Seven Oaks Lavender Farm

SHOPAll Products Arts & Crafts Bath & Body Food & Baking House & Home Jewelry Pet Care Sachets & Bouquets Tea Blends ABOUTAbout Us The History VISITTickets General Info FAQs The History of Seven Oaks Farm Deb Recounts the History of Seven Oaks Lavender Farm “How did you decide to start a lavender farm?" is one of the questions we are most often asked. To answer this question we should really start with my mother’s family which is a Pennsylvania farm family with roots reaching back to the 1700’s. My grandfather, Charles Campbell, raised hogs and potatoes and my mother, Edith Jane Campbell Williamson, worked by his side learning a lot about caring for plants and animals. See her hog slopping! She raised her five children knowing how to work hard, to garden well and to love and appreciate the beauty of nature. We can't leave my father's side of the family out of the lavender farm story though. Bertha Williamson, my paternal grandmother, taught her son, Glenn, how to SELL! (And sing, travel, and to be always mindful of the needs of others.)  Nana, as we called her, then went on to inspire her grandchildren with her love of crafting and her marketing genius. We fondly recall her stories of sales triumphs at The Little Tijuana Gift Shop in Miami, Florida. As children my sister Dianne and my brothers, Doug, Duane and David marched around our suburban development charming neighbors into buying potholders, note cards, leather bracelets, seed packets, and fairly useless things such as painted rocks and little hand-sewn "pockets". At the age of fourteen, we moved from Fairfax to Fauquier County. I was not always thrilled with country life. When I left for college, I swore never to return to live there. Fast-forward twenty years, past studying business, art and humanities. Living in Norfolk, Virginia and then New York City where I had my son Lincoln. By the time he reached two, I changed my mind about city life. I longed to raise him in open spaces and returned to Virginia. I lived with my parents for a time. Mom and I discussed ideas for a little farm  project. Flowers? Herbs? What would sell? I started asking around. On one trip  back to New York, my hair stylist and I chatted about a shop his boyfriend had that sold herbs. “What sells the best?” I asked. “Hmm…rosemary or lavender I think,” he responded. Mom, my sister and I had taken a trip to France recently and bought  some lavender in our travels through the French countryside. I also came across and article in “Oprah” magazine about a women who had left a career in New York  City to start a family and a lavender farm in Texas. Sound familiar? We started with a hundred plants in the field in front of my parent’s old home. We mounded up soil to create extra drainage as the land was very flat. I remember Lincoln in just a diaper toddling around with a spade and attempting to dig his own holes. “I lavender Mommy?” he inquired. Now Lincoln’s a teenager, who is not always so thrilled about living in the country. A year after returning to Virginia, I bought Seven Oaks Farm, renovated the farmhouse built in 1860, and moved in with plans to build Mom and Dad the home on a knoll they’d always dreamed of on the farm property. That was accomplished, and as they had sold their old home, we moved the 100 lavender bushes six miles up the road to Seven Oaks and elongated the farm name to “Seven Oaks Lavender Farm.” We began offering a pick-your-own experience at the farm in 2005. My sister, Dianne Bignoli, moved to the farm for a few years and added a lot of value to the business. Her daughters, Eva and Sofia, joined Lincoln in being third generation lavender farmers while they lived at the farm. Together, as a family, we have grown the  business from a few visitors trickling in and a very diminutive line of lavender products, to doing a booming pick-your-own business, creating a high-quality,  extensive product line: mostly made here at the farm, as well as selling fresh lavender and our lavender