Once again, we have temps in the mid-90's, with heat indices in the 110 vicinity. *deep sigh*

We continue to get rain at all the right times. The plants love it. So do the weeds. Ah well, at least we can use some of them. Maggie is harvesting wild plants to distill and dye. I gathered a bunch of Queen Anne's lace on Saturday... Into the dyepot it goes!

Indigo. Is. MAGIC!!

Full blog and pics here!

This looks like a fun Easter project to do with the kiddos - I love playing with natural dyes! 

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....

The sky can be really bright blue and beautiful here....it was cold when this picture was taken, but the sun was so lovely!!



You folks have been keeping us fantastically busy with orders. keep 'em coming! This was the load I took to the post office on Tuesday!!!!



We took advantage of some of the spring sunshine to photograph these beautiful naturally dyed scarves in the sunshine.

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!!!!


We have just gotten word that TEMPLETON RYE will be back on our farm for this Sample Sunday! Sampling their FABULOUS whiskey, and selling t-shirts, stickers, and perhaps their wonderful BBQ sauce! Oh, we are so VERY excited!

In other events:
*For our 9th birthday - if you purchase any 9 items you get 9% off your whole bill!

*New Soap! Exclusive "Mountain Mint" soap made with mountain mint hydrosol and dried moutnain mint herb from our farm!

*Fabulous selection of naturally dyed silk scarves (see below)! Dyed with herbs, flowers, or rusty "found" objects from our farm!

*Delicious Pulled Pork sandwiches available for lunch!

*New roving and fiber - fabulous fall colors

*New Class Schedule - learn to make soap, explore Reiki, and so much more!

Come visit us on the farm this weekend!

Maggie has an etsy store now! and is selling pretty, naturally dyed scarves and hankies...check it out! (PS for those of you that don't know, Etsy is sorta like ebay but for handmade cool stuff!)

oh.

My.


GOODNESS!


Just back from our annual judging at the State fair - we host and judge a herbal cooking contest every year, and every year the entries were PHENOMENAL!!! This year, some highlights include: super-deliciously garlicky herb bread (one loaf contained SIX CLOVES of garlic!!!!!!!!!!), a most amazing and delicious lavender-chocolate torte, fabulous lemon balm pound cake, a delicious pecan/mint tea bread (it tastes much better than it sounded!), and a fantastic bread containing an interesting mix of herbs such as juniper berries, mustard, thyme, peppercorns and allspice - paired with a dark beer and some sharp cheddar...oh my!!!

A good friend/customer of ours always enters oodles of contests at the state fair and she sent us home with one of the seven (!!!!) cakes she had entered in the fair today...I'm including a picture so you can see the caliber of stuff I'm talking about. Is this cake gorgeous, or what? And, I assure you - it tastes even better than it looks!!!!!!!!



in other news! We stil have space in our Batik With Natural Dyes class this Saturday, August 11th - come learn to batik with natural dyes and make and take home a gorgeous window charmer such as this:



or this:





in FURTHER news (gosh, aren't we busy this week??) We have a SAMPLE SUNDAY this weekened, Sunday, August 12th, from 12-5 PM - all three farms are involved, here's what's going on!

At Prairieland Herbs:
LIVE MUSIC! Super-talened Sarah Johnson of Adel, Iowa will be playing beautiful music for us!!

Samples of our Fiesta Dip and Garlic Herb butter - perfect for summer veggies and corn on the cob! Body powders will be on sale, and we'll be giving out samples of soaps and whatever else we have time to make up and throw in the sample basket. :)

Northern Prairie Chevre will have:
* Professional Tribal-Style dancers, Benu Dance Company from Lincoln, Nebraska will entertain at 1:00 and 3:00 and have items for sale.
* Jasper Winery will be sampling their award winning wines.
* Anthofer Family Farms ironworks decorations and The Atlantean ethnic jewelry.
* Milton from Sheeder Farms will be sampling his free-range meats.
* Lots of meats for grilling season.
* NEW! Kramer's Gourmet Salsas.
* Tour the barn, visit the kids and girls and view either a milking or kidding video.
* Lots of kid-friendly activities.
* Lots of samples and much more to see and do!

Picket Fence Creamery will have:

ICE CREAM SUNDAES ONLY $2! That's right...we'll be making sundaes with our famous vanilla ice cream and your favorite toppings! Choose from caramel, chocolate, or crushed cookies...ONLY $2! We'll have a kids' size available for the children too!

