18th Annual Seaside Herb Society Fair in Ormond Beach

Holy Basil in bloom

The Seaside Herb Society 18th Annual Herb Faire is scheduled for March 22, 2014 from 9 AM to 2 PM at the Bailey Riverbridge in Ormond Beach.  The address is 1 North Beach Street Ormond Beach, FL 32174.  

We always stock up on herb plants at this event.  Last year the ladies brought in Olive trees for sale at the event.  The herbal breakfast items are always a special treat.  

Aquarian Bath will be vending as usual.  We will be bringing member's favorite products: Carrot top shampoo bar, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Balm, Flaxseed herbal pillows, Patchouli soaps and more.  Please be sure to leave a comment here if you plan to attend and would like me to bring particular items.  We usually just bring a small fraction of our complete inventory for this event.

Organic DIY Chicken Feed Recipe

A couple of months ago we switched from buying chicken crumble feed for our hens to an Organic mix of bulk foods.  Since we made the switch our hens have much darker yolks and they want to start eating this feed mix as soon as we bring it out to them.  They are mostly free range bird and had lost interest in the crumble feed, so it seemed like a waste to keep buying it for them.  This recipe is a modified feed recipe from Farhan Ahsan who is the owner at The Poultry Guide blog.  Farhan's original recipe also calls for corn, but we still put out a little bit of scratch grains for our birds. I am thinking to switch to Organic corn when we run out of scratch grains.  Last year I had some luck growing small grained Cherokee popping corn.

Organic Chicken Feed 

• 16 cups of Organic Winter Wheat

• 12 cups of  Organic rolled oats

• 4 cups of whole Organic green lentils

• 1 cup Organic Sesame seeds

• 2 cups Organic brown Flaxseed

• Quarter cup kelp* granules

*I only use Sargasso sea weed from our Florida beaches.  I am not comfortable using seaweed from the Pacific Ocean due to the ongoing radiation releases from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant.  

The great thing about this recipe, is all these ingredients are whole foods that you can also use for the rest of your family.  We buy most of these ingredients in 25-50 pound bags at our local Organic grocery store.  The wheat can be made into bread, sprouted grain bread, wheat grass, or cat grass.  We use the Oats for either oatmeal or no bake cookies.  The lentils are great for sprouting.  The sesame seeds we buy in a bit smaller quantity from Mountain Rose Herbs.

Our 2 birds take about 1/2 cup of this mixture per day, plus garden scraps, weeds and other foods that they forage in our backyard.

Love Stamped Valentine's Day Soaps

Orange Clove

We have some new soaps for your Valentine.  Hope you love them as much as we do. Choose from 3 popular scents and we will hand stamp them when you order.  

Available now at http://www.aquarianbath.com.

Patchouli

Vanilla Chai

Our New Cell Phone Sized Solar Powered Aquarian Bath Webserver Runs on 5 Watts

The new Aquarian Bath web store was recently upgraded and given a new home on one of these palm-sized machines which are built with the power efficient processors designed for smart phones. The open source Cubieboard ARM based integrated computer serves as the bare metal for a Debian Linux based web, database, and email server. Drawing just 3 Watts 5 Watts under load, it is one of the most power efficient computing platforms available, allowing us to run our new website on solar power, courtesy of industry leader SolarNetOne.  We upgraded our server since this article was published last week to include an extra hard drive which draws 2 Watts in order to keep up with holiday traffic, therefore the server draws 5 Watts instead of 3 Watts.

In comparison, the average video card in a gaming computer draws about 100 Watts by itself. Another 150 Watts is required for the main computer. 250 Watts is also about the average power consumption for a typical server. An average compact fluorescent light bulb draws 13 Watts, more than 2 times the power of our new e-commerce website.  

With this new hardware upgrade, we also updated the shopping cart, reorganized and categorized many of our items and sections. We hope you find it easier to navigate. You can now shop by the following main sections Soap (and Shampoo), Natural Skin Care, Herbal Products, Gift Ideas, Flaxseed Pillows and Reduce Plastic. 

For example, this Gingerbread and Star Anise 2013  holiday soap set can be found in the soap, Gift ideas, and Reduce plastic section.  Thanks for reading and please check out our new site.  

New Lucky Fisherman's Anise Soap

Did you know that according to fishing and herbal lore Anise seed oil is attractive to fish like catfish and trout?  We have a new Anise seed oil hard hand soap that makes a great gift or stocking stuffer for the fisherman or fish lover in your life.  These soaps were hand stamped and include saponified oils of Coconut, Shea Butter, Extra Virgin Olive oil, Olive oil and Pomace.  They were marbles lightly with French green clay and Rhassoul clay.  Check out the new Lucky Fisherman's Anise soap at AquarianBath.

The photos below are from our weekend trip to Weeki Wachee Springs.  What a beautiful view of the water from the tour boat.

The fishing here was completely for the birds!   

Cypress Tree 

The crystal clear blue water drains into the Gulf of Mexico, some 12 miles downstream. 

Just down the road in the Gulf of Mexico on Pine Island, the sea birds are sunning themselves.

We didn't try fishing, but I did catch this crab with my bare hands for fun to show the kids.

It took me a while to get up the nerve to do it. Twenty years ago I hunted Dungeness crab by hand in Washington. This is a female blue crab.