Frugal Friday~

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
― John Stuart Mill

I have a confession to make....I have no problem putting consignment clothes on my children. 

Seriously- have you all watched how your kids play, with total disregard for their clothing??

We are big outdoor lovers and spend much time outside among the livestock, manure, and dirt.  My goal is to have them clothed,  but mainly I'm just looking for clothes that are inexpensive and will last.  (Of course, my second goal is to pick out clothes with their favorite movie characters on them because how fun is THAT?!)

To buy the "better made" clothes, I need to go to consignment stores to find the brands that I know will last, and because they are used, I pay less.  Win-Win!!

I hit Once Upon a Child and this is what I came home with. 
For Quinn:  1 dress, 2 capri pants, 8 shorts, 9 tops
For GW: 4 shorts and 5 tops.

All for under $90.00!  Many of the clothes were Gymboree, Levi, Gap, and Childs Place, so I know they are made to last.

Bottom line is...WE ARE READY FOR SUMMER!!  BRING IT ON :-)

Frugal Friday

“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important as living within your means."  - Calvin Coolidge

Home Repairs

Me texturing the stairway down to the basement.

As you know, we moved our farmhouse from our acreage to Loren's family farmstead about a year ago.  Since then, our home has been a running series of This Old House reruns.  Lots of finishing work to be done to the new basement and added mudroom, and repairs on the cracks created by the move.

Home remodeling is an area that can get fiscally out of hand very quickly.  Once we had refinanced our mortgage to include the added basement and mudroom structure and the expense of the move, we didn't want to add to our debt for the additional tasks of texturing and taping, painting, carpet laying, trim staining and application.... you get my drift. 

To combat this, we knew we had to follow a few guidelines:

• We would only do future finishing work as we could afford it.  This explains why there are still rooms that are still waiting to be worked on, even ones that we really need, like the downstairs bathroom. :-(
• We would do as much of the work ourselves, with the exception of electrical and plumbing work, because of something is going to go wrong with that, I want someone else to take the blame! 

Truthfully, this extra work has been a blessing as well as a curse.  As much as I dreaded working on the house each weekend, it has been a good bonding experience for all of us.  Once you've tackled texturing a room together, with spackling in your hair and your arm feeling like a dead weight from the roller, you are bonded for life.

Not to mention the skills we are picking up- I like learning new skills and I take pride in learning how to do a fairly good job with some of these projects.  However, there is a learning curve with all things, and the walls I textured last look WAY better than my first few attempts.  Oh well...gives the house character. 

I like that we are also modeling self sufficiency for our kids and teaching them a few of these skills- hopefully they will make use of these new talents when they have homes of their own.  There is nothing more attractive than a handy man in my book, and I'm trying to impress that on Luke so that he sees the advantages of learning how to do his own home repairs. 

Someday, his wife will thank me.

I hope our family is also learning a little about delaying gratification.  Yes, we could've had all of these things done right away, paid someone else a bundle for it, added to our debt load, and our undone house wouldn't be inconveniencing us now.  But maybe this is teaching them some patience?  Maybe it's showing them that they don't have to live in a house right out of Better Homes and Gardens, with everything in it's place and arranged shabby chique. 

I believe there is merit and a feeling of self worth in working to create something, especially when it's your home. Working together as a family to build a home- it's what kept the pioneer families together, right?  And if it was good enough for the Ingalls, then it's good enough for the Johnsons. 

Frugal Friday

“he who will not economize will have to agonize”
― Confucius

 

 

These two inconspicuous ice cream pails hold the wastefulness of my family's eating.  After every meal, any food left on a plate or scraps from meal preparation are diligently placed into the chicken bucket (on the left) or the cat bucket (on the right). 

With these scraps, we supplement our chickens' feed, and in return, we get fresh eggs!  Nothing goes to waste, and it reduces our feed bill for our laying hens.  It also gives me great satisfaction to know that we aren't creating waste and we aren't wasting food , which in my universe is a sin :-)

As for the cat bucket, those scraps feed the many barn cats that seem to migrate to our farm.  Table scraps might not seem like much; a spoonful of pasta, a crust of bread, or the milk left from cereal, but they add up during the day.

