Laurus nobilis, bay laurel distiallation and Penoel

Well, its been a long time since I posted.. so many things have happened, so many plants got collected and distilled..its just been a very busy time, however, I will try to follow up.

In early september we collected and distilled Bay Laurel leaf, Laurus nobilis. The leaves have to dry before distillation, and then the plantmaterial has to be 'comminuted', that is shredded or cut just before distillation. That is, because the small glandular structures accumulating the essential oil in the leaves are hidden inside the leafs structure. You might have noticed, that laurel leaves almost do not smell, if you sniff the entire leaf or just touch it. You'll have to crush it, before it releases its aroma. This is different with aromatic plants which accumulate essential oil in hairlike glandular structures situated on the surface of the leaves, like thyme.
















Anyway, we shred the bay leaves at the distillery, just before filling them into the stills. We use an electric shredder, as you can see.. one of those used for shredding twigs and leaves for compost in private gardens..

This is the only distillation that initially involves noise due to the shredding...
On one of these distillation days, we had a visit from Dr. Daniel Penoel and his wife Rosemarie. Dr Penoel is one of the pioneers in medical aromatherapy, having worked with essential oils in medicine for over 30 years, as a practitioner, writer, researcher and teacher. So we had a very inspiring time together, while the Laurus leaves were distilling... Many inspiring thoughts on essential oils to use for holistic, integrative healing.. On quality, analyses and uses...

Babis, Daniel and RoseMarie at the distillery...

That day, during distillation, we experienced a water-cut for the very first time.. The water supply was cut of centrally due to maintenance.. Luckily RoseMarie noticed straight away, as we were washing greens for salad, that the water had stopped running... so we had to carry water in large barrels from the next village and improvise a funnelsystem to constantly add cooling water
into the container by hand..

However, we managed that problem, and a few hours later we drew the oil...
Here you can just see it starting to come from the separator



We had a very inspiring day with Daniel and RoseMarie, they are dedicated, knowledgeable, curious, and genuine nice persons.. and then, Laurus distillation is always wonderfully fragrant, uplifting..

A few days later, we went back towards the South: the many weeks of Vitex agnus castus (chastetree or monkspepper) fruit collection were to commence...

So back again.. well, we had our friends Willy and Johnny visiting from Holland, staying, working and sharing with us almost three weeks.. Together we collected and distilled Lavandula and Lentisk.. together we finished the details of the 'shop' in Kallikratis... Johnny especially was very active trying to attract attention from that lone car passing.. calling 'stop, shop' out when the whole place still looked like a buildingsite.. we had lots of fun together, as well as a lot of good get togethers and much work..

Then we got a call from a TV crew, they wanted to do a documentary about our work for the digital prisma channel..so we had to think about a herb that could be collected and distilled the same day, for them to film the entire process from collection to distillation. We went down to Modi and collected Lentisk, since there is a population just behind the distillery. From left to right you see Maria, Babis, Janina and Johnny cutting, Willy took the photo, and later Mario joined us as well in order to collect enough for a distillation.
You can click the photos to enlarge them...

We had a wonderful time with the crew that day.. Then as evening approached, they sat us down for an interview, here you see us and them through Willy's lense.. The documentary will come out sometime in January next year on prisma channel..

They were surprised though, that 6 people collecting most of the day followed by 3 hours of distillation only resulted in about 100ml of essential oil...but thats what Lentisk gives...

Back in Kallikratis the next day, we were preparing for Johnnys birthday party.. goats had to be caught in the wild and slaughtered, bread had to be baked and foodstuff prepared..

And we had a wonderful time... Kostas, who builds magnificent string instruments in Chania had brought his guitar, and Thoma joined in with his wonderful voice..

Willy (Wil deZeeuw) made two short videos, which I here post with her permission..maybe you can grasp some of the atmosphere...it was a truly fine and starry night, fresh mountain air... In the second video they sing Johnny's birthday song...Gianni is the Greek name for Johnny...