Naturally....skuzzy?? EWH!

So I have been experimenting with natural/homemade hair and skin care now since September. While in PA I learned of a website called The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) which lets you explore just how many harmful chemicals are in the allegedly “safe” products we put on our bodies every day. If you were not of a paranoid persuasion before exploring their site I promise you will be afterwords. Since returning home from the Mother Earth News Fair I have really tried to reduce the number of chemicals I put on my body in hopes of making myself healthier and having a little extra money in my pocket.

I started out with skin care. Soap is easy, you can make soap in the crock pot with some basic ingredients from the grocery and hardware store (NOTE: some of the hardware store ingredients will get you the side-eye because, apparently, they are also popular for cooking methamphetamines). I learned how to make soap on YouTube. There are lots of different videos just search “crock-pot soap” and pick one. This is the one I use most frequently, I like it because it has everything in writing and describes exactly what each stage should look like so it is kind of idiot proofed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRoRlHMCemw.

I thought I was really up on it because I could make my own soap, detergent and lip balm. Really, I felt pretty self assured with my hippie holistic self. I also used “mineral” makeup so I figured I was pretty self-righteously safe. Then I put my favorite makeup and deodorant through the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database at the EWG’s website. Um, YIKES! All of my favorites landed in the red zone, uh oh, time to reevaluate.

I do not wear makeup everyday so that one was not a huge concern but I did wash my face with a high end drug store cleanser, I did use shampoo and conditioner every other day, I did slather on deodorant every morning and I used tons of body lotion so what’s a girl supposed to do? Smell bad and have greasy hair and alligator skin?

Thus began my quest through the magic of the internet for homemade safer alternatives. I turned to abraca-google for my answers. Let me tell you, there are some magic potions out there, all for your creation, with just some kitchen ingredients and some time. I can also attest to the fact that many of these are bunk and will leave you with stinky hair and lots of acne. Every site I researched was quick to point out that although their concoction of choice worked miracles on their hair/skin it may not work for you because of course everyone’s body chemistry is different. This is a nice way of saying good luck you are on your own.

I started with the simplest suggestions first, baking soda and vinegar hair care. According to many natural lifestyle sites this is the have all to end all of hair care. All you need do is rinse your hair in these magical basic elements and you will have shiny, lustrous healthy locks befitting a Disney princess. I am not going to call anyone a liar but…well…that is a big stinky crock of cat poo, or dirty hair as the case may be. Each site said there was an adjustment period while your hair and scalp acclimated and you worked to get the exact ratio down but I will tell you I gave it two months and my hair was both dry and brittle while constantly looking filthy and smelling like dirty gym shoes every time it got damp or I got hot.

This is how it works; you mix up one bottle of water and baking soda for cleansing I think I finally settled on a ratio of about one cup of water to one tablespoon of baking soda. Then you get your hair wet in the shower and rub this mixture into your scalp and out to the ends of your hair. You give it a few seconds to break down the oil then you rinse it out. I have relatively short hair and I can say if you stop with this step it will resemble an S.O.S. pad and you will never ever get a comb through it again as long as you live. Thus follows the vinegar.

The vinegar rinse is supposed to condition and detangle the hair and it does, to some extent, but what all the blogs and tutorials I read glossed over is the fact that your shower will smell like salad dressing and your hair, while not stinky as long as it remains dry and at a normal temperature, will immediately begin to smell like five day old socks as soon as you get caught in the rain or begin to sweat. Also if you do not get the ratio of vinegar to water exactly right for your hair it is a beast to rinse out and instantly gives you dirty-looking locks. Not to mention if you blow dry the smell will choke a dog at twenty paces.

I spend a lot of my time at home with animals that do not care what I smell like and with children who are too young to express their concern about my personal hygiene but poor Fred does have to sleep in the same bed as me, and on Sundays we go to church and our church family is a super huggie bunch and all I could think was someone was going to hug me and promptly puke down my back.

GROSS. I am sorry. It is gross. I want to make as much of my own skin and hair care as possible but this is gross. I used apple cider vinegar which I love to cook with but I do not want to smell like it any more than I want to smell like a garlic clove or a green pepper. I committed to the program for two months and over that time I became so paranoid I was afraid to hug people at church I was sure they thought “Ewh, does Autumn ever wash her hair?!” I may have stuck with it if it had provided the glorious hair of a Panteen commercial (which is what people all over the internet swore to) but it did not. I had gross smelling hair and it looked terrible. The ends split, it was unmanageable and constantly looked dirty so back to the drawing board.

After searching the web some more I thought I might be interested in trying to make some shampoo bars. However, this seemed like a time consuming and expensive endeavor so I figured I would order some and try it out first. I ordered half a dozen sample bars from the people at Chagrin Valley Soap and Craft Company (www.chagrinvalleysoapandcraft.com) and fell in love with the Extra Honey Beer Shampoo bar but at almost eight dollars a bar and six dollars in shipping it is kind of out of my price range for hair care although it does last much longer than a traditional bottle of shampoo. I would recommend it and I am going to try and recreate it in my kitchen. Using it allowed me to see that I do like a shampoo bar, it takes a little getting used to, and it would be a worthwhile project for me. It is important to note: you cannot leave it in the shower like you would a regular bar of soap. It melts with alarming speed. I order a full size bar of the beer-honey shampoo and a couple of sample bars of other concoctions and made the mistake of leaving the first sample in the shower where it did not last the week. Also apparently the beer-honey bar is delicious. I do not know this first hand but my Sengal parrot Simon Peter tries to eat it every time he is in the bathroom so now I have the double problem of not storing it in the shower and hiding it from the animals.