Now, if you don't have chickens or other pets to feed your scraps to, you can always compost them.  Other than meat, table scraps will compost really well and can be put into your garden once they have had a chance to decompose.  Food scraps can be mixed with lawn clippings, leaves, or other "green" refuse to produce rich, dark soil, and it's another way of making use of those scraps instead of throwing them away. 

Look at you...being all Green and Planet Friendly and all!  Now you can tell your friends that you are "reducing your Carbon Footprint", and watch them be impressed :-)

Frugal Friday

Lately I feel like I've been doing more laundry than normal, but then I shouldn't be surprised with 8 people in the house. 

And I realize that I've discussed frugal ways to deal with laundry before, but mainly in using racks and clotheslines to dry clothes, or how to make your own laundry soap.

But then I realized that there's more to it when it comes to laundry.  It's a whole new way of looking at what goes in the hamper; and attitude on how we look at clean.  I mean really, Americans are so brainwashed when it comes to our hygiene.  Commercials tell us that everything has to be spotless, or we're just "not good mothers and homemakers". 

We can either buy into that thought process, or we can realize that we are being sold an idea, developed by marketing teams to sell their products.

 I decided that we were happier when we weren't chasing the "spotless dream" and trying to look like we just walked off of a magazine page.  And was that a good use of our funds, by the constant washing of our clothes, homes, and bodies?

So here are a few of our rules:

• You get one clean towel a week, and you must use that towel all week.  If you hang it up correctly, it WILL NOT SMELL!  Remember, its job is to wipe clean water off of your just-cleaned body, so it's not really dirty.
• Jeans rarely get sweaty, so unless you are outside and they get dirty, you continue to wear your jeans until they do get dirty. 
• We have a set of chore clothes that are hung in the mudroom and used for outside work, and they don't need to be cleaned as often, so that saves on alot of laundry each week.
• Because we homeschool and don't "go" to school, we don't have to have a different outfit each day, so we can wear our comfies a few days in a row.  This is one of my favorite perks of homeschooling!

An extra bonus is that our clothes won't wear out as quickly because they aren't going through the rigor of the washing machine!  So yah for that!

So the next time you slip on one of your favorite cozy outfits for the third day in a row, don't feel guilty!  Feel FRUGAL!!  And be proud of it :-)

Frugal Friday

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." ~Albert Einstein

I haven't had many Frugal posts the past few months because it just seems that I've posted most of my ideas and I hate to repeat myself!  However, since we had 2 birthdays this month, I got to thinking that I've never mentioned anything about being frugal when celebrating birthdays, so here goes.

I'm hoping that you don't think many of these ideas are "inappropriate", but they work for us.  Then again, we aren't very picky either :-)

First, I keep a stash of what I refer to as "reusable party favors".  For example, I reuse birthday candles, because let's be honest, they're only lit for about 30 seconds, so why throw them away?  (Of course, I do wash the cake off of them afterwards.)

I have a drawer of Congratulations banners and toppers for kids cakes and plastic party tableclothes that I can use over and over.  No one seems to notice- they are just excited to see colorful decorations on their special day! 

I keep all the extra unused kids paper plates and napkins.  We have had several parties that have a mixed theme of Disney Little Mermaid, Barbie, and Dora, but again, no one seems to mind.

We also reuse the gift bags and tissue.  As long as I am careful, I can fold the tissue paper and it looks almost new.  By reusing the bags, I can save alot, and then I can put more money towards the gifts.

As for gifts, I try to either hit a great After Christmas type of sale, or I purchase gifts through Ebay or Amazon.  I can find a better deal on Amazon, especially on movies and electronics, than I often can get at Walmart, and I don't even have to leave the farm! (Saving gas and saving $$..... yah!)

Ebay offers alot of opportunities to find great gifts at a much more reasonable price, especially if you don't mind buying something that is used and your kids don't mind getting something that is used.  We have a huge rubbermaid tub that is full of wooden Thomas Trains, track, and buildings that have been purchased exclusively from Ebay, often gently used and a few were even still in the original box.  It is probably the most used toy that we have, and I never could've gotten it if I had to purchase it at retail, because they are crazy expensive! 

When it comes down to it, I think the thought behind the gift and the love that it's given with is WAY more important than the price spent or the packaging used. 

