Like I mentioned last week, we got all of our spring/summer plantings done in our garden this month. Before the sun starts beating down and our plants start growing out of control, I thought it might be nice to do a time capsule of what our garden looks like right now. It’ll (hopefully) be looking completely different in a month!

Our garden is big enough that it’s pretty hard to capture it all in the lens of one shot. So I did what I do and took to Illustrator to draw you guys up a little bird’s-eye view of the whole plot.

Click to see a larger version

The front section of the garden (the one with the raised beds on the left, starting with the strawberries, and the tomatoes on the right) is a new addition this year. Previously, the garden ended along the garlic/melons line, but we extended it because it was pretty much unused space, and we can always plant more tomatoes!

Eventually, we’d love to transition the vast majority of the garden into raised beds, not only do we like the look of them, but we also like the maintenance—with a little bit of mulch to help retain moisture, they are so easy to take care of. But making enough nice raised beds for a 5000 square foot garden isn’t a cheap undertaking, just like with the fence, we’ll be adding some a few beds each year to help spread out the cost.

But for now, the entire right side of the garden is row crops. Which fits a ton, but makes weed control a bit tricky. We’re doing a lot of pulling, but it’s a losing battle. Ha! We’re learning a lot this year, and already have lots of plans in the works to make it easier next year. Thankfully, even though we have weeds, our veggie plants seem to still seem to be thriving.

Well, except for the carrots. They’ve pretty much just succumbed to the invaders. Come fall, we’ll plant another batch of carrots, and this time, we’ll do some serious mulching (and maybe even move them to one of the raised beds that are emptied from summer crops).

Like I said, this is just our summer garden. A lot of these will come out mid-to-late summer (like the onions, garlic and potatoes) and we’ll be swapping another batch of cooler weather crops—Brussels sprouts, cabbage, etc. We’re fortunate enough here to have a warm enough climate that we can usually get in two cooler weather growing seasons (from March-May and then again from September-Novemberish) and one nice, long summer growing season.

We have a lot of plants that are doing great, but probably our most used garden space so far this season has been our cold frame! We’ve been using this little 8′ x 4′ box of greens almost everyday for the past few months. It’s getting warm enough that things are starting to bolt—the end of green season is approaching—and I’ll be really sad when I can’t get my daily salad from the cold frame.

We’ll be back in the middle of the summer with more pictures—hopefully of big, healthy plants (without too many weeds).

What all did you plant in your garden this year?

Hey! It’s been a few months, so I’m sure you’re super over your winter background images, right? Well it just so happens I’ve got a few spring themed ones ready and waiting to grace that pretty little desktop of yours!

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I hope you enjoy our shiny new background images! As things grow and start to produce, you better believe there will be more to come!

Which one is your favourite?

One part of our little homestead that we haven’t talked much about here is our lake. At about an acre, it is actually more the size of a large pond, but we call it a lake just because it sounds more impressive.

The lake is manmade. This part of the property used to be heavy woods, but my parents had always dreamed of having a lake/pond (lond? pake?) on the property and decided to clear the land and use the natural springs to fill up a big ole hole in the ground they dug. The lake make its first appearance on the Plow during the summer after 8th grade for me. Which meant that I spent a ton of my angsty early teenage summer time clearing briars and hauling wood in 90° heat. I was not a fan of the lake at the age of 13.

But now? Totally into the lake. Not only is a pretty to look at and makes for some decent swimming (we’d love to eventually make it even awesomer for swimming by adding a beach and a dock), but it is also well-stocked with fish.

My family (and the neighbors) have been fishing on the lake for years, but have always done catch-and-release. When I was thinking about food production on the property, for some reason, it never occurred to me that—duh—we had our own little fish farm prebuilt into our property. It wasn’t until my parents were building their retirement home on the other side of the lake, and the construction workers asked if it was okay if they could catch their lunch from the lake (they caught it, cleaned it and cooked it right there on the shore!) that it really hit me—hey, this is an excellent source of responsibly raised, lean protein. And it’s within walking distance of my kitchen. And it’s cheap to raise and harvest. Much cheaper than you can buy fish for from the grocery store.

