detergent / dishwasher / homemade / recipe / soap

Greening Your Dishwasher

So a little more than a year after moving in and rearranging our kitchen to make room for a dishwasher, it is finally up & running. And I sure am loving it. I have lived without a dishwasher for most of the past 4 years and I really thought that maybe I wouldn’t use it much once I had one – WRONG! With all the baking I do now I still have quite a few things to hand wash but it is very nice to just put the rest of the dishes right in there and have it all done for me. However, I was a little worried about how environmentally friendly this was going to be so I thought I’d do a little research. Please see the links to my sources thoroughout. Apparently, if your dishwasher is more than 10 years old it is worth investing in a new one. The energy cost of running such an old machine is prohibitive. One article I read mentioned possibly donating an old machine. In my opinion it would be much better to call someone who will cut it up for scrap and find uses for the motors, fans, etc. Our dishwasher

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bread / homemade / questions

Breaking Bread

Unfortunately I’m not referring to socializing or dining when I say “breaking bread”. I’ve finally turned out two good batches of homemade bread and plan to stop buying the store bought stuff all together. There are a few problems though. First, my hubby noted that the bread, although soft, is very crumbly and therefore is hard to eat while driving or even while sitting and reading a book as I like to do on my lunch break. We both end up with crumbs all over the place.Second, we tried to use this bread in place of a hot dog bun, which we usually do with store bought bread. I’ve found buns usually go stale before we use them. This bread just broke right in half instead of folding nicely around the hot dog. Now I’m sure I could come up with a recipe for homemade hot dog buns but unless they freeze well, we would never use them in time. The final problem, again related to the bread’s form, was found this morning when I pulled a couple pieces out of the bread bag I had reused. They broke in half just from that. What a mess!As I said, this

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updates

I’m Back! I’m Back!!!

Yay! Although I have been actively lurking (if that makes any sense) I haven’t been ready to jump back in to blogging until now! Things were so crazy all summer planning the wedding and then playing catch up. I started making a list everyday of 3 or 4 things I wanted to get done that day and updating here finally made the list. I spent most of the time making the new banner at the top and updating the sidebar but I just wanted to post quickly and let everyone know that I’m back!! Look for a more compelling post soon.

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factory / farming / harvest / pickles / processing / truck drivers

Pickle Farming – Part 1

Yesterday I was lucky enough to head out to the beach with a friend for the first part of the day. My fiance, Brian, was working for our friends that grow pickles so when I got home I decided to go ride in the semi with him. He was driving a semi with doubles behind it. That means it has 2 separate trailers behind it. The whole rig from front bumper to rear hitch is 70′ long. The set of 2 trailers is also known as “trains”. They aren’t too hard to drive but they are very tricky to back up. Brian drove the same setup for 4 years at an excavating company so he does great with them. I’m so proud of him! 🙂 Anyway, enough bragging, on to the story of pickles… Pickle farmers try to schedule their planting so that they know exactly what day the pickles will be ready to harvest. If it is 90 degrees and humid out the pickles can grow very fast. They can be too small to pick in the morning and too big to pick at night. Our friends had a 30 acre field ready to be picked on Saturday and

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baby / gifts / green / organic / seventh generation

Green Baby Shower Gift Basket

Okay I have a million new things (okay maybe a dozen) to post about. The majority of our wedding invitations are mailed out so I can start to relax again and get out of lurker mode. For those of you who don’t know we are getting married August 23, 2008. I graduated from college the first week of June and took my board exams a couple weeks later. Then I started working full time and planning the wedding! All I ask is that for those of you who do read this blog please hold on a little longer. I plan to revamp the design here when I get a chance. Originally I wanted this blog to center around the farm and what Brian & I do as a couple. Now that I am finding more and more great blogs that I enjoy reading I think I am going to change the angle here to be more from just my point of view and discuss the things that I feel are important. Of course the farm happenings will still be incorporated since they are a huge, wonderful part of my life. Anyway, I enjoy learning and reading more about how to

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blueberry bushes / compost / flour / local / planting / recipe / rhubarb / to-do lists

