SEQUIM — This could be the year when locals from Port Townsend and Forks, Port Angeles and Chimacum rise up and rediscover: There’s a herbaceous mecca in their collective backyard.
It’s the staycation phenomenon, and it’s about to bloom in and around Sequim, said Scott Nagel, chief organizer of the 13th annual Lavender Festival engulfing the Dungeness Valley today through Sunday.
The farm tours, street fair and related activities starting today constitute North America’s most giant celebration of “the joys of lavender,” according to www.LavenderFestival.com. In recent years, the purple herb has drawn 25,000 to 30,000 people to Sequim from north and south America, eastern and western Europe, Asia and seven African nations.
The throngs, and the attendant congestion downtown, have inspired some locals to stay home or flee town. But what if you want to do a little weekend staycationing, perhaps with people-watching and lemon-lavender ice cream tasting?
Easy, Nagel says.
To enjoy this festival’s multisensory pleasures, you don’t have to go directly to Sequim.
Instead, you can head for one or two of the outskirts’ farms and have a tranquil time talking with lavender growers, sipping iced tea, listening to music and then drifting on with a fragrant bouquet.
“The farm tours are the unique thing about the festival,” Nagel said, adding that each of the seven lavender fields on the tour circuit offers live music, activities and demonstrations.
If you’re coming from the west, think about Lost Mountain Lavender on Taylor Cutoff; if you’re east of Sequim, it’s easy to visit Sunshine Herb & Lavender Farm on U.S. Highway 101 in Blyn.
North of town are the Olympic Lavender Farm on Marine Drive and Jardin du Soleil on Sequim-Dungeness Way.
For the most peaceful scene, go early, Nagel advises, adding that the farms all open at 10 a.m. and don’t get busy until afternoon.
Then if you want to see Lavender Central, also known as the free Fir Street fair — 150 vendors, “Olympic Coast cuisine” and more live music SEmD consider going when it opens at 9 a.m. or toward the end of the day. The fair runs till 7 p.m. today and Saturday and till 6 p.m. Sunday; the Sequim Open Aire Market is open on West Cedar Street from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
For the first time this year, a parallel fair, Fun on the Field, is happening just a few blocks to the west, on Sequim High School’s Fir Street athletic field. The family-oriented gathering of about 25 local organizations features hands-on craft activities, games, pony rides, a sandbox with toys and plentiful space to sit and enjoy cotton candy, drinks and other treats. The Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and KONP have organized this fundraising event.
Also different in 2009: the absence of Angel Farm from the festival.
The Old Olympic Highway operation owned by Cathy and Leeon Angel is still growing lavender for the products it sells wholesale and at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. But where the festival parking lot used to be is a field of goldenseal, a medicinal herb the Angels added last year.
“Angel Farm is not getting out of the lavender business, and we are not selling the farm,” Cathy Angel writes on the festival Web site. “Please look for us at the Lavender Festival Street Fair.”
Instead of the Angel Farm’s yearly Saturday night dinner and barn dance, the festival has “Unwine’d by the River,” a lower-key supper from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Railroad Bridge Park just west of Sequim.
Guests are invited to choose seafood, meat or vegetable kebobs and wine or soft drinks and stroll in the park or sit in the amphitheater while the Black Diamond Fiddlers play along with the Dungeness River’s song. The dinner is $25 for the first 75 people to arrive at the park’s River Center, 2151 W. Hendrickson Road.
For many other insights into this year’s festivities, you can connect with a flock of enthused “fans” online. Yes, the Lavender Festival has joined the Facebook phenomenon, and some 400 “fans” are part of the herbal-social network, according to festival marketer Brigid Woodland.
Among them is Cris Sansone, who’s coming to the festival for the ninth time.
“I always start at Cedarbrook [Lavender & Herb] Farm because that was the first farm I ever went to . . . I still attempt to visit all the farms and eat something at every farm — lavender tamales, lavender sausage, lavender cookies, lavender ice cream, lavender lemonade, lavender salad dressing,” Sansone writes, and at Purple Haze, “gotta love lavender margaritas.”
This is where another festival feature comes in: the farm-tour buses, which depart from the street fair every 20 minutes from 9:30 a.m. to about 5 p.m. throughout the weekend.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
