Grocery Budget Update

A harvest in May

May's grocery total was $176.99, quite a bit more than April's. Most of that is still meat, milk, organic yogurt, butter, cheese and olives, along with some fresh and frozen fruit. The good news is that June will probably come in very much under budget, unless there is a great sale on meat and I stock up.

The garden is giving me a fair variety of items now, besides chard and red amaranth greens I have tons of small tomatoes, a small amount of lettuce that I'm babying through the heat and yummy new potatoes. I got a few handfuls of purple beans before something ate them. I think it was a pesky squirrel which also ate my first cantaloupe. I did however get revenge and mr. squirrel is no more.

First eggplant

The eggplants are beginning to trickle in along with squash, peaches, plums, green onions, with corn and more varieties of squash and potatoes to come. Does the garden pay? I think so, though I haven't had time to total up all my expenses and harvests yet, I do think that it will pay big time, even with having to pay for city water to grow it.

The chickens are still a bit in the red, since I'm feeding 4 pullets and a rooster that aren't laying eggs. But once these new girls begin to lay I think we'll see the numbers begin to change. Besides, how can you calculate the advantage to the new garden space of having it scratched up and manured by the chickens? What value can you place on the number of bugs and grubs they eat, reducing the numbers of things that might munch on the veggies?

In other news I'm making yogurt. I really hate that so much of the time a gallon of milk costs less than a half gallon but I can't drink the gallon up before it goes bad. So I've been culturing my own yogurt and this should also get the grocery budget down. I've taken to having fruit and yogurt nearly every morning for breakfast, so go through it pretty fast.

Also of note, many of my tea herbs have been big enough to harvest and dry so I'm no longer buying tea, but drinking home grown. You can see more pictures of my garden harvests and my garden at my gardening blog;, The Edible Garden

Even if you can't have a garden, you can save a lot of money by buying staple items in bulk and learning to make your own convenience mixes and 'fast' foods. It's easy to buy oatmeal, dried fruits and nuts in bulk and make your own granola. There are great recipes out there to make your own biscuit mix, cake and cookie mixes, even seasoning mixes for tacos, hot sauce and many more things. It doesn't take that long to make a bulk batch once in awhile, then you'll always have it on the shelf, for much less than the price you pay at the store. And you can use much healthier ingredients and leave out all the chemicals.

What Do You Really Need?

Homegrown Salad

What do we really need? Sometimes we do things or buy things just because that's the way we've always done it. I challenge you to look at all aspects of your life to find ways to do things better; better for your family, your pocketbook, your quality of life, better for the planet and the environment.

Recently I took out a bag of trash and when I came back in discovered there were no more trash bags. At first I thought I needed to add trash bags to my shopping list. Then I thought "WHY?" Why do I need to spend money on plastic garbage bags? Plastic is not a renewable resource. It is made of petroleum and while there are some things that  are nice to have made of plastic I could not think of one good reason why I should buy something to throw it away on purpose.

My grand parents didn't use plastic trash bags. They reused their paper grocery sacks. Cans and bottles were rinsed and saved if they could be reused around the house. Food scrapings were fed to the birds and the alley cats.

Personally I put out very little garbage in the first place. All food scraps are composted by my earthworms. All yard waste goes into my compost pile to enrich my soil for the next crop. I buy very few consumer goods so have little packaging to throw away. Paper and cardboard are recycled either as fire starters or as compost material. I wear my clothes until they are worn out when they are either used for scrap crafts or rags. I'm growing an ever increasing amount of food that I eat so there is very little food packaging waste in my trash can.

I decided that there was no really good reason that I needed to buy plastic trash bags. Since no food waste goes into my trash can there is little that is smelly or messy. It is just as easy to take the whole can and dump it as to carry a plastic bag. I do end up with a few plastic shopping bags which I recycle in various ways. I decided that if something was really messy I could use one of them to contain it.

I think we all need to take a look at even the small things in our lives and see what we can do better. Unconsciously going with the status quo is not going to improve things at all. In fact, I can see a day when I will not need to have weekly garbage service at all.  When all the waste from my property is either recycled onsite or taken to the recycling center; my goal is to produce zero waste going to the land fill. Good for the earth, good for my pocketbook; I currently pay $240 a year for garbage service, not matter how much or how little I put out. I'll be very happy to spend that money on something else.