So both Craig and I have been sharpening our angling skills. I grew up catch-and-release fishing for fun, and Craig grew up catching fish for eating (as you do in Canada), but neither of us have done it for hardcore food production before. It’s a learning process. Especially the whole cleaning a fish thing. That’s a whole new world for both of us. Craig had been doing the majority of the cleaning and filleting, and he is definitely improving. Hopefully, with enough practice, he’ll eventually be able to fillet a fish with his eyes closed and a hand tied behind his back. But for now, we’ll be eating a lot of fish nuggets (which are perfect for fish tacos!).

We’d love to get to the point where we have enough fish stashed in the freezer to cover us for months at a time. When it comes to our diet, I’d say that Craig and I lean toward being pescetarian if we were forced to put a label on it. Neither of us would turn down a nice juicy cheeseburger or a pork tenderloin if someone offered it to us, but at home, we stick to a mostly fish, seafood and vegetarian diet. So having a hyper-local, consistent source of fresh fish will work perfectly for us.

Anyone else a fisherperson out there? Any tips for us when it come to fishing for production and not just enjoyment?

This year is the first time that I have ever truly enjoyed spring.

Normally spring is just that time of year that gets in the way of summer coming quicker. Once winter starts to disappear, I am jonesing for a pair of swim trunks, a gin and tonic and a streak of 90 degree + days. While I’m still looking forward to these things this year (to be honest, we’ve already started with the gin and tonics), I am okay with waiting.

Every year, spring ushers in that feeling of rebirth. New Years Day may be a new calendar year, but spring is when it actually starts to feel new. The snow turns to rain, the brown turns to green and with the arrival of the daffodils, the rest of the spectrum isn’t too far behind.

While I’ve always expressed some sense of happiness when the trees started to leaf out, mostly because the winters in Canada are awful, it wasn’t until this new year, the beginning of the first full year we’ll spend in our new house together, that I’ve been practically giddy.

A big reason for this is because even though we haven’t even lived here a year, we’ve already planted so much on this property and it’s so much fun to watch it all grow, especially now that we have our vegetable garden planted. It’s going to feed us.

Mind you, there are a lot of plants that were already on this property that are going to feed us, like the grape vine, asparagus, black walnuts, hickory nuts, blackberries, and persimmons, but they’re just as fun to watch because it’s all new to us.

But where would all of this new growth be without the weather? We’ve only had a couple unseasonably warm days, which have been wonderful for gardening, but we’ve had enough average ones that things are just slowly growing big and strong, which I suppose is a hell of a lot better than it being cold and killing everything!

The state of things weather wise has also meant that we’ve been able to wake up and pour a cup of coffee and enjoy the perfect temperatures for sitting on the front porch and watching the world get brighter and brighter earlier and earlier every day.

Not to mention it’s been perfect to drink the aforementioned gin and tonics to cap the day off on that same porch at the end of the day when the world gets darker and darker later and later. Every day.

Going from living in a small two bedroom apartment to taking care of nine acres is no joke, especially when you want to be able to “stop and smell the roses”. Despite how busy we’ve been with all of this planting and landscaping and building and jobs and all that, spring has been so amazing because we have stopped and at least smelled the black locusts.

It’s amazing because we get the chance to just watch everything happen.

And we’ll get to do so for the rest of our lives.

What do you love about spring?

Yup. We suck. We wrote this big long spiel about how things were slow during the winter and we didn’t have much to talk about. We promised we’d be back when things picked up again. And guess what? We lied. Because things have certainly picked up and we didn’t really come back.

We’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

The truth is, we started this blog of ours back last summer when life was much, much different. Craig was only working two days a week and had the other five free to work around here and write and reply to comments and talk with you guys. And I was working a full-time job and had some side projects, but still had enough time to shovel things and write about it.

