Hi everyone! I hope all of my U.S. readers had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. Many thanks to my dad and all others who have served or are serving in our military- especially to those who have given all.

We skipped the typical barbeque this year and instead shared pizza with friends. If you want ten pizzas made in record time, order them when everyone else is having brats and burgers. As I type this I can still see a few pieces of styrofoam dinnerware strewn across our lawn. Signs of a good time had by all.

1. Groceries: I spent a lot of money on groceries this week. First we went to Walmart and spent $33.18 (see haul below). 

The next day I forgot about a potluck dish and just grabbed something at Kroger for $3.00. If eating out is a problem for most people, buying potluck dishes is mine. The season is upon us. "Did you know that we go to at least one potluck every week?" I asked Hubs. He didn't believe me at first. Until I started naming off all of the potlucks. I've been experimenting with which crowd-pleasing dishes are fastest, easiest, and cheapest to take. This week I tried deviled eggs, coleslaw and potato salad. Each of them is basically eggs or some vegetable mixed with mayonnaise and spices, so they're equally affordable. The problem? Dishes!! By the time you chop everything for coleslaw, plus mix it together in a bowl, then use another serving dish, you've left a trail of dishes in your wake. Same story with deviled eggs. I think the potato salad used the least amount of dishes and was the fastest to put together. If you have any potluck winners, leave them in the comments below. I would love to hear what your favorites are.

Later in the week we stopped at the 'village' grocery store, because it was summer in Michigan (as opposed to last month, which was winter) and we "needed" watermelon. And ice cream. And brats. And overpriced hot dog buns. We snagged all of that for a mere $13.00. 

Then I let it slip that Kroger was having a sale on ice cream sandwiches: $0.99 per box. Hubs said, of course, that we must go to Kroger to get the sandwiches. When we got to Kroger, they were all out of ice cream sandwiches. So I got a rain check. But that isn't all we got. While walking through the store, we decided that we also needed more brats, buns (at least they were cheap) and Klondike bars (not the off-brand, but real, genuine Klondikes). I also got Hubs' favorite brand of barbecue sauce on sale, with a coupon: four bottles for $0.75 each. We escaped Kroger just $17.74 poorer.

Total spent on groceries this week was $63.92.

2. Cooking: I made 1/2 lb. of butter with some raw milk that a friend gave us. Also made cheese with the leftover milk. 

3. ​Garden: I spent almost $10.00 at the nursery this week on 19 pepper plants and four watermelon plants. Hubs tilled up the remaining garden for me, and I planted sweet corn, beans, pumpkin, acorn squash, the nursery plants and some other plants I started indoors. I still have a few plants to find a home for, but most of my garden is complete.

4. Personal care: I bought some shampoo and conditioner for $0.53 per bottle with a coupon. Instead of buying Scott toilet paper with a coupon, I discovered Walmart's off-brand "1000 Sheets" toilet paper (which was cheaper) and bought that instead. I also gave my husband a haircut.

5. Laundry: during the summer we generate a lot more laundry. Between regular laundry and cloth diapers, it's about one load every day. So I have been air-drying a lot of laundry.

That's about all, folks!

Til next time,
​Bethany

​Again, guys, this update came super late. I will be coming out with a May update in a week or two, so this one is going to be short and sweet.

Chickens and Ducks

Not much happened since the opossum incident. Egg production went up a little bit. We bought feed this month.


Garden

I continued to nurse seedlings. I also started preparing the garden beds for planting. My husband tilled up some areas for row gardening. The strawberries stayed dormant.

Most of April was pretty cold; hence, no garden activity.


Honeybees

I finished assembling my hive and got to pick up my bees this month! I was pretty scared to death when I installed the package in my new hive. I got stung once and panicked about what to do. Then later I worried that I had made some awful installation mistakes and my queen would not survive. (In the end, it turned out well, though.) 

I will tell more about my beekeeping adventures in the next hobby farm post, as I only did one inspection during the month of April. I did chose to buy (and use) gloves for my beekeeping, though.


Profit & Loss

Expenses:
Chicken feed- $42.00
Beekeeping gloves- $11.49
Total expenses: $53.49

Income:
Farmers Market book royalties- $6.64

Net profit: ($46.85)
Year-to-date net profit: ($663.68)

That's about it! Most of my non-profit accumulated thus far has been from my bee project: $570.62, to bee exact. LOL. 

