Friday Favorite: Gardening with Mom
Yesterday I went over to my mom’s house to help her plant potatoes and to plant a few things of my own in her garden. My mom has a beautiful edible garden space which she has spent years building into a rich loamy spot, perfect for vegetables. Since the soil at Chiot’s Run is less than conducive to vegetable gardening, I grow a few things in her garden each year while I work on improving the soil and expanding my gardening space.
It’s also great to garden with my mom because we get to spend time together doing something we both enjoy doing. Being able to talk with someone else about something you enjoy with one who also enjoys it is really nice. Mr Chiots isn’t much into gardening so he puts up with it as a conversation topic, with my mom it’s what our conversations almost always end up being about.
My mom’s mom also enjoyed gardening, whenever we’d go down to visit we’d usually walk around the garden and talk about plants. I have a few heirloom plants in my garden that I got from her. Some of them went to my mom and then on to me. I wonder if any of my nieces or nephew will grow up to love gardening, it sure would be nice to have someone else to hand down some of these heirloom plants and gardening knowledge to.
Do you have someone you share a love of gardening with?
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Friday Favorite: Our Cow
I’m taking a break from the non-toxic cleaning series because – well, it takes a lot of time to write those posts and because the fact that when raw milk graces my fridge and my coffee once again it’s a source of much celebration here at Chiot’s Run.
Earlier this week, my friendly farmer e-mailed and said they could have fresh real milk for us this week. Why do we not get milk in the winter? Our farmers let their cows go dry in the winter, both for the sake of giving the cows a break, and for the sake of giving themselves a break. Lucky for us, there’s another small local dairy that offers pastured milk, it’s not raw, but it’s lightly pasteurized, the next best thing. It’s good, way better than grocery store milk, but once you’ve had good real fresh milk, everything else pales in comparison.
We dropped everything and went out to the farm to drop off our milk jars. We got to watch as the new calves were fed then our friendly farmers gave us a tour of all the pastures and told us all the cows names. I deemed this one as “The Morris Cow”. Her name is gluey and they were saying she’s homely & ugly, but I think she’s a real beauty.
Here in Ohio it’s illegal to buy raw milk, the only way it’s legal is to drink milk from your own cow. So we own a cow and we pay our friendly farmer to board her for us. We drive the few miles to the farm each week and pick up half gallon mason jars filled with rich creamy goodness. We love how the milk changes throughout the seasons depending on what the cows are eating. Fresh real milk from the farm is a true joy. It’s like most things, when you search out and have the best you really can never settle for anything less! Join me in dancing a little dance because our cups will be overflowing with fresh real milk until this coming December.
What local product are you most happy about when it’s available?
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Friday Favorite: Twist Sponges
Since I’ve been working on writing up the posts for the non-toxic cleaning series, cleaning has been on my mind, when I’m not working outside of course. My friday favorite this week had to be one of my all time favorite cleaning tools: Twist Sponges.
Why do I love Twist Sponges? First, they’re made from natural materials! The sponge side is made with unbleached, undyed white cellulose and the loofah side is, well loofah. I bought these on a whim once when I was at the health food store and fell in love. Second, they’re compostable! When the sponge is getting a little ragged around the edges, into the compost bowl on the counter it goes. Thirdly, my most favorite reason, they never get that kitchen sponge smell. You know exactly what I’m talking about, that weird smell that kitchen sponges get after only a few days of use, the one that never goes away no matter what you do, the one that clings to your hands for hours afterwards. That never with these sponges. Why? I have no idea, but I’m guessing that the natural materials inhibit molds and bacteria unlike their synthetic counterparts.
I cannot recommend the Twist products more highly, my favorite is the Loofah Sponge for scrubbing the dishes. I also have a Heavy Duty Agave Scrubber that I use on the shower stall, and a Euro Sponge and Loofah Sponge for cleaning the bathrooms. I just got some of their heavy duty scouring pads and they’re great for scrubbing the toilet and other tough chores.
Any great cleaning tools you’d like to recommend?
