Rain, rain, rain, rain, thunderstorms, tornado warnings, humidity, rain, mud, flood warnings, rain.

That is what is happening here. Big wet thundery storms, followed by sunshine = humidity and mud. and NO gardening. Beds are tilled, but empty. Weeds are lush an abundant. Donna CANNOT keep ahead of the grass. In short, Mother Nature is kicking our asses, and chaos rains.

That's what's happening here at Prairieland Herbs.

In other news: It IS time to make violet jelly!!


Here's our step-by-step recipe for Violet Jelly!

Roses will be blooming before too long, and my goal is to do a similar tutorial for Rose Petal Jam. Stay tuned!

We have some new arrivals on the farm - Miniature horses! We've always had horses (or mules) on the farm - generally, a motley assortment of equines that for some reason needed a new home. I can remember a retired barrel racer, a jumping mule, and a few just plain horses and ponies. The last 2 we had, some of our long-time customers remember (and still ask about). They were old and mellow, and didn't actually want to leave the farm, so we took down the fences and let them roam at will, like really big dogs. But the last one passed away several years ago, and Donna has been waiting for the right time to get a horse or two on the farm again.


Well....a horse or two somehow turned into 3 adult miniature horses, one with a newborn baby, and the other two due to give birth!!! (The dark brown one in the top picture is due any moment now!)

Here's mom and baby. The baby is about a month old and is SUPER funny! She leaps, jumps, cavorts and generally has a fantastic time racing around being cute. They had names given to them at their old home, but, they don't seem to know them, so we're just taking some time and learning their personalities and figuring out what their names will be.


This beautiful girl has bright blue eyes!
The inter-species introductions were most humorous. For those of you that don't know, we have a total of 5 dogs that freely roam the farm, (2 are Maggies and 3 are Donnas), and a Canadian goose named Beaker that also roams at will, not to mention several (okay, lots) cats. Everyone generally gets along. Sometimes Beaker chases the cats, and sometimes the dogs chase Beaker, but it's all in good fun, no real harm is intended - it's mostly about pecking order and sheer onery-ness, I think. Oh, and Beaker thinks he is a person or a dog (we're not sure which), and does not identify in the slightest bit that he is a bird.

Anyway, most of the dogs are very large, and the horses are very small, so there was some initial inter-species confusion during the initial introduction. The picture above shows Ollie, a 110 lb mastiff mix, sniffing noses with one of the new minis. He sorta figured out she wasn't really a dog, but....the baby horse is only about 30 pounds, and prances around playfully. For the first day or so, all the dogs were trying to initiate playfullness with her in typical dog fashion - stomping paws, play-bowing, and racing around like dorks. She of course did not understand these strange motions. The baby horse thought they were really weird horses, and the dogs though she was a really stupid puppy. Everything has been resolved now, and Ollie and the baby have figured out that they can play games where she races around the pasture and he races around after; it's quite cute.

I have been VERY remiss in blogging; I'm sorry everyone! This past week we had a few days of nearly perfect weather. Mid 70's, sun, slight breeze, no bugs - just amazing. This set of pictures was taken May 12th. Here is our little orchard - BLOOMING! It's very exciting; some of these trees are 4-5 years old, a few were planted last year, but they are all blooming and doing really well. In ths little patch here we have wild plums, chokecherries, whiteflesh peaches, sour cherries, and a few kind of apples. I'm really hoping for a great fruit harvest this year. I also planted rhubarb, and jostaberries, and hope to put in currants and gooseberies too. Also my friend Jill gave me some garden huckleberries - they're funny litle plants, they look like tomatoes (are indeed related to them), with fruits that look like blueberries. I plan to mostly use them for dyeing.


Here is Donna's woodland, looking gorgeous! This is right outside the front door of our shop, and a little to the right.

Here are the herb plants we have for sell. We sell them through the month of May, then plant what's left.

This is not in our orchard, but it's a beautiful crabapple tree with HUGE delicious crabapples. We did not have any last year, due to an untimely frost that nipped all the flowers, but the year before I made oodles of jam and crabapple butter. yum.

Beaker is enjoying the warmer weather - mostly, because it means that he can eat all the fresh greens and herbs he wants - his favorite foods! He will eat dried grains if he has to, but....they are most certainly not his choice of meal.


From Donna's shade garden


Go-cat luxuriates in the sun...Isn't her expression just great?


I *think* spring is finally here. We aren't past the danger of frost yet, BUT..chives are about to bloom! always a cheerful spring sight.

