Well, I am here! The month of June always flies so fast for me. Here's a little bit of what I've been doing the past couple of weeks:
1. Strawberries: my market strawberry patch has literally come to fruition, as it has every June for the past several years. This year, rather than hiring pickers or enlisting my husband to help, I've simply divided the patch into 2-3 sections and picked one section every day, taking Sunday off. I get up between 6:00 am and 7:00 am, depending on what the weather looks like, and pick until 11:00 or so. The most I picked on a given day was about 20 quarts, and the least I've picked was 4 quarts. I'm selling them for $4.00 per quart, so on most days I'm making between $60.00 and $70.00. On a good day I can pick one flat (8 quarts) in an hour: on a bad day, I pick about half that. A bad day means I'm picking in a bad section of the garden, where you really have to hunt for berries, and/or the berries are small. So I make between $16.00 and $32.00 per hour picking. Of course, that doesn't count all of the time I spend taking care of the patch. If you take that into account, my actual wage is probably closer to $3.00 or $5.00 per hour. That's pretty awful, but you have to remember that this is a job you can do at home with almost no start-up costs, and in some cases you can involve your kids in. Babies and toddlers will need a babysitter or playpen, but ages 3-5 should be okay playing nearby while you work, and 6 years old and up can work with you (or, of course, play... but on picking days it is really nice to have some extra help). My strawberries under plastic were very easy to take care of, but sadly did not produce more than three quarts on any given day. I already have another three rows of plastic put in, so I'll probably fill it with strawberries and just keep on going with it. But the matted rows are far, far more productive than my strawberries under plastic. 2. Chickens: I nursed several older chicks back to health from certain death. Two chicks died, but I would have lost 5 or 6 more, had we not acted quickly and got some medicine for them. We also had success with a broody hen!!! After several failed attempts, our bantam hatched out three chicks yesterday. None from her own eggs, of course, but who really cares about that. They're all different colors, and they're adorable. It was a totally free project for me; no electricity, no buying feed, no buying chicks. Last time I spent like $30.00 hatching three chicks and this time it was free. Yes! 3. Garden: I harvested spinach seeds, turnips, elephant garlic and lettuce this week, plus, of course, strawberries. Most of my vegetables and flowers are looking great. My corn patch failed miserably, but my gourd and squash patch is doing well. I ended up laying rows of plastic down, and in between the rows I planted my winter squash/gourd seedlings. In between the seedlings I laid down cardboard. There are almost no weeds, and the plants are big, bushy and healthy so far. I had wanted to interplant corn and black beans with the squashes, but it was too much for me to take care of, with the strawberries and my regular garden. Next year the strawberry patch will be cut in half, and thus more manageable, so hopefully I can put some effort into growing more of a "survival" garden. I also harvested chamomile. I missed the lavender harvest in the midst of the strawberry season, but this is the lavender's first year and at least now I know when to expect it. 4. I've been trying to read several books, if I can do so without falling asleep. 5. My grandma and I went to a discount/bulk store. I found some awesome deals to stock the freezer with: sausage and ham, in particular, for $1.50 per pound. I also bought a bunch of snack foods there for very cheap. Well, that's all for this week! My eyes are already starting to get sore and it's not even 10:00 pm yet. We may be leaving for the weekend tomorrow, and there is just so much to do. I will do what I can and let the chips fall where they may. Blessings, ~Prudence~
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I woke up this morning and thought, "I think I forgot to write a blog post yesterday. Wait a minute, did I even write one last week??" That's how crazy the last eight days have been! First with Memorial Day weekend, then we had three days in succession of evening activities, plus a fencing crisis. And it's only going to get crazier as my market strawberry patch begins bearing fruit in a few days.
Anyhow, I thought I'd pop in and share a few frugal things I did this week. 1. Paused a newspaper subscription. I pay about $2.50 a week for the Epoch Times. I'd subscribed for a year, but haven't been able to read more than the headlines in the last few weeks. My first thought was to cancel it, but then I discovered that you can pause it for up to three months. So I did. Moving forward, I may only renew such subscriptions for six months at a time; October thru March, since I simply run out of time during the warmer months to read. 2. Fixed the chicken fence with fencing we already had. It should keep the chickens IN, which will keep them OUT of my strawberries, vegetables and flower beds. Hopefully it will also keep our steer IN, as he's already defoliated about 1/3 of my strawberries under plastic, just from getting out a few times. My next step, probably happening this weekend, is to fence in the strawberries. 3. Harvested spinach and radishes from the garden. I also froze a bunch of spinach, since it's starting to bolt. My garden brain has been spinning with all that I want/need to do. I planted sweet corn this week, but the patch is so small I don't know if it will pollinate itself. I want to start a new bed by my vegetables and plant some field corn there. I also found a bunch of poison ivy that I need to spray, plus I harvested rose petals this morning and the lavender is due for harvesting in a day or two... I'm telling you, my mind is a blur with all of the outdoor things that need to be done. 4. I made a few local history discoveries this week. Family Search now has people linked to most, if not all of their records, which saves a lot of time and allows you to find records of the person that were misspelled or otherwise misrepresented. For example, one person I'm researching is named "Oliver", but his name is also spelled "Olive", "Olivia" and even "Alvin" on census and other records! I'm not sure if the links between records and people are a new feature or just new to me, but it's a lot of fun and makes research (for a novel series I'll be writing) a lot faster. 5. Our electricity bill has been switched from a standard rate to on- and off-peak hours; off peak being the cheaper hours. So I've rearranged my cooking and laundry schedules to accommodate that. Sadly this probably won't reduce our bill, but it will prevent it from increasing. I find that this is better for the summer anyway, since it's miserable to cook during the heat of the day... and we are going to have several 90 degree days in the coming week. That's about it for this morning! I need to hurry off now and get the dishwasher running and dry some of those rose petals before the increased electricity rate kicks in this afternoon. 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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