News

Young Living’s Winter Harvest Blends Tradition with Cutting-edge Science

January 22, 2013
SALT LAKE CITY—January 22, 2013—Young Living, the World Leader in Essential Oils®, is in the middle of its annual Winter Harvest event at its farms in northern Idaho. The harvest mixes old-fashioned logging with modern distillation and testing techniques.
The aromatic wood and needles of four different kinds of trees will be harvested to produce the world’s highest-quality essential oils, which will be used for topical application, aromatic use and a myriad of other uses worldwide.

Led by Young Living’s founder and president D. Gary Young, a team of distributors and staff brave the bitter-cold to cut, transport, chip and distill pure essential oils from the harvested trees. The labor-intensive work is exhausting for the team of volunteers from around the world who have gathered for the hands-on learning experience the harvest offers.

Teams of Young Living’s award-winning draft horses haul the trees out of the forest one-by-one. Although it is more costly, this approach to logging is kinder to the environment.

The farms, located in St. Maries and Highland Flats, Idaho, are an integral part of Young Living’s Seed to Seal® process. This unique process ensures that every step of essential oil production is closely controlled, from the seeds sown to harvesting, testing, and bottling. A newly built lab at the St. Marie’s farm is equipped with a state-of-the-art, high resolution gas chromatograph, which allows the purity of oil to be tested on the spot quickly and accurately.

“At the harvest, participants get to touch the oils directly from the trees, test the quality and put the oil in bottles,” says Brett Smith, Young Living research scientist. “They get to see the whole process and witness that there are no adulterations or additions to our product.”

In the spring, volunteers will return to the farms to plant seedlings and participate in Young Living’s annual reforestation effort.