Planting Self-Care: How Lavender Teaches Rest, Renewal, and Joy

Hello, and welcome back to Essential Ingredients. If you've never joined us before, I'm Justine Reichman, your host. And at Essential Ingredients, we strive to highlight innovators, change makers, and those at the intersection of food and wellness in the hope that we can do our part to foster a regenerative future. Welcome to Essential Ingredients. Today, we have DeAnna. DeAnna is the Founder of Point Reyes Lavender Company. She's also a physical therapist. I see her myself, and I love her products too. I'm excited to have you here.

Oh, thank you. I'm so stoked that you asked me.

I'm so stoked that you're hosting us here in this beautiful setting for the podcast. Everybody can get a better look at the lavender and all the things that you're building out with the herbs, flowers and everything that you're growing on. I wish everyone could smell it. Can we transport that through the camera? I know that you originally, years ago, started off as a physical therapist. And now, you've launched into this new initiative while still doing physical therapy in the last year or so. I'm wondering what initiated that interest to make that leap of faith and connect the two worlds.

Definitely a leap of faith, starting a new business in your 50s after a very long career and successful career in physical therapy, 25 years of treating patients in pain, and being a guide and a healer. But also realizing that there is something missing in modern medicine that's not just about the theraband exercises, or about empowering the patient, but getting the patient to really choose self care. And I feel like lavender is the perfect intro into that, promoting relaxation, reducing stress, and giving you a chance to have a little bit of a ritual for yourself. I've always been interested in lavender throughout my career. I do have somewhat of a background, my family lived around agriculture, so I've always been comfortable around a farm. And Point Reyes, to me, is just the beautiful backdrop to this rugged, kind of wild, but serene and peaceful setting. So it was the perfect combo.

And it is beautiful. It's such a beautiful place, and it smells amazing. I'm curious, I know you were always interested in lavender. So you wake up one day and you're like, okay, I want to go buy a lavender farm. How does that work?

Well, it was really after covid. Feeling like, wow. We all need a little more joy in our lives. We've all been through a lot, and I say collectively as a community and a country, and just feeling like, okay, how can we spread more joy? And lavender seemed like the natural fit, a mutual connection through patients who said, oh, I know that Black Mountain Ranch had tried some lavender test plots last year, and they were looking for someone to expand that. And so that's kind of how it happened. I'm part of Black Mountain Ranch, which is a 1500 acre, beautiful ranch that is malt supported as well. So Marin Agricultural Land Trust, and the owner of the ranch has several agricultural businesses. And it was like, all on board to try to like, yes, let's run with this. Let's try lavender. Which started out as a tip toeing into the idea of doing lavender quickly was in hyper drive, and we were flying the plane and building the plane at the same time.

Wow. So it was a little shooting, talking, walking and all those things. It's the exact same moment.

Still treating patients, still a mother of three. Having this career and going like, okay, well, how are we going to do this? So that was the big leap. And saying, okay, what you don't know, you don't know. But you ask and lean in on people that really do know, and really hire some experts. Susan Kegley from Bees N Blooms is another lavender farm. Went to her as my guru and said, how do we do this? Can you help me with a map? Can we test the soil? See what kind of amendments need to be made to really get this going. And we planted on the contour of the land, which is unique, because most lavender is just row planted. And so it's unique because we don't have to pump the water from elsewhere. We just use the natural spring from Black Mountain, which is awesome. And the lavender is very happy here.

Well, that's important. You probably get more lavender that way.

Yeah. I learned a lot really quickly about lavender and the different varieties of lavender. Lavender really doesn't like to have its feet wet. That's a very important point. It likes lots of sun, and it likes really good drainage. And Black Mountain is perfect for that because that's really rocky. This used to be an old rock quarry and so pretty difficult to plant. And I will say that we had a lot of help from the Black Mountain Ranch staff, Danny Vitale, Willis Bigelow, Mike Lennox and others. I'll give them some shout outs, who really helped us get the plants in the ground, which was tough. One foot up the hill, one foot down the hill, and shoveling into rock. That's hard. That's really hard. I was very naive thinking like, I'm a physical therapist. I've done workouts my whole life. I've trained people to lunge and squat, and how hard can this be? And day one crawling literally down the hill going, this is pretty hard work. But it's been great.

I know you're interested in lavender. But I'm curious about the medicinal effect on lavender. Because as a physical therapist, I know you said that you were looking for something that could really help and support your patient.

Lavender, from even ancient times, has been used for relaxation, reducing anxiety, depression and other things. So the act of smelling even just a certain amount of time per day is going to help lower the tension. And for me, if having patients take pause and not only just do the exercises in physical therapy, but take time to focus on yourself, look inward, focus on your own healing journey, and that's kind of what can catapult you into a quicker recovery.

With lavender. I should come here every day for 20 minutes, and my hip will be better. My back will be better.