Til next time,
-Bethany

Note: Over the next few days I'm going to post a few things that "missed" their deadline. My apologies for being so untimely!

March was pretty slow here on the hobby farm. It was so slow that I considered not even writing a report. Better late than never, I guess.

Chickens & Ducks

Right now there are 17 birds in the coop. We had a single chicken die in March. Before that happened, I suspected that something fishy was going on. I noticed that kitchen scraps- including large potato chunks- had been dragged into a building across the fence from the chicken area. While some of the chickens do sneak under the fence, I highly doubted that the chickens could or would drag food items into that area. It seemed more like something a pack rat would do. A few days later, I found one of the chickens, mauled, in front of the chicken coop. Of course this was upsetting, but it was, again, fishy. Usually when a raccoon gets a chicken it will drag it out to the boundary of the fence. Raccoons almost never leave their prey right where they killed it. Hawks strangle their prey and carry it off.... so, what was I dealing with?

Obviously, I started shutting the chickens in at night after that. Some people shut chickens in all year long, but I get lazy in the winter and just leave their little door open. That way I only have to go out there once a day. Anyway, two nights after the mysterious killing, I turned the light on in the chicken coop and caught a opossum in there- red handed!! Thankfully he didn't have a chicken, but was probably just stealing eggs. Either way, he was... exterminated.

In March, the chickens started picking up laying eggs a bit. 


Garden

Not much to report for the garden I started some seeds using a Jiffy greenhouse. I think I'll do this with almost all of my early start seeds for next year. It's so convenient and I lose fewer seedlings because I don't have to transplant so often.


Honeybees

​My bee project for March was putting together my Langstroth hive. I ordered the first deep, cover and bottom board assembled already, but assembled two honey super boxes and 20 frames myself. I also realized that I should have another deep, so I ordered an unassembled kit for that as well.


Profit & Loss

Income: $0.00

Expenses: $72.65 (extra hive deep)

Net profit: ($72.65)
Year-to-date net profit: ($616.83)

My profit and loss is turning into just a loss. I guess it really is a "hobby" farm now. I'm not selling many farmers market books, and the ones I  do sell wouldn't begin to cover chicken feed, let alone a new bee setup. During the first quarter of 2018 I spent $64.00 on chicken feed ($21.33/mo.). The rest of our net "non-profit" is from my new bee setup. They are less like value-producing livestock at this point and more like cash-sucking pets. 

For a couple years now I've been slowly transitioning the priority away from earning and more toward just saving money with our farm (and doing it for my own pleasure). I feel like if I want to be earning money, my time is better spent writing. In order to measure the true "profit" of the hobby farm, I should be calculating how many eggs and other food products I harvest, since that' now the goal instead of earning with dollars. Perhaps I will try to keep track of this in the month of May.

I'll be coming out with an April report pretty soon. Stay tuned!

-Bethany

1. Groceries: It was a no-spend week for groceries.

2. Cooking: I didn't do any notable cooking this week. For meals, we had the usual: hash, tacos, eggs, venison steaks, leftovers, more hash. I'm getting very bored with cooking; the freezer has a lot less variety now, plus the weather is warm, and I don't feel like making the soups and casseroles that were appetizing during the winter months. 

3. Gardening: I put in tomato plants, cucumber plants, and purple asparagus this week. I have never planted asparagus before, so we'll see how that goes. I also weeded and mulched my raised beds, and set up my sprinkler system. During the sunny days this week, I spent at least an hour every day weeding strawberries. With Baby, an hour's worth of weeding takes at least 90 minutes.

Raccoons killed two of our chickens this week, so I spent some time fixing up their pen, moving them around, etc., hoping to fix the problem. My brother-in-law found and eradicated a whole family of them, so if they were the problem, we will not lose any more chickens.

On Monday I had a very successful beehive inspection. I was able to find the queen, and also saw eggs and larvae- something I hadn't been able to do yet. Now that I know what I'm looking for, I hope the other inspections will be faster. 