That still left the conditioner dilemma. I continued to use the vinegar rinse until I just could not stand the smell. I found some organic tea tree oil conditioner at the Healthy Life Market made by a brand called Avalon and for now that is what I am using. The joy of having short hair is that only a minuscule amount of conditioner is needed so a bottle can last me almost a year. It does not totally solve the problem. I would like to make my own but I figure one baby step at a time. Let me conquer the shampoo bar and then I will move on to the lofty project of conditioner. So far all the conditioner recipes I have found on the internet seem extremely gross and oily so I will be trying them with caution.

This takes me to the problem of skin care. I have very sensitive acne prone skin. In the past I have taken antibiotics, Accutane, used harsh chemicals, had laser resurfacing treatments and chemical peels all to varying degrees of success. But I am tired of poisoning myself via the largest organ of my body so I decided to jump head first (or face first as the case may be) into homemade skin care.

The most popular method I researched was something called “oil cleanse” ok the thought of deliberately putting oil onto my already grease prone acne laden face was enough to give me SEVERE anxiety but in an effort to be green and reduce our carbon footprint I thought I would try it. It is a pretty simple process/concoction, depending on who’s blog you read, but I thought I would go with the simplest process first which was just a combination of extra virgin cold pressed olive oil and cold pressed castor oil. (An interesting and unrelated side note: Did everyone but me know that the side product from castor oil, what is left over from the caster bean, is what is used to make the insanely deadly poison Ricin? I was floored and a little put off from castor oil when my dad brought out that little bit of shock and awe trivia. He said that eating as few as two castor beans could kill a person, makes me a tad nervous about slathering my face in castor oil.)

The science (or pseudo-science, again depending on who you read) behind an oil cleanse, as best I understand it, is this; the castor oil dissolves the pore clogging dirt and oil on your face and the olive oil replaces the dirt and oil with a pure clean alternative. You basically slather the mixture on your face, (I ended up with a equal 1:1 ratio) leave it for anywhere from two to ten minutes, then steam it off either via warm wash cloths or by placing your face over a bowl of steaming water or with a hot shower.

I am still using the oil cleanse method and although the texture of my skin is much softer and smoother and I have noticed a reduction of the fine lines that were mostly due to dry skin, it has not done much or anything to help my acne. I still look like a pimply faced preteen for at least two weeks out of the month. I blame Mother Nature not the cleansing method. The plus sides to the oil cleanse are it is seriously the cheapest form of skin care I have ever come across even cheaper than bottom shelf generic drug store cures. The down side is you have to get used to skin that feels pretty weird and slightly dirty for the first couple of weeks you try it. I think if someone is not prone to acne this is an awesome fix, if you are prone to acne it is not so great but basically nothing is. I have tinkered with tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar as treatment and toner but I have not seen any noticeable improvements and the problem, especially with vinegar, is the same as with hair care. IT STINKS.

Lots of different sites and bloggers swear by different oil concoctions. I briefly tried jojoba oil and castor oil which one commenter said was the most amazing acne cure they had ever seen. Um, no. It left me with raging acne both cystic nodules and white and black heads, yuck and painful. So the expensive bottle of jojoba oil is now sitting lonely on the bathroom shelf. Oh well, live, test and learn.

I do not mind the oil cleanse method but I have not seen the miraculous results some people claim on their blogs. I basically believe what those people say because they are not being paid to advertise generic oils (as far as I know) so I doubt they would have many reasons to lie about it. I just assume they are more genetically blessed than I. I will probably stick with it because I have not found any better, cheaper, more effective natural methods so far but I am open to suggestions.

I do know that diet plays a big part for me. The cleaner I eat, the clearer my skin. Of course I am not perfect and clean eating often gives way to convenience or comfort eating but that is another blog.

If you have a natural cleanse hair or skin care method you swear by please feel free to share it in the comment section. I would love to hear it and I am always open to trying something new. Also, if you make your own shampoo bars and have any tips those would be much appreciated.

Much love, and thanks for reading,

Autumn

Excuses, excuses...

Yes, I know the last post was in August and I am also aware that it is now November. My only excuse (completely untrue I have many excuses but this one was voted "best excuse" by the voices in my head) is that as I de-facebooked my life I have spent less and less time at the computer and by default have spent less and less time obsessing over the blog. It is true without Facebook at the forefront of my thought processes I have had a lot more time to do real-life activities and a much smaller captive audience for my snark so I have turned to other outlets (like incessantly annoying our local librarians and joining a senior citizen's book club) but this morning I find myself with some time on my hands and in need of a distraction.

Pablo is sick and the vet cannot see us until ten thirty, I have made laundry detergent, cleaned cages, washed dishes and am waiting on the dryer to stop so in an effort to stay busy and assuage my guilt I decided updating the blog was an appropriate task. It is not that I have willingly abandoned the blog but more like I have fallen so far behind that I do not know where to even begin to catch up. I have considered abandoning the blog completely and starting anew but that seems unfair to people who actually read it, I thought about trying to go back and update every aspect but that seems insurmountable, so I think the best option will be just to start where I am, update a few pertinent bits discuss somethings we are excited about and march on.

I really do not spend even a fraction of the time I previously did on the computer so I cannot promise that blog entries will come with the regularity they once did but I know there are people out there reading this who are trying to do some of the same things we are and I want to keep those lines of communication open so we can share and help each other grow.

