A Good Harvest

There is something very wonderful about harvest time. It just might be my favorite time of year. (But then again Spring gives it some pretty strong competition and there are other fun and wonderful things to do other times of year as well so I just don't know....) It is also a wearying time of year as food doesn't just sit around in perfect condition waiting for you to have time to harvest or process. The canning sometimes takes longer than you think and you are up late waiting for the prescribed time to be done so that you can turn the burner off and take things out. But it is so fun to find the treasures in the garden and hive and a blessing to get meat from the pasture or woods as well. Whether we get our food from the grocery store or the garden it is a gift from God but I think it is often easier to remember that it is God who gives us all things richly to enjoy when we are out in nature harvesting things He has caused to grow. 

   After a two year break I had bees again this year. I had taken a break for a few reasons: 1. I still had enough honey from previous years. 2. My life got a lot busier when I had to go to work following Ken leaving and this was something I could skip. 3. In 2020 when I last kept bees I got stung near the end of the season and reacted to it much more strongly than I ever had before. I was stung on the ear (through the netting that had gotten to close to my ear) and both ears immediately started throbbing, my neck (but not my throat) and arms swelled up and I broke out into hives. It was a little scary. Since then I have taken a homeopathic treatment that is supposed to have cured my honey bee allergy but it hasn't been tested to I don't know if it worked or not. I also have a lot less stress in my life then I did that Fall (as my marriage was falling apart at the time) and I think that my body was quite possibly simply overloaded when the sting happened. Anyway I decided to try again but I have been careful and I didn't work with them unless I had somebody around that could drive me to the emergency room if necessary. 

The bees did well and I had fun watching the miracle that a bee hive is and sharing it with others (as I had nephews and nieces come to learn about it with me). I did learn a lesson this year about not putting off harvesting honey. I had extracted some honey in August (as they had pretty much filled the boxes and I needed more space) and then some in September and I got a nice amount from those times but I knew there was a lot more still in the hives. I needed to extract before it got to cold but it seemed like things were going fine that way. We didn't get a killing harvest at our place until this week. There were rainy, chilly days but for the most part it still seemed pretty nice. And I was hoping for a whole day to work on it and Saturday is the only day for me that is a possibility and I had been busy with weddings, working, traveling and company and it didn't happen. I finally got out to finish getting the honey out a week ago and discovered that the bees and all the honey (except for about a dozen bees and 20 pounds of honey in one hive) had completely disappeared. I honestly don't know what happened but I think in the future I had better not let it go so late. I had figured there was about 150 pounds of honey out there so it was a disappointment but in my learning to trust God in all things I was able to have complete peace about it. He knows what we need. He knows everything in the future all the could-have-beens and He knows what is best - Always. And I had perfectly cleaned out hives to put away and NO stings this year! 

Flowers are an important part of my gardening (and my life). I don't actually harvest these to store away for winter except in pictures. :-) Someone said once that being able to have flowers in every room of their house was a sign of wealth. I totally agree. I feel like I have "arrived" when I can enjoy flowers all over my home. I love being able to get them out of the garden to decorate. I am also super blessed because with my business I end up with extra flowers and with working part time at the flower shop I also can bring old (no longer sellable) flowers home and decorate my home with them. It gives me joy and I feel incredibly blessed. By the way I am curious about that- I have come to realize that not all people have the obsession with flowers that I have, some people will even say "No Thank You" when you offer them a bouquet - are you the type the loves them and find they give you joy or are they something that don't really stir any emotion in you?

I love canning tomatoes - they are so quick and easy. I canned quite a bit from my garden and then a neighbor also shared these lovely ones with me. 

Carrots that I got to dig from a friends garden. I love getting to dig carrots and potatoes and things like that! It feels like looking for treasure.

I have enjoyed harvesting wild mushrooms from our yard this year - such as this gemmed puffball.

