The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,399 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,095 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …   

For this week’s Make It Easy/Candlemaking Expert Level Merit Badge, I got to channel my inner pioneer girl. Actually, she’s not very inner: she rises to the top at frequent occasions.

Maybe it’s a childhood filled with all the Little House books,

Photo by Bill Morrow via Wikimedia Commons

maybe it’s my love affair with frilly and functional aprons,

maybe it’s the fact that I crave a pony and the wind in my hair …

uh, where was I? Right, candlemaking.

I can see me now … in my ruffled nightgown, holding my candle high, as I feed the hogs and bake my own bread … Okay, okay, back to reality (and indoor plumbing; can I get an amen?).

I had already made my own candles—tea lights and Mason jar ones—but now I got to really go all Early Americana, and try my hand at making taper candles. You know the ones: long and skinny and super old-fashioned looking.

I just know Ma Ingalls probably made enough of these to burn down Plum Creek (had she ever wanted to). And the fun part of this badge requirement was getting to share the experience with a friend (no, not Nellie, I chose Midge … far less persnickety and hardly ever bratty).

What we used to make our delicious smelling beeswax tapers:

• Hemp string (Buy at the craft store. Beeswax burns hot and bright, so you want a good-quality string like hemp)
• A big chunk of beeswax (we begged borrowed stole purchased some from our friendly local bee farmer)
• A big double boiler

You could also add in some scent or color, but honestly, I was going by my new mantra WWMID? (What Would Ma Ingalls Do?)

I couldn’t picture her burning anything less than golden-colored, sweet, honey-scented tapers. A lime green, gardenia scented one? Nah. But if you’re more the WWBD? type (What Would Beyonce Do?) then add in some extra oomph.

It took a while—and lots and lots of dipping—to get a nice, chunky taper shape, so we filled the silences with my musings of living off the grid, homestead style. Midge was skeptical that I could go longer than a week without Internet and bubble baths, but I don’t know … that inner pioneer girl inside me is crying to get out!

Photo, NBC Television via Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes she pipes down when there’s a Sherlock marathon on Netflix though, so maybe she’s confused.

After our tapers were finished and hanging upside down from my kitchen pot rack, we traipsed into town (NOT on a pony. Drat.) and went shopping for store-bought candles. This is part of the badge earning, peeps. Don’t fret. We needed to learn what our fellow townspeople were burning and buying, and just how often toxins were being released as a result. The results? Shocking, I tell you. Petroleum, parabens, paraffin, dyes, and not to mention, nasty fake scents that gave me instant headaches. I wanted to replace all the candles in the stores with my own homemade tapers, but Midge assured me that wasn’t exactly appropriate. Or legal. Legal Smegal!

WWMID? Well, I suppose she would make a few more as gifts and calmly and lovingly encourage those around her to make the switch.

Now. Where’s my pony?

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Joanna Green!!!

Joanna Green (Joanna, #5965) has received a certificate of achievement in Stitching & Crafting for earning a Beginner Level Buttoned Up Merit Badge!

“I have had buttons laying around and stuffed in many places for awhile, but I thought it was time to gather them all together in one place. Some of them are from my great-aunt, some from my mom, and some I have collected on my own.

I counted a total of 95 buttons and hope to add more. I decided to make a box to put them in and had a lot of fun doing it! I just covered a cardboard box with fabric and added some details.”

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,399 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,095 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

For this week’s Farm Kitchen/Bread Making Intermediate Level Merit Badge, I learned all sorts of fascinating things. In fact, you could retitle this post “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Yeast, But Were Afraid to Ask”! Not to be confused with the lesser known literary classic, “Everything I Learned About Yeast, I Learned in Kindergarten.” Or “Chicken Soup for the Yeast Lover’s Soul.”

I digress.

Here’s a charming little quote about yeast (or as we in the know like to call it, Saccharomyces Cerevisae):

“Sacchar means sugar-loving or feeding, myces means mold, and cerevisae is a word once used for beer.”
– The San Francisco Baking Institute

Mmmm, sugar-lovin’ moldy beer.

Photo by Tomasz Sienicki via Wikimedia Commons

Huh?

So, I dug a little deeper. Here are few other intriguing tidbits about yeast (tighten your stampede straps, girls):

There are basically two types of yeast: wild and commercial. Commercial is the kind you’re used to, most likely, while wild can only be found in zoos. (Ha ha, just a little baker’s humor there.)

For baking, there are three types of yeast: instant, active dry, and fresh baker’s. Active dry is quite common, and simply needs a nice, warm bath to rehydrate itself (much like me after a long day). Instant is flakier, and it can be added right into the dough. (Nice for beginning bakers, or those who have a fear of yeast. Yeastaphobia, we call it.) Fresh baker’s yeast comes in a cake or tablet form and has a shorter shelf life, so this is the least popular kind for the common cook.

Different strains and kinds of yeast can be found nearly everywhere in the environment; we’re talking on the fuzzy skins of fruits of berries, inside the bellies of honeybees, in the gut floral of mammals and insects, growing on cacti and other plants, between your toes, and let’s not even talk about that every-few-year-visit to the doctor us ladies make. Yeah, there’s no badge for that one, Madge.

