Tomita Farm

Day 3 of our vacation ~ We visited Tomita's Farm.  Its a lavender farm, but you won't get to see much of the purple flowers in my photos because it isn't the lavender season now.  The lavender season is in July, so be sure to make a trip down to Furano, Hokkaido if you love these purple little flowers.

As it is only May, the lavender plants we saw were merely green stumps which were not very interesting.  In order to avoid any disappointment, we were brought to the greenhouse where lavender flowers bloom all year round and are pollinated by fat round bumblebees!  Try spotting them in the picture below!

The story behind the farm began with a guy called Tomita-San who chanced upon a lavender field in Furano, and fell in love with it.  As such, he settled down to begin his own lavender field and married a lady who similarly loved lavenders.

In the early years, lavender flowers were much sought after for their essence to create perfumes and could fetch high prices. Unfortunately, the invention of artificial essence in the 1970s rendered the lavender flowers useless as artificial essence were much cheaper than their original counterparts.  Hence, prices of the lavender flowers plummeted drastically.  Many farmers gave up on growing lavenders and started growing other subsistence plants such as potato and wheat.

Nevertheless, Tomita's love for lavenders meant that he did not give up so easily.  Times were hard and he had to even borrow money from his neighbours in order to keep his farm.  Tomita nearly gave up on his lavender farm but when he was attempting to cut off his lavender bushes, he noticed his wife standing at the doorway looking on sadly...  It was then that the couple realised that they can't live without their lavender flowers and will fight to keep them alive or otherwise perish together with their lavenders.

Shortly after, tourists started visiting his farm one day.  Apparently, his purple lavender plantation which stood out among the sea of green / brown potato and wheat plantations caught the eyes of a photographer who submitted a photo of Tomita's lavender farm to the Japan Railway (a.k.a. "JR") Company.  The photo was made into a poster by JR and was featured in all their trains, thus unwittingly becoming an advertisement for Tomita's farm.

Tomita and his wife's perseverance paid off.  Today, floods of tourists visit his farm every year to admire the lavender fields.  Tomita even won an award in recognition of his dedication to the research / study of lavender flowers.

Apart from the lavender fields, there were also other attractions such as the dried flowers exhibition.  Visitors who stepped into the exhibition room started "ooh-ing" and "ahh-ing" and whipped out their cameras to take photos, such as the one below.

At the end of the day, you will see people leaving the farm with a cup of extremely delicious lavender ice cream.  There maybe dozens of different ice cream flavours in Hokkaido (e.g. yuki melon flavour, konbu flavour, asparagus flavour or pumpkin flavour), but this lavender ice cream is my favourite and definitely a MUST try!