4. Reading: I finished Meet the Frugalwoods (free with my Scribd subscription) and also renewed two library books: Montessori from the Start and The Art and Science of Grazing.

5. Writing: I worked on the manuscript for The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Produce. I still have some recipes to try and graphics to make, but otherwise, I've finished the actual writing. Next, I'll be editing the whole thing for grammar and typos.

6. Cans: I collected cans to recycle, while on walks this week.

So, that is about it for the week. No marvelous accomplishments, just slow and steady work that will hopefully pay off long-term. I spent most of my time this week either outside or reading. We also had social events and a few other surprise issues to deal with that took up some time. Summer is like that- lots of outside time, lots of people time. I've learned to expect it, but still sometimes feel cheated when I get to the end of the week and don't have much to show for it. But gardens and people (and books) are worth it!

What did you do last week?

Til next time,
-Bethany

​1. Groceries: I spent $20.87 on groceries this week. Instead of shopping at Walmart, Kroger or Aldi, I hit up a local health food festival near us. I came home with two pounds of beef, two pounds of pork, a (free) cheese stick and a (free) tiny carton of milk.

Like many people, I have a hard time reconciling my healthy, sustainable self with my cheap self. I realize that there are some serious issues with our modern farming systems. In my writing, though, I tell people not to buy locally produced, grass-fed or organic products because they are way too expensive on a tiny budget. If finances are your first priority, you can't afford to buy health food. You just can't. There are ways to HAVE health food, but you can't afford to buy it. As I mentioned in my last spending report, however, we have not been using up all of our grocery money. It's been too easy to buy junk food and still be under budget. I'm ready for a new challenge besides just spending not-a-lot of money on food.

While I don't plan on buying everything organic, I would love to gradually transition to mostly grass-fed meats because I feel like they have real health benefits. Of course there are some health benefits to certified organic products as well, but I feel like the difference is greater between grass-fed and grain-fed than between organic and non-organic.  Over the past few weeks, I've been pricing out grass-fed meats to see what a good ballpark price is. I looked at buying meat by the piece and also by the whole animal. It's actually slightly cheaper ($1.00 per pound or so) to purchase grass-fed meat by the piece, if you stick to buying ground meat or the very cheapest cuts.

My festival-purchased meats were $6.00/lb. (beef) and $4.50/lb. (sausage). Average price per pound was $5.21. While this is 2-3 times more expensive than what I normally buy, it's the going rate for what I was looking for. 

Aside: I also got two Free Friday items at Kroger! You can see these in my haul picture later.

2. Cooking: I made two potluck items this week out of things we had on hand. I also made yogurt, Greek yogurt, and "healthy" sugar-free brownies. Meals: baked potatoes, leftovers, tacos, "southwest" potatoes, hash, mac 'n' cheese, hotdogs, pizza, ham and potato soup, and more leftovers.

3. Gardening: It was a bit cooler this week, so I didn't do as much gardening. I did weed the strawberries and some of the raised beds.

4. Free stuff: A nearby town had their annual "junk days" where people set out their junk by the curb. For date night, we went "junking". A lot of it is just trash, but I did find a nice belt, some Nike flip flops, flower pots and a Thermos that I'll either sell on Ebay or use (if it doesn't sell).

​A friend also gave me a very nice cast iron pan. It's deep, kind of like a dutch oven, and has a lid. I look forward to using it soon!

5. Personal Care: I restocked my stash of baby wipes at Kroger for $0.66 per package. I waited until I had coupons and they went on sale. Huggies and Pampers are so much better than Parent's Choice. I buy the individual smaller packages to keep in our diaper bag. At home we use cloth wipes, so these disposable ones will last a long time!

In the pic below you can also see the Free Friday deals I picked up:

That is about it for the week. I feel like my choice to buy $5.00/lb. meat needs more explanation; perhaps a whole different post. In fact, I think I will prepare a post for later in the week. 

Til then,
Bethany

It's that time again! Here's a spending report on my four "focus areas" of 2018:

​
​Groceries ($130.00): $90.52

We spent 75% of the grocery money this month. All this year, we've easily paid a lot less than I budgeted. On average, we've had $37.53 left over at the end of the month. And what we spend includes impulse buys, going over budget some weeks, etc. I think I may adjust this number to $100.00 per month, until further notice. That will make it more of a challenge and more fun for me. I would love to go back to the bare bones basics of "how to eat for $10.00 per week" and see if I can do any better than that.