Then, in January, all that changed. I quit my job (yay!) to become my own boss. Which, from a happiness standpoint was the best decision I’ve ever made, but it meant my free time went from limited to non-existent (being your own boss is hard, y’all!). And Craig landed an awesome, amazing, perfect full-time job working as a social media manager and nursery rep for a local garden center. Our work situations totally got Fresh Princed—flip turned upside down. Which in-and-of-itself wouldn’t have been enough to kill the content here, but when you add that to the general maintenance and upkeep of nine acres of land (including a 5000 square foot garden) and you’ve got the death of a blog. For the past few months, we’ve been lucky to find the time to actually mow our grass on a regular basis, let alone take time to take photos and write about it.

We love writing here. We love writing about homesteading and self-sustainability and gardening and DIY and decor. But we also love sleeping. And being able to watch the rare episode of Parks and Rec. And maybe going on a date night every once in a year or so. Something had to take a back burner, and unfortunately, it’s been writing for The Plow. Which is a total bummer, because it’s something that Craig and I both are really into. We don’t want The Plow to die.

So we’re going to recommit to bringing back the goods. Right here. Right now. I can’t promise daily posts, but I can’t promise that we’re going to try to keep you up-to-date on the goings-on here at least once or twice a week. We have so much to tell you about what these nine little acres on the rolling hills of Southern Indiana are bringing us this Spring. I can’t promise we’ll cover every single little detail (like, c’mon, do you really care about the fact that I spray painted chains for our hanging baskets yesterday?), but we will cover the big stuff (you do probably care about the greenhouse we built for less than $100). For the little, everyday stuff, feel free to check us out of Facebook, where Craig is a rockstar on posting our day-to-day stuff.

Alright, and now that I’ve excused myself out of a corner (hopefully), I’m going to give you a quick and dirty update of where we are rightthisverysecond around the place.

Craig built us a greenhouse. For less than $100. It’s awesome and helped our seedlings get off to a rockin’ start. He’ll be posting about that soon (hopefully). We can’t wait to use it to help lengthen our growing season. Fresh greens in December? Yes, please!

We built a fence around our garden. It isn’t pretty, but it does the job of keeping the deer and bunnies from nibbling on our plants. Right now, the fence is just made up of steel T-posts and wildlife netting (plus some nice cedar gates on each end). Each year, we plan on upgrading the fence a bit, until we’ve eventually built a nice, solid, attractive, wooden fence. We just don’t want to put all that cash into it in one year. This year, we splurged on the gates and hardware. Next year, we might replace all the T-posts with cedar posts. Eventually, we’ll get there.

Speaking of seedlings and garden, our whole garden is planted! Woo-to-the-hoo! We’ve already been harvesting some of the cooler weather crops—like asparagus, spinach and lettuce. We did our first plantings right around St. Patrick’s Day and have been successively planting things ever since. This past weekend, we finished up our planting for the Spring by putting in our warm weather plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. Today, in fact, is the average last frost date in our area, so we managed to get a week jump, which is exciting! We’re done with planting until it’s time to plant our late season crops toward the end of summer. Yay! My knees and back are very happy to be done with this portion of gardening.

We’ve been working a bit on Operation Front Porch over the past few weeks. We literally had nothing on our front porch last summer. Nothing. Not a rug. Not a chair. Nothing. But we really want to utilize that space (without spending a ton of money). So we put out some pillows from last year, pulled some of our plastic Adirondacks over, pulled out an old rug, whipped ourselves up some shade hanging baskets, and filled some planters with some shade plants. We also have a hammock on order that will be living in the corner of the porch. Is it exactly what we’d do with the space if we had all the money in the world? No way, but it’s a great start for almost no money. And it makes the house feel much more welcoming and we use the porch all the time now. I don’t think we sat out there once last summer (how could we, no chairs!) but we sit out there at least 4-5 times a week now.

Mowing nine hilly acres? No joke. I pretty much feel like I’m putting my life in John Deere’s hands every time I step onto the tractor. I’m only minorly afraid that I’ll end of up at the bottom of our lake pinned under Mr. Deere.

Turns out, gin and tonics are the official drink of post-yard work relaxation. I’ve drunk more gin in the past two months than I think I have in my entire life.

Kitty and Puppy say, “Hi!”

We’ll be back in a few days with more goodies!

Anyone have any good gardening/homesteading updates from the Spring this fall? Accomplished any big projects?

Happy Wednesday, friends!

