It's time to change the header on this thing. Oh, hey, look, first blog post since August... I slack.

And to change what I blog about.

Because I am pretty sure that just this month and just on Amazon, I blew through that 17,500. (no, not really, because I am not in fact suicidal).

In truth, it's because we don't have to. And there are some things that we have been talking about that will completely blow that.

Like the wrap around deck and hottub and the three season room and the next trip to Ikea and the home and garden show is coming up in February and I KNOW the hubbin wants him some steamy sauna-y goodness and we'll actually start that planning this year. And the geodesic dome greenhouse. And the natural swimming hole with the carps. And the replacement outbuilding because I don't actually want to fix and move the back barn, I want to get one that has a usable loft, a ramp, room to store more than one spade and a door that closes without herculean effort and opens without a crowbar and last, but not necessarily least, one that doesn't smell like the one we have.

Oh, yeah, and my barely suppressed desire to take a 3lb sledgehammer to the bathroom on a daily basis.

And because I am working a regular day job with office hours.

Yup, that's right, I are employee. Feels kinda weird. Still not sure what to make of it.

That's actually why I have been absent for a while. I forgot how much it messes with ones schedule to have to be away from home from 6:20 to usually 5-ish. No more shopping at noon on a Tuesday. No more weeding the front yard while on the phone. No more hanging a load of laundry before getting on the computer. Those little bits add up. A lot. Kinda like pennies pinched and definitely WAY more than I remembered. But I have so far not put fingers to keyboard at 3am for this gig, or gotten phonecalls at 4am, so I am quite happy with the choice we made (did I just hear faint laughter and someone saying DOOM?).

So I guess the thing is to re-direct. More recipes for getting foods prepped for the week for home cooked meals, more gardening tidbits, more sustainability, more frugal with a purpose, rather than to budget (yes, there's a difference, think up front cost and amortizations), because I will continue to pinch pennies 'til Lincolns little eyes pop out, and we'll see, maybe even some thoughts on maximizing saving for retirement (unless we win the lottery, then I'll start talking about his and hers yachts and tax havens) and sewing projects and such.

I guess what I am saying is that we've cocooned for a bit, made some changes, thought some thoughts (and set off the fire alarm), and I think I might be back. It's a journey, here's to the next leg :)

That's all I got for now,
Happy Pinching

Blogging, Life and Gardening. Also, Priorities!

Alrighty then, it's been a while. 

I'm baaaaaack. Maybe. 

This post brought to you by my (very) occasional contributions to Lehmans, here's the link.

I'll put my original further down, because this post is actually about my realization how freaking awesome my editor is. 

When I submit something, I send it as a draft, with the understanding and expectation that things will be changed. And by that I mean the kind of change between the Lord of the Rings book and the movies. That's what I'm expecting when I send stuff over. 

What I get is something much, much better. 

When I see my contributions on the Lehman's Blog, I have caught myself thinking 'hey, that person sounds sort of like me, only better and funnier and she's writing about this thing I have done and that looks almost like my picture...pause...read a bit further, check the tag line...hey, that's my article. AWESOME'. 

That's what a good editor does. They take the original voice and they amplify it and make it clearer, without distorting it. I have that editor. And she rocks :D

Here's what I originally wrote for the article linked above, make your own decisions:

May 19, 2014

For us this year so far has served as a reminder that we are not in charge of our garden and how things will work out.

Despite months of planning, re-arranging, re-planning and, let’s call it, dreaming about the perfection that will be this years garden, we are now officially 3 weeks behind, we have harvested a grand total of three (you read that right, 3) radishes, and they were minuscule, because everything is either languishing or bolting to seed before setting full roots.

Bolting Radishes

The peppers and tomatoes went in on May 19, 2014, the latest I have ever planted anything, and it’s because I didn't want the poor little plantiwuzels (totally a word) to freeze in the ground, but I had to get them in, because they were starting to not like being in pods. 

