Owyhee Produce began growing mint in their fields in the early 70s, and have been distilling it themselves since 1976. Until now, the mint oil has been sold to companies who use it to make toothpaste, gum, and anything minty on a large scale. New this year, Owyhee has bottled their own oil into retail-sized containers for individual and small business use! Our new bottles come in 16mL and 1oz size
s – and when using it just drops at a time, can last for months. CAN YOU SMELL IT? Today, as the largest mint growers in Oregon, Froerer Farms grows about 1,500 combined acres of spearmint, peppermint, and native mint. Each year 180,000 pounds of mint oil gets distributed across the country to companies like Colgate, Wrigley’s, and Crest. Our local mint oil, nationally, flavors items like mouthwash, candy, gum, toothpaste, and even some laundry soaps. Here at the shed, we like to add it to our lemonade in the summer time for a refreshing beverage.
-THE PROCESS-
We begin by purchasing starts from a greenhouse, to ensure they are disease-free. The starts are placed into a mint planter that breaks the roots up into 2-3 inch pieces, drops them in rows, and covers them up. It takes one year for that plant to establish itself with a solid mass of roots. When we are ready to cut the crop, we swamp the fields and wait for them to dehydrate. Our mint plants are chopped into a trailer that has steam pipes in the bottom. Steam is injected into the bottom of the trailer and distributed equally throughout the trailer. It rises to rupture the oil pods underneath the mint leaves, pods too small to see with the naked eye. That oil then changes from a liquid to a v***r and travels with the steam up through a pipe to the condenser, which re-condenses the v***r into a liquid state. Ending in a receiving can is the water and mint oil, which are then separated. The mint extract is what is sold to various companies like Wrigley’s and Crest. Each planting provides us with 4-6 years of harvests.
