So, yesterday was full to the brim with instances and happenings galore!
A TL:DR thesis statement for this post would be: A lavender flower steam distillation, a complete lack of self-awareness sensation, and a deploying of the fire station narrative conglomeration.
However, for those of you who prefer a longer and slightly more in-depth explanation of interesting occurrences, please continue reading, I shall now describe the conglomeration of events.
To begin with, my lavender crop, as previously mentioned in earlier blog posts, is all sorts of befuddled thanks to combination of cool weather, drought, and then surface of the sun temperatures. Usually, I harvest buds, but this year that was not an ideal prospect, so I hatched this hairbrained scheme to finally build a still. My husband was fully on board.
Stills, especially large stills for essential oil distillation, are super expensive. As one branch of my family hails from the bootlegger hills of Eastern Tennessee, perhaps some of my moonshine-soaked genetics screamed out in frugal, I can DIY myself out of this conundrum because dangit holler folk distilled hooch without multi-thousand dollar equipment, frustration.
Apparently my husband agreed, and after a day of scrounging about the farm and a trip to Home Depot for some copper (ouch), the glorious Hawaiian had constructed a beautiful distiller for our whacked out lavender crop.
And guess what? It works beautifully.
Yesterday, he did a trial run and produced some beautiful oil and hydrosol. Sitting out in my car right now is the final piece we need to distill lavender essential oil properly, an essencier. I am so stoked about the essencier, and after we run our first batch of flowers through the completed still this Thursday, I will do a complete write up about the still, the harvest, distilling essential oil, etc. Talk about a frugal, self-sufficient win!
Which brings us to the lack of self-realization section of Monday's existential melee. While I was shelving some returns at the library, I noticed that my coworker had rolled out the processed holds for shelving. There was a rather portly gentleman at the patron computer next to the holds shelf, and my ears caught the vexatious tones of I have no absolutely no self-awareness pay attention to me verbal vomiting.
I drifted through the stacks, shelving easy readers and drew ever so slightly toward the event. At my workplace we have an unspoken pact, if we are ever being held verbal hostage by a patron, one of us will swoop in and relieve the fellow soldier. However, in this instance it was a little trickier, as my coworker had to shelve the holds.
My eyes met hers and I smiled a grimace of reassurance. The man kept his mumble prattling about baseball, his unwanted orations were picking up steam with each passing second. My coworker was in real danger of being completely encapsulated in his self-centered whingings.
My smile faltered a bit as I reminded myself that he was a lonely creature who most probably just wanted to be heard. It is also well known to us that he is a bit cognitively disabled due to a myriad of reasons (he has told us of his ailments many times), so I tend to try to be gentle yet firm in walking the balance beam of being a compassionate human being while also retaining the work-patron boundaries that are required of us all. What really got me is that my coworker, while a paragon of politeness, obviously didn't want to be there held attention hostage by his endless baseball prattling. It was a good lesson for me to reconsider, to be aware if people actually want to listen to you or not, conversations should be engaged in not hostaged.
He tried to do the same thing to me later, bringing up when Lewis and Clark were adventuring and the native Americans who saw them had never saw white folk before. I gave him my standard two full minutes of attention before gently disengaging him by throwing up a boundary of, I'm here to help you as a librarian, not as a counselor technique. It's always good to leave a CD or book to wash and shelve.
My favorite moment of lack of self-awareness wolves happened with the arrival of Mr. S. I love Mr. S! He's in his 80's, is almost deaf, and because of that status is super loud, and over the last decade he has provided me with the most off the wall requests of information.
Yesterday was no exception.
Mr. S had me find a certain author of large print westerns, an author that he has read a thousand times and knows exactly where to find the four volumes we have of said author. I don't mind though, because I knew what was to come.
"Young lady, I need you to find me the mailing address of the Carter Carburetor Company." Mr. S bellowed his honestly not unprecedented nor odd request into the air conditioned air of the library.
