Go big or go home.

Sometimes we need our friends to tell us what we don't want to hear. I have had a web page, with varying degrees of success, for at least a dozen years. The latest is okay, but the friend said it - if you don't have a viable, usable, attractive website, better not have one at all.

I have hired a media firm - TJ21 Media Group in South Bend - to spiff up my site. TJ told me it wasn't bad, but needed updating, better pictures, a blog that gets updated frequently instead of when I get a minute. You see, I would much rather blog here about this and that than to have some discipline about updating my blog for product stories on my site. Time to get to work.

The journey started Tuesday night, when Liz, my assistant at the market who just happens to be a photographer for her "real" job, came over and we did pics of all of my essential oils. They will be going up on my web page shortly. I have good prices, nice variety and a source of excellent oils. So why have I been keeping them under a bushel? I'm gonna let them shine!

I've also started carrying CBD products, so they too will be featured on my page. I learned the value of CBD oil when I was on chemo. It had failed to register that while I was taking it for nausea, I no longer had to take Celebrex for tendonitis in my hip. After chemo, no more CBD oil and I was back on Celebrex -- and then the nickel dropped. CBD oil is great for inflammatory disease. There will be a new section for CBD products. I have a story to tell and a product to sell.

Fortunately my web site bones are good. The firm is prettying it up and making it more comprehensive, and providing those good old meta tags that will get me more viewers. Liz and I will be doing all of the photos, and I'm doing the pricing and product descriptions.

Stay tuned for what's happening. Here's a link to the current clunky site. Watch the progress while we work!! Ceres & Co.'s current web site/

Starting things - and finishing things

My counter top is full of projects. A week ago, I started a new batch of fermented mustard pickles. They can be jarred this Friday. Same day, I started a jar of sauerkraut. Forgot to put in juniper berries, but I will do that with my next batch. I'm eating my last quart from last year right now, so this is perfect timing, although sauerkraut just keeps tasting better with time. But even "new" kraut is better than the store bought stuff.

Fermenting kraut and mustard pickles

My two bowls of poolish are doing their thing - flour, water and a pinch of yeast. It will sit until this evening. I give it 12 hours, by which time I'll see lots of bubbles and it will smell divine! Then it will get mixed into my bread dough. The dough will do a slow rise in fridge until I take it out at 5:00 tomorrow morning to make 15 baguettes for Garden Patch Market.

By tonight, it will be spongy and full of bubbles.

I made buckwheat pancakes for breakfast this morning and realized the jar of homemade sprouted buckwheat flour is getting kind of low. So more buckwheat was soaked this morning, then will be rinsed and drained daily until I see plenty of sprouts. Then it goes into the dehydrator for a few hours and is ground into flour for my beloved buckwheat pancakes. I mix it half and half with my low carb baking mix. Sprouting the grain gets rid of a few carbs, so my diet can tolerate a plate of buckwheat pancakes once every week or two, especially after a really intense workout at the gym.

Buckwheat groats soaked and set to sprout

I make kefir for a couple of people and have a delivery tomorrow, so the milk is sitting on the counter, with kefir grains added. By tonight it should be just right. I'll bottle it and take with me to market tomorrow.

By tomorrow morning, it will be thick, creamy kefir made with A2 milk - high nutrients

One of my customers loves my sourdough rye bread (only leavening in the bread dough is yeast that I caught in my kitchen when I moved here three years ago), and the jar of sourdough came out of the fridge for a hefty feeding so that I will have enough to do a recipe for two loaves tomorrow and Friday. Yes, that's right - it takes at least two days to make my sourdough rye bread, but it's worth the wait. He will be at market Saturday to pick up his loaf, and there will be two half loaves for sale along side the French baguettes. Those two breads are at the opposite ends of the bread spectrum, let me tell you, but both mighty fine.

I can already see some bubbles forming!

Last but not least, I'm making Easy Slow Cooker Lemon Custard, a low carb recipe with liquid stevia, fresh lemon juice and rind, egg yolks and heavy cream. It is in my slow cooker in a water bath for three hours. First time I've made it. Hope it turns out well.

Organic lemons, organic egg yolks, heavy cream, a little stevia for sweetening. 

Once a month, my minister and I have dinner here together and talk over church business.  I'm president of the board this year, and we seem to accumulate a few knotty issues that need some extra attention each month. Tonight's the night. He will just have to put up with my low carb stuff - although he is bringing the appetizers, his choice. Menu: Rev. Chip's appetizers, sweet red peppers stuffed with cauli-rice smothered in meat and tomato sauce, sautéed beans with garlic and cherry tomato cream sauce, and the lemon custards for dessert.

