Wendy’s Page

Welcome to Wendy’s page which is going to be about what I get up to, but only the permaculture stuff. I have a Shanklin page where you can find info on nettle patches for butterflies and anything else about encouraging wildlife. I will soon be featuring a page about getting involved. (Ah, when I get round to it)

Posted 23rd June
Soapmaking come and see how it’s done, next Sunday 10.30 at Nick’s in Shanklin.

It’s two years since we made soap so we thought we’d better have a practice run before we invite people along, and it went reasonably well. Soap is a temperamental thing. You can see us pictured below. Nick preparing the lye water and then me mixing the combined oils and lye. We put half the mix in a mould as a simple soap which can be rebatched later, and added calendula petals, turmeric(for colour) and essential oils to the other half. The soaps have to be packed away in an insulated box to keep warm. we have used pieces of leftover packaging from Godshill Organics. They are giving it away and it also makes very good kneeling pads. But I digress.
Adding the essential oils accelerates the process so logic should have dictated that we put the plain batch on the top where it would benefit from the heat rising. but logic had gone out for the day so the top soap was a little crumbly and the bottom one had to be put out in the warm sun for a further two days before it could be turned out. All in all I think we still have good soap. It now has to cure for at least four weeks but if come along on Sunday We’ll find you some we made earlier.
To find out where, ring 864054

It’s time to make soap. We’ve got out the equipment and the books and we’re ready to go. It’s the first batch for a couple of years so we”ll do this one on our own, and the next batch, anyone who wants to watch can come along.
Soap is made by combining caustic soda (often called lye) and oils so that they react to produce soap and glycerin. Although glycerin is a by-product of the saponification process it stays in the soap so you benefit from it. In commercial soapmaking they take it out.

We need to have a big pot to heat up the oils, not aluminium because it’s not good with lye. We are going to use a mixture of olive and coconut oil and solid vegetable fat. We have some plastic containers for the lye. We’re making sure they are clean. We have two thermometers, the ones for beer that we got from easy weigh. Because of the caustic soda we need to have goggles and rubber gloves and protective clothing. The way it works is; you heat up the oils and meanwhile all gloved and masked up you put the caustic soda into the water. It’s all in exact amounts. Then you have to get both things to the same temperature, that’s why it helps to have two of you.
When the soap is the right consistency you pour it into moulds and kept warm to continue it’s process. So we have big tuppaware to put them in and they are packed into an insulated box to be inspected the next day or it might take two.
Other ingredients can be added to the soap like petals and beeswax spices and essential oils. We will add some during the process but others can be added later in a rebatch.

the combined lye water and oils which have thickened to a good consistency to transfer them to the moulds. Soapmakers say the soap has reached trace.








---

The chapel is covered in plastic to protect the young plants. At the moment I have a couple of aubergines and some melons that I’m planning to keep inside. the cucumbers and tomatoes are going outside after this rainy spell. To keep the slugs at bay I make a thick ring of seaweed around squash and cucumber plants. If you have a pile of well rotted compost then that makes an ideal place to grow them, as it gets nice and warm.
Next door to us there is an abandoned allotment with a bath full of rain water which could be excellent for frogs if they could get in and out of it. It is important to provide a way out a deep sided container and this was easily remedied with a piece of wood. A pic of this will appear somewhere on the page soon.

you can get pallets from B and Q they give them away free. Oh yes and the door was made from bubble wrap, which was on my windows during the winter. (Have you noticed that people who are being green like to say how they found another use for something. they’re getting the point about making inventive use of things, but did they need to buy it in the first place?)

A couple of years ago me and Nick got into soapmaking. we’re still using it but plan to start making again when the weather gets warmer. I’ll let you know when we start, then maybe some of you you would like to see how it’s done. once we got interested we had bought beeswax and oils and made hand creams as well with essential oils. Citronella cream was especially good for keeping ants off my ankles.

This year I want to grow more perennials, that’s the permaculture way; Learning to enjoy the plants that grow well without so much attention, which really means working with nature and not against it.
please post your comments and hellos on my page.

I’m hoping some of us will get together and make a cider press for the autumn windfalls.

Cider press plans and recipe [Opens as a word document]

---

Soon on this page, how to build a chapel from pallets for growing cucumbers, Collect 6 pallets now. You will also need some plastic to cover your pallet chapel. We used the packaging from a new mattress. Now is a good time to sow your ridge cucumbers in a propagator. If you prefer you could try melons.

Here’s the geezers who put it up. It’s good to level the ground first. then they put some carpet down to stop the weeds. Knock out some of the middle bars of the pallets you are using for the sides to let more light in. they tied it together with plastic ties., and wedged some metal bars in to keep it in place. Then you cover it in clear plastic. Our Neighbour Pete thinks it might get blown away by a high wind, so I think it might be sensible to make some ventilation holes, these things can get get quite hot anyway. Nick’s put the plastic on but we’re still thinking about a door. Ridge cucumbers are doing well on my windowsill. they do alright outside in the summer so I’m off to buy some melon seeds and maybe some Aubergine plants would do well.

This page has the following sub pages.

• Shanklin page