One evening every burner was busy as I canned applesauce, cooked down goat bones, made tomato jam and salsa and blanched broccoli. I ended up canning quite a bit of broth and some soup too. I helped my parents with butchering a little and they blessed me with some meat. This year is a little sad as my parents got rid of all their goats. They have had goats since before I was born so this is a real change for them.

Thanks to my parents prolific apple trees I was able to dehydrate a lot of apples. They are a yummy snack. I love how efficient my current dehydrator is. I also canned apple pie filling and applesauce.

Today I made Kimchee. I think it is going to be a yummy (and good for you) batch and I am excited about it. I am thinking maybe I should make another batch.

   The freezers are full and the pantry shelves look lovely too. I am so thankful for God's many blessings. We got our first hard freeze last night so it is time to move on to the next season. I am looking forward to some sewing/crafting.

  Did you harvest anything at your house? What is a favorite thing for you to harvest?
 

Homestead Happenings

 Spring is always a fun time of year, I think. So much new life and so much fun work to do. Here are a few glimpses of the last couple weeks around our homestead...

New Baby Chicks. We bought 20 more layers and when they get big enough we will butcher our current layers for stew meat.

 The bees seem pretty healthy and happy and the crab apple tree next to them does as well.

 Ken tilled my garden for me a week and a half ago.

 My peonies are doing great this year and I am very excited about their upcoming blooming!

 Megan and I cleaned out the garden shed and then she decided to paint it as well. We were getting a place ready in it for our cat that is going to have kittens any time. Megan made a very cute maternity ward. Hopefully she uses it. Funny story on the Cat. We were told it was a male and named it Mr. Belo but have since figured out it was a girl and not just a girl but a pregnant one. He name is now Muriel Hubbard aka Mother Hubbard.

 I love Forget-me-nots!

 We have enjoyed harvesting rhubarb and making a delicious rhubarb custard cheesecake type of dessert. The whole family loved it.

 This chicken and it's mates are on their 3 or 4th summer now.

 I bought and planted 3 new apple trees which is rather exciting.

 This year has been the best one yet for having lots of perennials come back. It is so fun to see my herbs and flower gardens look beautiful. The picture above shows my Wormwood plant and a marchmallow.

Ken has been working to finish our sprinkler system which will use river water. It will work on the yard as well as the garden. He also is making a hydrant to use up by the animals and garden. It will be exciting to get it done.

Goals and Dreams for 2019

Life certainly is a journey. Ken and I have been visiting and lately it rather seems like we have left the walking/backpacking part of life and are on to riding in a jet - things go by so fast! Loosing Ken's dad a couple of weeks ago was a reminder of how life moves on and doesn't stay the same. We need to really enjoy each moment as it comes and use all of our life in a way that matters - to glorify God! In April we face the momentous day when all of our children are teenagers! In May there is a wedding planned (or getting planned anyway)! Mara got engaged to Thomas on New Year's Day. Teenagers, weddings, new experiences and growth is all good - just takes a little getting used too. I am so thankful to have Jesus by my side as we go through the changes ahead.

   I like to think about the year ahead and what we will be doing, areas that I would like to challenge myself and ways I/we could grow. I like goals, I really think they help me to grow and accomplish more. It can be so easy to just drift through life but I don't want that to be my story. I really want to live to my full potential for Jesus Christ.

  So here are some of the things I want to work on in 2019.....

  Focusing on Growing closer in my relationship with Jesus Christ. Over the years I have been convicted of my need to have regular prayer time each day - that is such a blessing to me as I start out each day to give things over to God in prayer. Memorizing scripture has also been important to me through the years and something we have gotten better at as we have raised our children - I want to continue to press on in this. Pretty much as long as I can remember I have spent time in the Word each day and several years back I was encouraged to do that even more. I feel so blessed that we have been able to make it a habit to dive in to God's Word several times each day. It has helped us a lot in our knowledge of the scripture. Here are the things that I really would like to improve at this year:

