It's Christmas month! And as I do every year, I'm breathing a great sigh of relief that I can hole up indoors now. It seems like one half of the year I neglect my indoor existence, and the other half of the year I'm neglecting the outdoors. But at this point, the snow gives me a valid excuse to (almost) completely forget about the homestead and focus primarily on housekeeping items. And, of course, as much reading as I can possibly indulge in.

Back in the good old days, I made most of our Christmas decorations. It was a lot of fun. Now that we're in a (much) larger house, just putting up the decorations is a job in itself, let alone making them. I am still hoping to do some table arrangements with fresh greenery. It may or may not happen. 


Rumble Videos

For the last several months I've had major problems uploading video. BUT.... today I uploaded a short (and fascinating) video here at home, and uploaded another at our public library. So, TWO videos! In one day!! I have two more videos edited and ready to go, for the next time I find myself somewhere with a good upload speed. The one at the library took about 45 minutes, which was already an uncomfortably long time for me to sit around in a public space doing essentially nothing.

​I'm trying some really cool gardening projects right now, after a gob of reading last winter. I hope this winter's reading will prove just as fruitful. Here is one of my projects:

That's about all I want to report on for now. As mentioned before, I'm doing as much reading as I can on various topics—of course, not nearly as much reading as I'd like to, but I try to squeeze in at least two hours a day. The book I got the dandelion idea from was called Root Cellaring; Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables. I buy most of my books used on Ebay now, because you can often get them at a better price than Amazon. The root cellar book is running about $12.50 on Ebay now (a few dollars cheaper than Amazon's lowest price) and it is well worth the money.

Til next time,
-Bethany

Well, I'll be! I was ready to wrap up the garden a month ago, but it has been WEEKS without a 32°F frost. I got tired of waiting and cleaned up several of my garden areas even though they were still producing, but I'm leaving the tomatoes, peppers and beans until a true frost. 

Some of our fruit here on the homestead has been acting wonky. The apple trees were re-blossoming at the end of September:

And then a few weeks later, some of my strawberry plants decided to blossom!

Wild!

You can see some purple berries in the basket of things I harvested yesterday. Those are pokeweed berries. 


Pokeweed: A Plant With a Long and Useful History

Since our daughter has gotten older and more independent, I've indulged myself in some of my old pre-baby hobbies like foraging and herbalism. While the internet will tell you that pokeweed is toxic and poisonous (and it is, somewhat) this fascinating book, acquired at a library sale for $0.10, states that pokeweed has several uses. Many a Civil War letter was written with the pokeweed berry juice, and the roots were commonly used medicinally. One of my favorite stops at Greenfield Village is Dr. Howard's office; a common country doctor's office from the 1850's. In the building you can see many of the roots and herbs that doctors would commonly use; things modern herbalists don't—like skunk cabbage and pokeweed.

Reading the history of my own area during the pioneer days has been particularly enlightening. One local doctor was not trained at medical school, but was well-liked by his patients, and—as the history book states—"did good for a lot of people." However, the other doctors disdained him and his lack of education. One day he broke his leg. None of his peers were willing to set the leg because they thought he was too far gone and would probably die anyway. The poor guy ended up setting the leg himself and made a full recovery!

But back to pokeweed; the most fascinating thing I've learned is that people used to grow it in their basements. In the fall they would dig up some roots and put  them in a container of garden soil in their basement. The plant would start to grow and sprout a few months later, and produce an asparagus-like shoot. The shoots would be harvested at 6-8" tall and then cooked and eaten like asparagus. According to my research, you can also do this with dandelion plants. I'm going to try it this winter to see how it works!

In a different herbal I'm reading, the author recommends to plant pokeweed seeds every year, rather than only foraging them, in order to harvest roots the next season. So when I saw some beautiful berries the other day, I decided to pick them for seeds. Hey, you never know when you might need some natural narcotics!

Til next time,
Bethany

After seven years of largely beef-free meals and just over a year of bovine ownership, we are now the proud owners of a freezer full of beef. Ground beef, T-bones, brisket, filet mignon... oh, yes. We're moving up in this world.

When I wrote The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food, I did some quick calculations to see if one could save money by raising one's own beef cow. Here's a direct quote from the book:

"If you are interested in buying grass fed or other specially raised meats, it may be better to buy a whole or half animal. Keep in mind though that some animals are sold by their live weight, which includes the fur, skin, bones and other non-edible parts. Other animals are sold by "hanging weight"; how much the animal weighs at the butcher when the head, feet, organs, hide and blood are removed. This weight still includes the bones and a lot of other non-edible parts, and you might get 60% of the hanging weight back in actual meat. If you pay $2.00/lb. hanging weight for a beef cow, as an example, you will be paying more like $3.33/lb. for the actual meat. This price, then, is for ALL of the meat you get, from sirloin to stew meat."

I go on to list different percentages for different animals, and ultimately come to this conclusion:

"If you just want to buy supermarket quality meats, I would say it is a better deal to buy single cuts. Why? Because when you purchase a whole animal, the price of the more expensive cuts are factored into the price of the animal along with the cheaper cuts like ground beef or chuck roast. If you are trying to save money, you ONLY want the cheap cuts. Plus, if you purchase a whole animal there will probably be several pieces of meat that will go to waste because you don't know how to cook them, or don't like them."

