Free Wood Chips

Check out this website!  A friend visiting from California gave me this information.  I've put my name on the list.  I did not see a map but it is possible this service is not yet popular in our area.  I'm ever hopeful that some awesome arborist will find my farm easy to deliver wood chips and logs!

Home grown dinner

I am grateful for food from my garden.

Black Eyed Susan, Zinna, and Tomatoes

Cap Candles

Cap Candles are fun!

I start by collecting the caps.  I personally don't drink enough of anything that comes capped so I ask friends for their caps.  They need to be metal caps. 

I use soy wax because it is a renewable resource.

I put the roasting pan on the stove top with a large mouth jar ring in bottom and add enough water to NOT float the old coffee carafe.  It's okay if it floats a little but you don't want it to tip and spill the wax into the water.  The coffee carafe rests on the jar ring instead of the bottom of the roaster.  You can use a pan or even a double boiler.  I prefer to use the old coffee carafe because I can dedicate it to melting soy wax.  This is a very good reason to save the carafe when the coffee pot dies.  Pouring from the carafe into the caps is tricky so I pour into a smaller container and use that to pour into the caps.  You've got to experiment a bit to see what works for you.  

There are a lot of ways to obtain wick material.  I like to experiment with thickness and type and as I create my regular candles I trim the excess wick and if it is 1/2 " or longer I drop it in a drawer for use in my bottle cap candles.  Wooden wicks are over-kill in bottle caps. Don't bother unless you are are outside in a fireproof area when you light them.

Take a hot glue gun, drop a drip of glue in the center of the lid and quickly attach the wick into the center of the cap.  My favorite helper was the young daughter of a friend.  She is 11 and she was a lot of fun to work with.  I would drip glue and she'd stick the wick in.

Stir the wax with a bamboo skewer or something that won't attract too much of your wax.

Pour the melted wax into the bottle caps over paper because you are going to drip.  

 These candles are fun.  They don't last real long.  The longest I've managed was 35 minutes.  The glue melts and the wick tips and all is over.  A line of these on a side walk or inside a fire pit during a burn ban is pretty cool.

The exact recipe I used for this batch

4 oz soy wax
1 1/2 t. stearic acid
5 ml Persian Pear Fragrance Oil

This recipe made 43 bottle cap candles.  There might have been more had I not spilled so much.

The stearic acid is a vegetable base wax hardener. It is optional.  I would not use this ratio for larger candles because your wick would burn up before the wax making a very tiny flame.

I use a dropper to measure the fragrance oil.  Fragrance oil is optional.

Trim the wicks as needed.

Nephew Bryan visits from Florida

Nephew Bryan on the left.  Grandson Matt on the right.  Bryan is visiting from Florida.  He says the cool weather feels good to him. We had an afternoon of family visiting and fun.  I set up a wood pile for entertainment.  Only one maul and one small hammer were broken.  Some of the wood was split.  Two young girls decided they would move into the summer kitchen when they are 18 so they started cleaning it right away.  A lot of spiders and cobwebs disappeared.  I suggested they have a sleep over first.  They want to become emancipated teenagers when they turn 13 in a couple of years and have bake sales to support themselves.  I asked them about the plumbing and they reminded me that I have a toilet seat that fits on a bucket.  The younger boys created Halloween decorations by hanging all my tow chains from the summer kitchen balcony.  They wanted a plastic skeleton but all I had was a feed sack and a machete.  As I walked through it this morning I read the word Boo! printed in marker on the back of the torn feed sack.  It made me laugh.  I love how much fun everybody had yesterday.  The youngest boy asked where the goose was that laid the golden eggs.  I swore him to secrecy and showed him the can of gold paint that I had used on the rocks.  My brother cooked burgers and corn on the cob while my brother in law cooked gumbo with chicken, shrimp, and gator.  Where do you find "gator" in Washington?  At Farmer George's in Port Orchard.

Catnip hanging in my living room at night

I love the way the paper lantern behind the catnip looks like the moon.

The New Catnip Toys Testing Ground One

The new catnip toys are a proven success.

Catnip drying in my living room

Emerald Aisle Farm is still in business

Here at Emerald Aisle Farm where I live in a homesteader's dream with a lot of reality thrown in, I am in the midst of a huge life transition.  The farm plugs on and I plug on but my husband has had a heart attack.  By the look of things this happened possibly two years ago and he never even knew it.  He has lost much energy with one heart valve completely blocked and another mostly blocked.  His body has already created a mighty freeway to get past the blocked one.  Alcohol plays a huge role in his health and his behavior throughout his life.  I have leaped into a 12 step program by the name of al-anon.  I knew I belonged there after hearing the first speaker.  I have been detaching with love for a few years now and was ready for the validation.  The bonus that I did not expect was that I am encouraged toward self care.  Do a jig twice and then do it on the ceiling with a lot of laughter is about the only way I can describe how ready I was for this.  This story will be continued below the picture.

Going to Al-Anon is about me because I am the only person I can change.   What makes a person actually go to a meeting?  Pain is why Al-anon exists.   Wanting to change that pain is what makes you go to a meeting.  As a teenager from a dysfunctional home, Al-Anon could have changed my life.  However, I didn't know about it and I didn't go.  I made all of my biggest life changes in the most natural way and most of them stabbed me to the core.  When I sit down at that Al-Anon table, I know all of those people have experienced the same kind of pain I have experienced.  I know that we are all there because we want to get better.  You will not learn how to change your alcoholic.  You can learn how to maintain serenity as you allow yourself to experience the mountains your choices lead you to climb.

So now that I am bringing my awareness back to myself and my future I can assure you that I am not losing the farm.  It is a great deal of my therapy. I have a survivors's pension from my late husband and am no stranger to getting by on very little.  At this time I cannot plan a schedule for my farm stand.  My farm is getting more attention from me than it has ever since I started the farm stand so it is looking better and better and providing more and more abundance.  I hope to load my car with produce and products and find a corner to sell it from whenever the crops, soap, candles and/or the other creations of my fertile brain come to light.

If you are a customer looking for a product you can always e-mail me at emeraldaislefarm@gmail.com.  If you feel that your message may not have gotten to me try carmendavis6@gmail.com but be sure to let me know you are a customer.  If you are looking for special order of soap, it takes 3 weeks to cure and it might take me at least a week to get the supplies.

Produce boxes

I have to laugh at myself and my boxes.  John drinks a lot of beer and I cut those boxes down and make my produce array.  I am still hunting down the pictures of the boxes I advertised on craigslist.