Island youth reap more than lavender at Sunday harvest
Published 1:30 am Friday, August 7, 2026
A small group of young islanders gathered at a lavender farm near the Orcas Island Grange Hall, filling baskets with fragrant purple stalks and, in the process, offering a portrait of a generation of Orcas kids who left home, grew up and came back — or never left at all.
The gathering was hosted by Kai Sage, a 2022 high school graduate who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Western Washington University in 2024. Sage’s family recently took over the property, formerly known as Orca Song Farm, and Sage has been sharing its harvest freely with friends and neighbors. “I’m just grateful to have so much plant medicine to work with and give away to my community,” Sage said.
Between shifts making coffee and curating the nature section at Darvill’s Books, where Sage has worked for more than five years, the harvest party doubled as a reunion of old classmates and new friends drawn together by a single text message.
One of those friends was Ana Sofia Garcia, who grew up on Orcas after moving from Mexico as a child and graduated high school in 2021 before finishing her own degree at Western this spring. Garcia and Sage went through elementary and high school together but hadn’t spoken in years before reconnecting at the Lower Tavern. “You don’t necessarily have to always be talking to someone to know that you’re in community with them,” Garcia said, reflecting on island life. “It’s moments like these where people do think of you and they invite you to gatherings or events. … Everyone’s always thinking of each other.”
Also picking lavender was Ayjah Wright, whose mother runs Kingfish at West Sound. Wright moved to Orcas from Las Vegas in middle school and graduated from high school on Orcas in 2021 before returning to Las Vegas to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Across her ties to Las Vegas, she has been touched by tragedy — the Mandalay Bay shooting and a shooting at her own school — experiences that shaped her path. Wright is now finishing an undergraduate degree in criminal justice, set to graduate in December, with plans to attend law school and become a public defender. “Vegas is great because it’s kind of like Orcas,” she said. “Even though it’s a bigger scale, we do have a really good community and everybody kind of rallies together.”
Rounding out the group was Riley Copeland, who moved to Orcas from Southern California just over a year ago to work at Camp Orkila — and stayed, even living out of a car for two weeks before landing a job with Kaleidoscope. Copeland’s friendship with Sage began at the skate park. “I was sitting at the skate park one day, and Kai just walked up to me and started talking to me, and I had no choice but to be his friend,” Copeland said. “We’re great friends. We worked together at the bookstore for a little bit.”
As lavender stalks piled up at the farm stand, the afternoon became less about the harvest and more about what these young people carry with them — community, resilience and a determination to give back, whether through free bundles of lavender or a future spent defending others in a courtroom.
