New Product! Healthy Hen Supplement!

This month we are releasing another new product, this time for chickens!

Here is a pic of the new mix. You can see the DE covering most of the grain and grubs giving this a frosty white appearance. 

Healthy Hen Supplement!
This supplement has everything in it that chickens need, but it often missing from their feed.... even the best feeds! Anyone can use this supplement to provide better health, but it is especially important for confined hens and hens fed inexpensive soy based feeds.

Turn "cheap feed" into a reasonably healthy diet by adding this supplement to the normal chicken feed once or twice a week. Watch the egg quality to see how often your hens need another boost. The difference should be evident in the eggs within a day or two of feeding!

A closeup to show the individual ingredients! 

Here is the list of ingredients:

• 3 grain scratch
• Organically fed Black Soldier Fly Larva
• Healthy Chicken Herb Mix
• Oyster Shell
• Chicken Grit
• Food Grade Diatamecous Earth

A Run Down of the Ingredients and Benefits

3 grain scratch Organic Wheat, Barley and Oats:
These organic non-gmo grains serve as a base to hold the DE and to create enough volume so that the first chickens do not consume all of the treats restricting the intake of others.

Organically fed Black Soldier Fly Larva:
The chicken's natural source of protein, bugs! These bugs are grown on organic food scraps in the pacific northwest and freeze dried. They make the best source of fat and protein we have ever found! Just a few of these in the chickens diet will improve health and make deeper colored, richer eggs!

Healthy Chicken Herb Mix:
this is a unique mix of organic dried herbs that provide a foundation of health for chickens.  The herbs in this mix are the ones used to treat problems, included at a level that is preventative of those same problems!

Oyster Shell:
Extra calcium is necessary for chickens to create good hard thick egg shells. Most layer feeds have just barely enough calcium for actively laying chickens. Adding a bit more usually improves the egg shells dramatically.

Chicken Grit:
Grit is tiny hard rocks that act as a chicken's teeth, grinding the food within their stomach for better digestion. Without grit, a chicken can not digest food properly at all. Chickens that are contained to a pen will often pick the ground clean in their pin early on, leaving them at a loss for grit as they age.

Food Grade Diatamecous Earth:
 DE is used to treat a variety of health conditions including parasites. Just a little DE every so often will provide a layer of protection and health to keep problems from developing.

You can order this feed supplement in the online store with your regular order.  It comes in 1.5 lb and 4.5 lb bag. The 1.5lb bag will feed about a dozen chickens once, 6 chickens twice. Adjust proportionally for the 4.5 lb bag. We recommend starting by adding this to their feed once a week, and see if you can tell a difference in the eggs. If the egg quality goes visibly up and down (color and consistency of yolk, whites, and thickness of shells), then feed more often. Every set of chickens and feed is slightly different, so explore and see what your chickens need.

Scented Laundry Products Shown To Produce Hazardous Emissions!

This study is a few years old, done in 2011, but very relevant! The University of Washington did testing on common laundry products to see what airborn emissions they created.  The results are astounding!

From the Article:

Analysis of the captured gases found more than 25 volatile organic compounds, including seven hazardous air pollutants, coming out of the vents. Of those, two chemicals - acetaldehyde and benzene - are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as carcinogens, for which the agency has established no safe exposure level.

The source of the airborn compounds seem to come from the scents and chemicals used in the laundry soap itself, when exposed to the heat of a dryer! These were not off brands, but popular "best selling" brands (although they did not name the exact manufacturer).

And we aren't talking about just a tiny bit... The levels of these compounds in the air seems significant! Again from the article:

 The researchers estimate that in the Seattle area, where the study was conducted, acetaldehyde emissions from this brand of laundry detergent would be equivalent to 3 percent of the total acetaldehyde emissions coming from automobiles. Emissions from the top five brands, they estimate, would constitute about 6 percent of automobiles' acetaldehyde emissions.

That's simply incredible to consider!

THIS is why we stopped using common laundry detergents years ago. Not only do we not want to breathe the carcinogenic compounds with ever load of clothes, but the presence of airborn compounds must mean that some level is actually left INSIDE the clothing itself, which then sits on our family's skin all day.  THAT is a toxic load we prefer to do without!