TRY LOCAL FOOD SAMPLES GALORE! Our own fresh white cheddar cheese curds (regular, dill, garlic, hot pepper, and a garden herb blend (created by our friends at Prairieland Herbs), cream cheese ball, elk sticks, creamery butter, local honey, and of course..."the best chocolate milk this side of the Milky Way!"

TRY OUR FRESH GRILLED MEAT! Jeff will once again be grilling some of our delicious beef and pork, raised right here at the farm without the use of artificial hormones or chemicals. Burgers off the grill - $2! Hotdogs for the kids - $1.

TRY OUR PICKET FENCE ALL-PURPOSE SAUCE! Dip your meat sample in some of our Picket Fence All-Purpose Sauce - great for beef, pork, chicken, and your other favorite meats, and for dipping. Wonderful! Only $4 a bottle.

FROM JENNA'S ORGANIC GARDEN- Fresh radishes! We'll also have fresh organic garlic from our neighbor, John! Radishes: $1/bag. Garlic: 75 cents/bulb. Feel free to browse around our garden. And get ready for tomatoes - Jenna has 120 tomato plants!

FRESH FROM VANDERPLOEG BAKERY IN PELLA- Dutch letters and apple cinnamon pecan bread! Also Pella bologna, beef jerky, and beef sticks.

SUPER DEAL! A fresh cherry, berry, or cherry-berry fruit crisp (made from scratch with REAL fruit), and a quart of iced cream...ONLY $10. Enjoy dessert!

OTHER GOODIES- Sour cream cinnamon rolls (made with our cream!), $3.90 for plate of four; single serve berry crisps, $1.49; fresh Lillie Mae caramels from Marshalltown (made with our cream!), $5.99/bag; your favorite Iowa wines; and a nice selection of certified organic foods.

FOR THE GRILL- Look over our selection of beef, pork, lamb, elk, buffalo, chicken and goat meat. All local meats from animals NOT injected with artificial hormones. We have fresh farm eggs, too...brown and green!

KIDS! See the calves, pigs, & kittens, hay maze, 00100355

and run through the sprinkler to stay cool! Free pencils and posters, too!

FREE KITTENS! We have about 16 kittens. We will be giving them away FREE on Sunday, July 15! Pick any size, shape, or color that you want! (We have three black Halloween cats!)

Music will be provided by HB Productions, Altoona, Iowa.

Whew. with all that suff, why *wouldn't* you come see us on Sunday??

I am experimenting and playing with natural dyes, and, have saved the leftover "tea" from our last few batches of hydrosol. The water lleft over from distilling the eucalyptus hydrosol was a really, REALLY interesting red color. I used some of the actual eucalyptus plant matter to compost dye some silk squares...those won't be ready for a few weeks, so I don't know what they look like. But I dyed this roving with the eucalyptus "tea" and think it's a really pretty color! Next, I'll try the leftover tea from the lemon eucalyptus we did a week or two ago. :)

I love it when so many things intersect so beautifully! Since I'm starting to learn about natural dyeing, I'm extra-glad that my still is copper. Copper, in various forms, is used as both a mordant (color-fixer) and dye for wool, silk, etc. - and, it is a metal, so it occasionally reacts with the chemical constituents of various herbs I put in it. So....when I clean out my condenser, I just throw a little vinegar in it, and pretty soon I have a beautiful blue-green solution that I save and use as a mordant and dye. And sometimes, when I distill things, I open the still (the next day, after it's cooled), and find the herbs on top a bright, BRIGHT green color. Like, technicolor green. It's happened to me with lemon balm, various mints, and today, Lemon eucalyptus.

So....today I happened to have a few pre-mordanted silk scarves on hand, because I've been playing with flower pounding (bashing flowers into silk to impregnate the silk with colors and the flower imprint. It's easy and HIGHLY addictive). I took the beautiful leftover (already-distilled)lemon eucalytus leaves with green "stuff" on them, and did some imprinting onto a couple of silk scarves. I took another scarf, and just wiped down the inside of the still - the scarf is now a GORGEOUS bright green color. Last, but not least, I saved a gallon of leftover lemon eucalyptus "tea" (the liquid left in the bottom of the pot of my still), and I'm going to take that home and try doing some dyepot dyeing with both silk and wool, using that.

I'll post pics later, but it probably wont' be until tomorrow. We're teaching a "Lovin' Lavender" class tonight, so it will be a very long day at work for us.

Here's a pic of our still, if that helps you visualize what I was doing. :)

Anyone interested in natural dyeing? (It's herb-related, right?) :) That's what I'm doing at home today, for fun. :) I posted more about it in my blog, but also wanted to put this link here too - it's some really cool and amazingly beautiful blog entries/photos all about natural dyeing.