Where does the time go?

Holy cow, its been a while since I’ve posted anything on here.  I’ve just become so overwhelmed with farm projects that I don’t have much time to just sit here and type anymore.  I know that during wintertime things will slow down a bit for us and I’ll have more free time during the day, but the last couple of weeks have just flown by with projects coming out my ears.  Here’s what we’ve been up to:

* We added about 5 acres of pasture fencing to the farm

* We moved all the animals into one of the new pastures

* I built a new hen pen with 10 nesting boxes

* We’ve moved chickens four different times between pens

* I built a portable shade barn

* I repaired a chicken tractor we got from some friends of ours who prefer the traditional chicken coop layout

* We spent a Saturday stretching fencing and repairing/strengthening corners

* We harvested two raised beds chalk-full of sweet potatoes – I still have to do something with those

* We’ve started gathering eggs (only a few so far, but the girls are all coming into maturity so it won’t be long now before we’re getting lots of eggs every day)

* I’m currently building pastured rabbit pens for the farm so we can get our bunnies off the back porch and out with the rest of the gang

* We amended about 20 EarthBoxes and have finally got all of our fall garden planted

* I gathered about 5 pounds of fresh chestnuts, and the tree is just now starting to “shed”

* I’ve managed to squeeze in making a few wheels of cheese as well

And I know that’s not a huge list, but when you’re working alone for most of it it takes a bit longer to accomplish things.  I was delighted to have my parents here for a two-week visit the first part of September, which gave me a chance to slow down a bit and visit with them – the break was wonderful!  My baby brother is coming for a couple of weeks at the end of October as well, and our major project is going to be another fencing one –  I need to build some garden fencing in our back yard.  Iris and Guinness are still ravaging my tomato plants.  We haven’t gotten one single slicing tomato all year long – between the blight and the dogs its been a rough year for the garden!  But good, solid garden fencing will stop at least the dogs, and thankfully my brother has some fencing experience.  Good thing too, because we have between 30 and 50 holes to dig out with the post hole diggers, and anyone who knows this Georgia clay knows what kind of hellacious task that’ll be!

Nerves…about 8 months early!

You know that dream you have as a teenager – the one where you’re walking through school and everyone is pointing and laughing at you, and you suddenly realize you’ve managed to make it there with no clothes on?  And when you wake up you spend the next week bodily checking yourself every half hour to make sure you’ve actually remembered your pants.  Yeah, I feel like I’m living in that dream…sort of….

Yesterday Sam informed me that in mid-March 2011 we’re going to be a part of an environmental conference in metro ATL.  This conference is hosted by Kennesaw State University in hopes of bringing awareness to educators in regard to the sustainable, slow-food  movement that’s creeping across America.  We’re going to be hosting about a dozen educators from around the state of Georgia for a two-hour tour of our little farm in the ‘burbs.  We’re also supposed to provide a work project for them; as well as explain to them what we do, why we do it, and how it’s working out.  ***gulp***

Teachers?  College professors?  Environmentalists?  In my garden?  The one with all the weeds, and dying tomato plants, and crumbling raised beds, and bright orange Homer buckets everywhere??!!!!  Yikes!!!!

Don’t get me wrong, Sam and I are very excited to share with people (common, ordinary, every-day folks) our vision for a sustainable future right here in the ‘burbs – just come to our Sunday School class if you don’t believe me!  We’re like first-time grandparents who whip out a 400-page photo album for every stranger they encounter because they’re just so proud of their little Jimmy John, and they know the rest of the world will agree that he’s the most beautiful baby they’ve ever seen.  We love having friends come and tour our garden, and we adore showing off our rabbits, chickens, and sheep to all.  But educators?  What can I possibly share with them that will be relevant, valuable, and something they don’t already know?  What we’re doing isn’t rocket science here.  My heart is pounding just thinking about it!  I’m not an organic farmer.  I’m just a girl who names my food, and likes to make cheese and grind my own grain, and grow vegetables in my back yard without the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.  I’m not about to stop shaving my legs, or start wearing Birkenstocks and bohemian style skirts.