~

I just got done making my third or fourth batch of laundry detergent so I will start there with the updates. In the past I have made the batches with lever2000 because that is the bath soap we buy (when we use store bought soap) and no one in our family seems allergic to it. While we were traveling over the summer I found Fel Naptha in a small five and dime. I had been unable to locate it locally. This was the laundry soap recommended on many of the detergent making websites I originally researched so I picked up a couple of bars and stored them for future laundry use.

The original recipe I found called for a whole bar of Fel Naptha but the bars are huge and the scent is strong. We all have sensitive skin so I cut one bar in half and used that this morning to make a new batch of detergent. As I tweaked the recipe and have started to use ingredients on hand over the course of this venture let me share my most recent concoction:

1.5c borax powder
1.5c baking soda (not the cooking kind I will explain)
1/2 bar of Fel Naptha
5 gallons of HOT water (roughly about 4" from the top of the 6 gallon bucket)

I found the Fel Naptha melted surprisingly quickly on the stove, much faster than the previously used bath bars, that was pleasant because in the past melting the bar has been the most time consuming of the steps.

I switched from washing soda to baking soda not out of a dissatisfaction with the washing soda but instead because I always have big economy bags of baking soda on hand. When I first ran out of washing soda I did a little research about substituting baking soda (the kind I have is label not for cooking I generally used it in the cat boxes to keep the odor down) and some of the discussions I read complained that clothes did not get as clean with baking soda instead of washing soda. I have not noticed any difference in the level of clean, Fred's uniforms still seem to be clean and fresh and since the cost of baking soda versus washing soda is even cheaper, and I always have it on hand so no special trip to the store is required, I have continued to use it.

(I will note the reason I put hot in all capital letters is because baking soda does not seem to dissolve as easily as washing soda so I have found that boiling a couple kettles of water instead of just straight hot tap water is necessary to fully melt the ingredients.)

As you can see I am quite pleased with our homemade detergent and have continued to use it. It saves an enormous amount of money and I know exactly what is in it. Making it at home has also become much easier with practice and we have the added peace of mind of knowing there is one less plastic container we are throwing into the landfill every few weeks.

~

I also want to tell you a little bit about our vacation this fall. Fred and I took a long weekend and went up to Seven Springs, PA for the Mother Earth News Fair. I cannot even begin to tell you how exciting it was to be surrounded by people who live like us to varying degrees. It is so much fun to commune with people who think like you and do not look at you like you have two heads.

One of the funniest things we noticed was that in a course of conversation if someone mentioned something seen on TV and we told them we did not have TV they rushed to clarify that they too did not have television that they had instead seen it on the internet or at a doctor's office, friend's house, etc. Apparently, it is a badge of honor among the hippie jet set not to have television. Fred and I are completely used to people looking at us like we said "we eat dog poop" when it comes up we do not have TV. It was a refreshing and highly amusing exercise to count how many people advised us they too eschewed television after we discovered this quirk.

The weekend was packed with classes and seminars. We took bizarre, fun classes like "How to Finance a Green Cemetery" and "How to Build Your Electric Motorcycle with Recycled Parts" and we took more practical classes like "Building Your Basic Herbal Apothecary" and "Organic Beekeeping." Some of my favorite classes taught about nutrition, eating raw, baking bread everyday (this was taught by the authors of "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" AMAZING!) and using herbs both in cooking and medicine.

I am proud to say we implimented much of what we learned and we met so many interesting and friendly people we have created for ourselves a whole new network of cohorts. We really did not want to come home but the Fair ended (as all good things must) and the homestead needed us. Since Grandma and Elvis had what can best be described as a personality clash, we had to get home lest Elvis end up in the pot.

By the time we arrived home Grandma had come up with some, lets say, "creative" homestead management techniques. Apparently, the first night Grandma tried to put Elvis in bed he was having none of it and he proceeded to sound the goose equivalent of a "stranger danger" alarm for the better part of thirty minutes. Grandma gave up and let him spend the night on the porch. By the next morning Elvis had screwed up his courage (he must have spent the night on the porch giving himself positive goose affirmations) and decided it was his job to protect the homestead from the interloping grandma.

What ensued can only be described as chaos, and although I am sure Elvis has his own tale, an indignant Grandma was the only survivor coherent enough to share the story. It seems Elvis decided Grandma was the enemy and snuck up on her, biting her several times and chasing her from the yard. Since he shares the yard with the chickens Grandma could not simply abandon him to his fate, heaving his food over the fence as she would have preferred, but was instead forced to arm herself with a broom and chase him about the yard while she tended her much beloved flock of gran-chickens.

Oh how I wish we had set up a hidden camera.

As you can imagine, Grandma was seriously indignant and disgruntled upon our return. Elvis appeared no worse for wear from the subsequent broomings and of course went on to try and make a complete liar out of Grandma and her tales of evil-goose-gone-bad by immediately climbing on my lap and nestling under my arm as soon as I sat down on the porch steps. The only theory we have come up with is that Elvis was convinced Grandma had kidnapped me and was intent on protecting the rest of his flock (aka the chickens).

Thankfully Grandma is not abandoning us. She will continue to care for our flock but has advised us she will only enter the back yard broom in hand. I have warned Elvis but I guess we will have to wait for another vacation to see if he heeds my advice or his stand off with Grandma continues.