• Each time I read God's word to think about how I can grow in my love for and closeness to Jesus Christ by what I am reading. Making sure that all the knowledge I learn and share is based on my love for Jesus.
• Spend time each week digging in deeper to some area of Scripture. Spend some time looking up more verses on the topic, using my cross references, checking out a commentary or a dictionary- in general just observing more than I would just casually reading.
• At least once a week sharing from God's word with others - whether it is through having a Bible study with a friend or neighbor, teaching a class at church or writing about God's work on this blog or elsewhere. Hopefully I can do it both in person and in writing each week.
• Overflowing with Joy, Thankfulness and Praise! God is so good to us and we need to respond to His goodness in a way that points others to Him as well. I want to do better at that.
• Growing in unity with the body of Christ. Truly building others up and working together as a team. I want to serve them more and listen better. This is an area that I have a lot of room for improvement in.

In Physical Health. I feel like I am pretty well blessed with physical health but as we have worked on trying to help Mara get better and as I observe the health of others It has made me want to be more intentional about taking care of our bodies. Here are some things I would like to work on:

• I am trying to do 25 jumping jacks each day out in the fresh air no matter what the weather. I have been already working on this for a month now and I have missed some days but I do it more often than not so I am making progress. I like the idea of doing something that makes me use my lungs ( I really want to keep them strong and my family seems to have struggles with that) and strengthens my bones. 
• I want to source even more of our food locally and organically. We have done well at that but I want to get better. I hope to grow and forage a higher percentage of our food. I am going to set a goal for growing/raising 50 percent of what we consume and then with local sourcing of other food going up to 90 % that is locally raised.
• Drastically cut the sugar consumption in our home. We have never been as heavy as your average family but I think we still eat more than we should. Especially after our not so great honey harvest of last year we used more sugar instead. I need to get out of that habit.

I would like to grow my business creatively using online advertising and stuff like that. I am also trying to figure out how I can create less waste with my business.

• I am setting the goal of creating a bouquet each week using items I foraged from our yard, woods or roadsides. 
• I want to work on notebook where I can log what local things I could use in bouquets and start sourcing as much of the cut flowers/ greenery as I can from things around here.

There are many other important areas of my life: Family, homeschooling, friends, crafting, music, etc. and I could come up with a lot of goals in those areas but I don't have time for that right now so I am going to simply share with you some other goals that I have been considering and thinking about for a couple of months now.....

Enjoying the wonder of God's creation in Glacier National Park

The last couple of years as I have worked at going through the stuff we own and getting rid of things we didn't need I have been amazed once again at the over abundance of stuff in our lives. I also get amazed by the wastefulness that happens so often in our culture - and not only by others but by me as well. We have so, so much stuff yet we think we still need more. I found this year (as I tried to get rid of excess in our life) that often second hand stores were overflowing with stuff - they had to often say "Don't bring more right now, we have no space. " So many people saying they have to much stuff and then I would often hear of them buying more anyway. And sometimes that was me. Why????

  I truly believe that God provided all things for us to enjoy and that what He made was good! God does bless us abundantly. God also provided us with the ability to discern and make wise decisions and he will give us the wisdom that we need. We do need to ask and to seek His leading. 

   I also believe that we need to be very good stewards of the world that God gave us to live in. It is our responsibility to do our best to hand it over to the next generation in a way that honors God. Leaving it piled high with toxic trash or with trash floating through the oceans doesn't fit in my mind. Half of the plastic that is produced each year is for single use plastic items (plastic bottles, plastic cups, plasticware, take out containers, plastic wrap, plastic bags, plastic packaging and much, much more!) many of which cannot even be recycled.

 90.5 % of plastic waste is NOT recycled. 

   So that is some of the background to why I have the goals below:

• Creating as little waste as possible.
• Not spending money. Exceptions would be giving, traveling, paying for experiences, paying our mortgage, insurance, utilities and anything else of that nature, buying gas (though I hope to drive less and bike more) and purchasing necessary food and consumables like toilet paper and soap. I can barter for other items or use money earned at a consignment shop to get other items there. I will try to grow or forage just as much of our food as possible and we will work as hard to use up food that we have rather than buying. Also - things will come up -such as a wedding. I will be doing my best on this one (in trying not to make a lot of needless purchases or create trash) but will try to use common sense and not be overly fanatical when it comes to this event.
• Eating local low or unpackaged food just as much as possible.
• Continue to get rid of 25 items each week and sort through 5 spaces each week. I am happy to report that I did accomplish getting rid of 25 items a week last year plus way more. I almost cleaned our 5 spaces a week but was 7 spaces shy for the year.