Besides, we save more using these little tips so that we can buy more TRAINS!!

Frugal Friday

Spring isn't just the season of love.....

Tis also the season of Rummaging!!

This was the haul we scored at the Irene City Wide Rummage Sale- it included 2 new winter coats, a trike, safety gate, gamechair, new aquarium in the box, and several bags of very nice clothes for our troop.

With our kids sprouting like proverbial "weeds", getting a whole bag of clothes for each of them for pocket change is almost a religious experience for this mom.

And by golly, they are learning to be frugal in the process!  More than once I heard my kids either say that something was still marked too high, or they mentioned that they "really didn't need" that item- yah kids!!

The fight against overspending and materialism continues....

Frugal Friday

When you concentrate on agriculture and industry and are frugal in expenditures, Heaven cannot impoverish your state.  ~Xun Zi

Don't you love consignment stores?

Got 3 pairs of barely worn shoes for a whopping total of $14.00!

And I still had enough birthday money left over to get 4 pairs of shorts and some PJs.

Can I get a whoop whoop?!

Frugal Friday

Our recent Label Reading foray into the nutritional odyssey that is our food source at the grocery store led us to decide that we needed to go back to baking our own bread.

We found High Fructose Corn Syrup, preservatives, artificial colors, dough conditioners, guar gum, and alot of mono-this or thats in the supposedly "healthy breads" at our local store.  We know that most of those ingredients are added for extending shelf life and making the bread look good, but I'm not crazy about ingesting things that I don't need.

Today, we made the best bread with only 4 ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast.

Before we baked it.

And it was good.   So good that we wiped out the loaf during lunch and didn't leave any for Dad and Luke.....sorry guys!

It was kind of a small loaf, but I was experimenting with an Artisan recipe for hard crusted loaves, and this one is a keeper.

And since loaves of bread are running anywhere from $1.99 on sale to over $4.00 a loaf, this is SUPER frugal and easy on the food budget. 

Tastes good..... Costs less..... Win/Win.   I'm in :-)

P.S. The recipe is from the Jan 2009 issue from Mother Earth News.  I never throw that magazine away!

Frugal Friday~

 



This book is EXACTLY what I was looking for- the concept of shedding our commercialism cloak of fitting in, and being bold enough to go against the peer pressure of our generation to Have It All.

I've never felt that we need it all. 

I grew up reading Laura Ingall Wilder books, and I felt a kinship to that era of pioneer women- quilting with worn material scraps, getting a tin cup, candy cane and a penny for Christmas and being happy about it, living frugally every day because their generation didn't have the luxery of living any other way.

I cringe when my kids mention wanting any electronics for their birthday, open cupboards filled with food and tell me there's nothing to eat, or they whine "We're having THAT again!" 

  I don't think we need to give or get gifts at EVERY EVENT that my children attend during the Christmas season.  I feel that every holiday has become too commercial and tied to a Hallmark card,  and I agree that the Christmas season has gotten WAY out of hand, forfeiting all Jesus references in lieu of Walmart Black Sunday sales ads.

Jen Hatmaker speaks my language.

This is an incredibly insightful book that everyone should read.  I couldn't get enough of it, and I want Jen to write another one just like it.  Immediately.

And because I loved it SO MUCH, I plan on trying to incorporate many of her suggestions into our own lives, starting with Lent.  As a family, we are going to try to do each of the 7 tasks, somewhat abridged versions of them, just to introduce the ideas to my family.  Then after Lent, we will choose which" denials" or changes we will want to continue.

I'm very excited to get started and see if we can move away from Immediate Gratification, to becoming more patient and also content with what we have.

Isn't that the definition of Happiness? 

Frugal Friday~

I know...it's been awhile since we've talked frugality, hasn't it?

In all truthfulness, it's hard to preach being frugal while I'm slapping down my Visa card to charge round trip plane tickets to China, ya know?  (I'm still working on finding a "Frugal" way of doing an adoption, and boy....is THAT going to be a challenge.)

Coming off of an international adoption, FRUGAL will be the theme around this house for awhile, needless to say.

Flash forward to now, and we are settling into a new routine in our new location, and beginning to talk what I call "Homestead Talk" again.  Diagrams of the farm are being scribbled down, seed catalogues are laying here and there, baby chicks are ordered, and thoughts of spring are just around the corner.

