Just curious who else is living super frugal

[DennisK]

Hay, all you frugalities – hope y’all have a great Thanksgiving! We have our turkey dressed and curing in the frig. Tomorrow, we will be taking our excess turkeys to the poultry auction. We don’t expect to get much money for the effort, but at least our feed bill will be smaller! It is time for us to release the chickens into the garden area so they can clear out all of the remaining growth – they will enjoy that. We are still fermenting our feed. It is a lot of work, but we continue to look for ways to care for our poultry like Grams & Gramps did (no store bought chicken feed).

 

[MoonShadows]

I would love to raise my own turkeys for the holidays, and maybe I will in a year or two. I will be picking up an all natural, free range turkey for Thanksgiving from the butcher on Wednesday morning. I ordered it last week. They don't come cheap, but I just can't eat a store-bought "fresh" or frozen turkey anymore that are dry and taste like cardboard.

 

[DennisK]

Hi MoonShadows! Hope you and yours are well and happy.
We are new to raising our own turkeys. We bought a few chicks and when they matured, they made nests all over the place. We ended up with 21 turkeys which are now close to maturity. I don’t think producers get much for their labor. The money must go to the middle men and the retailers. We have already been to one of the auctions, and we made enough money to pay for the gas it took to take them there. The real reward comes from producing our own food, and the challenge to do it for less money than it takes to buy it at the store. Another plus is that we do it more humanly than large producers.

 

[pattersonml]

Frugality can go from mundane to madness. My wife and I have been working for the past year at trying to make it through the winter with as few trips to the store as we can. We have stocked up on the basics such as toiletries and everything, she even bought Wal-Mart out of fels-naptha and castille soap so she can make our own soaps, dish detergents, laundry detergent and shampoo. We stocked up on vinegars as well including ACV not just for the chicks but for fabric softener and hair conditioner. We pulled in all of our garden every Friday and Saturday and Sunday became a madhouse of canning from pasta sauces to stews, okras, cream corn and beans.... Lots and lots of beans.
I was also out in the our unused back pasture because we had a mass amount of blackberries growing wild around the pond in back and around our birch grove. Picked a lot of polk as well that we boiled down and froze for late winter greens. Though my wife doesn't like it, we also grew a lot of peppers as well which I dried out for grinding for our spices as well (jalepenos and habeneros.) A bunch of the corn we saved as well not only for grinding for chicken food, but also for fresh masa, I love fresh corn tortillas. Our Hens and roos are doing great for producing our eggs and we have a few that we will be culling during the middle of the winter. I also have a a nice amount of hunting area around our house and have taught my son how to trap so we also have meat besides our flock to sustain us, and no I do not use a firearm, I do not approve of hunting by simply squeezing a trigger, I do use a an old hickory longbow which has placed food on our table for a few years now since my last one splintered on me after many years of use. We didn't get a chance to do a winter garden this year, but that is in the works for next year, as well as working on getting away from the electric company as much as possible also. But, we need our internet and telephones to much to go completely off grid.

 

[DennisK]

Wow, you are an inspiration, pettersonml! We have been trying to keep our trips into town down to twice a month. I would like to stay away from all commercial activity for a full year just for the pure challenge of it, but keeping it down to twice a month seems to be the best we can do – for now. With your hunting, have you done much with curing hides – leather craft? One of these days, I would like to learn some of the old cobbler skills.

 

[pattersonml]

I do have some experience in tanning, most times, we used deer brain as a catalyst for the curing process, but I have learned that boiled acorn mash works just as well for the process and does not smell as bad either. Others have used urine from deer bladders to cure also. I have mainly done small game such as rabbit, squirrel and if the possum finally leaves out from under our house, he will be next. I have done a a deer hide as well. The few times I did work with leather my wife threatened to have me sleep out in the barn due to the smells and it took forever to get the stain off my hands as well.

 

[DennisK]

The game in my area are small coastal deer (hunting highly regulated; so I don’t even bother), rabbit and boar. Pig leather is a potential. I remember visiting a leather processing business, and - ya, the smell is memorable. I have a lot of space where I live, so I can remove this project from wife and neighbors. One of these days, I am going to visit a slaughter house, and see if I could buy a green cow hide for a reasonable price. For cured leather, they want an arm, a leg, and the first born.
We have patches of sage brush, and when I walk through them, I notice a lot of rabbit droppings. I caught one Cotton Tail in the garden, but when I dressed it out, I noticed its liver was spotted; so I have yet to use the wild life here for food. It would be a good thing to know how.

 

[pattersonml]

If the spots on the liver were white, then it was coccidiosis and the meat itself would be safe to eat, just avoid the liver

 

[Beekissed]

The game in my area are small coastal deer (hunting highly regulated; so I don’t even bother), rabbit and boar. Pig leather is a potential. I remember visiting a leather processing business, and - ya, the smell is memorable. I have a lot of space where I live, so I can remove this project from wife and neighbors. One of these days, I am going to visit a slaughter house, and see if I could buy a green cow hide for a reasonable price. For cured leather, they want an arm, a leg, and the first born.
We have patches of sage brush, and when I walk through them, I notice a lot of rabbit droppings. I caught one Cotton Tail in the garden, but when I dressed it out, I noticed its liver was spotted; so I have yet to use the wild life here for food. It would be a good thing to know how.

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[DennisK]

Thanks Pattersonml, and Beekissed for the input. Looks like I got some studying to do!
Pattersonml, what is your recipe for dish soap. We make our own laundry detergent using fels-naptha, but I haven’t been able to find how to make dish soap. I’m not even sure what the difference is - soap is soap?