First Flowers of the Year

The bees are out and looking for flowers. All we have for them so far is a small patch of crocuses. I think I better plant several hundred crocuses this fall. They're so exciting for us as well as the bees.

Here are two soaps that are relatively new. The Old Fashioned Farm soap is made from fat that we rendered into lard. We wanted to make a local soap since usually our soap is made from olive oil from Italy and coconut and palm oils from the Caribbean. So, we used fat from John Nyman in Prince Edward County, organic sunflower oil from Quebec and beeswax from our bees. We scented it with rosemary essential oil just in case it smelled like meat - it didn't. Once the soap had cured the smell was just.... soapy. We're really happy with the way this soap turned out. The bar is hard and lasts a long time. It's very soft on the skin and lathers nicely. Since the price of imported oils is rising rapidly we may start making more variations on this local bar of soap. I want to try rendering the fat over a fire this summer since it does smell up the house quite a bit.

The Beer Bar is a project that has been in the works for a long time. Our friends over at Brewers Crap have been bugging us to make a soap for them to sell for a long time. They sell nifty products made from the waste from brewing beer. This includes using the grain sacks to sew beer different kinds of bags. This soap contains the spent mash from brewing beer, a bottle of beer, hops that we grow, and honey! It's scented with a blend of ginger, orange, bay and fir. It's another 'manly' soap. Both of these soaps are available on our website honeypie.ca.

Also, we're madly cleaning our house to prepare for the Green Homes Tour. It's April 10th and is organized by the County Sustainability Group. We built our straw bale home from 2004-2006. We moved into our house in December of 2006 just in time for the arrival of our daughter Hazel. We've been delighted with the warmth of our house in the winter and it stays nice and cool in the summer. It was a completely new experience for us building a house but we're very happy with the way it turned out. We will have a slide show of photos of the building process during the tour and can answer all kinds of questions about the house.

rendering fat into lard

Ok, WARNING - if you are a vegetarian this might gross you right out!
I have really been getting into making my own lard. It's great for making pastry and for cooking with. I have been lucky enough to get really good quality local fat that would otherwise be thrown out from John Nyman. All I have to do is render it and this is how I do it. The fat is frozen so you have to let it half thaw out. It's easiest to work with if it's only semi frozen. So, I cut the fat into 3/4 inch square chunks and put them in a pot on the stove on med/low heat. The chunks melt down but never disappear. The length of time this takes depends on how much fat you have. I think it took about 1/2 an hour for this batch. I strained everything through a paper coffee filter into glass jars and ended up with pure white lard. The chunks are called cracklings and we tasted them but thought they tasted too much like chunks of fat. Maybe there's a secret to preparing them to make them taste better - possibly lots of salt. I love having a jar of lard in the fridge - we will make it through the winter.