Welcome to this week's “What’s in Your Hand?’ edition where we strive to inspire you to focus on what you have to work with, not what you wish you had or hope to have in the future, but what you have right now ...
With the past several week’s price increases and successive
increases that just seem to keep coming across the board, I’m really hammering
down on making the best decisions I can with what we have to work with. I’ve always considered it my job to ‘look
well to the ways of my household’ but now it’s taking on a new urgency. The need is there to cut back, be more
frugal, start eliminating luxuries from our budget to maintain the basics, stretch and find the best use of what we have.
These are challenging times and I find myself researching more and
digging deeper into available information that will help me in my
endeavor. I call it
‘home-schooling/educating’ myself! (We’re
not in trouble financially, I’m just trying to keep us from getting there! I’m circling the wagons!)
Here’s how I worked with ‘what was in my hand’ this week …
I transplanted rosemary plants this week (that had wintered
over in my garden) and divided multiplying onions. I still have several bunches of multiplying
onions to divide, these little beauties provide us with green onion blades
practically all year long and as long as I don’t remove the entire onion, they
keep multiplying.
I worked on some ‘off-grid’ type projects this week as
well. Should the power go down for any
reason for an extended period, we would be able to take showers and do
laundry. It wouldn’t be pretty, but we
would be able to stay clean and have clean clothes to wear … as long as we could
get water.
Going hand in hand with taking off grid showers and doing laundry, I’ve also been fine tuning the skill of catching rainwater,
did you know catching rainwater is a skill, I think it is. Knowing
how and where to catch it for the biggest yield is critical. If the grid ever goes down for an extended period,
it will be an important skill to have in your arsenal.
I harvested the first of our asparagus!!!
I planted more ginger this week, I use a lot of ginger so
there’s no such thing as planting too much … well, I guess there is but I’m nowhere
near it!
I’m washing empty soda bottles and using them in storage, some
for water, some for other things.
We’re supposed to get a hard freeze tomorrow night (down to 23
degrees) so we’ll be covering our fruit trees (this is one reason we keep them pruned
to a manageable size) and blueberry bushes.
Our potatoes are anywhere from 1 – 5 inches tall so today I pulled soil
up over them, covering them completely.
This should protect them. Some of
the herbs will need covering as well but the broccoli, cabbage and brussels
sprout plants are cold hardy and should be okay. Our temps are supposed to be back to what’s
normal for us on Monday so this will be a short lived cold snap.
My home education continued this week with the following ...
One of the things on my goals list for 2022 is to research and compile a resource of how to make various home-made fertilizers. I worked on that this week and added 4 methods/recipes to my gardening notebook.
I'm also focusing on learning as much as I can about how to care for and feed my chickens as economically as I can. I gleaned some helpful info from here: HERBAL TEA FOR BACKYARD CHICKENS || BENEFITS AND RECIPES ||TEA AT THE LITTLE HOUSE
As you can tell, I’m focusing on lots of things we use and ways to stretch what we have to make them go further! My why ... we went to 5 stores this week looking for 2 grocery items ... enough said!
And finally, each week I’m updating my Goals
2022 page, check out what I ticked off the list this week!
Look around you, how are you using your
resources and time, what’s that in your hand?
patsi
She looketh well to the ways of her household … Proverbs 31:27
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That was a great deal on the soil.
ReplyDeletePractical Parsimony, It was! We are so thankful!
DeleteI come read and never think to comment, but really enjoy your "What's In Your Hand?" posts and other updates. That soil haul - YAHOO! I actually said WOW out loud and had my husband wondering, so I told him about your blog and your husband's method of looking for opened bags. He's quite impressed by that pallet find as well! Looking forward to seeing what all you grow. :D
ReplyDeleteUnknown, thank you! We are very pleased ... it never hurts to ask!
