This week’s “Rollin’ on TV” Harvest Hosts visit is MoonBeam Farm, a working lavender and loofah sponge farm, a short drive off I-5 in Corning, California. It’s a fun spot with way more to see than first meets the eye. There’s room for a number of RVs on site, so our Ram and Palomino fit just fine.

Like most Harvest Host locations, it’s dry camping only, and definitely bring your own shade. Harvest Host guests can just stay here, but it’s a lot more fun to learn a few interesting things about the farm’s products. Farm owner Carolyn Hanson gives daily tours that help visitors understand the many varieties of lavender grown on site and which purpose each type is good for– floral scents, ornamental, cooking, or medicinal, for example.

Carolyn Hansen: They’re doing some crazy breeding. They’re breeding reds, pinks, yellows, all kinds of different colors in those Spanish varieties. Our little girl, Melissa, a little further up, which is a white lavender, is always our first girl. She’s our sign that the season is starting, and when we get up there, she’s very unique with the smell. It is a culinary.

Jeff: Most visitors, like us, have no idea there are so many lavender varieties. Carolyn: We are a ten-acre organic farm, which means we get to spend a lot of time weeding. We don’t get to use chemicals. There’s also restrictions, you know, with the RVs, how close you can be to the field, and so forth, and also part of the pet restrictions are why the pet area is in the back as it is.

We grow two primary crops here on the farm. We grow lavender, and we grow loofah sponge. The loofah sponge always intrigues people, and the more they learn about it, they learn things that they never knew. Believe it or not, those vines, the seeds only went to ground five weeks ago. Some of them are eight to nine feet long.

Jeff: Loofah sponges are a fun and useful plant product that’s another MoonBeam Farm specialty. The loofahs are raised and harvested with healthy, organic principles in mind. They have none of the disinfectant or chemical treatments common with imported loofahs. Next up is a tour of the drawing and processing shed where bundles of lavender and bags of loofahs are going through the stages from field to table, or bath. The husk is removed, seeds are extracted, and the loofah cores are graded and designated for different end products. It’s being looked at as another textile–

Jeff: My wife Pam also learned loofahs have really strong fibers useful for fabric and other manufacturing purposes. Visitors browse the gift shop and find all kinds of locally produced and manufactured items. Numerous lavender-based products such as essential oils are available for sale. Pam found some terrific Christmas gifts that she’ll squirrel away in anticipation of the season. We discovered MoonBeam Farm is a fun and educational place to stay along the Harvest Host trail. For more information, log on to our website at RollinOnTV.com