By Sandi Kahn Shelton, Register Staff
sandishelton@comcast.net

THOMPSON — In the wonderful summery world of “pick-your-own,” Kristin Orr would like you to know there’s a contender for picking that you might not have thought of: lavender.

That’s right. The purple, scented flower, so common in potpourris and sachets, famous for being beautiful and aromatic and delicious, is available for the plucking now through Aug. 9 in a beautiful park-like setting known as Fort Hill Farms up in the sleepy northeast corner of the state.

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Orr, the co-owner of the farm and Quintessential Gardens, would like people from the manic portions of Connecticut (you know who you are) to come for a leisurely stroll among her 72 display gardens, all now in riotous bloom, as well as through her lavender labyrinth — and, if you bring along some scissors, you can take home a bouquet you picked yourself. If you prefer your lavender pre-dried, Orr has plenty of that, too.

Click here for recipes using Lavender flowers

If that’s not enough to get you to take the 90-minute trek to Thompson, consider this: Yankee Magazine has named Fort Hill Farms “the best place to go nowhere” for 2010.

“We’re now a destination!” says Orr. She’s a dynamo of a human being, zooming around the property on a golf cart, stopping only to explain her many passions, which consist of strict organic gardening, Greek literature, the joys and difficulties of lavender farming, her 230 milking cows, the creamery she’s building and her myriad recipes for lavender, including lavender creme brulee.



Give her a little more time, and she’ll tell you about The Farmer’s Cow, a dairy co-op she and her husband helped found, which has saved 10,000 acres of farmland in Connecticut, as well as the 6-acre corn maze she creates each year in the fall — a maze that she says is “not just for 4-year-olds! It’s for people between 4 and 88!”

But the lavender is blooming now, and if you sit with her in the protected area she’s chosen for its cultivation, you’ll learn that lavender is one of the most difficult plants to grow, particularly in Connecticut, because of the wind and the cold and the lack of good drainage of the soil. But Kristin Orr may never have met a challenge she didn’t conquer, and so she created a lavender farm within the foundation of an old burned out barn on her property, where it’s protected from the elements. Continued...

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To get the land ready, and to provide the right kind of conditions, Orr took a pickax and created 5 feet of drainage beneath each of her more than 1,500 plants. “The roots can never be wet,” she explains. “I needed to do it with a pickax to go through the layers.”

The results are amazing, she says. The quality of the lavender is breathtaking, and she doesn’t lose plants to rotted roots.

Maureen Estony, the owner of Woodstock Hill Preserves, says she’s come to Quintessential Gardens for years to get organic strawberries and blueberries for her products because she knows for sure that Orr doesn’t use any herbicides or pesticides. Now, she says, she’s teaming up with Orr to create lavender recipes for the creamery, which is opening July 15, and which will feature the organic, farm-made ice cream from the milk collected and separated right on the premises.

Estony, who now makes lavender cookies, is also working on special ice cream toppings made from lavender and the organic blueberries, which will be available for picking at the farm as of today. She’s also creating an organic lavender jelly.

“Kristin is just amazing, what she’s been able to do on this farm,” says Estony. “I saw her out there with that pickax, working away to create the perfect conditions for the lavender.”

Other features at the farm include the Discovery Barnyard, where you can meet the calves, the future cows that will give their milk to The Farmer’s Cow; the Fort Hill Mining Co., where you can pan for gemstones; and in the fall, the corn maze and a pumpkin patch. You can also buy organic perennials and flower bouquets.

- Fort Hill Farms is located at 260 Quaddick Road in Thompson. For more information, go to www.pickyourownlavender.com, or www.forthillfarms.com, or call the farm at 860-923-3439.

Sandi Kahn Shelton is the author of “Kissing Games of the World.” Check out her blog at http://www.sandishelton.com/blog.

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IF YOU GO Continued...

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Fort Hill Farms is at 260 Quaddick Road

in Thompson. For more information, go to

www.pickyourownlavender.com, or

www.forthillfarms.com, or call 860-923-3439.

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