Change Should Be Gradual for Best Results

Homegrown organic salad mix, much cheaper than store bought!

When you are thinking about making lifestyle changes, whether they are because of your own core beliefs or are imposed from the outside due to things beyond your control it is always a good idea to work at them gradually.

When you are working with your budget you should take things item by item and make changes slowly. Making too many changes too fast increases your risk of failure.

Right now I am working on changing my diet to one that is nearly all home grown. I can't do that all at once, I must do it at the pace the garden sets for me. But I can concentrate on doing everything possible within the framework the garden gives me. I eat a lot of organic salad greens, generally about 2 pounds a week. at over $5 a pound this amounts to a substantial amount of grocery money each month.

I have several areas of baby lettuce production in the garden, at differing stages of development. In the beginning, as the first area began to produce leaves big enough to pick, there wasn't really enough to make a dent in the grocery budget. Now that I have several areas in production I have been able to stop buying salad mix at the grocery store. Some weeks I am not able to pick as much as I could eat, so I have adapted my diet to the level of garden production. If I don't have enough salad greens, perhaps I am able to pick beets or carrots. If I'm not able to harvest enough vegetables from the garden then I fall back on the grocery store, but now I purchase things that are a little less expensive than salad mix.

I think it's all about adaptability and doing things a little at a time. By this time next year I don't think I will be buying any vegetables from the grocery store at all. My next big ticket in the grocery dept. to work on will be fruit. I do eat a lot of fruit, especially apples and pears in the winter, probably about 3 pounds a week. It will be awhile before I am able to put in a lot of apple and pear trees. In the meantime I need to work on taking better care of the apple trees I do have so that they will bear more fruit. I'll also be putting some other fruiting plants around the place, like strawberries. And of course come summer there will be watermelons and cantaloups in the garden.

Other things in the budget that I'm slowly nibbling away at is of course the last of the debt. I won't be done with it in January like I'd hoped, because I took a nice vacation. But I'll be done with it soon and then I will be able to ramp up the infrastructure I need to become more self sufficient, like a decent building to house the rabbits and some more chickens, where dogs can't kill them. Electric fencing so I can fence off part of my land and perhaps get some dairy and meat goats. There are many other projects planned, but for now I'll just go at them a bit at a time and try not to be too impatient.

Are you thinking you don't have enough land to grow your own food? You might be surprised at how little you actually need, check out How Much Land Does it Take to Grow Your Own Food?

LOOKING FORWARD

organic baby lettuce & radishes, home grown!

Today I am thinking about the future. I soooo want to be able to stay home and putter about with the garden, some animals and play on the computer! I know that I need to get a bit more organized about every part of my life and that is a continuing process. Besides creating various income streams that will create money for me to live on in the future, I am also trying to reduce the amount of money I need to live on.

Some days it seems like I'm spinning my wheels, I'm trying to save money but I need to spend money to build the infrastructure I need for the future. But I keep plugging along! Right now I have been harvesting lovely baby lettuce for my daily salads, along with occasional radishes, carrots and beets. I've gotten my greenhouse up and am planting things in it and I'm working on another one. Details can be found over at the Edible Garden Blog. Be sure and check out Seedy Saturday, I'm giving away free garden seeds! Having all my home grown lettuce means I'm saving about $10 a week on the grocery bill, perhaps even more.

My greenhouses turn out a big crooked and ugly, but I point out to the naysayers that I'm making something useful out of stuff other people have thrown away! So who cares what it looks like? It works and does the job I need it to do!

In the meantime I've also been writing a lot of articles over on Squidoo about all sorts of things and that is a small but growing stream of income, along with my Zazzle shop and I've even sold some books in my Amazon store, so things are looking up!

I had hoped to have my debt all paid off by January but this is not going to happen. Overspending on my vacation put a dent in that, but I should be out of debt before the end of 2012, even with spending some money building new infrastructure. Because most of what I am building will give me a long term gain economically, building up my gardens, putting up a new chicken house and raising chickens, all of this will put food on the table and reduce the amount of money I spend at the grocery store, saving me money in the long run.

