This week on the Sunday Story, LINK nky reporter Haley Parnell explores creative farming, like The Lavender Field, in Northern Kentucky.
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As the weather warms, owners of The Lavender Field in California, Kentucky, sell tickets for a “U-pick” lavender season. The fields on their farm were a product of a mother’s love for lavender.
In the house where Kelly Schauff grew up, her mom, Cindy Cappel, always had lavender plants on both sides of the front porch. Today, the mother-daughter duo harvest flowers from 500 lavender plants at their farm in southern Campbell County.
They don’t have a farming background and just opened their U-pick lavender season to the public in 2020. Caring for the fields each season is a fun activity for them to do together, Schauff said.
She started the fields as a Mother’s Day gift in 2018.
“I’ve always liked lavender,” Cappel said. “I said a row of it would be nice just to pick from, and you never know when you’re going to need it. But she ordered 50 plants for Mother’s Day for me.”
Needless to say, that was more than she was expecting. When the women first planted the lavender, it was for the beauty of it, not to start a business.
“It’s like a happy accident that it can be enjoyed by so many other people, too,” Schauff said.
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