More About the Grocery Budget

The chickens

So now I have chickens again. I bought 4 pullets just coming into lay and a young rooster (so I can hatch my own chicks to raise for meat).

Now that I have 2-4 eggs every day, they can replace part of the meat I would usually eat. Will the chickens pay? From previous experience I know that they will. In the past I had more hens and enough eggs to sell, covering the feed bill, meaning my family ate eggs for free.

While buying pullets costs more, you end up with exactly the number of hens you wanted, as usually there will not be any mortality at this age, unless there is some kind of accident. And no, eggs will not clog your arteries or any of that other silly stuff the scare mongers are trying to sell you. That happens to come from eating store bought, industrial eggs from chickens that are fed a totally unnatural diet and kept in very close quarters. (the government regulations say they only have to have about as much space as a sheet of computer paper per bird!).

Studies have shown that free range, pastured hens produce eggs that are actually very good for you, with more good cholesterol and less of the bad, less saturated fat, more beta carotene, the vitamin A precursor, more omega 3 fatty acids and more vitamin E. You can read more about this at Mother Earth News.

While right now there is no pasture on my land my girls get a good lot of weeds, grass, clover and veggie trimmings every day. Instead of buying regular laying pellets, which are full of GMO corn and soy, I bought wild birdseed, containing milo, broom corn and sunflower seeds. Besides this they get some worms and grubs from the compost and garden every day. So I think my eggs are probably at least a close second to full free range pastured ones.

On to the grocery budget. While March's total is not much lower than February's it is a bit lower, $142.05. A lot of that is for tea, coffee, olives and organic corn chips. Along with some cheese, onions, sweet potatoes, sour cream, cheese, yogurt and milk. And I haven't spent any money at the grocery store in April yet.

Having been slowly rethinking my spending and not buying a number of items, like garbage bags, I've been pondering what to do about the pricier items on my list. Coffee, tea, corn chips and olives are not cheap. Some of my herb plants are getting big enough to start picking and today I realized I still had a quart of spearmint from my mother's that I dried last fall. So beginning today I'm cutting the black tea with herbs. When I have enough tea herbs to go around I'll quit buying the black tea and probably won't buy coffee, either, just drink tea.

I could give up the corn chips, or just buy them once in awhile for a treat. (I love salsa and sour cream with corn chips for a snack). But I won't buy non-organic ones.

The olives are a problem though. I love the marinated olives from the store deli and eat a few every day with a drizzle of the oil on my salads. I do this instead of eating a heavy dressing. So I'll have to think about a replacement. Although when I ran out this week I did just start using some balsam vinegar on my salad instead.

I"m pretty sure that April's grocery bill will be much smaller than March's. I've received a windfall of free produce and my son has some extra meat in his freezer he want's to give me before it gets too old. The garden is growing exponentially and I'm sure by July I will practically be a vegetarian.

More Grocery Budget Reduction

root crops from my garden

Just a small review of the marvelous shrinking grocery budget. You can read more about the beginning of this Here and Here. So what happened in February? I only spent $144.17 for the month. And I still have half the giant package of pork chops I bought on sale along with a bag of chicken breasts ;-). Most of what's been happening is that the weather has been warmer than usual and the garden is really beginning to take off. While the harvest is nothing like what it will be during the warmest months, it's been enough to keep me in two large salads a day, along with greens for cooking, a bit of broccoli and some root crops like turnips and carrots. You can see lots more about my garden at the Edible Garden Blog.

And we're almost two weeks into March and I've only spent $47.92 so far. What did I buy? Two pounds of sharp Tillamook cheese (on sale for the same price as the cheap store brand), some marinated olives, (which I put on my salads instead of dressing), coffee, tea, (both on sale), a couple of onions, a bag of organic corn chips, a couple of sweet potatoes, and a few grapefruit. If I'm careful the cheese and olives will last for two weeks of salads, the tea and coffee a month or more. The other things, who knows, just depends on when I have a whim to eat them.

