​Hello everyone! I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since I posted last. Sigh.

Since the 18th, I planted spinach, lettuce, swiss chard and kale. Nothing has come up so far. I’ve been dutifully turning the eggs in the incubator twice a day. Later tonight I’ll candle them to see if there is anything going on inside. My seedlings are coming along nicely! I even had some Echinacea germinate last week, which was great!

​For the past two weeks COVID-19 has been worming its way deeper into our lives. The virus is spreading relatively slow around here, although at the time of this writing we have had 24 positive cases in our county. I think the “panic” phase is over. Now I feel an atmosphere more of suspicion and finger-pointing. Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive. I hope so.

Hubs got a thumbs-up to continue his job, which is great. That being said, he does have to take precautions; sanitizing and such. Of course there are no antibacterial wipes to be found, so he is improvising with baby wipes and a spray bottle of Everclear (that I had, thankfully, bought a few months ago for a project). 

As a homemaker, not much has changed for me either. That being said, I am really missing our weekly visits to the library. And monthly visit to the thrift store. Date night has morphed into “go for a drive for takeout” night, which isn’t nearly as fun.

​And then there is the carousel of shortages.

Here is a list of things that are sometimes (or always) hard to find, and how I’m improvising:

Hand sanitizer: Using soap and water to wash our hands before and after going to town. Also, as I mentioned, sanitizing surfaces (only for Hubs’ work) with grain alcohol. It’s definitely not cheap, but it is over the CDC’s recommended 60% alcohol.

Toilet paper: still have a large pack left from my haul in January. Trying to make it stretch as long as possible, though, since the toilet paper supply hasn’t bounced back yet. You can get it, sometimes, at Walmart, but you might have to pay an arm and a leg. I bought these bidet attachments and am keeping “family cloth” in the back of my mind just in case TP is still in short supply a month or two from now. Personally though, I think in a month or two the TP shortage will be over.

Vitamin C: I still have some packets that I bought in November, but I’m trying to save them in case one of us (more likely, one of our older relatives) gets sick. In the meantime, I’ve changed our menu to increase vitamin C content. I’m spending a little more money to buy kiwis, mangoes, bell peppers, and other foods high in Vitamin C. Also in the process of looking for wild vitamin C supplements… things like pine needle tea or rose hips.

​Flour: There is still a flour shortage in our area. I will be changing our menu a bit to stretch the flour that we do still have (5-10 lbs). I will not be making as much yeast bread, but rather things like corn bread muffins or biscuits. I’ll likely be experimenting with oat flour (our stores still have oats in good supply) and grinding other grains if the shortage continues.

​Yeast: Along that line, yeast is also pretty much non-existent, which is another reason why I won’t be doing as much yeast bread. Thankfully, the grocery stores still have a decent array of yeast breads, so we might start buying bread just to save yeast. Sourdough or something like beer bread is also an option here, but I won’t be wasting what flour we have left on experimentation.

Ground beef: we are just using whatever other meats are available at the grocery store. I still have a turkey in the freezer and some venison as well.

Elastic: I began making reusable face masks for our local hospital, but I had to stop at six, since that’s where my 1/8” elastic supply ran out. And guess which store near us is selling more? Not. A. One. Anything narrower than an inch is completely sold out. I am going to keep looking though. I’ve read that some people are using elastic headbands from the Dollar Tree. I may also try cutting wider elastic in half.

Masks: About masks. It’s been said that masks don’t really stop the spread of COVID-19 unless you are a health care worker (or someone working right up close to a sick person) or if you ARE the sick person. That being said, I have noticed a lot of people improvising in our community with bandannas, construction masks, etc. I don’t know if these people think they are protecting themselves or if they are wearing them just in case they feel a cough coming on, and want to protect others.

​If a mask helps our community to feel safer around us, I will likely make some for personal use. Our daughter does have a cough, and she just coughs wherever and whenever she wants to, since she’s two years old. In the last week I’ve been torn between taking her with me on errands and leaving her in the car (which, under normal circumstances, is an absolute no-no). I will probably make one for her to wear (which means I’ll probably have to wear one as well… sigh) so I can take her with me without getting dirty looks.

As a frugal person, I am used to cutting corners and using substitutions to save money. What I’m NOT used to is simply not being able to buy stuff, money in hand!! I feel like this is a strange mix of the Great Depression and WWII. In a way, it is kind of neat. When I’m in my sewing room making masks, I feel like I’m “contributing to the war effort”. LOL! And I like that feeling! I hope you are all getting along well, finding everything you need and staying healthy.

Til next time,
-Bethany

Hi everyone! Well, it seems as though the world (literally) has been turned upside down since I wrote my last post. The good news? Life goes on mostly as normal for those of us who already spend most of our time at home.

