LAVENDER LOVE
Festival celebrates soothing qualities of fragrant flower
Emerge yourself in the soothing qualities of lavender at Lavender in the Village.
The festival on Saturday, July 15, will feature fresh-cut lavender, plants and bouquets as well as a large variety of lavender infused products including soaps, lotions, salves, wines, teas, chocolates, pies, jams and jellies and more. Artists also will be showing off the aesthetic side of lavender in fine art, crafts, home decor and antiques. Educational exhibits, seminars and workshops on cooking and healing with lavender as well as live entertainment also will be part of the event.
“The location of the fest itself is really a celebration of being in that part of the city and here we are in a major metropolitan city and right in the middle of it is fields and crops and neighborhoods with horses and chickens and acequias that are hundreds of years old,” said Katie Snapp, a Lavender in the Village board member. “… That’s just really different and special, and it’s worthy of sharing and educating people about.”
Lavender’s relaxing properties inspired on-site yoga classes first offered at last year’s event. Four free 50-minute yoga classes will be offered during the festival. Parents can enjoy yoga in peace and drop off their children, ages 5 to 10, at the kids’ lavender camp for up to 75 minutes. The camp offers kids’ yoga, crafts with lavender and wood and “up-close and personal” experiences with butterflies, thanks to Wings of Enchantment and birds of prey with Hawks Aloft. There are four sessions, and the camp costs $5 per child.
“We try to provide an experience that is beyond an $8 experience,” event planner Dean Strober of Blue River Productions said. “You’ve got six bands, four yoga classes, the seminars and lavender-growing installations, but every penny helps the farm camp; it helps the local farmers in Los Ranchos maintain that agricultural lifestyle.”
The educational farm camp for children is offered in the spring and summer. “I think the real beauty of it is it takes this agricultural concept — you can say it’s even a farm-to-table concept — and they teach it to kids,” Snapp said. “… About 40 percent of them are underprivileged kids. … The proceeds from the Lavender Festival go toward underwriting a certain percentage of these kids that would not otherwise have been able to go to this farm camp. These are kids that don’t ever see horses and crops. … It’s a really special camp for kids.”