The Story of the Juniper Harvest
Juniper hydrosol is one of the most beloved hydrosols we make. It comes from the resilient juniper trees that grow all around the edges of my mom’s ranch in the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
What’s always amazed me about conifers (especially juniper) is their incredible resilience, particularly through the winter months. At 7,000 feet above sea level, New Mexico’s winters are harsh. The air is thin, the temperatures drop below zero, the winds bite, and snow and ice cover the land. Yet these trees have adapted to thrive there.
They do this by protecting their vital waters, their cellular waters, through calluses built up on their leaves. Unlike deciduous trees that lose their leaves and hibernate through the cold, conifers stay evergreen. They’ve evolved these calluses that shield their inner waters from the freeze.
A hydrosol, at its essence, is just that: an extract of the plant’s vital waters, those same cellular waters, combined with the volatile oils naturally dispersed within them. So when we distill juniper, we’re capturing that exact mechanism of survival and resilience, the plant’s wisdom stored in water.
It makes so much sense to bring juniper into our skincare in the winter. It’s a plant that knows how to protect itself from the cold, the dryness, the wind. When we use it, we’re tapping into that same resilience for our own skin.
Juniper has also endured for thousands of years in this harsh landscape. It’s abundant throughout the Southwest, across the Americas, and around the world. Every tree has a lineage that goes back generations, yet each one is as unique as a fingerprint. Every distillation smells a little different, feels a little different, its chemistry shaped by the soil, the season, and the sun.
So while you may have tried our juniper hydrosol before, each harvest is singular. This one, harvested in late summer, carries its own distinct aromatic and personality, a reflection of the tree it came from and of the land itself.
Generations of people have turned to juniper for its healing and cleansing properties, from Indigenous peoples to modern makers like us. We’re honored to carry on that lineage in our own way, crafting something both ancient and alive.
I hope you use this hydrosol in good health and that it reminds you, like it reminds me, of the strength found in stillness and the wisdom held in nature’s simplest forms.
Justine