The obvious answer for why we've got so much money left is that I'm budgeting for three, and only two of us are eating most of the food. When I set the budget, I wasn't sure if we'd need more than $20.00 per week (more food because I'm nursing still, more food because Baby eats solids, more convenience foods because I'm a busy parent, etc.). In all honesty, I think if we stayed away from junk food and impulse purchases we could keep it under $87.00/mo, which is $20.00 per week- a two-person budget. We won't be giving up impulse purchases any time soon, though, so I'll add an extra $13.00/mo. for wiggle room.

Things I did this month to save on groceries: I made a Youtube vlog compilation of how I use cooking skills and cheap pantry staples to prepare meals. The video shows a lot of "frugal accomplishments" I do on a regular basis. You can watch it below:

​I was shocked at the sheer amount of food available when I carefully followed the grocery list from The Housewife's Guide To Frugal Food. It's amazing how many different recipes you can make from basic ingredients like eggs, milk, meat, flour, potatoes, and vegetables. It does take creativity to prevent boredom, which is something I want to work on over the summer. 


Personal Care ($10.00): $7.27

'Twas the month of body wash! Hubs bought a two-pack of his favorite scent, and I bought a garage sale two-pack (uh... two different kinds) that will hopefully last us a very, very long time.

Things I did this month to cut expenses on personal care: we've continued to use up those little hotel toiletries. I'm so sick of coaxing conditioner out of those small bottles. It's crazy!!


Household Supplies ($25.00): $20.73

Things we bought in April: toilet bowl cleaner ($1.53), elastic ($0.97), laundry soap ($16.28- I bought enough to last five or six months) and permanent markers ($1.95).

Things I did this month to save on household supplies: I bought three silicone baking mats. These will hopefully eliminate the cost of parchment paper and wax paper. 


Clothing: $14.00

I bought a hat and scarf for myself at a garage sale ($1.00). The rest of the money I spent on Baby's 12-18 month clothing stash.


Robot Vacuum: $164.00

So... uh... I bought a robot vacuum. It's the best thing ever. This vacuum wasn't an expensive Roomba, but a cheaper brand that I will hopefully get to review on Youtube. The robot functions more like a sweeper, picking up little pieces of debris and dust in a random (but surprisingly thorough) way. It's not as good as a real vacuum or person sweeping, but it produces a relatively clean floor with almost no effort from me. It has a few drawbacks, like the fact that it just pushes around larger pieces of debris, and sometimes it gets stuck under furniture. But overall I have enjoyed this little appliance a lot, and I don't regret the purchase one bit.

We also spent quite a bit of money on gardening supplies; far more than I normally spend, but I'm trying to adjust my gardening habits to be more baby friendly and less time-intensive. Some things I bought were landscape fabric, seed starter pellets, orchid potting soil and flower bulbs. 

Since we've lived here, my goal was to slowly plant a few perennials every year to build up a relatively maintenance-free flower garden. So far I've planted lilies, roses, delphiniums, blazing stars, gladioli, and tuberose. To my delight, my mother-in-law and previous owners of the house put in plenty of iris, hyacinth, lilacs, peonies, daffodils, more roses, poppies and many others that we get to enjoy every year.


****


I guess that's about all for this spending report! Hope you all had a good, frugal April as well!
Til next time,

-Bethany

Hi everyone! I had a fun week. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous. I haven't been doing a whole lot indoors besides general maintenence- dishes, laundry, and meals. I feel like a little mouse who is finally seeing the light of day after months of darkness and cold. I'm so excited to be outside that I find myself scurrying around here and there, not getting much done but enjoying being outside.

Groceries: We spent $25.50 at Aldi and $9.90 at Kroger. I shopped at Kroger because tortillas were $0.49 per package!!! I bought the limit of five, and I also stocked up on  sour cream and bought cottage cheese for my Hubs and picked up a Free Friday item. I also got a bottle of on-sale kombucha to make a SCOBY with. Because it's almost kombucha season!!!