Well, back to work. Christina will be here to work in the soap room in an hour, and I have to get the work schedule together, get labels printed, jars set out, etc. so that we make the best use of our time today. In three hours, we put out a LOT of product!

Rhianna - where oh where did you go?

I got a Roomba 780, named her Rhianna, and happily used her for nearly a month, and just three days before my 30 day return with no questions asked period, she went brain dead.

Oh, how I missed her! But while I waited for my refund (yes,Amazon gave me back every penny, and paid for the return shipping), I did quite a bit of research.

I had a Roomba for years, but she really got to be too expensive to keep going, and I finally sent her to the heap. The 780 was much nicer, bigger bin, could run longer between charges. However, cleaning her up was just as big a pain as it was on my old 500 series. I have the world's hairiest dog, and even with the special tools that came with the newer model, it took a looooooooooooong time to remove hair from dust bin, both rollers, bearing housings and wheels.

I did a lot of research before replacing her, and Monday my new Rhianna, the 880 model arrived. I ran her for the first time yesterday, and I am very pleased. There are no brushes, and I was leery of how well she would take up the dog hairs. She did. No brush to clean. Okay, the jury is still out, but as of today, I am very happy with this newer model. I just came home from a forty-five minute trip to pick up my Mantis roto-tiller (that's another story for another day), and she had cleaned the whole living room floor and was safely back in her docking station.

Looks like perhaps Rhianna II and I are going to become new best friends.

Rhianna II

My new housekeeper, Rhianna

Rhianna has joined our household. She is a Model 780 Roomba, and we are new best friends.

I bought a Roomba when they first came on to the market, and I liked it. However, it required a lot of care, and I was often buying parts for it. I can't remember what I named her, but she worked hard for me. I brought her here to the river house and bought some parts, got her working, but not for long. High maintenance chick!

A couple of months ago, I finally threw her away, including the box of spare parts. (That may have been a mistake.)

Damn these ads that pop up when you play solitaire on your smart phone! There was a new Roomba model, square, sleek, bright red. I repeatedly ignored it, but finally bit and clicked on the link. I didn't buy her though. After doing some research, I went back to the updated model of the one I had. This one has a bigger dust bin, special brushes for pet hair, and is programmable, leading me to dream that she will clean all of my floors while I sleep at night. With two dogs, a cat (rarely home lately), and two VERY MESSY parakeets, I vacuum frequently, and it's not my favorite job. And now, of course, I wish I had kept the spare parts. Sigh . . .

She is learning the patterns in my rooms. And I am learning that I have to help a little! She knocked over a potted plant, she got stuck under the stove (bin was full already and I had to haul her out and empty it before she would continue), and Fred, the Figgy Pudding, is barking at her continuously!

But it's fun, and frankly she is doing a better job than the old model did. And a better one than I do. Bin full already? Could it be that I don't bother with vacuuming under my stove and sofa? If I can't see it, it's not there! But Rhianna knows, and she is a thorough little cleaner.

Oh, wow! I just glanced in the living room, and she has completely cleaned up the mess from the overturned plant. She is definitely a new and IMPROVED model. :)

Well, I'm going to go down to the soap room and make a batch of Lemon Skin Renew while she finishes my floors. Love it!

Rhianna coming back out from under sofa

Rhianna going under the dining room table

Oh, Rhianna, I love you!

Feeling good

I realized that I have not had to stop on the way home from market for a nap in a couple of weeks.  Nearly every day on my way home, I would pull into a parking lot or a gas station, put the seat back, and snooze for ten or fifteen minutes.  It was serious, since I would find myself starting to fall asleep at the wheel and knew I had to stop or risk a serious accident.

So what has changed?  I have help!  I always blamed the sleepiness on things like the drone of the car, or boredom behind the wheel, never on exhaustion.  But I think that is what it was.  Kayla is here now, starting her fourth week of working here.  She works around 30 hours a week, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on if she is on the milking schedule or not.

Yesterday I had to leave to get chicken feed and to pick up half a pork at the locker, so Kayla was here by herself.  I left her with a few small jobs, told her to stay busy as long as she could since she is not milking this week.  When I got home, both of my wood boxes were filled to the brim, the fires were both going (I usually come home to a bit of a chill and fires that have burned down to some coals), all of the dirty utensils from the soap room were cleaned up and put back in place.  What a nice feeling!  When I got home, I had to unload 300 lbs. of chicken feed, but that was it.  No fires to rebuild, no wood to haul in for the night.  I left the 85 pounds of pork in the car until after Kate and I had supper, and then she helped me bring that in.  I feel absolutely pampered and spoiled!

