"Mama's Mud" A Spa Treatment for Baby"

This is a shared post from my blog over at Linden Row Botanicals. I will be posting over there as well on soap and skincare topics.

      In May, I was blessed to give birth to my fifth child.  That's a lot of diapers and many opportunities for diaper rash to occur.  Naturally, once I started down this natural health and body care journey, over six years ago, I had to learn to make a better diaper rash cream.  I tried several recipes, but none worked as well as the one I came up with "Mama's Mud".  I have been using it for years now and given it as baby gifts as well.  The best thing is that it is VERY simple to make!

You will need:

1/8 cup coconut oil (extra virgin is preferred)

1/4 cup raw shea butter

3-4 Tablespoons Bentonite Clay (I use Redmond Clay)

This will make about 1 cup.

First, combine the coconut oil and shea butter in a small bowl.  You can use a hand mixer to blend or even soften the shea butter slightly in a double boiler.  Then add the clay until you reach the desired whipped texture.  Store it in a sealed container at your changing table or in a small tin in your diaper bag.  You can apply the paste at each diaper change to prevent rash or just apply when a rash occurs. 

I use the paste when there is an active rash.  As prevention, I have Redmond Clay (can you tell I love the stuff) in a shaker that I dust my babies bottom with during each diaper change. 

If you use cloth diapers, you can use this too!  I apply the paste and then use one of my homemade wet wipes (in its dry state) as a barrier. My wet wipes are made from cut up fleece receiving blankets.

*The paste may discolor or stain fabric.  It  is clay after all. :) 

"Mama's Mud" has worked wonders for me and I hope it brings quick healing to the little bums in your life.

Jill

A New Motto

     We are always striving to become more self-sufficient and I often feel that we aren’t moving quickly enough towards our goals.  The only way we seem to make progress is to leap!  We read, study and plan only to not act on the plan.  Things should be prepared for the animal before you take on the responsibility of the life and well-being of an animal. Right?

  Yes, we plan to eat our animals, but we want to give them the best life possible and respect their contribution to sustaining our lives.  There is a tendency for us to plan & plan & plan…you get the picture.  I have found the  only way we make progress is to do drastic things...

First Batch of Egg Layers

like order 15 or even 25 chicks when we don’t even have a coop :$.  Say yes to a rabbit before our colony is built.  If we don’t have the pressure of the animal coming we don’t “build it.” 

 My new motto instead of “Build it and they will come.” Is “Build it they are coming!” 

There is a big difference between the above statements, but it has been our motivator thus far.  I hope one day we won’t function this way, but for now, this is how we make progress. 





The Chicken Castle

Hawthorne, my husband, has almost finished the “Chicken Castle” as we are calling it due to it being 25% larger than we intended.  You could say we are also growing in our building experience as well, if you can call assembling PVC pipe and chicken wire building. ;)  This PVC pipe structure will house our Freedom Rangers when we move them outside around 3 to 4 weeks.  This will be our first batch of meat chickens and they arrived yesterday so I will be writing about that new learning  experience soon.  Birch, my oldest daughter, helped me set up our brooder so we would at least be ready when the chicks arrived. 



Sweet Fern


 

 

 For now our  breeder meat rabbit, Sweet Fern, is being moved around on grass in a modified dog kennel. 

In the coming weeks we plan to fence the rabbit colony and try to seed it with plot spike.  Our property has some interesting quirks and one is a concrete pad in the woods that is half fenced.  There is a very thick cover of organic matter on top of the concrete pad from years of leaves falling.  When my farm friends at East West Farm and Free Home Farm came for a visit they gave us the idea to build the colony.  This will be a huge learning experience and I pray we learn quickly without many mishaps.






There is always so much going on here and more we want to do, but I am trying to learn to rest in the journey and see the Lord's blessings each day.  Thanks for taking the journey with me.


Jill, The Herbal Hutch