When we last left you, there was talk of composting, sugaring, cold framing, fencing and seed starting and I had promised updates on all of those that I have yet to deliver and I’m sorry please forgive me I’ve been a bad blogger.

But I’m here now! Hi!

Thing is, since I’ve started my new job there hasn’t been a whole lot of daylight hours that haven’t been accompanied by some kind of obnoxious precipitation. This makes it hard to get outside things done. Which means lacking in blog post content. Here and there we’ve found a few minutes to get a little done though, so let me deliver the skinny!

First, we did get our compost unit built and it is glorious. Some of you may have seen it care of mine or Cassie’s postings on facebook/twitter/instagram/BTHR, but some of you may have not yet, so voila!

Isn’t it a thing of beauty? I’ve heard that plans are being called for and I will try my best to draw some up. Since it was free, this meant scavenging and winging it. Quasi-pallets and cut up cedar split rail and chunks of wood for spacers and screws all over the place is the gist of the material list. I say quasi-pallet because they’re like pallets, but not actually pallets. They’re pieces of live goods shipping crates.

Same genus, different species, if you will.

Taxonomy, go!

As for our sugaring efforts, I’d say that we’re pretty well covered in terms of maple syrup for the next year and a half. Unless we end up having some kind of maple syrup chugging competition. I doubt this will happen, but you never know.

I’ve done worse.

As of writing this, we have about 2 and a half gallons of syrup in the fridge waiting to be bottled with another batch a brewin’ on the stove.

SYRP4EVR.

Actually, breaking news you guys: OUR MAPLE SYRUP OFFICIALLY TASTES LIKE MAPLE SYRUP.

You may be wondering “what else would it taste like?” Well, let me explain. So far, it’s been delicious. Super sweet and amazing. But it hasn’t tasted like maple syrup. It’s just tasted like sweet and delicious. Apparently later in the season is when it really hits that typical maple syrup flavour and we have achieved that.

HUZZAH.

As far as our cold frame is concerned, it’s literally a cold frame. Functionally, it’s not. At the moment, its a couple raised beds left behind by Cassie’s parents that we stacked on top of each other to make a frame and we left it out in the cold.

By weeks end, it should have a nice layer of top soil resting inside of it and not too long after, it’ll have a couple hinged doors on top, ready and waiting for some cold crops. The most beautiful thing about the cold frame, other than early veggie production, is that it’s completely protected from animals.

The rest of the garden?

Not so much. Yet.

Actually, as we speak, there are 26 t-posts that can’t wait to have some deer fencing hung from them. Putting those posts in was a little more time consuming than we expected and because we had to come inside and watch the Hoosiers somehow manage to beat Michigan in the final game of the season, all that stands are the posts so far. Luckily I get a (from what I’ve been told, rare) whole weekend off this weekend so we’ll have plenty of time to get it done!

When we’re not celebrating 6 years of marriage, that is! Happy candy/iron anniversary to us! Actually, we don’t do the whole traditional gift thing. Last year was supposed to be wood. Instead, we gave each other sand. In the form of the beach we stayed on for a week in Florida. I think that trumps wood.

I’m sure we’ll also be doing a little transplanting too, since we’re about there with some of our starts. Well, the ones that our sweet, adorable kitty didn’t destroy. We’ve come to the realization she’s a fan of dirt. More than I’ve ever experienced with another cat. Seed starting next year is going to have to be done a little differently. As in, in a different building where the kitty doesn’t have access to.

A greenhouse, perhaps? Sounds perfect. Let’s do it!

Now, I promise that I will be back very soon with some more in depth info regarding our goings on. I just wanted to let you guys know that we haven’t forgotten about you all and that we still love you like whoa.

See you soon!

How are your gardening efforts going? What kind of content would you like from us on the gardening front?

Oh, hello friends! It’s so nice to see you! Have you been wondering where we’ve been? Where we’re currently at in our preparations for the year ahead? Well sit back and relax while I share a little.

Let’s start off with the former, shall we?

Now, most people who live in colder weather climates tend to take vacations to somewhere warm and sunny during the winter months, right? It’s just that whole idea of reminding yourself that warmth still exists and that it’s going to be back at some point. It gives you a chance to get away and regenerate a little to get motivated for spring.