I like to use my blog as a way to be accountable on the goals I set. Sometimes I have done a good job on that and sometimes I don't but here are the things I hope to post on here to hold myself accountable:

• I am encouraging all of my family to create less trash but I am going to focus on my trash creation. I am putting anything that I throw away into a 4.5 quart ice cream bucket. Once I fill that (my goal would be for that not to happen for the whole year) I will report that and start again. Once I make it the year I will show you my total amount of trash for the year. I emptied all the trash cans in the house last night and so today we start afresh. I had thought I might keep track of all the trash produced in our household but I am kind of thinking that might place strain on my relationship with other family members who really would rather not participate in a zero waste challenge. I will still encourage and try to help train them to do things like compost their coffee grounds, use handkerchiefs, compost the sweeping scraps and not buy heavily packaged items but I am not going to stress over it and I will not be reporting their trash creation.
• I will try to report every month the amount of money that I have spent. This report will not include any gifts (monetary) as I don't think that is something to report broadly also it will not include our normal bills (mortgage, insurance, utilities, etc) that Ken takes care of anyway. It will show any purchases made including food, animal food, recreation and gas and anything else if I have to cave on my plan in some area.
• I hope to share a lot concerning zero-waste, from scratch eating and ideas for sourcing local unpackaged or low packaged food.

Some exceptions: 

  -Ken and I have a trip planned to the Virgin Islands soon (We are pretty excited - it is to celebrate our 20th anniversary and I am excited about the deal I found on flights and an Air B and B to stay at) and when we travel like that we like to find a piece of blue pottery to add to our dish collection and a magnet for our fridge. We will most likely continue that trend. We also will most likely eat some meals out though I hope not to do that much this year otherwise. Also, we may manage to take a trip this summer out East and if so those same purchases will quite likely happen.

  -I plan on buying bees (to make us honey) and chicks (to turn into meat) this spring.

   I have all sorts of ideas of things I want to blog about to go along with these goals and just all that has been going on in our life. Hopefully I can find time to blog regularly this year! :-)

   But I  had better let you go for now. Do you have any goals for this year? I would love to hear them. Also, just for the record, just because I have goals like living "zero" waste or "zero" spend does not mean that I think everyone should. Those sort of goals inspire me and help me to think more creatively and reach goals that I want to reach. That is not for everybody. I do encourage everybody to live within their means and to evaluate their priorities when it comes to spending and make sure that their money is truly going to what is important to them. Also, if I can inspire others to be a little more conscientious of the trash that they are creating and reuse things a little more and buy a little less of single use items then I would be happy about that as well.

 

When Your Family Makes it Hard to Declutter

Hello!

So much for this idea of writing every day!! :-) Life just gets busy. There have been a couple of big things going on this week. Mara came home from Texas. She flew in on Wednesday night. She was just having to much trouble with her health down there and especially when they would go on trips she was struggling to keep up physically. We are still searching to come up for a reason for her extreme fatigue and other symptoms. She went to the Doctor down there a couple of times and they tested for Celiac and Chronic Mono but both came back negative. We are going to see a natural MD here this coming Friday. 

   The other big thing this week was finally getting all of my honey extracted. I like to do that much earlier but in September and October so far I was busy or sick every day that I had time and it wasn't cold or raining. Thursday I didn't really have time (as I had to take Megan to the Doctor, we went and sang at the Nursing home, Mara had just gotten home and we wanted to visit and I had a music lesson scheduled) but it looks like it may have been our last day this year to go up over 60 degrees and be sunny so I used the little time I had to get all of the frames of honey pulled from the hives. It was sad that I hadn't been able to do it earlier as it was obvious that the bees had eaten quite a lot of honey. Oh well, I still got a nice share and it is done now! Friday (amidst teaching music lessons, working with a friend on getting things ready for our homeschooling co-op, running kids into town and picking up sewing to do and then having a bunch of company for supper) and today I got all the extracting down. It is lovely to have it done for another year.