~

I am sure there are lots of other things I could ramble on about but that is probably all the updates you care to digest at the moment.

Much love and as always thank you for reading,

~Autumn

Soap Suds

Last Thursday, Veteran’s Day, I officially ran out of homemade laundry detergent. I made the first six gallon bucket of laundry detergent on April twenty-fourth of this year. Being as this was one of our first forays into homesteading I am happy to report it was a success. I think seven months worth of laundry on an initial investment of $18.01 is pretty economical.

You can go on to cut that price in half because I had enough of every ingredient (excluding an additional bar of soap) to make an entire additional batch. I will never have to buy the bucket again and I think I probably could have gotten a third batch of the detergent out of my original ingredients except I used some of the washing soda for other household cleaning and craft projects. So from here on out I estimate my investment in detergent every seven months, assuming I get three batches out of the initial ingredients, to be roughly $3.70 (and that is rounding up)!

I am taking up another whole blog about this because I want to tell you some of the things I learned from my first batch as well as share my pleasure at a completely successful, heart-ache free venture! First and foremost, it takes some time and is a messy endeavor to make laundry detergent, so if you are pressed for time, or you have run out of detergent and waited till the night before work to wash your uniforms, you are out of luck. It takes about an hour, maybe a little more, to make the detergent and then the concoction needs to be left to sit overnight before using. I waited till I was completely without detergent before make more because I wanted to see exactly how long one bucket would last (and it was a good excuse not to do laundry for an entire day).

Secondly, scooping detergent out of a six gallon bucket for every load is messy and impractical. I saved an “All” liquid detergent container, submerge it in the bucket to fill it up and then just use the lid as a measuring device like normal. Any liquid laundry detergent bottle that you have on hand would work. This way I can continue to store my product like normal detergent, above the washer, and it does not add an additional step to doing the laundry. I just push the bucket off to the side of the laundry room and only fool with it when the bottle is empty.

Finally, here are a couple of tips for the actual making of the detergent: The first time I made it I ran the bar of soap through my food processor, mistake. It was glommy and I like to NEVER got the food processor washed or the “mountain fresh” scent out of the plastic. Ick. I cook with that! Lesson learned. So this time around I just chopped the soap up with a stainless steel kitchen knife, much easier to clean but it did leave me with coarser chunks of soap to dissolve on the stove which took longer. I will chop it up in even smaller bits next time.

I also thought, last time I made it, I did not get the bar soap entirely dissolved and so my finished product was kind of gloppy and had a chunky consistency. Initially, I worried that is would leave residue on the clothes. That was not the case. It dissolved completely it just was not aesthetically pleasing.

This time around I took the extra time and care to dissolve the bar soap completely so when I put my finished product in the bucket it was entirely liquid and the consistency of a thin syrup. Unfortunately, on Friday morning when I opened the bucket, it too had unattractively congealed. It is not a thick smooth get like a commercial detergent. Instead, it is lumpy, like the consistency of oatmeal. The plus of completely dissolving the bar soap this time was there are no white soap chunks in it, it is clear, just lumpy.

The consistency of the detergent does not seem in any way to affect the way it cleans. Our clothes, even Fred’s uniforms, come out fresh and clean and smelling great. We have not had any problems with skin allergies or clothes not getting completely clean. Also, there is never any residue on the clothes like with a powder detergent. There is also no soap scum, which was a personal concern of mine at the onset. So overall my verdict is I will continue to make our detergent at home, saving a fortune on the commercial alternatives and making a little baby step towards being a more responsible consumer.

~

In the same vein of getting things clean here is something else we have realized in the past two months. Dishwasher not only save time and alleviate a tiresome chore, they actually use less electricity and water than doing dishes by hand. Knock me over with a feather.

Our dishwasher finally gave up the ghost about two months ago and we decided to forgo the expense of a new one. I would wash the dishes by hand. I do not mind washing the dishes. I put on some music or use the time to day dream and plan, but let me point out, I cook, a lot, several times a day. I make at least two breakfasts in the mornings, sometimes three. I make lunch for myself and whoever else is home and I make dinner most nights, in addition to anything I bake throughout the week and any extra treats I may make. In short, I dirty a LOT of dishes.

In the past I would load the dishes into the dish washer as the day went on and then run the dish washer when we all went to bed. I would unload it in the morning and start all over again. I ran the dishwasher almost every day and occasionally twice a day. Well when the dishwasher went on to the great kitchen in the sky I was left piling dirty dishes in the sink. The sink basin is small and usually breakfast dishes alone filled it up and spilled over onto my limited counter space. This make for some technical difficulties when it came time to make lunch and dinner and I was left with no space. So I would at least have to washes dishes once in the morning and once in the afternoon and usually at least once in between to clear up enough space to turn around in.

You can imagine my shock and horror after putting in all this additional work only to find out that both our water and electric bills had gone up significantly! That did it. It was like adding insult to injury. Not only did I have at least an hour or two of extra work every day but I was paying for the privilege! GRRRR! We bit the bullet and went dishwasher shopping this past Saturday.

We settled on a lower price point whirlpool with an extended warranty. No, we are not crazy about buying one more plastic and metal thing that will eventually find its way to a landfill but we also are not in love with pumping scads more water into the sewage/waste water plant or using tons of fossil fuel to heat that water just to wash our dishes. Buying the new dishwasher seemed like the lesser of two evils, the greener of two brown choices. We bought an energy efficient model that supposedly only cost thirty-three dollars per year to run and we will install it ourselves this afternoon.

