Soap Four

Soap Four
Originally uploaded by rkeithstewart

This is our first attempt at basic castile soap since our first soap. This turned out pretty good. It doesn't have the same smell as the original (ugly) batch. It is made with Olive Oil, vegetable shortening, coconut oil, sodium hydroxide and water. There are no additives for color or scent.

One thing we learned with this batch is that you can't line your soap mold with brown paper. When you do this the paper becomes one with the soap. It was a mess trying to get all the paper off. I used a steam iron to blow steam on the soap to melt it enough to be able to pull the paper off.

Like I said yesterday...

...I did a little research on the use of coffee grounds in the garden. According to what I found, coffee is slightly acidic, so certain plants (including blueberries) love coffee (liquid and grounds). Coffee is also good for getting rid of slugs.

The following article is very good:

How to Use Coffee Grounds in Your Garden - from ehow .

This Looks Gross…

…but to worms, this is like a Thanksgiving Dinner. This is the compost bucket we keep in the kitchen for use later in composting beds. This is a mixture of coffee grounds and vegetable scraps and peelings. You can be as elaborate as you want to with worm composting (also called vermicomposting) or as simple. Again, most of what we do regarding composting is on the simple side.

Recently I dug up a small flower shrub that was pretty unimpressive and replaced it with a fig tree. We had been composting around the shrub for a few months before the planting so the soil was soft and rich (from worms). The worms I found were huge - at first glance they resembled the small snakes I had found recently. It has been a long time since I've seen worms that size (about 6 - 7 inches).

I've read some things lately about the use of coffee grounds in the yard - I'll do some research and report back.

We’ve had signs of spring…

Early Calla Lily
Originally uploaded by rkeithstewart

…all last weekend - the temperatures were in the 70’s on Saturday we had a “cold spell” on Sunday (it got into the 50’s during the day). The weather has been warm enough over the past couple of weeks for trees to start pollinating and this calla lily to be fooled into blooming. I’m writing this on Tuesday evening and the temperature in the morning is forecast to be in the low 30s and upper 20s - so much for spring.

In discussing gardens and growing and farming, Benita and I have referred to living a simple life (some folks make Amish references about us). And not only about gardening, but in other areas also. Some time in 2007 we became aware of how little we watched the 50 +/- cable channels we had so we had our cable disconnected and began watching broadcast channels. We didn’t miss the cable. Then in July 2008 I found myself becoming angry every day as I read the newspaper. There was generally some story about some new horrendous murder that had occurred or other gloom and doom that made me realize what a crazy world we live in. So, in response to this I had the newspaper subscription discontinued. Instead of reading the gloom and doom I found myself going outside to eat my breakfast on the back porch. My son would sometimes come outside and began commenting on how he liked to hear the birds sing. We would watch hummingbirds and bees feed on the bottle brush bush. The most recent event that we think of as simplifying our lives is when the microwave oven finally went out sometime in December. Benita didn’t want to get a new one because of some things she had read about food cooked in microwaves - we haven’t gotten a new one and we have rarely missed the microwave.

What I have been thinking about lately though is that we are not so much simplifying our lives as we are making deliberate choices. There is nothing simple about milling wheat and making bread; there is nothing simple about making soap (have you ever tried to buy lye at Wal-Mart?); to re-heat food we have to think ahead about 15 minutes in order for leftovers to be heated well.

Really, it’s about being deliberate rather than simply accepting whatever the norm is. We make choices to cook healthier foods at home rather than eating convenience foods; we are making choices about the lifestyle we want rather than living the fast-paced hurry up lifestyles of others with small children. We have our children in some activities (TaeKwonDo and dance) but I would bet their young lives would be just as full and well-rounded without these activities.

2008 was the Year of the Endeavors

It seemed that my wife was constantly wanting to try something new. If she wasn’t trying something, she was reading about it or “looking up” information about some new endeavor.

It started on New Year’s Day when we planted the grapevine:


The results were pretty good for a new vine. We were pleasantly surprised to get a couple of bunches of grapes.

Then came the orchids - she read lots of books about orchids and spoke to a friend who was into orchids about them. The friend “donated” five orchids to the cause:

So far, they haven’t been that impressive - no blooms yet.

Smocking was something that she wanted to do because we have two girls that need to be dressed in beautiful clothes:


The results have been beautiful.

…and to further the smocking endeavor, she purchased a smocking pleater - it's kind of a scary looking device.

Finally after 15 years of feeble (and infrequent) attempts [Benita’s words], she has begun sewing and enjoying it. She has made several dresses for the girls and some baby outfits for a friend of hers.

The best thing (from this husband’s point of view) has been the grain mill and the freshly milled flour we get from it. A friend of Benita's lent her DVDs from The Bread Beckers, Inc. that explains the nutritional benefits of whole wheat. I did not personally watch the videos because I was a little skeptical of all the fuss about fresh milled flour. I haven’t been to the doctor or had any blood work done to see if there has been any benefit to my chemistry, but I have tasted the results. The bread is incredible; muffins, rolls and flatbreads are great also, but the bread is wonderful. We have also gotten supplies and cookware from Pleasant Hill Grain







Please see other blog posts for info about soap making. Benita started this habit, but I have kept it up.

It was this time last year...

Almanac
Originally uploaded by rkeithstewart

…that we started itching to get a little more land. Benita took Christmas money and bought two blueberry bushes and a grapevine. We planted those and started thinking about how many more fruit trees we could have if we had more land. Then we started thinking about how big of a garden we could have if we had more land. Our planning and scheming was so satisfying that we began to talk ourselves into being unhappy with the small acreage and house that we have. I don’t think we ever said that we were “unhappy” with our house, but some of the things we talked about and how we spoke about those things (many of our wants became needs) might have given anyone else the impression that we weren’t “happy” (as if that’s a real measure of anything).

Well, we put our house on the market within a month of beginning our discussions of wanting (needing?) more land. We found a house that we really liked and were disappointed when that house sold just as we began efforts to make an offer. I also “found” another house that was very suitable. The only problem was that house wasn’t for sale, and the owners would not contact me back so I could talk them into selling their home to me (the nerve).

So, here we are on our quarter acre still wishing, wanting, desiring, dreaming, and living. I must say, I still want to have more land, but with the way the economy has shifted over the last year it’s hard to determine what we could afford given that I our current house would probably not sell for what we want out of it.

What do we do? We do what we would do if we had more land - we get up, live an active life rather than a passive life - we continue to simplify our lives the way we have been doing over the last year. We continue to pour ourselves out creatively and expressively with great appreciation for what we have earned and been given in life. We continue to plan and do just as if we were living our “dream”. (What if our current situation has to be our dream?)

And with our continual planning, we are planning which vegetables, fruits, and herbs that we want for next year. Of course we will not feed the family with only what vegetables we grow, but we can supplement our food with fresher vegetables that we had a hand in growing, and the kids can learn that tomatoes don’t come from a can.

The planning and reading lately has taken me down memory lane some. I have run across some resources that my grandparents used on their farm when I was little. I found The Progressive Farmer magazine that my grandfather used to read. I never read the magazine as a child (I was certain it had to do with farming so I knew it had to be boring). I ordered the free copy.

I also found The Old Farmer’s Almanac online. I was looking for dates and times to plant vegetables and found a great planting table where you can enter your zip code and get a quick reference for early and late planting for garden vegetables. My grandparents always had an almanac (they just called it “the almanac”) around and consulted it for planting and weather advice. I have to admit that the almanac includes a lot of what I would call superstition, but who can argue with the history they’ve had - the almanac was first published in 1792 !

Read more later about our “Year of Endeavors”.