Just another Day on the Farm

Farmgal’s Garden Coffee Scented Scrubby Soap..

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Ok, it was still a bit soft when it came out of the molds today, but I am very pleased, I have never redone the batch ones its been set in the mold, so while I can see that I could have used a bit more banging up and down on the muffin molds to make sure all air bubbles are out, overall I could not be more pleased..

So in the end, I made six jumbo soap cupcakes, 3 stayed huge, and 3 where cut in half, leaving me 3 nice size rounded soaps, 3 rounded but topped with the coffee bean and six regular bars of soap with a awesome pretty little top on them..

They came out lighter in color then i expect from what I had read on line but I think its because I used lard as the base (which makes a nice hard white soap) where the others were using olive oil (many soapers don’t want to use animal fats as they say they won’t sell as well) so I figure that is what lightened mine up, but its also very possable that it will be much darker by the end of the cure?

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Coffee garden soap | 5 Comments

Coffee Garden Soap with Recipe

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Now, I have made this basic recipe without the coffee grounds and it turned out well and so I have no reason to believe that it won’t do so this time as well.. I will keep you updated and post photos of the soap. remember your safety working around lye.. gloves, glasses and be careful!

Garden Coffee Scrubby Soap by Farmgal

16 oz of lard
6 oz of safflower oil
6 oz of sunflower oil
4 oz of Sweet Almond oil
10 oz of coffee
3/4th cup of freshly ground coffee grounds (started from joels amazing coffee beans)
4.2 oz of lye

Follow all the regular rules of making CP soap, make sure your oils are within 10 degree’s of each other, and I am using a blender stick method, all gear is for soaping only, nothing that is reused for food etc.

This soap will take a min of six weeks to fully cure, but it should be hard enough to cut at the 24 hour marke, it should make a fairly hard bar but of course the longer it cures the harder it wil be and the longer it will last.

Costs break down to 3.97 for a 2 pd loaf of soap, which gives you 8 4 oz bars of soap at 49 cents per bar, I don’t know about you but I have seen coffee garden soap go for as much as 4 to 5 dollars per bar of soap. This is certianly more reasonable in price provided you can use the rest of the oils/lye for other soap making thoughtout the year etc.

This should come out as a light/med brown soap with black speckles, it should be good for garden hands, but also in the kitchen for removing fish or onion/galic smels.

Weds Photo Walk around..

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Clean sheet tonight, love it, its high double digits today with a good breeze, things are drying out in two hours flat, and the guest beds are in need of a good spring washing.

Look at all the baby elder’s that have self-seeded out, going to let them grow up a good bit before digging them out and transferring them to new places and give some away for the ottawa food forest. This is just one patch of them, I think I have at least 40 to 50 of them.

So busy rooting, didn’t even look up to say hello yet..

Got to the raised beds, and I see that the pea’s and beets are up..

Rhubarb growing well, my mints are starting to come up, I know this because I stepped at the wrong spot, up came the wonderful scent of fresh mint! and look at this massive almost foot and half wide of beebalm plant coming! or now that I am in the house, I can’t remember which row this was taken in, so its either a wild violet or a beebalm?

Posted in gardens | Tagged beet seedlings, drying on a cloths line, Fresh line dried bedding, garden pigs, pea's early spring, Spring Cleaning, Spring plants | 5 Comments

Kemit the Garden Plow Piglet..

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

Piggy Foot Care-Miss Rooten Tooten

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Boy do I have a “small” issue, you see from this photo, that is very clear that tooties needs her little feet trimmed, now the piggy book says once a year is good for trimming, so I am not behind on this as she is not even a year old yet! She turns one year old in June, towards the end of june, but I will need to double check to get her birthday date.

Still I can tell by looking at them, they need just a little work on them.. the real question is how? We tried to lift her and carry her like we did with kermie and it was a real fight, so it was in fact easier to let her go into her blue barrel, lift it and bring it and her in the wheelbarrol to the garden for the season, but I have got to the point, I can pet her and she hold perfectly still while doing so and that she will take a treat gently from my hand but touching her legs or feet is still a no at this time..

I have to make a choice, do I go out daily for the next weeks and work on clicker training her to let me have her feet and then slowly, ever so slowly work on a snip here and there and hope that over the next few weeks to months that I can get all four feet trimmed up, and hope that by the end of it, I have a stronger bond even if I have needed to put in many hours to get there..

Or do we do it like you would taking of a bandage.. fast, and quick.. feed her, grab her and flip, hold, listen to the piggy screams of you are killing me (so not) and have it all done in under a min per foot.. its a five min done and done.. and then I have a whole year to remind her that I bring the food, water, pats and cookies..