I’m pretty sure Sam will be doing most of the talking that day.  I’ll smile and nod my head a lot…and serve the iced tea.

Calling it a ‘mistake’ is an understatement!

For those of you who follow Our Edible Suburb blog, this will be somewhat old news, but for the rest of you, please be informed that we will not be growing heirloom seeds again…ever!

This year we made the move from hybrids to heirlooms in hopes of saving seeds for future gardening endeavors.  It was all a part of a greater plan to become as self-sufficient as possible right here in the ‘burb.  For weeks Sam and I debated as to how to go about this new phase of gardening.  We read articles and blogs written by heirloom growers.  We researched all the varieties we were interested in to see which ones were the most prolific and reliable.  And we discussed the issue to death.  Do we just start with a few heirlooms this year to see how they do, or do we commit and make the move fully?  Logic would dictate only trying a few heirlooms to see what the results are.  But we’re not always logical here at East of Eden Farms.  And this year we’re gonna pay for that error in judgment, for sure.

We planted our seeds back in early January (inside, of course), hoping the weather would cooperate with us and we’d be able to get everything out by early April.  Unfortunately, even if the weather had followed our plan we wouldn’t have been ready – the seeds took off like molasses in the dead of winter, despite the use of heat mats.  By the first of March the seedlings were barely 6 inches tall and only had a few spindly branches and some tiny leaves.  The center stems were weak and fragile.  By mid-March we suffered our first bout of wind damage for the year.  Now, that’s not the heirloom’s fault I know, but the fact that the plants were so fragile compounded the devastation.

The tiny seedlings went out into the garden the third week of April – ready or not, they had to be planted if we had any hopes of a crop.  For a couple of weeks the plants seemed to thrive in their EarthBoxes and buckets.  Several of the plants took an amazing growth spurt and we began to hope that things were going to turn around.  And then, out of nowhere, the plants started to yellow, and the leaves started to curl and crisp up.  We weren’t over or under watering.  They had plenty of good organic matter in the soil.  They were getting healthy doses of Epsom salts and organic fertilizer on a regular basis.  The soil was pest and disease free when we planted.  What was happening????  Sam attempted a rescue mission – he trimmed and pruned and snipped diseased branches.  We applied a folliar calcium spray.  We adjusted our watering and fertilizer routine.  And still nothing.  The plants continued to decay.

Then the storms started.  After three years of serious drought in Georgia, the heavens have opened up and we’ve been getting average rainfall, which feels like monsoon season, comparatively speaking.  The wind has been the most damaging though.  These fragile plants have broken and twisted and sagged.    The few plants that were producing tomatoes couldn’t take the gales and their branches snapped, despite all our careful staking and tying.

It looks like we may have enough tomatoes for ourselves, but our hopes for a farm stand seem to be disappearing as quickly as our crop.   And to be fair,  it’s not just the tomatoes that are doing poorly.  Nearly everything else we’ve planted has struggled.  Our peppers are small, and not very spicy.  Our tomatillos are sparse.  The cantaloupes are not setting fruit (this may have as much to do with the decline in the bee population as it has to do with the fact that we used heirloom seeds).  Our squash have not produced nearly as prolifically as we’d expected.  And the cucumbers have all but died.

So never again!  As disturbing as it is to us to have to rely on hybrid seeds we can’t risk the harvest because of it.  If we have any real hopes of making this farming thing work – and of providing healthy, beyond organic produce to the community we have to have a hearty, reliable, abundant crop of veggies.  So for those of you who were hoping for a CSA or a farm stand this summer, I hate to disappoint you, but I fear that any produce we have to sell will be late in the season, if at all.  But next year, I promise things will be different!  Don’t give up on us – stay tuned.

