My new friend!

One of my friends parents are moving, and they were going through some of their stored items and found an older grain mill that they had bought when they lived down south. The mother used it for all of their own flour and wheat but with moving and downsizing they just didn't have as much of a use for it anymore.

So they call me, who loves anything free, and I jump at the chance to get a perfect condition grain mill for free! Not only did they give me a grain mill but they also had three five-gallon food grade buckets filled with spelt, wheat, and barley that they were wanting someone to take. I never turn down anything that is free, I am turning into a little packrat myself haha but this was just an awesome blessing!

It is a Whisper Mill, which is an older brand of grain mills, it started being produced in 1994 by GrainMaster. It has since been renamed into the Wondermill when the company that produced them had a change of ownership.

It looks all nice and clean and ready for use! I haven't used it yet but I can't wait!! All the reviews that I have read are positive, so I am hoping for awesome things!!

Beat the Monday Doldrums

Mom I just need that treat in your hand, what do you mean it's a phone and not for eating?! Are you lying to me?

Thursdays are for beer, at least in my household!

Last night my father and I were talking about all of the stuff we have sitting around our house that never gets used. Seriously our house has so much stuff packed away everywhere it's like a treasure hunt every time you go looking for something. While talking about our stuff my dad mentioned that he still had his beer making kit he got for his birthday a few years ago. Yeah my family is not fast about anything, and as they say out of sight out of mind! It just sat in the corner of our basement storage room until one day when I uncovered it and started bugging him about making it.

I decided that there was no better time like the present to use it since we would probably forget about it if we didn't make it tonight and when my brother walked in the door from work that's what we did. It was just a kit, nothing too fancy, it was made by a company called Mr. Beer. I have included the link to make it easier to find.

The kit that we had came with everything you need to make two gallons of beer except the bottles. I guess the kind we got was what is called West Coast Pale Ale. It comes with a keg to brew the beer in, and all the ingredients. The directions were very easy to read and it only took about an hour from start to finish to make.

There is the yeast bubbling away making our yummy beer!!

It has to sit for two weeks in the keg before it can be bottled, and then it sits in the bottles for at least a week before you can drink it but I am excited! I have wanted to make my own wine and beer for a while! Hopefully it turns out good, I will have to give updates as we move along in the process. The kit comes with a book that talks about the history and ingredients of different beers, along with recipes to change your beer flavors and types. It looks like something that could be really fun to do as a hobby, and I think given how excited my brother was over it I have a birthday present already in mind. My dad thought it was more fun when we kids got involved so I think the three of us might be trying our hand at a few more kinds of beer in the near future.

All ready to be stored and fermented!

Weekend Workout

This weekend was gorgeous, simply beautiful! It was in the 20-30's all weekend and that meant most of the snow we have gotten was melting. It has been such a weird winter, tons of snow in November but then practically nothing all of December and now most of January. Yet this weekend of mild weather allowed all of us to get outside and....well....work! Our horses have been stripping the trees of bark non-stop and we needed to take a bunch of them down.

This is only one of the dozen or so that they have managed to eat everything they could reach off.

We live on 5 heavily forested acres of land, and every winter through fall we have trees coming down. It doesn't make it any better that now they are being helped down by our horses. We had three trees down in one section, looks like one of them came down and took the others with it.

Definitely a big job, not to mention that there was a tree over by the barn that needed to come down before it damaged anything by falling during a storm.  

We got started round noon, and I immediately started to light up our brush pile with my home made firestarters!! We don't use wood to heat our house so it gets cut up to be used while camping or during the summer for bonfires with friends. All the brush gets burned as we go to make it easier. (We already have three or four huge piles of brush from other tree cutting adventures)

They worked great to get the fire started! Especially since some of the center stuff was still frozen to the ground. We immediately started with the tree that was in danger of coming down on the barn, and it's that a scary thing to do! Even though my father has been doing this for years it's still a terrifying thing to see these huge trees just fall over on the ground. 

After 5 hours outside cutting and hauling wood we managed to slim down a lot of the stuff on the ground.

Remember that huge pile of like three trees? Well we didn't get all of it but we did get a good portion!

This section had a huge pile of brush and downed trees, now it's all nice and bare for the spring. We plan on seeding the pasture the spring hopefully as there is less shade and we have acreage down the hill in our backyard to keep them occupied. My aunt and uncle who live next door sometimes let us use their pasture as well since they no longer have horses. Which means we might actually have grass for the first time in a while!!!