​
Maple Syrup Update
​
We are still boiling down sap for maple syrup. So far we have got almost five gallons of syrup. That is is way more than I thought we'd get! We over-boiled some (the darkest jars in last week's picture) and it formed sugar crystals in the jars:

Of course those jars will just be for our use. But since we did collect so much this year, I'm considering selling some to help fund my little hobby farm. I don't think we'll sell as many berries this year due to the poison ivy infestation that happened last year. :(

I have just been so pleased with this project. Compared to my last new project (honeybees), this was crazy inexpensive and I was able to get a lot of value from it. This is definitely a do-again project for coming years.


Chickens

If you're a longtime reader, you might remember last year's fiasco with the bloodthirsty raccoons. I went into winter with just two hens in the coop. Since then, a friend of ours gave me a rooster and three more hens that she no longer wanted. So now I have five hens and one rooster.

I think five hens is just about the right number for us. That being said, it's likely that we'll need some replacements at some point, so I've decided to try incubating chicks. Right now the chickens are laying enough eggs for me to save a few for us and keep the rest for hatching. By the end of this week I plan on powering up the incubator. 
​

Garden

And.... we're moving quickly into gardening season!! Over the weekend I planted the rest of my beet and parsnip seeds. I've read that parsnip seeds are only good for one year, so I hope at least a few of my seeds (from last year) sprout.

In the garden right now, the only things ready to harvest are parsnips and spinach; both of which overwintered from last year. To be honest, I really like the idea of just overwintering a few things to have ready to eat as soon as the ground thaws. I hadn't planned to have any garden produce ready in March, but already I have two things! Next fall I'm planning on overwintering a whole bed of spinach so we can pick from it regularly. Right now there is only about one square foot of plants, so it's not a lot. I planted four square feet of parsnips last year, and that has been enough for our parsnip needs in fall, winter and spring.

​Here is an updated picture of my little collection of seedlings:

You can see that my tomato plants are pushing out their first sets of true leaves! I had one lavender plant die, but the six pictured here are still doing alright. The basil is also doing fine.

I did replant some $0.20 pepper seeds from Walmart, since my first batch of seeds never germinated. None of the new seeds have germinated yet either, but I am really hoping that some of them will.

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Grocery Budget

I planned $130.00 for groceries this month. So far we have spent about $90.00. I've been buying a little bit of fresh or frozen produce every week, but other than that there is nothing we need. I think we'll come out ahead this month. You can see what we've bought so far below:

Walmart Trip

We went to Walmart for date night (which consisted of fast food restaurant hopping, since all of the sit-ins are closed!), mostly because I wanted to see if the empty shelf rumors were true. I think the top picture of this post is a good representation of how full our Walmart was. There were definitely some empty shelves when we stopped in around 8:00 p.m. 

The main areas that got wiped out were toilet paper (no pun intended... lol!), bread and ground beef. Of course there were a lot of empty spaces—more than I've ever seen in my life— but it's not like there was nothing to choose from. For example, most of the eggs were gone, but there were still organic cage-free eggs, and jumbo eggs. A lot of the meat was gone, but some of the more expensive cuts and less-popular cuts were still there.

While the store was empty compared to a normal week, there was still a LOT of food and supplies. There were still kids' vitamins, for example, and plenty of diapers. As one Youtuber pointed out, the bread aisles might be empty, but the deli section (at least ours) still has bread.

As we we roamed the store, we were able to talk to a few employees about the situation. One stocker said that the toilet paper sold out in 15 minutes. The crazy thing is, Walmart is restocking toilet paper (and other stuff) every day. Clearly, people are just buying way more than they normally use. My hypothesis is that, on top of all the panic buying, people just don't know how much toilet paper they use in a 2-3 week period. So better safe than sorry, right?

As far as food goes, the same principle applies. I'm part of a frugal food group on Facebook, and I spent a few hours reading horror stories from members about how their kids and/or husband ate a whole week's worth of snacks in an afternoon. Again, shoppers who don't usually spend all day with their families are underestimating how much their families capable of eating. So they make multiple runs to the grocery store in a week.

I also read a thread that asked, "How much did you spend stocking up?" Most of the commenters spent several hundred dollars ($200.00-$500.00) extra. Of course that is going to wipe out supplies, if everyone buys a months' worth of food at once! And on top of that, according to the Walmart employees we talked to, there really are "crazies" out there who think it's the end of the world. We heard that one shopper bought 30 packages (I don't know what size... but the 1 lb. packs are most expensive, so the packages were probably bigger...) of ground beef. It wouldn't take many people doing that to wipe out the ground beef.