I think it's more not necessarily having to be here, even the ritual at home. But saying, I'm going to spend this time for myself.

Which sounds like it was integral to a lot of the products that you created. Because to me, when I think about bath bombs and balms for your sore areas, it's all about taking care of me, self care.

Yes, that was the huge message. And also to get people to choose joy. That's one of our hashtags or taglines. Because I think that a lot of times in life, you can be dealt some really tough cards, and you can look at it in a negative way, or you can look at it in a positive way. I try in my own life, and I try to encourage my patients to choose the joyful path. It's easier to go down into negativity. And if you keep trying to choose joy in your daily ritual, it will help.

I would agree with that. I'm a glass half full kind of person. That's my motto. But when I come here and think of this, and I think about what you do, it all connects for me. It totally does. Even when I went to try the bath salts, I was like, oh, I felt so great. I felt relaxed. I hate to admit this every now and then. And again, it's a little hard to get out of the tub, but I had less pain doing that. And of course, I use my bomb, so I want to go back to when you first started this and you're like, okay, I'm going to come up with my first product.

I always wanted to make something for pain. Because of years of people saying, what should I use on my back, or my neck, or my shoulder, or whatever it is. Looking at the marketplace and going, I don't really love what's out there. This will give you pain relief, but it's just numbing the area. This is that, but it's CBD. I wasn't into that and just going like, okay, we want to use all natural, but we want to take some of the healing properties of several things like arnica, which is great for bruising and soreness. And then the camphor, which you'll see in other products that gives you that burning like stinging effect. So we took that down to make it more of a warming effect. It's always the idea of warming and soothing. So we have arnica, camphor. We have turmeric, which is really great for inflammation. Peppermint and using beeswax as the base. So it has a lot of healing properties. Obviously, it hasn't been researched and tested. But every patient, I put it on.

That's research. Either you have your own built in trial.

So it hasn't been clinically tried, and it hasn't done a current clinical trial.

But if you think about the number of patients you have, and you think about the amount of time you use it, and the stories that you hear impact it, there's your trial.

Yes. We should do a trial, for sure, to get more studies on it. But I do feel like it's a unique combination of elements. And when people smell it, you see the joy. You see the potential of like, oh, my gosh. This could really help me.

What I thought of when I first smelled it was, I felt like when everything dropped and you just relaxed a little, that was the feeling I got, which automatically makes you feel a little bit better because you're not quite as tight.

Yes, it's like disarming. It's a little bit like, okay, this is going to help you calm down. Whereas a lot of other products, you open the bottle and you are like, wow. What's wrong with you? Are you walking to a party? And they're like, hey, did you get an injury? So you're not going to walk through a dinner party and reek of whatever. It's going to be like, hey, what's that? That smells good.

Well, for me, it also connected. I was reading something about meditation and breathing. Apparently, we don't breathe enough. You hold your breath when you're scared, which means that you're tightening up, which means that creates pain. But if you do the opposite and you breathe out, everything releases, and you feel better. But it's counterintuitive.

I know we've always tried in physical therapy to get people to breathe. It's been a lifelong mission to get people to breathe. So yes, when you're in pain, you do tense up, you do take shorter breaths. So this in itself is opening up their ways, so it's helping with that.

So here you are, I want to say serial entrepreneur. Because as a physical therapist, you run multiple businesses. And then now, you have another business. So that sounds like a serial entrepreneur to me.

Well, I definitely feel like the beginning of my physical therapy career. I ran a big practice for a group of orthopedic doctors, and I learned how to do it. I thought, I can do this. And I can do this better. And so with encouragement, with my husband encouraging me too and saying like, hey, yeah, you can. And my kids are really young and going like, oh, my gosh. Am I actually going to do this? And starting my own practice, but then hearing the feedback of patients going like, yes, this is how I want to have physical therapy. This is how I want to experience it. It definitely gave me the confidence to feel like I could take on this new endeavor and feel like whatever I don't know, I'll figure it out.

I think that's one of the key traits of an entrepreneur. Fixing things, navigating things, figuring things out, being scrappy until you're strategic.

And having the passion behind that. My husband always jokes with me and says like, you're all about the feels. But it is about the feels. It's the feels of being on Black Mountain, being out here in Point Reyes. The feel of having lavender in your hand, smelling it. That is what we experience when people come and visit the barn. When they first walk in, it's just like, wow. What is this place? It's kind of like the first time you went to an amusement park or somewhere, and you're just trying to take it all in. There's so much to see, smell and experience. I feel like when I see that, I know that I'm spreading joy.

For me, it's like a kid in a candy store. I want a little bit of everything. Not that I'm advocating for candy, but this is healthy better for you kinds of candy for self care.

Yes. It's like, take your pick of how you want to heal yourself.

