Okay, first post! Starting this blog to document how the next few months (or longer, who knows!) of our homesteading life goes. We will be living off love and food storage for the foreseeable future, since we've run out of money!
Now that hubby has been laid off nearly a year, and I'm pregnant again (yea!), we have eaten up the savings and maxed out the "emergency" credit cards, and are down to the barest bones budget I've ever attempted. For our family of 5 (2 parents, 1 college-age son, and 2 toddlers) we are working with $100 per month for household items and $160 per month for food. Those can obviously be shuffled back and forth as needed, and there will be some drastic changes to my household items I've been buying to help free up more for food, but that's what there is to work with.
Thankfully, I married a very smart guy, and he already had some long-term food storage when we got married, so we will be living off that, with the additions of anything I can grow in the garden, and all I can get out of the chickens, rabbits, and goats. (Although we follow the Old Testament food laws, so we won't be eating rabbit meat.) And our little food budget, LOL!
I'll document pretty much every day what we're eating, and how I'm making it, using mostly food storage foods, etc. I know I've always wondered how people actually USE their food storage, and while there's lots more helpful websites these days than there used to be, I still think it might be helpful to track someone doing it day-to-day. So here we go!
First changes we're making are switching back to cloth diapers, nearly full time. I will keep the huggies on hand for hubby, and who-knows, and my 2-year-old is almost potty trained during the daytime, but my little guy (just turned 1) will have to work with what we've got for a small stash. About 10-12 diapers I think.
I'm also switching to homemade laundry detergent. Our graywater goes into a recycle system for the outdoors, so we have been using 7th Generation which is okay, but way too expensive. The bottle costs about $8 and it says it does 33 loads (I haven't measured my use against that, though) so that would be like 24-cents per load. Supposedly the homemade stuff can be as low as 1-cent to 3-cents per load. I've got everything I need (which is only like 3 ingredients!) so I'm going to try making a batch tonight or tomorrow. Let you know how it goes! And of course, like all good frugal housewives, I'll be hanging my laundry up to dry as soon as Jeff has a chance to put up a laundry line for me. I think I'll be able to hang the diapers too, and just fluff them on no-heat in the dryer so they're not like cardboard on little guy's hiney, LOL!
I also conquered my long-time goal of making a decent-food-storage mac and cheese. Got a recipe from someone at Backwoods Home Magazine forums and it turned out awesome! Way better than the boxed stuff, and darn near Stouffer's frozen kind! I used the Cheese Blend Powder that we have so much of in our food storage, and in the past it has NEVER tasted right, not even tasted good at all. This recipe had me make a white sauce then add in the cheese powder and a couple of pinches of spices and it made all the difference in the world! I am going to fiddle with it a little bit tonight, make another batch, and then I will post my final recipe. I think if I add just a little of my freeze-dried cheese to the sauce, it will be as good as the frozen Stouffer's kind.
Jeff is out working on the raised beds for the garden right now. We've got some seedlings under lights in the bathroom, ready to harden off and transplant as soon as a bed is prepared. Then plenty more seeds ready to start. We will have a small garden close to the house with the raised beds, and then an "overflow" area near the barn for warmer-weather crops and stuff that takes up more room (squashes, melons, potatoes, etc.). I'll be doing lots of canning and dehydrating this year!
So there's lots going on in our efforts to live on this tiny little budget, and I'll do my best to keep you posted on all of it!
Talk to you tomorrow!
Tracey
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