At Big Mill we just can’t waste or throw anything away that might have a second life. Recycling soap is such a good idea!

Big Mill B&B saves used soap and sends it to Clean the World; they are the world’s largest high-volume soap recyclers.

In the U.S. we throw away over a million bars of soap every day. “Each day nearly 9,000 children die from diseases that can be prevented by up to 62% through regular hand washing with bar soap,” a sad statistic from Clean the World.

While we are a small contributor, Clean the World has some big name hotel chains that participate: Marriott, Caesar’s of Las Vegas, Walt Disney World, Harrah’s and the Sands of Las Vegas … and of course, Big Mill Bed and Breakfast here in eastern North Carolina. It takes many villages.

Clean the World has made quite an impact – Fox News did a video interview with the project’s Director that explains the mission and the process.

Since its inception, Clean the World has distributed over 21,827,093 bars soap to dozens of countries worldwide including many who have had natural disasters like Haiti and hurricane victims in the United States. Clean the World is a natural disaster First Responder and as CBS put it, “A little Soap Makes a Big Difference.”

Since 2009, over thirteen million children have died from diseases that could have been preventable with proper hygiene.

Big Mill joined Clean the World in their early days and our used soap has been remade into 485 bars of soap. We collect soap from anywhere we find it – our friends save it and we mail it off to Orlando. The folks here at our local post office don’t have to ask me what is in the box anymore.

There are only six bed and breakfasts in North Carolina currently participating. I’m hoping we can get more. If you are interested, you can host a Clearly Natural Soap Drive for your church or school. If you just have a few bars or slivers of soap, I will gladly add them to the Big Mill box of soaps that we recycle.

Global Hand Washing Day is every year on October 15th. We are ready!

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Fresh picked berries are yummy. Recipe for storing berries below

Everyone has an opinion. I think you should at least give it a try, then decide. I know the vinegar wash works for me, but then I think white vinegar is “gold.” We use it here at Big Mill B&B for an eco-friendly cleaning product. I also use it as a fabric softener.

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Some folks do not believe this works – try it for yourself and you will see. It works for me and I have a B&B so I deal with lots of fresh fruit

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Berry Wash Recipe

Vinegar helps fresh berries last a lot longer. I promise you won't taste it.

Author Chloe Tuttle

Ingredients

• Fresh strawberries
• 1 part vinegar
• 10 parts water

Instructions

In a large pan mix the water and vinegar. Gently add the berries and gently remove them to a colander to drain. Repeat this washing and draining.

After they have drained, remove the berries and place them on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels. I place this in front of a fan or under a ceiling fan until all the berries are very dry. Sometimes I have to replace the paper towels. Some folks use a salad spinner to remove the water. If you use the salad spinner, line it with paper towels. It certainly is faster than air drying on the cookie sheet.

To store I use the plastic containers that the berries are in at the grocery stores. Wash these containers and dry them. Put a layer of berries, a small piece of the paper towel and then another layer of berries until the container is full.

Store berries in the refrigerator, not in the crisper. My berries will keep a week; they don’t keep a week if I just put them in the refrigerator without the vinegar wash.

Big Mill Bed and Breakfast 252-792-8787

Earth Day  is just around the corner, so it seemed like a perfect time to celebrate the birds we love with a suet recipe they delight in eating.

When I am cooking for the bed and breakfast guests, I also make suet for our lovely feathered travelers. And this suet recipe is made from things that we all have in our larders, especially innkeepers. Recipe below is easy! 

Well, those of you who live north of Virginia might not have the lard, but you could render your own “Suet fat” out of bacon fat and other fats. Southerners know and understand lard and we have a deep respect for this delicacy.

Innkeeper’s Suet for the Birds

•    6 eggshells (about ¼ cup crushed) *
•    1 cup lard – no substitutions unless you use rendered fat. NO CRISCO
•    1 cup crunchy peanut butter
•    1 cup leftover granola
•    1 cup uncooked oats
•    ½ cup seeds like sunflower, pumpkin seeds or bird seed
•    ½ cup dried fruit like raisins, cranberries, blueberries, dates, etc.
•    ½ cup chopped nuts
•    1 cup corn meal
•    1 cup flour
•    Optional: ½ cup fresh, chopped fruit like pears, apple, orange, strawberries or blueberries if you are using Suet right away
•    large pine cone & about 6 feet of strong string

Wash eggshells and microwave wet shells for 4 minutes. Cool and crush.

Put lard and peanut butter into large cooking pan and heat on low heat till soft. Remove from heat and add eggshells, granola, oats, bird seed, dried fruit, nuts, corn meal and fresh fruit if you are using it.

Allow to cool until it is no longer “runny.”  You can refrigerate if you need it to cool quicker but it might get too stiff.

Stuff the suet into the pine cone. Tie a long string about 1/4 way down pine cone and leave about 4 feet tail on the string. Hang from a tree limb.

* (you can omit eggs shells)

Yield: 4 ½ cups

Remember that all the birds can’t eat from your suet feeder. Cardinals are ground feeders, so throw some out for them on the ground. This Innkeeper’s Suet Recipe is a great way to recycle too. We have other suet recipes here.

Innkeepers Recipe from Big Mill Bed and Breakfast 252-792-8787

The idea is really simple: just drill a hole in a glass bottle and push the lights in. Guests here at Big Mill Bed & Breakfast ask me all the time, “How do you do it?”  Now is the perfect time to learn and these glowing wine bottles make great gifts.