So when you started this business, clearly, a different business. Equally, the fundamentals of running a business can be similar. How did you leverage your experience from running a physical therapy business to building a company that now, you need chemists, and you need to make products, and you need to think about sustainability, things that you were not necessarily thinking about in your physical therapy practice. But what did you lean into for that? And what were some of the challenges that you found?

I do have a science background in biology, so I have an undergrad degree in biology. I've definitely always been into science and a little bit of a closet nerd. I thought, well, how hard can this be? Some of the difficulties were when you're wrangling and managing multiple people like ranch work and agricultural work is really different from healthcare. In healthcare, you have a set schedule, an appointment, and you can track and objectify how productive you are. This was more, okay, I don't know a lot about your world, but I want you to respect me. I'm going to respect and try to support you. Listen to you, and not try to force what I want. But still sticking to the vision of the feels, the ethos of like, why? I always said that I'm a healer. I'm a physical therapist. I want this for this reason, and I want it to smell like this. I want it to feel like that. And so even with the chemist, he was like trying to figure out like, well, what's important? And why do I not want to do, let's say hand sanitizer. Or why do I want to do the bomb and the lotion? Because I want to keep it in the wheelhouse of self care. I think it was a little difficult in the beginning just figuring out not only the AG aspect, how to actually physically do it, and learn about it. But then going, okay, well, I've never made a product. I am the product. A little bit like, I'm always worried about my patients. But now, I'm worried about my babies. When it was really rainy or stormy, going like, oh, my gosh. I hope they're not drowning. Or if it's sunny, or I hope the water lines are still attached. They're very happy. We only lost a couple plants, couple babies. It's been a sprint, a learning curve sprint, but feeling that, if I just stick to the heart and soul of WHY, it's going to work out.

Yeah. I can't believe you've done this within a year. Here we are in this beautiful barn, from the packaging, the branding, to sourcing, everything that you use to bottle and to contain things. It's a lot.

It is a lot. And that's another thing that was really funny as an entrepreneur. I'm thinking like, sure, we can do 12 products. And people in the industry are now looking at me like, yeah. Usually, we do like A product. I guess that was a little bit fortuitous for me, because I didn't have the backstory to limit me to just say, of course we can. And I did have a really great branding person in Sausalito, Kate Saker who has done amazing work with a brand, the logo and the website so that we can shop online, and all kinds of stuff like that. I've had a lot of really great people to help get this going.

Besides all the beautiful products that you've created here, what else drives you to build Point Reyes Lavender Company?

Well, I first visited Point Reyes as a teenager in love before I was married to my husband. We were 18, and I came to California and visited Point Reyes and I thought, wow, this place is amazing. I always had a special place in my heart for Point Reyes and the community. So definitely community building. I was part of Point Reyes Farmers Market. I've done other markets like Fairfax and local stuff, and supporting locals. I'm trying to network with the woman who did the paintings on the barn, Amanda Giacomini. She's a wonderful yoga instructor and artist, and I commissioned her to do a painting for us.

Oh, wow, how nice. Beautiful.

A little bit of a blessing of the barn and feeling like I want to be connected to the hows and whys did the Buddhas even come about, and learn her story. Got into Toby's Market, which is a local market in Point Reyes. Networking with other local businesses trying to do, potentially a lavender cookie with brick maiden breads, and networking with Point Reyes cheese to see how we can collaborate together. So really feeling like part of the community, and I want to be known as a cherished gem in Point Reyes. Not looking to build an empire, I want to be a local gem.

And did you see that expanding outside of Point Reyes? Because when you were talking about this, I was like, I could see you in Kabbalah point.

Yes. So we're wanting to be in places that we feel like minded. I'm not sure if they're aligned. I don't know yet. We haven't really explored, but we are in a couple of spas. We're in Sausalito, in Casa Madrona, and we really love them. Family owned locally, we're in Good Earth, which was nice. That was pretty awesome. In a couple places of Tiburon and Flourish, which sells succulents. I love the owner, Jody. She's great, and I like what she's doing. Talk about feels, that place has the feels, seen it. And the Healdsburg honey tasting room is called La Ruche, because we're all about the beads.

They have a lot of spas and hotels up there too.

So we're gonna dip our toe into that a little bit more and try to expand.

I was thinking that. Because every time I go to a hotel, I wish it felt differently. I feel like they sometimes, I know they're going for the spa thing, but it ends up feeling like the corporate spa thing. And I like the boutique that's why I was like, what about these? Because I feel like they could use it for a little local love.

That's what Casa Madrona is doing. They're creating a Point Reyes massage where they're going to use our lotion and the bomb. They're going to do lavender roller, and you're even going to get a little bouquet of lavender when you finish. So we love that kind of thing to feel like, yes, local female owned and doing sustainable practices.

