I thought I'd amuse you all with some shots of our ultra-fancy organizational systems. :) This is our brain - our calender for the year. This is where we mark all our events - classes, bus tours, farmer's markets,anything we have going on. We did without one of these for years, but I'm not sure how.

here is our ultra-organized (ha) inventory tracking system. A whiteboard, with a list of stuff we are getting low on. By "stuff", I mean raw materials such as tins, oils, butters, essential oils, etc.


And here are the "in process" wholesale orders. This one is a BIG one, which will go to Iowa city hopefully tomorrow.


And 2 small ones in progress.

In short - our systems are not fancy, but they WORK. See, if I wanted to run a bakery - I'd go work at a bakery, and learn the flow of it, then visit lots of bakeries to check out how they are set up and how they operate. We don't know anyone, in the area, who does what we do on our scale, so we had to make it all up from scratch, which is harder than you might think. We didn't know what kind of space we'd need, how to organize it, and how to anticipate our needs. So we guessed, and have learned to make do with what we have. I'll post some pictures of our work areas pretty soon so you can see what I mean.

Can't write now. must crank Tom Waits albums and make bath salts.


While I do that, print off this recipe, and then make it. It's SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO delicious, and perfect for fall. (archived on our site here)

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Every year, we sponsor a cooking contest at the Iowa State Fair, which has the largest food department in the nation! Thousands upon thousands of foods are entered, and we feel honored to be a part of this fun event. PLUS, we get to eat really, really good foods, and then get to bring back the recipes to share with you! This recipe was a 1st place winner and tastes AMAZING. This would be a great addition to any holiday feast, but we also think it's great as a side-dish anytime. We'd like to thank Sally Kilkenny, author of this recipe - she is an amazing cook that astounds us with new, delicious herbal recipes every year.

Herbed Pumpkin Mushroom Stuffing

6 cups cubed pumpkin bread

1 cup butter

1 cup chopped celery

2 cups chopped red onion

2 cups sliced mushrooms (portabella, crimini, portini, or your favorite blend)

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

1 1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. ground black pepper

1/4 to 1/2 cup chicken broth*

optional: chopped, toasted pecans**

Spread cubes on a baking sheet and let dry overnight, or heat in a 200 degree oven until dry. Preheat oven to 375 and butter a 2 qt. baking dish.

Melt butter in a large skillet over medium/low heat. Sautee celery and onions for about 10 minutes, then add mushrooms and continue cooking for about 8 minutes, or until tender. Add fresh herbs, salt, and papper. Fold in bread cubes and add enough broth to moisten. Transfer to prepared dish and cover with foil.

Bake for about 40 minutes. Remove cover and bake for 10 minutes, or until top is crisp. Garnish with fresh herbs and pecans.

* vegetarian Maggie suggests a nice vegetable broth as an alternative - Swanson's make a lovely certified organic veggie broth.

** We LOVE the pecans in this - and suggest adding whole, toasted pecans in the stuffing instead of sprinkled on top afterwards.

Making 25 lbs. of peppermint bath salts all at once reeeeeeealy clears out your sinuses.


In case anyone was wondering.

Well, it appears that winter is on it's way.

We had snow already, which I find disgusting beyond belief. It actually snowed all day last Friday. The ground was warm, so there was barely any accumulation - a mere dusting of snow that melted on Saturday. But STILL. snow. :(

It's been grey, overcast, windy, and cold for the last few days. I think we narrowly missed an ice storm last night. This morning my deck, grill and fence were covered with ice, but the roads and driveways are fine.

It always surprises me how many people assume that our farm closes for the winter, or that we get to our "slow season" after the harvest is done. HARDLY! During October, as the harvest and garden work is winding down, we make a concerted effort to start stocking the store. See, we make, package,and label darn near everything in our little shop - which takes an awful darn lot of time. Not only do we do that, but we of course have to make sure all our herbs are dried and stores, and that we have FULL stores of all of our essential oils, butters, containers and labels. Plus keep the website updated, blog, and write a newsletter. All in all, our days are quite full. And as we get nearer to the holidays, we just get busier and busier. The time from October until the end of December is like running a marathon - it's a long haul, and we get really really tired (and a little loopy as we get nearer the "finish line").

