Nine years ago Susan Harrington faced circumstances that forced her to decide between her life or her job.

She chose life.

“Growing lavender can be a little demanding physically, but I truly believe it saved my life and helped me get back in shape,” said Harrington, owner of Labyrinth Hill Farm in Hansville, a lavender farm that is literally in the backyard of her octagonal home.

Harrington was vice-president of the insurance arm of a half-billion dollar credit union. She began feeling ill, and her doctor warned her that the stress of her job was endangering her health and shortening her life.

She believed him, but had no idea how to get off the treadmill.

Like many people, she had been to the Sequim Lavender Festival, but she was astounded when a local grower told her how many visitors he typically had during the rest of the year.

She decided it was time to look into growing lavender herself. Starting with a few plants, she began to take a “vertical vacation” from her job, working just four days a week and selling the harvest from her plants at the Kingston Farmers Market on weekends.

“Farmers markets are a great incubator for a small farm idea because it teaches both marketing and customer service,” Harrington said.

“It also teaches you that you can only go so far with a basic product. If you want more revenue, you have to find a way to add value,” Harrington said.

After a year of learning her trade, she left her day job and made her backyard farm a full-time venture.

Conscious of neighborhood restrictions, Harrington built a low berm to “front” her backyard field of lavender. The field can’t be seen by passersby and her farm can be visited by invitation only.

She designed the field, containing about 150 lavender plants, as a circular labyrinth – a type of maze used for meditation for 3,500 years.

Although it may look like a highly landscaped back yard, her “farm revenue” is substantially above the $1,000 revenue base point set by Kitsap County as the definition of a farm. A mature Grosso plant will net from 500 to 700 stems and Harrington now has about 80 plants in that category.

“It amazed my classmates when I presented my enterprise plan — a measure of how much revenue you plan to bring in — during a class I took last year in sustainable agriculture, where ‘sustainable’ referred to staying in business, not being ecologically correct,” she said.

She believes her background in marketing has given her an advantage over many who want to have a small farm because it reminds her to be aware of new opportunities. “If you listen to customers, they’ll tell you what they want,” she said.

At a festival five years ago, she met a woman who had been sold a bundle of fresh lavender but had not been told how to care for it.

Harrington gave her a five-minute course and her business card in case she had questions.

A year later, the woman called to ask if she could ship fresh bundles, and Harrington said she’d give it a try.

“Now she emails me each year with a list of 30 or so people to send bundles to,” Harrington said.

At the time she was one of the only farms in the country that would risk shipping fresh bundles of lavender. Now she ships about 500 fresh bundles annually.

She has also branched out into consulting and teaching on both farming lavender and marketing on the internet. A half-day workshop at Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Ore. on growing lavender for profit has led to further workshops in the Northwest and to developing an online course that has been completed by more than 200 students from as far away as Brazil and Poland.

Now those students are clamoring for a course in marketing farm and other products on the internet, and Harrington is developing a presentation and online course to meet that demand.

“Physically, I know the day will come when I won’t be able to keep up the farm, so listening to what my customers want is helping me to be ready to make the transition to other products and services when that day comes,” she said.

“But meanwhile, you’ll be finding me at the farmers markets as soon as the harvest is in.”