I smiled and began typing, for I already had a search tab open, seeing how the last time he had me try to look up the home mailing address for the Farmer's Insurance CEO, (He had to settle for the corporate office's mailing address to his slight chagrin).
"Um. Mr. S., that company went out of business in 1985." I replied with a chirp.
"Dad!" Mr. S's son bellowed from the back of the library in exasperation.
I have to be honest, it was the first time I have ever seen Mr. S a bit nonplussed. In fact, he even looked a bit sheepish. My smile grew to the size of a certain orange hued boisterous politician's lofty hair.
My mirth evaporated quickly though, as the sound of sirens sped towards the library.
Multiple members of every fire agency known to these parts flew through town at speeds I have never seen them utilize before.
Thirty minutes later, the planes started arriving.
Less than a mile from my house, a wildfire had been reported. For the next 3 hours, my husband, who sat in the yard distilling lavender oil, got an airshow. The tankers and fire suppression aircraft had to line up for their approach to drop their loads on the fire just over the trees of my farm. It was a little nerve wracking.
Up on the hill in town, as I was at work in the library it being a Monday, my phone began to ping and ring incessantly, my blessed and beautiful group of friends and acquaintances all offering to help up evacuate if we needed too.
Thankfully we didn't have to and they got fire contained, which made me happy for everyone in my area, because most of us have not just ourselves to think of when it comes to evacuating but also multiple critters and neighbors that we care for.
And now that I think of it, sure, maybe people do often lack self awareness when it comes to foisting themselves onto others, but yesterday I saw an outpouring of pure benevolent, selfless generosity. Our town's Facebook group was full of post after post of people in our community offering to house people and animals and haul them out of danger.
Maybe that's why I tend to smile when I deal with the characters, for at the end of the day we are all in this together.
I had seen the fire report and was hoping it wasn't that close to your place. Scary! Thankfully it got put out fast. Just had a 10K acre fire come within 4 miles of my childhood home the past days. This summer is going to be rough for fires.
I look forward to seeing the distiller post!
It was way too close to home for sure. I hiked up on a ridge on the upper Pack River today, and just during the time I was hiking the smoke socked in the mountains and visibility became way reduced. You are so right about this summer being a rough one fire wise.
And I will do my best to show the still’s awesomeness!
Not sure if you have them bookmarked or not but the air quality maps for both WA and ID are handy. On this side we have a couple of air monitors close by which will give a good idea of the kind of readings you would be seeing since the winds blow from here to you over Mt Spokane. Of course except for those times where you have a forest fire right next door...
WA air quality map
ID air quality map
I have em’ bookmarked now lol! I’m lazy and just search for them as I need them, but now I have the links! Thanks 😊
The air is much better today, I even took a small hammock and nap respite for a bit!
Wow, this is a bit action packed. The fires are a post on their own.
I am wildly intrigued at the Still'ing. Cant wait to see all about it!
It’s so gross and dangerous around here right now. The air resembles the atmosphere of a 70’s biker bar and the landscape is dryer than the Sahara. Not fun...
And I will endeavor to do the distillation station justice!
Once you perfect the process, I'd like to see an "in the kitchen with Kat" post about the distillation of lavender essence - assuming you do that in the kitchen, of course. I any case, I'd love to see how that's done. Also, this may sound a bit odd, but what do you think of the fragrance combination of lavender oil and diesel fuel?
I had planned on doing a distillation post, maybe even a series because it’s just such a cool process! We set the still up on a table out in front of my greenhouse because my husband used the frost free hydrant there to do the condenser water cooling part of the process. Our water comes out at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so It works perfectly to cool the condenser and then we recycle the warm water by using it to water the lawn.
I think that lavender and diesel might be excellent, I know diesel is low sulfur, but copper reacts with lavender to make it more sweet which is why they use copper stills, so maybe sulfur would too. I mean, I have drive the tractor while heavily lavender scented and I liked both smells simultaneously lol!
Very cool fire photo, but too bad about the fire.
Quite a day!
It really was lol!
I am so glad they got that fire under control so efficiently!