After having to throw out all of my frozen chicken when we moved (due to the freezers sitting for too long unplugged), fresh chicken was my first priority.  50 Cornish cross chicks have been ordered, and 15 laying hens for fresh eggs.  After recently having store-bought chicken, and not being impressed AT ALL, my mouth is already watering thinking about chicken enchiladas, chicken noodle soup, chicken pot pie stew.... yummy!  But I digress..

To reduce the costs, I am purchasing chickens with friends for the volume discount.  We located a hatchery for the meat birds out of Nebraska that is half the price of our other poultry provider, which will help the bottom line.

This week I will also be scouring my favorite seed catalogues (Fedco, Gurneys, Johnny's) to begin planning my dream garden, which starts out each spring as a utopia of greens, but by fall is sometimes a weed-fest.  I do what I can.

Now with Quinn here, we're including more freshly made Chinese-type meals, so I'm increasing the amounts of Pak Choy, Leeks, cabbage, and other greens.  I found that sauteed vegys piled on top of rice are incredible, and super healthy, so I'm excited about growing them.

The exciting part of growing seedlings this year?  I have a WHOLE BASEMENT in which to put grow lights and trays in!!  And I won't have to worry about the basement flooding in the spring, so...

 Let the Planting Begin! 

And just for fun, a bit of cuteness :-)

Let's talk Frugality

So, Loren is driving up to Sioux Falls to a business dinner, and his favorite animal, the Deer With Suicidal Tendencies, finds him and again, makes contact. 

This is what he came home with...

(Yes, the poor man drives a mini-van to work...the less said on that subject, the better!)

The bumper is missing, a portion of the grill, and the front headlight.  Now it matches the other side, which also had a close encounter with 3 deer, and is also crushed in.  We also had to replace that front headlight, as well as a tail light from Luke's attempt to back out the car from the garage, but that's another story.....

I gotta tell ya, I am so proud of the fact that Loren can continue to drive this piece of junk    vintage car to work, when his peers are driving Hummers and Ford 150s that don't have major collision damage.  It takes alot of moxi for him to face that parking lot every morning.

That takes more than great self esteem...that takes big Kahoonas, in my book.  These are the things he does to take care of his family, putting his own needs on the back burner to make sure that ours are met. 

He is Awesome. With a capital A.

But now that we have managed to indent 3 of the 4 sides of the Milk Wagon, as I affectionately call it, I'm thinking that we will need to start looking for another used car.   Otherwise the next time he hits a bump in the road, I'm afraid the whole car is going to fall apart.

Thank you, sweetie, for always going above and beyond for your family; for putting your pride aside and putting your family first.

You are our hero!
Love,
Your family   xxxooo

Canning Season is D.O.N.E. !

Frugal Friday~

"An Army marches on it's stomach."  Napoleon


Canning is a wonderful way of saving money, eating healthier, decreasing pollution and fuel consumption (Oh yes it does!), provides you with a good amount of food stored for emergencies, and even satisfies your lofty pursuit of reducing your carbon footprint.

Canning season in our home starts in June with jams, and ends with root crops- my last item was parsnips.  My gardens are basically emptied, with the exception of some lettuce we are using until it freezes, and Italian parsley that is growing still and will be cut and dried later this month.

Here is a list of what we canned or froze this year:
CANNED:
Green Beans- 50 qts
Carrots- 12 qts
Jam- rasp  7 pints
     - blueberry  4 pints
     - cherry 7 pints
Pickles- sweet 8 qts
          - dill 7 qts
speghetti sauce- 29 qts
salsa- 74 pints
tomato sauce- 25 qts
chopped tomatoes- 21 qts
parsnips- 2 qts  12 pints
beets- 12 qts

FROZEN:
raspberries- 9 qts
peas- 13 qts
corn- 16 qts
brocolli- 8 qts
blueberries- 12 qts
rhubbarb- 3 qts
sliced sweet peppers- 6 qts

This month, we will also be butchering a pig and a steer, so the freezers will be almost full.  We still have chicken that we butchered last January, but ended up not raising meatbirds this year because I wasn't sure when we would be moving the house!  Luckily we still have some in the freezer, and maybe can get some more meat chicks once we move to the other farm.

