Tails From Provence

You know those things that scroll by on Facebook (those of you who book your faces, anyway)? You know, orange peel will clean your windows? Drink used car oil for a digestive cleanse! That sort of thing. And you just KNOW it’s a lie.

One of my friends shared this :

I was intrigued. Especially since we really do have a lot of horse chestnut trees in the village. From the end of August to mid October, it becomes risky to sit on certain parts of the terrace of both bars. One of those prickly cases landing on your head could do a lot of damage.

I clicked through to read the post.

As everyone is talking about conkers already I thought I would share my post about conkers and washing from last year.
I have used nothing but conkers for over a year now. As a family we love it.
No smells, no chemicals, no palm oil, no plastic. And best of all free other than my energy.
I have used the four smaller tubs in the picture and have the largest tub left.
I am now collecting conkers to prepare for this year and I hope to be able have enough to help others use conkers.

Can you help me? I need as many conkers as I can get.

How to use.

Chop up small and dry the conkers till they are rock hard. I use a dehydrator for this but you can use an oven on a low heat. Once totally dry they will keep until you need them.
Put 40grms of dried conkers in a 500ml jar.
Fill jar to top with boiling water and sock for at least 10 mins – 30 minutes is better.
You will get a lovely creamy feeling thick liquid.
Seive into another jar.
Resoak the conkers with more hot water. This time for at least an hour.
Sieve the liquid from the conkers again and resoak for a 3rd time. This time for at least 2 hours or over night if you can.
Each soak the liquid gets “thinner”. You can see when your conkers are “spent” they change from a yellow colour to white.
The liquid will have a lovely tree/soapy/woodland smell. This disappears by the 3rd soak.

Use the liquid from the first wash for your dirtiest washing. For very dirty clothes I would use the whole lot, for normal washing half the liquid per wash.
The liquid from the second wash I dont divide and use the whole lot for one wash.
The 3rd lot of liquid I use for towels and things that need a light wash.

I make the liquid as I need it. If you need to keep the liquid pop it in the fridge (label the jar so it doesnt get drunk) and it will keep for around 7 days. Always stir the liquid before use to evenly distribute the “soap”.
The used conkers can then be added to your compost.
Please always say thank you to the trees for the gift of conkers and please plant some of the conkers fo our biospheres future.

The Watercress Queen, Facebook  If you’re a Facebooker, check out her page – they make Ecobricks out of used plastic bottles. A woman after my own heart…

Anyway, I thought it seemed a little too good to be true, so I googled it horse chestnut washing liquid. I found a couple of other low-impact bloggers discussing their recipes and I thought, well why not give it a try? There are literally hundreds of thousands of horse chestnuts falling into the streets of Reillanne every year, to be swept up and put into the community compost heap. Why not collect a few and experiment?

I collected a smallish amount, about 400g. One of the articles mentioned that unpeeled chestnuts will stain the washing, so I peeled them, chopped them and ground them up small in a food processor, and left them to dry in the sun for a day or two.

I tried a fairly nondescript wash first, dark colours, not particularly dirty, followed by some towels. They certainly seemed to be clean and they smelt… yes, ‘Fresh’ is the word. But would they have been just the same if I’d washed them in water only? A real test was necessary.

As it happened, I was working for all of last week. Normally I change jodhpurs halfway through the week, but this time, I used the same pair for the whole week. Five days in a row of ‘horsing’ my clothes.

This is how they looked on Friday evening.

(I wear half-chaps to stop hay and straw going inside my boots, that’s why all the dirt is concentrated on the thighs.)

Could this yellow liquid clean up my manky jodhs?

Scroll

down

for the

answer…

Tada!!!

Here are the photos side by side for a true comparison :

Convinced? I certainly am.

I’ve been collecting conkers like a loon for the last week.

I’ve got a few tips on the peeling process :

Bash each one hard with a mallet or meat hammer. That cracks the skin and makes it easy to get the knife tip inside to lift it off.

In some cases, if they’ve dried a little, you can just winkle out the flesh.

Use a sharp knife with a strong blade. Some of those suckers are tough.

I gave up on the food processor notion and I’ve just roughly chopped the flesh, to dry in the sun on my balcony. If you don’t have a balcony or sun (Hi Cork!!) you can put them in the hot press. Or Airing cupboard if you’re not Irish.

I’ve got about 4kg collected, with maybe a third of them past the peeling stage.

This is going to keep me entertained for some time, but more importantly, it’ll give me natural, packaging-free, environmentally friendly laundry for the next year.