I left my camera at work, folks - sorry, no pretty pictures today.

Just a few housekeeping notes. We have FIVE "Flying Moon" soaps left. They will be gone VERY soon. if you want one (or three, or five) order now!

We WILL be open Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving - our usual hours, 10-5. Bring the family, and visit us and our neighbors at Picket Fence Creamery! (alas, our neighbors to the North, Nothern Prairie Chevre, will be closed those days - but will re-open next week).

We're getting stocked up for the holiday season. Last Thursday, I picked up our co-op order. Every other month, we get loaded up with bulk materials to make our products. A typical order is: 55 lb bag turbinado sugar, 4 or 6 - 50 lb. bags of sea salt, 8 or 12 gallons of vinegar, 25 lbs. of cornstarch, and 25 lbs of dried milk. Sometimes we need organic oats too. All of this stuff is used to make our scrubs, bath salts, milk baths, and hair vinegars. It's always good exercise - lugging that stuff from the co-op dropoff site ( a local church) to the van, then from the van to the shop or classroom. Whew. Who knew that running a herb shop required so much heavy lifting?

Well. It's cold, and all the leaves are finally gone off the trees. We discovered, to our excitement, that we had BITTERSWEET!! We had planted several bittersweet plants years and years ago, and waited anxiously for them to bloom and bear fruit. Nothing. So we read...and figured, well, maybe we don't have a "boy" and "girl" (you need both sexes of plants.... and they came unlabelled at the nursery where we bought them.). So every year we've been planting one or two more plants, assuming that eventually they'd, you know, get busy. (heh). FINALLY! We have beautiful bittersweet. it is so pretty! now I've got to get out there and harvest it.