And don’t even get me started on the sunflowers just poking their little leaves out, because those are the support system for the cucumbers, so those JUST got seeded out. Slackers all around me. I NEED cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, fresh from the vine, for my continued happiness. Does Nature not understand my needs here? And no, buying them is not the same, I have been forever ruined for hothouse produce. Starting to get scurvy here and rapidly going through my last little stores of pickles from last year, this is completely unacceptable. Where do I lodge a complaint? Just kidding, this is actually what makes gardening fun, having to adjust and go with how things run, not really having control. And there is a core deep happiness and sense of thankfulness and accomplishment when I pull one of the canned jars from last year or the year before off the shelf. That is something that no one could ever have explained to me, that sense of ‘YEAH, we did this, despite torrential rains, despite season-long droughts, despite insect invasions that had me picking bugs for days. Nothing quite like it :D
Potatoes, lettuce, peas, carrots and radishes, cucumbers vining their way up an ornamental trellis: PRETTY. Delicious. Win-win.

I do plan my garden to basically give me a 2 week break in the middle of summer, because we go on vacation, completely non-negotiable and we are not in charge of when that happens. Having everything come into fruit just as one leaves for two weeks is frustrating at best and definitely heartbreaking, so after doing that for a few years I started checking the days to harvest and planning the garden around those dates. Apparently I learn by pain association <wink>. And note, that’s me planning, not how things actually work out, because never fear, nothing will go as planned :D

With this years spring showing me whose boss I will definitely have to do some serious juggling and shifting of plant dates and even some re-arranging of where things will be planted, because the radishes that were supposed to be gone by now are still in situ where some of the peppers were planned, so those guys have to move and that will create a ripple effect in my plan, because they have to go where the corn was scheduled to go, which will have to be bumped by a few weeks (thank goodness for long growing seasons), which means the beans will be bumped along with them. To give a concrete example of one that didn't work out for me: The buckwheat I put in as early as I could only poked their little baby leave up a little bit before they all drowned (and were immediately replaced by dandelions, grump).

The carrots are clinging to life with a ferociousness I never thought I’d see in a humble carrot, because they have now been drowned, parched, nearly frozen and munched on by slugs, the letti (lettuces? Oh, if only I’d paid better attention in English vocab) is pathetically small, but at least they haven’t drowned (I was worried there for a few days) and they are being little troopers about not bolting (see above about the slackweasel radishes), so I am actually really impressed with those little guys, can’t wait to eat them :D

 

Carrots, trust me

On to further happy news: Despite being broiled, frozen and drowned ourselves and see-sawing between fanning ourselves and lighting fires in the fireplace to warm up the house, the garden is ready. Broadforked and augmented with compost, weeded,  desluggified (it’s a word, trust me), because those little suckers will actually drink cheap beer (no, I’m not letting them drown in home brew), sprinkled with crushed eggshells and diatomaceous earth and now it’s all about the weather forecast. So here’s hoping that it’s accurate and I didn't just plant almost 200 seedlings, only to have them all die in a late frost. Pray with me :D

June 15, 2014

Done at last, done at last, goodness gracious, we are done at last.

With the spring/summer planting.

A whole month behind schedule.

My schedule that is, because as we all know, *I* am not in charge and there is simply nothing I can do about that and it’s sort of glorious, isn’t it?

Here’s where we are as of today:

Carrots(Dragon, and I simply can’t wait to see them in all their red glory :D)  going strong and being all bushy and looking inviting. Make you just want to nibble, don’t they? Grow, grow, we want to eat you!

Carrots, told you to trust me

Little Potato cucumbers, these guys are being sprinkled with diatomaceous earth regularly, so that nothing nibbles on them when I’m not looking (as are all the other plants, that’s the little whitish specks you see in all of my pics)

Three head lettuce, this is one of the last ones around, because we ate the rest already and only left a few to go ahead and bolt, so we can seed save them for the fall planting. And they are kind of pretty when they bloom, so I get double duty out of the deal. Can’t complain about that, now, can ya?

It is for that reason that I plant a lot of lettuce in the front of my house, where one would expect to see flower beds. I know that I get strange looks when I am out there, harvesting lettuce and herbs for dinner with a big ole colander, but I just can’t bring myself to waste all that space on things I can’t eat.

Note to self: Don’t plant corn in the front flower beds, it doesn’t look right.

