Frost Advisory!

I can tell the seasons are definitely changing in our neck of the woods. The trees are becoming more colorful, the tomatoes are finishing up (yay!), the days are getting shorter and the farmer's are beginning the big harvest. Top that off with our first frost advisory. The low is expected to be around 34 degrees tonight. Time to cover the tender garden plants!

We started our outdoor wood burner for the first time yesterday evening. Works great! No more indoor mess and there should be alot less dusting on my part! One cool thing about this wood burner is that it also heats our water.

Since the weather turned cooler this week, I needed to pull out our light-weight bed comforters and Audrey's footed pj's. Those pj's always look so comfy!

We also started wearing jackets this week. Looks like I better make sure our heavy coats, overalls, hats and mittens are clean and ready to wear!

I canned the last of the tomatoes yesterday. (HUGE sigh of relief!) I will pick whatever is left today and they will be dehydrated this week. I will not try to save the tomato plants from the frost. They have blessed me beyond expectations and anyways, I don't have enough sheets/blankets/anything! to cover all 24 plants. I will try to save the greenbeans, jalapenos and raspberries. The carrots and onions can handle slight freezing so no worries there.

With the major canning done (unless I find a great deal on apples) I will concentrate on getting the remainder of my pantry stocked. This would include things like oils, seasonings, baking supplies and toiletries. Here are some great links that have helped me stock my pantry.

Food Storage Made Easy

Food Storage and Preservation

and a great yahoo group called food-storage:LDS(and friends) Food storage

All three sites are extremely helpful to those wanting to start their own food storage and explaining why alot of us believe in doing so. In my opinion, it just makes sense. I look at it as another form of insurance.

Time to go stir my simmering chili soup and curl up with some sewing and enjoy the quiet while Audrey is still napping!

Knee-Deep in Tomatoes!!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes!!! We have tomatoes!

Seems we are picking about a 1/2 bushel of tomatoes every 2 days. Yesterday hubby helped me puree about 70 pounds of them. Today, it is simmering and being canned into spaghetti sauce.


So far we have done salsa, pizza sauce, tomato soup, tomato/veggie juice and now the spaghetti sauce. The plan is to make more soup, juice and sauce. Then possibly some ketchup. Any other ideas?

Make Your Own...Homemade Laundry Detergent

I hate shopping. Plain and simple. So when I can come up with ways to shorten or eliminate my need to shop, I am very happy. This summer I started making my own laundry detergent again. It had been years since I had last done this. I don't know why I ever quit. Convenience I suppose. This is the recipe I have been using and liking very well. I gleaned ideas from tipnut.com. Note: I have very hard well water that is softened and a hubby that get very greasy, dirty and sweaty and THIS WORKS!!

Liquid Laundry Detergent

1 cup washing soda (NOT baking soda)
1 cup borax
1 cup oxyclean
2/3 bar of Fels Naptha soap, grated

In a large pot, heat 3 quarts of water. Add the grated Fels Naptha and stir until melted. Add the washing soda and borax. Stir until the powders are dissolved. Turn off heat. Add the oxyclean, stir until dissolved. The oxyclean will make this mix very foamy and expand - that is why I turn off the heat first!

In a large, clean pail (I use a 3-5 gallon bucket that has a lid) pour 2 quart of hot water. Add the heat soap mixture. Add about 3 quarts of cold water and stir well. (sometimes I add more or less water, I just kinda eye-ball it to see how it looks. Sorry!)

The soap will continue to look very foamy (at least it does for me). You will have to stir this well each time you use it. Once stirred, it is more gel-like.

I use 1/2c per load (I only run large loads). Use more or less depending on you water quality and how dirty your laundry is.

The ingredients:




The Fels Naptha and my grater:


Melting the Fels Naptha:


The mix getting foamy after adding the oxyclean:


Pouring the mix into the bucket. See how much foam forms for me!:


This is how thick the top gets after is sits a few days. You have to stir it well!


I have not figured out the cost of this detergent yet. I can't imagine it costs ANYWHERE near what you'd pay for Tide or similar detergents! So far it seems that this amount of detergent will last me about 75 loads. Give or take a few (I am not the best at remembering how long things last). One thing I will note is that I do pour about a 1/4 cup of pinesol into my washer per large load. It helps get rid of the perspiration odors. I also never use fabric softener - I use white vinegar. It does not make your clothes stink!

Please visit the tipnut site, there are so many comments and suggestions for the different kinds of water and washers you may have. It helped me greatly! Homemade Laundry Detergent tips.

Grocery shopping

In the past couple months, I have reduced my shopping trips. I was going once a week. I hate shopping, so I decided it was high time to quit going so often. I grow food and cook from scratch,so this was the next most logical step to take towards my quest for food self-reliance. So I figured out to shop only once every two weeks. That went real easy. So easy in fact, I probably could have gone 3 weeks on my last grocery trip if I had planned a couple of items better. So I had my shopping trip to Kroger today. I planned on enough to last 3 weeks. In reality, it should last an entire month. I will need to make a trip to town later this week, and there I will pick up my remaining 3 week supplies at Aldi. (My local Kroger and Aldi are not in the same town, and I really wish they were!)
My biggest challenge so far has been having enough dairy products. We currently use about 4 gallons of milk a week and use lots of cheese. So in order to have a months supply of milk, I have been freezing it. Kroger has had some fabulous deals on milk lately and I have been getting it for $1.76-2.00/gallon. That is dirt cheap around here!
Milk in the freezer.

At this point, it makes monetary(and health) sense to be producing our own dairy. However, I have a toddler and my dh is away from home often. We want to have more children (God willing) and I need to keep in mind that pregnancy and breastfeeding and diapering, etc, etc all take alot of time when I have to do alot of it by myself. So I have to pick and choose until I have children old enough to help me more. I would really love to be able to raise all of our animals products and entirely quit going to the grocery! Did I ever mention I hate shopping?

Note: I wanted to add a note just to clarify my shopping habits. We NEVER just keep a week or two worth of food at our house. I feel that would be irresponsible of me. I always have canned foods and meat in my pantry and freezer. If I don't go to the grocery one week, we won't starve. When I talk about grocery shopping, I'm talking about things like dairy products, fresh fruit and veggies (when we aren't growing them), toilet paper, soaps, juice, crackers, cereal, etc. It also includes restocking the pantry/freezer as needed. These would include(but not exclusively) beef, chicken, pork, canned fruit/veggies, flour, yeast, sugar, etc. My ultimate grocery goal is to be able to shop for 6 months at a time, or even better, one year!