GRATITUDE2017: 25% off SALE at Homestead Herbals this month

We are offering a special sale at Homestead Herbals this month, in gratitude for the support we have seen from our friends, family and customers this year.  Thank you for supporting the work of Little City Farm and our herbal project Homestead Herbals (where we make natural soaps, herbal remedies, salves, bitters and more using organic and wild-harvested herbs, many from our own property!)

We are offering 25% off everything in the Homestead Herbals shop, until December 23!  This sale applies to Canadian customers only (sorry, right now we are only able to ship in Canada).

Use the coupon code: GRATITUDE2017
to receive 25% off your entire purchase
(AND for local orders we will refund you shipping charges if you wish to pick up in person)!

This is the time to stock up on our popular calendula salve, calendula soap, post-partum bath herbs, baby bath herbs, healing balms, and other natural soaps.  Also, in our shop you'll find new varieties of soaps, new salves, elderberry syrup, elixirs, herbal chai blend, unscented herbal deodorants, herbal first aid kits, digestive bitters, shrubs (sipping vinegars), tea blends, and more!

Announcing! Dec 10 Handmade Holiday Sale at Little City Farm!

Mark your calendars!  Our annual A Little Bird Told Me Handmade Holiday Sale is now only about 8 weeks away.  Saturday, December 10th, from 4-8 pm at Little City Farm.

We are excited to host this beautiful sale every year, bringing together a variety of local artisans who create unique items with an eco-conscious mind.  Many of the items are made with reclaimed or repurposed materials, and others are made using organic ingredients or natural materials. 

This year you'll find:

• woolen clothing
• natural wool and wood toys
• jewelry from reclaimed materials 
• organic baking (including the favourite gluten-free vegan gingerbread pictured below)
• handmade chocolates & truffles (including our famous raw nanaimo bars - selling out quickly!)
• paper lanterns
• functional pottery
• organic soaps & botanicals 
• household accessories & decor
• eco living books, and more...

We'll be highlighting this year's vendors over the next weeks, leading up to the sale, so please stay tuned!  We hope to see you there!
 

NEW Soap Workshops coming in 2016

Do you love beautiful natural handmade soap?  I know I do - although I have been making my own soap and teaching classes for almost ten years on this topic, I still gravitate toward handmade soaps at every new farmers market and health food store I visit.  There are just so many variations in how people make handmade soaps - different textures, colours, essential oils, shapes, patterns (marbling, layering), herbal additions, infused teas and oils, and more.  It's both science and art, that's what I love about soap making.  And I can customize it to suit my needs (organic ingredients, non-GMO oils), and my budget.  Endless creativity, always new ideas.

Do you want to learn all about the traditional cold process soap making method, using oils, lye and herbs to make your own soap?  Join us for one of the four Saturday soap making workshops we are hosting here at Little City Farm in the new year (Jan 30, Feb 13, March 5, April 9).  We'll walk you through all the steps for beginning soap making at home, plus each participant gets to take home their own small batch of soap made by hand from scratch during the workshop.  Sign up here or get more info.  They fill up quickly and we take limited numbers of participants, so please do sign up soon if you are interested.

Come see us - at the Cranberry Market in Guelph, Nov 14

We'll be vending at the beautiful Cranberry Market held Fri, Nov 14 at the Trillium Waldorf School in Guelph.  Please drop by to see us, and tour this lovely school facility and support local artisans of natural and handmade goods.  We'll be there with our handmade soaps, herbal salves and other botanicals, plus new journals and eco notebooks we've been making. 

Soap Making session

Each week I try to have at least one day dedicated to my soap making endeavors.  This fall the weeks seem especially busy, still trying to harvest the last of our garden, plant garlic and clean up the beds before the snow flies; still trying to finish canning the last jams, making applesauce, drying herbs; not to mention the huge barn renovation that is still looming over us in the backyard - trying to make the most of these long fall days to get it all done.  But soap is what I do as well, so I try to eke out time each week to make a few batches, getting things ready for the holiday sales that are fast approaching. 

Here are a few photos of the process - measuring, weighing, heating, cooling, taking temperatures, mixing, blending, adding essential oils and botanicals, pouring into molds, and then curing...

This is what my day looked like today, 4 batches made and 2 more to go.  All made in small batches on the kitchen stove, measuring and prepared by hand.  A few new varieties today as well, just for the holiday season - a Honey-Ginger soap; and a Winter Forest soap (lemongrass, lavender, balsam fir, cedar); and a few new men's bars coming to the etsy store soon.  Please check out our soaps there or plan to come to the Oct 21 market at Fertile Ground CSA pick up from 3:45-6:15 pm (right in this neighbourhood) or our Little City Farm handmade holiday sale Nov 29 from 10 am-2 pm!

Felted Soap Workshop

What an action-packed weekend around here!  We hosted two workshops today, one in the morning on Wet Felting with wool, and one in the afternoon on Permaculture Design.

The Wet Felting Workshop was specifically focusing making felted soap - the idea is to have soap and wool "washcloth" all in one, and a bar is easy to felt in about half an hour.  It was nice to include kids in this workshop since working with warm water and wool is just about the most relaxing, kid-friendly activity I can think of!  Our daughter loved helping me lead the workshop by demonstrating her wool carding skills, and showing examples of the felted soap and wool felted acorns we had made beforehand as examples.  Everyone left with at least two bars of lovely felted soap.  Felting can be done with almost any fibre including animal (sheep, goat, rabbit, llama, alpaca), silk, plant fibres (milkweed), although some fibres really work much better for specific projects.  For example, we used merino wool in our wet felting because it was a medium grade of wool that felted fairly quickly. 

Materials needed to make felted soap:
- bars of natural soap
- large bowl of hot water (keep it hot during felting process, continuously dipping wool in)
- bowl of cold water (to shock wool at end of felting process)
- wool roving (enough to cover soap with at least 3 layers)
- something to agitate the wool (sushi mat, bubble wrap)
- cloth and elastic to wrap soap and wool while felting
- old towels to keep work area dry

Local homegrown herbals! New! Our soaps & salves now available through Bailey's Local Foods!

We are happy to announce that some of our homegrown herbal products are now available for purchase through Bailey's Local Foods.  This will make the purchasing and pick-up more convenient for local folks who already place regular food orders through the Bailey's online system, and pick orders up at a convenient uptown Waterloo location!

Through the Bailey's site you'll now find our handmade natural soaps, including baby soaps, shampoo bars, assorted body bars, and shaving bars, and even laundry stain stick bars.  You'll find our salves including mama belly balm, calendula healing salve, back ache balm, and all purpose healing salve.  You'll also find our lipbalms - peppermint with red clover, or lavender & local honey.  One of the things that makes our soaps & salves unique is that each uses locally grown herbs such as calendula, lavender, sage, red clover, arnica, and comfrey (grown naturally or sourced from a local organic farm), as well as only pure oils and essential oils for gentle, natural healing.  We work with our herbs from start to finish, including harvesting at their peak, by us, in small batches so we know exactly how they were grown, dried and prepared.

We are very excited about our Herbal First Aid Kits and can't say enough good things about them!  They come in a convenient travel tin that fits into backpacks or bags so it can easily be taken on hikes and kept on hand for when it's needed.   The first aid remedies included are useful for headaches, sunburn, bug bites, minor cuts & scrapes, splinters, heat rash, digestive upset and motion sickness, and much more.  A complete description of the remedies included in the Herbal First Aid Kits is listed here, and also comes with each kit.

A complete line-up of our herbals is also now available through our online Homestead Herbals Etsy store, and we can arrange local pick-up here at our location to save shipping costs.