I recently read about a lady who is trying to spend zero cash for her family's Christmas presents by using Craigslist, bartering and her own crafting ability. I think this is a wonderful thing to do myself, tho I don't know as I will have the time needed to do it this year.

This N That

Well I have been very bad! I overspent a bit on my vacation, though I will say in my defense that a great deal of it was bank fees that I hadn't counted on, first they charge for having to convert the transaction from foreign money then they charge for you for using a foreign ATM. Next time I think I will look into having the bank order the money for me ahead of time or something. The other part was not always converting Euros to USD in my head correctly.

But I had a great time in Italy and did a lot of drawing and painting and took like 3,000 photos. No I am not pulling your leg, I really did take about that many shots.

You can see a lot of my photos and some of the places I visited over on my art blog; check the archives beginning August 15th.

Since I've been home I've been working on getting the garden back in business and last week had my first harvest of beans, baby lettuce and baby beets. Photos of those are over at The Edible Garden.

I have decided to eat up a lot of the stuff in the cabinets instead of going to the grocery store.  I have some older canned goods and need to get them eaten up before they get too old. This is also stretching my money a bit so I can buy cement for the rock wall project; we have put culverts in the dry wash so we can drive over to the other side and I am building stone walls around them and along the creek banks to keep everything from washing away. Pictures of this is also on The Edible Garden.

Another thing I've been doing is writing up a storm at Squidoo and making new things over at Zazzle. One of my articles is a yummy soup that I make, Italian Potato Soup, that tastes just like Olive Gardens. I have also been making what I call the never ending pot of soup. For instance if I make a roast chicken and make chicken and rice soup out of the leftovers, when I get to the bottom of the pot I start adding more vegetables to it and maybe even a different kind of meat and just keep eating on it.  Another one I do occasionally is clean out the fridge soup. I just toss in all the leftovers that are in the refrigerator and cook them all up together. Sometimes you have to adjust the seasoning as it might be bland, but it's always good and always different and really doesn't cost anything because you weren't doing anything with those leftovers any way and they were going to go bad and end up in the compost.

How I Named This Blog 'Cottage Economy'

Some wonder why I named this blog Cottage Economy and where did that come from. Well, it comes from a book by the same title, written in 1833 by William Cobbett. Mr. Cobbett concerns himself with how poor laborers families in England and other countries can improve their lot by doing many things for themselves, by conserving their resources and in so doing give themselves a leg up.

In his introduction he gives us this definition of 'economy':

3. ECONOMY means management, and nothing more; and it is generally applied to the affairs of a house and
family, which affairs are an object of the greatest importance, whether as relating to individuals or to a nation.
A nation is made powerful and to be honoured in the world, not so much by the number of its people as by the ability and character of that people; and the ability and character of a people depend, in a great measure, upon the economy of the several families, which, all taken together, make up the nation. There never yet was, and never will be, a nation permanently great, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families.

I love this book, so many wise things in it. It's been awhile so I'm going to re-read it. I've just discovered that you can download a free digital edition of it in quite a few different formats here.


But if you would like to own a real paper and board copy of
William Cobbett's Cottage Economy, there are several
different editions available.

Plugging the Leaks!

"It is not what we earn, but what we save, that makes us rich. It is quite as important to stop the leaks as it is to figure on big profits" Rolfe Cobleigh, Handy Farm Devices and How to Make Them, 1910

I so love that quote! You can read the book here When we take control of our lives and our finances and begin to scrutinize what will give us the best return for our time and money in every area we find those little leaks. Quite often the ailing business can be brought round with some cost cutting measures and a case of plugs. The same holds true for the family budget.

Where is your budget leaking? Remember all those dimes add up to dollars. Spend a few minutes filling a water bottle and putting it in the refrigerator, pack yourself a lunch, make your own pot of coffee. None of these takes much time to do but they will quickly plug that convenience store leak in your budget.

