Candle Light

by Ida Livingston of Davis City, IA

We were recently asked by a reader how we can afford to light our home with candles; he felt they are too expensive to buy and too difficult to make. At this point we buy stearin candles from IKEA in bulk. They come in boxes of 20 for $9.99 per box. We use about 5 boxes a year. Making our own candles is a long term goal that we have not yet reached.

We like the stearin candles as they burn clean and efficiently, much better than paraffin candles. They are also made from some kind of stabilized vegetable or animal fat and not petroleum like the paraffin candles. Beeswax candles are as expensive as we can all imagine. My friend Regina Bambrick-Rust from the White Rose Catholic Worker Farm in LaPlata, Missouri, makes and uses all her own homemade beeswax candles. Perhaps she’ll share how she does that in an upcoming issue.

Our candle needs greatly vary throughout the year. Through these summer months we may only burn a candle per month. Here at the first of June it is daylight by 5:30 AM and it gets dark after 9 pm. That is enough daylight hours for me. We use more candles now than in time past because I stay up late sometimes writing the articles I send to SFJ. We use more candles in the winter when the day length is very short.

From June through August, we burn less than 2 candles per month on average. By September we are going through 1-2 per week, November is more like 3 candles per week and Dec/Jan will use 4-5 per week, tapering off again in February. Most of the summer here in southern Iowa has it getting dark between 9 and 10 PM, and by then we are tired and go to bed.

Five boxes of 20 candles lasts us pretty well for a year. Now when I do a lot of midnight writing, I may have to account for an extra box over the course of the year. Obviously, if we had a houseful of children it would take more candles.

Choosing to light our home with candles is perhaps a radical lifestyle decision. To do this successfully, this choice benefits from the company of a few other accommodating choices. Candle lighting is not just a lone choice, it is part of a collection of choices. To help make candle light do-able and affordable, I rarely ever cook after dark. Our home is lit with natural light during the day and whatever cooking and cleaning is done during those hours as those jobs require more light. We also rarely ever have more than 2 candles burning at once. Often we share a lone candle for our evening activities which are usually reading, writing or occasionally a board or card game like Cribbage. Summer dinner guests usually do not stay late enough to require candles and during the winter months we light as many as necessary when we have guests.

If someone is considering making or using candles, I do have a few tips. Historically candles were made not only from beeswax but also tallow; the fat from sheep, beef, deer, etc. The fat you use needs to be the internal body cavity fat, not the fat that lays between the muscle tissue and skin. The outer fat melts at a lower temperature and is good for cooking. It is very similar to lard when rendered (at least beef is this way) and poor for candles. The inner fat melts at a higher temperature and is a better candle wax but worse for cooking. It coats your mouth with a film of fat if you try to use internal fat for cooking. On a side note, both types of tallow work well for those making soap.

All candles should be stored in a rather cool place. Candles stored in a warm place will eventually have the wick drift off center and then they burn very inefficiently. Candles also benefit from being frozen. They burn more efficiently if they have had a chance to “cure” a while in cold or frozen storage. We keep our bulk candles in our root cellar. We will also overwinter them on our porch sometimes so they can benefit from the winter freeze.

Candles in use need their wicks trimmed as necessary. They shouldn’t be longer than about ½ inch for the most efficient flame. Too long and they wick the wax too quickly and burn less efficiently. We use candle holders with a good wide base that catches the dripping wax. This keeps wax off of my surfaces, but I also save this wax. It can be remelted to make candles or I use this to make wax melt lights. I use these in my cold frames sometimes to heat them on frosty nights.

For the wax melt light, I melt leftover wax in a shallow pan or platter. Usually an old tin lid. Then I place a cotton ball or a piece of charcoal in the hot wax, drizzle wax over it and then light it. The piece of charcoal or cotton ball will act as a wick. This is not as bright as a candle and one must be extra careful with this. Wax is fuel. If the melted wax in the dish were to slosh onto say, a tablecloth, and catch on fire it could quickly become a problem.

As I said, our long term goal is to make all the candles we use. We want to experiment with having top-bar hives for our bees as it requires them to make a lot more wax as well as honey. Busy bees are also less likely to swarm.

Hopefully this provides some answers for those with questions.