​Last week was really busy. Almost all of our weeknights were filled up, and then over the weekend some of my sisters-in-law were in town (one from out of state, one from overseas and one from the Caribbean) and there was an open house in our backyard. I usually like to get the Frugal Accomplishments post up on Monday, but we were busy yesterday as well.  

1. Shopping: I didn't keep very good track of grocery shopping this week. I know we spent $10.85 on snacks at Aldi. On Wednesday I went to Walmart and spent $16.99. I didn't have time to do a video haul, but I did snap a picture:

Almost all of the items I bought at Walmart are for Trim Healthy Mama recipes. I would like to start on their "plan" sometime in November/December, working my way up by doing a few recipes/meals per week. There are some parts of THM that I'm not a fan of (mostly buying low-fat and low-carb grocery items... why can't we just eat stuff the way God intended??) but it gets results and that's what I'm looking for. This little experiment will prove entertaining/interesting to those of you who think it's impossible to eat "healthy" for $10.00/person/week. I have a lot of theories regarding special diets and saving money, so now I'll get to put them into practice (for better or worse!).

We also spent between $50-$60 on food for the open house. We had a whole bag of frozen hamburger patties (12 patties) and 10-20 hotdogs left, as well as three bags each of hamburger and hotdog buns. We also had an extra package of celery hearts left. Total cost for extra open house food (I'll count this as groceries) was $13.98, minus the celery hearts which I somehow lost the reciept for. So we'll say $2.00 on the celery.

So between the Aldi snacks ($10.85), THM ingredients ($16.99) and open house overbuying/leftovers ($15.98), I was overbudget this week by a whopping $23.82. However, even with this week's massive overspending, we've only spent $84.58 for the month of August- a paltry $4.58 more than I had planned. That's pretty impressive in my opinion! Frugal food techniques really work, even when you have colossal planning failures ($10.00+ spent on pre-packaged snacks... REALLY?!) and buy specialty diet ingredients that you don't really need. 

2: Garden: Harvested and froze bell peppers. Most of my garden this year was for fresh eating, so I am not doing a lot of canning or freezing this year. I also focused more on plants for medicinal and decorative use; flowers, herbs, gourds, etc. I'm really looking forward to autumn decorating when everything is ready to pick!

3. Cooking: Made yogurt in my new Instant Pot! For those of you who haven't watched my Amazon Unboxing from a few weeks ago, I ordered a second (larger) Instant Pot to do food prep and make yogurt and cheese in. I tried the yogurt function for the very first time last week and it worked great. It cut my hands-on yogurt making time probably in half. One tip I learned from a fellow Youtuber is to cool the pot of milk in a sink of cold water instead of waiting for it to cool down on the stove. I'm not sure why I'd never thought to do that before, except my yogurt pot was always filled to the brim with milk (it was a little too small) and had a handle that would have a hard time fitting in the sink. The IP insert was easily tall enough so that the cold water wouldn't splash into the milk, and it also didn't have a cumbersome handle. 

The second time-saving aspect of IP yogurt is washing the dishes. My prevoius method involved heating milk on the stove in a pan first, then putting it into a separate yogurt incubator and putting that in the fridge. If you use an incubator with an insert that can double as a storage container, that's awesome. However, my incubator was limited to a 2-quart capacity, plus the pan had a handle and rivets and a lid that were annoying to fit into the sink and wash. The Instant Pot insert is quick and easy to wash. 

In addition to making yogurt, I also cooked a frozen rooster in the Instant Pot to use for meals, and then made broth from the carcass. Some meals we had this week were tacos, grilled backstrap and potatoes (yum!), taco bowls, and chicken and fried rice. It goes without saying that we had several (like, a whole weekend's worth) of potluck meals with relatives being home and then having open house leftovers. 

4. Collected cans on a walk.

So again, another week short on frugal accomplishments. But I have an excuse!! There are a lot of frugal accomplishments I've been hiding from you guys due to a special project that we have been working on all year. I'll have a blog post coming soon with lots of juicy details. ;)

Til next time, 
Bethany

​1. Shopping: It was a relatively no-spend grocery week at our house. We did end up spending $5.00 on a vegetable tray because somebody (might have been me *cough*) completely forgot about a church potluck. Oops! Good thing church is across the road from Kroger.

