Making my own homemade laundry soap is something I’ve been wanting to start doing for a long time, and I FINALLY got around to doing it!  It’s very easy and not as time consuming as you might think!  The cost can’t be beat!  This is another fantastic way to help my family live a more self reliant/self sufficient lifestyle.

Here’s what you’ll need: (** Note: all ingredients can be found in the laundry aisle of any retail store such as Meijer)

~1 bar Fels Naptha soap

~1 cup Borax

~1 cup Washing Soda (not to be confused with baking soda)

~ Essential oil of choice (optional)

~5 gallon bucket with lid

~Water

Step 1:  Grate bar of Fels Naptha soap, I use a hand held cheese grater.

Step 2:  Fill 5 gallon bucket half full with HOT water.

Step 3:  Add grated soap to saucepan and add 4 cups of HOT water.  Simmer over low heat stirring constantly until soap flakes are dissolved.

Step 4:  Once Dissolved, add to 5 gallon bucket along with 1 cup Borax and 1 cup Washing Soda.  Fill bucket the rest of the way with more HOT water and stir until Borax and Washing Soda are dissolved.

Step 5:  Let set overnight (about 24 hours) it will gel up. *** if you choose to add an essential oil of choice, wait until mixture has cooled but not set, then add 10-15 drops per 2 gallons***

Step 6:  After it has set, stir well (you will notice clumpiness, this is normal) and divide into clean, empty laundry bottles.  Upon using, shake bottle well and use 1/2 cup per load.  **NOTE this is very low sudsing soap, soap suds are not what cleans your laundry, so don’t be alarmed if you do not see any suds, I promise your laundry is getting cleaned.

Let me know what you think, I personally will NEVER buy commercial laundry soap again!

CONGRATULATIONS RENEE, you are our WINNER of the chicken potholders!  Please check for a reply to your entry comment under the original post here on the website for details on how to claim your prize.  If you have any trouble, email me at [email protected].  Thank you for supporting Rose Shadow Ranch!

As promised, in celebration of reaching 400 likes on our facebook page, we are going to have a cute little GIVEAWAY where everyone who participates can benefit!

So here are the rules:

1. Leave us a comment under this post.  The comment can be as simple as “Hello” or more elaborate, that’s up to you.  **In your comment please be sure to leave us your first name, farm page name and an email address so we may contact you if you’re our lucky winner.**  Winner will be chosen at random on Saturday December 8th, 2012.

2.  Next: (Read carefully), In the spirit of the season of giving, On your facebook page, personal, farm or business, tag our page ROSE SHADOW RANCH and 2 others of your favorite pages.  If someone has already tagged you, you must return the favor and tag the one who tagged you and 2 other pages.  Refer your friends to our website www.roseshadowranch.com and tell them to tell us you sent them to double your chances of winning!  In playing along, my hope is that everyone who plays will have several new likes/friends by the time this GIVEAWAY ends.

**NOTE: I would like to see those who participate play the tag game everyday during the GIVEAWAY, but if you don’t that’s ok, just once is enough to qualify you for the GIVEAWAY 🙂

The Prize:

*An adorable set of chicken potholders*

a cute set of chicken potholders!

Good Luck Everyone, and Thank you again for your support!!

I thought it was time to post some new pictures of our feathered friends here at the ranch.  I so enjoy the ladies and gents, they each have their own unique and crazy personality!  We have 13 hens, 2 Roosters, and 2 Ducks.

Treat time!

Lavender Ameraucana “Violet”

Cuckoo Maran hen “Ivy”

Pekin Male Duck “Donald”

Cuckoo Maran Rooster “Jingles”

Black Sex Link “Midnight”

Red Sex Link hen “Boo Boo Chicken”

Silkie hens “Willow and Flurry”

Your Friends here at Rose Shadow Ranch want to wish you ALL of very Happy Thanksgiving!!

Back in September you might remember we had a chocolate brown alpaca baby born.  Now she is nearly 2 months old and getting big!  Here are some recent pictures of her.

That’s her in the front!

So Pretty!!

Pretty Girl

Our Daughter snuggling with the Paca Babies

So, you have an incubator full of eggs and new chicks in the brooder that need heat and your power is now out and you don’t know when it will come back on!  Not to mention, you don’t own a generator either!  In the wake of Hurricane Sandy I know many of you are in this situation.  I’ve been there, not as a result of a hurricane but bad weather nonetheless and it’s a horrible sight to see chicks only days old “piling” because they are cold.  Or eggs in your incubator and you’re watching the temp drop by the minute.  There is something you can do!  It wasn’t that long ago, I was frantically running around trying to figure out how to keep 2 brooders warm and my incubator warm too!  Here’s what I did:

1.  Fill mason jars with boiling water and wrap them with aluminum foil (the foil helps hold in the heat), then a thin dish towel (the dish towel protects your chicks from getting burned) and place them in brooders and the incubator(s).  I am fortunate to have a gas stove, so cooking is not an issue with a power outage.  Maybe you have an electric stove, if so, fire up your grill or build a fire in your fire pit, somehow figure out a way that works for you to get boiling water.  If there is no way, then simply use the hottest water you can get out of your tap.  The temps drop quickly so you must move fast and the hotter the water, the faster you’ll get your temps up again.  You will have to continuously monitor your temps so they don’t get too hot and they will fluctuate a lot using this method, but in an emergency, it works.

