Clean livin' and the lord

Guess what?

Soap's ready to use!  

It's been curing for a month in the spare bedroom.  I've visited it often.

And use it we have been--now that those long four weeks are finally over!  It is really nice stuff...very gentle and more slippery than lathery, which is what we are used to anyway since we've been using health-food-store soaps for the last few years.  It cleans well and hasn't disintegrated in our shower (but isn't kept in the trajectory of the showerhead, either, let's be honest.)  It is mild, and I like using it for my face;  I hope that it will prove helpful for Jason's eczema with continued use.

OK, here's the deal:  do you know how satisfying it is to have made something entirely new--to have the chemical reaction work correctly the first time?  I think household alchemy is pretty dang fun, personally.  I will be making soap again...soon.  I keep giving it away, and that month-long waiting period is a bummer.

I am sad to say that the essential-oil fragrance has apparently been sacrificed to the curing period in the open air.  I would like to test the pH of the bars next time to see how long it actually takes them to cure, rather than just going with the average time, which might help.  I would also like to try again with essential oils, but use strong scents like rosemary and mint.  Oh, or clove and cinnamon.  Mmm.  


I was thinking the other day that if there is one area of this homesteading experiment that I feel I have truly explored, it is the home- and human-cleaning product realms.  For most of the last year I have made, rather than bought, the following:

• shampoo
• conditioner 
• hair gel
• body lotion
• herbal salve for wounds
• face lotion
• bathroom spray cleaner
• soft scrub
• toilet cleaner
• kitchen spray/general cleaner
• floor cleaner    

More recently, I've been trying my hand at making
-soap
-laundry detergent
-bug spray
-and bay rum.  

This is such a fun genre to dabble in, and I wish that I could be privately funded to focus on and play with herbs and potion-making all the day long.  I have books on herbs that I bought while in high school, so this is no passing fancy.  [Oh, and I would go to herbalist school in a heartbeat.  I love the rich history that women have with herbs and healing--just as I love the anarchy inherent to the fact that some of the most useful herbs are what we now call weeds.]  

Ultimately, the colors and scents and gathering out in the fresh air and sunshine are a blissful way to spend your day.  I have the most wonderful mason jar full of sun-dried calendula flowers that represents hours of picking, preparing, and drying beautiful flower-heads on sunny days throughout the summer.  How can they be anything but a force for health and happiness?


I also should point out that our house and persons are as clean as they were when we were buying all of the commercial cleaning stuff.   (Notice how cleverly I worded that.  Ha!  Some of you uber-housekeepers would faint, but I think we do OK.)  If anything, I feel like my hair and skin have benefited from this simplistic routine.  I absolutely love not having a label to bother reading--and if you are concerned about the chemical soup we live in like I am, then you are probably inclined to squint at label gobble-de-gook as well.  It is very freeing to have made what you are using and know the ingredients and their quality inherently.  It is a bit of a challenge to try to recreate for myself all that we would otherwise buy, and I am sure that I will eventually need to start weighing what is worth the time-invested and what would better to buy ready-made.  For right now, though, I am having fun.


If you are interested in trying some or any of these cleanliness-creations yourself, there are  many great resources out there with recipes, tips, and suggestions.  My favorites include:

• Rosemary Gladstar's Recipes for Vibrant Health:  175 Teas, Tonics, Oils, Salves, Tinctures, and Other Natural Remedies for the Entire Family
• Better Basics for the Home:  Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living, by Annie Berthold-Bond
• The Wild and Weedy Apothecary:  an A to Z Book of Herbal Concoctions, Recipes, Remedies, Practical Know-How & Food for the Soul, by Doreen Shababy
• The Naturally Clean Home:  150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning, by Karyn Siegel-Maier

  In general, let me say that I use a lot of the following, some of which is available at any grocery or drugstore  (but may be better sourced at a health food store):  

distilled white vinegar, organic apple cider vinegar, olive oil, extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, pure aloe vera, witch hazel, vegetable glycerin, beeswax, baking soda, washing soda, castile soap, borax, lye, fresh or dried herbs and essential oils. 

--and that just about wraps up my shopping list.  From hence, all cleanliness cometh.

Well, with the exception of dishwashing liquid, which continues to elude me.  Tricky liquid soap.   Ah, well. 

Ode to Moe

A question that seems to come up fairly quickly among people who have kept chickens is:  "How many have you lost?"  Chickens are, inescapably, succulent potential dinners running around in pretty feathers and fancy headgear, a fact I have worried about continually in my wildlife-rich neighborhood.  We try to find a good balance between giving the girls freedom and still keeping them safe.  [Whoa.  Just sounded exactly like my father.  Good lord.]   We have a six-foot privacy fence around the yard, lots of hiding places, and we are scrupulous about locking the girls in their coop when it is bedtime and the majority of the predators appear--we worry, but we go ahead and live our lives.   I have gotten surprised responses from several people when I answer "Haven't lost any yet!" and I am grateful, every time, to be able to give the same answer.


Sadly, that easy answer is no longer true.

We've lost our dear Ramona.

The girls are noticeably upset and subdued.  So are we.

*     *     *

Now, there have been a couple of other times in this blog that I've been tempted to expound philosophically about the Greater Truths of Life which may be discovered by contemplating your backyard flock. I have heroically managed to keep myself in hand on those occasions--I would, after all, prefer that you think of me as a relatively practical, down-to-earth person, and not someone off with the fairies.

