Archive for the ‘soap’ Category

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Busy as Bees on the Homestead

Monday, September 17th, 2007

The past couple weeks have been very busy here on the homestead. Between moving, house guests, a biker event, and making soap, bath gels, and bath salts, we’ve been happily realizing our dream of living on this beautiful homestead.

I’ve had two businesses agree to sell my home made bath products and they seem quite excited about it. I made a big batch of oatmeal honey bar soap last week and set it on the rack to cure for the next six weeks or so. I’m pretty excited about this recipe, as I came up with it all on my own and attempted to make a very moisturizing, lathery soap – and I used the honey from our hives. We’ll see how it turns out in a few weeks…..

I hope to have a page up on The Bee Buzz website soon to sell my products in the next few weeks. I’ll let y’all know when I do that.

Bernie still doesn’t really feel that he’s quit work. Probably because he’s working so much around here. He gets up early and gets busy right away. It amazes me how much he’s accomplished in the past two weeks. I have noticed a big difference in him though. He’s much more relaxed and layed back – almost to the point of annoyance. I mean he’s always been fairly calm, but now he doesn’t seem to get riled about much of anything around here. If I take off on a rant about what a mess the house is with this move, he volunteers to stay home the next day and clean it. When I got worried about one of the cats not acting right, he told me to make an appointment and he took her in to the vet. He’s never taken an animal to the vet without me. He HATES taking cats to the vet! At least the “old” Bernie hated it. The “new” Bernie just loaded her up and took off. He even does the dishes now without me saying a word. And he puts them away when they are dry. Weird. It is down right weird. But I do think I can get used to this.

The bees seem to be doing really well, although there is another hive we are now concerned about. We’ll take it apart next weekend and be sure the queen is ok. I hope this cool weather is to blame for the inactivity in that hive. We’ll find out this weekend.

Life is good on the homestead. And it only gets better and better.

Bee Free,
Penny


Posted in basic living, bath products, bath salts, bees, freedom fighter, homestead, homesteading, honey, soap | 1 Comment »

Dealing With Miss Penny 101: The Proper Way to React to a Home-made Gift

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

As I mentioned in my last post, I made some beeswax lip balm last weekend. I’ll get some pictures up on the website soon. It turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself. In fact, of the three people I’ve given some to so far, two of them reacted quite positively. One even suggested I could get rich selling it. Needless to say, THAT person will be receiving future home made gifts from me. Probably she’ll be the proud recipient of some home-made soap, but that little jewel isn’t quite cured enough to be a gift yet.

We’ve established how much I enjoy the whole obligatory gift giving notion, but there are times when I do feel obligated to give a gift – and even times when the spirit just moves me to do so. And because of this, I feel it only fair that I should tell you how I expect you will react when you are the blessed soul that recieves a home-made gift from me.

Gushing is completely acceptable. Proclaiming me The Queen of All Things Home-Made is not only acceptable, but somewhat expected. Doing these simple little things will insure that: 1) I will not hate you for all eternity and 2) you may well be the proud recipient of another slice of heaven made by my own hands.

The truth is, as much as I enjoy making home-made gifts, I do NOT enjoy giving to people who do not appreciate them. In all honesty, that kind of pisses me off. So, lie if you must – but certainly gush over your gift. You will not only receive future home-made gifts from me, but you will insure I will actually speak to you when we cross paths in the future.

You may think I am a little sensitive on this subject. You may be right. But I’m the one making this crap and I’m the one giving it away, so I get to make the rules. So gush away or be dropped from my gift list. And have a nice day.