I think I know why I no longer need a nap on the way home.  It is good to have help here, and Kayla is a jewel!  No job too big or too small for her.  :)

This is work!

I am glad that Kayla is such a fast learner.  She is scaling that learning curve at record speed!  But still, there is that small amount of training for each new product, and I have many!

Today, we added two new lip glosses to the line, one with lots of grape flavoring, another called "Buttercream" that tastes a lot like Tollhouse cookie dough, of which I am a big fan.  It is one of the few things that I really do miss from my sugarholic days.

So anyway, in addition to training, I am slogging through the paperwork involved in putting an employee on board.  It is not easy!  I have spent most of the morning reading instructions on the internet and filling out forms so that everything is in order.  I had several employees when I had my restaurant, but it has been a long time since I have had to deal with such things, and I am getting older and hold less patience for all of the details.

In addition to this, I am utilizing my free time to do some honing of my business expenses.  I will not tell you how many hours it took to set up this latest thing, but I can now swipe credit cards with my new cell phone.  I wanted to make sure it was working correctly before Saturday market.  It will make its maiden voyage tomorrow, and if all goes well, I will be able to cancel my phone line at the market - $37 a month.  I am paying $12.95 a month for the new service, and my fee per transaction drops from 80 cents to 30 cents - a very good thing.  Now if it works as well as the old land-line system, I will see a considerable savings.

There is so much to do with the holidays coming on!  Kayla and I are just barely keeping up, and there are the extra things to do like harvesting kale to blanch and freeze.  Yes, Kayla does a little of everything!  But January is my slow month, and I am hoping that we can tackle my files.  How wonderful it will be to start February (that's when the pepper seeds start going into seedling trays) with my office organized and help at hand!

I am trying not to be too optimistic about my future, but might I have a little free time next year?  I am trying very hard not to think about new projects.  My new mantra is NO NEW PROJECTS!  

Well, back to work.

October's nearly gone

Here we are moving into the last week of October, and I have only written four pieces for the month!  With Roy here, a lot more is getting done, but it seems that for every job that gets done, two pop up in its place.

Kayla is working with me in the soap room one day a week, only last week it was two days!  We are nearly caught up with soap, and this week I plan on trying her out on some office help.  That is now where I am the farthest behind.  The tags on the soap board nearly covered it - one goes up every time I see that I need to make more of a particular soap.  It takes five weeks to cure, so staying on top of it is important.  We are down to only four batches needing to be made this week, and Roy wants to learn how it's done.  So hopefully we will get them all onto the curing racks by Wednesday.  Then there are a few lotions to do, and some herbal remedies.

We are butchering one of our cows that failed to settle (that means get pregnant).  If they can't have calves, then they don't give milk, and they are not salable.  Our shareholders appreciate getting meat from animals that have been treated humanely, are strictly grass fed, and are organic.  So we will sell the meat to the shareholders for considerably under the value for organic grass-fed beef.

At auction, most of the animals will sell for less than they would if you are shopping for just one cow, so I set out to see if I could purchase at least one cow for replacement, and maybe even two.  These were registered Guernseys, the breed I want to increase in our herd, and would probably have had to pay at least what we will get for our meat for just one cow.   I was fortunate enough to be sitting next to a guy who raised and milked Guernsey cows for 50 years, and so he pointed me to some good values - cows a little older, maybe not such high, perfect udders, but good milking records and very high butterfat.  The two cows cost what we will get for the meat from our one cow.  They arrived last night and are getting to know the other cows already. 

I was going over the records of the two I bought last night and discovered that I bought grandma and granddaughter.  One of the girls freshened in July, and we are already milking her.  The other was due to freshen yesterday, so very soon we will have copious amounts of milk from her as well - and all that butterfat!  Guernseys give this lovely golden milk with very high butterfat, and are the breed with the highest A2 content.  You can read more about A2 milk here if you are interested: 
A1 - A2 Milk information   And some of the science stuff here:  Science behind A1 A2 milk

Pictures of new cows later.  I need to get on with my day.  I'm going to bake some braided oatmeal and whole wheat bread today.  Sean and Roy are getting spoiled for the good stuff - no more day-old bread store bread for them!