Sweet scents and birdsong

From Jeremy D. Wells

Carter County Times

What to do if you have purchased an old tobacco farm but the tobacco is not selling as well as it used to?

If you’re Jeremiah and Cindy Littleton, you do the obvious thing: you start growing lavender. Now, this may not be obvious to you or me, but to people with the analytical, technical background of the Littletons, it made sense. They talked to consultants, analyzed the type of soil they had, and decided that lavender would be their first crop to experiment with.

“I said, ‘Let’s buy some plants,’ and she bought 108,” Jeremiah said with a chuckle. “So we had to get going.”

It worked, and they have now expanded their property to 207 plants.

“Lavender likes poor soil and good drainage,” Jeremiah continued. “The nice thing about this farm is that there is really sandy soil here along Rocky Branch. It’s really well-draining sandy soil. There’s a lot of sandstone drainage here. That’s why it’s worked great. We decided to experiment and it’s going pretty well.”

Since they both worked as engineers during the day, they could afford to take the risk and look into alternative crops like lavender, he explained.

“We wanted to do a couple of things,” Jeremiah explained. “We like lavender. Who doesn’t? And (secondly) we’re experimenting for the county. We want something to replace tobacco. And we had read an article about old strip mines in West Virginia growing lavender. So we thought, if you can grow lavender in a strip mine… let’s go for it!”

Since lavender prefers more alkaline soils, they worked limestone into the soil when preparing their fields – another resource that is abundant in the region. They also purchased a variety that is better adapted to our local climate.

“The variety we grow is a hybrid,” Cindy added. “It’s been bred to tolerate humidity a little better than some of the more traditional varieties.”

The lavender they grow is distilled or dried into essential oils and used for potpourris and scented sachets. They use the old tobacco barn to hang and dry their lavender, which is then processed. Although lavender can also be used in cooking, Cindy explained that the variety they grow is more suited to perfumes and essential oils than to use in the kitchen. She said they are also considering growing food-grade lavender.

“We want to start planting some English lavender varieties as they taste better for cooking and experiment with them a bit,” she said.

They explained that these were experiments that they would never have dreamed of before the pandemic.

“Covid has had its advantages too,” noted Jeremiah. “I mean, remote work has changed a lot of things, so it’s helped us a lot.”

Although the couple currently still lives in Louisville, they are in the process of relocating to Grayson now that they can work from home. That’s where they plan to live while they operate the farm and work to restore the original cabin on their Elliott County property. As with changes in work life, that lifestyle has been altered by the pandemic and the reevaluation of values ​​it has brought. Neither Jeremiah nor Cindy were ever really “city people,” they explained, although their jobs at an engineering firm required them to live there. They traveled as much as possible, dreaming of visiting 50 countries by their 50th birthdays.

“Then Covid came and we had nowhere to go,” Cindy explained. “We kind of went crazy and started driving to Carter Caves a lot and spending time there just to get away from the city. We’re not city people at all. And when you’re in Louisville, you need to get away from it.”

So, Jeremiah continued, they began looking for property in the area, and a friend mentioned the property that the couple eventually wanted to purchase and name Whippoorwill’s Holler. It wasn’t for sale, but the owner was interested in selling.

“We came here and of course everything was overgrown,” Jeremiah said. “You could hardly see the cabin. It was all overgrown and stuff. So we spent the night in the barn, camped in the barn and just fell in love. We were kind of undecided and thought, ‘Hey, is this going to mess up our travel plans?’ When you get a farm, you’re kind of tied to the farm. We love it, but we’re undecided. We don’t know what to do. And all of a sudden the nightjars started singing and we were excited. So she named the farm Whippoorwill’s Holler.”

And what are your travel plans?

Jeremiah noted that at the last count there were 24 countries.

“We have to play the game until over 20. Not until 50. I don’t think we can do that.”

But both seem to agree with this idea. Especially on these warm summer nights when the scent of lavender is in the air and the nightjars are singing.

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