But it's FUN too, cuz, see - we're like Santa's Elves. We make things that make people happy - nice smelling, happy gifts for people to give to the folks they love. People that come into our store are deliberately avoiding the "box" stores and the malls. It's relaxed, it's fun, they're happy to be out of the crowds and commercial gross-ness of the big stores, and we're happy to help them. We take time to do custom gift baskets, and gift wrap for free. We are grateful to our customers, because they allow us to do what we love - live and work this land, make fantastic products, and enjoy the seasons. So, it's a lot of work, and we do get tired at the end, but it's also a joy.

Speaking of work. I have about 150 lbs of bath salts to make. Those will go to three different stores, and our shop. Then, I have to make about 10 batches (around 100 bags) of milk baths. But first, I do want to take a moment to rave about a fellow small business owner.....


....Aroma Artisan. See - we've been working around essential oils and scents, professionally, for about 10 years now. And the longer we work with scents....the pickier we get. You have to work HARD to impress us with a perfume, or scrub, or bar of soap. But Aroma Artisan has set the bar VERY, VERY high. In short, her products are AMAZING. She makes absolutely divine handmade, small-batch, essential oil perfumes, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I have several of her perfumes, and each one is divine. Visit her etsy site and do NOT hesitate to order from her - I've yet to have anything from her that is not top-notch!!!

We have kittens. We always try NOT to have kittens - all of our friendly farmcats are of course spayed and neutered. However, it's a farm, and having a feral cat or two in the barn is unfortunately a common occurrence. We have a feral tabby that had 2 kittens, which we caught and tamed. And, 2 slightly older kittens were dumped on the road outside our house. So, we have 4 kittens in need of homes. Above, is Princess Miranda. a VERY long-haired torti - she will need to go to a home where someone will be wiling to brush her and help care for her long glorious coat! She was one of the feral kittens that were dumped on our road. She is now super-loving, athletic, and very playful!
This is little stripey (not yet named). She is a talker - BOY is she a talker! Quite cuddly, she is one of the younger ones that was born in our barn. She has a sister, and all-black kitten we call Burdock, because she sticks to you like glue. She declined to be photographed for this blog -she was too busy sitting on the photographer's shoulder. She really will sit on your shoulder for hours if you let her, even if you're wandering around the house doing dishes or putting the laundry away, etc.

And this little beauty is a beautiful grey tabico (mostly tabby, with a few bits of calico marking). She's very loving and the most playful of the bunch!! She was one of the feral ones found by the road.

They have all been wormed and treated for fleas. We are hoping to get them spayed through the local animal protection agency, for very low cost. If you are interested in a kitten, please do let us know, as these are up for adoption to good homes!

Do you like to buy handmade soaps, lip balms, and other bath products?

Do you like to have a choice between buying handmade beauty products, and "big box" products?

Do you believe that small businesses such as ours should be allowed to make and sell natural bodycare products?

If you do - please visit this site, read about the FDA Globalization Act of 2008, and sign the petition against this act.

FDA Globalization Act of 2008 Petition


Handmade soaps and bodycare products have been made, safely and with integrity, for hundreds of the years. The FDA wants to impose legislation that would make it highly difficult for small businesses such as ours to continue to do so. If you find that unacceptable, please tell your congressperson so.

I've been very lax about posting pictures lately - I'm sorry, everyone! it has been a busy few weeks. heck, it's been a busy month. I'm not sure where it went? We didn't even have time to do an October e-newsletter!!! Anyway, here are a few photos, taken yesterday. We had a "hard" freeze about a week ago, but have had gorgeous weather (almost 70! balmy, sunny - I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt) since then. Go figure. The cold-hardy herbs - mints, catnip, sage, thyme, are still green and lovely, but most of the others are either harvested or just - done. The photo above is a shot of our annual herb beds.

The farmers were delighted with the week of sunshine and dry weather - all around us, the fields are bare and empty, like this one.

And here are 2 of the "babies" - the miniature horse "kids" grow so fast! Baron is on the left, and Delafino is on the right.

More soon......

We've had a BUSY month here at Prairieland Herbs, and have gotten a wee bit behind on some things.....such as our Luxury Soap of the Month. But I've finally got it posted online. "Flying Moon" is a luscious, heady blend of ylang-ylang (an exotic floral) and pure vanilla absolute. Enhanced with organic goat's milk, black cocoa butter, aloe extract, pumpkin seed oil (how very seasonal!!!), silk fibers, AND shea butter - well, wow. I just don't know what else to say except....oh yeah. FANTABULOUS. There are about 50 bars, and they WILL go fast.....

