It’s been too long since I’ve blogged, dear readers, and I humbly apologize. 2018 has been a whirlwind of a year for us here at Lavender Connection farm. In March, my husband and I relocated out to Sequim from Seattle (temporarily) to live on the farm and help out Farmer Rick and Susan the Purpled with the day to day operations of, well, farming. And this will come as a shock to no one, but farming doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. In addition, I quickly became engrossed in researching the history of our property and writing a grant to preserve our historic dairy barn. We had become increasingly concerned with the state of the barn, which seemed to be deteriorating more quickly every year. Exhausting story short, we got it!
Our barn is now proudly listed in the Washington Historic Barn Register, and the grant we received from the state Heritage Barn Grants program was enough for us to complete almost all of the repairs we requested. Primarily, we will be able to address structural sagging, and numerous holes in the roof (including over the farm store). The structural beams will be reinforced or partially replaced as necessary to address the roof sag. The entire roof will be replaced with cedar shakes. Finally, one cupola (which completely blew off in a windstorm a few years ago) will be rebuilt and replaced, and the other will be retrofitted and restored as well. For more information about the history of the property, please check out our barn information page.
After prepping and cleaning the barn to ready it for the forklift, we were finally able to begin work this week! I’ll be updating the web page with progress reports as we go. If you’re curious about the project, please feel free to sign up for our Barn Preservation Project email list, or “like” us on Facebook. In the meantime, snuggle up with a warm lavender hot chocolate and be sure to thank your local historical society for making preservation projects like this possible!
Now, back to your regularly scheduled blogs about lavender. Here’s hoping I have time to write one before next winter.