So we switched to a brand that uses only pure soap, no detergent, no chemicals, and only essential oils for scents. There is nothing in this laundry soap that can cause the unwanted toxins to begin with.  And this is why we add laundry soap to our product list of "what we changed to become healthy". Our mission in 2017 is to offer to you and your family the exact items that we used to overcome our family's health issues. Laundry is a big part of it.

If you have not yet, please look in the online store for the laundry soap we resell. It is the brand we trust and use every day, and we make it available to you, delivered for free direct to your door with your order each month.

Full text of the article can be found here:  https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-08/uow-slp082311.php

New Improved Coffee Soap available now

We have improved our recipe for  lard coffee soap.  the new recipe has more intense coffee effect (in killing odors) and improved coffee grinds. The original recipe had some coffee grounds that were a bit rough and could be irritating on sensitive skin, so for this year we modified our grinding method to make more consistent sizes, softer edges on the grains of coffee, and overall smaller size.

Closeup of the coffee soap. You can see the dark spots that are the coffee grounds. 

The purpose of the coffee within the soap is to stop odors. coffee has the unique ability to destroy most hand odors, including cooking odors (garlic and onion) as well as oil and grease odors. The purpose for the coffee grounds is grit to help clean off stuck on dirt, grease, etc. It leaves your hands soft (because it is 100% pure lard), smelling fresh and clean with no odor (becasue of the coffee), and clean of stuck on dirt and grease ( from the grit of the coffee grounds).

This is a truly unique soap, becasue there are NO chemicals, yet it cleans as if there were! Nothing unhealthy, the ingredients are simply Lard (converted to soap with pure lye), organic coffee, and organic fresh coffee grounds.  That's it! yet... it works with no side effects.

We made the first batch of the new recipe this week, and is ready for sale in next month's order.

Some bars sitting out after cutting. 

This is a must have in every kitchen, garage, workshop. Don't put harsh chemicals on your hands.. trust pure healthy lard soap to do the job without the heavy chemicals that might soak through your skin and into your bloodstream. Simple, effective, inexpensive.

Winter Chicken Flock in the incubators!

Today we put the new winter laying flock into the incubators. a total of 158 eggs!

The incubator on the  right is the one without a working door this year... If you recall, I left them out int eh summer 2 years ago and the front doors warped so they would not seal. We replaced 2 doors and mode those useable, but the third is not working yet.

Unfortunately we had a little mishap.. I washed the incubator egg trays in the dishwasher on the "sanitize" cycle. Nice and clean but.. yes.. warped! Now we can only fit 36 eggs per tray, like turkeys.  The rest we put on the bottom and will manually turn them until the first candling. 

The exciting part is.. this is a winter flock! These hens layed eggs without light. The means their offspring are much more likely to lay in the winter consistently, even without light.  We will have a steady supply of fresh eggs all next winter.  

When summer comes, we will hatch another flock in the middle of summer. The offspring from summer laying hens are much more likely to lay in the heat of summer. 

In theory, we will have a fairly steady supply of eggs year round!

Pure Lard Soap!

We just made our first new batch of the famous but "out of stock" Little Sprouts Pure Lard Soap!

This soap has exactly 4 ingredients, effective simplicity that is hard to match!

• Pure Pasture raised, soy free, heritage breed, organically fed Lard, slow rendered in stainless steel pots over low heat
• 100% pure Lye
• Water
• Essential oil

That is the makings of an effective, natural, pure soap with a mild scent. Today we chose Lavender as the scent.  We choose 6% excess fat in our soap, just enough to be soft yet effective, but not melt in the soap dish.

There will be many more variations coming, including our famous "coffee soap" for hard working hands. If there is a variety that you prefer, feel free to email us and let us know, we will make a batch for you if possible!

Unfortunately, it will be  a while until these are ready for sale. The PH starts very high in soapmaking, and slowly comes down as the soaponification process completes and the soap "cures". We will be monitoring each batch closely to offer them for sale as soon as practical. Usually 30 to 90 days depending on recipe and atmosphere for curing. If all goes well we will be making a batch every 3 days!

These soaps are another part of the "what we changed to get healthy" list. Commercial soap can have all sorts of unsavory chemicals and heavy scents, each suspect from a health perspective. The source of lard itself (or other oils) is always suspect also! These soaps are pure and natural from before raw ingredient to finished product.