New Venture Ponderings

It’s funny how with so many people at home because of Covid-19 that many people are saying, “Don’t you just love the extra time at home?” And then there are the people who are working from home, who struggle with lack of time just like every SAHM/SAHD I know. Yes, we’re home all day, but we are not lounging in the hammock with margaritas.

I’m home all day now, but I really don’t feel like I have any extra time at home. By the time we finish the kids’ schoolwork and mine, it’s time to start supper. Today, I did get a break long enough to sweep and mop the kitchen floor. But even while making dinner we were working on high school Physics. Now it’s seven o’clock at night and I can finally sit down and do my thing. We have a decent routine to get all our required work done, but I just don’t seem to have the extra time that I thought I would for things like garden starts, writing, crochet, soap making, etc.

I’ve been taking a course through Cornell Small Farm Courses, for learning the basics of bee care. This eight week course covers all the basics from how to recognize the three main types of bees (queen, drone, & worker), to recognizing healthy hives, pests, all the possible products from the hive – I only knew about honey and wax, who new the Royal Jelly (what the larvae eat) is also marketable?!? Week seven talks about marketing ideas from everything from local school cafeterias, partnerships, gift shops, fitness stores, local greenhouses, herbalists, coffee shops, fundraisers, microbreweries, artisan cheese shops, etc. So many more markets than I had considered.

We really intend to start crafting more, with the hopes for more gifts to give, but also more items to sell. We tend to use the first attempts ourselves. We have started making some bath bombs and shower melts. The bath bombs are good, but the shower melts need to be a tad stronger.  We intend to do more, and lip balms, lotion bars, body sprays etc. Along with these are linen sprays and room sprays. In the past, we have made up powders to sprinkle on carpet and vacuum away the odors. We no longer have carpet so we can’t test those out anymore. Rachel keeps trying out more crocheting patterns, but we are also expanding our sewing patterns. Reusable snack bags will be in the very near future, as well as bibs. We’re also testing out patterns for carrying cutlery and chopsticks in backpacks/purses for on the go meals. Soon we would like to have the beeswax wraps/bowl covers. At some point maybe those cool bowl things for removing a hot bowl from the microwave.

The girls have started doing all sorts of projects around the house. They are the ones who have cleaned up the yard the most. They have some cool ideas for building things about here too. A request was given to me for pallets and I fully support this. These projects are good for the mind, body, and soul.

Blogging is something that Rachel is putting more time into. She has been writing book reviews somewhat regularly (check this post on how easily you can be a paid reviewer too!), and is now working to expand the blog. She spends an hour a day most mornings networking with other bloggers and promoting this blog. In doing so, she gets to read all sorts of other cool blogs on everything from wedding trends to new books, new recipes to amazing candle scents. Through this, she made friends with a teacher/homesteader in her same town – how crazy!!

We just traded 6 dozen eggs for an almost-new bread machine. We used to have a bread machine, but after almost 20 years of use it eventually wore out. Now we can make our own cinnamon raisin bread overnight and have amazing warm bread to wake up to. Furthermore, we can bake all sorts of exotic flavors without any worry of possible allergy contamination. Yes, we could actually make the bread with our own two hands and the regular oven, but this is awfully handy. And nothing beats waking up to fresh bread and coffee!