Bee Free,
Penny


Posted in basic living, beeswax, homestead, honey, honey bees, lip balm, mice, self reliance, self sufficiency, soap | 2 Comments »

Lions and Tigers and Bears – Well, Sort of

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

For some reason we saw more wild animals this weekend on the homestead than we ever have before. We saw a doe with two precious little fawns, a fox, two coyotes, a skunk, and several rabbits. As remote as our homestead is, it really is fairly unusual to see many animals. The animals there are still wild and not used to a lot of human noise or motion. Unlike the animals in town that graze next to the highways or the skunks that visit our yard, any sound or slight movement will send them tearing into the woods on the homestead. I must say, although I enjoyed watching them, with each I saw I thought of either food on our table, or predator to our chickens and goats when we move out there permanently.

When we got to the homestead Friday, we immediately began rendering some of the beeswax we’ve collected. As I wrote about on The Bee Buzz, this was a little more involved than I had anticipated. I did manage to get enough wax rendered to make about 48 little tins of beeswax lip balm. I’ll have to work on getting the rest of it rendered in the next few weeks.

The soap is curing quite nicely and changing to a creamy white color. In three or four more weeks or so I should be able to try it out. If it passes approval, I’ll have gifts for my Christmas victims.

Other than that, Bernie and I mowed the lawns and took care of a few things on the homestead. As a result of me hitting a huge stump with the riding mower, we had to spend a little time on Saturday fixing one of the blades on the mowing deck. I hit it good enough to bend the frame it’s attached to. But Bernie managed to pound it back into shape and it’s running right along again.

Next weekend my neice is visiting us on the homestead and she’s bringing along the only kid she’s got that isn’t staying at my parent’s for the summer. We’re really looking forward to that. Two of my most favorite people!

I’ll be posting the lip balm recipe on The Bee Buzz website soon, so be sure to check it out!

Bee Free!
Penny


Posted in basic living, bees, beeswax, coyote, deer, doe, fawn, fox, homestead, homesteading, honey bees, lip balm, rabbit, red fox, skunk, soap | No Comments »

Rubba-Dub-Dub

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

We are having a great weekend on the homestead. It was raining when we arrived, which was a welcome respite from the dry weather we’ve been having. The grass is coming in quite nicely now.

This morning we worked on my trike and corrected a backfire issue is was having by replacing the #1 cylinder spark plug and wire. We tuned her up and she’s running like a top now. Which is really good – because we’re riding in support of Delegate Lingamfelter this week for the Dale City 4th of July parade.

Afterwards, I made a batch of home made soap. I’ve been reading up on this, and it’s something that seemed a little intimidating, but I really wanted to do. If things were to get really bad, I’d like to think I could at least continue with basic hygiene. The ingredients are pretty easy to come by, with the possible exception of lye – and I found a recipe for making my own lye, if it comes down to that. At any rate, I spent an hour or so making soap, and I am pretty excited to see how it turn out. Check it out!

This afternoon we cooked out and grilled some great burgers and bratwurst. Then we walked down to check out the bees. On the way down we stopped by one of the little creeks and saw several of the girls getting a little drink of water. They were darn cute standing on the rocks so their feet didn’t get wet. Wish I’d had my camera. They seem to be doing pretty well. Lots of activity around every hive. We’ll get Bob W. from the Dept. of Agriculture to come out again in a couple of weeks so we can do another thorough hive inspection.

We also noticed on our walk to the hives that we have raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries ripening up. I had a few for dessert as we walked. Hopefully I’ll be able to beat the birds and bears to them in the next couple of weeks and collect enough for a pie – or at the very least for a nice topping on my pancakes!

Oh – and for those of you who have asked, I do believe I reign triumphant over the mice! I haven’t seen a sign of them in the house for several weeks now. Of course it helped that daddy helped me search out every conceivable point of entry for them while he was here and fill it with that expanding foam. And as a side note, I would mention that when you read “expanding” on that foam, it means EXPANDING. That stuff looks alien about 30 minutes after you spray it – and it ain’t budging once it’s in place. I speak from experience.

Bee Free,
Penny


Posted in apiary, basic living, bees, biker, freedom fighter, homestead, homesteading, honey, honey bees, motorcycling, self reliance, self sufficiency, soap | No Comments »

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