The recyclable parts of our old dish washer will go into the scrap pile and we will try and determine if we can come up with a use for any of the skeletal remains of plastic. HEY! Maybe I have finally found my backdoor composter?! We will see. In the meanwhile we are still learning and taking our small steps although this one was quite the eye opener. Who knew washing dishes by hand was really so costly. Of course if you live alone or do not cook very often it might be much more cost effect, just a thought.

Thanks for reading,
Much love,

Autumn

Blood, Sweat and Pickled Corn

Today was probably not the best choice of days to pickle the corn but I was seriously running up against the deadline of four dozen ear of ruined corn. They had been sitting in my refrigerator for several days taking up most of the available space and generally looking a little sadder every day. I had several billion things to do this morning including catch the bus to town so the ideal cool temperatures of the before dawn hours passed me by and I was stuck firing up the stove in the early afternoon as temperatures outside crept above one hundred and temperatures inside were not much better.

I finished cleaning out the crock and set the water on the stove to boil to cook the ears. Sunday my friend’s mom informed me that the ears were pickled whole and the kernels not cut from the cob until the pickling process was complete. I put Sarah on salt dissolving duty and I manned the boiling water. I can tell you that if pickling and canning are going to become part of our rituals then we are going to have to invest in some larger pots and measuring devices.

The ratio of salt to water is one gallon of water per one cup of salt. The largest measuring bowl I had held two quarts (there are four quarts in a gallon if I am not mistaken) so Sarah dissolved a cup of salt in to two quarts of water poured that into the crock as I placed the corn in the crock. For every bowl of salt water we added one bowl of plain tap. My largest pot would only cook about six ear of corn at a time so it took quite a while to cook all four dozen ear. Needless to say I think Sarah and I are now significantly thinner due to water weight loss. I am pretty sure I sweated off at least ten pounds crouching over the stove and every time I looked at her she had sweat pouring off her face in rivers as she diligently dissolved the pickling salt into the hot tap water.

After we had finally loaded the pillow case in the crock full of corn and the whole project covered in salt water we sealed it off with a plastic bag clip. My friend’s mom said that if you covered the pillow case with another plastic bag full of water before you put the plate on this would create a seal. I had a turkey bag from last thanksgiving so we filled it up with water and tied it off. This created a mess instead of a seal. I guess the crock was too full and it just caused salt water to slosh all over the kitchen floor. So we took the plastic bag off and put the plate directly on the pillow case.

Then came the problem of how to weight it down. I had saved an empty large pickle jar for just that purpose. Eventually we decided to fill it with rocks from the driveway. We filled it up, cranked the lid on tight and sat it on the plate. WAHLA! The plate pressed down on the corn and the water came up around the pickle jar and over the plate about four inches. Now everything I have read and everything people have told me seems to point to needing at least two inches of brine over the corn at any given time so I think four inches is a nice buffer. We put the other pillow case over the whole thing to keep the bugs out.

That leaves us with one last teeny problem…um…five gallon stone crocks filled with corn and brine are not light! I tried to scoot it and sloshed some more salt water on the floor. Since leaving it in the middle of my kitchen floor until January is not really an option I am not entirely sure where I should put it or how to get it there. I have been told two completely polar opposite things about the storage. One person says to leave it in a cool dark place and the other said if it is too cool it will not ferment so warmer is better. Well warm I can do, there are very few cool spots in our house. We do not have a cellar and I don’t want to put anything we are going to eat out in the barn so I am not sure where to put the crock (never mind how to put it somewhere).

I guess that will have to wait until Fred gets home. I know between me and my beloved spaghetti arms there is no moving it from the kitchen without risking a serious mess. Ah, the struggles to get back to basics. I hope by January to have some decent pickled corn to can because if that whole container rots I cannot promise I will not have a full scale melt down. I tell you Sarah and I literally poured our hearts and sweat into this effort and we look forward to eating the rewards.

One last funny little aside: at my daughter’s expense I will point out the mentality of growing up in a totally fast food culture. In all reality even our home cooked meals never take more than a day or two at the most to come together. So as we stood over the crock wiggling the last pillow case down around its edges she said,

“ I’m anxious to try pickled corn.”

Me, “Well you only have to wait till January.”

Sarah, “January?!”

Me, “Yes, it has to ferment.”

Sarah, ”Well can’t we put it in the microwave or something?”

Oh yes folks, I want it and I want it now. Giggles!


Thank you for reading,
Much love,
Autumn

Moon Pickles

Well I have a 5 gallon crock, a bag of pickling salt and about 4 dozen ear of shucked corn in my fridge and a big heaping GOB of confusion. I will readily take any and all feedback I can get on this blog so please feel free to tell me any of your family lore, what your mom says, what your grandma says or what your neighbor down the street says. I need some help! I was all set to pickle corn and my friend, whose mom is the pickling guru who has been helping me, casually mentioned that back when she was in school they had canned a whole harvest of tomatoes that spoiled. She mentioned that her mother said this was because one of the cousins was having her period.

Ok, I know that last sentence probably just made most of the men reading this blog immediately delete their bookmarks but I was concerned. That information, in addition to an email I received from another friend who stated that his mother only ever pickled in certain signs sent me into a bit of a pickle information gathering frenzy. This morning at church I told my friend’s mom that I had all my corn shucked and everything ready to pickle but asked her about the whole sign/menstruation thing. She said that whether or not it was scientific was beyond her but that yes she did try to always pickle in any sign above the waist and no to definitely not pickle anything while menstruating. I asked why. She just kind of shrugged gave me a vague answer about old-timer wisdom and said I could try it whenever but it would probably ruin.