Independence Days Update

1. PLANT SOMETHING: Some of my watermelon plants are coming up now. I planted three different kinds of cucumbers: one for slicing, one for pickles, and lemon cucumbers. I also planted my six little blueberry bushes in front of the house. One of them is mysteriously missing now and since ordering season is over for them I guess I’ll have to get another one next year. I have a feeling that the puppy must have dug it up but I couldn’t find it anywhere in the yard. What a bummer. On a good note, the potato plants that were accidently run over with the rototiller are coming back up again. I’m not sure if it is the same stems or new ones so hopefully it didn’t hurt the yield too badly. At least we’ll have some! 🙂 2. Harvest something. Not much ready right now. Next year I’ve got to plant some lettuce! My gooseberry plants have some pretty big berries on them but I don’t think they’re quite ready yet. I guess you could say we are harvesting hay because that is stockpiled feed for our animals all winter. We got 85 good bales off before a hailstorm hit

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berries / flour / heirloom seeds / independence days challenge / local / planting / shampoo bars

Independence Days Here on the Farm

I decided to join the Independence Days Challenge so here is my first post about it: 1. PLANT SOMETHING: Well let’s see… already this year I have planted carrots, onions, bush beans, pole beans, snap peas and sugar peas, potatoes, and tomatoes. The seeds all came from Baker Creek Seed Co. and are heirloom varietes. The tomatoes plants came from a small greenhouse at a local farm but I’m afraid they shipped them in from somewhere else. I tried to start my own tomatoes from seed but I killed them – better luck next year I guess. The potatoes came from another local greenhouse. They do come from out of state but the family personal selects them and brings them home every year. Everything mentioned above has been planted for atleast a week now. Oh I also planted sunflowers (heirloom), and some raspberry, black currant, and gooseberry bushes. Today I got the dward blueberry bushes that I ordered. Tonight my fiance rototilled another section of the garden one last time and we spread a thick layer of composted hay over the top. I planted 3 different varieties of watermelon in hills in this new section. I also finished mulching the

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carrots / frost / fruit trees / garden / memorial day / mulch / onions / raspberries

One Day Weekend

After interning Friday and Saturday and picking up an afternoon shift driving carriages on Sunday, I was very ready for Monday to arrive. It seems kind of sad to me that more people don’t recognize what Memorial Day is really about. I am proud of my relatives that fought for this country and when we have kids I want to take time and explain to them how important that is. This year we didn’t do anything special and like of lot of other people we took advantage of an extra day off to get a lot done around the farm. Here is a before picture of a little spot on our sideyard. There are a few big pine trees along with some large rocks and our Centennial Farm sign sits right in front, facing the road. Our garden ends just a few feet to the left of this picture. I needed a good place to plant my raspberry bushes and since this area needed a little sprucing up I decided to “kill two birds with one stone”. We don’t have any hedge trimmers (I added them to the wedding registry list 😉 ) so I used a hand saw and

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centennial / farming / fruit trees / gooseberries / pears / potatoes / strawberries

Gooseberries and Currants

I’ll just make a quick update here before I have to leave. On Mother’s Day I went with my Mom to a nursery and purchased about $120 worth of plants. Here is a breakdown of what I got: 2 Gooseberry bushes ($8 each) 2 Black Currant bushes ($8 each) 3 Red Heritage Raspberry bushes ($4.50 each) 2 Himrod Green Seedless Grapevines ($6.75 each) 1 Bartlett Pear tree ($22) 1 Harold Pear tree ($22) 1 Dozen Red Seed Potatoes ($1.83) 25 Earliglow Strawberries ($11) 25 Jewell Strawberries ($11) So far I have only planted the Gooseberries and Black Currants. Both thrive in a colder, shader area and can stand up to a North wind so I planted them on the North end of our shop. I mulched them heavily and they seem to be doing well so far. I’m waiting to plant the pear trees until we pull a few stumps around the yard to make more room. Hopefully I can get everything else in this weekend! The plan is to use edible plants as much as possible thoroughout our landscaping. I just am not motivated to work on plants that I can’t eat! I’ll have more on this later…

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