So Fresh and So Clean Clean (and Cheap Cheap!) DIY Laundry Detergent Experiment

As The Farmer and I are having a super saving year this year we are looking to be frugal in as many ways as possible, as well as being green.  So in view of this I decided to go in search of a home made clothes washing powder or liquid....and I didn't have to search far as I stumbled on a local blog that had a recipe that looked like it was worth trying.  

Frugal Kiwi is a great fantastic New Zealand blog with some super interesting posts.  Including this fantastic recipe for home-made clothes washing liquid

http://frugalkiwi.co.nz/2009/09/clean-green-diy-liquid-laundry-detergent/

The recipe is as follows 

250g (1 cup) Borax (aka borax pentahydrate, sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate)

125g (1/2 cup) washing soda (aka Sodium carbonate, soda crystals or soda ash)

1 regular sized bar of soap around 85g (3 oz)

Grate the soap and put into a pot with about 1 litre (4 cups) of water. Heat the water until the soap is almost melted, but avoid bringing to a boil. Pour into the 20 litre bucket. Add 11 litres (44 cups) of warm water to the bucket. Add washing soda and stir until dissolved. Add borax and stir until dissolved. Your mixture will now look like soapy water. Cover with your bucket lid and let sit overnight.

The next day you’ll find a gel surrounded by a soapy liquid. Use 1/2 cup per wash scooping some gel and some liquid for each wash. 

The old classic, fantastic stuff!  I used Sunlight soap as the solid soap

 

The grated soap melted down in water 

All mixed up in the bucket ready to set overnight 

And after setting overnight you are left with this really cool jelly with a little liquid around it!

I found all the ingrediants I needed at our local Binn Inn store.

I've been using this to wash my clothes for the last week, and to be honest I was expecting it to be inferior to the shop bought stuff, but I have been surprised!  My clothes have been coming out cleaner and softer than ever before (and the powder I had been using had a built in fabric softener)  I've been so impressed with the results!  There is no perfume to it, which has taken getting used to, as I was used to associating perfume with clean-ness.  But the clothes have a lovely fresh smell to them which The Farmer loves - he hates any kind of fake perfumey scent.

No going back now, I'm in love <3 and costing out at less than 5c a wash... 

awesome!

Happy growing (and washing!) everyone :)

The Danger from Above

We've had a new visitor at the farm, and safe to say the chickens are not impressed. 

 A very large australian harrier has noticed our bumper crop of chicks this year, and is hoping to enjoy the bounty.  3 times how we have heard a huge racket of squacking, screeching, wing flapping drama coming from the back yard, we have raced out only to find a huge harrier landed amongst our chickens, often with a chick in its talons.  I was amazed at the bravery of the hens and roosters as they ran at the hawk, lunging with their claws doing their best to frighten him off.    The chicks themselves will drop down into the grass and freeze, they are almost impossible to see.  Once the hen is sure that the danger is gone, she will call to her chicks and they will pop up out of the grass and run to her as fast as their little legs will carry them.  

So what to do about this problem?

The hawk seems to come around in the early evening, either he has sussed out that is when I feed the chickens or it is when he does most of his hunting, avoiding the searing heat of the day during the summer.  

Either way, I had been feeding them out in the open but  I can move my feeding area to inside the chicken run, it has a roof so will protect them from attacks from above and I can't see the hawk putting himself at risk to fly in the door of the run.  Apart from that the hens are pretty good at keeping their chicks under the trees dashing from one sheltered area to the next.  

I can't begrudge the hawk hunting my chickens, they seem to be raising chicks at the moment so he will just be trying to feed his babies, but we also need to stock ourselves with chicken meat for the winter.  

Has anyone else out there had this problem, what did you do about it? 

Till next time, happy growing  :)

The Summer of Plenty

What an amazing start to the summer, after an unheard of 200mls of rain through december everything is growing like crazy!

All the hens are going clucky,  I've got three with hatched chicks now and three more still sitting producing lots of roosters for the freezer and pullets to sell.

The ewes and lambs are looking great, even with the size of the lambs still feeding off them all our girls are putting on plenty of weight so will be looking great when they go to the ram in march.

Onward to the garden update pics!

 Not in my garden,  but an amazing Morton Bay Fig at Pahi Bay, it was beautiful! 

 We decided to grow some tomatoes around the water tank garden this year to try it out.  With mixed sucess,  as you can see the tomatoe in the centre has had fantastic growth, it gets the most sun, whereas the others are getting not quite enough,  still they are starting to fruit up so we are looking forward to eating fresh tomatoes soon!

 Our new zucchini garden is going off!  It was a strawberry patch a few years ago, then sat unused last summer.  We dug it over with plenty of sheep pellets and mulched it with the hay our of the orphan lamb stall.  We've ended up interplanting it with some tomatoes, but they all seem happy enough together :)

 This zucchini has grown an interesting fruit!  Yes I think I'll leave it at that!

 The Cos lettuce has been a fantastic performer.  We've been eating off these ones everyday for the last month or so,  lovely crunchy sweet leaves, and yet to go to seed....

 The little gems have just blasted off into seed, but we have been enjoying them everyday for the last couple of months,  a great early lettuce the leaves are really crunchy and tasty and they grow pretty quick too!

 Silverbeet in the background, its turned out ok, but needed more feeding I think.  I need to chuck some more sheep pellets around.  Happily they don't seem to be bothered by slugs or catepillers, thats my kinda vegie.

 Beans have moped along.  Once again not enough food I think.  The parsley at the front however is very happy.  And is doing a nice job of shading the bean roots.

And last but not least.....My newest pet!  Water Kefir.  I've  just been learning all about how to keep it happy and growing.  And it is delicious!   I'll do a more in depth post on it when I do the first strain.  So excite!

Busy week on the farm, catching up on lots after christmas/new years.  Shearing this thursday/ friday and saturday,  heres hoping it doesn't rain!

Till next time,  happy growing everyone!