NON-TOXIC CLEANING SERIES
Stocking Your Non-Toxic Cleaning Kit
Learning to Love Castile Soap
Make Your Own: Foaming Soap
Make Your Own: Infused Vinegar
Make Your Own: Multi-Purpose Cleaner
Make Your Own: Color Safe Oxygen Bleach
Friday Favorite: Charlie’s Soap
Friday Favorite: Twist Sponges
and more to come
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Friday Favorite: Charlie’s Soap Powder
Since the non-toxic cleaning series is coming up soon, I figured I’d start listing a few of the products I actually purchase instead of making myself for Friday Favorites. First off we’ll start with Charlie’s Soap Powder. For the last couple years I’ve been making my own laundry detergent, grating soap, mixing it with borax and washing soda to make a powdered laundry detergent. Depending on the variety of soap I used it was great or not so great.
My biggest problem with making my own laundry detergent is finding local sources of washing soda and borax. For a while I was using lye soap bars made my a local family for my laundry detergent, but something just wasn’t right. I felt like it left the clothes slightly oily as my towels stopped being absorbent. I also found that it didn’t keep the whites white as well. I didn’t want to buy Fels Naptha soap that so many people use because of the SLS in it, so I finally decided to try a small 80 load container of Charlie’s.
It averages out to about 20 cents per load for the small container, you can buy a larger 1000 load bucket of Charlie’s which cuts the price in half. I’ll buy a bucket next, with only two of us in the house it will take a LONG time to use up such a large container.
Being very sensitive to dyes, fragrances and harsh detergents, I was wondering how my skin would react to Charlie’s soap. They claim that the soap is: Here are just a few of the benefits of using Charlie’s Soap “Contains no clays, dyes, phosphates, ultraviolet brighteners or perfumes.” I also appreciate that the detergent is safe for wool, which makes up the majority of our clothing. Since we have hard water at Chiot’s Run I’m going to order a container of Laundry Booster and Hard Water Treatment. It’s supposed to help clean clothes better by softening the water.
So far I’m very impressed with Charlie’s Soap and will be purchasing a 1000 load bucket when I use up the 80 load container I have. As much as I’d like to make my own detergent, I have found it simply doesn’t work as well with the soaps I’m using. Charlie’s makes liquid detergent as well (which I haven’t tried), I’m a dry laundry detergent kind of gal. Isn’t it funny how that’s one of those things we choose and usually don’t waver from.
Do you use powder or liquid laundry detergent?
NON-TOXIC CLEANING SERIES
Stocking Your Non-Toxic Cleaning Kit
Learning to Love Castile Soap
Make Your Own: Foaming Soap
Make Your Own: Infused Vinegar
Make Your Own: Multi-Purpose Cleaner
Make Your Own: Color Safe Oxygen Bleach
Friday Favorite: Charlie’s Soap
Friday Favorite: Twist Sponges
and more to come
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Friday Favorite: Seafood
I love seafood! Sadly, it’s difficult to find good seafood/fish here in NE Ohio. Sure I can find good seafood if I drive to Cleveland, but that’s an hour and half each way. We often end up in locations with local seafood when we travel so I eat up when we do. While we were in Florida that was the case, particularly in Key West. Our first night in Key West the friendly folks at the campground recommended Hogfish Bar & Grill; it was quite good!
Back when I requested suggestions for our trip to Florida, one of you recommended Blue Heaven. We ate dinner there on Tuesday night and enjoyed it as well. Mr Chiots got a fresh Florida lobster tail and we ended our meal with classic Key Lime. Pie.
One of the things I’m super excited about with our plans to move to Maine is the seafood. I can’t wait to buy fresh local seafood at the local farmer’s market. We’ve already looked into clamming regulations and would love to learn how to do it. I don’t have a particular kind of seafood that’s my favorite, I pretty much love any kind of fish & seafood, especially those that taste of the sea. Freshwater fish is welcome on my plate anytime too!
Is fish/seafood welcome on your plate or would you rather stick to something else?
