Summer is almost here!! Tomorrow I will probably get out our Memorial Day/ 4th of July / summer decorations.
Art prints: I took apart an old art history book (that I pulled out of someone's trash) and am in the process of extracting artwork from it. Most of it is black and white, but there are some nice color prints that I want to use. I'm saving a lot of the black and white prints to use for kids' coloring pages or for reference. I have a whole file full of artwork clipped from different newspapers or books to use for projects or as reference. Garden: I harvested spinach, radishes and asparagus from the garden this week. The spinach and swiss chard are starting to bolt and go to seed, so I'll be saving as much of that seed as I can; for microgreens, and also for using for next year's garden. There are only two spaces in my gardens not planted, plus some sweet and field corn that I have yet to plant. I may not plant the field corn this year, so as to avoid tainting the sweet corn. But I will work on having my husband build another raised bed for the kitchen garden that will be big enough to grow corn and sweet corn in, in preparation for next year. We burned more holes in the landscape fabric that we laid down last year. If I fill up all of these holes with strawberries, it will double the amount of strawberries that I have under plastic. The plants are looking great; much better than the weedy patch of strawberries farther out in the field that are now four years old. This will be the last year for those; and what a blessed relief that will be. In addition to getting rid of the strawberries, I will be looking for a new growing situation for some of my other perennials in the old garden; the asparagus, raspberries and delphiniums. I would love to make a permanent market garden area: a space we could use for extra food production in an "emergency event" year, or one that would just hold flowers, perennials (like asparagus, rhubarb, flowers, etc.) that we could sell at our roadside stand in a good year. According to the book How to Grow More Vegetables, in to have a garden that's 99% sustainable (a vegetarian diet) I would need 12,000 ft. of growing space for us, and even more growing space if I were to grow crops for our animals (which, in an emergency situation, would only be rabbits, chickens and possibly goats). My beds in the market garden are about 40 ft. long, so if I did a 4' by 40' bed, I would need 75 beds! And I don't even have a large family! The book states that 10% of this space is for salad vegetable crops, 30% is for calorie-dense root vegetable crops, and 60% is for grains. Right now I have 160 square feet (one 4' by 40' ft. bed's worth) planted in salad vegetables and around 40 square feet in root crops. The salad vegetables I have down pretty well, and I feel like we're about 50% to sustainability in that area. As far as root vegetables go, I do well with beets, turnips, radishes and parsnips. Potatoes usually turn out okay, but I need to learn more about storing and growing them on a larger scale. Carrots are the only root crop I've had a pretty hard time with, so those will need a lot of work as well. Grains will be a first for me in 2021. I had plans to grow field corn, and I still might if I can get a bed rigged up fast enough. This fall I'll try my hand at soft winter wheat, but that may be a steep learning curve. Rather than going for 99% sustainability through produce alone, I would rather raise animals for a portion of those calories. Rather than having corn 10 different ways, for example, I can feed the corn to a chicken and get meat AND eggs from it. Furthermore, the animals provide poop for compost that I NEED for my garden beds, anyway. So as I work on learning to grow grains and a larger (small) scale, I'll be looking at ways to create a sustainable closed-loop system for raising chickens, rabbits and goats, and what garden produce they may need to survive the winter. Goats, however, require hay, so that is a whole different hurdle. So I will work on the chicken and rabbit systems first. Sewing: I patched up two pairs of jeans, and now I can wear them. Yay! Prepping: I've set a few new prepper goals for myself. I bought a $35.00 DVD of nursing skills, and my goal is to watch all of them before a medical skills class I have scheduled at the end of the summer. I used to think that nursing was some high-minded, interesting job, and it probably is to some degree. But after watching some of these skills videos, it looks mind-numbingly boring. Washing people. Putting on and taking off gloves. Changing bedsheets. While I think nursing is an honorable job and very important, I've been reassured that it's not the job for me. My second goal is to learn how to use a ham radio. It costs about $35.00 for study materials and $40.00 to take the test to get your license. I bought a cheap ham radio for $25.00, so this project is already far less expensive than medical prepping, where even the most basic tools cost over $100.00 and training can be even more costly. Thirdly, I ordered some free CERT materials from the government. I couldn't find any in-person classes in our area, but since the student workbook was free, I decided to order it and read it on my own. I believe that's about it for this week! I know I was a little long-winded about my garden, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. Be blessed, ~Prudence~
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Hi everyone! I did a lot of fun, thrifty things this week.
1. Discount chicks: I sent my husband to the feed store to buy some more chick starter for our three incubated chicks. While he was at the store, he called me to tell me that they had chicks on sale for $0.50 each! I wanted to buy a TON, but I restrained myself (knowing that we already collect more eggs than we can eat) and had him get 10; seven Barred Rocks and three Black Sex Links. They are so cute and I love them. Here is the general math I figured out last night about raising laying hens: Chick: $0.50 (normally $2.50 or more) Chick starter for 8 weeks: $2.00 Electricity for warming plate (divided by 10 chicks): $0.50 Layer mash for 4 months: $5.00 Total cost to raise to laying age: $8.00 The going rate for mature laying hens in our area is about $15.00. Thus, by raising my own laying hen, I can save $7.00. Since I bought 10 chicks, all pullets, I'll be able to save $70.00 with this project. Had I bought the chicks at full price, I would have still saved at $45.00, which is good to know for next year. 2. Free stuff: I went "junking" at our annual "throw your junk on the curb" event. I found two wooden chairs, a small desk, sidewalk chalk, muffin cup liners, one children's book, seven non-fiction adult books, a child's dry erase easel, a pile of cotton fabric scraps, a Jiffy greenhouse with pellets, a wooden organizer, a basketball, a rug, a large picture frame, four outdated grapevine wreaths that I plan to redecorate in a modern style, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. All in all, I found over $100.00 worth of stuff, comparing with prices at the thrift store. 3. Upcycled jars: I washed out and scrubbed the labels off of some random jars and wine bottles we had lying around. Then I painted the lids with a chalk paint, so they all matched. What a transformation! I put dry goods (beans, chia seeds, etc.) in the jars, and put oil and wine vinegar into the bottles. I put a $0.50 dripper lid (from the Dollar Tree) on the oil bottle to make for easy pouring. I love the way the two bottles look on my counter, and it makes the oil and vinegar more accessible and easy to use. 4. Pasta: I tried a pasta recipe this week from one of my Italian cooking books. It actually worked great! I made ravioli with the dough. Fresh pasta is so much more expensive than dried pasta at the store, but the fresh ravioli was so good. I was happy that this recipe worked out better than the Venetian Cornmeal Cookies. 5. I continued listening to When Harry Became Sally on Scribd. 6. Chicken rescue: we caught and killed another raccoon, which had also been slaughtering chickens. This one I actually caught in the act, attacking my silkie rooster. Thankfully I got there just in time. We were able to rescue the silkie, who thankfully had no bite marks or other damage. There was one other missing chicken that I thought had been eaten, but the next morning it was walking around outside the coop, wondering where all of the others were. Praise the Lord! My broody hen unfortunately decided not to be broody anymore. But I guess my discount chicks this week made up for it. That's it for this week. I hope you've all had a thrifty May so far! Blessings, ~Prudence~ |
About PrudenceI am a Christian homemaker who lives in the Midwest. I enjoy sewing, gardening, reading and thrifting. Archives
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