As with most of my opinions, I still stand behind this one. That being said, it's been several years since we left full-blown frugal mode, and a grass-fed steak now and then sounded nice. So last year I decided to buy a 6-month-old calf to raise for beef.


How Much to Raise a Beef Animal?

First: the labor costs.

Adding a beef cow to our homestead was not a ton of extra work. We did have to make paddocks in our pasture, which was a pain (especially without a spinning jenny... don't EVER try to unroll fencing without a spinning jenny...). The other big headache was dealing with the steer when he got out, since he was too big to manhandle and sometimes too stubborn to be lured back into the pen with a bucket of feed. BUT, he only escaped through areas of fence that were non-electric; that is, the hog panels that we'd previously put up for goats. They were fabulous for goats—child's play for Steer. He mangled several new-looking hog panels during the last part of his stay here.

Other than that, the only extra work was feeding hay in the winter, switching paddocks in the summer, and keeping him supplied with water (harder in the winter than the summer). I bought a tank de-icer, which Steer promptly ripped from his tank. So basically I had to water him daily and hope he drank most of the water every day, otherwise ice would build up on the side of his water container.

Second: the financial costs.

So here is the fun part. I'm going to list the big costs, then some of the other things I bought that we'll be able to use again (and therefore can't be directly applied to the cost of this one steer).

Calf (6 months): $300.00
Hay: $360.00
Processing: $390.00
Total costs: $1050.00

Some other things we bought were: extra fencing, tank de-icer, a little corn (25 lb?). We had a salt block and some other things already, which was nice. Steer did mangle up some hog panels and also ate some of my strawberries, so technically you could add those costs to the list as well.

Third: how much meat we got in return.

The processer we chose (actually, we didn't have much of a choice... all of the others were booked out; some to 2023!!) didn't give us a total of how many pounds of meat we got in return. Since all of the packages were a slightly different weight, we had to estimate a total poundage. We did know the hanging weight, and figured that we got about 50% of that weight back in meat, for a total of 300-325 lbs.

And now... for the final calculation.

$1050.00 divided by 300-325 lbs. of meat equals:

$3.25 - $3.50 per pound.

That's truly not a bad price, if you compare it to store-bought grass fed and organic meat ($5.00 per pound for ground beef). While ours wasn't certified organic, it ate unsprayed grass and hay for a majority of its life and thus, was probably much more organic than something raised in a feed lot.

When you compare those prices with store bought prices for steak, it looks vastly more economical. And not only that, we were spendy and got a whole armload of snack sticks and hamburger patties, which added $47.00 to the processing cost. If you subtract those things, the cost per pound goes down to $3.09 - $3.34.


Is It Worth Raising a Steer?

My short answer? Yes. My long answer? Yes, but I wouldn't want to do it every year. I'm hoping to make our $1050.00 freezer full of meat last for several years. While $3.50 per pound is a good price when you compare apples to apples, it's not a great price when you compare apples to oranges—or rather, beef to chicken (which is what I do in The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food). So I still plan on doing beef meals just a couple times a week; certainly not every day.

One thing I do appreciate about this project is that we've found one more food item we can produce, in part, at home. You could butcher the whole cow at home (we've done it before), but we chose to have ours professionally done this time in order to have the different steak cuts rather than just ground beef, roasts and butterfly steaks. We figure that the processing added about $0.94 per pound to the price of the meat, and thought it was well worth it to have the steer processed properly and packaged well. 

****
Til NeXt time,
-Bethany

Hi everyone! I thought I'd better do an August post before it was no longer August! :p

One benefit of the 2020 Canning Lid Shortage is that I was able to explore a few different methods of food preservation. While I did NOT have success with lacto-fermented veggies, despite spending $30-40.00 on tools and supplies, I DID have success with dehydrating some of the produce that I would've otherwise canned.


The Hunt for a Great Tomato Sauce

One of my favorite dehydration experiments was dried tomatoes. In the past, I've never had a homemade pizza/spaghetti sauce that I've been happy with unless I added some store bought tomato paste for thickness. In 2019 I didn't make any sauce at all, but rather I only canned diced tomatoes. Then when I wanted to make a good sauce, I mixed store-bought organic tomato paste ($0.72) with water and added some homegrown canned tomatoes. 

Last winter, I did the same thing but added my dehydrated tomatoes to the sauce. I LOVED it! The chewy texture and added flavor of the dried tomatoes made a superior sauce than any I've made before. Not only that, but the dried tomatoes soaked up some of the extra liquid and made and even thicker sauce.

This year I was fortunate enough to find more organic canned tomatoes at a great price. Some were diced, and some were fire-roasted. I was happy for that, since it has been SO hot that the very thought of canning has me breaking out in a sweat. Unless it cools down, I will continue to slice and dehydrate all of the extra tomatoes I pick.

​Growing Tomatoes for Self-Sufficiency

One of my ongoing interests in life is the idea of a self-sustaining homestead. This year I decided to grow a small "market garden" out back with tomatoes and winter squash (you can see it in some of my garden update videos on Rumble). I'll talk about the squash another time, but this is how I did the tomato patch.

I grew 13 tomato plants this spring, of varying types. Two of those plants went into my kitchen garden by the house. I planted eight plants in two 4' x 4' raised beds; four plants in each bed, with a sturdy cage around each plant. Two of those plants died, so I replanted with two reserve plants; I ended up putting the last plant in a terra cotta pot.

