Lavender Oaks Farm: The story of one Chapel Hill couple's passion project

A little more than three years ago, Robert and Karen Macdonald sold their home. They bought and cleared some wooded acreage in Chapel Hill, and they started the area's only lavender farm.

The Macdonalds saw the move as a recipe for success.

“About three and a half years ago, she cooked me a lavender chicken dinner and it was just fantastic,” Robert Macdonald said. "I said, 'We gotta make this stuff.'”

It was at that moment Karen Macdonald pitched the plan she had been pondering.

“I have this crazy idea,” she said. “But we'll have to sell everything to do it, and for some reason we were both on the same page.”

That was the simple beginning of Lavender Oaks Farm.

With the fields now in full bloom, the Macdonalds know they made the right decision.

“The fields are just calming,” Robert Macdonald said.

“The butterflies are amazing to watch.” Karen Macdonald said. “The amount of nature that it attracts, it's just mesmerizing.”

“Mesmerizing” describes the Macdonalds' story as well.

The husband and wife had successful careers. They moved across the country in 1994, relocating from California to Cary and growing a franchise business into one of the country's top performers.

The pair have been together since college, and with their three children now grown and out of the house, the couple could have simply cruised into their golden years.

“We hardly ever take the easy path,” Karen Macdonald said. “There was no reason to upset the apple cart, there was no reason to change anything, but we kept being drawn to, if we did something together, we could do it pretty well.”

After buying the land in 2015, the couple became their own general contractor.

“We would go from 6 a.m. in the morning until 10 p.m. at night,” Robert Macdonald said.

"It was fun, we learned a heck of a lot!” Karen Macdonald said. “And (we) never looked back.”

To give their farm an authentic feel, the couple rescued three historic old barns from Pennsylvania and Ohio. Each barn was disassembled and moved to Chapel Hill. The basic structure and bones were used for the Macdonalds' home, a picnic shelter and the centerpiece event space on the property.

The farm is open to the public.

“Wow, it's beautiful,” said Marilyn Jansen, who recently visited.

Jansen and her friend Sandy Kerner came to pick a small bouquet of the flowers.

“It's gorgeous, really gorgeous,” Kerner said.

Like the chicken dinner that started it all, the Macdonalds like to share the culinary aspects of the mint-family herb, as well as its aromatic properties. They offer culinary lavender tours and offer up a buffet-type spread to groups who plan ahead.

The couple's passion for the purple is obvious. And their passion for meeting people is just as intense.

“We love people, and we love hearing why they came out to see the lavender,” Karen Macdonald said. "Everybody has a different story.”