Boston beans, homemade dishwasher powder and laundry soaps

pressure cooking on my barely adequate stove

I've been trying to convert some of the things I used to take for granted into things I make homemade.  A year or so ago we gave up grocery store canned goods (metal cans) because of BPA.  As a result, simple easy lunches like beanie weanies (baked beans and hot dogs) had been virtually removed from our diet.  I was getting pretty good at using the pressure cooker to provide cooked beans for us but still that requires enough foresight to get the beans out and soak them, sprout them...you get the idea.  Last week though is the beginning of the end of that inconvenience!  I canned my first batch of Boston baked beans!  I know real exciting but we were missing having that as a food option.  I used the recipe from Jackie Clay's Growing and Canning Your Own Food  which I'd recommend if you want to take canning to a level beyond just single ingredient fruits and veggies.  If you don't, the classic Ball Book of Canning is just right for just about everything else.  I don't think I can just post the recipe but it was basically navy beans, brown sugar, molasses, onion, mustard and bacon- which the instructions didn't say to cook and drain the bacon but I think next time I will since there is a LOT of grease in those beans.  They are super tasty though!  I think this is the start of some serious bean canning because that will seriously make dinner time easier to do on the fly.

the turkey roaster was the only pot big enough to cook them in

finished jars (after a few were given away)

A few other items I now DIY are dishwasher and laundry soaps.  I found the recipes on a website (I think e-how) but since I've adjusted it a bit I'll just post mine.  I was using those cascade complete packets with lemishine on the side but I'm not missing the cascade at all.  I can't seem to get away from lemishine though.  That stuff just rocks!  If TEOTWAWKI happens I'll have to try to get case loads of the stuff....oh wait, I won't have electricity most likely so nevermind.  I need a good liquid dishwashing soap recipe if anyone has one.

Dishwasher Machine powder

1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/2 cup kosher or canning salt (I use canning salt...its what I have on hand)
1/2 cup lemishine or citric acid

(after breaking up the borax clumps) dump all ingredients into a wide mouth quart jar.  apply lid and shake.  Use about 1TBS per load.  If you have cruddy water like mine you'll need to add a 1/2 TBS of lemishine in the prewash pocket. 

My laundry soap is just as easy...can't remember where I found this one but its really close to the way I found it.  Its gets even my kid's nasty stinky cloth diapers clean so I feel pretty good about it.

Basic dry laundry soap

1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/2 cup kosher or canning salt (can you tell I have bad water?)
1 bar of Fels naptha shaved

I take the ingredients and put in the powder-y stuff first into my blender.  I put the shavings on top and pulse until I get a nice fine consistancy.  I use about a heaping TBS in each large washload.  Its best to dissolve this stuff in hot water first but I'm usually too lazy and it does just fine.   I would imagine you can substitute the Fels Naptha but I kind of like the smell.  We were formerly using Country Save and it had absolutely no smell so a little scent is nice.

brrrr! cold day for looking at houses!

We are still house shopping.  Its really hit and miss, a lot of homes overpriced for this economy and even more that need more work than would be sensible for us with a toddler roaming about.  We're looking pretty much anything within an hour of Indianapolis that has greater than 4 acres.  Its a smaller list of homes than I would have anticipated. 

Our realtor is also sending out letters and making phone calls to the houses that border our lot and see if anyone has been considering selling.  To us, that sounds like a pretty good option too.

We are putting in a poultry order this weekend for shipment in April.  If we are still in this apartment by then it should make life REALLY interesting; keeping chicks in a small apartment isn't my favorite idea but fortunately its only until we get away from frost and they gain some feathers to keep them warm or until we get a place where we have room.  So far the order looks like it will be 25 meat chickens (a mixed bag of heavy breeds), 10 layers (2 americanas, 2 blue andulusians, 6 buff orphingtons), 2 geese, 7 ducks and 7 turkeys - all whatever breed they give us.  Should make an interesting brood!  I'm following the advice of Joel Salatin to get only as many birds as you can eat in a year on your first bunch being as we are new at this.  I'm really hoping we get a decent breeding set of chickens, turkeys and ducks out of the deal so we can either let them restock us next spring instead of placing another order. 

I'm still working on my seed inventory.  I think I've got most of the garden covered though.  I'm going to try picking up some organic sweet potatoes and starting my own slips this year.  I completely forgot to grow them last year and they will be a brand new experience for us.  I kept all my smalls from my regular (and by regular I of course mean Cranberry reds, All Blues, Yukon golds and Russett burbanks) to plant this year and I'm really hoping they'll be good by time planting comes 'round.  I think I found a use for all that hay that was ruined last year....garden mulch!  Surely we can use it for mulch and maybe it will breakdown and help improve our garden soil.