Some meals we had this week were breakfast for lunch, mac 'n' cheese w/ salad, leftovers, fajitas and sweet corn (yum!), pasta salad, BLT wraps, hash, hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, and cereal (that's a meal, right?) as well as some potluck meals.

2. Garden: Harvested plums, peppers, sage, calendula and lavender from the garden/orchard. I was able to get three pints of canned plums. I dried the herbs and froze the peppers. 

In addition to harvesting, I'm also working on cleaning out and preparing the garden for next Spring. It's kind of early to be transplanting and all that, but I want to get everything done before the end of September. I completely removed an overgrown sage plant and replanted just a portion of it in the chicken pasture (where it wouldn't be a nuisance). I also cleaned out my porch pots. This year I planted lettuce and sweet corn in the porch pot. The lettuce worked out great, but the sweet corn not so much.

I dug up and transplanted thyme and chives into the corn pot, and replanted the lettuce pot with more lettuce and some cilantro. I'm hoping to have fresh lettuce in October/November if everything works out.

3. Helped Hubs frame a painting that we bought in the Dominican Republic. It had been lying around for almost seven months, so I was happy to finally get it up on the wall. We used Hubs' tools and some scrap lumber. Hubs showed me how to use our table saw! 

4. And... another frugal accomplishment by my wonderful husband! We have been talking about building a vegetable stand for some time now- something to put out by the road where I can sell strawberries and other "farmers market" type items without actually being at a farmers market. A couple of weeks ago we saw a super cute lemonade stand at my friend Esther's house. Hubs really liked it and thought the design would work well not only for vegetables but also for parties or other community-type events. Next weekend my in-laws are hosting an open house, so Hubs decided to make one to use before then. It turned out perfect!

​Most of the stand is built with pallet wood and/or scrap lumber. There are some structural parts that he used new wood on. Total cost for the lemonade / vegetable stand was $11.00; $10.00 for four new 2'x4's, plus $1.00 for screws and nails (Hubs thought it was more like $0.30, but guessed more just to be safe). 

I asked Hubs how long it took him to build. He kinda rolled his eyes and said, "You don't want to know how long it took." In the end, he said it took "a day". Half the time was spent looking for just the right pallet wood and then tearing apart those pallets. Another large chunk of time was spent making plans for the structure and figuring out how to best use the scraps and bits. Hubs said that the actual construction time was only 10% of the total working time. 

So $11.00 and "about a day" later, we had ourselves a cute little lemonade stand! We are so excited to use it for events and roadside produce sales. :)

5. Collected cans on various walks.

6. Made updated autumn planner sheets on Microsoft Word.

So that is about it for frugal accomplishments this week. Again, I've spent a lot of time in August cleaning, organizing and reading. Help me out here- do you have any frugal accomplishments of your own to add to my paltry list?

1. Shopping: We went to Aldi this week and spent $24.64 after a $0.50 discount from returned bottles and a $0.25 Ibotta rebate. I did make a haul for Youtube, but haven't got it edited yet. So you will all have to be satisfied with a picture:

Some meals we had this week were macaroni and cheese, scrambled egg burritos, ham and cheese sandwiches, taco bowls, leftovers and more leftovers. Hubs was gone for three lunches this week so I just had smoothies or eggs for those meals. We also did a fair amount of potlucks and eating out this week. 

2. Garden: harvested bell peppers, cucumbers and herbs from the garden. We might have been eating sweet corn right now, had the raccoons not gotten in and decimated my patch. After this incident we put up a short electric fence around the corn, but one night it got turned off and they got in again. Thankfully there are still a few ears left, but I'm still waiting for them to grow to full size.

As a side note, I also picked some wild elderberries to make cough syrup with.