Luxury Soap of the month is Live! Get 'em while you can!

Note: The April Luxury Soaps are on the way here! so excited!

In the meantime, we have a few new items I'm adding to the website. Will post here as they're added. First off, our new fantastic handmade Paste Wax for wood. Perfect for spring cleaning!

We've been selling this fantastic muscle mist out of our shop for years - it's just never made it onto the website for some reason. But, now, here it is! This powerful muscle-relaxing spray is the BEST thing for tired, achey muscles - absolutely incredible. It's got a wonderful hot/cold soothing sensation that truly penetrates deeply, and helps relieve muscle aches. Available in 1 oz. spray bottle, 2 oz. spray bottle, and 4 oz. refill size.

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.

Oh my gosh. what a difference a few days make!! We had couple of warm (50-60 degree) days with abundant sunshine, and the snow and ice are GONE. yesterday was fantastic - mildly muddy, work-outdoors-in-a-tshirt weather. I (Maggie) tried my hand at pruning some of our fruit trees. I have NO idea what I was doing; I hope the poor trees forgive me!


The other interesting thing was this: We could literally see the plants growing greener as the day went on. A preliminary garden inspection showed that the parsley, thyme, mountain mint, sage, and of course weeds (dandelions in particular) were greening up. A few hours later, we SWORE they were even greener. Plants are so amazing!! They grow so quickly given a little water and a lot of sunshine....

Child labor laws....who needs 'em? :)

(Toby picked up a shovel and cleared part of our driveway the other day, just for fun. look that those red cheeks! it was cold out!)

Our Luxury Soap of the Month has arrived, and omg. is it amazing! Scented with jasmine wax, and essential oils of neroli, petitgrain and chamomile, this fantastic bar is a TRUE bargain!!! Wonderful fresh, floral scent, perfect for spring. We have 40 bars and when they're gone, they're gone!!

I'm fully convinved that Toby, my nephew, is the only person left in the Midwest who is actually enjoying this cold and icy winter. Every day the bus drops him off at PLH after school, and he spends a happy hour or so, bundled up in snowpants, jacket, mittens, hat and boots, running around the farm, sliding on the ice, playing in the snowdrifts, and generally having a good time. Ah, to be in first grade again!

We adults however are THOROUGLY sick of it. It's pretty much the ice and the cold that are most annoying. We have had a solid sheet of ice covering the farm since early December. Donna has fallen on the ice a couple of times through the winter, and Maggie did twice just this week. (thankfully we are both well padded on the rear end). It's just awful, and there's nothing we can do about it. Even the dogs lose traction and go sliding sometimes!



Even Violet is tired of winter! Here she is hiding from the horror of it all. "Wake me when spring arrives", she says.




Beaker doesn't seem to care too much one way or the other. He's a bit bored, because his "flock" is spending all their time indoors. He much prefers warmer weather, and he loves to help garden, distill, or just generally hang out outdoors with his "peeps". heh heh.

The Great Beeswax Project of 2008 is nearly done! John has spent HOURS melting, straining, and pouring beeswax into a variety of sizes - 1 lb blocks, 2 lb. blocks, .75 oz. cubes, and 2.5 oz containers. I believe he has cleaned over 150 lbs of beeswax in the last week or so. We'll get a picture of ALL of it together when he's done.....but isn't it pretty here, cooling on the table? and it smells amazing!

Here's a woodpecker, on our suet feeder we have just outside the shop. Feeding and providing habitat for wildlife is a really important part of what we do with our gardens and land.

We call Beaker our "Wax-headed cracker hound". He loooves to "help' John make candles, and has gotten bits of soywax dripped on his head and back moer than once. (It's not that hot and doesn't hurt him a bit, we swear). And he love love, LOVES Club crackers. If he hears a crinkly wrapper noise he comes right over to see if there might be cracker bits to be had! He eats veryv ery little people food (he doesn't even really like his winter food, he much prefers fresh greens and bugs and things out of the garden), but he has a serious addiction to those Club crackers!

I haven't posted about Beaker (the goose) in a while. he's doing great! We were worried about him, after we lost our ducks. We thought he'd be lonely. He has companyduring the day while we're at work - we let him out of his pen, he wanders around the farm and talks to our cats and dogs. If John is making candles or cleaning beeswax, Beaker is in heaven (he loves to help make candles!). But during the evening we have to shut him in his pen so he is safe. We've been looking at adopting some other fowl to keep him company but 1) we haven't found any, and 2) he thinks he is a dog (or maybe a person, we're not sure), and therefore doesn't actually get all that much company from other birds. But he found his own friend....




