"...and so she lived"

A Woman's Journey to the Life that Beckons

   I'm going to be incorporating Animoto into my blog and this is my trial run. I made this video about a year ago as a representation of the path that I have chosen for the next phase of my life. I'm sure all of the homesteading skills that I have learned over the years will be instrumental in my endeavors. Please feel free to post any comments or suggestions you may have, I'd love to hear them!

.....And so she lived.

.....And so she lived.

'Tis All Hallows Eve...Blessed Samhain and Happy Halloween!

       However you choose to celebrate the day (as you can see, I have gone into zombie mode) Halloween, or Samhain ( pronounced 'sow-en')is a time for many things. Dating back to pre-Christianity and of Celtic origin, it was the signal that the harvest season was over and it was time to prepare for the coming winter. Animals were brought in from the fields, herbs were hung to dry, root vegetables were gathered, meat was hung to smoke, and grains were stored in order to make bread. The seeds that had been planted in the spring, tended in the summer, and harvested in the fall had come to fruition. It was the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one. Winter brought with it the time to spend indoors by a warm fire, thinking about the past year, and making plans for the future, and bonding with friends and family to enjoy warm food and the telling of stories.
   It was also time to honor their ancestors. It is said that on All Hallows Eve the veil between the living world and the afterlife is at it's thinnest, when it is possible to communicate with the dead. In ancient Britain All Souls Day (November 1st) was the time for the poor to go begging door-to-door. The wealthier would give them "Soul cakes" and the poor would promise to say a prayer for the dearly departed. Today we see children going door to door requesting a 'treat', if the treat is not forthcoming, the children are obliged to play a 'trick' on them. 
   It is also the time for divination; tarot cards, scrying mirrors, crystal balls, Ouija boards, and tea leaves are all utilized to make contact with the dead or learn of the future. 
   It would be remiss of me to not include the quintessential poem of Halloween; Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" beautifully spoken and accompanied with the mystical music of  Omnia, a wonderful band of pagan folk. Enjoy!

   

Making Your Own Laundry Soap

   Some time ago I decided that the cost of commercial laundry detergent was prohibitive. Aside from the cost, it isn't doing our skin or the environment any favors either. My daughter and I began making our own and we haven't looked back since. Our home made laundry soap is safe, effective, smells great, and is a mere pennies per load. My partner traded the logging profession for the dairy farm life so an effective soap that could clean AND deodorize was absolutely necessary. I have found that my home made version is actually more effective than the commercial brands. If this stellar testimony of mine has piqued your interest let's get started.

   There are three ingredients that you will need:

Washing Soda- I use Arm and Hammer

Borax - 20 Mule Team is my brand of choice

Bar soap - Zote, Ivory, Fels Naptha, Dr. Bronner's are all good choices

   Have a large covered container of some sort ready to store your soap in when you're finished. The first step is to grate the bar of soap up as fine as possible. There area number of ways to do this, some easier than others. You can go old school and use a grater (watch your knuckles!) you can cut the soap up into smaller chunks and pulverize it in your food processor, or you can microwave it which is a blast to watch through the window as you nuke it. Makes a cool science experiment for your kids too! 

The Zote soap looks like a fluffy pile of pink frosting!

The Fels Naptha soap looks exactly like a loaf of bread!

The Ivory soap looks like a pile of snow!

   Aside from the incredible appearance of the bars of soap after they are nuked is the texture, it feels like velvet and it crumbles apart with very little pressure. The only drawback to using this method is that your house will smell strongly of soap and it takes awhile to get the smell out of the microwave. I cooked a lemon in mine to remove the smell and it worked great.

