When the Lavender Rests and the Olives Come In
The Provence Journal
Provence has two harvests, and they sit at opposite ends of the year. One is cut in the heat of July, when the fields are still purple and the air is heavy with it. The other comes in as the year closes, in the weeks when the light goes low and the mornings turn cold. Between them, the whole character of the region changes, and so does the soap you want in your hand.
The lavender is cut in July
Lavender in Provence blooms from May into July, and the harvest is short. It begins in the middle of July and it is largely finished by the end of the month. The timing shifts with where you stand: the fields of the Upper Luberon come down around the fifteenth, and Valensole and Sisteron follow about ten days later, near the twenty-fifth.
Higher up the season runs later. The alpine plateaus around Sault, Ferrassieres and Aurel sit at altitude, so they flower behind the valleys and can still be cutting into the first days of August in a cool year. After that, the cutting stops. Nothing more comes off those rows until the following summer.
The lavender is finished in July. The olives do not begin until the end of September. The year turns in the gap between them.
Late September, the olives come in
The olive harvest in Provence opens in late September and runs through November, and in some years into December. It is not one event. Growers pick in cycles, because the fruit does not ripen all at once and because different olives are wanted at different stages.
A small share comes off early, while the fruit is still green and firm, destined to be cracked and cured rather than pressed. The olives meant for the deeper, heavier oils stay on the tree considerably longer and are left to darken. Patience is the whole technique. The later the fruit comes down, the rounder the oil.
Why the turn matters to your skin
The weather changes at the same time, and it changes in a specific way: the air dries out. Indoor heating pulls what is left of the humidity out of a room, and skin that was perfectly comfortable in August starts to feel tight by late October. What you wash with stops being a small decision.
This is where olive oil earns its place. Every Averal bar is built on 72 percent organic olive oil, which is unusually close to what skin produces on its own, and every bar keeps the glycerin that forms while the soap is made. Most commercial soap has that glycerin extracted and sold on separately. Keeping it means each wash leaves behind a film that draws moisture toward the skin instead of stripping it away. Organic shea butter goes in alongside it, and the bars are triple-milled, which is why they hold their shape in a wet shower and last considerably longer than a standard bar.
The same turn, on your own shelf
Lavender is the summer bar. The Lavender Exfoliating bar carries real buds set into the bar and it belongs to the months when the fields are standing. It does not stop working in November. It simply stops being the obvious choice.
For the cold half of the year, the Olive Oil bar is where most people land. It is our best selling bar, chosen more often than anything else we make. Beside it sit the two richest of the fall bars, Coconut Oil and Vanilla, for anyone who wants something warmer in the shower. The Fall Winter Skincare Set gathers four of them in one box.
If you want the mechanics of how a triple-milled bar is actually made, and why the number of millings shows up in how long it lasts, that is covered in our guide to triple-milled soap. And if you want the older story behind the olive oil itself, our guide to the authentic Savon de Marseille cube explains where the 72 percent standard came from.
The fields will be purple again in June. Until then, the oil does the work.