2.  If you’re not too far out in the boonies, hopefully there is a store nearby such as a Wal-Mart or Meijer or hardware store.  For about $30-40 you can purchase an electrical car adapter (pictured below).  We own 2 of these little lifesavers (during the black out of 2003 we sat and watched tv when there was no power anywhere).  This wonderful little gadget allows you to run small appliances off your car battery! You will need to leave your car running most of the time while doing this but when it comes to an emergency, you won’t care!  I was able to run lights for both my brooders and my incubator off my car battery until the power came back on!  All my chicks and my eggs were saved and our power came back on 16 hours later.

car power adapter

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of you who have been affected by Hurricane Sandy.  Be well and stay safe our friends.

Hello!

I see I have not blogged in a while:( Sometimes life just gets in the way I guess.  Anyways, we have been quite busy lately!  Fall is well under way, although you would never know it the last couple days, I think we’re having our Indian Summer.  Today is supposed to be 79 degrees!  Our gardens are done producing now and it’s time to prepare for a long cold MI winter.  Back in the spring a local grocery store replaced their fruit and veggie stands and gave away their old ones!  This was a great score!  Hubby has been working on plans to modify 1 of them (we got 2) and turn it into a chicken coop.  Really won’t take much because they are already in the shape of a house, so all that’s really needed is a weather proof roof, some doors and some nest boxes.  The other one will more than likely get turned into a goat house for those goats I’ve been thinking about getting.

Our newest baby alpaca continues to do well and is sweet as ever!  She still needs a name though.  Her Momma is being bred to a new herdsire this time around and we are very excited to see what kind of results we get from him since he is not proven yet (not proven means, he has no babies on the ground).

As for the dogs, as luck would have it, or shall I say lack thereof, Cherokee went into heat just before her 2nd birthday (which was yesterday), so we will not be expecting our first litter of puppies from her until next spring now:(  We still have to get her OFA and CERF tests done (hips and eyes), these have to be done after 2 years of age, so now that she’s officially 2, we’ll be getting those done so she’ll be ready to breed on her next heat cycle.    STAY TUNED!

Now, you heard me mention goats, and if you follow us via Facebook, you know this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.  We have a small piece of property, so a cow is out of the question, but having goats would allow us to make one more move to living self sufficiently too.  So the Nigerian Dwarf breed is what I have my eye on.  I’m still learning about the little cuties and I’m sure the best way to really do that is hands on, so I will definitely learn more about them by having them.

Well, there you have it, and this is just the farming end of our busy lives lately:)

I want to welcome and encourage you all to share with us any tips, advice, suggestions or what have you on raising goats, especially the Nigerian Dwarf breed, and if you have a cute and clever name you would like share with us for our baby girl alpaca, we would be most appreciative.

By now, many of you are saying good-bye to your summer gardens by canning and freezing all the produce you’ve worked so hard for all summer long, and saying hello to frost and freeze warnings in your area, I know I am.  They’ve come a tad bit early this year in our neck of the woods, but the good news is, I saw it coming!  In preparation of it, I went out and harvested what I could of all the green cherry tomatoes which I am going to attempt to ripen indoors.  Here’s how:

Most varieties of tomatoes need temperatures to be above 60 degrees to finish ripening. Where we live, by October, those days can be few and far between.  To speed up ripening of the existing green tomatoes on the vine, pinch off any new flowers.  If you’re in an area like us, there is a few things you can do to try and get every last tomato off your vines before winter sets in.

1.  You can use the tried and true method of simply bringing your green tomatoes inside and placing them in a sunny window sill turning them daily until they turn the desired red color.  This method works best on fruits that are already beginning to change color.

2.  You can pull out the entire plant and hang it in a dry, sheltered location, like the garage or basement. The fruits will continue to ripen and will still have some of the benefits of ripening on the vine. Try and take some roots with the plant and shake off any loose soil. You don’t want to hang the plants in direct sunlight or total darkness.

3.  You can wrap each individual green tomato in newspaper and layer in a box, no more than 2 layers deep. Place the box in a dark, dry spot and check weekly for progress. It usually takes 3-4 weeks for the tomatoes to ripen, but check frequently and remove any fruits that show signs of rotting.  *I personally do not have time to wrap each individual tomato, so I improvise by placing a single layer of tomatoes in a cardboard box.  Then I lay a sheet of newspaper over the layer and start a new layer.

Ripening Green Tomatoes in a box

4.  You can also place the green tomatoes in a paper bag with a ripe apple. The apple gives off ethylene gas, which speeds up ripening. Check the bag daily.

Keep in mind, not all of your green tomatoes will ripen and, by ripening them indoors, they will lose some of their flavor, but at least it won’t be as heartbreaking as seeing your huge bounty of green tomatoes get killed by a frost or freeze.