Lazy Housewife beans, also pretty and can vine their way up an ornamental trellis. Or, as in this case, be in the garden and be purely functional. That is something that is on the list, pretty trellises for the garden, it just hasn’t happened yet. It just so happens that the beans really don’t care what they climb. I’ve used sunflowers, corn, sticks, a discarded porch swing frame, the side support of my clothes line, you name it, beans will climb it. Hooray.

The only limiting factor for me is what I want to have to look at in my yard all summer, so I strive for pretty. That garden is supposed to feed more than just our bellies, after all :D

Last, but definitely not least: Black Cherry Tomatoes.

 I’m informed by a reliable source that these are delicious and candylike (me, I am that source, I had them last year) and will not make it into the house. And since the hubbin flat out refuses to eat raw tomatoes of any kind, they will be mine, all mine. And there are 11 plants, so maybe, just maybe I will be able to dehydrate some or can them for the winter, because these things are sooooo jummy,  and dehydrated they are like tomato raisins (tomaisins?). I would show you a picture, but there aren’t any, because I used up all my self-control to put a handful into the dehydrator, there was none left for taking pics before devouring them.

I have limits. A lot of them. I embrace them and when it comes to delicious, homegrown foods without preservatives (OK, salt in some cases), I see no reason to restrain myself.

That’s all I have for now.

Happy Pinching.

P.S.: Tomatoes LOVE used coffee grounds, and eggshells, so don’t throw those out. And the coffee grounds and eggshells also act as a deterrent to some pests, so there’s another win-win.

I'm not dead yet... I feel HAPPY - and thoughts on food storage quantities :) with judicious use of the phrase A. LOT.

It's inspired by this post over at Lehman's:

I've been (and still am to some extend) finishing up the last (HAH!) of the harvest and stock up for Winter putting up chores and have consequently been buried in the kitchen and basement.

Our simply overwhelming apple harvest. Yup, that's all of it. It's a 3 year old tree, so We're actually quite thrilled.

One of the things that goes into preserving the harvest/ shopping frugally/ not running to the store every 5 seconds (or every week, which to me seems like every 5 seconds) is planning what you are going to have on hand.

I have tried doing the meal plan thing before and I failed miserably, because no matter how thick the writing on the meal plan saying it's bean casserole night is underlined, what we both really want tonight is pizza. And that's just for the two of us, I can't imagine what that sort of thing is like when there are more people involved in the 'but I'm really in the mood for X' discussion. And let's face it, just because we eat frugally doesn't mean that we want to (or should) feel deprived in any way. Feeling deprived (as opposed to depraved, which is the norm around here) is what leads to bingeing, which leads to feelings of guilt, which leads to austerity, which leads to bingeing and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

Self-defeating is the word I was looking for there.

One of the pitfalls of starting to eat frugally is that one might be tempted to buy cheaply and in bulk, only to learn that what one (me, alright, it was me) has stocked up on a bunch of stuff noone wants to eat. That's known as 'Not a Bargain for Us'.

Two things: Buying in bulk requires an initial outlay of funds for the larger quantities one buys, so there is usually a 'saving up for it' period involved. Use that time to figure out not only what you actually consume (toilet paper is a relatively safe bet here) and, and this is kind of important, how much of it you consume over a given period of time.

I just accepted a delivery of 100lbs of flour, 50 lbs of whole wheat stone ground and 50 lbs of white all purpose, so I'll just go ahead and use that as an example.

I bake A LOT in the colder months. Think at least four loaves of bread, two loaves of banana nut bread*, at least one batch of cookies (it's the season, don't you know), a batch of garlic cheddar biscuits and pigs in a blanket, usually an apple coffee cake and sometimes a batch of English Muffins or tortillas if I am feeling adventurous. That's every week. Now some of that goes into the freezer for the summer months, when I not only don't want to heat up the house by baking, but also don't have the time to do anything other than deal with the garden, but on average, I go through about 8 lbs of flour a week during baking season.

So those 100lbs are going to last us until Early February or a little more than 3 months.

We may have some kind of carb addiction going on here...