Well, we did the exact opposite and went to Canada.

In February.

The coldest month of the year.

Now, if Porter Airlines wasn’t offering such a good deal on tickets (buy one, get one free), we’d have stayed put, but given the huge shift in our lives monetarily with Cassie leaving her job, we couldn’t pass up the deal for a chance to see my family while we still had a little extra cash in our pockets. Even if we had to risk -40 degree weather, which on at least one day we were there it got very close at -36 with the wind chill.

It may have stopped us from breathing properly, but it didn’t stop us from having a ton of fun! We stayed with my brother and sister-in-law and had a chance to spend a lot of time with the two of them and my niece, Emma, playing in her play room, watching cartoons, and going out for coffee with her.

We managed to spend a little time with my nephew (pictured below with a sweet gift wrap mask-beard) as well, going 5-pin bowling for his 10th birthday (!).

It was there, at Mario’s bowl in Thunder Bay, Ontario, that Cassie tried both 5-pin bowling and poutine for the very first time. The verdict? She loved both.

It’s nice, though, to spend as much time as possible being an uncle and aunt when you live 1000 miles away and only see them once a year. You want to make sure that they remember you fondly, you know?

We also had a really nice spaghetti dinner at my parents’ house and we got to see my grandmothers. My parents even left the place decorated for Christmas just for us!

The picture is of my dad’s kitschy, colourful basement decor. The main level of the house was my mom’s canvas which ended up looking a lot more traditional.

On the Sunday, there was (of course) a Superbowl party at my brothers that came with way more food than necessary, not to mention a nice, crisp (Canadian) $20 bill that went my way at the end of the game. I still don’t know how I won it, but I did and that’s all that matters! I think that $20 went toward paying for lunch the next day at a local juice collective/restaurant called The Growing Season. Awesome little place. They even sprout their own grains right there!

On our last day there, my brothers and I had some beer and recorded a cover of the Incubus song Mexico. If you care to listen, it’s embedded at the bottom of this post! It’s the first time I’ve really sung in front of anyone and the first time recording.

That night, we all went out for an awesome meal at Lot 66, a restaurant owned by my sister-in-law’s sister’s husband (mouthful). If you ever make it to Thunder Bay, you have to go. We had all kinds of seafood deliciousness and some local beer from Sleeping Giant Brewing Co. It was a nice, relaxing way to end our trip up there.

After six days up in the great white north, we were starting to feel a little home sick and wanted to get back to our animals and surprisingly enough, get back so we could start getting ready for spring. I think what happened is that by going to a colder environment in the middle of winter, we were able to come back to our warmer climate and be reminded that spring is going to come a lot more soon down here in southern Indiana than it would up there.

By about a month.

Despite the fact that it’s still winter and snow is currently falling here, things are beginning to pick up around the Plow.

Over the next couple of weeks before I start my new job, we’d like to tackle getting the garden officially planned out, putting up the fence, getting our compost area ready and build a cold frame, so you can look forward to posts about all of that. We’re already done round one of starting our seeds for all of the cold weather plants (onions, kale, leeks, broccoli, etc.), with a couple more rounds to go with the others.

Sookie even helped!

She also brought to our attention how much she likes to play in the soil, which prompted me to build this amazing barrier to keep her out of our starts.

Look at her sitting down there, waiting.

Plotting.

Something we’re extremely excited about is that after a little hiccup with shipping issues, we’re not only in possession of our sugaring equipment but we’ve already begin tapping and draining some sugar maples. In fact, there’s a pot boiling away on the stove right now, so I’ll have a little more on that in the coming days as well!

For now, we’ll just keep on plantin’, sugarin’, plannin’, and buildin’ so that we have all kinds of fun stuff to tell you guys about!

Thanks for sticking around during the slow period and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Fancy restaurants? Breweries, please.

Expensive bottles of wine? Moderately priced bottles of beer, thanks.

It’s tough to imagine any of you have been able to avoid learning that we love our beer, and I’m not talking 30 packs of domestic nonsense. I’m talking wide range of flavours, all over the board and a couple new varieties every week.