3. Cooking: this week I canned nine pints of dill pickles and two pints of plums. Our plum tree was badly rotted in the center, and a strong wind blew it over last week. Thankfully the plums were almost ripe, so I picked them and brought them inside to ripen gradually. This week I will probably can or freeze the rest of them. Apart from the canning, I also made cheese and popsicles with leftover smoothie "batter".

4. Collected cans on various walks. 

5. I bought a tank top and pair of bed sheets (needed for a project) at our local thrift store. The shirt was $1.50 (50% off) and the sheets were $6.00. Usually I don't shop at our local thrift store because it's expensive. However, I had JUST purchased a brand new set of sheets at Walmart for $25.00 when the thought occurred to me that I could get away with using thrift store sheets. Even though they weren't half off, the used sheets saved me $19.00. Normally I would never spend $1.50 on a used tank top either, but it was a specialty shirt that I will use heavily for the next couple months. ;)

6. I did a lot of organizing and de-cluttering last week. Isn't it amazing how cleaning will reveal treasures that you didn't know you had? One of the tasks on my to-do list was to clean out my herb collection. I found over 36 medicinal herbs (dried), several tinctures and a salve. Most of these were homegrown, foraged or otherwise made by me for pennies on the dollar. I moved them from a high, hard-to-reach cupboard down to a more easy-to-access one. Some of the older herbs I replaced with new herbs of the same variety. There were enough extras of some herbs to start a separate collection for animal use. My goal for this project was to make the herbs more accessible and usable, which I think was accomplished.

Mixed in with my herbs were a ton of non-medicinal loose-leaf teas that I had forgotten about. Yay! I will really enjoy those this winter, now that I'm aware of their presence. I also found an envelope with cash in it that we had saved for a previous vacation. THAT'S an exciting find.

6. Downloaded some free audio books from Amazon. If you are homeschooling or enjoy classic (out-of-copyright) fiction, you can almost always download the free ebook on Amazon. For those who don't know, you can get a free Kindle app for your phone or device, and then read the book from there instead of buying a Kindle.

Amazon is the parent company of Audible, producer of audio books. I love audio books because they save me a massive amount of time. I can "read" while I'm on my daily walk, doing animal chores, gardening, cleaning or washing dishes. The only problem: even though the Audible app is free, most of their high-quality audio books are VERY expensive- like, $15.00 or more per book. However, if you "buy" a free classic fiction ebook on Amazon, sometimes you can order the audio version between $0.00 and $2.99 as an add-on purchase. 

The books I downloaded to my phone were Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, and The Man Who Knew Too Much by G.K. Chesterton. Both are fiction works. I may or may not listen to the first (after reading the description I realized I had already seen a movie of the story), but I really like Chesterton's non-fiction and am interested to see what his fiction is like. The Man Who Knew Too Much is a collection of eight detective short stories, with a total listening time of six hours. For productivity reasons I favor non-fiction over fiction, but I feel like there is less time wasted with audio books because I can do something with my hands while listening to the story.

Note: obviously if an audio book is not free on Amazon/Audible, you can most likely borrow it for free from your local library. Several weeks ago I figured out how to put CD audio books onto my phone, but it does take a lot more time and you don't get to keep the book.

7. Lastly, I sold three dozen eggs and three bars of soap. This will help a LOT with my hobby farm expenses.

​
YouTube Videos:

I only uploaded two videos this week.

1. Amazon Unboxing (a "haul" of some non-food items I ordered!)
2. How to Make Dill Pickles

The longer I put up Youtube videos, the more I realize what people will actually watch. There is far less interest in DIY or tutorial videos than there is for "here's what I bought" videos.

Because of this strange phenomenon, I've decided to start doing Amazon hauls (infrequent as they are) along with the grocery store and garage sale hauls. Most of my Amazon purchases are well thought out, researched and "slept on"- sometimes for months- before I actually buy. I explain my Amazon rules in the video, as well as my thoughts on Amazon Prime.

For those of you who are interested, I've set up an affiliate links page for my Amazon purchases. If you like the same things that I do, and you're interested in passively supporting my blog/Youtube channel, buy through those links! Another way you can support my work is by purchasing my books and leaving a review on Amazon. I'm not desperate for money, but I AM desperate for reviews! So if you have already purchased/downloaded a book, thank you SO MUCH and I would really appreciate it if you could leave an honest review for other future readers.

