Jackie Frobese

This was on an email from my credit card company.

If you’re wondering why the formatting is weird it’s just becauseI opened it on my phone.

Patrick can you share a link to your website where I would be able to peruse your products?

Thanks

I really enjoyed your comments Nicole.

It got me thinking about the most recent upgrade we did on our house, the countertops. We ended up with granite. Fortunately living in NH (the granite state) it was quarried somewhat locally, but I really didn’t even think to research the environmental impact of that choice. I’m thinking it’s probanly better than the fiberboard/laminate option, but I’m wondering how it compares to say concrete or butcher block? I’d love to hear some input on this from people.

As for siding we have grooved red cedar shingles. We had to re-shingle the south side of the house last year and the red cedar shingles are crazy expensive. Fortunately our house is small and the south side has a lot of windows so the total area wasn’t large, but we could not have afforded changing over our entire house to cedar shingles.

It does seem like a lot of the “natural” materials are more expensive. Cedar shingles, granite counters, solid wood doors instead of the hollow laminate doors... you get the point. But that said most of these options also have a much longer life. So the investment could be worth it financially speaking.

It really is amazing what you can learn to do by watching a few videos. We have done nearly every project ourselves. This is our first home so we had little to now experience before hand, and yet we have now done floor installs, retaining walls buildt with wood, stone or prefab blocks, wiring, painting interior and exterior, building and finishing new walls, patching holes in walls, replaced light fixtures, replaced faucets, re-shingling exterior walls, and removed old counters.  The only things we have hired for was the window replacements and the new counter install both of which were required by the manufacturing company for quality assurance. If you just have some patience, attention to detail, and some faith in yourself, you can do more than you may think. Doing the labor yourself has the added benefit of freeing up more funds to spend on quality materials. Certainly a worthwhile benefit in my book.

Lee Kochel, can you be more specific about the solution you used? I have minimal chemistry experience so I’m a bit lost by your description.

Will the concentrace minerals pictured here be appropriate for the ocean trace minerals? Then very specifically how do I mix it with the CaCl2? A quick online search shows me that CaCl2 is usually either powder or flakes.

I assume I don’t want to just mix ocean water with the CaCl2 because that would have too much sodium?

Thank you in advance Lee

I’m also really interested to see any pictures people may have of these types of floors finished.

I want to build a natural home, but in order to keep my husband on board I will need great pictures since the words cob floor don’t sound very pretty.

Some science behind the relationship of sun and bacteria for those of you interested.

As I learned it when getting my biology degree, the sun with its powerful UV rays does quite a job on DNA. More specifically UV mutates DNA. For multi-cell organisms like us, the plants our beloved pets and the multitude of other such creatures, there are defenses to this. For example: hair, pigmentation, (for us humans clothing), and an immune systen that seeks out and destroys cells that have been dangerously damaged (in the case of cancer, those cells have managed to hide from the immune system, definitely a bummer).

Anyway back to why this is important. DNA damage for a single-cell organism such as bacteria, is effectively lethal. If that tiny bacteria happens to be lucky enough to get a mutation of DNA that doesn’t change a function neccessary to life (energy attainment, waste removal, reproduction, etc.) that little guy is not likely to be so lucky with the next blast of UV bombarding its DNA while its out baking in the sun.

What all this amounts to is that tea made by sitting a clear glass jar in the sun for a number of hours will be effectively sterile.

Unfortunately, UV is also good at degrading a number of health giving compounds. Its a fascinating thing that plants, fruits, and vegetables grown with more sun exposure will have more of these healthy constituents, yet as soon as that yummie edible is detached from the mother plant that same sun becomes our enemy, degrading the healthy goodness.  Thats why most of us store our food hidden away in cabinets, closets, and basements.

So, when making a tea for medicinal purposes I would suggest going the route of heating the water on a stove, unless you have some traditional recipe that adamantly states otherwise. I’m certainly not going to mess with tradition.

I hope that helps.

I keep a pretty clean house. I often wonder about just how clean of a person I am, until I visit someone else’s house. I definitely have a low tolerance for grime.

That said I only use a good toilet brush, nothing else. And I always do it just before going to the bathroom to save the extra flush. Our toilet seems to get as clean as can be. I think if we had hard water it would be a different story, but we don’t.

I would challenge others to try cleaning the toilet without any product, just a good scrub brush see if it looks just as good when you’re done. You could save some money, reduce your trash, reduce the chance of ill effects down stream wether you have septic or city sewage, and reduce your overall carbon footprint. To me that’s all worth a try.

I’ve been going without toothpaste, and without any replacement for toothpaste for over a year now. I still get semiannual cleanings at the dentist with no fluoride involved. My dentist says my mouth is great and no new cavities which is a turn around from when I was using toothpaste. Before it seemed like every visit to the dentist it was another cavity. I won’t go back to using toothpaste. Going without has been good for my mouth, my wallet and the earth with my lowered landfill activity.

I do use an electric toothbrusheith water, a tongue scraper and floss regularly.

Alicia Bayer wrote:
Elderberry Tincture

Ingredients:

* One pint (two cups) fresh or half pint (one cup) of dried elderberries

* One pint of 100 proof vodka

Directions:

1.  Wash and sort the elderberries, tossing any stems or moldy berries. Fill a pint jar or other glass container with the elderberries, nearly to the top, and mash gently with a fork.
2.  Pour in the vodka to completely cover the berries. Screw on the lid.
3.  Shake the jar daily, topping it off with more vodka if needed. Let steep for 4-6 weeks.
4.  Strain through a colander into a clear jar, pressing the berries to release all of their juice. Transfer to small bottles with droppers and store away from light. It will keep for several years, though it will lose potency somewhat after time and will be most effective the first year.[/list][/list]

Dosage: Adults may take 10 drops up to three times a day as an immune booster and to prevent illness. In times of illness, adults may take up to 30 drops, three times a day (20 drops is a quarter teaspoon). Drops may be administered in a glass of water or under the tongue.

* Note that this has alcohol, so use your discretion about administering to children. Standard traditional dosage of elderberry tincture for children over two years old in times of illness is 7-10 drops, up to three times a day, in a glass of water or tea. You may wish to avoid the alcohol and administer elderberry syrup or oxymel instead, or provide elderberries’ benefits with elderberry apple juice instead, gummies, popsicles or other alcohol-free remedies.  Another workaround is to dissolve the extract in very hot water and allow it to cool.  The small amount of alcohol will burn off.

Thank you for your very complete and useful post!

I wanted to add that I prefer to use brandy for my elderberry tincture. The brandy is more palitable to me and the warming effect of it can be good for colds and the flu.

I know most of this thread is focused around MRSA, I wanted to share my experience with a different sort of infection.

A few years back I picked up conjunctivitis (pink eye) from my nephew. I didn’t and still don’t have insurance, and I prefer not to use antibiotics so I did a quick internet search. I ended up doing eye drops of raw cows milk from a local organic farm. I did a drop in each eye about every few hours the first day then only about 4 times the second day. By the third day I was back to normal. I’ve had this work for strep infections in the throat as well taking a sip of the milk every hour or two the first day.

I’ve also had a spider bite that I believe was from a brown recluse. It was not healing and only looking worse for almost a week before I finally found online that echinacea would help. It applied an echinacea extract directly to the bite as well as taking it orally (about 20 drops) 3-4 times a day. The bite cleared up in about 3 days. I have no scaring or discoloration today.