I no longer know what non-bulk, non-bromated flour costs, but I got this stuff for $0.56 per lb including the shipping, which is slightly more than I could spend for bromated flour at GFS in the 50lb bag, but I'll go with the non-pesticide option for as long as the extra ~$0.005 per pound and the shipping can be absorbed into the budget.

Now, if you are not baking all of your own bread and cookies and cakes then buying 100lbs of flour might not be for you. Here's why: That stuff doesn't last forever. Actually, it'll last about 3 months in my constant temp and relatively stable humidity basement or 6 months in the freezer before it goes stale and/or rancid. And would you look at that, that's about as long as it'll take me to use that all up. How fortuitous. It's almost like I planned it that way...

Another good example for us is tomatoes. We use a lot of them. A. LOT.

Before I started growing and preserving my own we went through about four #10 cans of whole peeled tomatoes a month. In order to replace that level of consumption with organic, home grown, non-BPA canned tomatoes I would have to can roughly 200 quarts of tomatoes. That's not happening for several reasons:

1. I'm lazy (remember this, it's sort of a theme here)
2. That's 200 quart jars I have to buy just for the tomatoes, and while I probably will get there eventually, it's not an investment we are able to make up front.
3. If I suggested to the hubbin that we need to can 200 quarts of tomatoes he would either have a coronary right then and there or seed the garden plot with grass seed, or both.
4. That's a lot of room to dedicate in the pantry. More room than we can allow for it, in fact.
5. Canning 200 quart jars would be 29 canner loads for me. I could probably pull it off during tomato season, but see #1 (told you to remember that one) and there are other things to take care of at that point in time. 

Dehydrating to the rescue :D

I can some tomatoes, because you just can't beat that taste and texture for some things.

I throw some of them into the freezer, because it's easy and we have a lot of them.

I dehydrate A. LOT. of them. Because when I make a sauce, stew or soup, having some dehydrated tomatoes to throw in there is wonderful. And a pint of dehydrated tomatoes is about equivalent to two #10 cans :) Look at all that room I am not using for tomatoes :D

I didn't one day decide that I would need 50 quarts of canned tomatoes and 100lbs of flour every three months, it took some watching what we actually eat, some math, some looking at grocery receipts and figuring out when we use what. And it took me a few years to figure out that that 50lb bag of flour I bought in December went a lot faster than the one I bought in August. It's a journey, and you have to pay attention to things you may not usually even think about.

Beans are a prime example of this for us. I used to not cook with beans that much, because I bought them dry and they are sort of a pain to deal with that way, but SOOOO much cheaper. Then I heard about a trick where you soak a whole bunch and then freeze them in portion sizes, so you just have to defrost them to have pre-soaked beans ready to go. Only that's a pain in the rear, too, because thawing that lump-o-frozen-beans takes forever without application of some heat, and you may recall that I am what is colloquially known as way too cheap to do that.

Then I started canning them without pre-soaking them (here) and suddenly we are eating more beans than you can shake a stick at. And I started running out of beans, so I started buying them whenever I saw them for my stock-up price (under $1.00/lb) anywhere...We have a lot of beans right now. Dried, and canned. 

A. LOT. 

There's actually more in the basement and I took this pic after I canned a bunch. I may have a problem.

It's OK, because they are not going to go bad before we use them up. But I will have to figure out how much we actually consume, so that I can then adjust my purchases to meet our actual demand without having a years worth of beans sitting around. Because having a few hundred bucks tied up in food that might go bad before we eat it is not frugal or smart. And it sort of ticks me off when I do it.

Quick aside: Rotate your food and your tires. In shuffling a bunch of jars in the basement I found some dried bell peppers from 2010. They are still good (Thank YOU) and are now actually ground into a fine powder and in the spice cabinet for use as paprika (YUMM). I just hate finding stuff like that because it means I didn't do due diligence. First in, first out and stock from the back, B. you know this :)

You know how when you were in school and you asked when you would ever need all this math stuff? My mall rat, colour guard, designer clothes wearing, snobby self would have laughed if someone had used this as an example.