Anyway: eight plants in 32 square feet. They are the gift that keeps on giving! This year I'm going to dry most of them, and possibly sell some at a local farmers market. You can see in the picture above that one of the jars has an oxygen absorber, which is technically better than just screwing the jar closed... although in 2020 I just screwed the jar closed and kept it in the pantry, and the tomatoes were just fine.

In an ideal scenario, I would harvest enough tomatoes from this patch to have enough for our own use, fresh and preserved, and then also have a bunch to sell out by the road at our farm stand. Farmers markets are a better place to gather petition signatures than to sell anything, in my humble experience. But if you bring some stuff to sell, you get more signatures, so.... those tomatoes are good for something.

Have you ever stepped into what dog owners call a "dog mine?" A while back I was in someone's yard and got that slow, sinking and sliding feeling, and I knew. I just knew.

Of course, dog poop isn't like other kinds of poop. It's sticky. I had to use a stick to scrape some of it off, but of course anything touching the bottom of my shoe was hard-pressed to come off. Worse than the mess, though, was the smell. Dog poop smells worse than other feces. I will take chicken or cow or goat excrement over dog poop any day. The odor followed me home on my foot, while I improvised a plastic bag barrier between my foot and our truck, to at least save my husband's nostrils for the next few days. What a smelly, long-lasting mess.

Well, folks, that's what it's like every time I write a blog post. In today's political climate, you never know what will land you in a pile of you-know-what. Will the after-effects linger for weeks, months and years? This week I was listening to the latest land mine in the Christian music industry. Matthew West dared to write a funny song about modesty, which everyone [now] knows is sexist and racist and all of the other "ists". John Cooper and Alisa Childers provide commentary below:

Now, of course, this video is hopefully still up on Youtube. But today I found myself heading over to Rumble because one of my daily Youtubers has been put in "Youtube jail" for a week for talking about the vaccine. But thankfully I was already subscribed to him on Rumble. If you dare to say anything "they" don't like, they are coming for you. Who are they? Well, probably the same "they" that is running the country right now.

But yeah. Speaking of Rumble, I posted a June garden update there! I am loving my garden this year.

Some new things I tried were carrots, onions, leeks, turnips, amaranth, kohlrabi and potatoes. I've always had some volunteer potatoes and onions, but this is my first year growing them intentionally. This is also the first year I've had a decent amount of carrots germinate, and they are doing well.

One of my goals for 2021 was to grow more cold storage crops like onions, carrots and potatoes. I didn't plant much in the way of quantity, but rather just enough to figure out a good growing system and then, if necessary, plant on a larger scale next year. The onions, carrots and potatoes are all doing well so far.

One struggle I'm tackling is how to cook and use turnips. They are so bitter! I tried peeling the outer skin off, and that helped, but still they were very bitter. Which is sad, because they were so easy to grow! If you all have any tips for me, they will be greatly appreciated.

As I'm coming to the peak of a new gardening season, we've almost finished off the produce I canned and froze last year. Virtually all of the frozen produce is gone, and there are just a few jars of tomatoes left. I'm happy that there was just enough to get us through a year, rather than too much. It will be a relief to me when I can figure out how much time to spend on canning and freezing for the most impact. 

​
Chickens

As you can see at the top of my post, one of our little hens hatched some chicks... all by herself! Out of several tries, this is the first time I/she has been successful as a chicken mama. I can't believe how easy and cheap it was compared to incubating or raising chicks from TSC. The only work I had to do was make sure Mama had food and water while she was brooding, and after the chicks hatched I did have to keep the little family separate from my other hens. When the chicks are old enough to defend themselves, I will put them and Mama back in with the flock.

Drawbacks to this method were 1) the hen only hatched three eggs, and 2) they are essentially free-range. Mama is teaching them how to wiggle through holes and fly over fences, which means they might be destructive to my gardens at some point. But I'm hopeful that they'll learn to be part of the flock. The last drawback is that I can't choose if Mama hatches little hens or roosters. However, since I'm not buying feed for these chicks, it doesn't matter to me what sex they are. If they turn out to be roosters, we can get rid of them before they start eating store-bought feed with the rest of the flock.


Back to Politics

Anyhow, I got sidetracked! I thought I'd drop a few political resources here, since politics really do matter to homemakers and Christians—especially now. While I think our regular homemaking tasks are most pressing and important, it's prudent to keep an eye out on what's going on in the wider world. If you want good, accurate news, switch from mainstream media to the Epoch Times or The Daily Wire. Many of the Daily Wire shows are available without a membership on Youtube (for now, that is). The Michael Knowles show is about an hour long and runs every weekday. The Andrew Klavan show runs once a week and is about two hours long. Every now and then I listen to Ben Shapiro, but his show is straight politics. Knowles and Klavan include a heavy dose of religion, culture and philosophy, which are a little more interesting to me. 

Dan Bongino also has good content, and his entire show is available on Rumble. He's a little more abrasive, but funnier and easier to listen to than Shapiro. Lastly, if you're a Michigander, I would recommend joining a Stand Up Michigan group, if you can. They will keep you in the know on local issues, and you can find them on all the regular platforms: Facebook, Youtube, etc. Many states have similar grass roots movements going on that will keep you informed.