Last year, we also made a trip to the apple orchard near us, and we are allowed to pick all the windfall apples we want for free, so we had put up over 20 qts of pie filling, 15 qts of applesauce, and had lots of apples stuffed into any available fridge space!  

We also have lots of peaches left over from last year's canning, so I didn't do any this year.  That's good inspiration for me to make more peach pies this winter :-)

Our cold storage consists of over 140# of potatoes stored in boxes in a storage shed to stay cool, onions drying on screens to be also put into the shed once they are dried, and a box of butternut squash.  My pumpkin sadly bit the dust due to a blight that hit all the area pumpkin patches, so we won't be canning pumpking this year.

Wish I could end this post with a picture of my canning shelves, filled with jars full of good things to eat!  However, since our house is being picked up and moved within the next 2 weeks, I have all of the jars boxed up so nothing falls and breaks.

Even if you don't have the room for a large garden, or have the time to tend to one, putting in a small kitchen garden for lettuce, onions, and a few tomato plants is a great start.  Every little bit is one more step towards self sustainability.

So, I guess my army is ready for winter :-)

Going Green takes Gr$$n

Okay.  So, we're moving our house, and we are having to make WAY more decisions about materials and processes than I thought we would have to make.  To me, it was just a quick "unhook", pick up the house, drive it 7 miles to the other farm, put it down, and rehook it, right? 


Silly me :-)


We are having to decide whether to stick with a propane heater/furnace, thermal heat (big investment) or use the electrical one from the other house, changing out the duct work under the house for something sturdier, and complete basement construction. (We have had an old basement that flooded each spring, so this will be a new experience for us- to actually be able to USE our basement.  What ever shall I do with all that storage space.......?)


Decisions, decisions.  And with every question we get from a contractor, I can her a "Ka-Ching" sound in my head.


Being the Mother Earth News reading hippy that I am, of course, I would love to plant solar panels on the roof, dig a cold cellar in the basement, slap a greenhouse on the south side of the house (which we really ARE considering) and put up an unsightly turbine to provide for all our electrical needs.


I would also love to do any reconstruction with recycled lumber/windows/materials, but those types of resources are hard to find in the rural midwest. We do have a Habitat for Humanity outlet, but the materials there are limited, and mostly include appliances and hardware, items that we don't need.  By the way, Loren said a big NO to compostable toilets.


So much for all of my Green talk.  Every carbon-footprint-reducing step that I have tried to take the past 10 years almost always get put on our Wish list because of the price or the availability of the know-how.  With this move, I'm not doing a whole lot better.

I guess I'm going to have to be proud of the fact that we are actually recycling our whole house by taking it with us!  We also managed to salvage alot of beautiful wood trim, hardwood flooring, doors, windows, sinks, and other items from the older house before it was torn down.  We hope to incorporate them into the basement and mudroom. 

Before tear down

After

Meanwhile, I hope the people at Ogden Publications where Mother Earth News is published aren't rolling their eyes and considering taking me off of their mailing list.

Frugal Friday

He that has a penny in his purse, is worth a penny: Have and you shall be esteemed. ~ Petronius

Harvest continues, and sweet corn season was at it's peak this past week for our area.  For those fields that received enough rain and didn't receive nightly raccoon visits, they were producing pure golden sunshine, all wrapped up in a cornhusk.

We husked 10 dozen ears of corn to produce 16 frozen quart bags of corn for this winter, plus we had a few good meals of fresh sweet corn!  Nothing says "Summer" like sweet corn and watermelon- unfortunately I can't seem to grow watermelon to save my life, so we will stick to the sweet corn!

On the corn, we do a quick steam blanch on the stove for 3 minutes, plunge the hot ears into the sink full of cold water, then let them cool.  I then take our electric knife and cut off the corn from the cob, scoop it into quart bags, and freeze it immediately.  The quicker you can get corn processed, the better, because the sugars begin turning into starch as soon as the ears are picked.  So to have sweet corn instead of starchy corn, I freeze them the same day it is picked.

The corn works out to cost around $1.67 a quart bag.  It would've cost less, if I hadn't had to purchase the corn this year.  (Mental note- we need to move the corn patch FAR AWAY from the cattle yard, so if the gate is left unhooked again next year......well, you know where this is going.)