That's all I got for now,

Happy Pinching

*I buy bananas when they go on sale in the summer and prep them for banana nut bread by putting 6 of them in a bag, adding cinnamon and freezing them as flat mush

Last of the summer harvest (frost advisory for tonight)

Clockwise and spiralwise (is that a word?), starting with the pile of three, upper left:
Green, ripening to a deep oxblood red sweet pepper, that has such a rich, flavour that it's simply indescribable. I keep opening the dehydrator and popping some chunks into my mouth. There's a reason you are not seeing a pile of them, I had to beat the hubbin off with a stick to be able to let them get ripe enough to seed save them. They are called Sweet Chocolate and it's kind of true.
Next up Ancho Pablomas, these babies are HOT HOT HOT and have a smoky flavour without having seen a smoker, which is a good thing, because I don't have one :( ...yet.
Black Hungarians, medium hot, with a sweet lead in that slowly builds up to a nice, warm crescendo with practically no burn. Probably my favourite hot pepper and not just because they are black, ripening to a deep, rich red :) on nice, compact plants and look lovely.
Black Hungarians, last years open pollination, it worked :).
Sweet little pepperlings, don't know what they are called, but they are really, really sweet, the candy of peppers, and simply adorable on the plant. Upright habit, and you can't really see it here, they go from a creamy white to purple to orange to deep red and are probably the most ornamental peppers I've ever planted.
I call the next set jalapeno looking sweet peppers, they are very flavourful, sweet and mild with no heat at all, very nice, they are from seeds I saved from a pack of sweet peppers from Sams Club if you would believe it. Experiment: successful, so far, let's see what happens next year :D
Then we have White Bullnose, they ripen from a creamy white through purple streaks to a deep red and the flavour changes from buttery to this very rich paprika flavour I've never experienced in a fresh pepper.
Purple peppers that are white on the inside, want to say they are purple beauty, but could be wrong, open pollination from last year, seed from one lone survivor of the drought, and the taste is completely worth the effort of nursing that one through :)
Basic green pepper, except these are a heirloom variety (Emerald Giant, didn't quite make it to red) as well, and I can tell the difference. The pepper flavour is complex, there is a sweetness to these that I have never tasted in a commercial pepper and they are more fragrant than anything I could buy at the store.
Then black jalapenos, they pack a punch and again, the complex flavour is worth dealing with the heirloom for this one, it was a new one for us this year and we'll be planting it again along with all of the varieties you see here. I will be trying a few other ones next year, just to add a bit more variety to the pepper game, but ultimately I want there to be 10 to 12 varieties.

I'm saving the seeds out of all of these, and for peppers that's easy to do: cut open the pepper, take out the seeds and dry them until a seed breaks when bent, then store them away, I keep my hoard in jars in the freezer :D. Make sure you lable your seeds well throughout the entire process, or you might wind up like me, calling your seed packs 'pretty little pepperlings' ;)

We've gone from this

 to this. Fall is well and truly here.

That's all I got for now,
Happy Pinching

Things found in the basement closet we didn't expect and couldn't immediately identify...

Can YOU???

How about now?

Yup. That's Potatoes.

Neither one of us wants to admit to sticking them in the closet, but between us we have definitely figured out that whoever put them there and then put a box of empty canning jars on top of them (finger pointing is still happening, but since it worked out in a weird, cool way I might take credit ;) ) did so in early fall of 2011.

I'm gonna let that sink in for a moment. It's OK, I'll wait.

Yes, your math is correct, that's about two years ago. We're pretty awed, actually. I mean holy macaroni, that's two years of sitting there.

I THOUGHT last year that I was missing some of my seed potatoes. I just figured that they had been eaten or something. I do know that this years seed potatoes are going straight into that closet.

To quote a movie I have liked since it first came out: Nature will find a way.

That's some staying power right there.

We're planting these babies tomorrow and we will be coddling and nurturing them through the winter (I'm thinking the window next to my desk with a grow lamp). I NEED those genes to perpetuate themselves in my garden, so I can eat their offspring for many, many years to come.

Two years of sitting in my basement in a closet, under another box, with no light, no water, limited airflow and these things are alive and going. Can you tell I'm pretty amazed?

Also, apparently we have a pretty good root cellar environment going on there. This makes me happy.