....A few months ago, we found some baby kitties in the barn. all of our pets are spayed or neutered, but this is a farm, with a nice warm barn, and stray cats come to live here. We feed them, and care for them as best we can, but they're usually wild. one had babies last summer...we caught, tamed, and adopted out 4 of them, but apparently...there was another one. We'll have to get a trap, and find a vet who will spay/neuter a feral cat, because s/he is certainly wild. BUT. S/he and Beaker are best buddies!!! Every night when we (read:John) puts Beaky away, his kitty is waiting there for him! We are thrilled he has found some "nighttime" companionship!

Sheesh. It snowed about 10 inches last night and is supposed to start blowing alot this afternoon. So Donna is snowed in and Maggie is snowed out! We packed a TON of orders yestrday - as many as we could, before the post office closed. We shipped 43 boxes - and sold 23 of our 40 "Secret Forest" soaps (so far). If we didn't ship your order yesterday, I'm sorry! We will get to it as SOON as we can get back into our shop....tomorrow, hopefully!

The new Luxury Soap of the Month has arrived, and it is SPECTACULAR! An icy-cool blast of woodsy goodness, "Secret Forest" smells like you're standing in a deep, green forest as the snow falls softly all around you. I kid you not.

There are 40 bars and when they're gone, they're gone. ENJOY!

Here is a itty-bitty sneak peek at our new labels! We've nearly got them all created now and have been using them on all the products we've made in the last few weeks. What do you think?

I (Maggie) am at home for a chunk of the day, trying to work on our new (not yet released) website. I'm learning ournew shopping cart system, which will be REALLY REALLY COOL once we get it done. For now, it is just making me swear alot. So if you hear loud, vulgar swearing coming from the central Ia area, pay no mind. It's just me.

Also, our friend Tina at Essential Herbal has a really cool post about Valentine's herbal potions on her blog. ENJOY!

It's the Great Melt of 2008. After lots of snow and ice, it's now about 50 degrees here, and the whole world is a drippy, melty, muddy mess! The mud is no fun but the warmth sure is nice!

We got our yearly beeswax purchase last week - 150 lbs of raw, delicious-smelling beeswax! It's pretty clean - the local fellow does a really excellent job of giving us the cleanest, best bits from his hives, but we still have to melt it all down, strain it through cheesecloth, and then pour it into 1 and 2 lb. bread pans to make the lovely cakes of beeswax that we use and sell all year long. melting and cleaning the wax is a long process that takes *several* days, but it smells sooooooo good!!!!

The Rosemary House ( a wonderful herb shop in PA) has a fantastic, fast-moving blog, and recently they're doing a wonderful celebration of Tea Around the World. I recommend you check it out - it's very interesting!

We had a bit of snow overnight last night - light, fluffy snow that was (fortunately) easy to shovel. When it's so light like that, it can really pile high on leaves and branches and, well, anything outdoors, making for some interesting pictures!

Today it's cold - well, all week actually. The expected high for tomorrow is somewhere around 7 degrees. UGH. :( We hope a few people will come out and see us for Sample Sunday anyway! Picket Fence Creamery are having specials and sales - their cream is VERY much on sale, and they have new flavored butters - garlic, cinnamon, honey, and garden herb (featuring our herbs!). They are delicious and if you buy 3 you can get one free! We have lots of free samples of bath salts and milk baths in our sample basket, and have our Breathe Easy items (see below)on sale both on our website and in the store!



This breathe easy set is really lovely. Even if you don't have a cold or sinus issues right NOW, the thing to do is have this kinda stuff on hand in your herbal "medicine chest". Then you can grab it whenever you start to feel stuffy and alleviate the problem of having to wait 3 days for your natural sinus relief to arrive in the mail! (I am speaking from experience here! When I don't have this stuff on hand in my medicine chest here at home, I always regret it!) These last 2 weeks we've been flooded with people calling or coming in for our Breathe Easy wand, eucalyptus hydrosol and eucalyptus essential oil, becuase they and their kiddos have icky sinus congestion. 'tis the season...unfortunately. :(



So this past week, we've been making stuff like crazy in the shop. It's been quiet, so we have time to go through and re-stock the store in a methodical and organized fashion. We been so busy, we haven't been able to do that in MONTHS! It's really nice. :) Normally we'd do something like this around October. Usually by then the garden is put to bed, and the holiday craziness has not yet hit, so we have a few weeks simply to stock up and get our ducks (geese?) in a row. But this past October was a madhouse. The weather was beautiful and we had not yet had a killing frost, so we were distilling and harvesting our herbs. We had three BIG new wholesale accounts open up, and seemed to be just crazy busy with orders.