That kind of love.

I wouldn’t call us connoisseurs. It’s still tough for us to use words like “crackery” or “medicinal” and talk about the gravity of a brew, but we’ve taken a decent amount of steps around that block– in terms of quantity, anyways. Quality? Well, I tend to love most beers I drink, so I think it’s safe to say my palette isn’t very refined.

Yet.

I do, however know a really great beer when I taste it. The rest of them just tend to be plain ol’ drinkable.

Regardless, we’d like to get into the whole home brew side of things. It’s just another one of those paths to self sustainability because let’s face it, beer is a necessity and we need to start making our own.

We’ve actually been extended an invitation to learn the ropes at a local brewery that seems to be just getting their feet wet with the whole distribution side of things. A big thank you goes out to Jacquie over at Haw Creek Brewing Company in Hope, Indiana for the invite. Hopefully we can make it up there soon and get the ball rolling!

Home brewing was actually a plan a couple of years ago when we decided, after gifting a home brew kit to Cassie’s father, that we wanted to buy our own. I just never got around to using it. I did, however, decide to use it a few of weeks ago when we were on our holiday break.

That didn’t go well.

Not only were the ingredients expired I discovered that the “keg” was made of one of the worst plastics you could use, and since the brew would be fermenting in there for a couple weeks +, we’ve decided to ixnay that plan.

So! We’re researching alternatives.

Since we’re beginners, obviously we want to go small. I have no doubt we’ll want to expand later, but for now, we want to do a one brew at a time kind of thing ’til we get the hang of it. Thus far, I’ve been looking at Midwest Supplies for ideas and haven’t been able to decide whether it’s better to go with glass or PET plastic. Stainless steel and wood are also options, but for beginners, it sounds like glass or plastic are the way to go.

We’d like to avoid plastic all together, but after some reading, it seems PET is pretty safe and the PET equipment they make for brewing seems to be fairly streamlined. The glass would be the ultimate, but I’ve also read that glass is a lot harder to clean than the PET, requiring some bleaching, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

So the struggle here is plastic equipment versus bleach cleaning.

I haven’t been able to find much on safe beginner brewing, so if anyone out there has any information, that would be really great!

For the pros and cons of everything from fermenting to bottling, yeasts to carbonation, and brew pots to airlocks, this seems like a really great pro/con resource to refer to. Being beginners, we really don’t care about the clarity of our beer, so it’s nice to hear that you don’t have to clear (transfer during fermentation) because it saves a lot of money on equipment and time that goes into the clearing and the sanitizing of extra equipment.

As an extra part of my research, I decided to finally get my collection of bottles out of totes and on display, so here’s a picture of all of the different beer we’ve bought and tried over the past year or so. Of course, all of the beer we’ve had at restaurants and breweries aren’t up there, so we’re missing quite a few, but as far as store bought goes, they should all be there! This ultimately just serves as a reminder, since I haven’t kept notes, on what we really enjoyed and what wasn’t really worthy of a second purchase.

If anyone has any suggestions on good places to do some further research, buy supplies, etc. or if you just have some tips and tricks when it comes to getting started, that would be greatly appreciated! Also, don’t be afraid to share some of your favourite beer that you’ve had. We love recommendations! It makes it a lot easier when we’re at our local liquor store and are completely overwhelmed with choices.

Salute!

Seriously, what is the best beer you’ve ever had?

Okay.

So.

This isn’t really a recount of our weekend as much as it is a continuation of the detergent discussion from last week. My apologies for the lack of pictures.

Remember when I told you guys all about the Dr. Bronner’s dishwasher detergent recipe? I did so because at first, it was working for me and it was super safe compared to other detergents. If you didn’t notice, I also came back a couple times with edits because I started having issues with it. Since I would like to continue with Dr. Bronners, I have resulted to washing dishes by hand because I seem to get a better handle on the outcome of the cleanliness of the dishes.

That being said, I’d just like to say two things:

1) I apologize for all of the dish detergent talk. I just feel like a lot of you might actually care about this and I now feel a duty to get this right.

