All the little things

It's been a year of big things but a summer of little things. Little things are, after all, what ultimately makes the world go 'round, whether for good or bad. A magical day is usually comprised of a bunch of good little things. The Roman Empire fell because of a series of bad ones.

Around the homestead we are finally in the swing of growing, picking, and prettying up outside, and touching up, refining, and replacing inside. I'm in the process of painting all the trim upstairs white, which means a little bit of painting, every day. And I've also been refinishing the oak trim downstairs, removing old water damage on the sills, and re-sealing with stain and polyurethane clear coat. Every day there is some little thing inside this house that's improved upon. Or outside. And that feels good. Because even if it takes 1,000 little improvements, once they're all done it will add up to the house looking great -- one big win for us. 

I don't know about you, but I actually enjoy a series of little tasks so much more than one large one. If I can spend my days doing 11 completely different things -- outside for this, inside for that, I'm generally pretty happy. In high school, I was a sprinter, never having been any good at distances. Perhaps it's the same principle. Put forth a little burst of energy for one thing, rest, then move on to the next thing. 

Here's a little of what we've been up to around here:

There's always laundry, but no rain means drying outside.

pumpkin dog biscuits

 

Cukes, zukes and tomatoes coming along nicely. Big Ag did a fantastic job on these raised beds, and the hay bales in the back will be planted soon, too!

Goodbye oak trim. Hello crisp white paint. Wall painting next!

Speaking of painting....exterior house painting coming in September!

A country bouquet to brighten up the house.

January Laundry

As I mentioned in the previous post, our mornings here have been clear and cold -- not cold by east coast or midwest standards, but cold for us.  I have been noticing that anytime we have cooler weather (even if it is sunny outside), the marine air makes the day's laundry much more difficult to dry, and when it does come in it develops a slight musty odor in the closet within a few days. This is probably from the clothes not being completely dry at the time they were brought in -- even though they felt dry (but cold) in my hands. 

It's hard to measure the dryness of clothes in 55 degree, 70 percent humid weather -- unlike summer when it's easy because it's 100 degrees with no humidity and everything has no choice but to turn to a crisp after a few hours in the sun (including me).  In hot weather, if your clothes are cool they are also inevitably damp.  In cold weather, all the wash is cold, making it harder to tell if it's actually dry as well.

Moist...

My solution has been to use the inside dryer to "finish off" the line-dried clothes, and to place smaller items like socks and t-shirts in front of the pellet stove, which puts out a very dry heat.  This serves a double purpose of not only drying the clothes nicely but also adding some humidity indoors, which we lack anytime the pellet stove runs.

or extra-crispy?

It's a strange dichotomy -- too humid outdoors, too dry indoors, but I'm sure anyone who lives in a coastal climate in winter can relate.  Sometimes it can take awhile to fashion some new techniques to accommodate a new climate.  In this case, we are entering our third year here, there are still some things I am figuring out.  

Laundry Woes

Big Ag and I have a pretty harmonious marriage.  Some of that comes from marrying later in life; when you marry late, you don't change much and it makes it easier to predict exactly who you will and won't get along with in your advancing years.

But we do have some differences, and some of those differences can happen on the homestead front when you're trying to live a chemical and addiditive-free life.  The latest example is laundry.  

And the difference is this: He wants to stink and I don't.

Before you judge, I will tell you right now that what you just read is probably not what you are thinking it is.  Neither one of us wants to smell of body odor.  We love our showers and we love clean clothes.  But here's where we part ways:  Big Ag likes his shirts to smell "fresh" -- fruity, flowery, and what most of our culture considers a "clean" smell, meaning highly-scented, and I like mine to smell natural, also known as "unscented."

And so our Washing Wars began, where he complained his laundry did not smell like anything and was, in fact, "musty," and I battled back and told him his clothes smelled like actual clean clothes, hung on a line in the fresh air to dry, and that he just wasn't used to that, after years of clothes dried in a clothes dryer with scented fabric softener sheets.

Then he told me someone had hugged him at work and made a face.  Whether or not I think this was his imagination or not was unimportant at this point.  The point was, I'd had enough of the critiquing of our laundry, and the fact that he was uncomfortable.

And so I broke down and bought some in-wash Downey "scent booster" (aka super stinky chemical "dots") which you shake into to your wash, and which gives you shirts you can smell from 50 yards away.  I wash his shirts separately from the other clothes now  -- not a very eco-friendly practice, I know -- but they have the extreme scent Big Ag apparently equates with "clean."  