You can watch my Aldi haul below:

​Total spent this week on groceries was $35.40. After four months straight of having extra room in our grocery budget, I think I'm going to cut it from $130.00 per month to $100.00. Our average spending for the last four months was $90.59. Setting the budget at $100.00 will still leave a bit of room. You can see my Kroger haul below: 

2. Cooking: I made turkey broth and cooked up the two-pound bag of beans we bought at Aldi. I used some of the beans, put some in the fridge for this week and froze the rest. We had a lot of "Cinco de Mayo" type meals last week and a fair amount of eating out.

3. Gardening: We tilled up some areas for row garden items. I planted beets, onions, borage and chervil. I also cleaned up some of my raised beds. We spent a few hours weeding strawberries as well. It is exciting to see all of the perennials come up; tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, lilies, blazing star... that's just the flowers! Then of course my mints, rhubarb, the asparagus and strawberry plants, some volunteer plants and the herbs I added last year: anise hyssop, horehound and several lavender plants.

3.Garage sales: I went to a local church's "sharing corner"- basically a giant garage sale where everything is free. Several weeks before the event, they put a trailer in the church parking lot for donations. Last week I decluttered some things and put them in the trailer so others could benefit. At the event found a bunch of vintage patterns (which I LOVE), four onesies and a pair of sandals for Baby, a book, some heavy interfacing for sewing, and a Scrabble game. Years ago I found a "deluxe" edition of Scrabble in somebody's junk pile in town. I sold the red tiles on Ebay, but kept the board because it wasn't worth anything. I had never seen such a nice board, with a spinning base and outlines for the tiles so your words don't get messed up if someone accidentally hits the board.

I used the tiles from my "new" free Scrabble to go with my deluxe board. I'm still missing a few letters, but that doesn't affect the game too much. Scrabble is one of my all-time favorite games (but I'm a stickler for correct spelling... if misspellings are allowed, the game is no fun at all). I forced Hubs to play with me once already, and then forced us to keep playing until I won. LOL! He is such a good sport.

4. Free Scribd membership: several weeks ago I bought an ebook bundle called, "The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle". It came with some bonus coupons; most of which I decided not to use because I'd have to pay shipping for the "free" stuff. One of the bonuses, however, was a free three-month trial to a subscription reading service called Scribd. It's like a combination of Audible and Kindle Unlimited. Except it's 1000% better!!!

Unlike Audible, Scribd allows you to listen to unlimited audio books, and it's half the price. Unlike Kindle Unlimited, Scribd has a wide variety of ebooks, including from niche authors who aren't traditionally published. I was able to find almost my entire reading list on the site. I hope to get everything finished before my free subscription runs out. At $9.00 per month, though, I think the membership is probably worth paying for. You can find all sorts of books in both audio and ebook format, plus sheet music and articles. If you're a reader, I'd definitely consider signing up. You guys know I love the library, but this is so much faster and easier. No need to make special (or weekly) trips to the library to pick things up.

5. Envelope system: I've decided to try using the envelope system for my "big four" spending categories: groceries, household, personal care and clothing. We are going to a Financial Peace class again just for fun, and I got to wondering if I unintentionally spend more money by using a mishmash of cash, cards, Paypal websites that already have our debit card number instead of just using cash. I'm not going to stop buying things online, but before I click "pay now", I'll pull the appropriate amount out of my envelopes.

Instead of making or buying an envelope system, I found a nice leather one in our old Dave Ramsey class kit. 

6. Ebay: Cleaned out some of my old sewing patterns and sold them for $20.00 on Ebay.

I think that's all for this week. How are you all doing?

-Bethany

Oh boy, I'm FINALLY getting this post out. It would have been out on Monday, but I was waiting for the garage sale video to upload to my Google account (phone was having internet problems) and then I had to edit the video and upload it to Youtube before I posted this. So.... it's finally done.

I'll be honest; I haven't been keeping track of accomplishments as well as I'd like to. I've been looking into trying a bullet journal for random record keeping (daily egg count, frugal accomplishments, garden records, etc.). If any of you have experience with a bullet journal, I'd love to hear your opinion on how it works or any tips you may have.

1. Groceries: I didn't do any regular grocery shopping. We did buy some ice cream and ice cream comes for $6.00 at a local grocery store, and my husband bought some cookout supplies for a backyard barbecue. Total spent on groceries was $16.00.

