This is Moe, doing what he does best. Relaxing. And guarding his precious catnip stash! (I mean, we only have dozens of catnip plants....there *might* be shortage anytime!). He came to live here after a friend of ours had to move to a place where they don't accept kitties (Can you IMAGINE such a thing?!?! Life without kitties!). He's about 5 or 6, and rules the roost here, keeping order over all the other cats and keeping the humans in line too.

This is Sassy. Originally, we named his Sasquatch, because he has BIG feet, with extra toes! (Yup, he's a polydactyl. a dinosaur cat, heh heh). But, since he lives in an herb shop, I ended up yelling "Sassafrass!" when he was in trouble. So I guess that's his real name. But he goes by Sassy, and sassy is what he is. He's a big, furry, cuddly cat that LOVES to squish his big self into small baskets. Especially if they're partially filled with, say, products. *sigh*

He also adores boxes of packing peanuts, and, if the box is big enough, will literally SWIM in the box of peanuts. I kid you not. It's HYSTERICAL.

He was a kitten from an accidental litter from one of my sister's cats. He's 2 1/2 and has lived with us his whole life. My sister has his brother too, which is pretty cool.

Skeezix, you crack us up! What a cool cat you are!

We dont' have vishus deer here, but yesterday Mo and Violet had to deal with something even worse - Small People. :) Yes, this being a happy family farm, occasionally we get hordes of Small People here visiting. They are loud and have sticky hands, and love to grab tails!

Mo, being the Sr. Canip Control Inspector, does not let them burst his "kitty-cool". He does , however, twitch his tail and run for the door. Violet takes one look and HIDES.

Guess I should introduce the Prairieland Herbs feline gang officially, hmm? I'll do that.....

Mo and Violet, two of our shop kitties, being super-cute, sleeping in the sun. :)

They give a big shout out to Missy Blue Eyes and all the other cat-bloggers that support their owners by buying catnip!

Here's a shout out to all our cat-blogging friends, and a big thanks to ML and Missy Blue Eyes for sending them our way!

Our FOUR shop cats (yes, FOUR...can you believe it?) Violet, Sassy, Moe and Go all say hello! We have some pictures to post later, but for now, we just wanted to get in a quick hello to all cat bloggers. :) We've distilled lots of catnip for our catnip hydrosol spray, and are currently harvesting what is probably the last of our dried catnip for the year. :) And don't forget - your purchase of our Bonky Balls helps support our friends at Iowa Parrot Rescue!

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!

Whew. Here we are with a blog. how 'bout that? I've been meaning to start one for ages, and just did it. So, here goes!

We're innundated with FRUIT right now. it's the time of the year when the garden goes nuts. We're drying, distilling, gathering, harvesting, canning, and eating. I just finished the elderberries, made lots of syrup and jam. Now I'm working on grapes (we have sooooo many grapes, and they're really good this year!) and we discovered that we have a crapabble tree. Who knew? We thought it was a plum bush gone beserk until it gave us crapabbles. LOTS of crabapples. Which make wonderful jelly. I've got 3 more cases of jars and about 15 lbs of sugar. I wonder what will run out first?