My wife (Marion ) and I (Mike) have been growing lavender for 5 years now .
My background is forestry, sheep and beef farming, contract fencer, goat farming, factory worker and human resource assistant. Marion has been a nurse, farmer, cleaner, rural delivery driver, mother of two and wife of one. So you can see we are well qualified to grow lavender. We made lots of mistakes but talked to heaps of people and learnt as we went along and have enjoyed the whole process.
When I was made redundant from the Toyota Assembly Plant in Thames in 1998 we decided to fulfil a life time dream to work together on the land growing something. Our research started on echinacea but we kept coming back to lavender almost against our will at the beginning but more and more with a growing conviction that this was what we wanted to do.
So we brought a block of land at Newstead and planted our trial of 500 Grosso Plants, they grew so we planted 1500 more and 500 Pacific Blue as well.
We found that to buy a still was too expensive so we built one and distilled our own oil. Now we had plants and oil but no products. Marion is the creator of all our range.
Where ever possible we have mixed lavender with active manuka honey in our creams and with sweet almond oil in our oil blends. We get our honey and beeswax from Waitomo Honey which is based in TeKuiti but has hives in the Coromandel
Peninsular where there is a good supply of manuka for the bees.
No animals were used to test any of our products. We made them to suit ourselves and then tried them on willing family and friends, all of whom are still alive and well and still using our range.
Around the middle of 2001 we made a big mistake and applied for permission to open a shop on our farm. The council said yes but Transit NZ got in on the act with some pretty expensive conditions, such as a de-accelerating and an accelerating bay to get vehicles on and off the road - cost $40,000. So after some legal enquiries we decided that relocation was the better part of valour and moved to our current address here at Koromatua, Hamilton.
We now have 1200 Grosso 800 Pacific Blue and 400 Super as well as 20-30 different lavenders for sale to gardeners or growers. There is also a legal shop on the property, we are now on a side road, Goile Rd. We welcome visits from individuals or groups and enquiries from anyone wether in person, phone, fax, or Email.
We look forward to meeting you,
Mike and Marion Alspach