We will not be at the Market this coming Saturday, June 14th.
We currently have nothing to harvest except cucumbers. We did pretty well last week at the Farmer’s Market. We sold most of our Elephant Garlic and Cucumbers, and ALL our fresh Carrots and Eggs. We ended up not bringing our onions because they needed to dry out. They ended up being super small, though, so I believe we are just going to use them ourselves or maybe can them with some of these cucumbers.
Soap
For times like this between harvests, I have been racking my brain for things I can do to keep up the momentum. I have been in contact with the Waccamaw Market Co. about selling homemade soap and I have a few kinds in mind. I have made them as gifts before, and my family and friends seem to love them. However, to sell at the market, it needs to be made with as many locally sourced ingredients as I can find.
I have been hunting for local goat’s milk, which is a wonderful additive, but I cannot seem to find any. The local farms either do not offer it or the ones I have reached out to have not responded to my inquiries. It may be that selling goat’s milk requires specific licensure, or maybe because they make soaps with their own milk. I might try local buttermilk if that can be found.
The main ingredients of soap are Oil and Lye. Some folks use tallow as part of their oil; tallow comes from meat and can be locally sourced, too. I thought about adding this, but I had read that it can clog your pores. Maybe that is only when used as a lotion, but the idea of using it just doesn’t give me warm fuzzies. I could add beeswax, but I don’t know that our bees have made that much. I am thinking of freeze-drying some of our flowers as soap toppings, and I will be adding our honey as well. So, we’ll see.
Bees
With growth and a swarm or two, we now have six hives and are thrilled. He planned to have twelve hives altogether; we had no idea that we’d be halfway there in one year. We have harvested the honey once and sold it all at the Farmer’s Market. We should be harvesting more honey this month.
Crates
The new crates George built worked perfectly! They displayed the veggies well and made it so easy to carry them in the truck. He made ones for future honey sales that we planned on flipping them over and using them as stands. I used one last week for the Elephant Garlic, and it turned out great. I hope he makes some smaller ones for those smaller harvests.
Compost
Some time ago, George built a four-stall compost dumping area at the back of the property. Each stall is around a 4 ft by 4 ft area. The front has removable wood slats to hold in stuff as it’s built up and can be removed to dump wheelbarrows of chicken and guinea pig waste.
If you are interested in how he did this, let me know so I can write something up for you.
It makes a great fertilizer for all the flower beds and gardens, but the lack of rain had it taking too long to break down. He added soaker hoses a couple of months ago, and it has made a considerable difference. The only problem now is how to flip it because it is too heavy, and we do not have a front-end loader. The idea is to load the first stall, then flip it over to the second once full, and again and again. By the time it reaches the end, it should be good and flipped and about ready to use. But we have filled it too quickly, and then adding water to help it break down has made it super heavy. Plus, June in the Carolinas is not a great time to do such labor-inducing farm work.
I will close for now. Stay cool and keep an eye out for updates. I am hoping we will see you at the Market on June 21st.
♥Blessings♥
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