Til next time,
​-Bethany

Hooray for another awesome week of frugality!
​
1. Shopping: This week I went to our local Spartan Nash "village" store for couponing. You can see a picture of that haul below my Youtube video. I passed up several coupon deals because they were still too expensive to be worth buying (this is a frugal accomplishment in itself!).

Then we went to the Dollar Tree. I forgot how much I loved the Dollar Tree! You can see what we bought in the video below:

I did end up going to Kroger on Sunday and purchasing some grapes (on sale for $0.88/lb.) and also a can of orange juice concentrate. Total spent on groceries this week was $11.12.

2. Gardening: harvested cucumbers and cut flowers from the garden. I also saved some calendula seeds to plant next year.

3. Cooking: This week was definitely a "cook to pad out the grocery supply" week. I made cheese, bread, mayo and cooked a batch of boiled eggs in my Instant Pot (affiliate link). I also used last week's Free Friday juice and some bulk gelatin powder to make jello snacks. Fun fact: you can still use months-old cabbage if it has started to get mold spots on the outer leaves. Just wash well and cut off the moldy part. The inside will most likely be pristine!

Lastly, I used my new Dollar Tree popsicle molds to make some chocolate/banana popsicles. The molds worked out great, and the recipe wasn't too bad, either. In the end, my recipe was basically a fruit smoothie with cocoa powder, poured into popsicle molds. I really like this idea because it retains the health benefits of smoothies without sacrificing the "treat" quality of ice cream. From here on out, I think I'll just pour half of my regular fruit smoothie into the molds. This will make my smoothie last for five days (one day for liquid smoothie, four days for popsicles) and I'll only have to wash the blender once.

​Some meals we had this week were: bean burritos, leftovers, turkey wraps, tacos, cabbage/sausage/potato hash, grilled potatoes & venison and tomato cheese sandwiches. Wednesday evening was date night, and Tuesday we ate dinner "out" at our local county fair. On Thursday my mom brought over some potluck leftovers and we had those for dinner.

Are You Really Eating for $10.00 per Week if You Eat Out?

I like to be transparent with you guys about how often my husband and I eat out. It's something we really enjoy and can afford to do. However, I can imagine many pointed fingers accusing us of not "really" living on a budget because we eat out. Recently I was browsing a grocery forum where people were sharing their budget. One lady posted a low-ish budget. Another forum member asked if her if she was "supplementing" with takeout a few nights per week- as if she wasn't being honest about their spending. Sometimes people like this are just curious, but other times they are looking for excuses to justify their higher spending ("she only cooks six nights per week and I cook SEVEN!"). Oh dear, mommy wars at their finest. 

Are Hubs and I being two-faced about our grocery spending? The reality is that most of my homemade dinners cost less than $0.75 per person. Breakfasts are far cheaper. If we really couldn't afford to eat out, it would be a simple matter of exchanging restaurant date night with an "extravagant" $3.00-4.00 in-home date night. Some great in-home date night ideas are grilling out (we currently do this every Friday, and it's just as cheap as my other meals!), homemade or frozen pizza, or some other favorite meal.

​By pushing two meals per week out of the "grocery" budget and into the "eating out" budget, we're only shaving a few dollars off of grocery spending. So eating out is NOT how we spend so little on groceries. It has more to do with the things I already mentioned in this post: shopping sales, buying reduced produce, using coupons, gardening and making grocery items like yogurt and popsicles from scratch. As you can see, we aren't even spending the full $20.00 every week, so there would be plenty of grocery money left for an in-home date night and the occasional sack lunch for the road instead of McDonalds.

Many "newbies" at frugality have a simplified idea that cooking meals at home will solve all of their grocery budget problems. They start cooking at home more, but it's a lot of work and they are still spending twice as much as other ladies on the grocery forums. In order to REALLY save, you have to figure out which meals are cheapest for your area, and then find out how to get the cheapest ingredients for those cheapest meals. This is also a lot of work for people who are still learning, but it can reduce the grocery bill by another 25%. Making excuses will lower your grocery bill by approximately 0%.