Delete'Circling the wagons' is exactly how I feel at the moment too! Just this morning I went to our local shop to buy the Saturday newspaper. We don't take a daily newspaper, but enjoy the Saturday and Sunday editions. I handed over £3 ($3.91), the usual cost, but was told that it had gone up to £3.50 ($4.56). As I had no more cash to hand the shop assistant said I could drop the extra money in next time I was passing. Well, I guess that will be in the next few days, but it certainly won't be to get next Saturday's edition. The £3.50 saved could buy me 21 eggs from a nearby farm. We will continue to get Sunday's newspaper however, since it has a very good tv guide, 2 more excellent magazines and plenty of newspaper for recycling into firelighters and mopping up spills when we are done with reading it. I think we are all reassessing our priorities now.
ReplyDeleteTracy, we're finding the same kind of things here forcing us to make decision like you made. I agree, it's time to start reassessing our priorities!
DeleteYou had a great week! Those purchases were great deals.
ReplyDeleteYes, circling the wagons here as well. We were at Sam's on Tuesday and picked up a rotisserie chicken. Some are much larger and I always look for that one that is bigger. We are sill eating that chicken and I expect three more meals from it. I save and washed the container to use for a greenhouse. We are considering every use of gas before we go out. Two more rolls of cookie dough were used from the freezer. One had peanut butter added that need to be used along with chocolate chips. Another had a cup of oats and milk chocolate and butterscotch chips. We shared with our neighbors who had picked up some items at Costco for us. We had a list of items that we had just not been able to find so I went on walmart.com and was able to purchase all of them and got free shipping since my total was over $35 and the prices were much better than our local stores. We have used our vacuum sealer a lot this week and I am thankful we have it to prolong the life of our food items. I am praying daily for God to guide us on stocking up our household. I want to only do what is best and not lose my head. We are about to head out into the cold wind and go to the discount grocery since they have posted many items we can use. I am thankful for those stores here.
Lana, I am praying daily for the same guidance. We ordered some things online that we weren't able to find locally as well. I hope that option continues to be available.
DeleteAwesome post! Definitely is timely.. and I love working with what you have, not getting hung up with what you don’t. God Bless and thanks for sharing.. I think I will be starting a binder for writing ideas in, I get many on the Internet then lose them..
ReplyDeleteEsther, it is part of my 'schooling' to take notes and try new things. I'm really trying not to rely on an 'always having access to the Internet' mentality.
DeleteOh I am so envious of the soil you found! I'm looking for a good deal in my area because I have a large raised bed & a few tubs I want to fill. Praying I find it.
ReplyDeleteJenny, I hope you find it soon!
DeleteWe are circling the wagons also now more than ever. This week we stocked a year's or more supply of water softener salt. We found a great deal on soil for the container part of our garden. There was a good deal on fish emulsion fertilizer which is something I'm going to try this year. Thank you so much for the homemade fertilizer link.My pantry has most all of the ingredients to make quite a few.
ReplyDeleteWe had beautiful weather all week and I worked amending the container garden soil. We shopped at the farm markets for fresh vegetables and were also able to get 3large roasting chickens. I baked 4 dozen gluten free chocolate chip cookies and made a dozen naan. Our local IGA had a sale on mozzarella cheese and I bought 4 pounds . I shredded 3 pounds and packaged up 6 oz portions for the freezer and later use. In taking inventory of my fabric stash I found a dozen linen tea towels that were bought years ago and forgotten about. I will use them to embroider. I am embroidering table clothes in the evening for each of my children.
Cookie, fish emulsion fertilizer is supposed to be a great fertilizer. I like the way that Hollis and Nancy of Hollis and Nancy's Homestead, use fish and fish parts directly when planting.
DeleteI like the idea of embroidering tablecloths for your children, what pattern are you using? Those linen tea towels will be beautiful embroidered on as well.
Patsy I have been following along on all your what is in your hand series and so agree we all need to "circle the wagons" and use what we have to the best of our ability with what we have. That is so sad you went to 5 different stores to get two grocery items :o and I hope you found them. What a wonderful price for garden soil, compost, potting mix and the track pants, sweatshirt and t-shirts and glad you could top up on needed items at rock bottom prices.
