Beauty Secret from the IO Family Farm (OM OF NM)
As one of IO’s founders and also a child of city folk turned organic farmers, I want to share an experience I just returned from as I journeyed to the high desert of New Mexico for the harvest.
Every year in the transition from summer to fall, I return to our organic farm to help my folks with the year’s biggest harvest. We pick all sorts of fruits like grapes, figs, apples, peaches, heirloom vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and medicinal, healing herbs like flowering mint and lavender.
My business partner and friend, Melissa, as well as IO Creative Director, Matt and IO Retail Director, Julie, have in years past also shared in the harvest experience and helped lend able hands to IO’s very own family farm, Old Monticello Organic Farms, New Mexico, otherwise know by the fitting acronym of OM OF NM.
After the harvest my parents, Jane and Steve, send me back from the farm to San Francisco with my healthy supply of freshly picked fruits and vegetables, my mom’s homemade stone-fruit granola, dad’s wood-aged balsamic vinegar, and lavender products to use at the spa and in my home bathroom.
Lavender Hydrosol is one of my favorite wellness products from the farm. In small batches, my parents slowly distill fresh, hand-cut herbs in their pure well water, producing the highest quality hydrosols and essential oils.
Nearly everyone knows what essential oils are, but hydrosols may be new to people outside of Europe. It is being learned that this “milky water” contains all key plant constituents, often even more than the essential oil itself, and can deliver the fullest medicinal value of the plant via inhalation or skin contact, both pleasingly and effectively.
Lavender is a healing herb known for its balancing, antiseptic and calming qualities.
Hydrosols are the pure water-based solutions created when essential oils are steam-distilled. They help maintain skin pH balance and absorption of product ingredients.
I love to mist Lavender Hydrosol generously on my face and body as a refresher and light fragrance. I always travel with a bottle to hydrate, calm and refresh. Since lavender has antibacterial and antimicrobial properties it’s also good for the germ exposure we encounter when traveling. Try it yourself.
A special thank you to my parents, Jane and Steve, and the fall harvest at OM OF NM for reminding me about the beautiful organic yields of nature and what delightful creations can be made with our own hands. What a combination.
Straight from the farm,
Amy
20 Jun 2009
Dianne Dawkins
I am very interested in Lavender products you have. After getting a massage in T or C on Friday the 19 Maya used the Lavender oil and she told me it was an English Lavender. WOW I love Lavender but this was wonderful. We went to the farmers market this am but you were not there. Please let me know how i can purchase the lavender and lavender oil.