A Million Words

I have been scouring the internet for advice on how to clean untreated wood, and I've come up dry. I found articles about cleaning wooden furniture, routine cleaning of wood floors (almost all of which have some kind of finish), and washing outdoor decks. None of them seemed suited to my problem -- an untreated, semi-post-and-beam ceiling with about 40 years worth of woodsmoke, pollen, and general household dust built up on its surface. Last fall, I washed it with a wood cleaner, diluted in water and mixed with bleach as directed on the bottle. I slopped it on with a rag, scrubbed it with a stiff plastic scrub brush, and wiped it down with another damp rag. It looked a bit cleaner, but it wasn't significantly brighter, and now, after a winter of construction dust, you can't tell the difference. I read that oxygen bleach is the active ingredient in most wood cleaners, so I decided to try an experiment. I found some of my sister-in-law's oxygen bleach near the laundry ...

I haven't posted much here lately. We've been busy with one thing and another, including various experiments in backyard poultry. My brother gave us 4 hens and a rooster at Christmas. They were theoretically his birds before that, but they spent most of the time at our house, anyway, so it wasn't a massive change. They are entertaining and low-maintenance. The biggest hassle they cause is by hiding their eggs all over the property. Nova finds them entertaining and sometimes likes to collect the eggs, when we can find them. Around about March, things started to get more complicated. I was told that this guy, Jeff, wanted to sell off some egg-laying ducks, so I bought three of them and threw them in with the chickens. At around the same time, my brother talked me into ordering more ducks, because I'd been talking about raising some for meat. Despite pregnancy, the renovation process, a new, short-lived job, and being generally over-extended, I ordered 8 Pekin ducklings...