A Homesteading Must

Okay, quick commercial break.  This food processor is one of my favorite, time-saving tools for all my homesteading endeavors.  A purist might manually chop and process things, but I personally would not have the patience and commitment to make much of what I do at home without my food processor.  I use it for everything from pastry dough to laundry detergent.   You can click the picture to purchase it online.  I promise I won't insert shameless ads too often, but this one really is worth purchasing!

Making Laundry Detergent

It’s time to make a new batch of laundry detergent at our urban homestead, so I invite you to join the fun.  As you can see by the photo above, I’m quite a messy detergent maker, but it’s completely worth it.  I feel like I’m playing in a sandbox of soap as I hand mix everything.  I’m sure if you were committed to having less mess than I, your experience could be much neater.  I enjoy making a powder recipe for the soap sandbox experience, but I’m sure you could find liquid recipes online if you prefer that. 

Making your own detergent is pennies on the dollar compared to ready-made detergents.  I have very sensitive skin and have to buy “free and clear” when using ready-made detergents, so making my own detergent saves me even more money.  Below is the recipe that I use.  Of course, it is all-natural and doesn’t cause my sensitive skin any irritation.

Powdered Laundry Detergent

Mix Well:

12 Cups Borax (see link below to purchase online)

8 Cups Washing Soda

8 Cups Baking Soda

8 Cups Bar Soap Grated (I use 3 bars of Fels Naptha and 4 bars of Ivory)

Store in a sealed container (I use an Utz Pretzel container – works great).  Use 1/8 cup of powder per full load.

A big thanks to my friend, Jen for getting me into making my own laundry detergent and for numerous recipes and Q&A sessions!

 

Good Water

I’ve been thinking off and on over the past year about the water we put into our bodies.  There’s so much fuss about organic food, while we all drink city water that’s so full of chemicals it makes my kitchen smell like a swimming pool room when I put the tea kettle on to boil.  So, I’ve decided to switch the majority of our water consumption to natural spring water.  I was able to get the little cooler/stand thing for free, and the water is inexpensive.  The novelty of the cooler also encourages my kids to drink more water – can’t argue with that.

Happy Work

Planting is much easier than moving large amounts of soil!  I’ve been enjoying the lighter work of getting the seeds and starts into the ground (with the help of two eager little boys) over the past few days.  Most everything is planted with a few exceptions, so now I need to move on to laying the paths and digging the small pond.   

In the meantime, we’re enjoying our black raspberry harvest…it’s hard to beat homemade, black raspberry ice cream. I also made a delicious cherry pie using Julia Child's pastry crust recipe and my neighbor's extra cherries (yes, she gave them to me!).  

I also thought I should let you know that this post holds good news for the budget front to offset some of the initial setbacks.

1.  Lots of free starts from my sister

2.  Black raspberries coming out our ears (a very pricey fruit at the store)

3. Free batch of cherries from our neighbor's harvest

And More Dirt!

The rationale behind narrowing of the paths was, “how often do you really need a wheelbarrow to go through all the paths in such a small space?”  The answer: quite a bit while filling raised beds with dirt, afterwards hopefully not so much.  The wheelbarrow fits, but we have to lift it high enough to keep the back legs above the walls of the beds.  This really is very doable until it’s filled with heavy topsoil, so we found ourselves running into corners and knocking nails loose while bumping and dumping.  We had built the beds with nails we had on hand, which really weren’t long enough.  So, my husband found himself running to the hardware store and reinforcing all the corners with longer nails before I ruined all his hard work with my wheelbarrow.

The nails made all the difference!  This is working.  Thanks to my housemate’s one day and my husband's help another, we have distributed the entire pile of topsoil .  I think my body will scream at me if I shovel another load if I push it any harder...good thing planting and watering are a little easier on the muscles. 

Dirt!

Bad news again from the budget department.  Decreasing the size of the paths and increasing the size of the beds means we need more dirt than I planned.  As a matter of fact, the amount of dirt needed is exponentially more than I planned.  I think my initial calculations (based on formulas found online) must not have taken into account how deep I want the dirt.  But, we bought all the wood and built all the beds, so there’s no turning back to the sod cutter plan now!  A dump truck load of topsoil it is, and it looks like the shovel, wheelbarrow and I will become good friends over the coming days.

All in a Day's Work

A productive day!  We now have a yard full of raised, albeit empty, beds.  The result is a really cool looking outline of what our backyard will become.  I am indebted to my fabulous husband who committed an entire day to building these beds.  I was a pretty good helper, I think.  To prep the area, I began laying down linen fabric to block the weeds and old soil from contaminating the new beds, but then I ran out of fabric and commitment, so we now have an experiment to determine which beds are better.  When I wasn’t needed to help with building the beds, I was tearing out and discarding my hopelessly diseased grapevine, spreading compost all around, and checking on the kiddos.  They did a great job of staying out from underfoot…earned themselves a trip to Berry Winkle!