Farm and Soap Updates

Soap has existed since before recorded history, though if you read my short history of soap and hand washing, you know that using soap for hygiene practices like hand washing is less than 200 years old. But did you know that using soap for household cleaning like laundry, dishes and mopping is also relatively recent?  For most of that history, soap was far from the ubiquitous cleanser that it is today. Before soap, most households used dry cleaning methods like sweeping and brushing for the majority of tasks. Greasy chores like laundry and dishes were accomplished with wood ash, to make...

A History of Soap and Hand Washing Who invented soap? Frankly, we will never know because soap has been around for a very long time. As in a 'before recorded history' long time! The first time soap does show up in the historical record is 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia [1]. Historically, soap was first used to clean textiles and dishes rather than people. Some cultures thought it might have medical properties for the skin but at this point we're a long way from any understanding of germ theory. Even the idea of being "clean" was motivated more by religion than...

I usually find myself answering this question from two perspectives. Either, "Is soap really necessary?" or "Is soap enough?" So let's have a quick look at the chemistry of how soap really works. At its core, what soap really does is to make water a better cleanser. By itself, water does an ok job at removing dirt. Think about trying to get dirt off your hands with a dry paper towel or by rinsing with water. Water does a much better job!  But now think about washing your hands with either a dry soap bar or soap combined with water, the dry...

The days are quickly getting shorter here in the northern hemisphere as autumn takes hold. What that means for a lot of chicken keepers is a sudden drop in egg production. Like plants and many other animals, a chicken's biology is attuned to the change in day length over the seasons.  When days get longer in the spring, this triggers the hens reproductive cycle to lay lots of eggs, since spring and summer are great times of year to raise chicks. As the days get shorter, egg production slows down, since raising chicks in the winter is generally a bad...

About once a year I offer a slightly different product in my chicken line up: the "stew chicken". This kind of bird must be cooked very differently than most chicken you are used to from either the grocery store or poultry growers at the farmers market. Roasting a stew chicken is a great recipe for chicken flavored rubber bands! Braising or simmering in a liquid is a must to get these birds tender. What is a stew chicken? You may hear stew chickens also called stew hens, this is because they are typically 'retired' laying hens. Unlike chickens raised specifically...