Summertime chores

I’m probably the worst blogger in the history of blogging.  Like everything else in my life, I start out great guns – good intentions – tons of ideas – lots of potential….and then mediocrity strikes.  The guns run out of ammo, the good intentions get tossed to the back burner, all my profound ideas dry up, and the potential is diverted to my next big adventure.  I think it’s A.D.D.  Really, I mean it.  What was I saying?………

As you’ve guessed from my lack of blogging, nothing new, exciting, or interesting has happened in the past ten days.  The dogs are the same as they always are.  Iris is still a poop eater, Guinness is as nosey as ever, and Dream sleeps all the time.

The garden is growing as a garden should.  I’ll have my first wax bean harvest today…if it doesn’t rain that is.  I broke out my pressure canner a few weeks ago, and unpacked a couple of boxes of jars.  Won’t be long before my mornings are spent canning up beans, tomatoes, and sauces, and my afternoons will find me squatting over gardening beds and snapping beans ’till my fingers are green!

We had some people over on Sunday for our first garden tour.  It was fun.  I don’t know if it was helpful or just overwhelming to them – we do have quite a large garden – I think it was a bit more than what they’re thinking about doing; but we’ll see.  Every good idea starts with a single seed.

In farming news, the chicks are growing like crazy.  I posted a short video clip on Our Edible Suburb blog (<===click on the title to view the video).  They’re nearly fully feathered now, and I can’t wait to get them moved out to the farm this week.  Our plan was to do that this weekend, but the weather decided not to cooperate with us, so it’ll have to be on Wednesday or Thursday.  We finished assembling the chicken tractor this weekend – in the rain no less.  And let me just add that PVC chicken tractors are not as easy to assemble as the advertising leads you to believe.  Nor are they as light weight.  Nor are they as sturdy.  Nor are they as practical.  Basically, what I’m trying to say is they’re garbage.  But cheap.  And that’s what matters in this world.

Howard and Vestal (the sheep) are doing splendidly.  We seem to be slowing down on the ear tick problems, which is good.  I felt so bad for them – some nights we’d go out to feed them and they’d have 5, 6, even 8 ticks on their little head and ears.  We found this amazing tick spray (it’s blue) at Tractor Supply (my new favorite store!) and that’s taken care of them pretty well.  The sheep look kinda funny with blue racing stripes down their back, up their legs, and on their ears, but the ticks have vanished.  Now were just being vigilant in picking them off of us every night.  Ick – I really, really, really dislike ticks.  I do not see what their purpose in the food chain is…except as bird food.

In other sheep news, we’ll be adding a third ewe to the mix in about three weeks.   Sam has found a farm up the road a piece from us that have Katahdin sheep.  That’s a ‘hair’ variety of sheep, which means they don’t have to be sheared every year as they shed their wool (like a dog sheds his fur).  We’re going to be purchasing a 3 month old female to use as breeding stock – we’ll cross her with Howard (our East Friesian – that’s a dairy variety of sheep), and hopefully come out with a dual purpose variety that isn’t as heavily woolen.  In case you don’t already know, I just love sheep.  They’re adorable, sweet, funny, and have amazing personalities.  Every day they make me smile.  If you’ve never spent much time with a sheep, you should – they’ll win your heart over every time.  I promise!

Two weekends ago was our first rabbit processing day as well.  You can read all about it on Our Edible Suburb.   It was Sam’s job to do the killing, and then I helped with the skinning and other processing.  It was a sad day, but also a purposeful day.  Sam and I both have a broad understanding of the cycle of life – we respect it very much, and strive to show that respect in the way we harvest.  I love our bunnies, but they’re not pets – they’re food.  We make sure they enjoy a good life while they’re here – they have plenty of pellets, hay, pasture clippings, water, and love while they’re with us.  We respectfully harvest them as we need to, and we thank them for their sacrifice.  I know, it sounds weird – and it is a little bit – I’ll never deny it.  We had bbq bunny on Sunday for lunch.  It was amazing, and I was so grateful to and for Floppy.  Yes, my food has names – it’s that fresh.

