We were lucky to catch up with Lilia Wood recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lilia, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

My Dad is my hero. Family came first and he sacrificed a lot to make sure we never went hungry and we were safe. We lived in Jamaica, West Indies until 1978 when he sent us to live in Panama with my Grandmother. In Jamaica there was a lot of poverty, food was hard to find, and voilent crime. He was an avid gardener, beekeeper, and grew most of our food. He was a humble and kind man. He showed me what love is and to never give up.

Lilia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My husband and I began Wood Lily’s Plants and More LLC when I retired after 33 years of Government Service. Our farm is a labor of love here in Woodlawn, Montgomery County, TN. It is on 40 acres.
My husband is a veteran and still works full-time, and I am my MIL’s caretaker. We have longhorn cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, bees and approximately 2,000 lavender plants. It is not thousands of acres of lavender you see in those pictures of lavender farms from Provence France. Right now it is on about 1/2 an acre.
Our lavender is a crop not a garden…with our second crop being weeds (just joking but it does seem like it). Some of the weeds are also helpful plants such as plantain, wild berries, mountain mint, bee balm, etc., I am learning about them. We grow and experiment with different varieties of lavender to see what grows best here in Middle TN, it is trial and error…lavender doesn’t like our red clay soil so we amend the soil. Lavender doesn’t like the humidity and heat either, it prefers a dry climate and of course it doesn’t like too much rain. To keep them happy we plant on slopes. And yes there are lots and lots of weeds which we try our best to keep down by weed eating, mowing, and pulling by hand. It is a never ending, backbreaking chore, to help with this task we are moving the sheep to the lavender fields to graze. We do not use any herbicides in the fields.
At our farm do not to expect well manicured gardens and fields with smooth paths. You will find: The bad – rocky paths, weeds, uneven land, insects, mud, messy barn.
The good – lavender, birds singing, buzzing of bees and bumble bees, butterflies, peace, tranquility, lots of trees, wild flowers, sheep, pigs, longhorn cattle, chickens, dogs, and cats.
It is our little slice of paradise, we love it!
Each year we open the farm for a few days while the lavender is in bloom to let other people enjoy this little paradise and the fragrance.
We use the lavender to make different products. We distill some of it to get Essential oil to use in soaps, and lotions. The other product we get when we distill is hydrosol which is one of our best sellers. Our products are all natural.
Lavender products are not the only things we sell. We also sell beef and honey.
We take our products to craft fairs except for the beef.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Yes, we manufacture our own products. Growing up I learnt to sew and embroider which I use to make our sachets, neck wraps, eye masks, and sleep pillows. In 2020, my husband’s project was to find a still which he did. That year our lavender distillation was a flop and we only had enough for one batch so we gave up until last year. This time we did more research and watched YouTube. We were successful and did 3 distillations we hardly got any Essential oil but we did get lots of hydrosol. We also distilled this year. We still have a long way to go to get more Essential Oil when we distill but as they say practice makes perfect and we love hydrosol

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We were planning on building our dream house on the property where we have our lavender when 20 more acres became available down the road. This acreage came with a small herd of longhorns and a beautiful creek in the front. We promptly put our dream house on hold and bought it. Right now we still live in our house a few miles away but love our properties. It is peaceful. We love our longhorns and seeing all the wildlife. Our dream is one day we will build the house.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.woodlilyslavenderfarm.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Wood-Lilys-Lavender-Farm-1242389925918924