So, yeah. This is not much of a problem for those of us with stocked pantries, and I'm encouraged to see a lot of good Youtube content about working with what food you have, buying reusable personal care products, etc. This is stuff that many of us have been doing for years, but it takes a national crisis to get everyone's attention about it! I also think it's a good thing that families are spending more time with each other. Personally I like seeing parents teach their own children, even if it's only for a few weeks. Some parents are trying to do structured homeschooling, while others are focusing more on life skills. I really like seeing parents teach life skills. Maybe they can prevent another wave of "millennials". LOL!

I trust that you are all doing well, despite all the craziness. This, too, shall pass. 
In the meantime, go out and plant more seeds! :)

Til next time,
​-Bethany

We had a lot of fun last week boiling down maple sap last week. The syrup started out as "my" project, but Hubs began helping me, and has decided that he likes it almost more than I do! 

We are not done tapping yet, but after just a week our 12 trees (sorry, I haven't counted the taps!) have yielded a good 14 quarts, or three and a half gallons of syrup. In today's market, that's a value of more than $200.00!

We were able to use my in-laws' old taps and homemade burner, but I did have to buy a $4.00 thrift store pot to boil with. After one day, we realized that the pot would not keep up with sap production, so we invested in two buffet pans (steam table pans, I believe, is the official word for it) at $40.00 each. That felt like a lot of money, but they do boil down the sap much quicker and we have already recouped the investment.

To stock the furnace, we used scrap wood from Hubs' shop and sticks that I've been bringing in from our little grove of trees out back (where there are four of our maple trees!). The grove has been an extension of what I call "the backyard dump" for the last several years, but we have been working to get it cleaned up. I would love to make it into a quiet park-like area that we can actually enjoy. 

Picking up the fallen branches and burning them has done a lot for the grove's appearance. We still have a long way to go, but it made me so happy to kill two birds with one stone last week: cleaning up the woods, and then using it to fuel our sap fire. Hubs did the same thing with the front yard and also our little row of grapes near the orchard. I would love to make this a yearly tradition, where March is the official Clean Up Month around here.

While both Hubs and I have helped with making syrup before, neither of us had been through the process 100% on our own. Each day we were able to refine our system a bit more for efficiency and efficacy. As in, more and better syrup for less work. You can see how different some of our early batches were:

The first batch, which has the least amount of ash, was the clearest. We think it was so clear because we were still using the pot, which had less surface area for ash to fall into.

The last and darkest batch wasn't strained before we boiled it down, plus I think I overboiled the whole thing (it actually boiled over when I wasn't looking). It was very dark and very thick. After that I became more familiar with the boiling-down process, and we started straining both before AND after the final boiling down. This helped a lot with the color, but our current batches still have a little bit of sediment from the ash. I'm not too worried about it.
​

Thrifting

A couple of weeks ago I went thrifting. Here's what I found and what everything cost:

Another crazy deal... Walmart had a wide variety on food items on clearance last week. You can see below all of the cheese I bought. The mozzarella balls were $0.50 each ($1.00 per pound), the 2 lb. brick of cheddar was $2.50 ($1.25 per pound!!), and the little packets (part of a "macaroni and cheese sauce kit") came out to $2.00 per pound. All of those prices are the cheapest I've seen in YEARS, and only the mozzarella was expired. But it was still good. ;)

Seedlings!

And, a little garden update! I repotted most of my seedlings and some houseplants on Saturday. The seedlings—most of which are tomatoes—are doing well. The smallest seedlings are lavender (to the right), and the pots to the far left are basil. Also in there are a few marigold seedlings.

Lastly, I don't really follow the news, but I've been trying to keep updated on the coronavirus since it has the ability to affect the price and availability of household supplies. I've noticed that several items we buy have been out of stock now and then at Walmart; things like diapers and dishwasher detergent. So far only the Walmart brand has been sold out; there are more expensive brands to choose from, but still. 

At the beginning of the year, I bought six months' worth of personal care and household supplies, mostly for ease of record keeping (Walmart receipts are a bear to record, since they often contain items from 4-5 budget categories). Now I'm very thankful I did that, since I don't have to worry about paying higher prices for things like toilet paper, toothpaste or laundry detergent. Another comfort is that I have the skills to make things that often sell out during a pandemic; things like bread, hand sanitizer or even toilet paper (hello family cloth!) should we really need some.

I'm not expecting any severe shortages, but I do believe we'll be paying higher prices for many things in the coming year if this pandemic gets out of hand. So it helps to have some frugal skillzzz.

Have you noticed any shortages at your local stores? Do you think we are at the brink of a recession?

Til next time,
-Bethany

I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to see March 1st as I am this year. I have a lot of new projects that I’m starting (and I LOOOOVE starting new projects!!) that I thought I’d share this week, plus some miscellaneous frugality.
 
