Hi friends!

It's a brand new year, and we are in our planning stage for 2022.  We have so many ideas.  The hard part is figuring out which ones we can take on each year.   Our long term goals stay the same, to have 5 acres of lavender flourishing on our property, a large building with a shop, storage and space for classes, and a lovely separate space for events.  

Overall, 2021 was a great year for Sleepy Bees.  We were back at the farmer's markets nearby and at several large events that had been postponed in 2020. Approximately 500 new lavender plants were added to our fields, and all of them were flourishing at the time we covered them for the winter.  We started a pollinator garden near our beehives.  Our honey event and holiday events at the farm were wonderful.  We were lucky enough to meet a couple of great ladies who started carrying the Sleepy Bees products in their spas.  On a personal note, my cancer was declared in full remission.  So, nothing to complain about here in 2021!  Now what is up for 2022?

First off, we will be kicking off our show season in March in Ralston, NE at the Huffman Productions Spring Festival.   We will also be returning to Junkstock the last weekend of April and the first weekend of May, and our favorite farmer's market, the Sunday Farmer's Market At College View at the end of April as well.  We are looking forward to all these events. We really do miss seeing and talking with our friends, customers, and other vendors over the winter!

We plan on adding another 500 or so plants this spring, probably in May.  There are about 300 growing in the basement from cuttings we took in the fall, and they are looking great.  We will also get another 200 from a nursery, and try a new variety or two.  Hopefully through all this trial and error we will come up with a nice mixture of varieties that can make it through the Nebraska winters and thrive!  I am currently ordering seeds and plants to add to the pollinator garden, and am adding a large herb garden as well.

Coming up sometime in the early spring, Jerry will be doing a 6 part video series on cooking with lavender.  The dates will be on our calendar on the webpage if you are interested in checking those out.  

Of course we will also have the farm tours in June and July when the fields are in bloom.  There will be some additional days and timeslots added so that hopefully more people are able to attend.  We did have several people that wanted to come last year, but worked on Saturdays, so we are going to try to make the tours more accessible for everyone.  

We do want to let everyone know that due to the current supply issues, and the cost of many of our ingredients going up we have had to raise the price on several of our products.  The majority of our products actually stayed the same price, and one even went down a bit!  Figuring the cost of everything is probably one of the worse parts of having your own business, (along with taxes, ughh), but of course it is necessary.  The increases in price are just enough to cover the difference in costs of our supplies.

So we are excited for 2022 and all the new things we have planned.  We thank all of you who have been so supportive and kept us going for the past 3 years.  We appreciate it so much, and definitely wouldn't be able to do it without you.  If you have any suggestions for things you would like to see in the future, please leave a comment here or on FB, IG or TikTok, we would love to hear them!  Have a safe winter, and we will see you soon!

Thanks for reading :)