Wild lavender

Until 1960, wild lavender (Lavandura angustifolia) constituted an important seasonal source of income on the Causse de Sauveterre. A group of women still harvests wild lavender for distillation in two stills in Saint-Etienne-Vallée-Française to produce essential oil. Another part of the harvest is distilled in Faux, near Ispagnac, where there is a distiller. Michel Vieilledent remembers: “The lavender was harvested from the 15th of July to the middle of August. You had to cut the flowers when they changed colour and turned grey, that's when they yield the most scent. A good picker could harvest 120 kg a day. You had to distil 200 kg of stems to obtain just over one litre of essential oil.”