Solar Power - it's simple!

You may have seen our previous posts describing how our business and home are powered by on site, self-generated and renewable energy sources (see: Power in the Storm and Earth Day Every Day ).
Wind & water power are pretty obvious: the wind spins a propeller which turns a rotor inside an alternator which creates electricity; water turns a water wheel which does the same thing.

Solar power comes from Photovoltaic panels which work in mysterious ways.
Be mystified no more - here is a simple explanation of how they work:

Living on the River

Van Duzen River

We live on the Van Duzen river. Literally. It runs through the middle of our property.
A small stream in this dry end of summer, it becomes a fast moving torrent during the winter rains. Wild & free, it is but a small tributary into the larger Eel River. Part of the Eel River Watershed.

Van Duzen River

Our fresh water is one of the most important resources. Not only to sustain life, but these rivers are the nursery for several species of ocean-going fish, notably Salmon and Steelhead. For many years these fisheries have been dwindling. This year, after stricter rules and moratoriums on Salmon fishing the numbers have rebounded.

The Eel River by Fortuna, Ca

An amazing local artist, Michael Guerriero, has been working with elementary school children to educate them about these fisheries as well as doing art. He has a project going to Celebrate the 2010 Eel River Salmon Run that needs funding.



It is being funded through Kickstarter and the time to donate runs out on Sept 30. Please join us in supporting this wonderful project!

Making our Soaps...

mixing the oils in the kettle

We've been making a lot of soap lately. It is, after all, our business. And while it keeps us indoors on beautiful sunny days, it is still a labor of love.

We have been making soap since 1979, when we began as a way to provide natural & nontoxic soap for our own special needs. Sensitive to synthetic fragrances and colors, we could not find commercial soap locally that worked for us. And since that time we have never tired of creating the best soap we possibly can.

Saponification

Soap is the result of a chemical reaction called Saponification. Briefly, Saponification is the chemical reaction between fatty acids (oils & fats) & caustic ("lye", caustic soda, sodium hydroxide, etc.) that results in 98% soap and 2% glycerin. Different oils/fats and different caustic solutions can be used for different types of soap. Potassium Hydroxide, for instance, is used for liquid or soft soaps.

We start by mixing organic oils of olive, palm, and coconut together. We choose these oils for their individual benefits. Olive oil is the best for the skin. Palm creates a harder, longer lasting bar. Coconut oil is the source of rich, copious lather, without it bubbles are small and thin. These oils are heated and then we add the sodium hydroxide that starts the chemical reaction. This process requires a lot of stirring. At the point when the mixture has thickened the proper amount we add the various botanical elements that give the individual varieties their characteristics.

Dennis cutting the Orange Spice soap

Our soaps are made in rectangular columns. Once the liquid soap is ready, we pump it into these molds, cover it with an insulating layer and let it sit up to 48 hours before it is ready to cut into bars. Our soap cutter is a machine of our own devising, custom made by us for our soaps. Once cut we place the soaps on trays, then on ventilated shelves, where it cures for at least 3 weeks before we wrap it to sell.
We wrap the soap by hand. Each bar is wrapped in ecologically sustainable Thai mulberry paper, then labeled with a recycled paper band. You've probably noticed we color code our soaps: each variety has its own specific color paper.

Wrapping Lemon Shea Butter soap

Our soap shop has evolved a lot over the years. Starting by making soap in our kitchen, our original shop was built from trees we fell and milled ourselves (5 big buggy Douglas fir that were dying).
We outgrew that in a few years and expanded it into the shop we have today.




Here is a quicky version of the photo tour we have on our website:

Our kettles, lye station & manufacturing area

Where we wrap & label the soaps, etc.

The curing room with our renewable energy power wall

With over 30 years of soap making experience, it is our pleasure to provide you with the finest natural organic soaps. It makes us even happier to be able to do it in the most environmentally conscious way we know how. To learn more about our business and philosophy, please see 'About Us'.

Summer Daze...

The hot days have set in.
One just feels lazy in the middle of the afternoon, the world just too bright to look at. So we go to the river or hide in the shade, relaxing, or do indoor work where it's cooler.

