Young Living Members at St. Maries

Young Living members come to St. Maries to help with both summer and winter harvests.

Young Living members come to St. Maries to help with both summer and winter harvests.

This is 2011. Does anyone in this picture recognize themselves? Members distilling! Yes indeed, there’s Judy, Kathy, Jill, and husbands. Kristen was there with her mom and dad. Thank you so much. These beautiful people came to St. Maries over and over and over, summer after summer, winter after winter, helping with the lavender harvest and the winter harvest. Thank you so much.

This is loading the cooker. Members are unloading chips from the truck into the cooker and tamping them down prior to distillation.  The St. Maries distillery has 42,000 liters of distillation capacity.

Who would have thought Idaho Blue Spruce essential oil would be such a lovely pink color? This is blue spruce from last year’s distillation. Isn’t that beautiful? Chérie Ross was at the farm the day I distilled the first batch of blue spruce. I was downstairs when the blue spruce oil was coming out. If we call it blue wouldn’t you think the oil’s going to be blue? It came out champagne pink.

I went running up the stairs and said, “Chérie, you’ve got to come down here; you’re not going to believe this—it’s amazing!” She came down the stairs, and it was one of the very few times Chérie was silent. Her eyes were that big around, her mouth was down to her chest, and she was just standing there in awe. Since then she has never stopped talking about blue spruce.

Who would have thought Idaho Blue Spruce essential oil would be such a lovely pink color?