Coming Soon – The Little Homestead Orchard

The Z Man and I have been wanting to add fruit crops to our little homestead but couldn’t decide what we wanted.

I had dreams of a big strawberry patch and making strawberry jam and strawberry wine and strawberry shortcakes and strawberry pies and strawberry syrup and strawberry everything.

While the Z Man was having nightmares of more work for him and an aching back. Admittedly most often my ideas do create more work for him, so I understand.

We decided on apples and pears and off to the nursery we went. I called ahead to make sure they still had trees in stock and the man on the phone said, “yep we’ve got apple trees, come get what you want cause the wind is blowing them all over the parking lot and I’m tired of picking them up”

He wasn’t kidding either. When we got there the trees were all laying down and scattered about. And, I guess he was tired of picking them up because he marked the trees down from $24 to $7.00 each.

We got 13 trees! 3 Liberty Apple, 2 Golden Delicious Apple, 1 Red Delicious Apple, 1 Pink Lady Apple, 1 Macintosh Apple, 1 Winesap Apple and 4 Kieffer Pears.

It was a good decision to go with apples and pears instead of strawberries.

In about 3 or 4 years we’ll be enjoying the fruits of these trees for many years to come.

I can see apple butter, apple pie, apple cider, apple wine, apple crisp, apple everything.

I feel like our little homestead is complete now. We have our vegetable and herb gardens, we have our chickens and pigs, we have goji berries and wild blackberries and now we have apples and pears.

Well, complete at least until I get my next crazy idea…. I can feel the Z Man just shaking his head at me now and wondering what’s next.

Friday’s Frugal Five and One Frugal Fail

I’m going to start with the frugal fail.

I made the worst meal of all time this week. It was so bad that even the Z Man who is a Saint said “Baby, you don’t need to write this one down” (sometimes if we have really enjoyed a meal, I’ll make notes about it in a recipe journal I keep)

The concept of the meal worked in my mind, but the follow through and end result was so bad, so so so bad that I threw the whole meal out and didn’t even try to repurpose it.

In my electric pressure cooker I put brown basmati rice, diced onion, diced carrot and water. Then I put the steaming rack in the pot and put cod filets on it. I pressed the button for rice and let her rip.

What I ended up with was one large glob of overcooked rice and cod filets that were so over cooked they resembled a dried up old sponge. It was awful. FRUGAL FAIL! (well the chickens got the rice)

Friday’s Frugal Five:

Earlier this week we saved $17.00 on each apple and pear tree we bought for our little homestead orchard, paying only $7.69 for each tree.
I returned some clothes that one of my other personalities purchased on an impulse and they were not at all my style. I don’t know why she does that sometimes!
I colored my own hair, which is not unusual… the unusual part is that I foiled my own hair and put darker undertones in it. Foiling your own hair is NOT easy. The products cost me about $5 saving me $115 of what it was going to cost at the salon. No, it doesn’t look as good as it would have had it been done professionally, but the Z Man likes it so I’m ok with it too.
I spent $27.44 at the grocery store this week which brings my total for the month for groceries to $66.45.
Laundry was dried on the clothes line, no meals were eaten out or carried out, lunches were from leftovers or salad in a jar, bills are paid, still adding to the pickle jar and still breathing fresh air and loving it.

How about you, what frugal fun have you had this week?

Till Next Time,

Lori

Friday’s Frugal Five

It’s been a busy week, but it seems like it flew by. I wish I had some earth shattering frugal tips for you today. Sometimes it’s hard to remember the frugal things to post about because they are so routine for us. Things like using the clothes line to dry clothes or taking leftovers to work for lunches.

But I’ll say it again, it’s the little frugal things that add up and over time they just become the normal way of doing things.

Five Frugal Things:

This week the Z Man and I celebrated our anniversary. A long time ago we decided that our food is better than most restaurants we’ve been to so very seldom to we ever go out for a meal. We started a tradition for our anniversary celebrations to include BLT sandwiches and carrot cake. When you have bacon like we have, a BLT sandwich feels like a special meal. Our wedding cake was a carrot cake, so each year we have carrot cake for our anniversary.