Rather than setting aside an hour every day to listen to politics, I just keep my phone running while I'm gardening or doing laundry or cleaning. The shows make the boring parts of my day a little more interesting, and they don't require the same concentration and focus that an audiobook does.

So what are we supposed to DO with all this information?

I try to keep an ear out for any easy or passive ways I can help win the "culture war". I've started listening to shows on Rumble and buying books on Ebay when possible, and deactivated my Facebook account. Last week I wrote my senator for the first time ever. It was very easy and only took 15 minutes. I don't wear a mask anywhere I don't have to.  There are many things that we housewives can do to help turn the tide.

Being "in the know" has also led me toward some bigger changes that may also be necessary going forward. Choosing a parochial school or homeschooling will be prudent for the Christian family. I will be  prescreening TV and books for our child, and choose those that promote traditional values. We were at a hotel last month, and I let our daughter watch a kids' show while I combed her hair. A commercial came on with a rainbow drag queen singing about families with two dads. I'm not even kidding. 

The pandemic has schooled us in what it's like to live under the government's thumb, and I think we're headed for more of the same. I will continue to ramp up my homemaking skills, especially in regards to gardening and reading up on health topics.

I think that's about all I have for now. Hope you all are having a wonderful summer!

-Bethany

​Hi everyone! May has been pretty busy for me, as it usually is. Every year I try to make some improvements around the homestead that'll allow me to harvest more food with less effort. This year, however, I feel a bit more urgency. It seems like every week brings some new disaster in one part of our country or another. Last week it was the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack. Think about it: some foreigner literally launched an attack on our fuel supply... from his computer. What else could they attack? These cyber attacks seem to be happening more often, which is concerning to me. With that, plus ongoing random shortages and inflation, it just seems prudent to get my home production of goods figured out. 

 Here are a few projects I've been working on:

1. Gardening space usage: This year I've been moving my old garden plants from the back of our property to the front. Having the garden closer to the house makes a world of difference. I started last year with nine 4' beds, three cattle panel trellises and a small 1' by 4', for a total of 156 square feet with three cattle panel trellises for vertical growth (and this is GREAT for beans and cucumbers!). You can grow a LOT of vegetables in what amounts to a 12.5' by 12.5' garden space! I have five more beds in the back, but I'm undecided whether or not I need to move those to the front.

I might begin growing some of my annual vegetables or flowers mixed in with the (moved-closer-to-the-house) perennials if they are compatible. For example, tomatoes are supposed to grow well with asparagus, and bush beans with strawberries. If I end up doing this, it will free up space in my raised beds, and also make better use of my perennial areas. Some crops just don't take up a lot of space (garlic) so they don't need their own space, and others grow during the shoulder season (March-May and September-November, like spinach) so they can be pulled out or put back in as needed.

I've learned that perennial herbs and flowers don't need great soil, so those will be planted around the house as landscaping rather than in the raised beds. Out back I had two full beds dedicated to herbs, but now I can get rid of those completely and pack them in with the decorative plants up front. We have a long spot on the south side of our house that is fantastic for flowers and medicinal herbs. For years I've tried to grow lavender in the raised beds out back, but the more invasive herbs took over. Last year I planted some end-of-season discount lavender under plastic/mulch, in the new "sunny spot". They are doing great. Huge (compared to my seed-started plants from years gone by), no weeds and they have their own spot to thrive. I will still plant some herbs in the raised beds, like cilantro and basil. But nearly ALL of my perennial herbs and flowers will be under plastic or some kind of permanent mulch. It makes things prettier and easier to manage.

2. Seedlings: So! Last month I told you about my grow light, which is another thing that has and will make seed starting easier and more reliable. Keeping the grow setup in the basement was great. The plants didn't dry out as easily because it's damp and cool down there. There are a few things I'll do different in 2022: I will grow onions in a huge mat rather than start each individual plant in its own cell. I will also start tomatoes a month or two later. I plan on buying another grow light, but it won't be a special light; rather just a shop light. My small light wasn't quite big enough to hold the peppers and tomatoes together with the onions, herbs and other miscellaneous starts.

​I already save my own bean, tomato and some herb seeds. This year I will also collect spinach, basil, onion, and hopefully swiss chard and cabbage, as well as select squash seeds. Normally I only save as much as I'll need for 1-2 years, but now I will also make an effort to save more quantity of seeds; particularly those that are well-suited to growing microgreens, such as beans, basil, spinach, etc. The microgreens can serve as "produce" during the late winter months.

3. Compost: We kept a steer this year, so I have a boatload of beautiful manure to make compost with. In addition, I have the chicken manure (which usually goes into raised beds). I'm looking into some exiting new ways to use the manure, which includes creating hotbeds and using it to facilitate composting things like cardboard.

4. Chickens: I incubated chicken eggs this year, and it was a success! A few days after I moved the feathered chicks out to the coop, my husband went to the farm store to get some more chick starter. You know you have a good husband when he offers to pick up feed for your stinky chicks. But you know you have a GREAT husband when he goes to pick up the feed, and calls you when he sees more chicks for $0.50 each!! So I had him pick up some more chicks to stink up our kitchen. But they are totally adorable and I love them. This year I bought a warming plate to replace the heat lamp for our chicks, and it is amazing. The warming plate is similar to a mother hen, where the chicks huddle underneath it when they're cold. It is not a fire hazard like a heat lamp is, it's better for the chick (allows them to have a natural night/day cycle) AND it only uses a fraction of the electricity that a heat lamp does. Our warming plate will pay for itself in about three years based on those savings.