I no sooner got done with the corn, that I noticed many tomatoes had turned red, so I began preparing for our first Tomato harvest of the summer.

Since I didn't have alot of time this week, with Fair activities and all, I went ahead and canned plain Tomato sauce and Chopped tomatoes.  Both are fast and easy to prepare.

After washing our tomatoes, we core them and throw them into the blender.  This is Camille's favorite part, as she likes to watch the "tornado" from the top of the blender.  (this is how I get help in the kitchen- turn it into a science project.)

We cook the tomato sauce so it is hot, then put it in jars with 1/2 tsp salt, and put it in a waterbath for 20 minutes.

The chopped tomatoes are also easy- I only use Roma tomatoes, and cut them into small pieces to be used as "chunk" tomotoes for chilis and stews.  They hold their shape nicely even during processing, so I grow alot of these.  Put the chunks into a jar, pour hot/almost boiling water over them, add 1/2 tsp salt, and process for 25 minutes.

tomatoe sauce (left) and chopped tomatoes (right)

It is so satisfying watching the canning room shelves begin to fill up with vegys, fruits, and jams.  I think it's a basic instinct to stock up before winter- must be the retro-pioneer woman in me. :-)

Retail Therapy

To combat the anxiety we have been facing this past week, we decided to do our school and Quinn shopping yesterday!

Grandma Lee rode shotgun, and we headed off for Sioux Falls, first completing some minor errands, then met Aunt Gayle, Kellie, Glenda, and their grandchildren at Pizza Ranch to down some nourishment before hitting the streets again.  (I can eat an amazing amount of Cactus dessert pizza- something I thought you should know about me.) 

We found all of Quinn's clothing at Once upon a Child, along with some toys, and I feel much better having enough clothes for her.  Could little girls clothes get any cuter?  Even picked out a dress for her court day- I'm getting so darn anxious to get that little pumpkin.....! 

 It is tricky when I don't know what size she wears, so I'm playing it safe by having 18 mo-size 3 outfits, just in case.  The shoes will just have to wait until we get her- who thought I would ever do "shoe shopping" in China??!

We had decided to allow Luke to attend public school this year, for reasons that I'll have to go over at another time, so we had to "school shop" for clothes for the first time in 5 years.  He looked almost shell shocked when we kept bringing him items to try on at Platos, and he kept muttering "this is just like Christmas".  Too funny :-)

I also scored several hugs from him...definitely worth the trip!

 We just don't shop for clothes often, and the great thing about homeschooling is that you can show up in your jammies if you want, so clothing hasn't had alot of importance for us.

Here is their Sears Pose!

Luke and Bri in new tops- Bri chose this with her gift cert she won at Rodeo Bible Camp.

(For you Frugal Followers out there, note that all the clothing we bought was at consignment stores!  I just can't bring myself to buy clothing at retail store prices.)

Since the girls weren't getting clothing, they were looking forward to getting school supplies.  Bri's eyes light up when she sees the aisles of markers, paint, and folders, and I thought at one point she may actually hyperventilate. With supplies in hand, we are now ready to begin our school year.

Momma splurged alittle as well.  See what I found at the Ys Buys store?  (like a Goodwill, but run by the YMCA)



I'm a sucker for antique furniture...

 All in all, a fun day and great annual treat for everyone!  Next week is County Fair, then we start school the week afterwards.  Summer is winding down.....

Frugal Friday~

"He who does not economize will have to agonize"-Confusius

Preserving Cabbage~
There are a few great ways of preserving cabbage- choosing the one that suits you depends on how you plan on using it.  One year, we tried making sauerkraut, but Loren and I were the only ones to eat it, so now I freeze it and use it in stir fry meals, casseroles, and soups.

I prefer a white cabbage for freezing, but I also grow red cabbages to use fresh during the summer for coleslaw and other summer salads. The red cabbage tends to "color" dishes with it's red color when it's cooked, so I stick to the white cabbage.

After cleaning the cabbage and coring it, it can be frozen either in wedges (see above) or it can be cut up or grated and frozen that way. (below)

I steam the cabbage for about 5 minutes, then plunge it into cold water, shake the water out, and bag it in a freezer bag for freezing.

