The weather has been awesome for this time of the year and who would believe that it’s March in Iowa? Well not me for sure! We’ve been in the 50’s, 60’s, and even hit 70 the other day. SCORE! It just makes you feel better doesn’t it?
Well with the nice weather, it’s also time to burn our Christmas tree. We usually just leave it outside behind the garage after Christmas in case the little birds or critters need it, and then in the Spring – Light her up! The scary part of all of this is that it takes just one little spark and then the whole thing goes. But we put it in the garden to try to burn off some of the other weeds and that usually works pretty good. Soon it’ll be time to plant the garden again and the less weeds that I have the better. I’m seriously thinking of putting a good dose of Round Up on the whole thing and killing the weeds before I even start. I’m sure I’ve said this before that I’m not one for chemicals – but in this case .. I say go for it!
Christmas tree ritual
Daryl has been busy with getting machinery out of the shed, checking them out, and then cleaned up for the spring. And just like any routine, this all happens down by the new milk house.
Working on the skid loader
Next comes the manure spreader and tractor with the bucket and into the cow yard they go. Now there’s a party going on in the cow yard and I’m not sure how many loads Daryl hauled out of the pen, but I’m sure that it looks tons better!
Daryl had lots of help from the dogs tonight just checking the spreader out
As for me? Well I wanted to make a baby basket for some babies that are coming up in our family and what better way than to make soap to put in the basket. OK, yea… I know that this sounds more like an excuse to make some more soap, but the soap that I made is literally called ‘Baby Soap’ because it only has 3 oils in it and some baby powder fragrance so I just had to try it out. And I’m telling you that it smells Awesome! But I did learn something new with this batch. I knew that it was going to be a smaller batch when I got done so I used a smaller mold to put it in. But of course, I had too much for that mold and I quick grabbed a plastic container and filled her up. No big deal and I was even thinking that I was pretty smart about the whole thing. Well tonight when I unmolded it, it wasn’t the prettiest and kind of stuck in the container.
One good mold and one not so good
At first I was kind of bummed, but then I thought just to trim off the bad stuff. duhh! With a little fixing up, the soap was all good as can be. I made some small sampler sizes for my friends who I’m asking to be my critics. 
So our kitchen smell this week is baby powder. Could be worse right? 