Well chaps and chapettes, that’s all the news that I have right now.  As I said in the opening paragraphs – there’s not much happening around here.  Just the usual summertime chores and busy-ness.  I hope your holiday weekend was as wonderful as mine was.  And I hope you took some time to remember and give honor to those for whom you owe your freedom to.  If you didn’t, it’s not to late to take a minute and do that now.  Have a blessed week!

Weekends are toast around here…

So the weekend flew by, as they always do.  I feel like I’m gonna have to go out and get a full time job just to get a break from all the work that has to be done around here!  We spent most of this weekend in the garden – you can check out some photos of our progress HERE.  We’re starting to get some produce on the vines, and I think it won’t be much longer before I’ll be spending my days alternating between the harvesting and the processing.  Lots of canning, freezing, pickling, and preserving to be done between now and winter.  I think I’ll change my name to Ant.

Hope y’all had a great and productive weekend too!

Sore, sore, and more sore…

Did I mention that I’m sore?  If not, I want to let you know that I’m really sore.  My back is killing me.  My legs are tired.  Even my stomach muscles hurt.  Why, you ask?  Simply put, I’m out of shape, over weight, and doing manual labor is a killer!

Last night was the first evening (of many to come) for us to spend out at the land working.  We had to mow.  The grass and weeds were waist deep in most parts of the pasture, and we’ve only got push mowers.  **Let me just mention here how very important it is for us to get a riding lawn mower ASAP!**  We didn’t mow much.  Just enough to get the sheep pen set up.  Friday morning, Sam and I head down to Savannah to pick up our first two dairy lambs.  Fortunately, they’re just lambs, so they won’t need a ton of space right now, so we’ll have time to continue to mow down the fenced pasture and move them around a bit each day so they can eat new forage.  I’m really excited about their arrival, but not so excited about all the work that will go into it.

One of the things that saddened me as I worked last night was the amount of trash strung out in this pasture.  Not just weeds, but odd bits of wood, broken branches from trees that were never cleared out, plastic bags, old cardboard boxes, broken watering buckets, even some old tires and scrap metal.  It’s like someone has been using this area as a personal dumping ground.  I know that there were horses and goats on this property before, and as I was picking up all the trash and debris it made me wonder what kind of life those animals had, trying to negotiate around all the crap in the field in order to eat.  That’s certainly one thing that I know our animals won’t have to contend with – I’m not a big fan of the ever-growing trash pile.  Especially not when it’s in the middle of a pasture.  I suspect we’ll be havin’ a bonfire before too much longer!

Even though I’m sore as a well digger, I’m excited about this new farming adventure we’ve embarked upon.  Being good stewards of the land is an important Biblical value to me.  Helping to teach people how to live a better life through their food is also paramount.  Enjoying the company of the animals is a bonus.  But finding a way to make a genuine difference in this world is priceless.  I hope you’ll join us!

Big decisions, small decisions

For many years I’ve heard married couples joke about who makes all the decisions in the house.  Often the joke goes something like, “I make all the small decisions and they make all the big decisions………and I let them know when it’s a big decision!”

Right now, Sam and I are facing a plethora of decisions to be made – some big and some not so big.  But of all the decisions on our plate at the moment, the hardest one involves paint choices.  Should we paint, or should we not paint?  Do we go bold and vivid, or natural and toned?  Do we paint every room a different color, or just pick a few accent walls?  If it were solely up to me, I’d probably have a different paint color in nearly every room of the house.  I think it gives the rooms personality and makes them interesting.  My beloved on the other hand thinks vanilla is an appropriate and interesting color scheme and should be maintained in all rooms of a house.

We’ve lived in our house for over two years now and we’ve I’ve painted one room – the powder room.    And Sam only agreed to that as it was a part of our basement renovation project because we had a really cool bucket sink specially built especially for that bathroom.  It was frivolous.  I’m over being frivolous….for now anyway.  However, the great paint debate is back on.