   Once you grate, pulverize, or nuke your bar of soap all you have to do is combine it with the borax and washing soda. A ratio of 1 part soap, 2 parts borax, and 2 parts washing soda is a good rule of thumb. In other words, your recipe would be: 

1 bar of soap 

2 cups borax

2 cups washing soda

   If you are using a extra large bar of soap, such as Zote (which is a hefty 10 ounces) you could increase the borax and washing soda to 3 cups each. The bottom line is that you can't really screw it up, it will still work fine if you make a few minor changes in your ratio. I have used my home made laundry soap in both warm and cold water and it dissolves completely in both. Now, here's the best part; you only need to use between 1 and 4 tablespoons per load of laundry. I'm serious...that is all you need, I only use 4 tablespoons when it is absolutely necessary. The reason behind this is that the home made laundry soap is pure cleaning power with none of the fillers that are found in commercial brands. Any name brand liquid laundry detergent is primarily water, just look on the label it will be the first ingredient. By making your own you can control exactly what you want to put into it and what you want to leave out. You're doing your part to help contribute to a healthier environment and saving a ton of money to boot. Depending on the cost of your ingredients the price is approximately between 2 1/2 and 6 cents per load of laundry.

   

Pickle Heaven!

   This year we had a bumper crop of cucumbers and made three different varieties of pickles; dill chips, spicy dill spears, and every one's favorite, bread and butter pickles. By the time we were finally done canning our grand total was 80 jars of pickles! Many people have told me that they would love to do some canning but they are are intimidated with the process.  There is nothing to fear and its much easier than you think. If you know someone who cans, ask if you can help them, you'll learn a lot and they will surely welcome the help. In no time at all you will be canning all manner of fruits and vegetables; believe me, it's highly addictive, once you get started you won't want to stop. Below is a photo of the first round of pickles....there was more to come.

   Besides the bread and butter pickles being a unanimous favorite, they are also very easy to make so I'm including this recipe:

     Crunchiest Bread & Butter Pickles Ever

5 pounds 4-6 inch cucumbers, cut into 1/4 slices     2 tsp. celery seed

1 pound onions, thinly sliced                                    1 tsp. ginger

1/2 cup canning salt                                                  1 tsp. peppercorns

2 cups sugar                                                              3 cups vinegar

2 Tbls. mustard seed                                                 Ball brand Pickle Crisp Granules

2 tsp. turmeric                                                           7 or 8 Ball or Kerr pint (16oz) jars with lids and 

                                                                                        bands

1. Combine cucumber and onion slices in a large bowl, layering with salt; cover with ice cubes. Let stand for 1 and 1.2 hours. Drain; rinse; drain again.  

2. Combine remaining ingredients except Pickle Crisp in a large pot; bring to a boil. Add drained cucumbers and onions and return to a boil.

3. Pack hot pickles and liquid into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Add a rounded 1/8 tsp. Pickle Crisp Granules to each jar. Remove air bubbles. Adjust two-piece caps.

4. Process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner, adjusting for altitude.  

   This recipe is fairly adaptable too; if you want more onions and less pickles you can use 4 pounds of cucumbers and 2 pounds of onions; it still tastes great and the onions are heavenly on hamburgers!                          

The Cold, the Snow, and Natural Air Fresheners.

   In the last thirty-six hours it has gone from -14 to a balmy 24 degrees...a veritable heat wave! Since my son-in-law graciously brought wood in for me this morning, I don't have to go out (unless I choose too) and can enjoy the beautiful view from the warmth of my house. It's currently snowing (again) and they are predicting another 12-18 inches on top of what we already have. It's very beautiful and looks like Christmas!
   Since I've decided to stay inside, I thought I would be productive and clean the house. I don't care for artificial cleaning products or air fresheners for a number of reasons. First, they contain way to many mysterious chemicals which cause me concern, they are expensive, and lastly, they don't really smell that good in my opinion. My number one favorite air freshener is made from three simple, inexpensive ingredients: orange peels, cinnamon sticks and whole cloves.

   We eat a lot of oranges around here so there is no shortage of peels. I just throw them into a bowl and cover them until I need them. Whole cloves can be bought for a dollar or under at most stores, and since we aren't ingesting this I am not concerned with buying expensive cinnamon sticks. I have found that  the local dollar stores sell a good sized bag of them in their craft section. Take the spices and peels and throw them in a pot , fill it with water, and put it on your wood stove or kitchen range. Once it heats up the heavenly aroma will permeate your house without giving you a headache or putting a dent in your pocket book like commercial sprays.