2) This is all a complete pain in the ass.

Especially when I come across something like this.

Go ahead. Look up the cleaners you use. See for yourself. The Environmental Working Group has compiled an amazing database of all of the cleaning supplies we western hemisphere folk use on a daily basis and have given us the skinny on each product. You’ll be fascinated to find out that a lot of your “green” cleaners aren’t all that safe at all.

Before I came across this site, I was starting to lean toward giving up. I was beginning to think “is this all worth it?” Well, when I see that the “green” dish soap I’d been using has received an F grade based on the harmful chemicals within the mix, yeah, I kind of feel like it’s worth it. I kind of feel like the bit of grit or film left on the dishes is a much better alternative than possible cancer causing substances or reproductive effects.

So, since my old home made mix was leaving dishes feeling gritty and the new was leaving a film, where was I to go from here?

Well, since studies (snore) say that dishwashers are actually more energy efficient, water friendly and sanitary than doing dishes by hand, I figured that since I stuck with it for over a month, I should try the old home mix again. The one that was also hardening in the dispenser.

I realized that if I have to open the door a third of the way into the process and simply loosen the detergent that’s stuck, that minor inconvenience is nothing compared to the possible side effects of what I’m “cleaning” my dishes with on a regular basis. To attempt to combat the grit that was being left on the dishes, I put some vinegar in the second compartment and vinegar in the rinse aid as well and it seems like it actually helped.

Where the Environmental Working Group is concerned, there is some hope for those of you not interested in making your own dish detergents.

These are the ones that received an A grade.

This does not necessarily mean they’re 100% safe, but they’re a hell of a lot safer than most, considering there’s a total of, oh, 8 out of 256 that received the A, only 4 of which are for your dishwasher. After going through the list, it seems the The Honest Co. auto dishwasher gel, free & clear appears to be the best one in terms of the least possible adverse effect on your health and that of the environment. It is not certified green, but that seems to be the only downside.

There’s an obvious grain of salt to be taken with all of this. When considering possible cancer causing chemicals, it’s tough because you hear that just about everything has the possibility to cause cancer these days and nothings really 100% proven. It all seems to be based on tests that result in a “likelihood” of certain outcomes. It’s ultimately up to you to wade through the data and weigh the pros and cons and figure out what’s right for you. I just wanted to be able to provide you all with a really great tool to do so.

This is going to be the next direction that we lean, staying on the Dr. Bronner’s train but abandoning any of the fragrance additives. As you can see, there’s hardly any concern at all with Dr. Bronner’s. As I’d mentioned last Monday, we’ll be using Bronner’s for more than just dishwashing. We’ve actually been using it mixed 50/50 with water for a foaming hand soap already, which works great. We’ll also make an all-purpose cleaner and give it a try for laundry detergent. I’ll be back to let you know how that goes, but I promise I will make it short.

In addition to cleaning supplies, the EWG also has pages for cosmetics and purchasing good food on a tight budget. The cosmetics one is especially interesting because they not only go over makeup and the such, but toothpaste and lip care as well, so check that out.

Also worth reading is the EWG’s FAQ page for any questions you may have about how they end up with the results they do.

I know I’ve read enough that very soon you’re going to see a post about the complete overhaul of the chemical situation in this house.

Have you made any kind of conversion to home made/safe cleaners? How have you fared?

Happy Monday, friends!

As Cassie told you last week, things around here are moving fairly slow right now. Most of what we’ve been working at is fine tuning our budget and assessing and testing what kind of stuff we’ll be able to produce at home and what we’re still going to need to shop for.

If you remember from the beginning of December, I made a gift post about home made dishwasher detergent. Well, we’ve been using that for the past month and I’d like to post an update about it.

I’ve been having issues with it.

The biggest issue is that when I pour the mixture into the dispenser, if there’s even a tiny amount of water, it reacts with it and ends up hardening. This means that at least half of the loads I do aren’t being properly cleaned because most of the soap is still stuck in the dispenser. Also, as mentioned by one of the commenters, the dishes were slowly starting to feel a little gritty from what I assume to be calcium build up from water that’s a little hard.

