Young Living Lavender Farm, Mona Utah

Hey y'all!
I probably should do a "so this is me" kind of post lol... There are a couple of things that are a given with Karen Day. 1. You will probably learn that I am a teacher within the first minutes of any conversation with me. 2. My family will be taking bets on how long the conversation goes before teaching comes up. 3. I LOVE to craft and teach others to craft (see the teaching thing again) 4. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Young Living essential oils.

Way back in 2013 I started looking for alternative ways to support our health. See 2012 is when I started dealing with IBS and other digestive issues. I wanted support for my systems not a bandaid to cover the symptoms. I've used oils daily since 2014, yes it took me a year to get myself together and into a routine lol... slow learner.

The first summer that I used Young Living oils, I started hearing that you could drive up and tour their farms and distillery. To be honest, I didn't believe that a company would really be that open or transparent. But they are, and today I got to go see one of the farms in person. This morning my family loaded up and headed to Mona, Utah. It's a little over an hour from the KOA RV park where we are staying, and I wanted to be there for the first tour at 11am.

I can see why the founders of Young Living, Mary and Gary, love this place! It's simply beautiful! I think being at the farm during an even would be fantastic, but I loved the peacefulness of walking around today. I took TONS of pictures, but they don't do justice to how beautiful the farm is. Today they were distilling Juniper. As we walked over to the distillery, I felt like I was smelling oregano and cederwood. Our guide said that she thought that Juniper had simpler notes as oregano. I haven't used Juniper, although I just got a bottle about a month ago to use to support my kidneys and the systems they are attached too.

Here is my day in pictures! I can not wait to scrapbook this either... and pocket style scrapbooking is so easy!!

The front "gate". You can also enter the farm office from this entrance.

The visitors center also has a store attached. They have Young Living products as well as the bottled oils for sale. They also have some shirts and hats. 

Yep... that me. And this is what happens when you hand the camera off. lol Sorry it's dark. 

There is a great pond area just outside of the visitor center. They have paddle boats that you can take out on the pond.

This is the jousting arena. Yep! I wish that they were competing today but they were painting. Not as exciting lol!

Here are the people that I drug to the farm kicking and screaming.  They were such troopers! And maybe they learned something, even if it was that mom takes too many pictures!

These two! Anna Claire leaves for college in the fall and Jackson will start his junior year of high school. Time really does fly!

This is one of the MANY beautiful horses that are at the farm.  His name is Bud. One of the farm workers got him out and answered so many of our questions. Neither of my kids had seen a horse that close before and this was a great opportunity for them to interact with an animal they had never before. Jackson was the most interested. His questions were wonderful. On days like these I wonder if his wacky questions and point of view will be accepted or if I will be apologizing and explaining about our autistic child. The young lady was so sweet and answered all his questions. I wish I had gotten her name. She was fantastic!

 The distillery "barn". We were told that they distill 9 different oils at the Mona Farm. With Juniper being something that is farmed year round.

 Raw Juniper product. They had BIG stacks of this ready to go into the "pot" to get cooked. Yes they were getting ready to load and start a batch when we were there. This is a working farm and all the oil distilled here will be bottled and sold.

 This is what is left after they drain off the useable oil. The small brown layer on the top is essential oil but it is full of crap... dirt etc that comes through. The milky white is water that is used in the distilling process.

This is one of the monitoring screens used during production. 

 Did you know that pure essential oils do not freeze. This is a freezer full of oils that have been distilled at the Mona farm. The jar in the top picture that Katelynn is holding has water at the bottom that is frozen and Juniper oil at the top. It's a quick test that anyone can do... put your oils in the freezer.

 This jar was so interesting. This is what she called floral water. It's the stuff that is left. There is some pure oil in the jar but it is mostly just good smelling water. This is NOT what you want to spend your money on. All the good stuff is in the oil and not the water, it really just gets the smell.

So there you have it... my day at the Young Living Lavender Farm. Y'all it was so wonderful. The only thing that I wished was that the fields of lavender were purple. But it's really about 3-4 weeks early for them to be blooming. These oils changed my life and getting to see where all the good stuff happens was amazing! Thank you Gary and Mary and Young Living for being so transparent and open to letting the public come and visit.