Mornings are when we get the real work done. Today we cleaned the hencoop ( see our Taj Mahal for chickens here: Coopus Optimus ). A simple pleasure, if aromatic & dusty. I love that it is easy with our new coop. And it is always such a feeling of accomplishment to see the clean coop with sweet smelling wood shavings on the floor and a trailer load of manure to compost for the garden.

Garden work gets done early, too. Harvesting, hand watering, tying up tomatoes and such. I know when the shade leaves each part of the garden, and work along that schedule.

On a weekend like this it is our pleasure to take some of the day to read in the shade or hike down to the river. Such a rare luxury most of the year due to weather or our busy agenda. There is usually a breeze to temper the heat.

Tempering the heat in our off-grid home uses some old-style techniques. Air conditioners are energy hogs, and just not something we own. It starts with having a well insulated house. Opening all the (screened) windows and doors overnight cools the house. As soon as the outdoor temperature starts to rise we shut it all down. We close the curtains on the sunny side of the house. The house stays at least 20 degrees cooler than outside most of the day. We supplement this with a ceiling fan or other fan to move the air when it is exceptionally warm out, and an oscillating fan in the room where we are if it is really, really, hot indoors (only a few days a year). Our solar attic fan keeps air moving as well and cools the ceiling. It also draws air up through the vent in our pantry.

Old houses always had small or large vented pantries, and we use this method as well. A vent from under the house lets in cool air and a vent, often chimney-like, exhausts warmer air up out of the insulated room (or cupboard). It will be 10 degrees or so cooler in there than in the rest of the house.
While not as cool as a refrigerator, we are able to store many things besides canned goods, including fruit, dry goods, and eggs! We never refrigerate eggs. If you do not wash them when you bring them in from the hencoop, they will keep just fine. If it gets really, really hot for an extended period of time we will take the eggs down into our root cellar.

Just as they are named, root cellars are traditionally used to store root crops such as potatoes. In the fall we fill the cellar with apples (that haven't been pressed into cider), potatoes & lugs of peppers. Amazingly the peppers last well into the new year, fresh, in the cellar. We only lose a few to mold or drying up. We also keep sealed jars of dried fruit and vegetables, canned goods that won't fit in the pantry, and wine, down in the cellar. It stays around 54 degrees F. all year round.

Well, enough of this. It's Saturday and I promised myself a break with my book and a glass of ice tea. Its 91 outside and rising, but there's a nice breeze and I can hear that hammock calling...

Time out of place...

partly sunny

17th of July, half the United States is baking under the sun and suffering from drought, and we are still waiting for something like real summer weather. Our winter lasted well into June and weather conditions stay off-kilter from what we used to consider the norm.

Not like the TV weather ever mentions the words "climate change" during these months of extreme weather events here and around the globe, but something in the weather has definitely been changing over the past few years. Living close to the land makes that more obvious.

Plants and animals are getting thrown off their timing so we have had stuff blooming early and other things coming on late. Mostly late.  Currently I am noticing that all my alliums (onions, garlic, shallots) are going to flower. The onions & shallots are early, the garlic is late. The garlic should have been ready to harvest last month, but isn't ready yet. Beets and radishes are flowering before making, well, beets and radishes. Lavender usually blooms in June here, and we should have been picking Tayberries then, too, but they are both now just starting to come on. Our Yellow May-blooming waterlilies waited until the end of June, but they may have been delayed by the deeper water level in our pond. The garden sits, suspended, and when the rare warm day comes everything grows like mad only to stop as it cools back down.

Fruit trees that try to bloom at the normal time have not been well pollinated the past few years not, as ordinarily sometimes happened, by late rains, but by freezing snow! At least it appears we will have some fruit this year.

The insect population has been effected - honeybees (who have a lot of environmental burdens these days) are relatively scarce, but so are Yellowjackets, oddly. A nice thing in some ways, but I know there is a corner of the ecological balance that they fill, too. The higher humidity, of course, leads to plenty of mosquitoes. But for mid-July, many other insects seem to be in smaller numbers - and also the birds that feed on them.

I'm curious - what have you noticed?