Janice Cox – Beautiful Lavender

Janice Cox - Natural Beauty at Home Beautiful Lavender, by Janice Cox An expert on the topic of Natural Beauty and Making your own cosmetic products with simple kitchen and garden ingredients. Janice Cox comes to you with her new book called, Beautiful Lavender. A Southern Oregon native out of Medford, Janice joins us to talk about the wonderful properties that Lavender has and to talk about some of our local Lavender Farms. Please checkout Janice's wonderful book and take a look at some of her other information at her website and over at Mother Earth News at the links below! Beautiful Lavender - https://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Lavender-Janice-Cox/dp/1948734184 Mother Earth News - https://www.motherearthnewsfair.com/speakers/janice-cox/ Natural Beauty at Home - https://www.naturalbeautyathome.com/ Transcription Brian: Janice Cox is an expert on the topic of Natural Beauty and making your own cosmetic products with simple kitchen and garden ingredients. She's the author of three best selling books on the topic natural beauty at home, natural beauty for all seasons and natural beauty from the garden. She is currently the beauty editor for Herb Quarterly Magazine and a member of the editorial advisory board for Mother Earth Living magazine. She lives in Medford, Oregon with her husband. She's a member of the Herb Society of America, International Herb Association, United States Lavender Growers Association, Oregon Lavender Association and Garden Communicators International. Janice Cox Welcome to Grants Pass VIP. Janice: Thank you, Brian. It's nice to be here. Brian: Yeah, it's great to have you on just for a little bit of background for everybody. Janice was on an episode of my other podcasts, Off The Grid Biz Podcast. She was on that last year for some earlier books and for her speaking schedule that she had with the Mother Earth News Fair. So I'm happy to have her back here. Her latest book is, Beautiful Lavender. Why don't you tell us a little bit about it, Janice. Janice: Well, yes, that's right. I talked to you last time at about the fair we had up in Albany and you even made it up there to the fair, which was great, I like that. But this year…so I did that fair, and I think you even came to it, I used to give a talk all about lavender and growing lavender and using lavender and just enjoying lavender. So out of that talk came this book or it's more, real actually written more workbook style, because that's kind of what I like is when people come up to me with my books, which are written cookbook style, and they're all written up and people make notes in the margins are swapped out ingredients and really made it their own. I wanted to incorporate that in this new series of books. I wrote one on loofa and then this one is all about lavender. And so there are pages that you can actually write on make notes, so all your information stays in the same place. If you bought a plant at a nursery and you just loved it. And you want to remember the variety and you want to remember the address of the nursery you can put it in the book, or if you've changed one of my recipes around for shortbread cookies, you can make notes there so we call it it's a book but it's also a workbook. That's kind of the new thing now. Brian: Yeah, absolutely. The subtitle is a guide and workbook for growing using and enjoying lavender. So this is everything from A to Z when it comes to lavender which is amazing because I mean it goes through the history. I mean, I'm not sure how many of you had ever heard that. When they discovered King Tut's Tomb. They opened it up and it smelled like lavender immediately. It's amazing how something like that would last that long. Janice: It shows how important an herb it was because to be in a King's Tomb, right? Brian: Absolutely. And it mentioned you know, Queen Elizabeth the first love lavender and just everything from the history to how you can grow it and the different varieties and you've even got a great map here for the hardiness zone for the US to kind of give an idea of where person would be able to grow what types and I mean it just goes on and on. There's so much here and uses, and you still include the whole thing is not a cookbook you have a number of recipes available in it. So that's, it's really great stuff. What drew you to lavender in the first place? Janice: I've always loved lavender, I have it in my own yard. But lavender is probably never been more popular than it is right now. Especially with what we're going through, the lavender farms are doing really well because their sales of product and lavender and oils have almost tripled because the best known there's like I think over 100 uses for lavender. It's a very versatile herb, but probably the most well known is for its treatment of anxiety. And so and it's calming and relaxing since people that are stressed out you know, using lavender products or smelling lavender or even just walking out and looking at some lavender, it really calms you down. In fact, I even just prove this, I went to the grocery store Oh, before the book came out and I walked up and down every aisle and I knew I would find lavender and maybe body care products. But I didn't realize how many other products feature lavender now and I almost filled the whole shopping cart. We won't tell my husband how much I spent on it. But I had cat litter, I had laundry detergent, I had beer, I had sodas, I had teas, I mean not just a cream and a lotion in a bar. So I mean lavender really is out there because a lot of people and if we're lucky here in Southern Oregon, we have some really amazing lavender farms very close by, they are open and you can go visit and take your class you know experience the plant and just see how they're growing and buy some of their products. Brian: Absolutely. And you sent me this map and great pamphlet the Oregon lavender destinations, which you can find at OregonLavenderDestinations.com. This is put out by the Oregon Lavender Association, is that right? Janice: That's correct, The Oregon Lavender Association and you don't have to be a lavender farmer to be a member, anybody that just wants to learn more about lavender or enjoys it can join, they have different levels of membership, I think I'm considered a friend of lavender. And they also have all the way up to lavender farmers. But if you get their newsletter, you get recipes. And these maps now the maps are available in a lot of tourist locations at the visitor center. Some hotels have, you know, nowadays, it's kind of harder to find those brochure kiosks. We just went to a state park and they had them behind Plexiglas and you had to talk to the Ranger to get one because they don't want people touching them. Brian: Because of COVID and everything. .Janice: Right! COVID has kind of changed everything but it but it's increased lavenders popularity. Brian: Has it really? Janice: Yeah, because it's also antibacterial. So a lot of people that are cleaning their house, there's I have recipes in there for a natural household cleaner. But because people are cleaning their house more, they also want a natural scent, they want natural products. And lavender is anti bacterial and will help clean your not just your body but also your house. Brian: Absolutely. So why don't you tell me a little bit more about how has COVID affected you in your activities in your life? Janice: You know, actually it's changed the way I've done business. I guess since this is a business podcast, I was going out face-to-face with people and running workshops, hands on workshops and that has all changed. Everything's gone to the virtual world, I've had to kind of become more tech savvy, I even set up a little video shoot in my backyard, and my daughter was the cameraman, and instead of doing the workshops live, we record them because the Mother Earth News Fair now has gone virtual. So if you go on their site, you can buy a ticket, the ticket used to be if you went to the fair $20. Well, that's the same price, but you now can have access to maybe, I think it's like 56 videos now, we're up there. So all the speakers have kind of gone ahead and either done their presentation online, you know, like a PowerPoint or they've recorded new things out in their yard or out in their on their homestead. So the amount of content virtually is really going up. Also, you know, I've always written articles that has people have had an interest in more, you know, online articles. Because I think people are just home more and they're looking for content. They're looking for things to watch and they're looking for things to do. So they're you know, people are cooking more, crafting more, gardening more. So that's all a good thing for me. And that also, I've had both my daughters move back home. So that's kind of another COVID bonus and all all during this time period. Brian: Wow, that's great. What brought you to the Rogue Valley. I remember one time you were telling me you were living you lived in Australia, what brought you to live in this area of the world? Janice: Well, actually I'm from Southern Oregon, I grew up in Klamath Falls. So left and you know, went we lived a lot of different places around the country. And then right before we moved back to Southern Oregon, we did live in Australia, my youngest daughter was born there, my husband had an opportunity. And that's actually where I really got into making my own body care products. It was a little bit out of cost savings and then out of necessity, I just couldn't find things that I was used to use it. You know, today, the cost savings is always a good thing. But it's also lifestyle choice. A lot of people want to use natural things. And they're concerned with what they're using on their skin, hair and their body....