So on the way home from church this morning we stopped and bought Harris’ Farmer’s Almanac I was delighted to find it (we had stopped three separate places yesterday looking for it) and immediately befuddled. I flipped through the entire pamphlet and yes it did have moon signs listed but they correlated more to a zodiac chart than anything else. They had absolutely no reference to any segment of the body. I got on line and did a little research. Not a whole lot of fruitful information there.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac web page listed the best dates for canning and pickling in August as the 7th and 8th and the 25th and 26th. Well that is great but it did not tell me why. I look up those dates and how they corresponded to the moon signs in the Almanac I have. It listed the dates as Cancer and Pisces. Ok, I still did not know to what portion of the body they allegedly correspond.

After more internet digging I finally found a Wikipedia article that listed the zodiac signs and the segment of the body to which they correspond. Well, this only deepened my confusion because Cancer corresponds to the breast (ok that is above the waist) but Pisces corresponds to the feet!? Last time I checked the feet are about as far below the waist as you can get. I did a little more research and found some blog posts with comments regarding peoples’ personal opinions and family traditions and some people agreed and said to pickle in the chest or feet. Some people said to pickle only above the waist. Some people said to pickle only in the chest and head and some said pickles in the chest, kraut in the head only. I am so confused. Not a single comment or entry gave any reason why other than if you did not do it their way it would spoil. Several comments also distinctly pointed out that menstruating women should never ever can or pickle anything.

I am so confused! I have no clue now what to do with my corn or when. If I do not get some rock solid advice from someone, backed up with some concrete reasons why, then I am just going to pickle it in the morning when it is cool outside and pray for the best. I certainly do not know what my menstrual cycle has to do with anything other than that seems like a really good reason to get out of some serious manual labor one week a month. Maybe our grandmothers were wiser than even we realize.

I also called my aunt in Kentucky who is probably the only living relative who actually pickled with my paternal grandmother, the queen of farm living. She said it was all a bunch of hooey. "Pickle it when you get it, it is fresh and you have the most time," was her advice, sounds good to me! Now I certainly do not want to ruin four dozen ear of corn but since I cannot seem to pin down an exact answer I am just going to do the best I can. Tomorrow morning, pickled corn here I come!


Thanks for Reading,
Much love,
Autumn

Post Script: Fred just found a chart in next year’s almanac that concurs with the Wikipedia chart so now at least I know what zodiac sign goes with what part. Still sketchy on which sign to pickle in! Still open for debate!

Pickling, Canning and Composting

These are the things at the forefront of my mind as the busy month of August picks up steam. Mostly my thoughts of late center on a pickling obsession. My friend’s mom pickles corn every year and then cans it. That corn might be some of the most delicious straight from the can goodness ever tasted. She makes it simply, with only pickling salt and tap water, in an old school stone crock. I am fascinated with the pickling/fermentation process. I have only ever made pickles of any sort with vinegar. Last week I made some refrigerator pickles from a MotherEarth News recipe that only required sliced cucumbers, rice wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and garlic. All the ingredients are put in a glass jar, shaken up and placed in the fridge. This is kind of the instant gratification of the pickle world. Within twenty-four hours you have a tangy crispy sandwich topping not unlike a Clausin pickle. (Only much cheaper seeing as how they only cost pennies on the dollar versus their supermarket equivalents.)

While these refrigerator pickles were delicious and easy to make, I long to revive and preserve the arts of my ancestors. As I get older I wish more and more that I had shown a greater interest in these things when there were still people in my family around to teach them to me. My dad’s mother, my paternal grandmother, was the epitome of a country woman. She raised nine children on a mechanic’s salary and a little farm. They raised their own food from chickens to potatoes and nothing was wasted. My grandmother pickled or canned everything. According to my dad she even pickled the core of the cabbage (which was actually the part the kids fought over). In my youth I shunned such “country” living and ate most of my meals in the fast food lane. As I have matured and as I have watched what our fast food culture has done to our health, our wallets and our waste lines I no longer wish to live this way. Instead I find myself longing for the “country” food I once shunned and desperately grasping for the old ways of food preservation before even the memory of it is lost to us.

I have spent quite a great deal of time lately talking to people about and researching pickling and canning. They seem to go hand in hand as the best way to preserve fresh harvests through the long winter months and to cut the cost of store bought goods significantly. True pickling, according to my friends mom, involves no vinegar at all. The sour taste comes from the fermentation of the vegetable not from an additive like vinegar. She says that you can add spices like dill or garlic or hot peppers but that it is best to just allow the flavor of the vegetables to create their own tart taste. Pickled corn goes something like this:

1 large stone crock
1 cotton pillow case
1 c of pickling salt to every gallon of water
Fresh cooked corn enough to fill crock at least half way, slightly cooled
A plate to put on top and a stone or brick to weigh down the plate

The cooked corn is placed inside the pillow case which is tied off and then covered in brine until submerged. The plate is then placed on top of the pillow case and weighted down. This weighing-down process is somehow intricate to the pickling. I am not sure why other that the constant pressure forces the juices out of the veg. She also says that if you fill a food grade plastic bag with water and place it between the pillowcase and the plate this will form a seal and prevent having to remove the scum from the liquid every so often. After the corn has pickled for a few weeks then she takes it out and cans it in a water bath canner. The theory is at this point it is acidic enough to not need the higher temperature of a pressure canner and can be safely canned in a water bath.