   You can also fill large bowls with natural fixings and place them in different rooms for a constant, gentle waft of aromatherapy. 

  The bowl I used is a large pottery saucer that you set a flower pot on; it's heavy and I'm not concerned about it absorbing any odor from the scented mixture that I've used. The filler that looks like tiny pumpkins (aren't they cute?) are called putka pods and can be found at Michael's craft stores. I simply scented them with plain cinnamon. I dried some orange slices in my food dehydrator and tied them onto bundles of cinnamon sicks with some raffia. I made the miniature bundt cakes out of beeswax and rubbed them with cinnamon and cloves. Besides the great smell and aesthetic appeal (I love primitives) I had  great fun making all of it! You certainly can't say that about store bought products! I shall now leave you with our daily song :)

Everything Old is New Again...

   I have a stack of little wooden boxes that held clementine oranges sitting on my craft table. The stack keeps growing because, well, I keep buying the oranges. I've been wondering what to do with them because I can't bear to throw them out and I know they could be useful in some manner. After playing around with them for a while, turning them around and stacking them up, I realized that they would be great for organizing craft materials. 

   I lightly sanded any lose bits of wood off the edges of the box and then painted it with sage green paint. I painted one end of it with blackboard paint. If you've never used blackboard paint, try it...I guarantee that you will become addicted to it. I used this particular box to hold some of my rubber stamps. I plan to make more like this one for other craft supplies. The added advantage is that you can stack them on top of each other, thus saving a lot of space. The other one I just sanded and put a primitive label on that says "Buttery 1879" and placed some of my antique canning jars in it. These are just a couple of examples of what you could do with these cute little crates. You could decorate them to use as Easter baskets by painting them and tying a ribbon around the outside of the box. You could decorate it, fill it with goodies and give it to someone  as a gift; leave it on your counter to hold coffee, tea, sugar, honey, and teaspoons; it's the perfect size for holding quite a few Cd's or dvd's; the possibilities are endless!
   I found this photo where someone used a clementine box to make a bed for a child's doll...very cool! And if you turned it upside down it could be a table.

   The blackboard paint that I mentioned can be used for many things. Besides using it on the clementine boxes, you could paint a section of your wall, put a picture frame (the older and more ornate the better in my opinion) and use it as a message board, paint a section of wall in your kids bedroom and tell them they really can write on the walls (as long as they do it on the blackboard area) and then stand back and watch their creativity flow, and you can paint the inside of one of your kitchen cabinet doors and use it as a shopping list. It's very handy, just look through your cupboards, see what your running low on, and write it on the chalkboard!

   This particular brand of chalkboard paint that I used is made by Rust-oleum. It's a 30 ounce can and I swear it must be bottomless because we have all used it on numerous projects and it's still half full!

   Wooden crates aren't the only thing you can re-purpose; how many times have you been driving down the road and spied an old bed sitting there for the trash man? Well, this is what we made out of two old beds that we had out in the barn:

   ...and here is how we did it:

   This is what it started out as, just your basic twin headboard and foot board. After washing and sanding it, we cut the footboard directly down the middle to make the arms. Using bolts and washers we attached the 'arms' to either side of the headboard. We had another part of an old bed out in the barn so we took a piece from that and used it for the front apron. After attaching that piece, we screwed sections of 1 x 3's to either side and the back.We then cut some pine boards to use as the seat and screwed them into place.

I sanded it all one more time and then painted it...voila! A very cool bench for just pennies! 

  Here's a photo of another one we made from a different bed on it's way to it's new home:

  These were both made from twin beds, but you could just as easily use a full size (or larger) and make a wider one. The twin size is easily comfortable for two people to sit on, and it's very sturdy. So the next time you're driving down the road or at your local landfill and see an old bed, you might want to take it home with you.....and now I think it's time for a tune. Feel free to sing along and dancing is strongly encouraged!

The Arrival of the Seed Catalogs...