You will also start to notice that we have entirely new labels for all of our products. For years, we have printed our labels and handcut them all. But not we've decided to redesign our labels for a cleaner, more uniform look. Plus, they are now pre-cut, saving us ALOT of time and hassle! We are using a waterproof vinyl for many of our labels as well, so we hope they will look nicer, longer. We hope you will enjoy this new look. We're working on all new photographs of ALL of our products....another huge project. We will keep you posted on our progress.

The Luxury Soap of the Month has arrived!!

And....we have 2 of them this month!

Due to a weather-related soapmaking problem, Geri was only able to provide us with 2 small batches. So we have a double-header! "Aphrodite" and "Sunrise". We have 16 bars of each...and they're going to go fast. These soaps are amazing! Containing hydrosols, silk, clay, shea butter, organic goat milk and essential oils - well, they're just fantastic. Details on the website!

A Day on the Farm

It's wintertime, and we've gotten past the holiday craziness. I thought I'd try and post a little bit about what a winter day on the herb farm is like.

Donna is an earlybird, so she is always up and about and doing stuff WAAAAAAAY before John and maggie arrive. She usually goes out early to feed the cats and let Beaker the Wondergoose out of his pen (we have to keep him penned up at night for his own safety, due to the neighbor dogs). She usually starts up the computer and does some emailing and pulls some orders before the shop is open at 10.

John and Maggie usually arrive 10ish (heavy on the ISH). We say hi to Beaker and all the dogs and cats (that takes a while...there are lots of dogs and cats at PLH).

The rhythm of our day is changeable, depending on what needs to be done. Filling orders and getting them in the mail are always our first priority. Donna usually pulls the orders, prints them, and answers the emails. This can take quite a while! All day, if it is a busy "order" day. Or only an hour if there are just a few orders.

Usually, while Donna is printing the orders, John will pack them while Maggie makes stuff. Of course this can change at any time depending on what needs to be done. If we need candles made, John will be in the classroom/chandlery doing that. If we are in the midst of making a TON of stuff (thousands of lip balms, let's say), then Donna will help with the laborious task of labelling and shrinkwrapping them. All in all, we do whatever needs to be done.

Of course one of the most important tasks is letting the dogs and cats in and out of the door. Those of you who have pets know what I am talking about!! Maggie has 2 dogs that come to work with her, and Donna has 3 dogs that live on the farm with her. We have assorted cats that live in the shop, Donna's house, or the barn (as they please). We don't let the pets in the manufacturing area, but they are allowed in the shop as they please. So plenty of time is alloted each day for letting the pets in an out, assuring everyone has proper "blankies", and generally spoiling them rotten.

Other things that may occur on any given day: Answering phones, setting up bus tours or classes, ordering the hundreds of packaging items or raw materials we use in our production, cleaning, organizing, bill-paying, filling wholesale orders, making deliveries, shopping, unpacking and putting away delivered items, working on the blog or website, discussing new products/changes/renovations, shoveling snow, researching, creating an enewsletter, taking photographs, designing labels, stocking the shelves, and a million other things that go into running a farm and small business.

We are a family business, and our family is VERY important to us! Donna's dad lives with her, and so of course he is part of the general action too. He likes to make us lunch, and we LOVE it when he cooks and bakes for us! Lunch is a kind of random affair. We are near a teensy town with hardly any restaurants and such....and Maggie is vegetarian which cuts down even further on food options in our tiny town. So we might get pizza once a week, or eat some goodies from our neighbors at Picket Fence Creamery (their cheeseball is a staple of our lunch diet!). Sometimes we don't have time to eat at all. Only one thing is guaranteed: if there is a lunch, the SECOND we sit down to eat, customers will arrive. No matter if it's at noon or at 3 or anytime in between! It's just guaranteed. Murphy's law, right?

Speaking of customers. We are a small store located in the middle of nowhere! So on a "normal' day, we may not have any customers are all. We may have TONS of customers. It is completely random! Generally speaking, Saturday's are our busier days in terms of having customers in the store. But in the winter especially, a day or two or perhaps even three might pass without us seeing a single customer in the store!