4. Collected cans to recycle on various walks.

5. Line dried four loads of laundry.

6. Made a shoe organizer for our mud room. The organizer started out as an old (free) TV stand. It's kind of ugly and was inefficient for storing shoes, so we made some grid shelving for the bottom section. This works very well for holding different pairs of shoes as opposed to just having a pile of mismatched shoes shoved in the bottom. I'm also going to put up a little curtain on the front of the TV stand so you can't even see the storage, but that is a picture for another time.

7. Used coupons for toothpaste and toilet paper. These are both items that we prefer to buy name-brand, which make them suitable for couponing. I like Scott toilet paper because I think it gives the most value per roll. A lot of people like thick, paper-towel/kleenex-like toilet paper, but I really don't. In addition to being extremely wasteful,  I don't like the lint fuzz it leaves all over. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my experience I use the same amount of sheets whether the toilet paper is thin or whether it's thick and fluffy. And what's more likely to plug up the toilet? Not Scott. Anyhow, that is my preferred brand and I was able to use a $2.00 off coupon at Walmart, bringing the price down to $0.61 per roll. I marked the date inside the last roll I put out, so now I can estimate how much money we spend per year wiping our tushies*. Because I'm a nerd like that.

Secondly, toothpaste. I could use the el-cheapo $0.88 Aim toothpaste all day long, but Hubs requested that we buy something else. Anything else, as long as it wasn't the el-cheapo stuff. So I used a $1.50 off coupon on a three-pack of Colgate toothpaste, also at Walmart. This brought the price down to $1.02 for an 8 oz. tube, thereby making the Colgate toothpaste CHEAPER than Aim by about $0.03 per oz. Total savings: $0.72 by couponing for toothpaste, while simultaneously fulfilling brand preferences. What a deal.

I think I am going to continue to use coupons for things like toothpaste, toilet paper, deodorant, etc. in order to save money. This will be especially helpful for the name-brand items that we like.

8. Made a table arrangement with (almost) free flowers from the garden. I have been wanting to do this ALL summer and just never got around to it! By a stroke of luck, I had sunflowers, delphinium and bells of Ireland blooming all at the same time, and they made a lovely arrangement. The only thing I paid for was the bells of Ireland seeds ($2.50 for a packet). I plan on saving some of those seeds from this year so next year's plants will be truly free.

9. Cleaned out my bottle collection (I like making sodas and other drinks) from beneath the sink and found some that could be recycled. I added these to the pop cans I collect while on walks.

10. Cut up several pairs of jeans to use for a braided rug.

11. Made laundry soap.

Whew! I think that's it. I had such a fun week making and doing frugal things. 

Til next time,
-Bethany

*Have I heard of reusable toilet paper, AKA "family cloth"? Yes. Will I ever use it? I hope not. 

​Goats

​Both goats are doing great. Adi is growing a shiny new coat of hair, presumably for winter already. She is currently giving about 1 1/3 cups of milk per milking; just over one pint per day. I am going to continue milking through the month of August, and then start milking once a day for the first 1-2 weeks in September. After that I'll dry her off until breeding in early/mid October.

​Chickens

I have good news and bad news from the chicken department. The good news is that none of the hens or roosters died. Another good point is that my broody hen finally hatched out her chick. The bad news is that the chick died a few days later. :( We never did figure it out, as the chick didn't drown and wasn't attacked by a predator. Our best guess is that it died of heat or got stepped on by the goat. That was kind of sad, because I thought the broody hen would take better care of her chick without my assistance.

​The chickens are laying between 6-9 eggs per day, and I am feeding the the same $0.66/day in feed. If I weren't selling any of the eggs, my cost per dozen would be $1.06. This month, egg sales paid for feed costs with an additional $7.00 profit. So all of the eggs we ate were free.


Ducks

​I finally got around to butchering my two remaining male ducks. Hubs helped. This was a huge burden off my shoulders! I had forgotten a few key points on how to do it, so the processing took a LOT longer than it should have. I did freeze the body and drumsticks separately because they are best cooked at different temperatures (something I learned from my first duck). I still have two roosters to go, but those are easy enough to do on my own.

