​Hello everyone! I had a pretty decent week by frugal standards. It's been one of those weeks where your look back and literally can't remember anything you did. Thankfully I have a daily planner where I keep notes on all that happened.

1. Shopping: I spent $4.46 on my Youtube shopping haul (see below). Later in the week we again stopped at Kroger to pick up some Free Friday items that I didn't have time to look for during my first trip. Some of the employees had set up some free photo ops (see picture above!) that we took advantage of. Sometimes the little things make life a whole lot more fun.

​Total spent this week on groceries was $25.53, with the vast majority of that being our last-minute Sunday lunch purchases. Out of those items, we still have two leftover chicken breasts, half the bag of potatoes, a whole container of ice cream and one cantaloupe. 

There are a few ways we could have saved money on our patio dinner. 

1) 50% could have been cut automatically on the meat, had we just used some from our freezer. As it was, the grill idea was spontaneous and we didn't have time to thaw anything out.

I do still plan on buying chicken for grill meals, because my free spent-hen/rooster meat is much more suitable for the Instant Pot or crock pot. However, we paid $1.79/lb. for the chicken breasts, and I know I can get thighs for $0.68/lb. at Walmart. 

2) 30-50% could have been saved on the potatoes by purchasing regular brown potatoes instead of red ones. I wanted to see if the red ones tasted better on the grill. We didn't like the flavor of the grilled red potatoes as much as the peeled, grilled brown potatoes, so that will save money on future grill meals.

As we get more comfortable with the grill, I would like to have some regular "company" meal ideas that I can plan ahead for and fit into our normal grocery budget. Even if I can just do sides and dessert from pantry items, that would be a great start. There are a lot of ways to save when hosting a meal, but many of them get blown to pieces if the meal is a last-minute affair. Planning, even for unexpected things, is so important!

Total grocery spending for the month of July was $38.07. That's less than half of our normal budget, but spending typically drops during the spring and summer months thanks to free milk, eggs, produce and yearly "cleaning out the freezer". I know that the extra $40.00 from July will be spent in November when those fabulous Thanksgiving sales roll around and I purchase large amounts of butter, flour, sugar and other staple pantry items.

2. Garden: harvested cucumbers, calendula and lavender from the garden.

3. Made yogurt.

4. Line-dried one load of laundry.

5. Received an Ebates check in the mail ($31.00) and also returned some recycle-able cans worth $7.90. I really like Ebates (affiliate link) and pop cans because they are literally free money. If you're just buying household items it may take a while for Ebates rebates to add up, but I also try to get rebates whenever I purchase wedding/baby/Christmas gifts. What really adds up? My husband's business purchases. Two weeks ago he wanted me to buy a tool for him on Ebay (he doesn't have an account). It only took 30 seconds for me to go through Ebates before purchasing, and I earned $1.00 for doing so. I am going to try putting an Ebates widget on his office computer and see if my earnings go up at all. :)

6. Collected more cans on various walks. Like using Ebates, it only takes a few extra minutes during every 30 minute walk (that I'm doing anyway) to pick up cans. In MI, most of the pop and alcoholic beverage cans are worth $0.10 each. On an average walk, I can find about five cans. At four walks per week, that's an effortless $8.00 per month that I can earn. Which is pretty cool.

7. Got some free all-natural spa items! I babysat for a friend the other week and she traded me product (she sells Lemongrass Spa stuff) for babysitting.

So, that is really about it for the week. I spent a lot of time weeding strawberries, cleaning house and working on book marketing stuff. The weeding and cleaning hasn't paid off yet, but my book royalty earnings were the largest they've been all year. I'm not ready to give actual numbers, but... I made almost enough in July to buy the new Instant Pot I've been drooling over! 

(Yes, I already have an Instant Pot, and I love it. But my 6-quart model doesn't make yogurt, and the much-wished-for 8-quart one does. Plus, IPs are like crock pots... it never hurts to have an extra one.)

How did you do last week?

