As harvest nears completion…
Life on the farm often makes the growing season feel like a whirlwind. It arrives quickly, sweeps us up in busyness and beauty, and before we know it, harvest is here and another year is coming to a close. On our grain farm in central Alberta, our days revolve around this short season—and we’re always at the mercy of the weather.
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Note, we still have drought-like conditions in our area with over half of our native poplar trees dying back this year and almost all sloughs are dried. It’s a dreary site. But we did have rain come at the most opportune time this summer with cooler temperatures which led to good growth and renewed hope.
Here at Prairie Soap Shack, although the months leading up to Christmas are our busiest season for shoppers, markets and packing orders- the growing season lends to a different type of busy for us. As all of our products are made with different herbs and plants that we either grow in our garden from seed, or forage in the wild near our farm- we need to be able to gather enough plants over summer to last us the entire year of making products.
As our business continues to grow, the need for dried plants in our products grows right alongside it.
It has become a challenge at times to harvest enough plants- always with sustainability in mind. There have been times when we sell out of a certain product in late winter as we wait for that plant to start growing again, but that’s okay. You, as the customer, know that it is made with fresh and high quality plant material.
So now as our grain harvest wraps up, our garden harvest does as well. Our ‘soap shack’ has been filled with hanging plants left to dry, and now they are placed into jars to use in our herbal infusions.
Our garden plants used in products this year:
Calendula, chamomile, peppermint, thyme, lavender, eucalyptus and various flowers. We also grow comfrey, raspberry, plantain and chickweed in our garden space.
The wild plants we have foraged this year for products:
Saskatoon berries, goldenrod, fireweed, sage, yarrow, rose hips, nettle, wild mint, horsetail, wild rose petals, juniper, spruce and pine.
These are just the highlights, as harvest always brings so much more. It’s a season that overflows with abundance and fills me with gratitude—a time to be truly thankful for the gifts of nature.