   Just when you think that you might succumb to cabin fever and do some damage, the seed catalogs begin to arrive in the mail and instantly all is right with the world. I sit on the couch with a large sheet of paper, surrounded with my catalogs and begin to diagram where we will plant everything. The beautiful illustrations of fruits and vegetables have a fairy tale quality about them and the hardest part is showing a bit of self control and limiting the list to a manageable amount. We have a core group of favorites that we plant every year; Heirloom Brandywine tomatoes, Black Beauty zucchini, green beans (this year we are planting purple ones too!), Butternut squash, Straight Eight cucumbers, green and purple peppers, Yukon Gold potatoes, sweet corn, and last but not least...pumpkins! Last years yield of pumpkins was insane (see my first blog) and I can't wait to do it again. I still have a few Jack-Be-Little pumpkins, only one of them started to get soft so I decided to cut it open and harvest some seeds from it.

   I save the plastic boxes that the organic greens come in (that I buy in the winter) because they make great seed starters. I use seed starter mix as a growing medium and fill the container about half way up. I planted six pumpkin seeds in this and even though it is rather early to start these in the house I couldn't wait to get started! 

   
   After you get the seeds planted, replace the lid on the plastic container and the condensation that forms will help keep the soil moist. The herb planter (the one that says 'Herbs') pictured here is a good example of planting when you have limited space. I made a few of these out of wooden pallets that were given to me. They also make great wall racks for spices, magazines, mail, in the bathroom for toiletries, the possibilities are endless! I will post a tutorial for making these at a later date; in the meantime, if this interests you, you can start collecting some pallets now. I suggest that you check them out for any stains that could be from a  dangerous chemical, and try to make sure they are dried naturally, if they are you will see the letters "HT" somewhere on them. This stands for "Heat Treated" and that's what you want, otherwise they have probably been dried through the use of chemicals and you don't want to plant anything in them you will ultimately ingest. I'm using this particular planter as a holder for the last of the bread and butter pickles and a bundle of Sweet Annie that I'm planning to use for some other crafts (the Sweet Annie, not the pickles! hehehe). When Spring arrives and I'm ready to plant herbs in it I'll put it back outside.

   

   I have a couple of favorite mail order places to order seeds from. They both offer heirloom seeds and both organic and non-organic:

"Botanical Interests" is located in Colorado and they have a great selection of fruit and vegetable seeds. Here's the link for them:  https://botanicalinterests.com/ If you go to their website, check out their blogs, they have a wealth if information in them. "Hudson Valley Seed Library" is located right here in New York and they are one of my favorite sources. Great seeds, beautiful packaging (and artwork) and they also have a wealth of information to offer. Here's their link: http://www.seedlibrary.org/ I haven't bought any seeds from the "Southern Exposure Seed Exchange" but I think I will this year. Here is their link: https://www.southernexposure.com/ Catalog has beautiful illustrations and a lot of info!

   I'm sure there are quite a few more sites that sell heirloom and organic seeds, if anybody has a favorite feel free to include it in the comments section.  
   It may not feel it right now, but Spring is right around the corner and once again we will all be out side digging in the dirt planting beans, pumpkins, tomatoes, herbs and flowers.

 I am planting some dent corn this year so we can grind it into meal for baking and...wait...that reminds me of a song....

 Maybe the best video ever....enjoy!
  

   

"The Winter of 2014"

   This winter has been one of the coldest that I can remember. Here in the great Northeast we're used to the cold and snow, we expect it, but this year it has been intense. We have had had many days of sub zero temperatures with the wind chill bringing it down to anywhere between -10 and -25...that's a bit nippy! We heat with wood and many nights I stayed up so I could keep the fire going, sometimes having to reload it every hour. Yet, even with all of our efforts, we still had pipes freeze (and sometimes break) as the heat did not reach certain areas of the house...and this was in addition to putting an electric heater under the sink. Ah, good times! But, there is also a great amount of joy and beauty to be found in the winter.

 

   The view from my house can't be beat! Watching the birds enjoy the treats that my grandson places out in his bird feeder for his feathered friends is heart-warming too!

 

 

 

   It doesn't take long to get frost-bite in this weather, and since I have already had it once, I take extra precautions to guard against getting it again. When my left foot starts hurting, I know it's time to go back inside and warm up.

