we started our farmer's market season last week; the weather was amazing! we had a great time. Enjoyed a java joe's breve, and some amazing fruit/chocolate tarts. (our ususal favorite - chocolate croissants - had already sold out by the time we wandered over the La Mie's stand). Here are 2 pictures of our market stall.


a random shot of some beautiful pepper jelly


and another random shot of some pretty veggies.

We'll be at the market again tomorrow, and will probably have some more pictures to post. :)

one of our very cool customers posted a lovely review of our healing wands!

Our healing salves and wands (same formula, different packaging) do work REALLY well on just about everything. this time of year we're using our on garden-induced rashes, mosquito bites, and sunburn.

I'm just posting some older pictures I didn't have a chance to post while my computer was kablooey. I LOVE this picture of Toby (Donna's grandson), in his pj's, raincoat, and sneakers, proudly walking his Delilah.
And, we have a new puppy on the farm. This is Pal, a 3 month old Jack Russel Terrier puppy. My grandpa saw him at Picket Fence Creamery and fell in love, so he came to live on the farm with the rest of the gang. He's super cute, ALL puppy, and probably smarter than the rest of us put together. He can certainly run faster than us....

WE HAVE A NEW BABY MINI-HORSE!!

Christened "Baron" by my grandpa, here he is! Born late Friday June 27th or early Saturday, June 28th.


His mom, Dutchess, is a wonderful and protective mother. She has just now started to let him wander away from her a bit, and we can finally scratch and pet him. He's sooo soft!


And now all of a sudden Deliliah, the bigger baby, looks HUGE. here she is in one of her favorite poses. a true beauty queen, she adores basking in the sunlight.....

Farmer's Market Dates!

Finally, we are able to announce the dates we will be at the Downtown Des Moines Farmer's Market.

July 5th
July 19th
August 2nd
August 16th
Sept 13th
Sept 27th
October 4th

We are "occasional vendors", which means we don't necessarily get the same spot every time we show up, so you just sort of have to wander the market until you find us. If you want to purchase something specific from us, PLEASE call or email ahead of time so we can make sure to have it for you! And last but not least - the store is still open while we are at the market, so don't worry about that, if you prefer to visit the farm.

Did you think we forgot about our Soap of the Month? We most certainly did not! It just got, well, put aside for a month or 2. We promise not to do that again. I don't have it on the website JUST yet, but, here is a little sneek peek for you....Will blog here when it is listed for sale online :).

WE ARE ALIVE!!!! Thanks to everyone who called or emailed saying "hey, are you guys still around?" We are. We're frantically planting, mulching, weeding, harvesting, and distilling. May passed in an absolute flurry of bus tours, really big and time-consuming wholesale orders, and just general busy-ness. June was all about rain. Rain, rain, and then more rain, resulting in (as many of you know) huge devastating floods in many parts of Iowa. We are very fortunate - the worst of the flooding and rain occurred to the east of us. We did not suffer any crop or property damage. We were, however, completely unable to get into our gardens to plant or do any sort of work at all. When the rains finally stopped, we erupted into a flurry of outdoor work. We have done our best to keep up with our orders, and thank you all for your patience with us. If we don't get things planted, dried, and distilled - we are unable to offer our full range of products. So forgive us as we, as the saying goes "make hay while the sun shines". Sometimes you just gotta work outdoors when you can.

In the midst of the rain, bus tours, orders and otherwise wacky goings-on at Prairieland Herbs, Maggie's home computer died. yes, that is the one that contains all the PLH website info as well as all photos for blogging, etc. We promptly ordered a new laptop but, it took it's sweet time getting here. Good ol' Mercury retrograde - of course the computer was shipped the day after Mercury went direct. :) So we weren't able to blog, update the website, or send enewsletters until now. We'll be working on getting back to our regularly scheduled chattiness starting - NOW!
One of Donna's gorgeous Buck roses, surrounded by a beautiful blooming creeping thyme.

This is our main annual bed. Well, it was, anyway, because we are slowly planting it to more perennials. This picture was taken on June 18th. we had to MOW the weeds before we could till it!!! (those of you who think your gardens are weedy: take heart. I can pretty much guarantee ours is worse!). Anyway, as of today, these beds are mulched and planted. Pictures coming soon. :)
Tell me - aren't these the cutest little baby peaches you have EVER seen? We planted an orchard several years ago, and it is FINALLY producing fruit. I am so excited. We have 2 of these whiteflesh peach trees, several apple trees, a pear tree, loads and loads and LOADS of wild plums (the go mad, and spread isanely - you have to keep whacking them back with mowers and power tools, lest they completely take over everything), chokecherries, the biggest fattest juiciest mulberries I have EVER seen, grapes, and the elderberry bushes are just starting to bloom.

Greetings from a VERY wet and flooded Iowa! I apologize for the extended "radio silence" - we are well here, and safe (currently) from flooding. The past month has gone by in a whirldwind of tornado warnings, storms, thunder, bus tours, gardening (when possible), rain, more rain, flash flood warning, roads closed due to flooding, and still more rain. On top of that, my (Maggie's) computer crashed, so I haven't been able to update the website or blog. (A new laptop is on the way so I will be getting back to our regularly scheduled blogs a enewsletters as soon as possible).

But folks are starting to call and email to make sure wer're okay, so - we just wanted to let you know - WE ARE FINE! Wet, moldy, soggy, muddy, humid, and slightly cranky, but fine. :)

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!!!!