But on to the project of simplifying and decluttering. This week my big project has been the kitchen. It hadn't seemed super cluttered but Jonathan (the one who puts dishes away) has been complaining about the crowding and I am trying to go through everything anyway so it seemed like a good idea. It went went and I will share more about it in another post.

They are working at looking angry and upset over the things that I am getting rid of. 

All was going well anyway until some people in my household took note of some of the things that I was planning to get rid of. Aaron and Megan (my drama king and queen) started an uproar. Now truly it was mostly in good fun and they weren't actually breaking down in tears or anything but it is completely true that they would have preferred that I didn't get rid of quite a few items. 

   And when it came to the old, black, ugly pizza cutter (that I thought I would get rid of and just keep the nice looking, newer one that we had) they did truly start and uproar, then Mara joined them and then they brought Ken into it who said "We can't get rid of that Pizza cutter, we have always had that one." So on that item I had to cave and I got rid of the nice one instead.

  By the way, Jonathan was firmly supporting me in the whole uproar. He loves to get rid of things and is not very sentimental. The other three kids (especially the younger two) are quite sentimental and get attached to various things - thankfully not everything- they aren't quite hoarders yet. :-) Ken and I can be pretty sentimental too. Thankfully it seems to be just in certain areas. Ken is sentimental when it comes to anything to do with his grandparents house (thankfully we don't have a huge amount of items from there) or when our kids were little. Traditions are very important to him and if an item goes with a tradition then he is unlikely going to want to get rid of it. But otherwise he is incredibly neat and tidy.

  Getting rid of things when others around you (and it doesn't even have to be in your household - many outside your household can make you second guess decluttering decisions) think it is a bad idea can make the process hard. You may have already been struggling with the decision yourself and then they come and make it very hard to let go.

  Here are some of my thoughts for dealing with this:

• Respect your spouse. If they really don't want you to get rid of something, then don't. Really work at decluttering the areas that are more your areas and that they don't care about and hope that they will see the beauty in doing that and be more willing to let go. If something they want to keep is really cluttering up an area that you need to keep clean maybe you can move it to an area that is more their area. I can think of a time that I did this; there was an ugly (in my mind), red, plastic placemat that had been Ken's Grandma's. We already had quite a few items "to remember her with" (not like he would forget anyway) so I thought maybe we could get rid of it. Ken didn't think so, so I put it in his office to decorate his desk with as I didn't have another good place to keep it. He is happy with it there and I am happy not to have to mess with it and that works for us.
• Listen to your kids, but that doesn't mean that you have to do what they say.
• If it is your domain and your stuff (such as the kitchen) then stick to your guns (with your children not your spouse) and move it out. 
• Explain yourself - "Here is why we don't need this anymore."
• Ask them when they last used it (whatever they don't want to get rid of). Aaron really didn't want me to get rid of a meat tenderizing hammer. Our neighbor (cleaning out her house) had given it to us a year or so ago and we had never used it. But Aaron thought it looked cool. Sorry, we weren't using it, so it goes.
• As long as you are not decluttering their stuff (I think that really should be done with them in a sympathetic but realistic way- at least when they are as old as my kids are) then it might make the most sense to try to declutter when your sentimental ones are away.

  Do you have to deal with family members that are attached to stuff? How do you go about it?

Animal Update

 I wonder if maybe I have forgotten how to blog. I guess we shall see. Between busy days and a slow computer I just haven't done much blogging for a while. But I have a different and faster computer (following the old one completely crashing which was a little nerve wracking as all of my business stuff was one it) now so hopefully I can blog a little more again.