I am anxious to begin picking things immediately but I have hit a significant stumbling block in the process. Those stone pickling crocks, so intrinsic to the pickling process, are not easy to come by nor are they inexpensive, if you can even find one. I spent most of the weekend scouring the internet and combing the flea market trying to get my grubby little paws on a couple of decent sized crocks. Several friends and family members have sifted through their garages and basements looking for discarded crocks but have come up short. Several have found crocks but they have been used for storing paints and chemicals or are cracked. Cracked will not work because the fermentation process causes swelling in the crock and it will leak or shatter altogether. I am afraid to use ones that have stored chemicals for fear of poisoning everyone.

My dad even called his sisters in Kentucky to see if they had any of my grandmother’s old crocks, they do still have a couple but that would require a several hour drive to obtain them. The other problem with using an old or antique crock is the possibility of lead in the glaze. At this point I am pretty much stuck with having to buy a new crock, and if I want to make kraut and pickled corn I will need at least two crocks. I have found one local hardware store that sells new pickling crocks and you can figure the price is roughly ten dollars per gallon. I figure I need two five-gallon crocks. The cost of these will be a little over a hundred dollars. More money than I want to spend but after much consideration I have decided that these crocks will more than pay for themselves over the years in the food bill savings provided. Although the initial investment is high, if well taken care of, these crocks should last a lifetime.

So next week I plan to begin my pickling adventure. I will start with two crocks and I will pickle corn in one and make something called green-tomato kraut in the other (my dad’s personal request). If all goes well hopefully by September I will be able to can the contents of the crocks and pickle some other things. On my list are pickled beans, traditional cucumber pickles, pickled onions & peppers, and some plain kraut also. I have decided that since most of the things I will be canning this year are pickles and high acid fruits I will stick with the water bath canner for now.

Next year, if all goes well, I may try to can some low acid food which really will require a pressure canner because it will reach and maintain the two-hundred and forty degree temperature needed to kill anything toxic in the food. I am a little afraid of the pressure canners having read horror stories of scalding burns and explosions but most of the reviews of the new pressure canners insist that they are completely safe and there is minimal risk of fire, explosion or injury. With all that said I think I would still be more comfortable starting off with water bath canning.

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As for our composting adventures we have yet to obtain the coveted food grade barrel and I am sorry to say our composting endeavors have been somewhat lack luster. It mostly consists of continuing to throw compostable material into one corner of the fence where the dog and the chickens still manage to string it around the yard and it must be re-gathered every so often and tossed back into the corner on a regular basis. The other down side to this is that that side of our fence borders the creek so I have been unwilling to mix the chicken bedding and droppings into this corner for fear of contaminating the water table. One of the books I read advised that dumping chicken droppings near a stream or creek could allow the nitrogen from the droppings to leech into the water and kill the fish. This is the last thing we want to do so as we consider building a permanent or semi-permanent compost pile we must locate it farther from the creek.

I have an over abundance of that orange netting/fencing stuff that the state road crews use. I have no idea where Fred’s dad got these things but our building is often like a treasure trove of odds and ends. I am considering fencing off the upper corner of our yard (farthest from the stream and house) with this netting and building a temporary composting pile there. I am not yet willing to commit to a permanent cinder block or concrete structure until my dream of a barrel composter is completely dead. The good thing about the netting is it can be taken down and the compost stirred around and then put back up, it is also a small enough mesh that it would keep the grass clippings and other small bits contained. Too, in theory, it could be moved from place to place. The bad thing about it is: it is blaze orange ugly and may not actually keep the dog out if there is something he really wants in the pile.

This is my latest idea but I will definitely be waiting to start a new building project until the heat wave breaks. Ninety plus degree days are not ideal for building anything. I have one other small problem: does anyone have any clever suggestions for collecting grass clippings short of me going out and raking the whole acre plus into the wheel barrow after I mow? Our tractor does not have a bag attachment so usually the grass clippings get left in piles where they fall since collecting them is such a chore. However, if I build this structured compost pile it is my understanding that I will need the grass clippings as a neutralizing layer to trap the heat and keep the smell down. Thank you in advance for any tips or suggestions.

Also, several of you sent comments on a couple of the latest blogs and some of them were full of very helpful suggestions that I would like to share but for some reason the blog site ate these comments. When they were emailed to me for approval I approved them but they never appeared in the comment section of the blog. I apologize and if anyone wants to repost I will definitely approve them. I have not denied any comments on the blog to date so please do not feel like I am ignoring you or did not post your suggestions. I am grateful and appreciative for everyone’s advice, love and support.

Thank you all for reading and for helping and for praying,
Much love,

Autumn

Of Our Own Hands…

Yesterday Sarah and I tried our hand at making laundry detergent. My imagination was sparked last week by an article about managing and saving money on Yahoo. The author of the article suggested that we don’t even need detergent to wash clothes because it is really the agitation of the water and rinsing that removes dirty and odor. He insisted detergent is just an expensive waste of money. While I probably would not want to share a seat on the bus with him I was intrigued by his article, however, in the immortal words of my mother “cleanliness is next to Godliness” and to be quite candid I’m just not yet willing to wear stinky clothes nor do I quite agree about the lack of soap’s necessity. I think the author of the Yahoo article must have suspected he would meet with several similar responses so he went on to detail other money saving tips such as how much detergent is actually needed and how to make your own laundry detergent at home for pennies on the dollar. Now this is where I really became interested.

