Ginger and lemon tea

I tried some lovely tea at a cafe recently, it was ginger and rosella. I bought some of the tea to take home, it was expensive, and when I finished the packet I wondered if I could make my own....

I didn't have any rosella, but I thought I could start with trying to dry the ginger. I bought some organic ginger from the the Nanango markets and sliced it up really thin. I spread it out in my dehydrator to dry. I ran the dehydrator on and off for a couple of days (its very loud, so I don't like to have it on when I'm in the kitchen), until the ginger was crispy dry.

At the same time I had a massive bag of lemons from a friend's tree. I knew that they were organic, so I decided to peel the skins and dry them as well, to add some lemon flavour to me tea. The ginger/lemon smell in the house was wonderful!

A jar of dried ginger and lemon peel

I have some rosella seeds now after swapping seeds earlier in the month, so I've planted them and maybe I'll soon have enough rosella fruit to make ginger and rosella tea. I'm also trying to grow enough ginger to keep up with all the ginger ale I make and now ginger tea.... In the meantime I have plenty of other herbs in my tea cupboard.... lemon grass, lemon myrtle, pepper mint, mint, calendula petals, and a little tarragon, oregano and thyme. I like to mix these up in a little jar to take to work where I enjoy my morning herbal tea.

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here . You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!). I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months. I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog. I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people. I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts. I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo. Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive! Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap. And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps. I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment. One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap. As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances). When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather. I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap. It also contributes a tan or brown colour to

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