​1. Shopping: I didn't do a shopping haul this week. On Sunday we went to Walmart to buy flour, oregano, and some non-food items. We also ended up buying a package of cookie mix. There is a certain type of Hershey's cookie that we sometimes get from the Walmart bakery, and we were wondering if a cookie mix would make the same quantity/quality as the bakery cookies (for $1.00 cheaper!). After an Ibotta rebate ($0.25) the total spent on groceries this week came to $3.50.

​Some meals we had this week were turkey wraps, BLT wraps, ham wraps, leftovers, pasta salad, baked potatoes and some AMAZING venison steaks and potatoes that my husband cooked on the grill. We bought a new grill last week, and it has been a lot of fun to try new cooking projects together.

Hubs was out of town on Friday night to early Saturday morning, so on Thursday I just ate scrambled eggs and leftovers. On Wednesday afternoon I made some cinnamon rolls to send with him on his road trip (this is notable because I NEVER make cinnamon rolls!). 

2. Garden: I harvested raspberries, lavender, calendula, cucumbers, lettuce, and some more green beans from my MIL's garden. I also planted some potatoes that had started sprouting in the kitchen cupboard.

3. We went "out to eat" at Arby's and Subway (date night!) this week. We used a few coupons I had for Arby's. Restaurant eating isn't really frugal, but... did I mention that we spent $3.50 on groceries this week??

I also used a $0.50 off coupon for toothpaste at Walmart.

4. Line dried three loads of laundry.

5. Processed two male ducks. This has been on my to-do list for MONTHS! So happy to have it done.

6. Made ice cream and mayonnaise from scratch. This was my first time making mayonnaise in the Vitamix, and it worked like a charm. I used 100% canola oil this time around, but I think next time I will try mixing in 25% olive oil and see if it affects the flavor.

​DIY Mayo: Worth It?

Is homemade mayo cheaper than store-bought? My recipe cost $0.31 per cup. Bent 'n' dent mayo cost $0.20 per cup ($0.75/jar). Regular off-brand store mayo is similar in cost to homemade... perhaps a tiny bit cheaper.

That being said, homemade mayo has fresh ingredients with no preservatives/additives, and I do think the canola oil is an upgrade from vegetable (aka soybean) oil that is found in most brands of commercially prepared mayo. 

Because we're using so much of it (wraps, pasta/potato/chicken salad, etc.) and because we have extra eggs, I'll continue to do the homemade mayo. However, during autumn I think I'll switch back to store-bought because it has a longer shelf life and we don't use it all that much for winter meals (soups, casseroles, roasts, etc.).

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7. Learned how to transfer CD audio books onto my phone. This is a big deal, because I do almost 100% of listening on my phone. This spring I tried using Audible, and came to the conclusion that it was not worth the money. For most audio books, I would be paying $1.00 per hour to have someone read to me. I can easily burn through 4-5 hours of audio per day, so that was not a sustainable education program. I had some CD audio books lying around, but I hadn't listened to them because I can't take my laptop out to the garden.

Recently I ordered an audio book from our library's interloan system, which was FREE. With Hubs' help, I ripped the audio files onto my computer, and then moved those files onto my phone via USB cable. You can read how to do this here.

I finished the book in three days. Since then, I've found two other garage sale/thrift store CD audio books to put on my phone. I think physical CDs (from the library or garage sales) are going to be a much better deal long-term than using Audible. $15.00 per month will buy a LOT of garage sale CDs and free library audio books.

8. Lastly, I made my very first stuffed animal! I've had a vintage 1930s/40s stuffed animal pattern lying around for over a year. My original plan was to sell it, but it's only worth a couple dollars. Instead of selling it, I saved it to use. Unlike books and wooden/plastic toys, stuffed animals just don't last 80 years and retain their usable quality. The vintage pattern allowed me to make an authentic "antique" toy that will last many years.

Total cost for the stuffed elephant was $0.25. The only cost to me was the stuffing, which I pulled and reused from a $0.25 garage sale pillow. For the fabric, I used an old pair of Hubs' jeans and some scraps from my stash. The eyes were two black buttons, also from my stash.

