Just curious who else is living super frugal

[galanie]

I don't have the patience to clip coupons, but most things I buy are staples to make several meals out of that they don't have coupons for anyway. Staples are the easiest way to go, and I can buy better quality for being more limited in my range. We eat healthier (and cheaper) than most people I know around here, for the no junk food policy

Bingo! Absolutely! I think we've uncovered the real way to be frugal folks. Don't be CHEAP, be SMART.

 

[mickey328]

LOL, Scott, you crack me up! I've seen some awesome prices for way cool critters at auctions and on CL for a while now...if I get some, can we come live with you?? What's piqued my interest here lately is...a goat. We're going to the county building on Wed to see if we can't get a copy of the rules and regs for "livestock" in our neck of the woods...their website is pretty much as useless as you know what on a boar hog. What I'm hoping is that we might be able to get one itty bitty (dwarf or pygmy) goat and have it classified as a pet. Dave can't drink cow's milk, but handles goat milk well, so we wouldn't need a lot...but it'd be nice for him for drinking and to make cheese and all that good stuff. One of those little ones wouldn't be as big as our big dog and it's poo would be a lot less stinky and more beneficial to our growing endeavours.

I'm SO sorry to hear about the issue with the manure! How horridly frustrating! I guess our having a wee place has its advantages...what compost we make is from our own trimmings and bunny manure we got from a local lady (we're "making" our own now) and a friend's horse...none of which get anything but the "natural, untreated" stuff to eat.

Yep, I am fond of saying that frugal doesn't mean NOT spending money, it means spending it wisely. Growing fodder for our critters (chickens and rabbits at present) is on our "to do" list; we hope to have a system in place before fall. We have plenty of green stuff for supplement during the growing season but it gets pretty scarce later in the season. The idea of turning 5 lbs of grain into about 50 lbs of highly nutritive feed? Well, that's frugal in my book!

 

[ScottnLydia]

O.K. Mickey, sometimes those expressions of yours just leave me confused. Just what, exactly, IS useless on a hog? Besides the meat, the hide can be tanned into a lovely, garment grade leather, the fat can be rendered into lard, the intestines can be used for sausage casings, the ears make great dog cheweys. Bristles are used in brushes. Everything else goes into sausage or hot dogs. So what's useless?

Regarding your goat idea, Seattle was talking about changing dwarf goats to pets along with chickens before we moved. Households would be allowed 2.

I've been trying to figure out a way to grow fodder for my sheep for some time now. I have an area in an outdoor shed, but insulating it would be beyond our means. Without insulation, it's too hot in summer, and too cold in winter.

 

[galanie]

There's an old saying, Scott, "Useless as (breasts) on a boar hog (or boar shoat)." I doubt there truly is anything 100% useless on a hog too but that's just the old saying.

 

[ScottnLydia]

OH! Now I know what you're talking about, hotdog parts. I always heard that as "nozzles on a bull".

I just recently found out that some enterprising food company found a way to market breaded hog intestines as "calamari rings" for restaurants!

'This morning we have a report of a man choking to death on faux calamari. When his wife was told it was actually hog rectum she replied, "Rectum! it KILLED him!" Not an actual news report, I just make this stuff up

 

[In His Service]

 

[Peep_Show]

LOL!
Sort of a perverted twist on "Get your head outta your arse" to be "Get the arse outta your head!"

Are the faux rings the actual sphincter muscle? Ewwwww. Too, I would think there might be some kind of a backlash for non-pork-imbibing folks (due to religion or whatever) to be duped with squid-like pig. Overall, it just sounds like a bad idea.....

 

[nok13]

a percentage of the population that cant eat pork also cannot eat calamari so that solves half (the jewish half, not the moslem half) of the quandry....
having a thai husband who is a country boy, every tiny bit of any animal gets used; from the cock's comb to intestine chips, to unborn baby pig bbq... (that i skipped along with placenta of cow which i detest.)...

