Purple Hues and Treats to choose
Lavender represents calm, grace and serenity. Adirondack View Vineyard and Lavender is home to 900 of these sweet and fragrant plants. Located in the countryside of Keeseville, NY, the vineyard offers fields of lavender and lavender based products.
The scenery is especially vibrant on dewy summer mornings with the blue mountain backdrop. Next to the gravel driveway is a shed shop full of lavender-based treats and themed home decor. There are cookies, biscottis and other types of baked goods arranged on metal shelves. Lavender bouquets, wreaths and quilts hang from the walls. Self-care essentials like soaps, bath bombs, body and lip scrubs lie spread out on sturdy tan tabletops. There’s no cashier present. The business uses an honor system with non-electronic transactions to lessen contact during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Customers can place their cash directly into the slot of the wooden payment box nailed to the wall. If they are paying with a credit or debit card, visitors can fill out forms provided on the small checkout table with their card information, then place it in the payment box.
Lindsey Pashow and her parents, Ken and Dana Pashow, live across the road from their lavender field and shed shop. Ken handles much of the plant care and maintenance, while Lindsey and Dana make all of the products sold in the shop from the heart of their home.
Pashow, a SUNY Plattsburgh alumni, studied business administration, marketing and expeditionary studies. For the last three years, she has been researching lavender. She opened the business this past June, at a time when businesses across the country were beginning to cautiously reopen after the worst of the spring coronavirus scare.
In previous years, Pashow grew cold-climate grapes and sold them to local wineries in the North Country. She stills grows grapes but does not make wine. A small-scale sunflower field as well as other organically grown goods like pumpkins and garlic can also be found at Adirondack View Vineyard and Lavender.
About four years ago, Pashow and her parents felt inspired after they discovered some lavender operations in Washington State, an area that has the largest lavender planting in North America. “It seemed as though it would be a different type of crop to grow in the Adirondacks,” said Pashow.
“We’re a USDA hardiness zone 4 in Keeseville,” she says. “And to grow lavender, it should be anywhere from 5 to 9.” The standard zones are created to know which plants thrive in which locations.
“It’s a huge financial investment doing this,” says Pashow. Lavender is a perennial that doesn’t require replanting when in an appropriate hardiness zone. However, this area is not ideal for its survival, so the Pashows replant lavender each year to keep the fields abundant.
Lavender has a multitude of uses and benefits for conditions like insomnia, anxiety and mild pain. Pashow enjoys using lavender in the kitchen as well, it has an intense, savory flavor. She recommends the homemade lavender biscottis sold in her shed shop.
Over the summer, my friend and I experimented with the culinary uses of lavender and baked these lovely lavender cupcakes with honey cream cheese frosting. The recipe for this is located down below. Anyone with a love for lavender will surely find Adirondack View Vineyard and Lavender to be a worthwhile visit.
How To Make Lavender Honey Cupcakes
Ingredients
Cake:
- 1/2 cup room temperature butter
- 2 eggs
- 1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 tsp dried lavender
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2/3 cup milk
- 20-25 drops each of blue and red food dye
Frosting:
- 8 oz room temperature cream cheese
- 2 tablespoon room temperature butter
- ¼ cup honey
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 3 cups powdered sugar
Directions
Cake:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, lavender and salt. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium-to-high speed for 30 seconds.
- Add sugar, honey and vanilla; beat until combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
- Add equal parts red and blue food coloring and combine (20-25 drops of each).
- Alternately add flour mixture and milk to butter mixture, beating on low speed after each addition until mixture is combined.
- Spoon the batter into lined muffin tins, filling each about half full.
- Bake for 16 to 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean.
- Keep the cupcakes in the muffin tin and let cool on wire racks for 10 minutes.
- Remove cupcakes from muffin tins.
- Cool completely on wire racks.
Frosting:
- In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, butter, honey and vanilla with the mixer on medium until light and fluffy.
- Add 1 cup of the powdered sugar, beating well.
- Gradually beat in remaining powdered sugar until it reaches spreading consistency.
- Frost the completely cooled cupcakes with the honey frosting.
- Sprinkle with more lavender.
Recipe from: https://localhivehoney.com/blog/lavender-cupcakes-with-honey-cream-cheese-frosting
Story and photos by Haley Passino
