PART 6: FINDING PURE ESSENTIAL OILS
EDITOR’S NOTE: Since Gary Young’s passing, we have been taking stock of the tremendous contributions he made to the world by revisiting his presentations such as this fascinating twenty-part blog post series that recounts Gary’s ongoing discoveries about pure essential oils, their properties, and their production. Here’s Part VI.
In 1995 I expanded my farming adventures into a third farm in Mona, Utah, where I bought 120 acres and built my first greenhouses to propagate plants to expand my growing potential. One year later I leased 1,600 acres of totally raw, organic land that had been used only for raising cattle. It was exciting to be at the beginning of what has now become a very big operation.
This farm has become our showcase, where thousands of people have come to see the harvesting and actual distilling of our plants. As the steam travels up through the cooker, it saturates the plant material, causing the oil to be released in the form of a gas molecule, which is enclosed within a thin membrane. These essential oil molecules travel with the steam up into the condenser, where the membrane breaks and the gas returns to a liquid and is then recovered in the separator. A great, natural beauty appears before your eyes when the essential oil droplets bubble up through the water inside the separator.
After this fascinating experience, our visitors are able to go through the laboratory next to the distillery to see the oils filtered and prepared to go to our bottling facility. Thousands of people have enjoyed seeing the actual production at our farm and have come through our visitors center, asking questions and wanting to know more about essential oils.
To be continued . . .
