This is Toby - Maggie's nephew, Donna's grandson. He's 5, and loooove to "help" us in the shop. He was helping to make milk baths one day, and of course, being 5, he stuck his hand in our giant vat of cornstarch, and discovered that it "feels funny" when you smoosh it with your hands. Which it does. So the other day while we were all being boring grownups (i.e. working), he helped himself to a bowl of cornstarch and smooshed it to his little 5 year old heart's content. And this is what he, and our shop, looked like!

Okay! We're down to ONE space in our sopamaking class. And I've had OODLES of people tell me they want to sign up for this Saturday's class, or that they're going to sign up for this Saturday's class (Herbal Harvest), but, as of yet...NOBODY has actually done so. SO, if you're wanting to, please do! Otherwise we'll have to cancel it.

Yesterday, we had a blast cutting flowers to dry. We cut enough for 36 bundles, they're in the drying shed right now. Where did the summer go?

A quick bit of news-ey stuff. We have only TWO spots left in our Sept. 30th Soapmaking 101 class, so if you're interested, sign up quickly! Otherwise, Karla will have another class mid-December (unless you whine *really* loud to us and then we whine *really* loud to her and maybe she will do one before then. But we don't have any scheduled.).

Also, we're sorry to say, we are temporarily out of the African Black Gel soap. We expect to have some by the end of this week, so, feel free to order it, and we will ship it when it is ready. Thank you for your patience! :)

WHEW! What a week! We had the Midwest Travel Writers tour through on Thursday. They were GREAT! They were only on the farm a half hour, but they were attentive, asked great questions, took pictures, and did some shopping. Yay Midwest Travel Writers! You all can come back anytime. :)

Found out, randomly, that if you google "shampoo bars" , we show up as the number one hit. Isn't that cool? :) That's a good thing - I imagine with this new ban on flying-with-liquids, more people will be interested in getting solid soaps and shampoos and things.

We started our big, 8th birthday open house this Friday, and it runs through today. We worked our tails off to get ready! Mom has been just about killing herself to get things weeded and mulched, and you can REALLY tell. the gardens look fabulous! It's starting to feel very fall-ish...I really need to get harvesting our flowers for drying, and get distilling some of the "tropical" herbs, like lemongrass, lemon eucalyptus, and regular eucalyptus.

But I digress. The open house. We had some lovely guest vendors yesterday, and will today too. Gorgeous silver jewelry (some of which mom and I had to buy!), and beautiful gifts and crafts from Mexico. Today Picket Fence Creamery and Northern Prairie Chevre (our two neighbors - a Jersey cow dairy and goat cheese producers) both have oodles of samples, bands, wine samples, and things like that so...I expect it to be very busy. Let's hope the weather cooperates!