I try not to focus on the fact that I have no idea what's in these little scent dots, what they do in a septic system, a human immune system, or what they are made of.  I keep them out of 3/4th of the rest of the laundry (his underwear, jeans and socks get washed with our regular, homemade detergent, which cleans just fine but which has no scent), and that is our compromise.

When you homestead as a couple, you will find differences in how you want to live, and this is an example of ours.

The bane of my existence.

And now I'm going to go and throw all the windows in the house open because I just washed a bunch of Big Ag's shirts and our entire house smells like a fruity, flowery, chemical candy store.

Why I Love Mondays

If you are a homemaker or a homesteader, you probably love Mondays.  I know I do.  When you work in your home and on your home, making it clean, organized and fruitful, Mondays are the best day of the week.  You wake up in the morning, in your work place and ready to hit the ground running on your never-ending chore list....but without the distractions that are often present on Saturdays and Sundays (even though they are nice distractions).

I love our weekends and I love the activities my husband and I find ourselves involved in.  But I'm often glad once Sunday night comes around and I know tomorrow is Monday.  This is a bold contrast to how I felt when I worked outside the home.  I hated Mondays, because I knew I had to leave home the next five days in a row, for most of the hours I was awake. I can't think of a single job I held where that fact did not depress me just a little bit.  Some jobs were worse than others, but even the best ones left me longing, just a little, to be home enjoying the house I was working so hard to pay a mortgage on.  In truth, I'm probably the ideal personality type to work from home.

Today I am back to the blissful routine of cleaning, hanging wash, composting, cleaning chicken coops, and continuing to lay drip lines for the front yard landscaping.  It's quiet and the pace I set my work at is my own.  I will work hard, but I am working for myself, and that makes all the difference.  Perhaps people who own a shop or restaurant feel the same way...going to work on your own property is a sweet feeling, no question.

Mondays I always breathe a little bit easier.  I get organized, get clean, and enjoy the sweet routine of householding until Friday comes along again, when I'm ready for another break in the routine.

It's hooray for Monday -- every Monday -- here at the Hot Flash Homestead.

Powering a homestead

one off-grid energy option...no power

This time of year always brings with it a certain dilemma...do I hang wash outside, or use my energy-hogging electric clothes dryer inside?  You see, even though we live on the Central California coast, in the land of rhone wine grapes and sunshine, we still get more than enough winter days of "marine layer" cloudiness and short days, when there's a distinct lack of dry and/or warm air about.  There have been plenty of days recently when I dutifully hung the wash in the morning, then pulled it in at around 4:30 pm (sunset in these parts), still damp.  Talk about a waste of personal time and energy.

These days also have me thinking about finally buying a generator, now that my husband has his Christmas bonus in hand and we can afford it.  In summer, we could easily live without electricity -- the days are warm and sunny, but the nights are always cool, which makes the house a pleasant temperature most of the time; we have a solar oven and a 3,000 gallon tank of water which is gravity fed into the house if the well fails -- but winter is another story.  Again, we bust through yet another California myth:  Not only is there not eternal, warm sunshine, it also gets damn cold here in winter, especially at night, where it often freezes.  That's not North Dakota cold, but it is cold enough to make a long night much longer, if you have no pellet or wood stove, fireplace, or central heating to help you through.  

another off-grid energy option...limited power

Anyplace where it's down in the '20's or teens and you're in an emergency situation, you can always survive by putting everyone to bed in an extremely small room, sealing the doors and windows securely, and letting your combined body heat warm the room.  With only three of us here full-time, it would work.  But the question becomes....who would want to do that if there were another option?  It's a last resort, at best, suitable for only the worst survival situations. For us, another other option is a gas or propane generator, capable of running the fan on the pellet stove and therefore heating much of the house up before we retire each evening.  

I know it's odd that I loathe using an electric clothes dryer and regularly imagine scenarios where we actually have to do everything without electricity (in which case the clothes would remain on the clothesline for two or three days in winter until they finally got dry).  The fact is, I like having  back-ups in place to grid-dependent appliances -- and knowing how to use them, because what you think is never gonna happen seems to have a way of happening, even if only for awhile.  When the 1971 Sylmar hit near my childhood home, our power was out for four days.  Not an eternity, but long enough.

And if you need to imagine a closer scenario, how about Hurricane Sandy.  There are some folks that are still without power from that storm, almost two months later.

Another off-grid option.. really expensive power.

I freely admit I also hate giving an ever-increasing amount of money to PG&E each month, but I'm not sure solar panels or wind turbines would either a) make us more independent or b) save us money in the long run. The most expensive type of system is one in which you're off-the-grid most of the time and storing power in batteries, but have grid capability should you need it.  Those batteries I just spoke of cost a fortune, as does the technology that make it possible to charge them.  But with all that technology comes dependence of another sort -- on repairmen and parts shipped from far away, since no technology will work forever without need of replacement parts. 