 

 

 

   This slate hangs in my kitchen and will remain there all year. Two years in a row it was missing (simply miss-placed) and my family took great joy in telling me that I ruined Christmas because the sign wasn't there. Thankfully I found it and have been absolved of all guilt. I'm afraid to pack it away with the seasonal items, lest I lose it again. Therefore, it will hang there year round. LOL!! It does make you feel rather warm and comforted just looking at it. My miniature wood stoves don't give off any physical heat, but they warm me just the same.

 

 

   ...And when I get snowed in, I can amuse myself by rearranging the cupboard...and more stoves!

 

 

 

 

 

      I grew up in a small fishing village on the east end of Long Island in a house that was built before the Civil War. Obviously, in a house that old nothing is plumb and drafts abound! In the winter I remember my mother taking empty bread bags (my mother was into recycling and repurposing before it became 'fashionable') and stuffing them around the door with a bread knife to keep the draft out. It worked great until somebody came in or out and then you had to stuff them all back in again! This is where "pool noodles" come in handy in the winter. Just cut it to the width of the bottom of your door and using an exacto knife, make one cut the length of the noodle on one side only. Since there is a hole in the middle you can easily slide it over the bottom of your door. If it's too thick, you can shave some of it off n the bottom where it meets the floor. It will conform to the shape of the door and prevent the cold from coming in.

 

   It's winter, it's cold, and it's beautiful so let's enjoy it! As Dean Martin sang "Let it Snow, let snow, let it snow" 

 

 

 

 

 I've gussied up the site here with the addition of "Foods that are in Season in New York" which will change monthly, and... we finally have some music and videos! So kick back, listen to some Grateful Dead, and enjoy reading about the truly wonderful world of being self-sufficient!

 It's mid-January and snowing...a perfect time to begin planning for spring! There are baby chicks to order and plans to be made for the new vegetable and herb gardens. This year we are expanding the gardens to include a larger variety of everything. If all works out well, (and I'm sure it will) there may be a vegetable stand in the front yard and fresh eggs for sale. Starting a new flock of chickens is always an exciting endeavor; disinfecting the chicken chateau, rebuilding any nesting boxes that have seen better days, painting the exterior, and the best part? Going to the post office on delivery day to pick up a large, peeping box of baby chicks...even the employees at the post office get a kick out of it! This year we have three different breeds up for consideration; Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, and Speckled Sussex. All of these are fine , hardy breeds that are suited for our climate here in the Great Northeast. All three breeds are brown egg layers which is a must simply because I have(for some unknown reason) a rather intense dislike for white eggs. There is an on going debate on whether brown eggs are healthier for you than white eggs. Nobody seems to know for sure, but fresh home raised eggs, no matter what the color, are healthier for you than store bought that have been produced in filthy, overcrowded industrial warehouses.
  Buff Orpingtons have always been my favorite breed of chickens for a few reasons. They are very productive egg layers, the hens are good sitters if you are interested in hatching some, their temperament is very sweet, both hens and roosters alike, the roosters are very attentive to the hens, and they have the most beautiful soft, golden plumage!

Rhode Island Reds are also a hardy bird, and it is said "that no other bird lays more eggs", I can't attest to that, but they surely do lay a lot of eggs. They have a beautiful dark, rusty red plumage and even the little chicks could be referred to as "gingers" as they already exhibit a paler version of the coloring that they will soon develop.

The Speckled Sussex is a breed that I have only raised once, but it's a very nice bird of good temperament. They were developed and bred in England over 100 years ago and have gained popularity over here in America. A lovely bird with mahogany red feathers tipped with black and white, hence the term "speckled."

Brown eggs are not simply all brown, they come in beautiful shades of tan, sepia, chocolate, dark beige, and occasionally you'll get one that has almost a sage green/brown color to it. Brown eggs are never boring!

If you dye brown eggs for Easter, you will see the most beautiful, vibrant jewel tone colors appear...

...you certainly don't get that result with white eggs! Look for a tutorial next month for dying eggs using natural ingredients.