So, that is what I've been working on as of late! I love being out in the sunshine in the dirt, and hearing our baby chicks chirp in the kitchen each morning. I haven't been writing much, but I have been living much, which is just as good. :)

I've also been able to finish a few books in the last month or so: one biography and also Richard Wurmbrand's Tortured for Christ. The latter is very good. If you are a Christian, or even just a history buff or Patriot (as we now seem to call ourselves), it is a very worthwhile and eye-opening read. 

And lastly: we can't end this post without a shout out to my Rumble channel! In the midst of the busyness, I've been able to get out two new episodes of Meals From The Bunker since the puff pastry feature. I have several episodes of that series in the pipe, and I will also be putting up some gardening videos as time allows.

Well, that really is all for now!

I hope you have a beautiful and productive rest of the month!
-Bethany

Hi everyone! I'd like to give a little update on my grow light system. According to my records, I started seeds February 24th. The onions, marigolds, and one tomato plant had sprouted by March 1st. 

The picture above was taken March 10th. You can see some barely-sprouted peppers in the upper left-hand corner. The photo below was taken March 31st:

As you can see, the tomatoes have exploded in three weeks! Halfway through March, I did transplant the seedlings into bigger pots because the roots were starting to outgrow their little soil pellets.


2020 / 2021 Comparison

Last year, I started my seeds sometime during the last two weeks of February. I took a picture of the seedlings on March 31st, which you can see below:

Compare that with this year's seedlings:

Is there even a comparison?? I'm so happy with the $38.00 I invested into this LED grow light. If all goes well, I'll be able to use the light for many years to come. I hope that the investment will pay off in healthier plants and more produce from the garden.

How much does it cost to run?

The light is on a timer running 9.5 hours per day, sucking a total of 0.2 kWh of juice. Our electricity costs about $0.15 per kWh, so the cost per day to run the light is $0.03. I had the tomatoes and onions under the light for 31 days, for a total cost of $0.93. This seems quite low to me, but the light is rather small (2 ft.) and it is an LED bulb.

I'm not sure how much of a difference the reflective film made, but I used it to get more growing power out of the light. Next year I may do a split test on film vs. no film.

Lastly, I moved my seed-starting setup from an upstairs east-facing window to our damp, dark basement. So far, I haven't lost any seedlings to lack of water (even though I only check them every few days), and I also believe the cooler basement temperature helped the plants grow strong and sturdy.


Other Considerations: Seed Starting Dates

Now that I know how big a difference the light makes, I can adjust my seed starting dates to reflect that head start. Planting later will mean less watering and babysitting after each seedling has matured.

My tomatoes are ready to plant now, but I can't plant them until after our last frost... in May. LOL! So I'm going to be watering these plants for another month and a half!! According to my gardening friends, tomatoes don't get bigger or ripen earlier if they have an extra six weeks to sit indoors, so I haven't done myself or my plants a favor by starting them so early.  Next year I'll start the tomato seeds April 1st rather than March 1st, and they should be well ready to transplant in mid-late May.

Onions, as it turns out, don't need that much of a head start, either. The packet says to start them 6-8 weeks before the last frost (so for me, that would mean starting them mid-March to the beginning of April). Next year I will start them in April rather than February.

My pepper plants (started with the tomatoes and onions) are only a fraction of the size of the other plants, since they took far longer to germinate. We'll see how big they are at the end of April, but that is one type of seed that I may still start in February or March.

I'm also learning more about cool-season crops and how to best utilize them in my garden and menu. Beets, carrots and parsnips can be overwintered and harvested in March. Fall-sown spinach is ready to eat in April. Peas and lettuce can be tricky. If you direct-sow them outside, you might get a week or two of harvest before they bolt. By giving them a head start under the light, I can get another week's worth of produce out of the plants. That will be one of my goals for 2022.

That's all I've got for today!

​-Bethany

I was mistaken... NEXT week is our Really Busy Week! So here's a Friday assortment!

Butternut Squash

Last year I grew my own butternut squash, but my 1' by 4' vertical patch only yielded 10 half-sized squashes (which is actually quite impressive, but not enough to last through the winter). So I bought like 20 full-sized butternut squash at a produce auction for $0.60 each. What a bargain!

Well, last week I had about 10 rotting full-sized butternut squash to do something with. We ate a lot of squash. I also froze several of the squash, so we'll be eating squash for a long time.

The good news: I've discovered a lot of ways to eat squash. My favorite way is to cube it up and roast it in my air fryer/Instant Pot Crisplid. I like the Crisplid for some things, but I don't recommend buying one. It's not even big enough for three of us, let alone an average-sized family. But I still use it because I bought it, and it makes some fantastic squash!! If I were to buy another air fryer, I would buy the biggest model I could find.

The roasted cubes can be added to a lot of meals, or served as a side. In addition to that, I'll also cook some squash with potatoes and mash it all up for a squashy mashed potatoes. It's actually pretty good if you keep the squash at 40% and the potatoes at 60%. Half squash and half potatoes makes the mix a little too... squashy.