If you don't know how to hem your pants, patch a hole or sew on a button, don't you think it's about time you learned? These simple things can keep your clothes going a bit longer, they don't take very long to do, in fact I used to keep a basket with mending or some sort of sewing or embroidery by the couch and while the rest of the family watched the movie, I was sewing (or sometimes knitting). I was still enjoying the movie, but I don't have to have my eyes glued to the screen to follow the plot.

For some more money saving ideas check out my article at Associated Content.

Saving Money

I so so soooo love being in tune! I have procrastinated buying new shoes for several months and printer ink for a few weeks. In the meantime I got emails about sales & such and oh am I happy camper: inkgrabber.com I got an email coupon good for 20% off my order and free shipping on an order over $75 so I ordered 2 combo packs and have 8 black, and 4 each blue, red, yellow coming for only $78.38.


Then I got an email for shoebuy.com, buy anything and get $15 off any purchase over $60. Well my Sketchers usually cost around $60 so I went looking; a pair of Sketchers, usually $105, on sale for $79.95 so they only cost me $64.95 (shoebuy doesn't charge sales tax OR shipping!)

At both websites you can sign up to receive email newsletters which often have coupons or special sales that are not advertised on the website; you have to put in a special code at check out to get them. I don't buy these things very often but am really happy to get the specials when I do need to buy them!

Bit by Bit (Time Management)

Well, they say Life is what happens to you when  you are making other plans. Rather I think it's what happens when I get distracted from my goals. After more than 12 month hiatus I am working hard to get things back in shape around here. I'm still working full time, but I have managed to make all of the financial goals I've had and will become debt free around January of 2012.

A few days ago I realized that I had been majorly procrastinating in several areas. So I made up my mind that every day I would spend 15 minutes working on four areas of my life; my kitchen, my garden, decluttering the junk all over the house and my desk, paperwork and business affairs. So far I have mostly accomplished this for 10 days now (I did have a couple days where I didn't get all four done). (edit June 21, 2011 I have now been doing this for 23 days in a row and have begun another blog to chronicle this journey in living color. Come along for the ride at My Journey from CHAOS to Organized)

The result has been remarkable. The kitchen is clean and tidy which makes cooking healthy food and cleaning up after a breeze. The gardens beds are slowly appearing from under a forest of weeds and jungle of rubbish. I vow not to plant too much until I am home from vacation in September. By then things should be quite cleared up and ready to plant. My desk has slowly appeared from under piles of paperwork and filing. I had been slacking a bit about paying bills, losing them in the piles but am back on track now. And slowly boxes and piles are disappearing from the living room and studio.

I can't wait till I've kept it up for two or three months, it will be amazing. On another note, I recently refurbished a resin garden fairy and returned her to greeting duty by the front gate.

Refurbished Garden Fairy

I wrote an article with step by step photos if you'd like to read it go here: Refurbish Your Garden Art

Sometimes Making Do is Bad Economy

From Nov 11, 2009

Some recent events have me focused on doing things the right way instead of my usual slap dash and make do. I had some little hens for eggs and spent a lot of money buying some Buff Orpington chicks. The Buffs are a dual purpose heritage breed of chicken. They lay lots of brown eggs and  make nice meaty birds to eat. While not listed as endangered by the Livestock Conservancy they do need more breeders out there keeping them alive. [some older varieties of livestock have actually become extinct because people quit keeping their own farm stock]. Well 2 dogs attacks and a skunk have killed off my chickens. I have 2 left out of 20. So there went a lot of time and money down the drain as well as my future meat and eggs. [edit May 31, 2011 A few nights later another skunk got those last two. I, at least, was able to get the skunk. But these events took the wind out of my sails and in the time since I gradually let the garden and what not go. However, I am resurrecting things and coming back with renewed energy.]

What does this have to do with Cottage Economy? Just this, I made do in building my pens. I just slapped them together with just the thought of keeping the chickens IN and didn’t think about keeping other things OUT. I have learnt my lesson. In the future my animals will have secure pens and cages. In fact they are going to be living in Fort Knox. Because it certainly has not been an economy to make do.

This will mean more capital outlay in secure fencing and housing before acquiring an animal. But it will also mean that the animal will not be destroyed before it fulfills it’s destiny in my household. In the end it will add to my economy, not detract.