Pre-Industrial Human Skills, Seasonality
Hi, I'm Rachel. Yarrow Bone is my 20-acre farmstead in chilly east-central Minnesota, where I have farmed using organic practices, with regenerative agriculture and sustainability in mind, since 2014.
Here you'll find some of my products including traditionally tanned sheepskins, handmade soaps, seeds & dried flowers, hand-dipped beeswax candles, cleaned & ethically-sourced animal bones, written materials for your skill-building, and other seasonal goods.
HIDE-TANNING
In Fall and Winter I source sheep hides from meat processors and small farms in my community. The skins are unwanted "byproducts" that would otherwise go in a landfill and I enjoy rescuing them. I've adapted my tanning process from the traditional brain tan method - actually the only real difference is that I use soap & oil as my emulsified fat, instead of brain! This allows me to avoid exposing myself, the hides, and my home to potential animal brain pathogens. Soap and oil mimic the fatty, emollient brain solution used in brain tanning; it produces a white leather that darkens a bit after smoke-curing.
SOAPS
I make the soap myself from either beef tallow or pork leaf fat (also sourced in Fall & Winter from the butcher) that I render into tallow / lard. Occasionally I have lard from pigs I've raised on my land.
CANDLES
I source pure beeswax, harvested in late Summer and Fall, from beekeepers local to me. My typical source is a father-son apiary that moves their thousands of honeybee hives through Minnesota & Wisconsin.
BONES AND SKULLS
Occasionally I have access to sheep and goat skulls from local farmers. These I clean using mother nature. In the cold months I also collect friends from the roads - carelessly struck down by vehicles and left like trash. I sometimes tan their furs and clean their bones for crafting, as a way to honor them as our ancestors would have. When it feels appropriate, I offer these resources up here for other crafters to honor.
DRIED FLOWERS & SEED
I am a flower farmer as well as a steward of my land. I nurture wild meadow spaces in my orchard alongside domestic/domesticated cut flowers. On a seasonal basis I have dried flowers and herbs available, as well as seed from native and cultivated plants. As I expand the plantings on my farmstead I plan to have more seed available on a regular basis, and enough dried flowers to see us through from first to last frost.
If you want to learn more about Yarrow Bone Farmstead, you can follow me on Instagram @farmer__rachel (double underscore).
