Here on the Young Living farm in Guayaquil Ecuador
at the Ylang Ylang Plantation
It's harvest time again
The main production time for Ylang Ylang
runs from February to May and that's the heaviest production just as the monsoon
rains start to end the trees load up with water from the rain
and they put flowers on the flowers become very heavy laden with the water
Which increases the glucose or what we call the Brix in the flower
and that all converts to
essential oil
and it's very exciting
Ylang Ylang trees
produce the highest level of oil at night time
In fact, if we pick the flowers at night
they'd be the most fragrant and
because we have the Ylang Ylang trees around our house
and we have our window open at night to let the breeze in because here on the farm
there's just like you see the leaves moving here
There's always a gentle
breeze that blows most of the time and it's just most refreshing it keeps the
air clean it helps to move the mosquitoes out during mosquito time but
at night when it's cool and that breeze blows in through the windows of the
house the whole house filled up with the fragrance of the Ylang Ylang flower
because the Ylang Ylang produces the most oil in the flowers during the night time
So it's really important that my crew comes in the field just after
daylight or soon after daylight
and start picking
and I like to end the
picking no later than 10 o'clock because after 10 o'clock in the morning and the
heat comes up the oil will start to go down in the flowers and so when you come
in the field and you smell the trees in the afternoon or even noon time or later
afternoon mid-afternoon time
You, the fragrance won't be as intense, even when
you pick a flower
Off the tree and you smell it the fragrance isn't as rich
because the oil will always go back during the heat of the day to preserve
the tree and then at night, as it cools, it comes back into the leaf
Very, very interesting how it preserves itself
and when we're picking flowers it's most interesting because
you know with the Ylang Ylang very much like other
plants that produce aromatic oils
and perfume houses and brokerage houses and
aromatherapist brokers for oils
The problem is worldwide and it's everywhere
if a company that's marketing oils is not growing the plant or engaged in a
cooperative growing project with the farmer, as we are in Young Living, and
Young Living owns over 4,500 acres of farms throughout the world
We have farms on five continents and distilleries
and we are partnership with many others
but through that I supervised a lot, the majority of the growing the harvesting
and the type of distillation that we do with our plant material through
Young Living
That's why in Young Living, I can guarantee the highest quality essential
oils that exist in the world
One
Simply because I grew up as a farmer
I understand plants, understand soil, I understand nutrition of the soil to
produce a good outcome and if you don't know that anyone can come along and sell
you an essential oil say hey it's really good and here's a GC to show that it has
all the right constituents in it
But that is not necessarily true anybody can
print a GC
Only if you grow, only if you plant, only a few harvest
and if you understand what's supposed to be in that plant to make it the finest quality oil
in constituents and you understand how a GC can be operated and of
the beautiful function of a GC and an MS and identifying the compounds and the
percentage of them
but there's more to it than that
It's coming and understanding what is the best time to take the leaf or
harvest the the plant whether it's Rosemary or Lavender or Clary sage from the field
What is the best time of the day just like the Ylang Ylang
The best time is at midnight to 4:00 in the morning that's the best time
but it's hard to get people to pick during that time of the night so we pick
at daylight til ten o'clock because we found that the oil maintains up till
9-10 o'clock and then we'll start losing some of that value
But the next thing that's really important to know
is which flowers do you pick?
You know you
can look at a flower like this
or in many cases
Pickers will pick a flower
very similar to this
So you still have a flower
and you can see here the nice
long petals on this flower this one is starting to to shrivel is starting to
atrophy and why because this flower is over mature this flower looks just
almost right and you turn it you can see the yellow leaf here and let me get one more
Yes, right here now we have a good visual where we can really see the difference
We've got a flower that the petals are starting to shrivel
This flower is over mature
then we have this one this got a nice yellow leaf
and as we turn it we can even look inside here and we see there's a little green on
this leaf
but if we compare it with this flower here right beside it
It's still relatively quite lime green in color
what we have again is just like other
plants it is in the harvesting and knowing the right time and here the
right flowers to pick because
harvesting Ylang Ylang is all done by hand
So when you pay a picker by the kilo to go in and pick the flowers
this is what you'll have you'll have green you'll have yellow and you'll
have oxidized brownish yellow
and this will all go in the basket
because that picker wants to make as much volume as you can because that's how he's paid
and unfortunately in the commercial farms that's how it happens
so you'll have a mixture of green to yellow to brownish oxidized shriveling flower
Now what makes that bad?
When this flower starts to oxidize such as this
it also, because the compounds
start to hydrolyze
it creates a sour smell and that will
affect the oil and so you can go from having a beautiful flower like this
that's yellowish and mature
and rich in fragrance
which would be classified as an extra-fine grade
With Ylang Ylang we have four grades
We have extra fine, we have fine, we have first second and they'll even
give a third and a fourth qualification but the only ones that we're concerned
about are the first four grades so we have extra
And this here would be
classified a third grade or fourth grade oil
The green here would be classified
also a second grade oil because it hasn't matured yet
Now how do we know when the flower is mature
that is really important to know and one is you start
as we have done here as I have done here training my people how to recognize the
flower to pick so I pick it I have them smell it and smell it and smell it until
they build a memory of the smell then I have them pick this flower that's
oxidized and smell it and you can smell the sour note in it almost like it's
rancid it still has a beautiful fragrance but you can smell that sour
note that rancid just it's very mild very little but it's there and so we
don't want this this is okay for the oil brokers out there that's just selling
oils in the aromatherapy industry but not for Young Living
Young Living stands
on quality and standard higher than any company in the world
and why?
Because I supervise all the growing and harvesting
and here again is the best now there's
another way to tell with Ylang Ylang flowers
You can take and open the
flower up
and right at the base inside you'll look where the petal connects on
and you'll see here a little spa of red
and gently it'll show on one I'm
not seeing on more than two petals and there we go we open it up and we look at
it and there's the red right at the base of two petals when we see this it's
indicative of the compound
compound called in dual which is very very
important in the Ylang Ylang oil
You don't get that when the flower is too
mature and you don't get it when the flower is not mature enough so if you
don't pick at the right time that very, very key note in the essential
oil is not going to be there
This is what makes Ylang Ylang extra-fine
and that is only found in Young Living Essential Oils