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How to Make Wine Bottle Lights

Make these stunning wine bottle lamps - perfect for romantic lighting

Author Chloe Tuttle

Instructions

• • Light green or blue wine bottle

  • 1/2-inch ceramic tile drill bit (each bit will drill 6-8 bottles)

  • Small piece of masking tape

  • Electric drill (battery ones just can't cut it)

  • 20-count tiny Christmas light set. You need the kind that has a plug on one end only, not the end-to-end kind. The best time to buy these is at Christmas, they are difficult to find otherwise.
  
• Place a small piece of masking tape on the back of the bottle about 3 inches up from the bottom. Start drilling; don't use too much pressure, the bottle might break. The tape is to keep the drill bit from jumping around when you first get started.

  Be VERY careful; this is a slow process and is not to be attempted by impatient folks.

  Drill until the bit goes all the way through the glass. There will be glass dust in the bottle so you will have to rinse this out. Allow bottle to dry.

  Push each light into the hole that you have just drilled. This can be tedious and is not for the fainthearted. After all 20 are inside you are finished. Voila, it is gorgeous and magic!

First you need an empty bottle; wine bottles are good because they are free. The best ones are light green, usually Chardonnay, or blue, usually Riesling, but not always. The dark green bottles used for red wines like Merlot just don’t illuminate well.

You can either drink the wine or beg your friends to give you their empties. I have been saving wine bottles for years and now I have quite a stash.

Some folks decorate the bottles with all kinds of sequins, glitter and bottle covers. I don’t add anything because I like to see the wine labels.

We have these pretty wine bottles everywhere here at Big Mill B&B.  Everyone loves them and the price is certainly right. Oops, forgot to tell you that the ceramic drill bits cost about $16 each.

What a fun way to recycle!
innkeeper at Big Mill Bed & Breakfast 252-792-8787

How many bags are used per year?

We are overrun with plastic bags.

The Wall Street Journal says 50 billion and they don’t biodegrade. So we still have all of them in some form.

As for paper sacks, making a paper bag generates more water and air pollution than a plastic bag. But we are more likely to recycle and reuse a paper bag. Neither breaks down very well in the landfill.

Cities and countries around the globe are struggling with these issues. Los Angeles is the first U.S. City to ban free plastic bags. Their “No Disposable Bag Day” held in December, 2007 was a great success. Bangladesh has banned plastic bags. Ireland has imposed a bag tax and thereby reduced its plastic bag usage by 90%. Even China has banned free plastic bags, so if you are heading to the Olympics don’t forget your grocery totes.

Plastic bags will be gone from the check-out line at Whole Foods by Earth Day, April 22, 2008. The Manhattan Whole Foods Store sold reusable totes by the designer Anya Hindmarch that taut “I’m Not a Plastic Bag”. New Yorkers began queuing up at 2 a.m. to buy these bags that were quickly sold out.  A stampede of shoppers for these trendy bags in Taiwan injured thirty people.

Target and Harris Teeter and many stores are selling the reusable bags at good prices, many under a dollar.  IKEA is charging a nickel for each plastic bag, hoping that folks will provide their own bags. Even Wal-Mart is introducing a reusable bag with “Paper or Plastic-Neither”  Wal-Mart,  forsooth? Guess it fits in with my quiet Green Revolution.

What are we doing at Big Mill Bed and Breakfast?

Well, when I lived on a boat in the Caribbean, I always took my own bags to the store. When I lived in St. Barth’s we needed these strong, unbreakable canvas boat bags because we had to carry all our groceries on a small motorcycle. Thirty years later I still use these bags; you can buy them at places like West Marine , LL Bean and Bass Pro Shops and online at Green Home. They hold more than I can carry.

At Big Mill BB we use our own bags.

Here in Williamston, North Carolina, I take my own bags to the store and the folks at the check-out counter peer at me as if I had sprouted horns. But I keep on with my, mostly tacit, vigil to help save the Earth, one aluminum can and one bag at a time. We might go through your trash if you don’t recycle at Big Mill.

And, along with the Sydney Opera House in Australia, the Wan Arun Buddhist Temple in Bangkok, Thailand and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and others across the planet, Moses and I celebrated Earth Hour on March 29th. We really enjoyed the candlelight.

None of this is new for us on the farm here in coastal North Carolina; but we are glad to have the company. Someone must have noticed that we are seriously earth-friendly; we were just voted one of the Top Ten Eco-Friendly Inns by BedandBreakfast.com.

For now, at Big Mill B&B, we are supporting those businesses that are making an effort to help fight global warming and pollution. We reuse any plastic or paper bags that sneak into the house.

We give them to the fellow who sells watermelons and collards out of his truck. And we carry those cute totes to the store. But just when I think I have figured it out, the bubble bursts; so please don’t tell me we destroyed a wetland to make them.

And shame on all of us in the U.S. if we have to trail behind Bangladesh.

 Big Mill Bed & Breakfast 252-792-8787

Of course, it was wonderful to be acknowledged last year when the Washington Post ran the article about our clothesline.  And now, to be in such good company with other environmentally-friendly bed and breakfast owners … I’m just tickled.

That said, I realize that so many of the things we do here at Big Mill are second nature.  I’m always surprised when guests thank me for sharing a green-friendly tip or trick they didn’t realize.  I have a million of ’em I learned from my mom  Hmmm, I should post some of these on my blog.

In fact, I’m working on a new post called “Paper or Plastic.”  It should have been finished by now, but I got so fascinated learning new things retailers are doing, it has taken me longer to wrap up the article.  But, I promise to have it ready for you in the next day or so.  It’s very interesting, if I do say so myself

We save the seeds every year from these stately sunflowers; some to feed the birds, some to grow new sunflowers.

 Big Mill Bed & Breakfast 252-792-8787