2018 has been a year of expansion for THF. This means that we are learning about and doing new things. Since February I have been busy making what we are calling our natural skin care products.
While we have sold some of it to our friends, we won’t find out if they will really sell until we are at our first vendor event. That will be the CCE Herb & Flower Festival on June 16. Last year we were blown away at the reception of our shiitakes. But my worry about how well our products sell will remain front and center until the event if over. It is just a little bit scary. I have put so much of myself into this newest part of THF. I am trying to keep my hopes based in reality, but it would be wonderful if this stuff sells well.
During this process we have stumbled across a few interesting things.
This is a jar of coconut oil being infused with lavender. I know that coconut oil will solidify at a low temp, but I have no idea what this is about. Could not resist taking a picture of it though.
Coconut oil is one of the basic ingredients I use in my soap and lotion bars. And it is a huge pain in the neck to get out of the big plastic jars the brand I use comes in. After a few weeks of fighting with it, I decided to put our woodstove to good use. I put the jars near the stove and went on about my day, waiting for the oil to melt. Then I poured the oil into one of my soap loaf molds.
I waited for it to harden again and then wrapped each loaf in plastic wrap. Now all I have to do is slice off what I need for each batch. And I can easily see just how much I have left. I think when I do this next time, I will pour just the amount needed for my double batch of soap in the mold. Then all I have to do is plop the whole thing in the pan and turn on the heat. I am all for anything that makes life easier.
Ron has been busy coming up with new ideas too. We have spent hours tacking down all the landscape cloth we have in our field. For our garlic patch, the elderberries and paw paws and more recently the lavender and calendula. It was not a overall success. First we tried using those staples designed for just this job, but they were useless. Then Ron took the small wood blocks that he and brother in law Doug spent hours working on. They were supposed to be a mulch of sorts for his ginseng plants. Which did not work out as planned. So he drilled holes in each block and we used them a “washers” for timber spikes. Those worked pretty well unless you hit them too hard with the hammer and they broke. And sadly they did not hold the cloth down as well as we had hoped. We get quite a bit of wind out on THF and if it gets under one of the sheet edges, the whole thing can be ripped up. We lost more than a few of our newly planted lavender starts last year after a wind storm blew through.
Ron’s solution was to order the above disks from “the rubber man”. They are left over from another process and are perfect for our needs. Once Ron drilled holes in them, of course. Which he did in the kitchen one chilly day in March. He used the drill press he found at a yard sale for 10 bucks a few years ago. I don’t think he even remembers what he bought it for, but it sure came in handy for this project. The rubber disks don’t break when you bang the spikes in and should last longer than the wood blocks. And you can bash them down right to the ground.
But you really do need to use a proper hammer. The first time Ron and I went out to do some tacking, we forgot to bring a hammer. Rocks, even good sized ones really don’t do a good job. Our wrists felt it the next day.
Ron also used his amazing macgyvering abilities to get his solar powered fans set up in the drying shed. He bought them as a kit back in August, and of course they were not as easy to put together as he hoped. He managed to get one solar panel together; somehow as it did not come instructions. Has anyone else noticed that trend? More and more things that need to be put together don’t come with an instruction sheet. Or they some with one sheet of only pictures. It was so frustrating that he then set the while project aside until now. More pondering was needed in order to figure out the best way to get the last panel put together and to get them both set up on top of the beams that he had built into the shed just for this purpose.
Once he got the second fan set up and we bought a new roll of duct tape, both fans were installed in the shed. The purpose is to keep the air circulating and the temps down enough for us to use the space for drying garlic, lavender and calendula. The solar panels are the power source as we are not connected to the power grid.
It was another great and fun adventure getting the panels onto those beams and attached. Ron and I got it done with just a few frayed nerves. We could not tell yet if it was going to work as the sun was going down by the time we were done. We still have to tack down the connecting wires both in and outside. But they are up and running and doing their job. The next step is to get the shed organized and figure out what our drying racks are going to look like. And how we are going to set them up.
Ron also decided to expand our mushroom world. This year we drilled and inoculation a set of logs for nameko mushrooms. These will be smaller and slightly sticky and are used in miso soup.
They are grown differently too. The logs are just placed on the ground, making sure they are in contact with the surrounding dirt. We won’t see anything from them until this fall. I will be sure to keep you posted. One of Ron’s other plans is to grow oyster mushrooms in buckets. Our shiitakes are always well received but it would be lovely to have something more to offer our customers.
Who would have thought that our lives at age 60 would suddenly be crammed full of so many new and slightly crazy projects. Isn’t this the time of life when most people are reducing their work loads? I have known for years that Ron could not retire and then just sit around the house. He needed a project to keep himself and his mind busy. Leave it to Ron to shake our world up so much with a farm of all things. I saw us having a garden in our backyard not growing mushrooms, elderberries, lavender and paw paws on 10 acres. Still cannot believe he dragged me into this. And now I have jumped feet first into making skin care products and have plans to sell them. A few years ago Ron started making my morning tea, and now I think I know why. Obviously he has been putting something in my cup.