This being my first stuffed animal ever, it took a long time. Probably five or six hours, if I'm being honest. Normally I try to stay away from crafty stuff that isn't very productive (stuffed animals are a dime a dozen), but finishing the project was very satisfying. It was my first time doing a stuffed animal, so not everything went peachy. I will be uploading a Youtube video this week with details, some of my mistakes and things I would have done differently, and a pattern review!

Youtube Videos

I only uploaded two videos this week:
July Garden Update
Sustainable Chickens: Broody Hens vs. Incubators

Hope you all have a wonderful last week of July!
-Bethany 

​Last week was fantastic. I feel like I accomplished a lot with the time that I had. One highlight of the week was recieving my proof copy of The Housewife's Guide to Menu Planning. This is a book I've been working on revising for the last several months (it was previously called Pizza Night) as a companion guide to The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food. 

To those of you who are interested, I will be giving away copies of the ebook version FOR FREE in order to get as many Amazon reviews as possible. When the book is published and available, I will send out my July newsletter with a link to the free ebook. If you want to download the book to your Kindle/device for free, be sure you are signed up for my monthly newsletter. You can do that here.

1. Shopping: I didn't buy any groceries last week. BUT, the week prior I did make a trip to our not-so-local Amish discount store. I spent $29.47; you can watch my haul below:

​Some meals we had this week were: rice/cheeseburger helper, taco salad, hash, baked potatoes, leftovers and fajitas on the grill. Yum! We did a lot better this week not going to restaurants. I packed a lunch for one day trip, which saved $5.00-$10.00. On Friday I spent the afternoon babysitting, and by the time I got home Hubs had already left to pick up pizza. Lol!!! We enjoyed the pizza anyway, and had leftovers the next day for lunch.

2. Garden: harvested red raspberries, lettuce, lavender, and calendula.

3. Froze 16 quarts of green beans. My mother-in-law will be out of state for a few weeks, and said we could pick what was ripe from her garden. She specifically mentioned green beans and squash, which is awesome because I didn't plant any green beans OR squash this year. We ate some summer squash fresh, and I was able to put about four month's worth of green beans in the freezer.

4. Cooking: Made yogurt and French dressing from scratch. I used the recipe in my book, The Housewife's Guide to Frugal Food, (affiliate link) except I cut the amount of sugar in half. It was remarkably similar to the Aldi French dressing I bought several weeks ago. The recipe is also available in The Tightwad Gazette (I don't remember which volume- affiliate link is for the all-in-one edition) for those of you who have that book at your library or at home.

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French Dressing from Scratch: Worth the Effort?

Was the homemade dressing cheaper than my Aldi dressing? Even with free onions, garlic and vinegar, my homemade dressing cost $1.14 to make four cups. The Aldi dressing was $1.29 for two cups. Therefore, I saved $1.44 by making my own dressing instead of buying it. It took just 15-20 minutes to make (including washing the blender), which put the hourly wage around $5.00. I think this is probably worth my time to do again.

I didn't have enough red wine vinegar for the dressing recipe, so I used some strawberry wine vinegar that I made several years back. It worked like a charm! I refilled the store-bought vinegar bottle with my homemade vinegar for next time.
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5. A friend gave me several boxes of used clothing to pick through. I found a whole box full to keep, along with some DVDs and a few other miscellaneous items that will come in handy over the next year.

6. Borrowed three books and one audio book from the library. I ordered one paperback and the audio book through our state's interloan system. The interloan system (it's called MELCat in Michigan) gives library card holders access to books at every public library in the state. I've saved hundreds of dollars by borrowing niche books not available at my local library instead of buying them on Amazon.

Audio books are an even better deal, because instead of saving $4.00-$5.00, you save $15.00 or more for each book you listen to. 

7. Line dried ALMOST one load of laundry. It rained on laundry day, so I dried most of the load (socks and underwear) in our kitchen beneath the ceiling fan. The pants and jeans, however, didn't dry completely because our house is SO humid in the summer. So I had to finish off those in the dryer.