And not to be forgotten: Hubbin pulled out that box of quart sized canning jars, just in time for this years potato harvest (these guys second cousins? How does that work?), so what doesn't go into the (apparently magical and conceivably linked to Narnia) basement closet will be dried, then stored in jars. Want to know how, check here.

K, that's all I got for now.
Happy Pinching.

Beneficial insects

Found this gravid lady today

and because she was hanging out in the front of the house, in the potted purple peppers (say it fast, I dare you), and we have a cat that seems to think praying mantis are delicious, I picked her up

and moved her to the back yard garden area, into the asparagus ferns to lay her eggs and start me up on next years crop of alien looking little helpers :D

Will have to remember that there's at least one egg sack in there when we move the asparagus later this year :).

That's all I got for now,
Happy Pinching

Our seed order has been placed (and major braggathon on teh frugal me ;) )

This is year 4 of Gardening for us, and in true form I have gone big (because I'm already home, so all out of options ;) )

And by go big I don't mean that I am growing a garden that would feed the masses, since I don't, and don't intend to. This is about us, after all and about being frugal and sustainable, which I am learning are two things that are so completely intertwined in so many ways that they are practically impossible to separate at times.

I mean that I spend WAY more money on organic, open pollinated and heirloom seeds in those first few years than we could afford. And it's now paying off with dividends.

Not dividends in the form of a check (but if you want to get some of my saved seeds, I wouldn't say no to a donation, contact me ;) ), but in the form of organic vegetables in the freezer, dehydrated and stored and in the cans of what we lovingly refer to as HCMREs (home cooked meals, ready to eat) that are on the shelves in the basement and looking like we'll eat this winter with only minimal dependence on the grocery store (nope, no pics of the basement, I don't need anyone to call one of those hoarders TV shows on me).

Dehydrated delicious goodness

And in the bags and bottles of seeds that are in the freezer and drying on the kitchen sill and still waiting to be harvested on the vines out in the yard, that are now in some cases going into the 5th generation here at Pinch Manor. Let me just say that again: 5th generation.

That makes me smile in a goofy, happy way.

And dividends in the fact that I just clicked the 'order' button on this years order and the grand total for the seeds I needed to buy was, including shipping $65.

Here's a list of what those $65 bought us, not QUITE scored to the twelve days:

One kind of bean
Two types of herbs
Three kinds of beet
Four types of pepper
Two kinds of cucumber
Two types of kohlrabi
One type of lettuce
Four types of flowers (to interplant)
One type of pea
One type of spinach
Two types of squash
two types of sunflower
and some swiss chard for hubbin to eat...

That's $65 to feed us organic, local and fresher than anything else could possibly be vegetables for the larger part of the year in varieties that are in some cases obscure and not even available at the farmers market because they don't like to travel any further than from my garden to my kitchen. Bruised tomatoes are just not something one would want to buy.

So allow me to brag and do some simple math here:

Let's say that I include something homegrown in one and a half meals every day, so that's three portions a day (it's WAY more, since we have shifted to mostly home grown, but I am being conservative in my estimates, since I want to account for travel and splurges etc), so that's 1095 meals (there's two of us) over the next year.

Considering the $65 I spent on seeds and let's figure in the approximately $15 that we will likely spend on fertilizer (horse poop) and the $50 that we are throwing at the hoop houses ($150 total, and those are expected to amortize over three years minimum, but probably closer to 5-6 years, being conservative ;) ) that's about $130.

That's $130 to get organic vegetables for 1095 meals. Not considering that we are now growing some of our own grains.

Can I just scream that price-tag from the rooftops?

I spend $0.12 on organic vegetables for the two of us per meal.

Granted, I'm not paying myself for any of that labour, or Hubbin for the digging and hauling, or figuring in the fuel needed to haul the fertilizer or hoop house materials home or the energy and water needed to process and preserve, but I did round up to the $0.12, so I'll call that even.

We eat probably 5 to 6 vegetarian meals a week, and yes, I'm counting the PB&Js in that number, but not the egg containing meals, or the number would be much higher, but this is how we do it. This is how we eat healthy and sustainable on a grocery budget that allocates less than a dollar per serving.

