As I mentioned in an earlier post, we had absolutely no
clue about farming. Yes, during a herbalist training I learned about the benefits
of lavender and other herbs, but nothing about growing them … and certainly
nothing about having 25 000 lavender plants.
I was superproud of us when we managed to finish
planting after 3 weeks and the months after that there wasn’t much to do except
waiting for spring to arrive. I expected of course to see beautiful lavenderflowers
emerge … but soon I learned that nature doesn’t work that way.
Yes, the lavender plants started growing … slowly. But, the weeds were a lot faster. So, soon
you could find us every day with our shovel in hands, carefully removing weeds
around the baby lavenderplants. Yes,
with a shovel, no tractor. That one came
only to clean between the rows, but between the plants it had to be done by
hand and shovel.
From locals we soon learned the saying “la terra è
bassa”, something farmers often say when they complain about back aches: “The
ground is low.” Well, that is certainly no lie.
We kept going and soon one of the four fields was done
and then … Well, then we learned our next lesson : Weeds never stop growing (except
during the wintertime). So, once finished one field, we almost had to start all
over again.
So, we never really managed to get all the fields cleaned up. But we found the solution, after years of trying to get “clean” fields, now we call them “wild lavenderfields” ?