8. Made soap.

9. Sold a used book on Amazon. After fees, I earned $7.01. Amazon charged $5.00 in seller fees for an $11.00 book. If you don't purchase their special seller membership, the fees are very high. After the book sold, I removed all of my other listings because they were just not worth selling. Instead, I will try to sell them on Ebay or just donate them to Goodwill.

10. Collected recyclable cans on various walks.

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Youtube Videos:

I uploaded two videos (besides my grocery haul) this week:

1. How I Do Menu Planning (ANNOUNCEMENT!)
2. Selling at a Farmers Market: Calculating Net Profit

I hope you are having a fantastic and frugal week!
-Bethany

​1. Shopping: I spent $5.10 on groceries this week. You can see my shopping haul below:

​We have been eating a lot of eggs, goat milk (and cheese and yogurt) and garden produce like lettuce and berries. Most of my meal efforts have been geared toward using up those free staples. This week we had salad,  grilled cheese sandwiches, baked potatoes and leftovers. We ate out a LOT this week. Monday we had dinner at Famous Dave's (Hubs' business paid), Thursday we went on a date (that's normal, but...), Friday we ended up running to Home Depot and had dinner at Little Ceasar's, and Saturday we were gone most of the day and had breakfast at McDonalds. On Sunday after church we both got $0.50 Frosties and some french fries at Wendy's. Not a real meal, but still eating out.

Between the 4-5 meals at home and 5-6 meals out, we also went to several potluck lunches/dinners this week. And there were several "meals" that I ate by myself consisting of eggs or yogurt and granola. It was CRAZY last week.

2. Garden: harvested black & red raspberries, a couple strawberries, lettuce, thyme, lavender and calendula from the garden. I also harvested Japanese beetles for my chickens, and grass clippings to use as mulch!

​3. Made yogurt, cheese, and Greek yogurt. I also made my very first Instant Pot cheesecake!! I used half cream cheese (bought on sale) and half Greek yogurt from last week in order to make it more frugal. The yogurt make the cheesecake lighter than normal and not as sharp, but we enjoyed the results. :) I think it actually tasted better a few days AFTER it was made. 

In order to waste as little of my goat milk as possible, it goes through several stages before it gets thrown out.

A) Liquid milk. This sits in the fridge between 1-4 days.
B) Yogurt or cheese. Before I make either, the cream is skimmed from the top of each jar and saved in the freezer until I have enough to make butter. The yogurt and/or cheese sits in the fridge for another week. Usually the cheese gets eaten, but sometimes there is leftover yogurt.
C) Greek yogurt. My week-old yogurt is strained to make Greek yogurt (or "yogurt cheese").
D) Cheesecake! This is going to be the last hurrah for my milk before it goes to the chickens.

You could do this with any kind of milk, not just goat's milk. I like this system because it stretches the milk past the normal 1-2 weeks AND gives you higher value dairy products besides just liquid milk. At current milk prices in our area, $1.70 (one gallon) per person could supply us with a week's worth of milk, yogurt, cheese and possibly enough leftovers for cheesecake. Yum!!

4. Collected cans and bottles on various walks to recycle for $$.

5. Went to the Bent 'n' Dent discount store!!! I am saving this haul for next week's Youtube video even though I technically spent the money on Saturday. 

6. Line-dried two loads of laundry.

Guys, that is literally IT for frugal accomplishments this week. When you don't stay home, you can't save a lot of money. I did spend a lot of time in the garden and working on writing projects this week. Those are long-term money savers (earners) but week by week it is slow progress. 

So here's hoping to a frugal-er week!
-Bethany ​

 Chickens & Ducks

Fail #1 on the farm this month was a raccoon infestation. We had one chicken die of old age, and at least one chicken plus one duck get eaten by raccoons. There was also a good amount of feed wasted/eaten by raccoons. Thankfully the raccoon traps have been doing their job and we have not lost any more animals to critters. I started tying down my trash can lids (I use tin trash cans for feed storage) so there hasn't been more feed wasted, either.