ReplyDeleteWe are finding the same thing here in Australia that things just all of a sudden vanish off the grocery shelves in the supermarkets. Tinned fruits are one item we can't get at the moment for reasonable prices. Fortunately we topped up on a lot of things and increased our stockpile later last year :). We worked out the price rises here and since September last year our grocery bill has increased between 30-40% :o. Each grocery shop we are stocking up on anything we use on half price specials where possible, comparing prices at other supermarkets we are passing for cheaper prices and buying grocery or other items that are cheaper.
Due to fuel prices ($2.039 currently per litre for e10) and us being 45 - 70 km one way from the nearest supermarkets as we live in the country we are planning our trips out for when we have medical appointments for DH and doing multiple errands each time. DH gets paid a fuel allowance for each km for his medical trips as he is a vet as well as a double meal allowance one for me as his carer and one for him so this makes our grocery trips and other errands almost free to do at the same time. We also have a meal out on these long days as a trip to town doing multiple errands takes most of the day.
Things we did with what was in our hand is that I planted sweet corn and broad bean seeds in the gardens that I saved from our previous crops. We have also been amending our beds to put more compost/organic matter in them by adding dried grass clippings, fruit veg peelings crushed eggs and bread from the kitchen. We have also been mulching the garden beds with dried grass clippings as we have so many of them from mowing our 1.21 acres here.
We have also been collecting rainwater off the garden tank stand shed which has no gutters by putting rain barrels at the back of the shed for when our rainwater tanks overflow as we have had a lot of rain here lately. We use that water to water our potted fruit trees and vegetable seedlings we started and new seedlings we plant in the gardens. Shower warm up water gets used in bottles for hand washing and also for cleaning in the home.
We also have been doing our own plumbing work as a tap riser broke with age which saved us around $120 over calling a plumber out including the parts we purchased.
Have a great week ahead everyone.
Lorna.
Hi Lorna, sounds like you're doing the same kind of things we're trying to do. I picked up a couple more things we can do from your comment! Thank you for sharing!
DeletePatsy most welcome and always good to share ideas so we can get new ideas, all cut our expenses by using what we have mostly :) .
DeleteLorna.
I'm curious why you're growing hawthorne. Here we have them growing wild and they spread like crazy. The thorns on the branches are so sharp and so thick they will flatten a tractor tire. We didn't plant these. They originated at a home about a mile from us and the seeds have blown and spread this way.
ReplyDeleteI'll grant that they are pretty but the blossoms stink, smelling like spoiled potatoes, so they aren't for cutting...
So given all that... Are there benefits Im not aware of that might make this plant more advantageous to us? I know you often have good reason and purpose behind what you grow. It's usually of some use to you medicinally, for chickens, or for your garden. I'd really appreciate knowing if there's one of those reasons that make them desirable to you. And gracious I wished you weren't a state away from me, I'd give you all we could dig up, lol!
Hi Terri, yes, most everything I do has a purpose! Hawthorne is good for the heart. Here's one of many articles about it .... https://www.christopherhobbs.com/library/articles-on-herbs-and-health/hawthorn-for-the-heart/#:~:text=Hawthorn%3A%20For%20the%20Heart%20The%20best-known%20herb%20for,the%20U.S.%20and%20other%20parts%20of%20the%20world.
DeleteI just checked and 4L=1 gallon. Our diesel is over $2/L, that's $8/gallon. With fuel costing so much, and most of our groceries being delivered to our supermarkets by fuel gusling trucks, the prices of everything are going through the roof. Now is the time to stock up and to get food into the pantry. The price hikes havent hit the highs that we are expecting.
ReplyDeleteI have my garden planted. I am practicing succession planting and trying to have fresh produce available for the table in a continuous cycle. We are lucky in that we can have a productive garden all year round.
Our son and his family, who had been living with us since November, Have just moved to an Outback town for a 6 month contract. This will help them achieve the house deposit they need for a home of their own. We had flooding in January and then again in February. Our home was safe but others not so much. The flooding cut the town off and supermarket shelves were stripped bare. Our family were fine as we had plenty in the pantry to keep everyone going.
It is time now to do some serious restocking of the pantry. It is time to do this before the prices get too high and the family budget gets very tight.