Yeast is used in the making of not only alcoholic beverages such as beer and wine, but in the making of root beer and other sweet, carbonated drinks, and in kombucha and kefir.

And now, to be confusing, health-food enthusiasts love something called nutritional yeast (not for baking) sprinkled on their popcorn, or used in place of parmesan.

Brewers’ yeast extract is the main ingredient in the popular Australian food, Vegemite. You know, the land down under? Where women glow and men plunder? Sorry. Sometimes I slip into Men at Work lyrics when I least expect it.

The next part of earning my badge was to make two different types of bread, and then remaking one using a different type of yeast, or substituting baking soda or baking powder instead. Good thing I’m hungry. (The sacrifices I make earning badges. Munch, munch.) I went with Anadama Bread, later substituting baking soda in place of yeast.

Photo by Stacy via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Melanie Jones!!!

Melanie Jones (#4211) has received a certificate of achievement in Make it Easy for earning an Intermediate Level Carp-hen-try Merit Badge!

“I built my first chicken coop!!! I drove around town looking for scrap wood, pallets, and siding. I ended up with two shelves from my local Aldi supermarket, two pallets from a local business, and some tin roofing from an old farm house. It took a Friday and a Saturday, but the end result was spectacular!

Altogether, I spent $20 and some change on this chicken coop, including the chickens and feed! Now I have two happy chicks and one happy farmgirl!”

The adorable, always humorous MBA Jane is my way of honoring our Sisterhood Merit Badge program, now with 6,399 dues-paying members who have earned an amazing number of merit badges so far—9,095 total! Take it away, MBA Jane!!! MJ 

Wondering who I am? I’m Merit Badge Awardee Jane (MBA Jane for short). In my former life …

For this week’s Make it Easy/In the Garden Beginner Level Merit Badge, I went shopping.

Outside.

In my yard.

And maybe in my neighbor’s yard.

And by yard, I mean trash.

Ahem. Hey, now, before you get all judge-y on me, farmgirls, (no, I am not advocating a Freegan Badge) remember this little nugget of truth: A penny saved is a penny salvaged. Or is it: A bird in the bush is worth two in the garden?

Well, no matter. Whatever your personal mantra and creed is, your own yard (and your friendly neighbor’s) is an excellent place to find all sorts of treasures to recycle/upcycle/DIY. Golly, I could probably have my own reality television show at this point. And an action figure.

Wait. I AM an action figure.

Well, anyway. Back to the show. My goal was this: Make a garden trellis out of material I could salvage/find/discover.

Don’t get all overwhelmed on me, chiclets—this was going to be easy-peasy. (In fact, a pea or bean teepee was next on my list, to boot.) I had so many ideas, my head was swimming with them. You can make a trellis out of nearly anything …

• Old doors
• Pallets
• Fencing
• Bamboo (bonus points if this is actually growing in your garden; talk about double-duty)
• Antique headboard (so French chic)
• Old windows, with or without the glass
• Wire (mesh or cable)
• Chicken wire
• Saplings and vines
• Lattice
• PVC piping
• Antique mattress frame (the wire part, not the fabric part)
• Bicycle
• Bicycle or wagon tires (screwed into a post vertically)
• Old screen door
• Anything, really!

“The Grey Trellis,” by J. Alden Weir, 1891

And now that you have a fabulous, unique, one-of-a-kind garden trellis, what to do with it? Well, you came to the right place, doll. Here are a few creepers (and by that, I do not mean a shady-looking character … I mean some climbing plants) and crawlers that adore trellises almost as much as you do:

• Flowering Jasmine
• Black-eyed Susan
• Snap Peas
• Beans
• Roses
• Honeysuckle
• Morning Glory
• Hyacinth Bean Vines
• Cucumbers or Zucchinis
• Twisting Snapdragons
• Climbing Nasturtium
• Raspberries or Blackberries
• Clematis
• Passion Flowers
• Petunias
• Canary Creepers
• Decorative Gourds
• Hydrangeas
• Squashes and Melons
• Glory Lily Bulbs
• Wisteria
• Sunflowers

Photo by Stephen McKay via Wikimedia Commons

And did you know these fun facts about growing veggies on a trellis, as opposed to on the garden floor? The fruit and veg will be cleaner, better-shaped, take up less space, will be less discolored (no resting on the ground), easier to water, and easier to harvest.

And this most important reason of all:

It’s totes adorbs!

Try a trellis today. Don’t go shopping for supplies, just use your imagination. Then get planting. You’ll have the cutest, most functional garden on the block (of course, your neighbors might want their stuff back … let ‘em share in the bounty instead). Happy DIY-ing, peeps.

Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)

Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)

My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … Beth Lohman!!!

Beth Lohman (cntybuff, #2591) has received a certificate of achievement in Garden Gate for earning a Beginner Level Backyard Farmer Merit Badge!

“I received two beautiful chickens for my birthday last October. I have been learning a little about how to take care of them and improving their pen.

I love having chickens. So does my granddaughter. We love watching them free-range in the backyard. I haven’t had to buy eggs in months!!! I’m ready to add a couple more.”