Right now we have 22 birds; three ducks (a female and two males), three roosters and 16 laying hens. I'm feeding four pounds of feed per day ($0.66) and getting about 11 eggs per day. According to the cost of feed, I'm paying about $0.72/dozen for eggs. For the amount of birds we have, I'm impressed that the chickens are still laying as well as they were this Spring. It proves that most of the birds that died over the past few months were NOT laying eggs.

And for the GOOD NEWS: Broody hens! I have two broody hens right now. One is just a nuisance (she switches nests and makes me fight for all the eggs), but I think the other broody hen will be successful. Both broodies are bantams or bantam cross-breeds. My successful broody hen is actually in with Adi, away from the other chickens (she and one rooster prefer to be with the goats). She is a bantam/barred rock cross and was hen-raised herself. The nuisance broody hen still prefers to be in the chicken coop. This creates a problem because she's not sitting on HER OWN eggs, but on whatever pile she can find. That is, the eggs I want to eat for breakfast every morning. I've tried moving her over with the goats, but she always finds a way to get back in with the others. I'm going to keep trying to separate her.


Goats

The goats are doing well. Adi's milk production has gone down a little, and now she's giving about three cups per day. I'm feeding her about 1.5 pounds of grain per day ($0.21), so my cost for a gallon of goat's milk is about $1.12 per gallon. That's really cheap for specialty milk, but it's technically free for me because I sold those cute little goat kids to pay for mama's feed.

It's important that I keep track of milk production and feed consumption so I know when to stop milking Adi. As long as she's milking, I'm going to feed as much grain as she will eat while she's on the stand. Eventually it will get to the point where I'm feeding 1/2-1 lb. per day, but getting less than a gallon of milk per week. At that point it's not really worth milking her anymore. 

I have a limited budget in 2017 for goat feed (not counting on farmers market to cover costs), so I'll need to be careful about how long I keep milking. When I stop milking I can cut back on grain, eventually stopping it completely until winter. This will obviously help with expenses for a few months. Last year I stopped milking in October I believe, but this year I may quit earlier.

Barry is doing great on his little field adjacent to Adi's. He has been eating primarily pasture since Adi's kids were born at the beginning of April, and he spends his days happily munching away. I'll start feeding him grain in October when I put the two goats back together.


Strawberry Patch

My market strawberry patch is doing pretty well. Except a bunch of deer have been eating my plants!!! My in-laws (brother-in-law has some plants beside mine) put up a fence and some scarecrows in an effort to scare away the deer. I think it's working.

I have been keeping strawberry expenditures separate from hobby farm expenses because it's a separate project. However, it WILL be replacing farmers market income next year, so I thought I should write about it in the hobby farm post. I paid $54.00 for plants, with the expectation that I would pick strawberries for the neighbor lady and earn enough to cover the plants. I ended up earning $60.00, so I put the excess amount into the P & L "income" category.


Farmers Market Fail

My final fail of the month was a Thursday night market that I signed up for. I went through my usual routine, bringing all of my usual items and setting up the booth as usual, but in a different location at a different time. I ended up selling less than half of what I usually sell, even though my costs to attend the market were higher because it was supposed to be a "special" market.

Normally when I do the P&L, I count on baked goods to cover market expenses (booth fee, gas, etc.). Then whatever I make on farm products (eggs, soap, fiber, books, etc.) can go straight into my farm income. This has worked well for every market so far. However, for the Thursday market I actually LOST $4.75 when all was said and done. I wasn't sure how to put this on the P&L. What I ended up doing was listing farm income as usual (I like to know how many bars of soap, etc. that I sell each year) and then listing what costs the baked goods didn't cover as an "expense".

For those of you interested in doing farmers markets, I've started a special playlist on my Youtube channel. If you want to watch me work my tail off to earn $0.00, see the Youtube video below:

Profit & Loss

Income:
Eggs- $24.00
Milk products- $10.00
Strawberry picking- $6.00
Total income: $40.00

Expenses
Layer mash- $22.00
Farmers market costs- $24.48
Goat mineral- $8.99
Boots- $14.84
Total expenses: $68.96

Net profit: ($28.96)
Year-to-date net profit: $118.89

I guess we've started going backward in profit again! Time to start pinching pennies.


