The story of our Botanical Body Butter begins in the spring, when the garden is coming alive again after the grey winter days in the valley.
Roses are our first harvest, and we collect their petals by hand from the bushes scattering our property. Basket after basket of petals is carried to the still where we extract our delicately fragrant rosewater, while others are brought inside to our drying room. For our body butter, we infuse these dried petals in organic coconut oil to create a nourishing, anti-inflammatory and beautifully scented oil.
Into the summer the harvest continues, plucking the flower heads off our calendula, chamomile and viola plants, each of which is brought into the drying room before being infused to create oils rich in vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants that work to soothe and soften the skin.
The summer is also punctuated by our biggest harvest of the year - lavender! The majority of our plants are harvested by hand with a traditional sickle, and each variety is brought separately to the still to extract its incredible essence (you can read more about the distillation process here). Lavender essential oil is rich in regenerative, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, and the one we use in our body butter is Lavandula angustifolia , 'English' which received a 2nd place in the 2021 Australian Olfactory Oil Awards!
When the heat of summer finally cools and fall arrives with its frosty mornings and bright sunny days, we're off to pick our rosehips from the very plants we harvested the petals from in the spring. Rosehips become sweeter and brighter as the temperature drops, and are high in vitamin C and the essential fatty acids that promote cell regeneration and tissue healing. The infused oil we create from them is highly therapeutic and helps to soften tissue and heal dull skin. And it smells of strawberries, which for us is our favourite part of the process!
An entire growing season comes and goes before we have all the farm-grown ingredients needed to craft our Botanical Body Butter, but it's the culmination of these and the rest of the ingredients we source that make this product as exceptional as it really is.
Our certified Fair Trade, organic and unrefined shea nut butter comes from West Africa. An amazingly soothing and restorative moisturizer, it has no added chemicals, colouring agents, additives or preservatives, and has not been bleached or deodorized. And the most impressive part? It takes 20-30 hours to produce just one kilogram of shea nut butter!
The beeswax for our body butter comes from our neighbours at Arlo's Honey Farm - just down the road from our own farm - and works to create a protective barrier on the skin to help retain moisture.
The addition of frankincense and immortelle essential oils makes this blend especially beneficial for reducing inflammation and regenerating rough patches left from scarring, while chamomile and rose geranium essential oils further promote healing and help to soothe the skin.
Restorative, therapeutic and delightfully creamy in consistency, our Botanical Body Butter truly harnesses the power of plants. Plus, it's packaged in a 100% biodegradable, microplastic-free container made from sustainably-managed Nordic forests that can be composted when empty. It will begin to break down almost immediately before returning to the earth completely. An exceptional container for an exceptional product, and one we are most proud of to make right here on our farm!