Yesterday I moved the  dogs into their new space – the part of the addition we have affectionately nicknamed “the Barn”.  We only call it that because we plan to put the rabbits out there and because the dogs were stinking up the basement too much.  Yes, I know, I know.  We spent all that money to finish the basement last year so we’d have a place especially for the dogs to live – they even have their own bathroom.  But that plan just didn’t work out so well for us.  Again, it was frivolous spending.  I told you, I’m over being frivolous…..for now.  So we added the sunroom/enclosed patio addition onto the house so the dogs and rabbits could peacefully coexist together outside the human’s living space, thus keeping their various odors and aromas away from any noses that might be more sensitive.

Anyway, I as I was scrubbing the red Georgia clay off the walls, baseboards, and out of the grout lines of the tile floors in the basement I was considering what colors I should paint the rooms around me.  I’m ashamed to say that we haven’t done anything besides white primer on the walls, and its been a year now.  Talk about indecisive.  I guess neither Sam nor I could decide if this was a big decision or a small decision, so we just haven’t made any kind of a decision.  And considering I’m going to hosting a dinner and movie night in a couple of weeks, I think its high time someone made a decision here.

So I’m asking for your help – yes you….my lone reader.  What color should we paint the walls in  our basement?  We’re thinking something peaceful and relaxing, but we’re open to suggestions.  Currently, the space is broken up into three distinctive parts – my office (aka. the Library), the media room, and now a potential larder and spare bathroom.  The carpeting is fairly dark with tones of greens, burgundy, and tan in it.  And the tile floor is a light sand color.  Here are a few photos for you to get a better idea.

My office space

The media room

The room formerly known as "the dog's room"

I’m open to suggestions here, especially since Sam and I really can’t decide on a color scheme.  Leave me a comment or two and help me to make this space livable, fun, enjoyable, and interesting.

FRESH the movie

This morning as we’re getting ready for church, Sam comes bounding up the stairs nearly giddy with excitement over a new movie that’s coming out this spring called FRESH (<—–CLICK on the name to see the official website and to watch the trailers).  The movie is a happier spin-off of Food, Inc., and after watching the previews I’m so excited for it to come out.

In the past eighteen months, both Sam and I have radically changed our way of thinking in regard to the food we eat and grow.  When we moved to Georgia in 2008 we began vegetable gardening as a way to fill Sam’s sleddog void, and for something for me to do during my days at home.  With our first plateful of truly vine-ripened tomatoes back in 2008 we were hooked, and decided we wanted to try and grow all our own fresh produce.  That began a three-year plan to become completely vegetable and fruit self-sufficient.

However, in the last year or so, we’ve become increasingly and alarmingly aware of the dangers of the rest of the foods we regularly consume.  Things like “healthy” eggs, skim and 1% milk, “trans-free” margarine, “diet” sodas and “vitamin water” mix-ins, “whole wheat” pastas and breads, “low-fat” fruited yogurts and ice creams, etc.  As we began reading labels and considering how chemically, sugar, sodium, and MSG packed our diets had become (even in the foods we’ve been led to believe were healthy for us) we began to understand our various health ailments – things like slow weight loss (and in most cases weight gain), heart palpitations, kidney problems, muscle aches, migraines, water retention and bloating, and a variety of other issues I won’t bore you with.  Suffice it to say, that Food, Inc. opened our minds and eyes to what we should have seen all along, and yet didn’t because it has been elaborately veiled from us by those who stand to make the most money off of what we’re eating.

The bottom line for us is, we’re taking control.  We’re fighting back.  No longer are we content to sit back and just shrug our shoulders in defeat.  God created this brilliant ball of green-space just for us, His creation.  And, not only did he entrust us with this magnificent rock, but He even gave us a manual for living, eating, and caring for it (we like to call it the Bible).  So we will rake and hoe the soil.  We will plant seeds and trees and care for them.  We will harvest and preserve and pickle until our fingers are green and wrinkled.  We will grow our own rabbits, chickens, and beef, and we will eat it all.  We will hunt more.  We will make our own butter, cheese, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese, clotted cream, and other dairy products.  We will grow our own grains and we will grind them and make our own breads and cakes.  And we are going to become beekeepers as well.   And we will do it all (or as much as possible) without hormones, steroids, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and in God’s timing, not our own.   We have determined to live our life as stewards of God’s creation, not manipulators of it.  I hope you’ll consider joining the revolution too.