We have exactly TWO spots left in this coming Saturday's class - Compost-dyeing With Natural Dyestuffs. It's gonna be GREAT - if you're at all interested, do sign up! The scarf above was compost-dyed, then treated with ammonia as a post mordant (and, as a shameless plug, is available for sale in Maggie's Etsy Store....

Heather recently gave us a lovely product review on her blog, and in the comments on that blog, she got a variation on that age-old question - "Why do they use lye to make soap? Isn't lye a toxic substance?".

This is a very, VERY common question that we get asked. Anyone who makes or sells handmade soap will invariably get asked this question. Heather did not know the answer to that question, so she asked us. We LOVE when customers ask questions!!! We wrote her a response, which she put on her blog (with our express permission). Because this is such a commonly asked question, I thought we'd put the answer here as well.

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Let's start with the very basics. You cannot make soap without lye. Soap is
made by a chemical reaction occuring between fats (oils) and lye (sodium
hydroxide, or other similar alkaline substance....but we won't diverge into
that just now). The phrase "chemical reaction" is very important there - in
other words, those 2 ingredients, combine together and than CHANGE, to form
soap. Properly made soap, while made WITH lye, will not have any lye in it
at the end of the process. You will have saponified oils - also known as
soap. A quick check at your local library on any current cold process
soapmaking book will confirm those facts, as will this well-respected
soapmaking site: http://www.millersoap.com/SoapFAQs.html

Yes, Lye is a substance that must be treated with much respect. Improperly
used, it can be quite dangerous. However, used with care, caution, and
respect, it will turn ordinary oils into divine handmade soap that is very
good for your skin! As a point of fact, lye is also used to cure certain
types of food, such as lutefisk, hominy, and green olives. For more
information, you may visit this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lye

There are many way to label soap -all falling within the letter of the law,
but some that "hide" the lye more than others. We believe in educating the
public, therefore we have "sodium hydroxide" listed right in the ingredients
list. Other soaps will have labels that say things like: "Saponified oils of
coconut, palm kernel, and olive", or list ingredients as "sodium tallowate"
or "sodium cocoate" (translation: saponified tallow, and saponified coconut
oil). These labels are technically correct - and still point to the same
process - lye combined with oils to create soap.

Liquid soap is handmade with a slightly different type of lye - Potassium
hydroxide, instead of sodium hydroxide ( or sometimes a combination of
both). The above facts remain the same, however - To make any soap, liquid
or bar, fats/oils must be combined with lye, and saponification then
occurrs.

Melt and pour soap is a quite different product - it is often comprised of
synthetic detergents, and we do not consider it a handmade product. Most
commercial liquid bodywashes are also quite full of synthetic sudsing
agents, colorants, petroleum-by-products and goodness knows what else -
frankly, we don't even consider them in the same realm as handmade soaps. We
personally prefer good handmade soap, made with lye, to artificial
ingredients we cannot pronounce. But to each their own!! :)

We have another 3-farm Sample Sunday coming up this Sunday, October 19th! Join us at each of our 3 farms, between 12-5, and spend a delightful day in the country, sampling the harvest bounty of the midwest.

Here's what's happening:

Prairieland Herbs

Pete Mahlberg, from Dallas County Conservation, will be giving a talk on
"Critters of Dallas County" at 1pm. Perfect for the whole family! He will be on hand all afternoon
to answer questions, and share his display of artifacts and critters.

Guest Vendor Sally Kilkenny will be sampling and selling her delicious homemade jams!

Mary DouBrava will be giving free 5 minute Reiki treatments - a great chance to experience this energetic healing art.

Kristin Wilson, of Zoko Jewelry, will be selling her fantastic handmade jewelry.

We will be sampling our newest Biscuit Bars (soaps), check out our naturally dyed silk scarves from Girl With A Sword Productions, and we still have a few spots left for our Natural Cleansers and Natural Dyeing classes!!

Picket Fence Creamery

Hay rides in the pasture. Local food samples: pumpkin ice cream, elk sticks, cheese balls, tortellini,fresh peanut butter, Elvis muffins, Heirloom apples, honey, apple cider, Iowa wine & more.

$5 Lunch – Brats,fixins’, chips, milk & ice cream (Kids meal $3).