There are still some rotting butternut squash in our garage. But I got to thinking...

Is it worth 30 minutes per squash to salvage $0.50 worth of produce? Probably not. So this year I'll take care not to buy as much, and I may end up throwing a few of them on the compost pile during our Really Busy Week.

​
Bedroom Updates

Over the last 6 months, I've been slowly working on improving our daughter's bedroom. It now has new paint, a rug that I like, some exercise elements, a music element, and I'm working on zippered bedding similar to Beddy's (but a fraction of the cost). I've tried to stick with a Montessori-style design to make things easier for her to use and be responsible for.

One element we added this week was a shelf for her toys. She already has two small shelves, and she's really taken ownership of one shelf, organizing her books and small toys. The new shelf is actually a cloth diaper shelf that my husband made for me several years ago:  

Within five minutes of securing the shelf, she already had the baskets, dustpan and wooden bowl sitting in the cubbies, Montessori-style! I didn't even encourage her to do that.

She loves cleaning up her room (when I help her) and organizing and arranging her toys. I'm hoping that the different room elements I'm working on will allow her to be more independent and confident.

That's about all for now!

-Bethany
​

Hi everyone! I did some fun things in the last two weeks that I thought I'd share today.

Year-round Garden

Several years ago, I decided that I didn't enjoy canning in the way that homesteaders are supposed to enjoy canning. However, I still liked the taste, nutritional value and savings that came from gardening. The result of this quandary was a goal I came up with: to harvest fresh produce year-round.

This month our menu will feature butternut squash, apples, onions, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, beets, and possibly some microgreens or foraged greens. I'll be supplementing those things with some dried and canned produce. I didn't grow a lot of those things; the apples, onions, and most of the potatoes and butternut squash were things I purchased specifically for my cold storage experiment. But I WILL be growing them this year! Every year I try to expand the garden a little bit to get closer to the ultimate goal of fresh produce all year round.

I had a goal last year to do a winter garden, growing spinach, lettuce and cherry tomatoes in our basement. I was able to set up an indoor grow system last month, but it was too late to have a winter garden. Instead, I'm using the setup for my spring seedlings:

I paid $50.00 for the 4 ft. grow light, and $30.00 for a 100ft roll of reflective mylar film (to help keep the light focused on the seedlings. Amazon also had a $20.00 roll of film, but it was only 25ft so I chose to buy the bigger roll for an extra $10.00, just in case I decide to expand the indoor grow operation.

The light is one that hooks to other lights, again, so I'll be able to expand up or down a shelf if I choose to.

I put the light on a timer, so basically I just go down there every few days to water the seedlings. Most of them are onions, tomatoes and peppers. They are looking very stocky and sturdy so far. Last year, without a grow light, my tomato and pepper seedlings were tall and spindly. This year I'm hoping for better. 


Big Pantry and Household Haul

It's March. Do you remember what happened last March? Well, I sure do! And last week I put in a huge Walmart order and bought a ton of toilet paper. A TON. I also stocked up on stuff like tomato paste, pasta, rice, beans, laundry detergent, toothpaste, trash bags and such.

It cost about $100.00 to stock up the pantry for 4-6 months, and another $100.00 for 6 months' worth (more or less) of personal care and household supplies. We have a small family and I buy mostly Walmart or store brand items, so it doesn't cost much to stock up for a long time. Another thing I've tried to do is replace disposable products with reusable products, which also cuts down on yearly expenses.

Between stocking up twice a year and growing a lot of our own produce, it means I only have to buy a few things when I go grocery shopping, like dairy products or specialty items. There are still some things I wait for sales on, like barbecue sauce (we buy a name brand for that) and butter. But the big pantry haul eliminates time wasted shopping AND money wasted buying stuff I don't really need every time I go shopping. Not only that, but I have a feeling that food prices are going to increase this year, so why not buy stuff while it's still cheap?


Thrifting

Before we picked up our groceries at Walmart, I returned a bunch of cans and bottles; most of which were picked up on the side of the road. I got almost $12.00 from the returns, which I took straight to the thrift store to spend on books and a few other odds and ends. LOL!

I can be a real pack rat, so I try to get rid of things when I no longer need them. It's a good policy for almost everything. But not for books.

Several years ago, I donated about a third of my book collection. We were running out of space, and I was due to have a baby soon. I'd just read Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I asked myself, "Does this book spark joy? Is it still useful to me?" One of the books I donated was called The Diaper-Free Baby. I read the whole book and thought, Yeah, I think I know enough about this and I won't need it anymore. So I  tossed it in the box. Just a few months later I was wanting that book back!! And there have been several books I gave away that I wish I could have back, including some that were gifted to me and I only donated "because our local library has them". Now that we have space, I realize how stupid it was to get rid of so many good books permanently when I could have just put them in storage until we did have more space (which I knew I would, eventually).

There are a good number books now that I've ended up rebuying, at a much higher price than what I paid to begin with. And depending on how far Amazon and Ebay decide to go with their censorship, many of the books I want to read or reread might be harder and harder to find. So I've decided to just buy a book if it's something I think I will ever read.