I've still got some chicken and rabbit in the freezer and most of my five pound bag of pinto beans. Which reminds me, I should cook some up this week on my days off. I also have a few more apples left from the huge boxful I bought last month from Bountiful Baskets. Of course February only had 29 days in it and March has 31, and I've eaten up some more of my stored food. So wondering how low will March's total be? Probably depends on the weather and the garden.

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.

Grocery Budget Continued

My YNAB budget program tells me that my average monthly budget for the past 12 months is $209.74. Of course some months were less and some were more. I did not have my garden in until fall so it really doesn't factor in at all. While it did give me about $30 worth of produce, mostly salad greens, in January, that of course isn't enough.

In January I did buy 20 pounds of chicken which were on sale very cheap. I try not to think of how they were raised when I cook them. I'm looking forward to having my own flock and my own meat and eggs again. However, I'll eat the last of it probably this week. There are a few bits of leftovers in the freezer along with cheese that was on sale. These will help me out this month. I will probably make a pot of chicken soup along with a pot of pinto beans with green chili out of the leftover bones and bits of chicken, which should carry me through close to the middle of the month.

Since my garden is not producing very much I'm buying produce through the Bountiful Baskets co-op, which is a great value for the money. Through them in Jan I was able to buy a 38 pound case lot of Pink Lady apples for just $22.50, less than $1 a pound. I'm not that fond of citrus, but I love fresh apples. This time of year I eat 5-10 pounds of apples a week, so this lot should carry me over for the month. This is a terrific savings since even on sale apples at the store are about $1 a pound and some varieties regular price is $1.49 to over $2 a pound.

While I have left the average of $209.74 as the grocery budget this month, I'd like to get that down to about $150 if I possibly can. I have a lead on buying grass fed lamb and want to save up so I can buy one when they are available. I don't know the price yet, waiting for an answer back from the grower.

So what are you doing about the high price of food in your neighborhood?

Nibbling Away at the Grocery Budget

Homegrown Salad

Right now I am nibbling away at my grocery budget.  I've just run some numbers and in 2011 I spent an average of $203.16 a month at the grocery store. In December, when my garden started really kicking in, I managed to only spend $119 for the month.

I am working on being more frugal with my money in general, making sure I've turned off the lights I'm not using, cooking on my airtight wood burning stove instead of using the gas or the microwave.

I've decided I want to really cut back on my grocery bill this coming year, partly by growing all of my own vegetables and some of my own fruit. (Fruit trees take several years to come into bearing, but strawberries only take 2 years to get up to speed and of course melons only take a few months)  While I won't forgo meat entirely I will probably have some meatless days each week, replacing meat with beans and other protein foods that are less costly. This months strategy is to use up the rest of the meat that is in my freezer as well as make a dent in 5 pounds of pinto beans that were given to me.

There are many ways to stretch your food dollars. I bought a large ham before Christmas on sale for .99 cents a pound. I cooked it and had several dinners & lunches of ham, sweet potato and applesauce. Then I made 2 gallons of 15 bean soup out of the leftover bits of ham and bone. Some of that is still in the freezer.

When whole chickens are on sale I try to get several. Each one makes several meals, first roasted chicken with carrots and potatoes, then either chicken and rice soup or chicken & dumplings.  When my kids were little and I either raised a lot of chickens or bought 12 or more on sale very cheap I would cut them up myself. I would save a couple whole ones for roasted chicken dinners. The rest I packaged for the freezer as boneless skinless breasts, legs & thighs for BBQ. The backs, tails, ribs, wings and necks all went into the stock pot and I would make 5 gallons of chicken broth and then can it in pints and quarts for later. I'd use the broth for gravy or as a soup starter. I think I need to start doing these kinds of things again.

So what's on your menus for this week? Tonight I've cooked a large pork roast, so pork, brown rice and salad tonight and probably tomorrow also. Tomorrow I might pull some carrots and beets to go with the  leftover roast. Maybe I'll make a pot of soup too.

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.