Well, these last days have required Practical Down-to-Earth Maggie to be present with a vengeance (it is not acceptable for a 34-year-old woman to have a massive breakdown over a dead chicken, FYI)...and yet, all the while, in the background, my mind and heart have been simmering with poignant Great Truths.  About Ramona.  About keeping animals.  About loving other creatures, of any kind.  About life, death, and what in the world to do with the last two dark-brown, pointed eggs in my carton?

Never fear:  I will not burden you with all of these thoughts.  In fact, my inner-dialogue voice tends to snort derisively when my heart tries to talk about these things.  The last thing I ever wanted to become, when I placed the order for my little flock, was the chicken equivalent of those women who carry miniature, yipping dogs in their designer handbags.  While I will admit freely that these animals are pets far more than they are livestock, I do not want to be overly sentimental or impractical.  We couldn't justify enormous vet bills or superhuman efforts if one of the girls were ill, for example.  I have long wrestled with what we will ultimately do with the girls as they age and lay fewer and fewer eggs.  I have semi-serious dreams of raising a meat flock some summer...damn it, I am not just a silly, impractical urbanite!

And yet...my sweet Mo-mo-chicken.  My sweet girl. 

It is hard to believe we won't have anymore of our mutual chats...the soft warmth of her sitting quietly against my chest, cocking her head to make eye contact, and conversationally chirping and cooing.

It occurs to me that this grief is partially her fault:  she made a lifelong habit out of charming us and whatever other humanity she had the opportunity to sidle up to.  It was Ramona who napped in our cupped palms as a brand-new chick, and who perched proudly on my shoulder when she was first getting her feathers.  If you have been to my place to meet the girls, you have either held, petted, or fed her, I'm sure.  I can't count the number of times I have turned around to see a young child awkwardly grasping Mo-mo to their chest--with Moe looking at me calmly as if to say:  It's OK.  People this size always have food....

I referred to her as our lap chicken. What can I say?  It is futile to try to categorize her as simply another cog in the wheel of our little homestead; she was, more than the other girls (dare I say that?), an entity in her own right.

[TOP SECRET:  In fact, the concept of wishing--if it had to happen at all--that Ramona would have survived in exchange for one of the other girls has actually been expressed by most of the humans closest to this little flock.  We feel really awful about saying it...and yet--behold the power of Ramona.]

And, with that, I am done with the sentimental stuff.  Promise.

Now, I am sure that many of you are wondering what happened.  With as little gore as possible, let me say this:  probably a raccoon.  Possibly an owl out hunting a bit early.  Either way, it was a violent death that we hope was very quick.

Actually, the whole thing was rather harrowing--Jason was gone for a long weekend, white-water rafting with his dad in West Virginia, and so it was Maggie vs the Crisis.  Awesome.  I came home from dropping him off a few hours away at his parents' place, and found the backyard in chaos.  The remaining girls had witnessed the violence and were panicked--Roxie was somehow over the back fence in the neighbor's yard and couldn't figure out how to get home.  In trying to puzzle that out, I happened upon poor Ramona--near the fence, and near a large gap that I hadn't known was in the fence (it is partially hidden by the brush pile.) 

In any case, finding her body, while hard, was also helpful in the sense that one immediately knows that the sweet, sassy spark that was "Ramona" is gone, and what is left is, truly, just a carcass.  This was nothing like most open-casket funeral home ordeals where the departed looks like a creepy wax figure with a few inches of stage make-up slathered on--this death wasn't sanitized, which was a first for me.  In truth, I am grateful.  One look was enough to know two things with certainty:  that is Ramona, and she isn't coming back.  It is almost as though the moment I found her little body, Ramona-in-this-world disappeared and a bright light was lit in my mind, a warm little glow of funny & precious memories.  If she, herself, can't be here, then I am glad that her personality remains larger than life.

And it is, let me tell you!  Do you have any idea how many people knew Ramona?  I've received sympathy cards.  No joke.  Most of the condolences I've received have been accompanied by a story about her--the first chicken I've ever held!...she came running when you called...I couldn't believe she let me hold her and pet her...etc.  We feel a little less silly now, so thank you for the stories.  We weren't the only ones who loved her. 

It has been close to two weeks, now.  The girls are coping, but slowly.  They are quite depressingly discombobulated--to go from four to three is a enormous change for ladies of such predictable habits! We've moved the outdoor pen back beside the garage for the winter, and they are content to stay confined (that should tell you all you need to know!), with access to the coop in the garage and the pen outside. While they will have free range time again (if I'm able to convince the Red Rooster that this is a worthwhile risk), for now we are only letting them run around while we are outside with them--and even so, they stick close to us or hide under cover most of the time.  Gone are the days where we all felt invincible--the girls and the humans around here are like newly-driving teenagers who've been through their first scary car accident.  No more carefree joy-riding!  We know, painfully, that "it" can happen to us.

SO.  Anyway, that is the story of the demise of Ramona!  We buried her under the hackberry tree in the backyard, and covered the spot with stones.  It feels good to have her still be a part of our place.  After thinking it all over for a while, we are probably going to add another chicken to the flock before winter, to ensure that we have enough eggs over the slow season, and to bring in the newbie before the original three get used to their new flock dynamics. 

With that, here are a few more of our favorite pictures. 

The life and times of our Moe:

This was probably the last time we were rational about this chicken

Coffee talk

Big-girl feathers

A teenager with a pin-up rooster

Educational chickens

Beautiful iridescent feathers...freshly groomed.