- When I was growing up we
worked seven days a week.
Didn't make any difference
what day of the week it was,
why it was a work day.
- My first memory as a farmer
as a kid were driving combine
soon as school was out I
was headed home to the farm.
- I grew up here, so I
was born on the farm.
I grew up just in the house next door.
When I was growing up we
worked seven days a week.
You'd go back to school in the
fall and the teacher always
wanted you to write your first paper of
what did you do this summer?
I didn't have to write very
much, I was just like, work.
Worked every day and
that's just the way it was.
- [Man] My dad got started
farming when he was a senior in
high school, he was renting
about 150 acres and just kind of
started farming from there,
ended up going into venture
with some peppermint.
- The reason it's such an
honor for us to work with the
Brown family is because
they take such pride
in what they do, they
love growing peppermint,
they love harvesting peppermint.
You look at this distillery,
this is a state of the art distillery,
you won't find anything like this
anywhere else in the world.
- Soon as the trucks
start bringing in the tubs
we just watch for when
they're gonna hook 'um up and
make sure they get the steam going.
When the steam comes up to
pressure we've got different
buttons here to regulate the
steam and it's just a lot
of pacing back and forth in
here watching 16 different
bays and making sure it happens right.
- This year we're harvesting
520 acres of peppermint
and we're gonna plan on doing
that in eight and a half days.
We're cooking right now
about 102 to 103 tubs a day.
The Willamette Valley tends
to have have a more oil
that's more sought after than
other places in United States
or around the world and a
lot of it just has to do with
the climatic conditions here.
When the plant starts to
bloom the quality of the oil
starts to change, you don't
want to end up with oil that's
not of the consistency
that the consumer wants.
Although we could get more
oil by letting the plant
get more mature, there's a
certain time in there when
we have the best quality for the maturity.
- Because of the care
they put into their fields
in making sure they're free of weeds,
we get the finest peppermint in the world.
- We want to be the best in
whatever it is that we're doing
so I love it when the wellness
advocates come to visit
our mint still, it's such a
emotional experience to me,
to be able to talk about something
that we are so passionate
about, to see the impact of
our efforts, of our hard work
through the stories that
are then told to us.
I know it means a lot to
them and when they share with
others about peppermint oil,
they know exactly where it
came from and they can be
even a stronger advocate
for the use of peppermint oil.
And you think wow, we really
are making a difference.