Last week I was thinking about what books I should start looking for in regards to our daughter's education, since I plan on homeschooling. I thought about one book I particularly enjoyed that shaped me as a preteen/young teenager called Beautiful Girlhood. Again a book that I owned, and got rid of because "I didn't need it anymore." Sigh. One more book I'd have to rebuy (currently selling for about $4.00 w/shipping) at some point. 

Well, when I was at the thrift store a day later, I found a copy! For $0.50! So I bought it. Yes, it will be a long time until our daughter can read it herself. But I know from experience that I regret not buying books, and I'd rather spend a little to rebuy a book than a lot. 

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Puff Pastry Video

Okay, last thing! I uploaded a new episode of "Meals From the Bunker" on Rumble. You can watch it by clicking the picture below:

Rumble has made changes recently so it runs more like Youtube. It's a lot more functional now than it was when I first started uploading, and I'd recommend downloading the app if you can.

Okay, that is all for this week! I hope you are all enjoying early spring as much as I am. We have several guests coming over next week, so I may skip posting. But I will be back then the following week.

Later,
Bethany

Hi everyone! I missed posting yesterday, as our daughter woke up early, and I missed posting last week because we were gone! We spent the weekend at a marriage retreat (which was more like a workshop than a retreat, but I'll cover that later), which I'm going to make the main topic of this post.

Back before Christmas, some of my sisters-in-law were talking about marriage counseling and/or events, and one of them mentioned a retreat happening on Ohio. We thought it would be fun for several of us couples to go together. Hubs and I have always wanted to do some type of marriage event, but it has never worked out. So I was like, "Yeah, sure, send me the info and I'll sign us up."

The event was called "Two Hearts; One Flame" and held by the ministry Haven of Hope. It was at a large Mennonite church, and led by a Mennonite couple—marriage counselors who are booked out several years! While some marriage retreats are basically a romantically-themed vacation, this one is more like a workshop with some fun elements and very good food. It's designed to be like counseling, but self-directed and on a large scale. There were 10-14 tables set up with three couples per table, plus a bunch of staff at the back of the room. The most surprising thing to me was the amount of gray heads I saw. Probably two-thirds of the couples attending were in their upper 40's or older, many of them grandparents. 

We sat with one younger couple, married for about a year and a half, and on the other side an older couple, "Tom" and "Tessa" who had been married for 25 years. Tom was slim, probably in his 50's, dressed in a crisp plaid shirt tucked into jeans. His wife Tessa, also in her early 50's, was wearing a nice sweater, skirt and neat black doily on the back of her head. Each evening, one couple at the table had to answer four prompts; a good childhood memory, a bad childhood memory, the best part of their marriage and the biggest struggle in their marriage. The prompts gave you a good idea of each person's "story". Hubs and I were shocked when we heard Tom's story. He had let Tessa "run the show" for the first 20 years of their marriage, while he snuck around engaging in what our workbooks politely called 'moral failure'. 

"On the outside I was sitting down," he explained, "but on the inside I was standing up." He went on about his involvement in the worst kind of marital sins. It culminated in his having to spend three months in jail.

"Was that the low point in your marriage?" Hubs asked.

"No," he said. "Jail was actually not the worst part." He went on to explain that while he was in jail, he was served with a lawsuit that had to do with a texting relationship with a woman that he'd cut off five years prior, but never told Tessa about. The lawsuit could've caused him to lose their family farm. "That was definitely the worst part," he finished. After he got our of jail, he finally confessed everything to Tessa, they got help, and slowly began to rebuild their marriage.

"I really wish we could have started our marriage three or four years ago, and erased the first 20 years," Tessa said. "I mean, not erasing the time we spent raising our daughters, but I just wish we could start our relationship at the point we're at now."

That whole ordeal was something I wouldn't have guessed from looking at Tom and Tessa, but as the event went on I realized that this story (plus or minus jail and lawsuits) was not uncommon.

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What's a "Spin Cycle"?

I mentioned previously that this retreat was more like a workshop than a vacation. I love marriage books, and they are awesome and helpful, but you can't master something by just reading about it. I greatly appreciated the personalized approach that the conference took. The main task of this workshop was to choose a "spin cycle" (an offense that turned into an argument and spun out of control) in your own marriage and break down how and why it happened. While slowly dissecting our own spin cycles, we listened to many, many spin cycles featuring real couples... and we could ALL relate.

​Below is an example of someone else's spin cycle we looked at:

You can follow the flow chart and kind of see where that argument ended... or rather, where it didn't end. When we worked through this spin cycle, the speaker got Jordan and his wife (I'll call her Molly... I forget her real name) to come up to the stage so he could interview them. Unlike many of the attendees, Jordan and Molly were definitely not Mennonite, and looked like they came out of a normal suburb somewhere. They were probably in their 40s. Their spin cycle was about an incident that happened eight months ago. They needed a new washer and dryer, according to her. He told her to "do some research" to see what they should get. Her idea of research was looking on Pinterest to decide whether they should get a front loading washer or a top-loading one.

When she presented her research, he became irritated because he felt like he would have to do "the research" all by himself, and also renovate the laundry room thanks to Pinterest. On top of that, he was trying to figure out how to pay for it (something he failed to mention to her). In the meantime, the laundry was taking four hours when it should have taken two hours, and she was having to do a lot of extra work because of the broken washer and dryer.

The speaker then called on the audience to help fill out Box 3 on her chart. In our workbooks, we looked at a chart of thoughts and asked her which ones she was thinking at the time. 