I know, I know, everyone is going to say.. of course set aside x amount of time per day and teach her to give her feet etc.. but gotta say that both have their strengths and their downsides..

When it comes to the big pig, its a bit easier, you just bribe her up on to the boards of her pen with cookies, one can feed her, while the other trims.. done and done, cause without a stock crate, there is no way you can make her do anything of the sort.. but the difference is that Miss Piggy is a much more calm and steady temperment.

So anyone out there got a mini-pig, and what do you do.. is it worth the time to teach the lift and give me the foot, I know that they are very smart and will remember a slight, so that play’s into it as well..

Posted in Critters | Tagged Foot care on the farm, Trimming Pigs feet | 4 Comments

Making Leather.

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

i have certainly showed enough photos of making pelts but don’t think that is the only choice by any means, I am currently turning a full size sheep pelt into a very nice size peice of leather, now, lamb leather would be very fine indeed..

This is photos showing the hair at the slip point.. Will keep you posted on how the rest of the process goes..

Posted in Carfts an Hobbies, Life moves on daily | Tagged home tanning, making sheep leather, rawhide, Slip on a wet rawhide, using what you produce on a small farm | Leave a comment

Lamb Kabobs on a open fire…

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

So good it made DH go all cave man on it lol..

Posted in Lamb Recipes | Tagged lamb kabobs | 2 Comments

Plot #14 – Barley Seeded..

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

My main garden is huge, and so for the sake of planting its devided into plots, each plot is 64 square feet, currently, which makes the pig working pen, because it just makes things easier to do it this way at the moment..

Pig worked..

Finished working by me, and then hand seeded out with whole barley (which had been pre-soaked for 24 hours before being seeded out)

compost from our four year old barn pile (this has sheep, pig and chicken/duck/rabbit in the mix)

close up of the compost.. ah, black gold!

A light half inch covering of compost on top of the seeded out barley and that plot is good to go!

Updates to follow on sprouting time, harvest etc..

Posted in gardens | Tagged barley green cover, Garden | 5 Comments

Gueana Fowl Nests -what a Mess :)

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

I have to laugh, I could not help but notice that my G-Hens have had no interest what so ever in regular nest box’s and if they are going to lay, they have been all over the place..

So when they were moved, they had a great lovely shelter with lots of sleeping bedding and I have successfully had ducks use this area as nesting but again, nothing much was shown in way of interest.. hmmm

So I hit the net and in a nut shell, they like a small dark hidden nest in thickets, where they can look out but not easily be gotten into.. ok, how to make this happen, was the question..

Spring pruning to the rescue, now I know that this area looks like it was just thrown together, it in fact took me an hour to make, set up the roof, and weave these branches into a form of a teepee, some went up and some went down, and a few go across..

I finally stepped back after running of branches and took the photo and then closed the pen and the nens ran over to check it out.. they chirped and peeped and stuck heads in.. and then ran to the back and went to the nest area and looked out..

Ah, sweet success at first blush.. now Dh is making me a 3 inch L ledge that will go on the inside, so that the eggs can’t be rolled out and lost and hopefully those girls will get busy filling the nest with eggs and a month later we will have keets joining the farm.. If I can swing it, I will be trying for two clutches over the season..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged homemade natural bird nests for the farm | 9 Comments

Finally found a reasonable cost for Aerator for my personal gardening..

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Just another day on the farm

Without a doubt one of the best seminars at the permiculture seminar was the seminar on how to use a aerator to create billions of live mircos to be used as a living compost tea..

I enjoyed it, took pages of notes and then went and googled prices, and I figured at a min, I needed to spend around two hundred dollars to get the set up done. That is where I have been for a bit now..

That is a lot of money for something that sounds great but I have experance in, something that could or could not work for me, something that NO one I talked to or asked, had any personal information on.. it was just this book or that website..

Which menas not only would I be flying solo on my own to make it work but I would be also finding my own way on how to use it for the plants, I can buy alot of proven garden things.. but still the idea of it niggled in the back of my mind, and its rolled around and around..

And then today, I jumped up and yet YA! I found something called a Mino-O-Life Aerated Bait bucket in a fishing supplies catalog.. for wait for it.. 26.94, everything I need included and I can pick it up in person in ottawa..

It will only make a limited amount of fertilzer per batch but as each batch only takes 3 days from start to finish and using it, this system would allow me to make two batches per week, and with 8 batches per month, over the season, I will have data and info for sure on if its worth it or even needed for our own farm uses to go bigger..

This little kit if it will do the job is perfect for all the smaller home gardeners, I will for sure off reviews and test data over the season..