Just curious who else is living super frugal

[mickey328]

You can use the cream (or whole milk) to make your own butter as well. You can try it for almost no investment...fill a quart jar about 2/3 full, cap it tightly and shake...and shake and shake. Eventually you'll get butter on the bottom and the buttermilk above it. Alternatively, you can put it in your mixer and just turn it on. It'll go to whipped cream first and beyond that...to butter

 

[ScottnLydia]

Hey DennisK, we also recently (a few years ago) were drop kicked into poverty. We were able to acquire an acre with a humble (read old) trailer on it. We have gotten chickens (dual purpose for eggs and meat), heritage turkeys ( that reproduce naturally), and hair sheep. I had a steer once. Since I have some mobility issues, I won't have another (he almost killed me!)

Housing for sheep is necessary, but doesn't need to be elaborate. Just a good deep shed to protect from rain and prevailing winds. In it, I provide an area about 3' x 4' that can be closed off ( I use shipping pallets) for 'lambing jugs'. You put a new mama and her lamb(s) in there for a couple of days when they are first born so they can get acquainted without being disturbed. Other than that, a gathering pen with a chute can be made fromshipping pallets and that's all you need.

Hair sheep are (generally) easy going, and some are quite friendly. My ram, Hamish, is always coming over to me to get scratched and petted. Just never pet a sheep on the forehead, it encourages butting. We are raising some ewe lambs now that we have handled a lot to be milkers when they are bred. Sheep milk is quite sweet, rich and good! Many of our favorite cheeses (romano, feta and mizithra) are made from sheeps milk and my wife has all here recipes ready!

We try to garden but we are blessed with some of the poorest soil you've ever seen! Pure alkaline clay. We are working on making raised beds and filling them with the compost we make from bedding and leaves we collect from around town but without a soil test kit sometimes I wonder what we have there as well. This summer everything died! Of course, we did jump into 100 degree temps at the end of May which is unheard of. At the farmers markets, everyone reported trouble growing this year with the heat, so it wasn't just me!

We make bread, naturally, and many other things as well. We make and freeze large batches of spaghetti sauce (still using last years tomatoes), beans (several kinds), soup (again, several kinds), scrapple ( I know, but WE like it) , Sausage, and stock. We make our own pasta, barbecue sauce and salad dressings. My wife is a genious with herbs and spices. I don't think there is ANYTHING she couldn't make!

I also do our own butchering, including the sheep. Bones are cooked down for stock and dog food. I still have my gear for making hams and bacon although we don't raise pigs. I would like to if I could come up with a free/easy food source for them. We buy pork shoulders to make sausage and beef chuck roasts to grind into hamburger ( no 'pink slime').

We can fruit and veg that we get from friends and family, and buy from the farmers market.

I heard on the news that the average American family throws out 40% of the food they buy. I don't think we do. Everything gets prioritized as chicken, turkey, sheep or llama, dog, compost or finally, trash.

Our next project is to build some kind of greenhouse to extend our growing season. The problem here is that it has to withstand the near hurricane force winds we can have in the winter months. And be made out of scroungeable materials! When I get it done, I hope to start growing fodder for the livestock as well.

~S

 

[mickey328]

We're up in the northern end of the state, but experience a lot of the same issues...just wish we had some acreage rather than the 1/4 acre residential lot we have. Our tomatoes and squash aren't having a stellar season this year either...and it seems fairly standard across the state, darn it.

That being said, there is still a lot we can (and do) do to help offset expenses. I wish we could grow blueberries, but with this alkaline soil, that's a pie in the sky dream. However, there are things that generally grow well here, one of which is alfalfa. We're going to put in several patches of it in the spring. It's a perennial, so you only have to plant once, if you cut just before flowering it will come back again and again...most folks get a minimum of 3 or 4 cuttings a year; it's nutritious in the extreme and is also a nitrogen fixer, so it amends the soil as it grows. We'll be able to provide it green for our chickens and will dry the excess so they can have some through the winter as well. We're also planning other items we can feed the chickens to help reduce the feed bill...sunflowers (runner beans around the base to climb the stalks), patches of winter wheat and rye, more oats, lots more veggies in the garden.

Our entire back yard faces south, so we're going to put in a cold frame or two along the back of the house. They're low enough and will receive some wind protection from the house that we should be able to raise kale, spinach and chard through most of the winter...we'll eat some, but the bulk will go to the girls.

 

[ScottnLydia]

OOH, OOH, I KNOW HOW YOU CAN GROW BLUEBERRIES! ! ! !

