This is TEMARICIOUS past blog archive written by Rika.
2019.05.22
Hello. People who feel lucky to have heavy rain for the first time in a while are those who work in the garden or fields.
Last weekend, I participated in NARD JAPAN's herb farm training with Mr. Kana from the aroma class, who has been attending for just over a year.
I rode Azusa to Yamanashi with a friend who also loves herbs and aromas.
We arrived in no time and the training proceeded with the following content.
- Distiller description
- Harvesting herbs for distillation at the farm
- Introduction to plants
- Current status of pesticide residues
- Practice using herbal water or essential oils
I was surprised to see the size of the distiller used to make herbal water and aroma oil for the first time, and was shown the time-consuming process of producing herbal water. What surprised me the most was the scent of freshly made aroma oil. That day it was rosemary. Rosemary can sometimes have a strong scent, but when it was freshly made, it had a very mild and gentle scent.
Rosemary is so good that you can get 126 ml of it in a 250 liter distiller at 36 kg. The top of the photo is essential oil, and the bottom is distilled herbal water.
What is surprising is that only 1 or 2 ml of essential oil can be extracted from a 100 kg/approximately 33,000 flower mass in a 250 liter rose distiller. That makes essential oils expensive!
Then, we moved further up the hill to a farm where we finally had the opportunity to experience herb harvesting.
This time of year I have Chamomile German and although it was a little early, I have Damask Rose. There is a herb field on one side of the hill with an open view.
Chamomile German is often said to have a sweet, fruity scent, and when you have a large amount of it, that's exactly what it sounds like as you work while being enveloped in a fluffy, sweet scent.
Next is cutting a high-quality rose, a damask rose. It was still early in the season, so there weren't many blooming plants, but I'm going to pick off some of the flowers that bloomed this morning with my hands. Just walking by the roses fills the air with their scent, and I'm so happy that I was able to pick them...The roses in the photo are said to be in full bloom for another week or two. It's a beautiful sight, I'm sure.
In fact, damask roses are said to be most fragrant when they're in bud, and the scent drops from the blooming side, and those with whitish petals actually lose their scent. It seems like a few hours difference. When I asked the people at the farm, they told me that picking fresh flowers that have just bloomed begins early in the morning. All done by hand! Exactly the same as making Temalicious thread! (All done by hand!)
I had so much fun picking them that I received a lot of them.
I also received herbs as souvenirs that I had never seen before.
Rose and Chamomile German were soaked in alcohol to make a tincture. I'm planning to let it mature a little and put it in the Temaricious classroom as a spray. Please try to be healed by the scent. Please wait a little longer.
Temalicious will not be doing a farm tour like this this summer, but we would like to share some events with you about the knotweed we grow. I'll give you some guidance again.
At Temaricious, the process of making temari by adding herbs and essential oil to the rice husks inside is very soothing.
Aroma temari kits are available for sale online, and you can also watch a free video on how to roll them.
You can purchase the very popular aroma temari kit. → Click here
How to wrap aroma temari → Free video
Click here for past blogs introducing aroma temari kits.