Kids – pony rides, hay maze, calves, kittens & free pencils.

Super Deals – 90% lean ground beef - $2.99/lb. with 10 lb. purchase; 5 lb bag local apples - $5; AppleCrisp & quart of ice cream $10.

NEW – Local gouda cheese & local homemade apple pies; free half pint ofice cream with $25 purchase; free coolers while they last.

(Maggie's note - THE GOUDA IS DIVINE. I've been getting this at the des moines farmer's market every chance I could get, and could NOT be happier that I can now buy it at Picket Fence. YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Northern Prairie Chevre

Bring your lawn chairs and enjoy the music and singing of Tim Mitchum.

Snus Hill Winery, Tassel Ridge Winery, and La Vida Loca Winery will give out samples of their award-winning wines – all for sale in Miss Tillie’s !

Winter is coming! We’re raffling a beautiful hand- crocheted afghan that would make
a wonderful gift for that special someone – or yourself! Tickets are $1/ea or 6 for $5. Proceeds go to theSusan G. Komen Foundation.

Milton from Sheeder Farms will be selling bratwurst sandwiches for just $3!!
Chris has the deep fat fryer heated up and is selling Northern Prairie Chevre Fried Cheddar Curds for just$4. Delicious baked goods from Corn Crib Catering in Madrid.

Relax with Shannon, Massage Therapist, who is offering chair massages - $10/10 min. Mary Boyvey, Hoopnotica Certified instructor will be offering free classes on the hour (see photo below - that is her at the last Sample Sunday!), and have hoops available for all ages to try and/or purchase. Pat from Randol Honey will be sampling her creamed honey. Stock up on Sheeder Farms meats and eggs & various cuts of elk from Skeeter Creek Elk.

Kids – enjoy the swings and sand box in the front yard and make a special craft.
Six little 4-legged girls are looking for your attention!! Gary, Wendy and Lana will be giving
tours of the barn and will introduce you to all the girls. Honeybump and Stosha are looking
for kisses too! Come on in to Miss Tillie’s for samples of our cheese and MUCH MORE!

The pre-frost harvest continues....Yesterday I cut the last of our purple basil, to turn into delicious jelly. For those of you that don't know, purple basil has a very similar leaf shape and taste to "regular" pesto, but it is a DIVINE purple color. So, you can do really cool things like make purple basil vinegar with it, or make purple pesto.

Making purple basil vinegar couldn't be easier. You simply stuff fresh purple basil leaves into a glass jar, cover with vinegar, and let steep for a week or so. Strain out the leaves, and you have a gorgeous ruby-colored vinegar infused with the flavor of herbs. Salad, anyone?

Making Purple basil jelly is super-easy too - I have posted the recipe to our website. Enjoy!

f
This is SO exciting. Last year, we purchased a few saffron bulbs from The Rosemary House, just for fun - I mean, isn't it a great idea to grow the world's most costliest spice in your backyard? These little plants are amazing! They are a fall-blooming crocus, and are extremely easy to grow! We just popped them in the ground last fall, and pretty much forgot about them until *this* fall, when I noticed they had come up and - yes - even had actual saffron to harvest! I'm going to plant LOTS more! If you're interested in growing your own, I highly recommend it - they're inexpensive to purchase, grow beautifully in most places in the US, and are practically no maintenance.

And - just to show you how naughty Donna's little horses are - on these gorgeous fall days we simply leave the door of the shop open, to enjoy the sunlight and the breezes. Well, in their morning perambulations, the little horses just stopped on in to say hi! Delilah is on the left, and Baron on the right. Ollie, our mastiff-mix dog, is in the background - the babies are bigger than he is now!

As most of you know, we offer various classes, mostly here on the farm. And we LOVE doing so! We keep thinking about a way to offer classes online to our many wonderful customers across the world...but have yet to come up with a great plan to do so. (There are only so many hours in the day unfortunately!) HOWEVER, we do get lots of emails from our (inter)national customers about classes, so I thought I'd post about a few options here.

Our friends Tina and Maryanne, of The Essential Herbal and Lancaster Soapworks, are offering a REALLY spectacular-sounding online soapmaking class! Check out the details here on Tina's blog - they are limiting the class to a certain number of students, so I highly recommend signing up very soon if you are interested.

