My homestead crafting for this month—rendering tallow, tallow lip balm, calendula salve; knitting baby socks and a baby hat, some scarves and cowls and little things I’m finishing up, and yet more work on the yo-yo quilt! Get er done!

Today I made a calendula salve! I made one previously, and have been absolutely loving it. I put it on all my wounds, bug bites, and skin irritations. Infected piercing? Calendula balm. Bad zit or acne? Calendula balm. I heard you should use it like neosporin (which some people like me have allergies to the neomyacin, so this is a good alternative.) I use it and just keep applying when my skin has absorbed it and it feels dry again.
Making it was a fun mess—well, it was only messy at the end when I poured it into tins. I started by infusing olive oil with calendula resina flower petals. This flower is a relative of the marigold, both very beneficial flowers. They are beautiful flowers, a rich yellow colour, so vibrant yet soft. They dry on a screen of recycled lace I put on a hanging quilting hoop, flat on their faces with their petals sticking straight out in every directions, each one a perfect, holy circle.
The flowers release their medicinal substance under the heat and it becomes infused with the oil. To this I added tallow, Shea butter, and beeswax with the embellishments of lemon, tea tree oil, and turmeric powder (all beneficial for the skin).
Once it all melts and is incorporated, I can pour it in its little tins from the double boiler (and of course the edge of the glass makes the liquid fall down the side 😂). I let it harden, add lids, and put in my stash for to sell and gift! $15 my friends! Message for sale!

Tallow, refined beef fat, is useful in cooking as well as homemade cosmetics products. It is shelf stable when rendered to purify it from imperfections (meat bits) and so so soft, soothing, and an ultimate joy to work into your skin—both as a finished cosmetic product and as I work with processing it!
I started this process at the Trackside butcher shop, purchasing first three, then five pounds respectively, of beef suet. My first recipes I planned on trying were bird food suet and tallow lip balm.
when I brought home the thawed tallow, I put the three lbs through my kitchen aid grater. After doing that, I can say it melted and processed way faster than just cutting up the suet—however it was quite a bear to grate, as it has lots of membranes that do not want to grate at all and then coat the grater. The second time, I just cut up the fat and put it in my rendering pot on very low heat with 2 cups water.
Melt, strain, sit and harden, and repeat is the process it takes to refine tallow. A few repeats should leave your tallow whiter than it starts, and free of floating chunky bits.
Once it was done, I poured melted tallow into my bird feed mix and let it harden for bird suet. I waited until it hardened into a bar to measure it out for my lip balm.
For the lip balm, I mixed tallow with beeswax, honey, and turmeric, and tried both pouring into a container to harden and letting it harden and whipping it—and I did like the whipped version better.
I love the tallow products so far! The lip balm is so soft, tastes just like a hint of honey but not much else, and the birds are eating up the suet really fast (I have a fine crop of songbirds and woodpeckers in my backyard). Next I plan to try a whipped body butter and a calendula salve. Stay tuned—and if you are interested, listen up in my shop, I actually have my lip balms available right now for sale! Blessings!
​—August Lee

Please enjoy my video of my time at the Kentucky State Fair and going through all my 19 ribbons I won!

My goal/experiment with the home garden this year was to let everything grow that came up. I did not have many weeds at all, it was mostly covered with tomatoes, beans, and squash in my bed areas—and actually ended up getting completely covered up and unnavigable. Thus, I have it a haircut. I will keep the home garden more pruned in the future—that was the value Learned this year, pruning. I chose to do this experiment as I was a little bummed out at getting started with seeds very late. Even when you get started when you think it’s late, you can still get a shite ton of growth. Too much. So when it needs to be managed, manage it. (Though, I also had a lot of time restrictions on my plate this year…) For next year, I already have a different plan. Stay tuned to hear what it was. Also, I did want to share what I was most proud of this season, which was my cushaws. Cushaws are a type of squash crossed kind of like between a pumpkin and a zucchini, and I cook it in either pies or breads. Just skin, roast, blend, and substitute 2 cups for a can of “pumpkin” (which is usually actually just butternut squash).

Before garden-haircut

After the haircut

Mid-work pictures

Bounty

Basil salt

Leather Britches (strung beans)

Oregano infused olive oil

Boneset and Pokeweed for dye

Various sunflower heads drying for seed

Calendula salve which I had made with calendula petal infused olive oil, and thus, needed to make more calendula olive oil

Cushaws

Fiber fun in the garden with alpaca wool from my cousin!