Toby, Donna's grandson, gets out of school and off the bus about 3:45, so from that time on, there's extra activity (generally involving action figures, playing in the snow, radio-controlled cars or possibly cartoon watching) that goes on between 3:45 and closing time. He is a good kid and loves to "help" make bath salts and such. :)

4:00 is post office time! The little post office in woodward closes at 4:30, so at 4:00 maggie loads the van with the day's packages and heads into town (about a mile drive). Our postal folks are AWESOME, we cannot say enough nice things about how helpful, pleasant, fun and wonderful they are!

After that, we finish up any projects we're working on (or get to a stopping point), and get ready to close down at 5:00.

So, is anyone besides us cooped up inside and doing alot of reading?

Donna always gets a slew of paperbacks for Christmas (it's a tradition), and then enjoys a little bit of free time reading them (she's a FAST reader, has been doing a book a day at least!). She has been reading a series that may be interested to some of you - it's a mystery series, set in the late 1300's, and involved a Welsh man an herbal apothecary. Interested? Check out the Owen Archer series by Candace Robb!

I have been reading about FOOD (surprise, surprise!). Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver was on my "best books" list of 2007. So far in 2008 i am getting my mind blown (in a good way) by Living the GOod Life by Scott and Helen Nearing. COOL! Also, I am LOVING this book "Infused" - it's all about infusing herbs, spices, veggies, fruits and flowers to make really, REALLY fantasic - sounding flavored liquors. Expect future posts from me on THAT subject!!!

Any books any of you would like to recommend to us?

We are heavy into a fit of reorganizing and updating here at PLH.....working on all new labels, and an all new website....plus entirely reorganizing our kitchen space, our shop, and our classroom!!! We will keep you updated on all those events. But in the meanwhile...isn't Mo cute?!

Just a little bit of our world the last few weeks.....ice on the trees and a blue iowa sky. :)

Long time no blog, I know! Well, what can I say. We were busy making products and packing orders. PLUS, the weather has been absolutely gross! The first weekend in December we got a BIG ice storm that turned our driveway, parking lot, and walkway to the shop into a solid, 1-2 inch thick sheet of ice. Since then, we've had a winter storm EVERY WEEKEND, just adding layers of ice and snow. It's pretty exciting. We did have some brave souls come out and shop (thankfully everyone was really careful and there were no accidents or falls), but overall this weather is really crazy for December! I wonder what the rest of the winter is going to be like?

Yep, it's December. And while recent weather events (stupid ice storm! stupid snow!) have kept our retail folks from getting to our shop....well, folks have certainly been shoppin' online. Here is the load we took to the post office today!


Also, i don't think I've ever posted a picture of our cash register? It's really cool - big, old and heavy, and people coming into our shop often comment on it. So here it is, for you folks in the rest of the world! :)

Is that not the HANDSOMEST goose you have ever seen? He recently celebrated his first snow with a nice swim in the pond. The cool weather does not seem to bother him one bit!

Beaker is currently without fowl-friends....Unfortunately, the neighbor's dogs came down to our farm (we live in the country....no fences), and killed Beaker's duck friends. They actually tried to get Beaker too, and he was slightly injured on one of his wings, but he is fine now. Now we have to keep Beaker in a safe, roomy pen when we're not around to watch out for him.



This is or cat Tilly - Donna's cat, really. She lives in Donna's house but occasionally comes out to the shop to "supervise". The other day she positioned herself on top of our antique cash register and spent quite a bit of time there, just watching the world go by!



We have a new soap - Just Plain Goatmilk! We do get a fair number of requests for unscented products so do try to have a nice selection of fragrace-free handmade goods!



John is making candles like a crazy man, and also working on a new, floral essential oil candle. Makign a new candle takes a lot of time! First, he tries out various essential oil blends and mixtures, to get something that smells wonderful. Then, the various blends must be made into candles and thoroughly burn-tested. Here's some of the blends he was working on the past few days....when our new floral candle is ready, we'll be sure to let you know about it!

Um, yeah. ICE. soooooo much ice! Maggie stayed home yesterday, due to this ice storm, and this morning Donna reports a solid inch or more of ice on our driveway, parking lot, and walkway. PLEASE, folks - if you were thinking about driving out to do some shopping - don't! It's not safe until we get this ice cleared off!!

In other news - I'm updating the website here in a few minutes with our $5 Flat Rate shipping for the month of Dec! So stay home and warm and safe and shop online, k?

More blogging, with pics, coming soon!