Help Yourself Help Others

Around here we tend to stick to a very tight budget.  It’s the only way to keep the freezer filled and the lights on.  Racey was talking to a friend of ours at the market recently, and he made the comment that our little house of cards is dependent on all the little tips and tricks we currently use and if we stopped doing just one thing the house would fall.  To some people that would be too scary and they would chose a different path.  For us it’s the only way of living we've found that makes us happy and still keeps things going.  Now, if anyone reading this feels so inclined to give us a million dollars, we would be glad to change a few things.  But, left to ourselves, this is the plan that gives us the most successful results.

Like all plans, ours needs to be re-evaluated and adjusted from time to time when life circumstances change.  Case in point, we have just acquired two additional mouths to feed with a 3^rd on the way and due here in early January.  One is working full-time and the other lost their job so things are tight all the way around and getting tighter. 


Our little house of cards was built to feed, clothe, and shelter three people, not six!  So what are we going to do?  Well since we are ‘preppers’, we have a surplus of canned food and dry goods that will ease the added food budget crunch.  We converted our bulk storage pantry (which was our loft) into a bedroom and we're in the process of finding a new home for all our supplies.  The shelves in the picture below were put up this summer to hold all the fruit and veg we canned.  Now they hold pictures.... this was not in the plan but I'm glad they are here and can be used in this time of need.

We will be stretching the meat order that much further, and the fresh produce we get from the market has become even more valuable to the household budget. 

 I already coupon all our toiletries, personal care items, and  food products that I can’t make myself, but I'll need to be a little more aggressive at it.  We've built up such a surplus in the last year I was starting to get a little lazy.

This is a good example of why Racey and I go to all the trouble to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.  We are not doom & gloom, apocalyptic, anti-government type people.  We're ordinary folks, just like you, that have other people who, in times of crisis, turn to us for help.  Life’s unexpected changes can happen to anyone at anytime.  We need to be prepared to weather the storm and come out on top. This is not easy for any of us, but it is doable. If something similar happened in your household would you be able to help? 


I encourage you to assess your situation and see if there are areas you could build up in order to be better able to assist family or others in times of trouble.

Home Cooking Saturday - Chuck Roast

Today's home cooked meal is chuck roast.  This is an easy, hands free, and delicious meal.  When I was a young wife the only method of preparation I knew was to cook it in a crock-pot.  That method was fine if I started the roast early in the morning, but if I got a late start then I was out of luck.  The crock-pot has many advantages but speed is not one of them.  The latest method I've come to prefer is to prepare it in the oven.  I know this isn't new in any way, and I knew it could be done this way int he past, but it was always scary "real cooking" to me.  The crock-pot is kinda like microwave cooking.  Just put it in, flip a switch, and your done.  If that's all the more daring you'd like to be... well you can figure that one out on your own.  Here's the super-mega-skeery-real-cooking method:

Line a baking dish with aluminum foil.  Place the meat in the center and toss your roughly chopped sidekick ingredients around it, which in this case are potatoes, carrots, and onions.  Cover generously with salt, pepper, and minced garlic.

 

Loosely fold the foil over so the top is covered kind of like a tent.  This is so all the good moisture and flavors will be somewhat sealed in and won't just evaporate.

Toss it into the oven and bake at 350 for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until the internal temperature reaches 165.  If you're a gravy family, remove the meat and vegetables and place it on a serving plate, then just use the remaining liquid to make your gravy.  The gravy can be made a number of ways.  The easiest way I've found is to pour the liquid into a small sauce pan and add about 2 teaspoons of flour or cornstarch and whisk it over medium heat until it thickens.  Depending on how much liquid you had, you may want to add a small amount of milk which will add to the creaminess of the gravy as well as increasing the overall amount of gravy you'll make.  If you feel like you need it, add the milk before you add the flour or starch. 

When it's all finished, this is what you'll end up with:

In my opinion it's just as good as the crock pot method and takes a fraction of the time.

Passing On The 'Old Ways'

Yesterday was a very busy day for me.  I woke up early and headed to the farm where I picked up 1 1/2 gallons of fresh raw milk.  Then I drove to Loganville and sold 17 Farmer's Market Baskets at our new location which is the little cottage industry I sometimes refer to.  While 17 baskets is a small haul for the amount of time and distance I have to drive to get there, I see it as a starting point.  I am personally so thankful for the benefits my family receives from the baskets that I want to pass it on.

While I was there I had the chance to pass on some of the 'old world' life skills Racey and I are passionate about.  I took the raw milk and taught the family who's home we use as the drop off point how to make butter from the cream in the raw milk.  The kids took turns shaking and laughed and played as if it were a game!  I think that's an important concept in this style of living.  You have to involve the children in the daily chores to make everything work in the long term, but it also needs to be fun so they don't really feel like it's work.  By doing this you're teaching them valuable life skills like being self sufficient and making their own products, but also a responsible work ethic.  The butter isn't going to make itself.  If you want butter then shake some cream!  Forget the tendency to just pop into some big box store and pick something up that you have no clue when or where it was made and from what.

After the butter was finished we had butter milk left and in the mindset of waste not want not, we used it to make a pan of biscuits.  Once again the children were as interested as the mother.  They pulled their chairs up to the counter and watched every single thing I did.  They insisted that the flour tasted good.  The two year old, Corbin, dipped his little fat fingers in the buttermilk and sucked it off till his mama moved the bowl!  I wish I had taken more photos, but with four little ones five and under in age, picture taking wasn't very easy.  After the biscuits were finished cooking, everyone had a hot butter biscuit as a treat.  Yes, it was a TREAT!  The family was as happy to have the hot homemade butter biscuit as if it was something special from the store.

As the last person picked up their basket, the question came up of how to you use real carrots.  I started laughing and thought she was joking at first.  I asked her, "have you never eaten carrots before?", and she replied, "yes, but they are always cut up and ready to eat."  Again I laughed and shook my head.  It's really only funny if you've ever been as modern and spoiled as this.  I have, and when I look back at all the money I wasted on pre-washed, pre-cut, ready to eat convenience foods I realize the joke was on me.  It's silly, I know, but as a society we are being dumbed down when it comes to self sufficiency.  The more knowledge they take from us the more they can make us pay just to eat and survive.  Okay, okay, I'll get down off my soapbox here... maybe ;-)

As I left, I took a fruit and veg basket to my children's grandfather who is by himself now that their grandmother passed away last November.  I hate to use the term ex-father-in-law when referring to family as I have found when you have children even if the marriage doesn't last the family connections do.  He was very grateful for the veg, and we talked about the kids and life for a little while.  When I left he seemed a little happier than when I got there.  It's somehow nice to know that just a little food and companionship cane make a difference.  I had a 1/2 gallon of raw milk that was supposed to come home with me, but knowing who I was visiting and his love of 'old style' living I left the milk with him.  He was really excited about that, and of course then the stories started about how when he was a boy that's all they drank!

I backed out of the driveway and glanced back one more time before driving off and saw him through the kitchen window drinking strait from the jar like a kid!

By the time I made it home it was dark and I had been gone for almost 12 hours.  I was welcomed into a clean house with dinner ready on the stove, and my hubby waiting for me around the fire pit.  For all the hard work it was overall a great day.