ive just realized that here, living on kibbutz, most of us are fairly frugal by neccesity and by habit if not by direct decision: when i first came to live here, we had no phones, no tv, we all ate in a main dining room, and food was very very simple. buckets and containers were used as flower and vegetable planters as were old toilet bowls, sinks , and everything else imaginable. of course, coming from suburban america i was a snob and went and bought planters and thought that all those 'old' things were 'low class'... now of course, its IN. trendy, and expensive, people actually spend lots of money buying these things. (we just go to a dump since close by here people still dump stuff everywhere they can rather then pay for garbage collecting).
we recycled jars, plastic containers were used to give home made jams as presents; we collected all the windfall of our apples, peaches, plums and cherries (the good stuff got sold out of country); older members here would make jams from pomello peels, and watermelon peels (thats an iraqian speicality supposedly)...
when we were pregnant, we went and got clothes that fit us, when we got too big, (or gave birth) we returned them for someoen else. our kids got outfits that we traded in for larger sizes as they grew.
all sorts of stuff got reused recycled or patched up rather then thrown out and bougth new. i thought that was horrible and ugly and cheap. my mother had always been frugal but not like that. now i understand teh older members here; they really are frugal and plain (there is one old guy here wearing teh same grey wool sweater every winter since ive been here, for 30! years). you can spot us from a mile away because , even now, we dont tend to buy latest fashions but stuff that wears well. people still chop up old sheets and stuff to make rags for washing the floors, or other cleaning stuff. now that i think of it, people here reuse their teabags, make their own breadcrumbs, all sorts of stuff that nowadays city people have to learn to do, as a trendy thing. most of the members here are survivors of the second world war, and several other wars along the way, and when they first came here, the shower was 10 minutes away in a spring; and everything, but everything got reused.
it has come full circle as many of us are going back to that way of living. althgough it isnt stylish by any means, it helps financially. i think it helps that our local shop doesn carry alot of variety. now we have a mall near us and there is a new shopping area opened up also, so our kids are much closer to 'city' than we ever were.
i managed an entire year to do cash only transactions. unfortunately, our old fifth hand renaut kangoo diesel is starting to fall apart and we have to pay off garage stuff (hubby can only do so much) in installments, as well as other beurocratic things so we have gone back to credit cards (a bit different hten the american style of credit card, more like a long term debit card i guess), and we do have cell phones...

 

[mickey328]

Note to self: do NOT order calamari ever again!

Checked with the zoning laws this afternoon...we can NOT have a goat I even asked the very nice lady if we could have one if it were a certified service animal, LOL No go. Where we are, goats are deemed "livestock" and we aren't allowed livestock. Why poultry isn't considered to be "livestock" is beyond me. I'm currently looking for a groomer who could make a Nigerian dwarf look like a sheepdog, and a vet to alter it's vocal cords to emit "woof" instead of "baaa". I think it's an uphill battle.

I'd always heard "teats on a bull" but in Dave's part of the country it's "teats on a boar hog". Same diff, I reckon.

I was fortunate enough to have been raised by my grandparents who were in their early 20's during the Depression. All this "green", "organic" "reduce, reuse and recycle" stuff wasn't trendy then...it was just the way you lived. I think all this disposable stuff is really quite new, starting with about my generation. We also lived 25 miles from town (which at that time was only about 2000 or so people). It just wasn't an option to toss something and replace it if it could be make to function. I strayed from that lifestyle for many years as I moved to "the city'' and got a job and raised my child. The economy was fairly decent then and I had a good paying job and I took the 'easy' route...let's face it, it's a lot 'easier' to throw that toaster away because the handle broke and just get a new one.

Circumstances have changed a lot for me since those days. First, as I've gotten older, I've developed a longing for those simpler times. Second, the economy tanked and for us at least, it's not gotten better nor does it appear that it will in the forseeable future. Back in the day, we reused and recycled because it was practical. Now I've developed more of an awareness of how badly we've treated our Mother, the earth. So, in a way, I've come full circle, and even taken some of my ways farther than when I was a kid. We didn't really grow any of our own food back then, for a number of reasons. You could still get "real" food then...no GMO, no pumping animals full of antibiotics and hormones. Also we lived where the weather and soil weren't conducive to growing a lot of things, and we had a business that kept us extremely busy from about 4am to 10 or 11pm, 7 days a week, from May through October.

Neither hubby nor I work a full 40 hrs a week, and we're extremely fortunate that our house and vehicles are paid for. We have the time, space and inclination to try to produce as much of our own, natural food as possible. We can't produce everything, of course, but we're aiming for as much as possible. With that increased awareness about filling the earth with garbage that won't decompose for thousands of years, or ever, we're more conscious about what we do throw out. We have garbage pick up every week and recycle pick up every other week. I wish we could reverse that...we put 2 or 3 times as much in the recycle bins as in the garbage. Plus, we compost everything we possibly can, including neighbors leaves. I also have an idea cooking about getting in touch with a couple of coffee shops and salad bar sorts of places to see if we can pick up some of their stuff as well. It can all go into the earth to her benefit, rather than in a landfill where it'll just make methane which will further harm our atmosphere. I'm proud to say that very little goes to waste from our household, and that we're moving to reduce that even further. Before I put anything in the garbage, I stop to think if there's a way we can use it for something...and it's amazing how many time the answer is "yes" I do have to say though, that my grandmother took it even further...she rinsed and re-used coffee filters several times before tossing them, LOL. We just went and got one of the metal mesh ones and did away with the paper ones entirely.

 

[MoonShadows]

Well, I finally did it! After months of talking about it, I dropped my digital cable box off at the cable office and cancelled my TV subscrition. I still have my computer. I need that since I run my own business website, but I am not going to pay these rediculous fees for TV with hundreds of stations, most of which are garbage. I don't even think I am going to miss it. I figure with less TV and more time on my hands, I will have more time to expand my veggie garden and do some other "projects" I never seem to get around to, some of which will bring in more income.. I had previously dropped my phone service with the cable company and just use my cell phone now. In all, I have cut my cable bill by just a bit over $100. I am only paying $52 a month now for internet. An extra $1200+ a year will be an extra mortgage payment.