My “plastic guilt” has become almost unbearable. As I look around our house at all the plastic we ship out into the landfill every year I am appalled. There are disposable plastic containers in every room of our house. But what are we supposed to do? It seems like everything “convenient” comes in single sized plastic containers and some things like shampoo and detergent just come in plastic bottles with no alternatives. On a positive note, I have learned, through research and experimentation, what a small amounts of these things we really need to use verses what we think we need to use. For example with shampoo and hair conditioner: a dime size amount is really that, it is a few tiny droplets, not the palm full of product I had been using. I realized right away that my hair was equally clean and took a shorter amount of time to rinse out so there was less time spent in the shower thus less water wasted.

The author made the act of making homemade laundry detergent sound simple, it involved only three key ingredients and a little time and effort. I put a link to this article and the proposition of creating detergent out on my facebook page for comment and discussion. I got lots of interesting comments and emails. Several people had recipes, some for powdered detergent and some for liquid. I almost exclusively wash our family’s laundry in cold water to prevent additional waste and larger electric bills so I prefer to use a liquid detergent versus a powder, which doesn’t always dissolve. The recipe I finally chose was a smash up of a couple different recipes. Here it is:

1 bar of lever2000 soap (this is the soap our family uses normally due to allergies)
1.5 cups of washing soda (I found Arm & Hammers in the laundry isle)
1.5 cups of 20mule borax (also in the laundry isle)
4 gallons of water (roughly)

I started by running the bar of soap through the food processor and grating it into small pieces. Then I put the soap into a small sauce pan on the stove added enough water to cover and heated it on low medium stirring frequently until the soap melted. I then put the washing soda and the borax in the 5 gallon bucket added 3 gallons of hot tap water and stirred till dissolved.

I added the soap from the stove stirred more and finally added a gallon of cold tap water. I continued to stir and once everything seemed to be mostly combined I put a tight fitting lid on the bucket and left it till today. As I type this the first load of laundry is going through the machine now. When I took the lid off the bucket the mixture was slightly thicker than water however not nearly as thick as the gel–like detergent I am used to buying in the store. My main concern with this mixture is that the some of the soap seemed to congeal on top of the liquid and I am worried those bits won’t dissolve in the wash. I gave it a good stir and added 1/4 a cup to a super-sized load of wash before adding the clothes. I will update how this turns out.

We are really hoping this is a viable solution to normal store bought detergent for several reasons. The first of which being, of course, we would like to save money. The second reason being, we as a family would like to make a smaller environmental impact on the world around us and we feel that carelessly tossing out more and more plastic waste ever year is no way to do that. Third, and lastly, we would like to be more and more self reliant making fewer trips to the grocery and if making our own laundry detergent is a way to meet these goals then I am willing to put up with the mess and the extra time and effort it takes to do so. My rough estimates on cost are around two cents a load, I have not worked out the exact math but when I do so I will post it.

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The second thing I would like to update on today is Fred and my effort to start building our chicken coop. We have been researching coop designs and talking to people who raise chickens now for several weeks. Originally I was much enamored of something called an “ark” design. This basically looked like a little A-frame made of two by fours covered in chicken wire with either the top or one end acting as a roost. I thought this was very cute. Some of the pluses were: it would be completely portable and it was small so it took up very little room in the yard. Ultimately, we decided this kind of coop, while attractive and low cost, would not suit our purposes.

We plan to start out with three or four laying hens, we have decided on Jersey Giants because when full grown they will be able to hold their own with the dog. We will pick up, these girls at Green’s tomorrow and they will need enough space to move about. Also, since we don’t live in a year round warm climate, we opted for a coop design which would allow us to provide more indoor space and insulation per bird. Fred gathered several designs and sketched out the plans (mostly in his head) of exactly what we would need and how this would all go down. Last night we went to Home Depot where landscape timbers were on sale for less than two dollars apiece, we intend to use these for the bulk of the construction, the drawback being that landscape timbers have rounded off edges and are extremely hard to square up. We also purchased a few two by fours (which were much pricier), some chicken wire and a gallon of “red tomato” paint.

We got home from church this morning and decided since the sun was shining we would begin right away. We drug everything into the back yard and immediately began construction. Well, as with the best laid plans, we had several false starts. Fred had one plan in his head and of course I had a completely different one, we were not communicating well nor were we being extremely pleasant to each other. We finally had to put everything down (after two failed attempts that left us with a dangerously drunk-tilting coop) and step away from the situation to reevaluate our plan. It also helped that we took a minute to remember why we were going to all this trouble and exactly where we hope to be someday. After about six hours in the hot sun, learning by trial and error, we eventually got our post set and the frame for our coop/run mostly constructed. We also put down the floor of the coop. It didn’t fall over and knock us on the head and it has not blow over yet in the rain, don’t worry I’ve been out to check several times, so right at this moment I am feeling a somewhat precarious iota of success.

Fred took tomorrow off from work, originally we had intended to go camping and hiking but with the drop in temperatures and the on and off again rain we figured the time would be better spent getting a start on our coop. Since we hope to bring the chicks home tomorrow and they will have to stay in the house for about a month, that gives us a limited amount of time to get their permanent home ready. Wish us luck and please say a prayer.

Thank you for reading and please come back to travel with us down this new and winding road,
Autumn