O.K. can you tell I'm excited? While living here, at another place, we SUCCESSFULLY grew blueberries using an ENORMOUS polyurethane (foam) pot that we got from Waldomart. They are finished to look like ceramic but are quite light weight. They will also be going on sale soon! Using ordinary potting soil, order dwarf blueberry plants like Tophat. There are several other vaeieties that are not on the tip of my tongue right now, but they are just right for container growing! The polyurethane pots insulate the roots and don't absorb moisture so they won't crack in freezing temps like real ceramic. When the plants grow, simply fertilize with a fertilzer for "acid loving plants". You will need 2 different varieties to cross-pollinate. We had 4 plants like this and they did great, yielding so many delicious berries!

You know what I mean about those winter winds that come down off of the mountains! Some days, feeding is like taking your life in your hands with the wind chill! Hope you got more rain this year than we did, so far we haven't even gotten 6 inches. even scrub oak and aspen are dying! It's no wonder Waldo canyon and Poudre canyon went up like they did!

Anyway, look at the catalogs for the dwarf blueberries, and consider those pots. It works here.

~S

 

[mickey328]

I've also seen where you can grow blueberries in peat moss...either just cut an X in the bale and stick 'em in or bury the bale and do the same thing. I'd definitely go that route if we had enough space, but with our little back yard, we have to try to grow stuff where we can get more "bang for the buck" so to speak I find we have issues with pots...it's so dang dry and the sun is so dang hot that they dry out almost instantly Even adding water absorbing polymer only does so much.

We haven't had much rain here this year either...the reservoirs are all way way down. Our water bill has been ridiculous even tho we tried to cut back. I'm sure glad we took out the lawn in the front...we heavily mulched it so it doesn't need much water now.

Those fires were scary! We weren't ever in any danger of evacuation, but we had ash on the deck and smoke in the air for weeks. I feel so bad for the folks who lost their homes

 

[ScottnLydia]

You can put the pots on the north side of the house, shaded in the hottest part of the day. That helps some. We use a 'catch basin' to catch the water we run waiting for the water to heat up. I water plants outside with that. Peat moss is good, but don't bury in the ground, our alkalinity will seep in. I know, that was my first experiment with blueberries! They need to be completely isolated from the soil.

I sympathize with you on the drying pots. Clay pots are the worst! I still think it's worth a try if you like blueberries like we do! We're going to do it again when we can afford the pots.

~S

 

[mickey328]

Oh, unless I glaze the outside, I never use clay! It's fine in a humid climate but not here!

Why couldn't you grow the blueberries in large styrofoam coolers? I often see them for free on Craig's list. Set them up on a couple of old 2 x 4's and poke some drainage holes and fill 'em with peat.

Hehe, we have a couple jugs beside the sink for the same reason...I rarely let any water go unused down the drain.

 

[newfoundland]

For anyone who is interested in war time recipes, super frugal! try 1940sexperiment.wordpress.com. Also you can loose a lot of weight on this diet. Perhaps you might need to increase portion size but it is nutritionally balanced. Good Luck!

 

[ScottnLydia]

Oh, unless I glaze the outside, I never use clay! It's fine in a humid climate but not here!

Why couldn't you grow the blueberries in large styrofoam coolers? I often see them for free on Craig's list. Set them up on a couple of old 2 x 4's and poke some drainage holes and fill 'em with peat.

Hehe, we have a couple jugs beside the sink for the same reason...I rarely let any water go unused down the drain.

Hey, there you go!!! I never thought of that.

To continue on the frugal theme, we don't subscribe to cable, so we don't get any T.V. That also means no political ads (eat your hearts out!) We get movies and books for free from the library. We also subscribe to the cheapest level of Netflix for some stuff the library doesn't carry. 100 channels of nothing good was really getting on my nerves anyway!

~S

 

[mickey328]

We lived very happily for 2 years without anything but Netflix and what we could watch online. The only reason we have cable now is because my brother came home and he just can't live without NASCAR...yuck! LOL I confess, since it's available I watch a fair bit of stuff, but wouldn't miss it if it were gone again. I'd cut down some on internet too...wouldn't mind slower speeds for myself, but I work from home so it's something I have to keep. The good thing about working from home is that we save SO much on gas...it more than pays for the internet service.

I'm really trying to find some sort of local group to swap with. I'd be more than happy to trade extra eggs and canned goods for other goods or services we now have to buy. I think it would be an awesome way for everyone to save a few dollars.