Frugal Fridays #25

Life is all kinds of crazy right now. Babies, homeschooling, home improvement projects, garden season. Whew! I feel like Dori from Finding Nemo lately. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming.” It’s good to feel productive, though. I remember in the days of healing right after my c-section how I was longing for the business of my life. I was thankful to spend time cuddling my new baby, but being stuck in bed or on the couch was difficult for me emotionally. So I’m thankful that I have the energy to do the things that need to be done around here…and that I’m able to have an incredibly full life with a houseful of people that I absolutely adore. God is good.

Successes/Blessings:

• My aunt and uncle decided that they didn’t want their barrel composter anymore (this is the same one), so they gave it to me. I’m so thankful for this! I was researching making a worm bin, which is fairly inexpensive. But hey, free is better.
• We ordered some Hemlock trees at a great price in order to create a privacy hedge along our rear property line for less than $50. We have a neighbor living behind us and their very large living room windows look right into our backyard. A living fence is an affordable option when town codes and tight budgets prohibit traditional fencing.
• We made the 45 minute treck out to the Amish bulk foods store. The closest LDS Cannery is almost 2 hours away, so this is where we go to stock up on bulk dry items. We got 50 lbs of hard white wheat, 1 lbs of real salt, 3 lbs of soft white wheat, and a few other items. While we were there, I noticed that they were selling 3 gallon buckets with sealing lids for $1.50 each (from their bakery), and they also had butter on sale for $2/lbs. It was well worth the drive!
• I cooked up and froze 2 pounds each of pinto beans and black beans.
• I haven’t been grocery shopping in 6 weeks! We’ve been focusing on using up the meat in our freezer in anticipation for our meat delivery in the next 2 weeks, and we could probably push it another couple of weeks without feeling very pinched if we needed to. I’ve had my husband stop a few times for milk, but that’s it. We’re running out of produce items, so we’ll do a large grocery run this weekend. I can’t wait for the garden to start producing.
• I planted more lettuce/mesclun and cowpeas today. I plan on posting some pictures of the garden progress soon.
• My oldest son and I worked together to grind wheat by hand (this is the mill that I have). We used our DIY sourdough starter and made whole wheat sourdough bread. This is the first time I’ve made sourdough and also the first time I’ve made bread from hand milled flour. I didn’t love the result. I’m very comfortable with making breads with store bought flour, but this is a whole new animal. I’ll continue to work on the recipe until we find something we like! If grinding our own flour ends up becoming something we end up doing on a regular basis (it is much healthier, afterall), I’ll probably invest in an electric grinder. A hand mill is great for emergencies, but it is HARD work!
• We picked up another free load of mulch from the town.
• While visiting my aunt’s house on mother’s day, she let me dig up some oregano and parsely from her garden to transplant at home. She also gave me a small lilac sapling (I’m not sure if that’s what you call it) that was an offshoot from one of her bushes.
• I spray painted 2 of our ceiling fans in order to give them an updated look. Something like this.

Goals:

• I’ll be rendering lard this weekend. I’ve rendered suet into tallow before, but this will be my first time rendering lard. I’d like to make some lard soap if I can find a decent price on lye. I’d like to find the lye locally in order to avoid paying shipping costs.
• LOTS of work in the garden to do!
• Grocery shop this weekend and go to the public market on Tuesday for produce items.

How did you save money this week?

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