House shopping

After the holidays we are going to look at houses.  I'm pretty excited and nervous about it too.  On one hand, I've put so much energy into the land we have and trying to get a house on it that I think I'm having some trouble letting that idea go completely.  On the other, it would be pretty exciting to have both and having both really expands our possibilities. 

There are a few complications to the idea of having two properties.  One big one being that there is no water source on the current lot so we may have to consider either hauling water, digging or having dug for us a well or setting up some really creative rain water containment system.


I have a lot of ideas roaming about in my head of things to do if we had two plots to work with.  Growing crops and trees on the one we aren't living on comes to mind....that would leave us free from having to do much over there in inclement and winter weather.  This spring, house or not we'll be adding in critters so I should have some lovely pictures once we get going. 

I expect this will be my last post for the year and maybe for a while (or at least until I order seeds) so have a happy holidays!

Take a cookie break from my drama

and visit my friend over at Stay at Home Chef for a chance to win her super secret cookie recipe.  You'll need to become a follower through networked blogs :)

So we have decided....

We've decided after much discussion with relatives and friends that we are firing our banker dude working on our home loan.  What does that mean?  It means that we are either going to wait until spring to build or we are going to find an existing home with acreage and divide projects between both lots.  There are actually 3 homes in our searches that would be a good place to start looking so probably after the new year we'll start our search for existing homes and put building on the back burner for now. 

We may come back to the idea to build and we are going to leave our deposit with the builder we've selected for now.  As it stands we wouldn't be moving in until spring or summer anyhow once the house would be built so a few months of clarity would be good for us.  We DO still plan to get chickens and goats in the spring despite the fact that we won't have a house out there.  I've seen some really nice igloo style goat housing, movable fencing and I think the addition of a milk stand and an "instant" canvas garage might get us started.  For chickens we will build a chicken tractor to keep them safe and contained.  We only live about 10 minutes away right now so we will be transporting water and spending a lot of time out there gardening so I think it will work.

The nice thing is that we own the land we planned to build on and I think with some creativity we will still make it a farm, even if we are farming from another location too.  Ideally if we find an existing home to purchase it will have land of its own.  One of the ones on our short list includes 12 acres...so in that purchase we will go from 9 acres to 21 total acres!  Holy cow(s)!  We may have to start raising grass fed beef to keep that managed.  Darn!  I "hate" having such high quality problems. :D

I'm reading Joel Salatin's book right now, You Can Farm, and its providing me with some inspiration about farming remotely since in this book he's adamant that you don't even have to own the land you farm on (too late for that one). 

I'll keep y'alls posted on what happens next.  Wish us luck!

Contemplating a change of course

We are at a point where we are considering other alternatives to our original plan.  One option is to keep with what we are trying to do, build the house on our land starting sometime hopefully soon with the banker we can't stand.  The second option is to find an existing home with land and farm it or both locations.  The third option is to stop where we are with this lender, regroup and find a new lender in the spring with a fresh face- this may or may not include keeping the current builder.  If we don't keep this builder I have a mind to revert back to one I interviewed before that we were pretty impressed with and our original smaller cape cod style plan.

The builder has really gone out of their way to try to make this work, its not their fault.   I'm not even sure if the fault lies on the bank themselves.  The banker that we are dealing with though is about to make me go off.  Its been since the end of August since we signed on.  They approved our loan back in early october.  Our appraisal has been done for nearly a month and now they are saying its a bad appraisal, that the house out front is/was a problem, etc, etc....it just goes on and on!  I think we've just about had it though. 

If any of y'alls have been here, have any advice or whatever...we'll take it!  So far our families think we should walk from this bank.  We are pretty much in agreement.

In other news (see I'm not all gloomy), I met with a survivalist group today.  Lots of great people with good ideas and skills, some of which we've not yet dabbled in yet.  Its good to have folks to ask when starting something new :)  If I get the ok from them I'll try to post a link sometime soon.

Next week maybe?

I spoke to both the bank dude and the builder today and it sounds like the problem is the appraisal.  Remember that 10k in improvements, well apparently that means to one party something different than it means to the others.  To the appraiser, its the lot improvements such as to be done well, sewer, drive, etc.  To the bank, it meant improvements we had already completed.  To us, it means more money at closing...but they can't yet say how much that will be.  Both the builder and the banker agree that the goal currently is to close by Friday the 10th and by Dec 15th at the latest.  

On a cheerier note, we are getting snow and if it actually will stick long enough to get a picture of it I'll have to put a pre-construction snow picture up under pictures soon.