Los Miramontes Lavender Farm naturally revolves around the plant in its name, but produces a variety of culinary and cosmetic products.
Jeremy Bryant said he and his wife, Aisha Bryant, used to grow herbs and vegetables when they lived in Aztec, and sold them at farmers markets along with beauty products made by his mother, Susanne Bryant.
As the business expanded, the couple eventually relocated to Cortez in 2019 and began farming lavender in 2020.
“It’s a good cash crop that can survive in our area,” he said. “Basically, I just wanted to grow a crop that could survive and not have to replant it every year.”
These days, the farm’s lavender products fall into three categories: culinary, cosmetics and cleaning supplies, he said.
“Lavender is a very good cleaner,” Jeremy said. “It’s where the name actually comes from – in Latin, ‘lavare’ is ‘to clean.’”
On the culinary lavender side, Los Miramontes sells various teas; honey made by Harris Bees, which usually has several hives on the Bryant farm; and black cherry and peach jams made with either the farm’s own Elberta peaches or peaches from Palisade, he said.
The Bryants also use the lavender to make spices and other flavor enhancers.
“Lavender, when you use it for cooking, you don’t want it necessarily to be the flavor, you want it to be an enhancer,” Jeremy said. “So you would use it like you would use salt, where a little goes a long way.”
Los Miramontes’ lavender-based flavor enhancers include organic salts and sugars, a simple syrup, a culinary-grade oil and a lavender lemon pepper.
“We actually use real lemon rind, instead of citric acid, and we dehydrate our own bell peppers,” Aisha said.
The farm’s website, losmiramonteslavenderfarm.com, has recipes that use lavender, such as Mango Bacon Shrimp, Lavender Apple pie, and cocktails and mocktails. Before he got into farming, Jeremy said his background was culinary.
On the beauty product side of its business, Los Miramontes sells lotions, body butters, sugar scrubs, beard oils, mists, sprays, facial toners, milk baths, chapsticks, soaps, insect repellent and sunburn relief.
“You can have a full skin regimen out of our products if you truly wished,” Jeremy said. “And then you can come back with the lotion and body butter and moisturize the skin.”
Aisha said the farm’s CBD products have been a good asset to the business.
“Our CBD is really high grade,” she said. “It’s really helped people with neuropathy and things that are really severe. We’re really proud of our massage oil and lavender body butter CBDs.”
In addition to the plants, Los Miramontes raises chickens and alpacas. The Bryants sell the eggs of the former and hats knitted out of fiber from the latter, Jeremy said.
“We make everything ourselves,” he said. “We do it all by hand. It’s a slow, rough process, but we get through it.”
ngonzales@durangoherald.com
