My Favorite Thing About Summer

My favorite thing about summer has to be the garden and all the fresh veggies. The pool ranks in at a close second, but I love everything about mowing grass, planting tomatoes and eating fresh purple hull peas. It is a lot of work, but so worth it when you have things from your garden frozen and canned for the winter.

Tonight we had a meal of things entirely grown in my Dad's garden. We also had round steak that was raised at my in-law's farm. My Dad puts in a lot of work to plant the garden every year. I try to help as much as I can, but without him none of that would be possible.

The garden with raised beds and sprinkler system that he built by himself

I can't wait to do some canning and learn more about how to do that from my parents and grandmother. That is such an art that people don't even know exists anymore because it is lost on the older generation. I think it's so neat to be able to plant and store your own food. It's definitely something I want to pass down to my children.

Domestic Duties

I've neglected the blog pretty severely lately, I even missed What I'm Loving Wednesday. I've been busy going to school, spending time with my parents and taking care of Jackson. I've also been making laundry detergent and planting a garden :-)

I mentioned that I was going to attempt my own laundry detergent. I found a recipe I liked and went for it.

Here are the ingredients:

1 cup Washing Soda

1/2 cup Borax

1 bar Fels Naptha soap

1/2 cup Baking Soda

3 gallons of  warm water

First, I put about 4 cups of water into a pan and got it boiling

Next, I grated the soap with a cheese grater

I added the soap to the pan little by little until it was dissolved.

Then, I put the 3 gallons of warm water in a 5 gallon bucket.

Add the soap mixture, washing soda, baking soda and Borax

Stir until mixture blends together

Let cool for 24 hours

Mine turned out pretty much the same consistency of regular detergent.

I washed a load of clothes in it and they didn't have a scent necessarily, just a clean smell.

 It was really easy and kind of fun to make. I ended up with 3 leftover detergent bottles full and a 5 gallon bucket.

 I think I made enough for about 6 months or more. I have most of the box of baking soda, washing soda and borax left. All I have to do is buy another $1 bar of soap for another batch. All in all it cost about $7 for all the ingredients that I can make several more batches from. I'm also planning on putting together a few more cleaning products from the baking soda and borax.

Now for the gardening.

My Dad plants a huge garden every year, but because I am a Lowery, I feel the need to plant something of my own. Apparently it's in our genes. 

A few onions left from last year and my broccoli

My one tomato plant so far

A few squash and and zucchini plants

On another note, I only have 3 weeks of school left and 4 until graduation. I can't wait to have all the business and stress behind me!

Have a great weekend!

Yard Sale and a Little Gardening

This weekend my friend Nicki and I decided to have a yard sale. I've been saving all this stuff in our attic and shed for the last few months and couldn't wait to get it out. I'm so thankful to Nicki because she did it at her house and ran it on Friday when I had to work. She really did most of the work! We had fun on Saturday despite the lack of customers and warm weather. I ended up selling all but 5 items, and those were small things. It feels so good to get rid of junk just in time for Spring!

The gardening part started yesterday around lunch. My parents live on 10 acres, and every year since I can remember my Dad has had a huge garden. A few years ago he built 20+ raised beds to make things a little easier. I haven't been as much help as I would have liked in the past few years because of having Jackson, but this year I plan to help a lot. I took Jackson out to their house yesterday and we started working the the garden. Jackson helped a lot and then played in the dirt like every boy should!

 The first thing we did was cut up potatoes and get the spot ready to plant.

Jackson took them out to my Dad to plant

Jackson watching Papa till the ground

Jackson and my Dad

By the end of the day we had carrots, broccoli, cabbage, radishes, potatoes and peas planted. I can't wait to have all this good food ready to eat