Heather on the hills
Heather is such an iconic Scottish plant. From sometimes as early as July, but usually through August and into September, it begins to flower. At that time the hills and mountains are covered in a profusion of purple. It is quite an amazing sight. The colour across the landscape is beautiful. I once had a tourist customer come in and ask me what the purple was on the hills. They asked if it was lavender. But no, it is heather. When you walk through it you also notice the scent. It is a warm, heady smell that drifts up from the plants, bees adore it and the heather honey is thick and not easily extracted from the comb - I know as I used to keep bees here on the croft, (until I became very allergic to their stings). It is quite wonderful when the hills are covered in it.
Harvesting heather flowers
When I harvest heather the flowers need to be fully open. Rather than picking the flowers individually, which would be very difficult, I cut the stems. I then hang them up to dry. I have a place where I can hang plants for drying, and the heather stays there for two or three weeks. By that point the flowers are properly dry and they can be stripped from the stems quite easily. Once they are dry the flowers are bagged up and stored until they are needed.
How I use heather in our soap
Heather appears in our Highland Heather, Myrtle and Juniper soap. For this soap the process is a little different from some of the others. The oil is first infused with bog myrtle, which takes several weeks. When the soap is made, the dried heather flowers are crushed and added directly into the soap itself, the finished soap actually contains the flower petals within it. The scent is not the actual smell of heather. That beautiful smell on the hills is very difficult to capture. Instead I blend essential oils to create a woody citrus fragrance that reflects the plants growing on the hills.It has proved to be a very popular soap.
At the moment it is only made as a soap, although I may well look at using it in other products in the future.