Audience member: "Did you think you were not loved?"
Molly: "Yes."
Audience: "Did you think you were inadequate?"
Molly: "No."

This went on for a few more questions as we tried to pinpoint some of her thoughts. Then someone asked,

"Did you think 'he gets everything and I get nothing'?"

​Poor Molly broke down. She didn't answer but only nodded, tears streaming down her face. Even though the fight had supposedly ended months ago, that thought was still alive and well in her mind, and I'm not sure even she knew it before it was said out loud.

The issue was the same, but the two parties looked at it completely different. Jordan felt like Molly was putting the weight of the world on his shoulders, and Molly felt like Jordan was subjecting her to servanthood, telling her that she was not worth his time or money. Were either of those things true? No. But as different individuals with different roles and different work, we can all believe untruths sometimes.


What's the Big Deal?

So, what's the big deal about a spin cycle? As several of the speakers pointed out, often one spouse's reaction to pain is the other spouse's trigger, and the cycle goes on indefinitely. The key to stopping the cycle is not necessarily to stop the feelings. It is to stop the negative thoughts or lies (Box 3) and the sinful reaction to pain.

The retreat taught me some about my husband and his responses and triggers, but it also taught me a lot about myself. By identifying "childhood traumas", you can see patterns of response/reaction in your life that lead to poor choices and hurt other people. Some people like to wallow in their traumas and blame all of their problems on their childhood, but the speakers here made it clear that everyone has "traumas" in one form or another. It's not the trauma that creates a problem, but your reaction to the trauma that creates a problem.

If you can identify that trauma, it's easier to identify patterns of reaction in your life. One of my traumas was going to school. We can all agree that going to school is not abuse or neglect in an objective sense of the word, but for me it felt like neglect. I hated riding the bus every morning. I didn't know the bus driver, didn't know any of the kids. I always tried to find the perfect spot: an empty seat was the best, because then I wouldn't have to talk to someone I didn't know. After that I tried to get a middle seat, because the kids in the back were naughty (and I didn't want to get yelled at by the cranky bus driver), and if you sat in front, there was just a bigger chance that another kid would sit by you or that you'd have to talk to that bus driver.

Years later, hearing school bus brakes, smelling the exhaust and feeling dust swirl up around my face makes me nervous. It's not something I can control; it's just a feeling, like if you step on a nail and it hurts. Other things I worried about when I was five: only being able to eat at lunchtime, kids making fun of my lunch, having to ask to go to the bathroom, wondering if someone would knock on the door while I was in there, giving a wrong answer to a question, being reprimanded, who to hang out with at recess. The bus ride home was far better, because the worst part of my day was over and when I got off the bus I could jump away my stress on the trampoline. I loved learning and was a really good student. But I hated school. Rather than learning, I spent most of my time trying to navigate the social scene, stay under the radar of the teachers and not be one of the "bad kids". 

As you can imagine given my "trauma", it caused problems early on in our marriage when my wonderful husband would dump me in an unfamiliar group of his friends/family and leave me to socialize by myself. I learned to associate certain places with being dumped, and then we'd argue whether or not to go to those places.


Hope for Every Marriage—Even the Worst Ones

Everyone has these kinds of arguments based on feelings. What I loved about this marriage retreat/workshop is that they did a great job of making both spouses equal. Sometimes in a marriage there is a "squeaky wheel"—the louder of the two who has all of the problems, and you assume that the quiet spouse is completely innocent. Other times, the squeaky wheel is the innocent party being hurt by the quiet one's "moral failure". Regardless, the quiet spouse is often viewed as having fewer or no feelings or opinion, which is simply not the case.  

As we worked through many spin cycles, it became evident that each spouse has an equal amount of feelings, regardless of how loud, quiet, bad or good they act. When you recognize what your own feelings are, you can redirect them into conversations with Jesus, rather than arguments or destructive behavior toward your spouse. Furthermore, when you realize what your spouse's triggers and pain points are, you can help heal those by accepting, understanding, and caring about (not fixing!) their feelings. You can resolve any past pain that you caused, and help point them to Jesus for healing. You can also help heal by using healing words and statements, rather than words that are hurtful to your spouse. 

One thing I took away from the conference was that there is hope for every marriage, regardless of your age, stage, personality, childhood traumas or sins that have been committed. The tools we were given at the retreat (resolving spin cycles, etc.) were certainly helpful, but more valuable than that was the truth that there is hope for a marriage no matter how bad it gets.

Just in the past few years, Hubs and I have watched a few of our friends' marriages struggle or end in divorce. It is so painful, even when you're not part of the situation. Most of the divorce announcements seem to come out of nowhere, and by the time you realize something is wrong it is too late to help. I thought I would share my experience with this ministry just in case you or someone you know is struggling in a marriage where you think there is no hope, or even if you're not quite satisfied with your marriage, or worried about where it's headed. 

It looks like Haven of Hope will be doing another event in Ohio, in November of this year. There is a suggested donation of $300.00 per couple. I felt like the money was well worth it for us, even though we weren't facing any glaring issues in our marriage. They also offer counselling, which is free, but slots fill up very fast. As I mentioned, one of the couples is booked out already for several years.

That's all for this week! I look forward to doing a more eclectic assortment next week.

Blessings,
Bethany