We are teaching a class here on the farm about Homemade Natural Cleansers. The class draws heavily on an article I wrote for the Herb Quarterly in the Summer 2008 issue. (Did you guys know that I write a monthly column for that magazine, as well as feature articles??) Anyway - it does have some really great recipes in it, if you can find a copy at your local library I'd highly recommend it. Otherwise you can order a copy from their website. I also recommend 2 books on this subject:

The Naturally Clean Home by Karyn Siegel-Maier is my favorite - it's packed with great recipes that really work.

Clean House Clean Planet by Karen Logan is also great!

We also have a great recipe for homemade laundry soap on our website,and we DO plan to add more natural home cleanser recipes to our website soon, so stay tuned.....


Last, but not least - we do offer several natural dyeing classes here on the farm - we haven't yet offered one on rust-dyeing, but I *did* write a tutorial for Hobby Farm Home magazine on how to rust-dye fabrics. It's easy, fun, and a great way to turn rusty "junk" into art. Here are a few items that are dyed with rust (all of these can be found in my etsy store, by the way...)

We got a lovely product review from The Gerber Babies Blog - check it out!

A few housekeeping notes: The Soleil limited edition perfume is sold out!


We still have 2 spaces left in our November Soapmaking 101 class, and several slots in each in our Natural Dyeing and Natural Cleansers classes.

We are being blessed with a GORGEOUS fall. I guess we deserve it, after such a wet/hot/miserable spring and summer.

The harvest is in full swing here. The still is running every day, weather permitting. I've distilled the season's tender herbs - lemon verbena, eucalyptus, lemongrass - the more tropical herbs that grow here as annuals. Now I'll concentrate on the hardier herbs - peppermint, comfrey, mountain mint, etc. We had a crop failure of several herbs - lemon balm and chocolate mint. Which is bizarre, as normally they grow REALLY well here. go figure.

I'm also drying herbs, and making smudge sticks. The picture above shows sweetgrass, mountain mint, and white sage, just cut. I bundle some of each together and tie it with a rubber band, as shown below:


These are hung in our drying shed, until they're dry, but not TOO crispy/crunchy.
Then we remove the rubber band, tie the smudge together with natural-fiber (cotton or hemp) string, and they are done!

Here's another online tutorial about making smudge.

I've posted this recipe before, but it's so damn good I'm gonna post it again. I'm making it tonight, but, instead of sage, I used some leftover pesto (I had a pesto-making spree last night, and turned a laundry basket full of basil into delicious pesto in my freezer).

Enjoy!

Sage and Shallot Foccacia Bread

1 cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp. dry yeast
2 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. good olive oil
2 tsp. salt
about 12 shallots, roughly chopped
3 tbsp. chopped fresh sage leaves (or 3 tsp. dried crushed sage leaves)
1/2 cup grated asiago cheese
1 tbsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 1/2 cups flour (I used a mixture of white and wheat)

Combine water, yeast, and sugar into a large bowl, and let sit while you grate the cheese and chop the shallots, grate the cheese, and chop the sage.

Add oil, salt, shallots, sage, pepper, cheese and 1 cup flour to the yeast mixture, and stir until completely blended. Gradually add the rest of the flour until dough gathers into a ball. Knead for 4 or 5 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Coat dough with olive oil, and let rise until double. Punch down, then place on a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan - pat dough down into whatever shape you like, as long as it's about 1/2 inch thick. Let rise again, for about half an hour or 45 minutes.

Dimple the dough very deelpy with your fingers. Sprinkle the top of the bread with coarse sea salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

Love to support your local farmers, AND eat great foods? Head to southern Iowa this Sunday, October 5th for a fantastic Farm Crawl! "Crawl" across six miles of countryside to visit six independently owned farms, and taste cheese, wine, fresh apples, see racing pigs, enjoy a corn maze, and SO much more!

As promised, here are some of the pictures from last week's Sample Sunday (Our big 10th birthday party).


Here is Mary DouBrava doing reiki - she kindly came out and offered free mini reiki sessions to anyone who wanted them!

Our friend Ryan and his uncle were selling their gorgeous hand-turned pens.


And our friend Nikki had her amazing handmade sterling silver jewelry for sale!


Here is Kristi, showing off some of her paper beads that she used making recycled junk mail - they are so gorgeous, you wouldn't believe they were just paper and glue!

Sally Kilkenny was selling her amazing handmade jams.

And Rachels wonderful stand of handmade jewelry!

More pictures to come......