Welcome to our sunroom!

Construction is finally finished on the addition. **cue angelic singing**  I’ve got the sunroom mostly decorated, and Sam and I are absolutely over the moon about how it turned out.  Here are a few photos.

This is the herb bench I built this winter - it fits perfectly into the new room!

The skylights let in a ton of natural light and make the room feel even larger.

My plants are so happy to be back in the sunshine...although my banana tree is looking a bit sad just now.

The "back door".

We choose to add heating and air conditioning to the space as well - for resale purposes mostly, but so far it has proven to be useful on these chilly GA mornings!

A tropical corner - a goldfish plant, a pineapple plant, an antherium, and a fig tree.

I'm going to call this narrower section the 'atrium' and I hope to fill it up with beautiful and lush plants.

Let’s talk components – laundry post, part 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, making your own laundry soap is easy, quick, inexpensive, and does not require a lot of specialized ingredients.  I will say though that getting the right ingredients is key to this soap turning out correctly.  So let’s talk a little bit about these components.

First, let’s address the issue of what kind of soap to use.

All the websites I found online have some slight variations when it comes to soap.  Really, soap choice is preferential, based on what you have and what you like.  There is a soap product specifically manufactured for making laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies called Fels-Naptha.  It’s an industrial strength soap that is very inexpensive and works very well in this recipe.  If you use Fels-Naptha you will only need to use 1/3rd of the bar of soap per batch of detergent you make, so keep that in mind when you’re considering what soap you’re going to use.

For my detergent, I choose not to use the Fels Naptha soap, simply because I didn’t want to pay $1.37 for soap when I have plenty of other soap on hand.  You see, a few months ago our local Kroger ran one of their 10 for $10 specials on Ivory bar soap (the 3-bar packages), so we picked up ten packages, thus we have 30 bars of Ivory soap lying around, so that’s what I used.

Because the Ivory soap is so mild, I used the entire bar of soap instead of just a third of the bar as I’d have done with the Fels-Naptha.   If you don’t have Ivory soap you can use whatever mild soap you do have, however I warn you, it needs to be relatively fragrance and additive free.  Soaps like Dove, Caress, and the like – those that contain lots of extra moisturizer and vitamins and minerals just won’t work for this laundry detergent.  All those additives, while great for your skin in the shower, aren’t great for your clothes, and you’ll find a filmy residue left on the clothes during the washing cycle.

You also want to steer clear of soaps that are colored, like Irish Spring and Zest.  While these soaps are inexpensive, the coloring agents that have been added to the soap to make them blue and green can stain your clothing.  So when choosing your soap, look for brands that are white in color, additive free, and have not been fortified with extra vitamins and minerals.  Again, your two best choices are Fels-Naptha or Ivory, and both are very inexpensive.  ***Side note: for those of you who make your own bar soap or who purchase homemade, all natural, and/or handcrafted soaps, such as goat’s milk soap, that will work in this recipe as well, and you’ll just need to use a whole bar per batch of detergent you make.

Next we have the Borax.  What is Borax anyway?