I thought I would share some pictures of some of our new additions to this homestead....

 I had mentioned earlier that we lost our Mr. Sippi cat to an eagle this winter so we have been keeping our eye out for a new cat. Neighbors of some friends of ours had kittens that needed homes and so we ended up getting this little male cat. There was much debate over the name as Jonathan and I thought we hadn't gotten enough use out of the lovely name "Mr. Sippi" but others thought that we shouldn't name another cat that right away. It wouldn't be properly remembering the dead so that name was out. Our new cat is Mr. Nary. Named after the community that he came from.

 He is a pretty lively cat. And we have to keep our eye on him when it comes to our chicks. He thinks they are good wrestling partners.

 We did get 50+ chicks again this year. They are pretty big now though and the broilers are nearly ready for butchering so our numbers will go down. We got over 30 broilers and we have over 20 layers now again.

 Baby bunnies we the exciting surprise this Spring. One female had 6 bunnies then a month later she had 3 more and the other female had 2. The first 6 did well. The Mama of the 6 didn't take kindly to having more so soon however and she let the next 3 die. Concerning the 2 that the other female had, only one survived. He has been a very interesting bunny however. He was born to Naomi so Mara named him "Obed".  He (possibly a she - we don't know) has been dubbed Obed the Adventurer because of the many jaunts he has taken. He has had the amazing ability of wiggling about and finding cracks that he can get through since he has been very young. We have found him in his Dad's cage next "door", in the chicken run which is below and then 2 times Kitchi (our dog) found him out of his cage and carried him down to the house. He squeaked then and we rescued him and took him back to his mom. We are amazed that he survived and has actually even thrived.

 They love to be fed greens stuff to eat.

I do also have bees again this year. I am looking forward to lots of honey, Lord Willing, this fall.

Kitchi gave us a little scare this Spring by getting Lymes disease and getting quite sick. He didn't want to walk anywhere and limped majorly when he did move around. Thank-fully we are familiar with Lymes and figured that was the problem and the vet quickly agreed and prescribed an antibiotic for him and he improved quickly after that. In the picture above Aaron was helping him get back to his place on the hearth after he had gone out to relieve himself.

  The animals take work but they are also fun. With the boys gone to camp these last two weeks (they got home yesterday which is SO nice!) I have done most of the chores- it is actually kind of fun. They provide us with enjoyment, eggs, meat, honey, guarding the property and keeping mice away. We are also hoping to get fur in the future. I am thankful for our animals and that God provided them for us to have and use.

 Do you have any animals? 

50 Ways You Can Create Less Waste This Year

  This past October I had a lot of fun working to live a zero waste lifestyle. Though I haven't been quite as strict since then I have still been making steps to live the lifestyle more on a normal basis. I guess I have been making steps towards doing that for a very long time but I just wanted to point out that I am still making progress. This is a goal but not a finished process.

 So, with it still being near the beginning of the year I thought I would list a bunch of different ways that we can create less trash this year. Maybe you would like to work towards the goal of creating less trash as well. If so, I would love to have you join me...