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Maple Syrup Making
 
This is our first year tapping the trees on our “new” property. (While the property has been ours for several years now, it FEELS more like ours now that we’ve actually moved into the house.) My in-laws tapped the trees here for many years, so we just picked up where they left off. I had Hubs’ drag the clothes-dryer-turned-boiler up from the backyard dump, and then he and my BIL found the taps up in our barn. I washed up the tapping stuff and we scrubbed out some paint-y buckets to collect sap in. It’s not a beautiful setup, but Lord willing it will work great! This week is supposed to be great sap-running weather. We’ve already collected some sap and will start boiling it down tomorrow.

GARDEN 2020!!!!

At the beginning of this year, I was not so excited about planning my garden. I think I was still burnt-out and “hung over” if you will, from all that happened in 2019. After our trip to Italy, though, I felt like I could really put all that stuff behind me and get ready for a beautiful new season of homesteading.
 
This year I will be transitioning our garden from a plot way out by the barn, to one that is just behind our house. I am so excited about that. It will mean less walking, fewer hoses, possibly less deer damage, and a lot of other benefits. In 2020 I will be during a basic continuation of last year’s small, “fresh-only” garden, where most of the produce will be eaten fresh and only a little bit canned or frozen for winter. There is still some spinach that overwintered in my greenhouse bed, but I will have to reseed most of that for an early spring harvest. I’m hoping to have a good variety of fresh produce from April to October, with a few selections in November, December and March.

Seed starting: Every year I re-evaluate what to start from seed and what to buy as seedlings. This year I chose to start almost everything from seed (which is actually not that much), as I did a seed inventory and discovered over 50 varieties of seed! Yikes! Nonetheless, I still bought an $8.00 bag of seed starter and two little $0.20 packs of seeds. The cheap seed packets have already provided four marigold seedlings and four basil seedlings, with seeds leftover. In the past I had trouble sprouting basil seeds, so that is something I might re-purchase every year. It is a LOT cheaper than buying a $4.00 basil plant. I am hoping to plant one or more marigolds in each raised bed to help with pest control.

Other seeds I’m starting this year are lavender, Echinacea, chamomile, heirloom tomato and pepper seeds. The peppers are not coming up so well, and the Echinacea is still in the pre-germination stage, but everything else (including LAVENDER… WOW!!!) has begun to germinate. I’m floored at how well things have germinated so far. I started some flower seeds as well, but those are several years old and may not germinate at all. My hope this year is to clean out the seed stash as much as I can.
Of the other seeds still sitting around, a few (spinach, lettuce, radishes, chard) will be planted before the last frost, and may will be planted after the last frost. This year, as last, I will continue to evaluate what vegetables and herbs we actually use, and which ones are just a waste of time and energy to grow.
 
I bought a book this winter called Carrots Love Tomatoes, about companion planting. I am learning SO MUCH about plants and gardening through this book! On area in particular that I find fascinating is about weeds; what helps, what hinders, and what the presence of certain weeds can tell you about the condition of your soil. If you can only have a few gardening books on your shelf, I would recommend this and Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew.


Chickens
 
Right now we have five laying hens and one rooster. As egg production picks up, I plan on incubating some of our own eggs and then raising or selling the chicks. I don’t think this will be a great money-maker so much as a fun project. And it will keep me from buying chicks at the farm supply stores in town. Or, at least I think it will.
 

Frugality Tidbits
My daughter and I have been spending a little time each week at the library. I pick out four books for her, and one or two books for me. This week for her I got 1) If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, 2) Heads are for Hats, 3) a book whose title I can’t remember, and 4) Blueberries for Sal. For me, I got a very old book (c.1886) about Michigan history.

Our library has a nice little toy area set up for toddlers, so our daughter loves going. In addition to books, you can also check out movies, audiobooks or magazines. The other day I noticed that they put all of the old magazines by the door for free.

Related: I started playing a new set of kids' songs on Youtube called "Seeds of Faith". They seem to be basically Bible verses set to music. Our daughter really likes them. One drawback is that they're a "music video" (not just a picture like the other songs we play), but mostly they're just lyric videos or people doing motions to the songs. The other day my husband was working late and she got cranky (and... I got cranky, too) so I put on these songs. I hate using TV as a babysitter, but I really just needed a break. When I came into the living room a few minutes later, she had found stickers somewhere and put them all over her face. So, evidently the videos are not TOO mesmerizing.
 
Butter was on sale at Kroger this week for $2.00 per pound. So naturally, I took the limit of 5 lbs. We use about one stick of butter per week (more for occasional baking), so my haul will last for at least a couple of months after we use up what is already in the freezer.
 
You GUYS!!! Another one of my orchids decided to bloom! After years of faithful watering and disappointing bud blast, I’m finally being rewarded with reblooming plants. In our last house, for some reason the plants would bud out at least once a year, but then the buds would shrivel up and die. I think the temperature or humidity in this house is more consistent or something. 

I think that's about it! I'm really excited about what this month holds.

Til next time,
-Bethany