(27 Aug 2024)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
East Garafraxa, Ontario – 21 August 2024
1. Wide of lavender field, rack focus along field
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2. SOUNDBITE (English) Julie Thurgood-Burnett, owner, Hereward Farms:
"We are on 250 acres of generational farmland, fifth generation farmers. During Covid, I was like, I wonder if lavender will grow. And I’ve never been to a lavender farm, ever. And so we started with 40 plants and I made some products. And then we went up to 6,000 plants. And now we’ve rolled out a whole production.”
3 .Detail of lavender plants
4 .Wide pan up of row of lavender plants
5. Aerial overhead of lavender plants
6. Various of Cadence Thurgood harvesting lavender
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7. SOUNDBITE (English) Julie Thurgood-Burnett, owner, Hereward Farms:
"Kind of starts from the lavender. Probably 95% of our products are organic or come from a sustainable source. So it is a lot of work to find that information or that product. When there was a glass shortage a few years ago my suppliers, like you can go to plastic and I’m like, no, I will buy up whatever glass I can. We now have a refillable program. So our customers come in and they bring back their bottles. So that’s one less thing that they are putting in to the recycling.”
Various of product displays
8. Various of refill station
9. Various of Stephen Burnett using a lavender processor
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10. SOUNDBITE (English) Julie Thurgood-Burnett, owner, Hereward Farms:
"It’s such an intimate relationship because you’ve put it in the ground and you’ve cared for it. I go out and I sometimes just sit there with the plants and I love that the bees are there and, and we’re doing this like really neat ecosystem. That wasn’t the reason why we started it, but it’s become that.”
11. Detail of lavender buds going through processor
12. Wide of lavender drying
13. Aerial of workers harvesting lavender in field
14. Medium of lavender plants
STORYLINE:
"Clean beauty," the idea of promoting healthy and environmentally friendly beauty products, is all the rage online and in big-box stores. But knowing exactly what’s in most of the soaps, creams and perfumes on shelves today can be nearly impossible, supply chain experts say, because even products that tout natural, sustainable ingredients are so far removed from the fields where they’re grown. While the origins of many raw ingredients are obscured, some small beauty brand owners go the extra mile — but even they can be frustrated by the sacrifices they have to make and the lack of transparency in the industry overall.
Julie Thurgood-Burnett had no idea that her COVID-19 lockdown whim of starting a lavender patch on her husband’s family farm just outside Toronto would turn into a small business. She had never been a farmer, but before long, she had a bright purple field and a new hobby of creating lavender oil for her friends and family, who liked it so much she ran out.
And then she had a brand, Hereward Farms, which she wanted to be “authentically sustainable." To her that meant avoiding plastic packaging, even though it would have been cheaper. It also meant sourcing as many raw ingredients from Canada as possible, which turned out to be much harder than she expected. She was able to get Canadian-made beeswax and sunflower oil, and work with a Canadian supplier, but that supplier gets things from beyond the country’s borders. Most of Hereward’s essential oils and all of its dried flowers come from the United States.
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