{"id":16525,"date":"2025-09-15T21:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T21:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmers-market-mesa-verde-lavender-is-the-result-of-a-dare\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:58:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:58:35","slug":"farmers-market-mesa-verde-lavender-is-the-result-of-a-dare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/farmers-market-mesa-verde-lavender-is-the-result-of-a-dare\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmers Market: Mesa Verde Lavender is the result of a dare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Katie
Katie Terrell Ramos, owner of Mesa Verde Lavender, stands among her wares at the Durango Farmers Market on August 23. (Nick Gonzales\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Nick Gonzales<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Katie Terrell Ramos started Mesa Verde Lavender<\/a> on a dare.<\/p>\n

She was working as a writer and illustrator<\/a> of children\u2019s books, and was always obsessed with lavender, she said. Then her father-in-law dared her to start a lavender farm and didn\u2019t let it go.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of became this joke that maybe I could figure out how to farm lavender,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I took on the dare, and I followed it, and I said, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll take the challenge.\u2019 I\u2019d never planted anything before this, and so my first thing I planted outside was 200 lavender plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was in 2021. Now, Mesa Verde Lavender, located about 15 minutes away from the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park in Mancos, grows close to 3,000 lavender plants, Ramos said.<\/p>\n

The farm grows both culinary and aromatic cultivars of lavender. The culinary lavender is used by a number of ice cream shops, bars, restaurants and coffee shops in the region, including Durango\u2019s Cream Bean Berry, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of our goal: to make sure that your lavender treats taste good and your body products are as potent and as medicinal as possible, Ramos said. She said she wants to teach people how to use different cultivars.<\/p>\n

Mesa Verde Lavender specializes in hydrosols (also known as floral waters) and essential oils, which are made in the farm\u2019s copper distillery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re made in small batches, so we can be checking the pH level,\u201d she said, \u201cso they\u2019re really, really high quality products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ramos said the farm\u2019s lavender tallow balm, made with local, regenerative tallow, is also popular \u2013 as are its lavender sachets, teas and honey.<\/p>\n

In addition to monthly visits to the Durango Farmers Market, Mesa Verde Lavender products can be found at the Cortez, Dolores and Telluride farmers markets. They are also available at shops in Durango, Dolores, Mancos, Rico, Telluride and Bluff, Utah, and the farm\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ngonzales@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

farm\u2019s culinary lavender is used in regional ice cream and coffee shops, restaurants and bars<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1934,1587,438,439,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-16525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-farmers-market","tag-farms","tag-food","tag-food-drink","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16525"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20250,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16525\/revisions\/20250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16525"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=16525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}