Product Spotlight: Garden Carrot Hand Cream

Spring has arrived, which can mean long days spent with your hands in the dirt. Exposure to moisture, dirt and the unavoidable cut or splinter can leave hands feeling dry and rough. We designed our Garden Carrot Hand Cream to keep hands hydrated and soft even under the toughest conditions.

Garden Carrot Hand Cream is formulated with an ultra moisturizing base of Organic Coconut Oil, cold-pressed Rosehip Seed Oil and Pacific Northwest Beeswax infused with healing Yarrow, strengthening Gotu Kola and purifying Calendula. Enhanced with precious essential oils of Carrot, Rose Geranium and Lemon Peel to restore and hydrate damaged skin. Garden Carrot Hand Cream's aroma is rich and earthy with floral and slightly sweet undertones - a subtle scent that will please gardeners and mechanics alike.

Massage sparingly into clean, dry hands to soothe and hydrate hard-working skin. Perfect for those who work with their hands, or anyone looking for a luxurious, earthy hand cream. Use this "dry" salve sparingly and it will leave skin feeling soft without excess oil. An ideal all natural lotion alternative, keep a jar near the sink to hydrate and soften hands after washing.

You don't have to sacrifice soft hands for productivity. With a little care, you can make it through the garden season with healthy, happy skin!

From the Garden: Mid-Winter in Southern Oregon

An epic mid-January double rainbow!

One of the things that I love most about Oregon are the four distinct seasons - and especially the transitions between them. Sometime in January-February, we get a little break from the normally long, dark and wet Winters. The storms move to the North or South of us, and we enjoy a few weeks of clear, sunny skies and unseasonably warm weather. We begin to see buds swell, the pasture thickens green and an army of robins return to forage.

Heavy December rains caught in between our sleeping food forest beds.

 This Winter was especially wonderful (and wet!). Our region was pounded with heavy rains from cold storms leaving thick blankets of snow in the mountains. After several years of extreme drought, this 'normal' Winter was a welcome change. We're currently sitting at above-average snowpack and we can only hope that this pattern continues for several years to help replenish our weakened water table.

The ducks enjoying a seasonal pond in the pasture.

 But now that we have received a slight break from the rains, we get to think ahead to the coming growing season. This year, we plan to grow more herbs for Wild Rose formulas including Burdock and (hopefully) Arnica. We had much success with our essential oil still last year and plan to extract more Apple Mint and Catnip oils from our lush herb beds.

Romanesco Broccoli harvested in January

We're excited to see what this Spring and Summer will bring for both Wild Rose and our little homestead!

From the Garden: Our Biointensive Brassica Bed

In our annual veggie garden, we incorporate a variety of permaculture methods to increase yields, reduce pests and maintain healthy soil. One such method is biointensive gardening, where a single garden bed is inhabited by a variety of compatible plants for maximum use of space. It has been our experience that plants grow better in a diverse bed rather than a monocrop, so we plant biointensive beds just about everywhere.

Baby broccoli in the early spring greenhouse

One such bed we call our "brassica bed" because the primary crop is range of brassicas - Kale, Cauliflower and Romanesco Broccoli (known as hippy broccoli on the ranch). We planted our brassicas in staggered rows, so that each plant is approximately 18"-24" from one another on a diagonal line.

Hippy Broccoli - Fall 2014

These brassicas grow upward, with most of their food value harvested from the "canopy" of the garden bed (imagine it's a tiny forest). This leaves plantable area below and just above ground. The gaps in between our brassicas were filled with low-growing lettuce and carrots (beets are technically a better companion, but we eat more carrots). So in the end, we will be harvesting food from the flowering tops of our brassicas (2'-3' above ground), the leaves and whole heads of our lettuce (about 1' above ground) and the roots of our carrots (up to 12" below ground). That's a lot of vertical growing area!

Now, we are admittedly very chaotic with our gardening habits. What little space that is left in beds is filled with scrambling peas, aromatic herbs and a ridiculous amount on Calendula (for use in Wild Rose formulas, of course). We combine biointensive gardening with lasagna gardening (no-till) plus whatever else sounds good and organic. Diversity is key!