Borax is a white powdered substance that is naturally occurring in nature in the form of boric acid.  It sounds nasty, but really it’s quite mild.  In fact, some countries have even approved boric acid as a food additive in things like meatballs and noodles as it gives foods a nice rubbery, gelatinous texture (NOTE: the U.S. FDA has not approved this product for use in foods, so don’t go adding it to your spice rack!).   Furthermore, borax powder has been used by housewives for years as a cleaning product in laundry and other household cleaning applications.  The brand that is most common is 20 Mule Team, and has been around since dirt.  I purchased my box of Borax powder at Wal-Mart in the laundry aisle and I believe the cost was around $5.  This recipe only calls for 1/2 a cup of Borax powder so this box will last me for a good long time.  Don’t be afraid of this product even though it is an acid.  **Like any household cleaner, don’t leave it out where kids can get into it as it’s not safe for human ingestion.**

And finally, lets talk about washing soda. I don’t know about you, but before I started researching laundry soap recipes I had no idea what washing soda was.  I just assumed it was baking soda since that’s what is sold in my grocery store’s laundry aisle.  Let me assure you, washing soda is not the same thing as baking soda.

Baking soda is sodium bi-carbonate.  It’s great in baked goods, household cleansers, as a natural deodorizer, and for putting out grease fires.  Baking soda will also work as a super mild whitener, and is found in many toothpastes and dental whitening products.  You can even make a paste and put it on tile grout to help lift stubborn stains, although I’ve never really had great success with this approach – bleach works a whole lot better for me, but that’s just my personal preference.

Washing soda is also known as soda ash, and is the bi-product of burned plant materials.  It is another naturally occurring substance found in nature – especially in areas that have been ravaged by forest fires or prairie fires; hence the name soda ash.   This product comes in a white powered substance and is incredibly mild.  As a component of laundry soap the washing soda works as a whitener and freshener.

Of all the components to this recipe, the washing soda was the one product I had difficulty locating, simply because there is the misconception that it’s the same thing as baking soda.  I called every grocery store, big box hardware store, and discount super-center in my area and no one carried it.  Finally in desperation, I looked it up online and discovered it is sold on Amazon.com.  However, the shipping was three times the cost of the product, and even though this recipe only calls for 1/2 cup of washing soda and the box will last me for ages, I just didn’t feel I could justify the cost of shipping.  Luckily, I researched the product a bit further and discovered that ACE Hardware carries it.  Good ol’ ACE.  Frankly, I haven’t seen one of those stores since we left Iowa over eight years ago, so I just assumed they were out of business.  Turns out, there’s one just up the road from us.  Sweet!

Some of you might want to fragrance your laundry soap, and you can do that with the use of essential fragrance oils.   I just have one note of advice for you when you do this: read the labels on the essential oils.  Some oils are not approved for topical use and if you use those in your laundry detergent you will likely end up with a very nasty rash and have to throw out your entire batch of laundry soap.  As long as the oil is approved for topical usage you should be fine, however you might want to rub a drop or two into your skin a day or so before you make this soap, just to ensure you don’t have some kind of allergy to the oil.  Oils make a nice addition to the soap and there are a multitude of fragrances available – some lovely choices are lavender, sage, tea tree or eucalyptus, lemon and other citrus flavors, cotton, lily of the valley, apple, and hundreds of others.  You can also mix fragrances to create a unique layered scent.  Pick oils that smell nice to you, and ones that you’ll be able to live with for a while, as this recipe makes 2 gallons of soap.

The last ingredient in the soap is water.  Tap water is fine – that’s what I use.  If you have some aversion to your tap water, or if it’s very hard water, you may want to run it through a water filter or buy distilled water at the grocery store.  You’ll need about 2 gallons of water in the whole recipe and I keep a few extra gallon sized milk jugs on hand just for this purpose.

Other than that, making this soap is super simple.  If you have trouble finding any of the components to this recipe, you can purchase them from Amazon, although the cost will increase due to the shipping.  As far as the cost per load, you’re looking at about 1 penny a load with the homemade soap, versus 5 – 8+ cents a load with commercially produced soaps.  Granted, that’s not a huge difference, but in a year’s time you’re looking at about $20 –  $50 (or more) in savings (depending on what brand of laundry detergent you’re using and how many loads of laundry you do each week).  Not to mention the fact you’re no longer putting toxic chemicals on your skin or into our ground water and public sewer systems.   Plus, making your own laundry detergent is just cool!