1. Throw no food scraps in the garbage. Instead you can compost them, feed them to your chickens or various other animals or give them to somebody else who has animals and would gladly feed them your scraps.
2. Use cloth napkins. It is easy to make your own. We really like the ones that I have made out of cotton polo shirts.
3. Bring your own bags to all stores. I have discovered that in stores other than grocery stores they don't seem to expect you to supply your own bag but it works just fine. In some stores you actually get a few cents taken off your total for each bag used.
4. Pack your lunches instead of going through a drive through.
5. See what you can do to get less junk mail. This site has some ideas. I just signed up at this place but I have no idea whether it works or not.
6. Make your own spray cleaner and put it in a re-used spray bottle.
7. Drink tap water (or your own filtered water) and bring your own re-usable water bottle with you.
8. Skip drinking pop/soda. It isn't good for you anyway.
9. Bring your own cup to fill if you want to get coffee, tea, hot chocolate or I guess even pop at a gas station.
10. Make food from scratch instead of buying pre-made heavily packaged food.
11. Buy second hand whenever possible (though not food! ) and avoid all the extra packaging.
12. Use handkerchiefs instead of tissue. I suggest making your own from old flannel sheets or pajamas or shirts.
13. Save and re-use your wrapping paper until it is past that and you have to burn or recycle. Then use fabric pieces or bags for wrapping with.
14. Buy food from bulk bins at your grocery store or health food store. Take your own containers, get a tare weight on them and then fill them. I guess you can also do that at the deli counter but I haven't tried that yet.
15. Make your own deodorant.
16. If you want to subscribe to something (a paper or a magazine, etc) do it digitally if possible.
17. Mend your clothes and make them last as long as you can.
18. Make your own salad dressings. I haven't been doing very good at this and I would like to get better at it. I saw this dressing recipe and would like to try it.
19. Bring your own cloth produce bags to the grocery store. I still need to make some for me so that is a project in my future. If that sounds challenging to you - check out this simple tutorial.
20. Get your eggs from your own chicken coop or from a local farmer and re-use the cartons over and over again. (Take them back to the farmer for him to use.) When they are finally completely worn out you can compost them or start a fire with them.
21. I want to try out making a bees wax cloth wrap to use instead of cling wrap. I use cling wrap quite rarely but still I would like it to be not at all.
22. Bake your own bread and skip the plastic bag that comes with store bought bread. It really isn't that hard. And it tastes so good!
23. Make your own tortillas too. Again, they taste so much better!
24. Buy your milk straight from a farmer if possible in your own glass bottles that you can use over and over again. We are so thankful that this is available to us - both in being able to buy cows' milk and my parents giving us goats' milk.
25. Make your own yogurt and skip all those little (or big) plastic containers.
26. Make your own toothpaste.
27. Skip the dryer sheets and the fabric softener. Generally they really aren't needed. The smell they provide is unnatural and gives many of us headaches anyways. I think they do help a little to cut down on static cling but if you line dry your clothes you never will have issues with that and when you use the dryer just try to not over dry your clothes and then it will usually not be a big problem. I have been meaning to try making wool dryer balls again, this post tells all about them for an alternative.
28. There are alternatives to buying shampoo and conditioner (which pretty much always come in plastic bottles). I personally have used the no 'poo method for years and have been fairly satisfied with it. You can read about how I do it here.
29. Use bar soap instead of liquid hand soap and you can use a lot less plastic packaging (and save a fair amount of money). I like to get homemade soap that is not packaged personally.
30. Use rags instead of paper towels. You can make them from old towels, cotton t-shirts, etc.
31. Use bar soap instead of shaving cream. An electric razor is another way to avoid using shaving cream.
32. I found that I could buy toilet paper in bulk and also not packaged in plastic at a local paper supply store. All the packaging now can easily be recycled or used for fire starter, etc.
33. I personally prefer methods that create no waste for dealing with my menstrual cycle. Here is how I made cloth pads. I also use the Diva Cup.
34. I have tried to make ketchup before but it wasn't successful - here is another recipe I have found. I think I might need to try it and hopefully I can stop buying plastic bottles with ketchup in them.
35. Use cloth diapers. I haven't done this for many years but I was glad to do it when I had babies.
36. Use cloth wipes too. Simply having a set of wash cloths for this purpose only that you get wet before you change their diaper works wonderfully. Just wash them with the diapers.
37. Say "No" to unneeded freebies that businesses offer.
38. Skip wearing make-up. I know this isn't desired for many but I am happy with life that way and it saves money and time as well as not creating trash.
39. Turn old clothes into quilts or rag rugs.
40. Can your own food in season with re-usable canning lids.
41. Make your own sprouts.
42. Buy food in bulk. We actually buy quite a few things in 50 lb. bags (wheat, rye, oatmeal, popcorn, rice, etc) which are generally nice paper bags that can be re-used/recycled. We then store it away in containers and eat on it throughout the year. This is only a good thing when you actually use what you buy. We do. We are quite careful not to overbuy and waste food. I also buy my cheese in 40 lb chunks which greatly reduces the amount of cheese packaging that I have to deal with.
43. But your animal food in bulk. I am still wanting to figure this out for our cat and dog but for the chickens and rabbits this is working wonderfully. It saves a lot of money and I have no waste as I can bring back the bags that they put it in to be re-used. 
44. Use baking soda for scrubbing sinks, tubs and toilets.
45. Any plastic bread bags or zip lock bags or whatever sort of bags - wash them and re-use them over and over and over. Except I don't re-use ones that have meat in them. But I try whenever possible to put meat in containers rather than bags.
46. Make your own underwear from old t-shirts. I have also been wanting to try making bras but haven't done that yet. Here is someone else's blog post on how to do that.
47. Skip the breakfast cereal (with all it's packaging) and eat homemade granola or oatmeal or homemade pancakes or eggs and toast (from homemade bread) instead. 
48. Make your own laundry detergent.
49. Make your own lotion.
50. Skip out on using paper or Styrofoam plates and cups whenever possible and just keep handy camping gear and such like that you can use instead.