Grated or Wedges

Cabbage is an easy and inexpensive food to grow and preserve.  Start them as seedlings or plant them directly into the garden.  You can actually grow 2 crops a year in most parts of the U.S. if you start the seedlings indoors.

Bring on the coleslaw!

Frugal Friday

"Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship"- Benjamin Franklin

Yah.......I know this is kinda lame for a frugality post, but I can slip in yesterday's pictures of the kids at the pool if I do :-)

Our closest pool for summer swimming is in Centerville, which is about 8 miles away from Viborg.

Swimming lessons cost $18/child, and a daily pass is $3.00.  That means that if all 3 of my kids took lessons, which they do, it would cost $54 for lessons.  Each "fun swim" day that we would enjoy would cost $9.00 for the kids, or $12.00 if I went in with them (which I love to do!)

The summer Family pass costs $65.00 for the whole summer. 

Based on that price, if we didn't get the pass, each of the kids could get lessons, costing $54.00, and we could all go swimming for a fun swim day.

Once.

So, the frugal tip today is if there are Family or Bulk Use passes that offer more bang for your buck, do it!  This way, we also make more trips to the pool because WE CAN!  IT'S PAID FOR!!

Bri and Kaylee

Bri, Kaylee, Camille

Frugal Friday

"Rather to go to bed supperless than rise in debt"- Benjamin Franklin

Just to warn ya, most of the summer's "frugality" is going to revolve around food preservation.
So consider yourself warned :-)

Well, we jumped right from freezing peas on Wednesday to picking green beans on Friday.  I thought Bri was going to cry when she saw they were ready to be picked!

We start out by picking early in the morning- the vegys are supposed to be at their peak taste in the morning- something to do with the sugars stored in the plant. 

Once they are picked, we all sit around and break off the ends and snap the beans into 1 inch pieces. 
(Because, if you remember, this is where the TV watching comes in.  It's the most popular step, needless to say.)

Then, I put them in a huge cooking pot and bring then to a boil- simmer 2-3 minutes, then remove from heat.

Load them into pre-washed mason jars, add 1/2 tsp seasalt in each jar, and slid a knife along the inside of the jars to remove any air bubbles.

Add new seal lids that have been boiled, and tighten on the rims.

Place the ready jars into the pressure canner, then follow the instructions that come with the canner.

This is my "return" to using a pressure canner.   I was fairly nervous, since it's been years since I've used one, and I wasn't keen on blowing my kitchen up, so I followed the instructions to a T.

Notice the different stove??  Our newer glass top cannot be used for canning because the heat will crack the top, so we (and by "we", I mean "Loren") had to move our old stove back for canning season.

I've missed my old stove.   (See the burnt ring around the right burner?  That's from canning.)

Good times.....

Frugal Friday~

This week's garden harvest includes peas and raspberries.  Because these are "fragile" fruits and vegetables, they preserve better when frozen, as compared to the canning process, which is kind of hard on vegetables and fruit.  Their flavor and texture is better if you first flash-freeze them, then bag them.

First, place the freshly picked raspberries in a single layer on a cookie sheet.

Second,  place them in the freezer for about 4-6 hours.

Third, bag and label them, and pop them in the freezer.

 Fresh produce during the winter with the taste of summer. 

Because these raspberry bushes grew from some shoots planted years ago and they come back every year, it's hard to determine how much it cost to produce these raspberries.  However, to purchase bags of frozen raspberries currently costs over $4.00/qt bag, so I'm hoping that those bushes just keep on producing! 

 I love perennials because they are SO worth the investment price of planting them, because if they are taken care of, they just keep on giving.

Frugal Friday~

This is a double duty tip- qualifies as frugal and Green! 

Instead of using environmentally harmful chemicals to get rid of bugs, we take a little extra time and pick them off, then feed them to our chickens. 

No expensive chemicals, no toxins on your plants, and your chickens will thank you!

Camille is my bug picking helper, and today we were picking Squash bugs (yes, that is a technical term...) off of the potato plants.  It's easy work, and the plants look much happier once we were done.

Handle our planet with care and a little TLC.  And if it saves you money in the process, then all the better!