Of course no outdoor project is complete without the two terrors watching our every move and getting underfoot with their playing. The one in the front is my girl Amaris, the one in the back is her sister from the same litter Tango. My aunt and uncle got her after I brought my girl home and they have been best friends ever since. Though next time I might put them to work, with harnesses and maybe have them drag some logs. You think that will work? 

Monday Struggles

I took the idea from a fellow blogger, for those Monday doldrums here is a way to beat them!

         But mom why do you have to blog? Why can't you just play with me?

Lazy Day

I know two posts in one day is awesome, but confession, I had this ready to go since Tuesday but with class and other things I wasn't able to publish it until today. (Bad Leah!) Although now I know how to set a post to automatically publish! So hopefully that won't happen again!

This past Sunday when we were getting our massive (so not) snow storm my whole family was able to just relax. None of us were working, which with my brother's work schedule is a minor miracle, and so we slept in and laid around. My mother made her homemade granola which is delicious as I was making breakfast. Then after looking in the freezer to uncover a multitude of bananas (what do they spawn in there?!) I decided that I was going to make banana bread.

My recipe is from my aunt and it is a favorite both in my family and out. Usually we just make a double batch which ends up to be enough for two loaves but we had so many bananas we had to make 5 batches!! YUM!!!

Aunt's Banana Bread

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp salt
1 & 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat your oven to 350 and cream your butter and sugar together. Add your vanilla, lemon juice, eggs, bananas and sour cream. Mix well. Add salt, flour, baking soda and baking powder. Pour into greased pans and bake for about an hour and a half. Or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool and enjoy!

I was only able to get the one picture of the banana bread before the ravenous horde descended on it.

Of course in our family by the time the first loaf was cool enough to pull out of the pan it was gone! We must have mice or something! (I sure didn't eat three slices)


You can also fold in chocolate chips at the very end for delicious chocolate chip banana bread!

Laundry Soap

As a college student, I am always looking for ways to save money. Gardening is my passion, but it helps that it saves us a ton on our grocery bill. So I was looking around the Internet at people who have posted different tips and tricks for saving money when I stumbled across a blog claiming to save you hundreds on laundry detergent. I sat there for a good 5 minutes just staring at the article thinking to myself, "homemade"? I know food is way better when you make it yourself, and veggies taste 100 times better when you grow them, but laundry soap?! Come on; who are you kidding?!!

I did end up reading the article and doing some research. It's a fairly simple recipe: 4 ingredients and not many chemicals, which is a good thing as I don't necessarily believe that we need all the chemicals in our lives anyway, but it still made me wonder if it could handle our wear and tear on the clothes. In the summer between the garden, the horses, and our yardwork we are filthy. Then I smacked myself upside the head because a lot of these ingredients have been around for at least 50 years. And they were probably much rougher on their clothes then we are.

                                                     The ingredients are:

1. Water, self explanatory, though I did find a few recipes that were powdered instead of liquid. I will add those links at the bottom so anyone who likes powdered can use it. My washing machine does better with liquid, honestly. 

2. Borax is also known as soduim borate, it is a naturally occurring mineral caused by the repeated evaporation of seasonal lakes. It was first discovered in dry lake beds in Tibet and was then imported into  Arabia. Borax works by converting some water molecules to hydrogen peroxide. This reaction happens more often with warm water so for best results use warmer water when washing your clothes. I use 20 mule team borax, which is the most common kind of household borax found. 

3. Washing soda, is also called sodium carbonate. It is used domestically as a water softener for laundry, and can be used when dying. I buy Arm and Hammer which is the only kind I can find in the stores.

4. A bar soap of your choice. I have used Felz Naptha which is a laundry soap bar, and I didn't mind the results. I have also used Dr. Bronners organic soap. And that is good too. Honestly I think it comes down to personal preference. I have seen recipes of people who swear by using Ivory soap. My plan is to eventually make my own soap to use in my laundry detergent. But for now I use what I have.

5. You will also need a five gallon bucket, a long handled stir stick, a pot of your choice and your soap containers.

                                So you start by heating up 4 cups of water on the stove.

Grate your bar of soap beforehand (some people use an old food processor) and put that in the water on your stove. Let simmer until ALL of your soap is dissolved.

Get your 5 gallon bucket and fill halfway with hot water, mix in one cup of borax and one cup of washing soda.

Stir until well mixed. Add your water/soap mixture and fill the rest of the bucket with hot water to the top of the bucket. Stir until well mixed.

I let this sit overnight, you don't have to but then it sets in the containers and if you fill it to the top it won't mix up enough to turn back to liquid. If you have animals or small children I would suggest putting a lid on the container. I used a plate that fit over the top as I didn't want my dog accidentally drinking this.

