For the next several weeks we will be focusing on getting the toxins out of our household cleaners. During chicken butchering today, I asked Kailey if she had any thoughts on what cleaning product I should mention first, and she quickly mentioned dusting spray. Kailey explained that before we started making our own dusting spray, she hated dusting because of the sore throat, cough, and headache she would get every time she dusted. Until we started making our own dusting spray, she thought it was the dust. Since it doesn’t happen anymore when she dusts, we have to wonder if it was the spray. She says she still doesn’t enjoy dusting, but at least she doesn’t feel bad when she’s done.

Since we are talking about getting the toxins out of our hair products, I thought I would share a tip that has helped some of my children with cradle cap. In babies we call it cradle cap and children and adults we have different names like dandruff, depending on the severity. I have noticed that my children with the most gut damage have struggled the most with cradle cap. I have also observed that changing our lifestyles to reduce toxins, correct deficiencies, and focus on eating a highly digestible, nutrient dense diet with lots of natural enzymes and probiotics from our food has significantly reduced all the cases of cradle cap. If you or a loved one is struggling with this, I can’t wait to share what has worked for us, because there are so many toxic “treatments” out there and this is so simple and natural!

Multitasking is great, but overtasking is disastrous.

Quote By Kailey Mentink

If you ask my husband or my children how I get everything done in a day, they will tell you that I’m constantly multitasking. While most of the time this works well for me, sometimes I try to do too many things and end with a small or disastrous problem.

I remember when I was back in 5^th or 6^th grade and my neighbor taught me how to fix my bangs. The higher they were, the better. I remember my mom making me wear a bandana when I would spray gobs of hair spray on my hair to hold those bangs in place. My husband still laughs at those pictures! We knew the products we were using on our hair weren’t good for our health, but we didn’t have a lot of alternatives. Today there are many products out there that are more natural, but I don’t know if they would hold my bangs up. Thankfully that style is gone!! Today I only use two products, and they are a shampoo bar and a natural hair spray (at least as natural as I can find).

This week we are focusing on getting the toxins out of our skin care items that can be harmful to our health and can age us faster. Because I believe what we eat is just as important as what we put on our skin, I have added a few of those too. While none of us want to appear older than we are (I was doing just that and didn’t even realize it), we often don’t fully understand how detrimental these added ingredients to our products along with not getting the proper nourishment are to our skin and health. I have noticed a big difference in my skin since I started using real soap with quality ingredients, moisturizing with basic oils and herbs without the harmful components added, and using facial cream without the poisonous toxins. I have also had many other people report similar results. We can’t stop the aging process, but we can sure speed it up by following this list of eight things.

When crooks expand the money supply, this is called counterfeiting. When governments do it, it is called “monetary policy,’ but it is the same thing, inflation. In both cases it causes falling money and rising prices.

Richard J. Maybury

One of the books the kids and I are reading at this time is Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? This quote comes from that book. We have found it very useful to understand economics. I highly recommend this great read!

Liquid soaps have become very popular over the years. Unfortunately, in order to keep liquid soaps from going bad and growing harmful bacteria, they must contain preservatives that are known to be harmful to our health.  They also contain other toxic ingredients and require more energy to produce and create more waste. Bar soap is just as effective as liquid soap (even antibacterial soap) according to several studies, and since there’s no extra water added, they don’t have to contain preservatives (although many still do). While bar soap will have fewer toxic ingredients than liquid soap, it’s still very important to read labels on those bars of soap. Most of the cheap bars of soap that are sold in the store contain several cheap, toxic ingredients, and most of the glycerin (a natural skin softener) has been removed. The glycerin can be used to make lotions or other products which one will need to purchase after using this cheap soap. I wouldn’t even know how to remove the glycerin (nor would I want to!).

I shared in a recent post about how we almost used rat poison on our organic farm over five years ago. When we moved to our farm I saw my first rat and I was panicked! My husband bought rat poison and my son gave us this report right before we were ready to stick it in the barn. We never did use that poison and we are both really thankful for Caleb’s wisdom. I asked him to share this as a blog post. We are certainly not experts in this area and just becasue this has worked really for us, doesn’t mean it will produce the same results for everyone. Here is Caleb’s report below.

“Eek! A rat!” Its iconic. They’re small. They’re furry. They’re such ugly-dirty-disgusting-mean-insolent-little-churls! I get it, rats definitely are one of the most despised animals on a farm. If rabbits reproduce fast, rats are faster. If weasels can slip through small openings, rats can fit through smaller ones. Racoons are destructive, rats are more. You get the point. Rats will eat anything they can fit in their mouth. They will chew through almost anything that’s in their way and kill anything they can over power. It’s no wonder we do whatever we can to get rid of them! Well, almost anything.

                I’m not here to “Save the rats”. Yes, I do get paid to hunt rats so maybe I’m a little bit biased. All that aside however, the debate whether or not to use poison to control rats will probably never be completely settled.

We should never put anything on our skin that we wouldn’t eat. Recent studies have shown that all the chemicals that you find in skin care items will go directly to the bloodstream, lymph nodes, and other parts of the body. What we apply to our skin has even greater dangers according to a professor of biology at North Carolina State University than what we ingest. According to him, “When you eat something, it’s broken down by your liver and digestive system. But when you put something on your skin, there are times when it can enter your bloodstream without being metabolized.”

Did you know that the Pied Piper fairytale was likely based on a true story? When I asked my own family members if they had heard about the Pied Piper, they each shared that it was a fairytale about a man dressed in “pied clothing” that went to the village of Hamelin, Germany to rid the town of rats by luring them into a lake to drown. They were lured with music played on a magical pipe. After the town refused to pay him, he led the children to a cave and they were never seen again. Each story varies a little, but it’s basically the same. My family members were as surprised as I was to learn that this story was more than likely based off a true story. Even my husband who is very knowledgeable had not heard this.

The evidence that this really happened is written on a plaque at what is believed to be the Pied Piper house dating to 1602 and it says “A.D. 1284 – on the 26th of June – the day of St John and St Paul – 130 children – born in Hamelin – were led out of the town by a piper wearing multicoloured clothes. After passing the Calvary near the Koppenberg they disappeared forever.”