There are way more ways to reduce our trash use than that but at least it will get us started. :-) By the way, nearly all of these ideas will also save a fair amount of money as well. It is a win-win!

Honey From the Homestead

 Today I extracted the last of our honey (I did one hive last month but didn't get to the 2nd one until today). We had a beautiful sunshiny day to do it in and I was very thankful! It looks like cooler weather is on it's way so I am glad to have gotten it done today.

This was by far the worst year I have had for honey production. I am not truly sure why though I do know that I had at least one swarm leave the hive (which I tried to get back but couldn't) this summer. I am not sure why they swarmed either as they had plenty of room. Anyway, I am hoping to do some more reading on beekeeping this winter and work at it a little harder next summer.

  But we did still get honey and I am very thankful!

 Keeping our own bees is a great way to provide zero waste sweetener for our family. We do buy and use some sugar as well but the majority of our sweetener tends to be honey from our homestead. I repurpose jars that we have collected from other things to put all our honey in. They just need to be clean and very dry. I always enjoy bottling up the honey and figuring out how many pounds we got and storing it on our pantry shelves. It can get a little sticky but it is pretty fun! :-)

Pictures of Our Life in the Last Week Or So

 While DJ was here we enjoyed some fishing. I didn't catch any of DJ and Aaron did. This was the big one that DJ caught but it had to be thrown back because I think it was breeding time or something like that. We did get to keep some others and enjoyed fish for a couple of meals.

 We are loving some of our flowers that are blooming!

 We had to take Mara down to the cities to catch a plane to go on a mission trip in Mexico. We stayed at my sister's and went to the Ramsey County Fair with her and her family. They had a marionette show there which was fun.

 Beatrice and Megan working on projects.

 We have been a little tired around here. Yesterday morning we were down in the cities and got up around 3:30 am to take Mara to the airport (she had to fly out early!) and then drive home. So Aaron, Megan and I along with Beatrice and Gregory got back home in good time in the day since we got such an early start. We were also tired but I had bees that were swarming and I was trying to capture them and then I had a lot of wedding flowers to do so I didn't get a whole lot of rest. Jonathan also got home yesterday from 2 weeks of camp. His granddad picked him up and he got home a while after us. Afternoon came and both Gregory and Jonathan were very tired. We hadn't gotten a bed set up for Gregory yet so he crashed on Jonathan's bed. Later Jonathan laid down too and slept as well. Ken got home for supper and looked in the boys room and asked if we were starting to require Navy style sleeping. Anyway- we found it cute.

 Today and yesterday were focused on wedding flowers.

After all the wedding set-up I visited a quilt show that Ken had been given a complimentary ticket to give to me. The pretty embroidery above was there. It was fun but I didn't stay very long as I was tired and ready to be home.

That is some peeks into our life. Have a wonderful new week - we plan on it. :-)