So today I will use the electric clothes dryer....because I can, and tomorrow I will go out and buy a generator, because someday I may need it.  And when it's warm I'll hang  wash outside and use my solar oven, and when it's raining I'll stay inside and use my household appliances.  Right now it's the best of both worlds, but should one of those worlds become dominant, I'm hopeful I'll be able to function in either of them.

Homestead laundry detergent

About a year ago I decided to start making my own laundry detergent, after the eco-friendly one I'd been buying at the store became prohibitively expensive.  Homemade powdered detergent is extremely easy to make and is gentle to the environment in addition to being kind to the pocketbook.  I would guess $5 worth of this lasts about four months, and I do laundry for a family of 5 each week, which translates to 6 - 7 loads.  (And of course there's occasionally a mat or rug that gets soiled due to a pet accident, so some weeks it's 8 loads, easily.)  Bottom line:  This powdered detergent goes a long way, and costs only a few pennies per load. And gets the job done well.


Here is the recipe, courtesy of Planet Green:

Powdered Detergent

2 cups finely grated soap
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax

1. Mix well and store in an airtight plastic container.

2. Use 2 tablespoons per full load.

I use Fels Naptha soap, which costs about a dollar a bar and is available at WalMart.  Washing soda is available there as well (I haven't found either item anywhere else around here) and borax is found in the detergent section of most supermarkets.  Note that washing soda is NOT the same as baking soda, despite the similarity in packaging.  Washing soda is much stronger.

I break the Fels Naptha bar into small pieces before putting them into the food processor to grate finely (you could do this by hand, but the food processor is faster and easier unless you are working on Popeye arms).  Then mix in the other ingredients and you're good to go.  It's smells nice and looks pretty good too, as you can see from the pic (the finished product is on the far right in the mason jar).  

Double Duty

People start doing homesteading-type activities for many reasons. A couple of the main ones are frugality and a desire to simplify life. In these bizarro-world economic times, no one can argue that frugality (especially if it's virtually painless) makes for a nicer number when looking at your bottom line at the end of the month, after paying the bills. When our family started taking things back to basics, our main reason was to disconnect from being consumers only, and to begin being producers, specifically producers of the things we were going to use.  But after a few months we noticed a marked increase in our savings, so frugality was a nice and very much appreciated side effect.


Outside right now, I have a lasagna cooking in the solar oven and a load of wash on the clothesline, meaning the sun is currently acting as both my stove and my dryer.  We have a lot of different sized mason jars laying around that see duty as canning jars and drinking glasses.  They're also food storage containers.  In the refrigerator, I use them instead of Tupperware containers, to preserve a cut up onion, a half-used jar of tomato paste or leftover spaghetti sauce.  I use them in the freezer, saving chicken broth, limoncello and peach syrup for making sodas with. In the pantry, large half-quart jars hold all our flour, pasta, rice, etc..  Don't get me started on the mason jar thing.  I'm fairly obsessed.  And my point is that the mason jars can do many things successfully, which increases their value to me, as well as their cost-effectiveness.  


Many things can do double duty, if you're willing to get creative. I just ate an orange and now the leftover peel is sitting on the stove simmering, along with a half stick of cinammon and some cloves, to freshen the air in the house. I like it better than any air freshening crap they sell in the store, and I'm sure breathing in the scent of real oranges and cinnamon is probably better for me than whatever's coming out of the spray can or the  liquidy goo plugged into some power outlet.  


Occasionally I peruse the Sunday ads and am amazed at the number of appliances which 1) serve no other purpose than the one advertised and 2) are so easily done by something else -- something most of us already have around the house.  Two great examples are appliances I saw advertised last Sunday.  One was a self-contained cupcake maker, and the other was a quesadilla maker.  These were both stand-alone devices, using their own supply of electricity and taking up either valuable counter or shelf space in the kitchen, 365 days a year.  


I know now why modern man keeps needing bigger and bigger houses -- it's not because we need more space in our bedrooms or family areas -- it's because after a few years we run out of space to keep all our cupcake maker, quesadilla makers and other assorted -makers that have accumulated through the years.


I have a cupcake pan that goes into either of my ovens (solar or conventional) and a Lodge pan that does the same thing.  With these, I can make cupcakes, muffins, quesadillas, and about 100 other things.  


People might say I'm sounding preachy about this, and maybe I am.  So I'll preach it. Do we really need this much stuff?  What might life be like without cupcake makers and canned air freshener?  Damn good, I'll tell you.