This will end up gelling kinda like jello honestly. That's fine, just make sure you mix well the next day. This is where your long handles stirring implement comes in handy. I just used some scrap lumber but you can use whatever. I have read that some people use an immersion blender or whisk attached to a power drill, just use whatever you want. Once mixed you are ready to put into your containers!

It gets everywhere when you go to pour so I would do this over towels or in a place where it's fine if you splash the liquid a little. Or I have even just left it in the 5 gallon bucket under the counter next to my laundry machine and took a cup when we did laundry. You still need to stir it but whatever works for you. 

Once you have it in your containers you are ready to use it!! You use about half a cup a load or a little more if you have a large dirty load. I use the old caps you get with the big laundry detergent bottles, and just fill halfway. It will clump in the containers so leave some space so you can shake the bottle before use.

The best part about this homemade laundry detergent is the price! When I bought these ingredients they were:

One box of borax - $4.99

One box of washing soda - $3.59

Felz Naptha - $.99

or Dr. Bronner's Soap - $2.99

I linked them all to amazon, where they are much more expensive but you can find everything at your local grocery store. The Dr. Bronner's is in the natural foods section with their cleaning supplies.With the amount I use (1/2 cup per load) that works out to 160 loads per every 5 gallons. That costs me $4.03 per batch of detergent I make. That's .03 cents a load!! And at about $20.00 per bottle of regular laundry detergent I am saving serious money!!!

There is a recipe for powder detergent that seems to be just as popular. I am going to preface this link by saying I have never used it, my laundry machine works better with liquid. However if you like the powder more let me know! I want to see how it turns out!!

Powdered Laundry Detergent

Winter snow!

It's finally time! After 16 inches in one day in November and then a month of almost spring like temperatures, and most recently our practically arctic temperature plunge, we have snow! 

Not a ton but it's the second time in a few days that we are getting some white stuff!! I am very glad as I have been worrying about the garlic I planted this fall. It is supposed to have a good freeze all winter before it grows in the spring. But with the warm temperatures I have been worrying if the ground has gotten too warm and they will start growing. They are mulched pretty heavily but I am just glad the cold weather came back. Yes I know GLAD for cold weather. I must be going insane. 

Today was just a relaxing day, We used up our bananas that were in the freezer and made 5 loaves of banana bread. YUM! I love the smell of banana bread. I just love it in general so it's gonna be a struggle to make sure I don't eat it all myself. That post is coming shortly, along with a post on how I make my own laundry detergent. Hope you all are enjoying your weekend!

Thrift Store Finds

So I have been dealing with finals, finishing up the semester and getting ready for the holidays. All in a round about way of saying I have been busy, very busy. And unfortunately while that means my garden stuff got done, I haven't had much time for anything else. I have multiple things I want to post about. The first being a find, or rather a couple of things I found today at our local thrift store.

For the longest time I only used to buy book and the random toy at a thrift store. I don't know why, there are always interesting things to find there. I went because I had stuff to donate, of course I forgot all of it at home when I took the wrong car but that is a different story.

I went there because another fellow blog member was talking about how she went to her local thrift store and lo and behold they had pint jars! In perfect condition they had 10 pint jars!! Look at my pretty canning jars!! They didn't come with any lids but that's alright I always have to buy new lids and I have way more rings then I could use in a lifetime.

I got the half gallon size and all of them are in perfect condition! They had no cracks or chips! I was very surprised to get these as they usually run $8.99 for a 9 pack. I got them for $.69 per jar which puts my 10 pack at about $6.90. Not the cheapest I could have gotten them for, but they weren't that expensive either.

As you can see they are in perfect condition.

The other thing I got (that I have been bragging about to everyone at my work, they are probably ready to duct tape my mouth shut haha) was a new winter coat. I have an old Columbia jacket that has a few rips and tears and is missing the handle for the zipper and I usually use that when I am taking care of our horses. I also have a nice white jacket that always gets disgustingly dirty from wearing it everyday, so I have been contemplating getting a new jacket. And what do I find at the store? A brand new tags still on Columbia jacket. It had been sold for $250.00 at least that is what the tag claimed and I bought it for $30.00. A steal of a deal! 

I did wash it before I took a picture of it

I honestly don't think I am ever going to be shopping elsewhere. I think I am in love. Hahaha. 

Well at least I learned that you don't always need to pay full price for something when there is a person somewhere else willing to do it for you. Though I am very grateful that people donate to stores like this, it makes my budget a lot easier when I can find good deals like this. I try and donate everything I can to help give back to the community as well, and so I think the cycle goes on.