So, I searched out a new recipe. Something with a little more soap to it. Again, we wanted to avoid borax, so this weekend I searched for mixtures using Dr. Bronners Castille soap and once I found one I could try out by using ingredients we already had, I whipped up a batch.

After doing a couple loads with it, I am definitely happier than the previous mixture. If any of you gave the old one as a gift, it does work, you just have to make sure the dispenser is completely dry before you pour it in an that you’re treating for hard water. With this Castille soap mixture, it’s a liquid, so you don’t have to worry about it getting trapped in the dispenser at all!

The beautiful part about Dr. Bronner’s is that it’s made from vegetable oils, so it’s 110% safe. People use it for toothpaste and mouthwash even!  I’m going to make up a batch of household cleaner with it and once our laundry soap runs out, we’ll use it for that as well. It’s an extremely versatile product that you should definitely check out.

If you head over here, they’ve answered a bunch of questions you may have if you’re not familiar with it.

Cleaning supplies aside, there are a lot of foods Cassie’s been working on.

In fact, at the moment she has a bowl of whole milk on the hearth making it’s transition into yogurt (well, she did while I was writing this). If you read her blog, you know we’ll be getting a gallon of whole milk every week in our CSA for just these reasons. Last week she used it to make mozzarella cheese and a Scandinavian boiled down whey cheese called gjetost (pronounced YAY-toast by Americans, yed-OOST by Scandinavians). It’s a very interesting flavour. Highly recommended.

Something else that’s highly recommended and food related is Baker Creek and Seed Savers for all of your garden seeds. I mention them because of an exciting precursor to more happening around here: we’ve received our garden seeds! All 564,000 packets, because we’re planting a garden on the bright side of the moon, which we’re definitely over about our future garden and can’t wait to get to planting!

Who’s with us?

This weekend also found us down at New Albanian for the first of the twelve date nights Cassie has planned for us. This first one was to be planned around one of IU’s men’s basketball games and she had me choose the date, so I chose what I imagined would be the best game we’d be playing in January: against Minnesota. Guess what? It was definitely one of the best so far this season and such a great time. I even discovered a new favourite beer, one of the best I’ve ever tasted: St Bernardus Abt 12.

If you like beer, also highly, highly recommended.

Something not recommended? Taking pictures with an iPhone in low light.

I have a lot of recommendations today, by the way. I hope you’re paying attention, because the next one has to do with your feet.

This new job I’m starting prompted the purchase of new footwear. Since I’ll be in a fairly wet environment with potentially heavy objects about, I figured some waterproof, steel-toe shoes would be the best choice. I also figured that since I love my winter boots from them so much that I should invest in a pair of shoes made by Keen.

Guys, I can’t recommend this company enough. After working for 5 years, 8-10 hours per day on concrete floors and trying to find the right shoes, I think I’ve finally found them. They’re extremely comfortable and since I’ve started wearing them, I think I’ve also discovered that my feet are wider than the average pair and that it must be the reason I was having such a hard time finding shoes that fit me properly before. One of my favourite things about these shoes is that they give my toes room to splay and not bunch up so unnaturally like most shoes do.

But that’s a whole other topic for a whole other time.

The point here is that these shoes are amazing and I think I’m turning into a Keen convert.

A Keenvert, if you will.

One last bit of information is that I’ve been doing some research on home brewing beer and I know that a couple of you are involved in this kind of thing, so stay tuned for a post about where my research has taken me because I’m going to love your feedback on this. Most specifically, the best equipment to get started with in terms of glass vs. PET plastic.

As is customary lately, I leave you with some adorable.

EDIT: I just had a load of dishes come out filmy and have discovered that the acidic vinegar in the second compartment may be canceling out the basic Dr. Bronners, will update after further tests without the vinegar.

EDIT #2: Dr. Bronner’s “Sal Suds” does contain SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulphate) which is the ingredient in toiletries and cleaners you want to avoid, so be sure to steer clear of that and stick with the regular 18-in-1 Castille soap.

EDIT #3: The second load of dishes came out even filmier. For the time being, I’m going to have to do them by hand with the Dr. Bronners. This seems to avoid the residue being left behind.