Cutting Costs on the Farm

One way I saved money this month was by using a 10% off coupon at TSC for boots and goat mineral. Total savings were only $2.50, but all I had to do was time my purchases with the coupon (which comes out in a mailer every three months). I did this last time when I stocked up on goat feed. 

Some other things I've done are 1) tried my hand at making silage with grass cuttings... we'll see how that turns out this winter! I've also 2) started growing some mangels (large beets) for animal fodder. I am going to do another crop of beets this fall.

I am very happy with the goat costs. Currently, feed is only costing $0.15 per day. It's the chicken expenses that really add up. Right now I'm feeding 20 birds two lbs. of layer mash and two lbs. of corn at a total cost of $0.66 per day. This is actually a little less than conventional wisdom suggests (4 oz. per bird). 

$0.66/day x 30 days= $19.80 per month on chicken feed

Thankfully I can count on $8.00-$12.00 every month from egg sales, but that is still cutting it close when you count "other" farm costs that are bound to come up. Projects for the coming months will include processing a few more chickens/ducks and researching more free chicken feed ideas. 

Til next time,
-Bethany

2. Garden: harvested spearmint, peppermint, strawberries and garlic from the garden. I also picked sour cherries from the orchard and black raspberries from different places around the property. The lawn got mowed (finally!) so I collected grass clippings, and I also moved all of my houseplants (except orchids) outside. Moving the houseplants means I won't have to water them as often. :)

3. Made about 12 half-pints of jam with my cherries and berries! This was a fun little project for me. I used honey for sweetener and discount $0.50/$1.00 no-sugar/low-sugar pectin. I would guesstimate that each jar cost $0.25, mostly because of the honey. 

​4. Mended a pair of my shorts and a pair of Hubs' shorts.

5. Printed new pages for my daily planner.

6. Froze eggs. First I ran them through my Vitamix and then poured them into cheap plastic garage sale cups. I plan on using these egg ice cubes for scrambled eggs during the winter months, when the hens quit laying for the most part.

7. Boiled eggs in the Instant Pot. Can you tell I've been trying to clean the excess eggs out of my fridge? Some meals we had this week were: lamb curry over rice, rice 'n' beans, taco salad, soup, goat (chevon) steaks, hotdogs and a potluck meal. For the potluck, I made my friend Esther's recipe for chocolate chip cookie bars. I was expecting to just use a hodgepodge of whatever chocolate chips I had, but lo and behold I found some mini-chips, just like the recipe called for!! There was about a cup of chips left, so that's what I used. I thought they turned out very nice.  And of course... we had leftovers.

Mini-Vacay

We finally had a free weekend, so we spent Saturday and Sunday in the thumb area (MI... it's shaped like a mitten!). It was a lot of fun! On the way to Port Crescent, our campground, we stopped to see the Sanilac petroglyphs; drawings in sandstone made by ancient Native Americans. It was super cool!

Then we spent the night at the campground, and next morning we went to Grindstone City for massive ice cream cones at the Grindstone General Store. When we got there, the store wasn't open so we wandered over to the fishing area. "I wish there was some kind of little museum or historical sign we could read about the grindstone factory," I told Hubs.

A few minutes later, Hubs spotted some old-looking equipment and a bulletin board with pictures smack-dab in the middle of an RV campground. We walked by the RVs feeling a little sheepish, but were rewarded with a little outdoor mini-museum of the grindstone factory! The board had enough information to be thorough, but not more than we had time to read. We also got to see some big pieces of grindstone-manufacturing equipment.

By that time the General Store was open, so we got our ice cream cones. Initially we both ordered two scoops in a waffle cone, but when I saw Hubs' cone I knew I wouldn't be able to get it all down. So I asked the lady scooping (just in time!) if I could just have one scoop. It was PLENTY. :)