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Cleaning Up:  Uses for woodstove ashes  |
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hipmamato4
True Blue Farmgirl
51 Posts
danielle
wernersville
pa
USA
51 Posts |
 Posted - Dec 28 2008 : 5:59:44 PM
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We just got a wonderful wood stove that I absolutely love. I am thinking that there must be some good uses for the ashes that I hadn't thought of. Any uses??
Homebirthing, home-schooling mama to 4 awesome kids, living an idyllic country life in Pennsylvania |
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kmbrown
True Blue Farmgirl
459 Posts
Misty
Waynesboro
Pennsylvania
USA
459 Posts |
Posted - Dec 28 2008 : 6:20:35 PM
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We always saved our ashes and used on Ice instead of salt. You can scatter the ashes on your driveway and your sidewalks and it works wonders!!
It's also a good source of nitrogen for your garden. Any left over always got scattered in the fields. |
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willowtreecreek
True Blue Farmgirl
4813 Posts
Julie
Russell
AR
USA
4813 Posts |
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JudyBlueEyes
True Blue Farmgirl
657 Posts
Judith
Spokane
Washington
USA
657 Posts |
Posted - Dec 28 2008 : 6:43:35 PM
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Er, Julie, you _can_ use wood ash to make lye soap, but it is a tricky business, best left to our pioneer forbears or the very adventurous. To make a nice bar of soap that you would like to use on your body, you need to have a fairly sophisticated measurement of lye to fats and that is not always easy to do using wood ash. First, depending on what type of wood you are burning, it produces a different kind of ash. Then, you have to run water through the wood ash and strain it into a bucket to make the lye. There is an old way to tell if the lye is "just right," by floating an egg in the lye bucket, and if it floats on top, or sinks to the bottom, the lye isn't right, but if it floats about half-way down the bucket, it's about right. And since our forebears typically used only animal fats (pig or cow) for their soap, it would be a little bit easier to figure out how to prepare your lye, if you cared to keep records of how much lye and fat you used. I would tend to think that most people didn't do this, based on the number of "horror" stories one hears about "the old lye soap" that burned their skin. The other thing that science teaches us is that each different kind of fat or oil you might use in your soap requires a different amount of lye in order to become the "perfect" soap. So if you made your own lye, you would want to know its exact "measurement" in order to know what kind of fat or oil to use. So, it's really quite a production. Anyhow, it _can_ be done, but to relatively uncertain results. It is something I intend to try some day, but I don't hold out great hopes for a luscious bar of soap, such as I make using commercial sodium hydroxide and my fats and oils, which are carefully calculated on a "lye calculator."
We come from the earth, we go back to the earth, and in between, we garden! |
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Woodswoman
True Blue Farmgirl
512 Posts
Jennifer
Altamont
NY
USA
512 Posts |
Posted - Dec 29 2008 : 04:28:56 AM
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I also use it on icy spots on the driveway.
Jennifer
Farmgirl Sister #104
"Nature brings to every time and season some beauties of its own".
-Charles Dickens |
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Alee
True Blue Farmgirl
22941 Posts
Alee
Worland
Wy
USA
22941 Posts |
Posted - Dec 29 2008 : 06:16:00 AM
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You can use it to clean your wood stove if it has glass and also to clean your oven. Simply wet a cloth, dip it in the ash and the scour with it. It doesn't work quite as fast as those extremely toxic instant stove cleaners, but using this method will get every scrap of black out of your oven and you will be able to breath while doing it.
Then of course just wash with wet cloths until all ash is wiped out of oven.
Alee
Farmgirl Sister #8
www.awarmheart.com
Please come visit Nora and me on our blog: www.farmgirlalee.blogspot.com
Put your pin on the farmgirl map! www.farmgirlmap.blogspot.com |
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MsCwick
True Blue Farmgirl
775 Posts
Cristine
Farmville
Virginia
USA
775 Posts |
Posted - Dec 29 2008 : 08:44:26 AM
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| You should ad some to your flower beds as well. I always ad a bucket or so to each of my 4x8 raised beds and turn it under during the winter months so that it's dispersed by planting time. |
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LivingWell4You
True Blue Farmgirl
1411 Posts
Karen
Hillsboro
MO
USA
1411 Posts |
Posted - Dec 29 2008 : 6:06:36 PM
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Similar to adding it to the garden, we put ours on the compost pile.
Alee, thanks for the reminder about using it to clean the fireplace door. I didn't realize you could use it to clean your oven too. Yet something else I learned on the connection!
God bless -
Karen ~ Chickherder & Maven's Haven Editor
Farmgirl Sister #311 |
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Ms.Lilly
True Blue Farmgirl
826 Posts
Lillian
Scotts Mills
OR
USA
826 Posts |
Posted - Dec 30 2008 : 07:48:58 AM
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We do a couple of things with them- Either they go in the compost pile or they get sprinkled in the dust bath area for the chickens, they love it.
Lillian |
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Annab
True Blue Farmgirl
2900 Posts
Anna
Seagrove
NC
USA
2900 Posts |
Posted - Jan 02 2009 : 09:52:12 AM
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| Since we have dirt for a driveway and thank goodness it doesn't ice or snow much, our ash goes to compost |
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Cleaning Up: Uses for woodstove ashes |
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Uses for woodstove ashes