From the Garden: Late Spring at the Wild Rose Homestead

Spring is in full swing at the Wild Rose Homestead. Here's a few scenes from the farm:

Our Rose bushes are covered in beautiful, bright blooms! We harvest just a portion of  these for our Attunement Balancing Facial Mask and Bloom Muscle Rub. The rest are left for the bees.

Our mixed flower/herb bed of poppies, mint, borage and calendula flourished every year. We also added a young apple tree that will one day offer shade.

We started the last of our veggie seeds including this beautiful Cassiopeia popcorn offered by Siskiyou Seeds. We'll be growing this in a traditional Three Sisters bed with winter squash and beans.

The greenhouse is packed full of veggies, flowers and herbs! We used the last of our excess jar boxes from Wild Rose to start sunflowers and hollyhocks.

An early June harvest of rose petals, calendula, mulberries, strawberries, cherries and red clover! Our array of veggies, fruits and herbs grow together harmoniously, improving the soil to produce more potent herbs for Wild Rose.

From the Garden: March at the Wild Rose Homestead

Spring has arrived in Southern Oregon! Here's a few scenes from around the homestead over the past month.

This is our second full growing season on the property. The fruit tress we planted last year are looking marvelous - like this Asian Pear exploding in flowers! Maybe we'll get the first fruits this year?

We also planted two-year-old asparagus roots last year on the garden edges. We're starting to see some nice, thick stalks pop up, though we wont be eating any this year. We're patiently waiting for the plants to become well established. Next year we should have plenty to harvest.

Looks like these Calendula volunteers are giving us a hand with our goal of growing all of our own Calendula in 2015. When these babies bloom, they will be used to make our Calendula Extract for our Ink Spray Tattoo Aftercare as well as our Attunement and Clarity Cleansers.

We added more fruit trees this year, including this Puget Gold Apricot! We wont get fruit from this tree for several years, but the blossoms are a real treat!

From the Garden: Recycling cardboard at Wild Rose

We go through a lot of boxes in a single holiday season! And while we have an amazing local recycling center, we try to reuse as much as possible right here on the homestead. Cardboard is an ideal first layer for our lasagna garden beds that we are establishing on the property. So, each box is saved, de-taped and used either as a weed-blocking base layer or as a seed starting tray in our gardens. Here, boxes that once held The Original Beard Cream are now being used to start a future blueberry bed. The box stops here!

The Summer Garden at Wild Rose

Summer is here in Southern Oregon and our permaculture gardens are exploding with fresh food and herbs! We grow all of our own Calendula and Yarrow in our annual veggie gardens because they are wonderful allies for our food crops. They attract beneficial insects, improve flavor and keep the soil healthy. 

This is a first year garden on our new homestead. We established this garden using the lasagna gardening method with the help of a couple loads of rich, USDA organic compost. Our compost is from Southern Oregon Compost, a local company that reclaims local waste and transform it into black gold.

Calendula is perfect paired with tomatoes. Our tomatoes aren't quite ripe, but we are sure to have an epic crop this year!

We also practice bio-intensive gardening which combines beneficial crops into the same bed to best utilize space and increase yields. Here, our early kale plants are using space not yet taken up by our young squash. Lettuce also fills unused space as the squash grows.

When establishing our garden, we left this large wild Yarrow patch intact. I was surprised to see it bloom in hues of pink - a color only found in ornamental and high elevation varieties. This beautiful bunch will provide us with Yarrow for many years to come!

From the Garden: Recycled Box Seedling Pots

We go through a lot of jars at Wild Rose, which means we go through a lot of jar boxes! Jar boxes are typically small with corrugated partitions to protect jars during shipping. These boxes aren't very useful for storage or garden mulch, so we've started using them for seedlings. We save all of our jar boxes through the busy Winter shopping season for our Spring seedlings, leaving the partitions in place to prevent neighboring seedlings from intertwining their roots.

The boxes degrade quickly, so we simply start our seeds in them before potting up. The seedling above are tomatoes that are just about ready to be transplanted to larger pots. The spent seedling boxes are then composted with the rest of our household/workshop plant waste.