Turning Washer into Grey Water System

Disclaimer as I revive my blog: This blog is my adventure with living off the land.  All things local, natural, and creative.  It will be about my journey.  Posts will be quick as I don't have much time.  There will be errors in my typing but I am allowing myself to be comfortable with that so I can get my thoughts down.  I'll write this little blog for myself and if someone reads it and gets inspired.  Great!  If not, at least I have my journey written down for my boys to read some day.  And so I can look back and say, "WOW!  I did that!"  (since my memory is terrible)

Blog post about Greywater:
Tomorrow the Tucson Community Food Bank comes out and talks to me about installing a grey water system.  I have been wanting to use the grey water from my washing machine for watering a garden or tree for many years.  But step by step, slow and steady, and now is the time.  I don't know anything about the mechanics of it.  I attended a workshop about it and have seen diagrams so I am excited to physically see how it will be done.  Tomorrow is just signing paperwork, not the actual work.

One big thing about grey water is the detergent you use.  We use Charlie's Soap.  We bought it 2 years ago and still have about 1/2 the 5 gallon bucket to use.  It only requires 1 Tablespoon of soap per load.  Clothes always come out fresh.  It is for high efficiency washers and is biodegradable.  I have a front load high efficiency washer.  However, Charlie's Soap contains salt.  Salt is a big no-no with grey water.  Trees and gardens do not like salt being poured on them.  So, we will have to figure out what to do with our detergent.

Harvesting Mesquite for the First Time

I went to the Santa Cruz River Farmer's Market last Thursday to enjoy some Peruvian music and the new location of the market.  (Congress St. just west of I-10 on the left (south)  I brought a small baggie of mesquite I had picked from mesquite trees in town and one prickly pear fruit from my friend's front yard.  Desert Harvesters was there giving demos about how to harvest and use mesquite and prickly pear pads and fruit.  In Spanish, the pads are called nopales and the fruit, tuna.  Anyways, the tuna I had was almost ripe but not quite.  I opened it to taste.  Mmm.   But lots of seeds to spit out.

My mesquite were ready to turn into flour.  So this morning my family enjoyed mesquite pancakes topped with Tucson raw honey made from mesquite and desert wildflowers.  I bought the honey from the Tucson Honey Company at the market.  I turned the mesquite pods into flour in my Vitamix using the dry container.  I then sifted the flour to make it extra fine.  If harvesting large quantities of mesquite I recommend using the hammermill that the Desert Harvesters own.  It will be available to use in September.

http://www.desertharvesters.org/

I bought a book that Desert Harvesters wrote called Eat Mesquite!  It has great information about how to harvest desert food, focusing on mesquite, along with recipes.  I highly recommend it.  Since I had great success and my family LOVES the pancakes, I hope to harvest gallons of mesquite pods so we can have enough for all year.  You know it is ready to pick when the pods are brown and come off easily when pulled.  If they are still green, they are not ready.  Never pick pods that are on the ground.  An animal may have peed on them.  Also, don't pick pods with black dots as that is toxic mold.  Pods with little holes in them are good.  It just means a bug hatched and escaped.  No harm there. The harvesting season lasts until September.
Happy Mesquite Harvesting!