My one remaining female duck is recovering from some kind of foot infection (it's not bumble foot/staph) and is currently not laying eggs.


Strawberries

For those who don't know, I put in a 300-plant strawberry patch this spring in order to sell strawberries at a roadside stand next year. This income will hopefully replace the need for farmers markets. Not much is going on with the strawberry patch. We set up a sprinkler system earlier in the month that can be easily moved around to wherever it's needed. Ideally I'd have put in drip irrigation, but for the amount of plants we have I don't think it would make sense financially. Plus the patch is not established yet, and it would be a pain to till/weed around the hoses.

Besides watering once a week or so, I've also been tilling between the rows and weeding between individual plants. Actually, Hubs has been tilling and I have been weeding. We till once every 3-4 weeks (it takes about 30 minutes) and I weed after everything has been tilled. The first weeding sessions didn't take all too long because the plants were smaller. I could use a hoe for most of the weeds, and then just hand weed right up close to the strawberry plants. Now that the plants are bigger and sending out runners, the hoe is counter-productive and almost everything must be done by hand. After the last tilling, it took me between 5-10 hours (a week's worth of afternoons) to weed the whole patch.

​There are a few empty spots in the patch where plants died. I am going to fill in these spots with strawberry plants from my old garden patch, which I'll probably till and reseed with a cover crop this fall.


Other Garden-Related Items

This year I tried to use some of my garden space to save money on hobby farm expenses. I grew a patch of mangel beets for animal fodder, and also grew some new herbs to use in soaps and other products to sell. As far as I can tell, both the herbs and beets were a success. The seed packets (all of which were from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) only cost a few dollars and paid for themselves in the first year. I am saving seed from the calendula so I won't have to buy it again.


Book of the Month: The Bio-Integrated Farm

I read one farm-related book this month on permaculture; The Bio-Integrated Farm (affiliate link) by Shawn Jadrnicek. I was almost surprised to see it available through the interloan system already, since it was just published in March of last year. Borrowing from the library was a good frugal move because the book costs $25.00- used- on Amazon. Unfortunately I had to return the information-packed book before I finished it, but nonetheless I picked up a few great ideas for my chickens in particular. A lot of the information on ponds and greenhouses was fascinating to read about, but far beyond my budget and mechanical ability to implement.
​

Summer Goals

There are a few more things on my hobby farm to-do list before the summer is over. I'd like to use up all of my freezer fat to make soap and also butcher those two roosters. In the garden department, I'd like to till my old strawberry patch and move some of my old herbs (sage, 2016 lavender plant and thyme) into raised beds. Lastly, I'd like to make some revisions to my farmers market book (affiliate link) and re-release it.


Profit & Loss

Expenses:
Shelled corn- $22.00
Layer mash- $22.00
Total expenses: $44.00

Income: 
Books- $10.80
Eggs- $27.00 
Babysitting- $25.00
Total income: $62.80

Net profit: $18.80
Year-to-date net profit: $137.69

So, I cheated on income this month. Instead of doing a farmers market, I just threw in some babysitting money and pretended that was "farm" income. It was a lot easier than actually doing a farmers market. 

My original plan this year was to do one day of market per month in order to support the hobby farm. Ideally, I would net $40.00 each time and this would more than pay for farm expenses. However, my June market was a complete bust, and I actually lost money after working 10+ hours. It was very discouraging and made me re-think doing any more markets this year. In addition, there are some big changes coming for us in October and I decided it would be wise to spend my free time preparing for those instead of earning a few more dollars for the homestead.

I thought I would be drastically behind this month without the babysitting subsidy, but before the month was over I sold several dozen more eggs than anticipated. In addition, I received some royalties from my farmers market book (which is the one I count toward "farm income"). So in the end, I would have *almost* broke even without the babysitting money. But I left it in there because an $18.00 net profit looks good on the books. :)

That's about it for this month! Hope you guys had a great July.
-Bethany

​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