I made a weeks worth of salad in a jar for our lunches. During the busy months at work our dinners become more simple like sandwiches or something grilled which often doesn’t allow for leftovers. I love salad in a jar and I’m a firm believer that is saves money and prevents waste when making all the salads at one time. How many times have you bought salad ingredients only to find they got pushed to the back of the fridge, finding them days later in need of Viagra and on its way to the compost pile? That doesn’t happen with salad in a jar because you make them all at one time. It’s a great healthy grab and go meal.

I fell into a frumpy mood this week feeling that I needed to look better, more styled, more modern, prettier. Fortunately some of my frugal friends gave me a little boost of encouragement helping me realize that I need to just keep taking care of myself (not smoking, eating better and quitting the omeprazole) and let the rest of those (not good enough, negative) feelings go. More on this later… lets just say for now I didn’t spend the $500 or so dollars it would’ve cost to (supposedly) feel better about myself.

Yesterday was cinco de mayo so we had taco salads for dinner because I had leftover meat and beans from the quesadillas we had on Wednesday so it was mexican two evenings in a row. The funny thing is that we had BLTs on both Monday and Tuesday evenings. No waste = frugal. The Z Man is so easy going with my dinner plans, he is always happy no matter what I serve. As long as its good food it doesn’t really matter to him what it is. That makes meal planning so much easier. Luckiest woman in the world I tell ya.

I completely failed to track my grocery spending for April. I will go back and tally the receipts when I get time, but lesson learned because I’m sure I spent more because I didn’t track it. So far for the month of May I’ve spent $14.57. I want to stay as close to my $20 a week ($100 a month) budget as possible. Now that I’m buying more local and organic foods it is a bit more expensive, but I’m just fine with the extra cost. I would rather pay for it now than pay for it later with my health. Tracking spending = frugal.

What frugal fun did you have this week?

Have a great day!

Till Next time,

Lori

Friday’s Frugal Five & A Frugal Fail

Happy Friday Y’all!

I had to change up the dinner plans last night because when I got home the crock pot of bar-b-q pulled pork I had put on before I left for work had burned to a crisp. I’ve made bar-b-q in the crock pot many times, I’m not sure why it burned so bad yesterday. Anyway, breakfast for dinner it was. I whipped up a sausage, sweet pepper, onion and cheese frittata and it was delicious. I love our chickens, I love having pets that feed us 😉

Friday’s Frugal Five:

I completed a CE course I needed for work last Sunday and got paid 7 hours overtime for it.
I finally got our taxes done, and while there is nothing frugal about waiting till the last minute, getting them done and sending the check in is certainly more frugal than not paying your taxes. Uuuugghhh!
I’m seriously contemplating purchasing a desk top computer so I can set my lap top on fire. What’s frugal about this is that I’m doing my research of what we need vs. what we don’t and optional prices. Perhaps I’ll trade our laptop in on a desktop instead of setting it on fire. That of course would be the mature frugal thing to do, but it seriously would give me an abundance of pleasure to watch that POS burn in the front yard.
We use our outdoor clothesline year round but in the winter the clothes just don’t smell as good as they do in the spring and summer. I love clean sheet night with fresh air dried sheets in the spring. Even as busy as I get in the spring and summer, clean sheet night still happens every week.
Checked out several more books and books on cd from the library, made my returns on time = no late fees. All meals came from the freezer and pantry which means no meals eaten out or taken out, bills are paid, money in the pickle jar and still breathing fresh air and loving it.

Frugal Fail: Because I don’t like to put hot foods in the refrigerator I usually let them sit on the counter to cool a bit first. Earlier in the week I put the dinner leftovers on the counter to cool – ALL NIGHT LONG… Not cool! Maybe the food was ok, maybe it wasn’t but I’m sure what isn’t frugal is a hospital visit for food poisoning. No thank you!

Clean sheet night… one of my favorite things