I want to talk to you about that a little bit. I'm curious, I think about all the containers that you need to use, the glass, the metal, all the different things that, in of itself, is a whole other conversation, and it's a whole process to uncover the options. I'm just curious if we could just narrow it down and say, how did you make your choices?

Well, we chose glass because we felt like we're eventually going to make the front of our barn a refill bar. People can come in and like, I love the lotion. Can I get a refill? That's great. And the soap too. Obviously plastic, we're like, eh?

And the glass that you use, are you getting new?

Some of it is recycled. And then our packaging, we outsource to do soy dye and recyclable. We try to keep minimal on the packaging. A lot of the times when people come in here, they're like, I'll take the soap, I'll take the lotions. Skip the box. We really only have the box for shipping and gifts and retail because it looks really cute. It looks really great. And this, I'll show you, which I think is super cool, how they go together.

I like that.

The logo, I kind of just talked to you about this for a second. This logo really, to me, we wanted bold, new and fresh, but this is coastal serenity, earth passion, and then lavender rising.

That's so thoughtful. I love how it connects. I don't know that I've ever seen such intentionally done branding.

Well, I'm gonna give that to Kate Saker regardless. But she's definitely amazing. We love the brand.

Recyclable boxes. So here's a question for you. So a lot of times when you feel like the softer boxes and they have ink on them, people think you can't recycle them.

You can soy dye. We had to wait so many months to get these. I don't know, they came over a long period of time. We were like, are we ever going to get the boxes?

So once you got the boxes, though, and you made such an effort to make a sustainable product that is recyclable, what role is education playing in that so that you ensure the people that have these boxes know.

It says on the box, I believe it's underneath.

Printed with soy. You're telling me that because it's printed with soy, I can recycle it. Do a lot of people know this?

I'm not sure. Maybe we need to put a little shout out on there.

I'm thinking because I feel like not everybody knows these.

The big sustainability piece for us is not only the lavender and the way that we're doing it with the water and sourcing from the Black Mountain, that's basically glacial plates that shifted over time, so there's a natural sponge in there. But also for our bomb, for example, like I mentioned, we're trying to grow all the herbs that are in the bomb like the arnica, the comfrey, the calendula. We're not going to buy that online or wherever. We're going to grow and dry it, and make it here.

When are you starting that process?

Well, we've already started it.

Oh, so you've already planted those herbs. So now, we're just waiting to see them come up.You have so many children. I've got two dogs.

And the three children.

You have 12 products right now. And when you think about the next few years and what you hope to grow and achieve, what does that look like? Are we going to see new skews? Are you going to pare down? Are you going to expand?

We're definitely going to expand. We're hoping to do two to three new products this winter. Play around with it. It's all going to be in that same self care, the feels.

Two to three more products this winter, so maybe I'll have to invite you back and tell them, and test them out. Alrighty, that sounds exciting.

Little guinea pig and try things, and give us our feedback. A huge part of it is like, how do you enjoy it? Or what do you feel a need for? And my husband feels like the guys are a little left out. So we may do something male related.

Fair enough. He gets off a bike ride and he's feeling sore or something, he can use the bomb.

A lot of men buy the bomb. But also just feeling like, okay, this can be an amazing gift for someone in your life.

We've got lots of things coming up this holiday season that we will need gifts for. And on that note, I wanted to circle onto that and circle back to the community building, because I know you're doing a couple holiday markets, and you're doing one in Marin, in ROSS. Can you tell us a little bit about those so people can come find you.

Well, November 20, I'm going to be at Ashley Morgan Designs and Ross Jeweler, which is all about promoting women in business and doing sustainability. She has a lot of amazing people that are part of that. Before that, artisan craft fair and civic center, November 7th, all weekend, will be there indoors, so that should be pretty exciting.

And so if folks that are tuning in today wanted to buy the product direct from you, for those people that are not necessarily in Point Reyes--

Well, we've shipped all over the country.

How would they go about getting it?

They can go to our website at www.pointreyeslavender.com.

Okay, we'll make sure to put that in the show notes too, for sure. Thank you so much, DeAnna, for having this podcast with me, and for having me here in your beautiful Buddha barn. Thank you for showing me the land. I want to thank our listeners for tuning in today. I'm so pleased that you got to meet DeAnna and see all her products, and see the passion behind it, and how she's connecting food sustainability and pain for relief. You can feel better. So if you are watching this as a podcast, don't forget, or listening to this as a podcast, we do have a video cast that you can find on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram at essential.ingredients. And DeAnna, do you want to throw in a couple of your Instagrams so people can follow you too.

Sure. You can follow us on Instagram at Point Reyes Lavender. And our website, pointreyeslavender.com. On Instagram, you can follow along and see from raw land to product making how we've done it all.

Thank you so much for listening to Essential Ingredients. Your support means the world to us. We would love it if you could follow us on Instagram at essential.ingredients, and subscribe to our substack at substack.com/essentialingredients. Bye for now.