2. Cooking: l made cheese this week with close-to-expiring milk. I also cooked a frozen turkey (bought on sale after Easter!) and froze the meat. The carcass is still sitting in the fridge, waiting to be made into broth. I made meals throughout the week (sorry, I didn't keep track of what they were). Lastly, I made a cosmetically challenged but very delicious fruit crisp from frozen fruit! 

The recipe I used is the same one in my book, The Housewife's Guide to Menu Planning. Tips: Don't overfill the dish like I did (fill halfway with filling and crisp, then put the extras in a separate container to bake). Also don't over bake, and lastly, the crisp is best on the second day! I think that's because the fruit filling has time to seep into the "crisp" part on top. My recipe was originally a rhubarb crisp recipe that I got from my mom. What I love about this recipe is that it doesn't use canned pie filling. Of course you CAN use pie filling, but I don't have a lot of that lying around. It's almost rhubarb season here, so I'm looking forward to using the recipe as it was originally intended. 🙂

3. Gardening: I planted peas, lettuce and radishes in my raised beds this week. I also weeded a tiny part of the strawberry patch. Baby Girl and I put rotted chicken manure on the other beds, raked it out and covered them with landscape fabric. Usually I use newspaper or grass clippings for mulch, and I will do that for the peas. Now that we have a baby though, I have less time to collect grass clippings. So this year I decided to try the landscape fabric on some of our squares. Hopefully the fabric will save time (like my Jiffy "professional" greenhouse garden did) and allow me to still produce the same amount of vegetables as usual, while taking care of Baby and the big strawberry patch.

I also planted an onion and some garlic bulbs that sprouted in the fridge. I made a video that will hopefully be on Youtube at some point. And last of all.... the moment I have been waiting for, for YEARS....

ONE OF MY ORCHIDS FINALLY BLOOMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started my orchid collection in 2015, when Hubs bought me an orchid for Valentine's Day. Since then I have added  six more orchids; four full size and two miniature ones. Multiple times over the orchids have grown new flower spikes, but ALL of them have succumbed to bud blast (the buds shrivel up and drop before opening). It was one of the mini ones that finally bloomed. I am such a proud orchid mama.

You may notice that the poor thing only has three blooms. Two of the blossoms did fall off due to bud blast. But at least one of them has made it to maturity, which makes me so, so happy.

4. Clothing: Back before Baby was born, I made several nursing tank tops like this. I ended up not using them because when paired with a button-down shirt, the neckline hung too low for my liking. This week I discovered that I can wear them under normal T-shirts and use the combination like a nursing top. The T-shirt gets bunched up depending on what side Baby is on, but if you use a similar-colored tank underneath, it doesn't look too weird. No buttons to mess around with, and no cover needed, really. In early pregnancy the tanks can act as belly bands. I wish I knew about this trick months ago! The only downside is that the two layers get warm on a hot day. But I was happy to find a use for my tanks AND find a way to wear my regular T-shirts. I had planned on purchasing another nursing shirt ($20.00) but now I won't. I like the nursing shirts, but they sag, stretch and hang funny after being used for so long.

5. Garage sales: I got to go to some garage sales this week!! I bought some personal care items and clothing. You can see my haul below:

In total, I spent $12.00 on clothes for Baby. That seems a bit much for a partial wardrobe in one size. I had planned on spending $75.00 per person this year for clothes, and Baby has less than $25.00 left for the whole year. 😞 Between Hubs and I we've spent less than $25.00 though, so there is plenty of wiggle room left overall. Really, adults don't need that much new clothing every year. 

6. Beeswax: I took a big chunk of beeswax that I bought at Hobby Lobby years ago, and melted it down into pellets for easier use. Previously I used a designated beeswax knife to make shavings every time I needed some. That took a TON of time!! The new pellets will be so much easier to use and less messier. In case you're wondering, I used the same silicone potholder to make the pellets as I did to make sugar-free chocolate chips. In addition, I found several chunks of burr (unnecessary) comb in my hive that had to be removed. I'm going to save the chunks until there is enough to melt down for some more pellets.

I believe that is all for this week! How did you all do? 

​-Bethany