Could I do it without the garden (the thing I am often accused of: "if you didn't have the room for a garden you wouldn't be able to do it")? Definitely. There'd probably be less organic foods, and more focus on the clean 15 vs the dirty dozen for veggies (not a bad thing to pay attention to, no matter what your budget is) and we would not be having as much meat as we do, but I could easily feed us on our budget (again, that's less than $1 per serving on average, we definitely eat more expensive meals, but balance them out with really, really cheap ones) without a garden.

The catnip harvest, yup, even the furballs are being more sustainable and self-sufficient.

Rice and beans are still very cheap. Even the brown rice I buy (nope, not even gonna try growing it, no matter how wet of a spring we are having). So are eggs and flour and potatoes and cabbage and pasta and actually most produce in season. Basing meals around those staples and then expanding with add-ons is how one can do it. That and my flat refusal to let foods go to waste. It pains me when I have let something sit until it's beyond its best and no longer something we would enjoy eating, so I try not to do that too often. Not throwing away 40-60% of the foods we buy (the average families waste) is part of the equation. It still happens, but much less often than it used to. Took conscious effort, though.

Cooking from scratch is another :). It's not as hard as you would think. Try making a big pot of rice on Saturday and then plan your meals around that for the week. Chicken on Sunday, Chicken Quesadillas on Monday, Rice and Beans on Tuesday, Chicken fried rice with veggies on Wednesday, Stuffed Peppers on Thursday, Tuna and Rice Casserole on Friday and Eggs and Rice scrambled together for Saturday Brunch. And then make a big ole pot of pasta or potatoes for the next go around ;) And if you made more than you can eat in a sitting, you have leftovers for lunch the next day or to freeze for those weeks you just can't be bothered, because we all have them and there's no need to beat yourself up over it ;).

One thing I will allow that would not be possible without the garden and that I don't talk about that much: When something is coming in in force and I am not sure what to do with the next basket of corn or the huge colander full of lettuce or the tomatoes that are not going to fit in the dehydrator, that's what we eat. It's free, it's there, it's fresh and we have more than we can shake a stick at, so it's what's on the menu. All day, every day. Until I've caught up.

Those months are the ones where the grocery budget is mostly spent on filling the freezer with meats that are otherwise not on the menu and on improvements to the garden that are not in the budget otherwise and on putting money aside to pay for the food we eat on vacation. It takes planning and pinching and sometimes eating salad for a week straight until the Hubbin thinks he's gonna turn green while I am considering making lettuce sandwiches for his lunch and how I can sneak some fresh cucumbers into his diet despite his refusal to eat them non-pickled and can I get him to eat peanut buttered swiss chard stalks one more day... but it's what works for us :)

That's all I got for now,
Happy Pinching

Fall quicky update, sorry, no pics and a shameless product promotion

I have been traveling for my new job so much that I am basically either on the road, unpacking, packing, doing laundry or trying to catch up to all the wonderful autumn bounty that my garden is producing and keeping the fridge stocked with home cooked MREs for the hubbin, so he doesn't resort to frozen pizza too often ;)

On the saving front: We have switched our cell phone provider to Ting and WE LOVE IT. Reliable signal and at this point our average bill is less than a third of what it was, with no loss of services that I can detect. For us (2 smartphones, both used for work and play) that's a savings of over $120 a month, so definitely not to be sneezed at. (and if you check it out via that link up there and decide it's for you, you get $25 toward Ting devices or services, if you can port your device, which seems likely from what I've seen ;) )

I promise that once things slow down a bit I will catch up and post about all the things that are bubbling, dehydrating, frozen, cooked, seedsaved, planted (peas and radishes and lettuce and colecrops oh, MY), root cellared and otherwise going on between trips.

For now a quick rundown of what I have in my brain at this moment:

I had a missing cat, he came home after a week, tired, hungry and skinnier than I've ever seen him (YEAH!)

I lied, there's a picture of the prodigal furbaby

Corn harvest is in, 3 varieties eliminated for just not being all that, 9 will be re-planted next year. We will not be doing the 3 sisters, which while wonderful and interesting seems to not work all that well for us in our garden setting, so row planting it is.

Complete failure of the squashes. And I mean we have nothing, nada, zip out of well over 40 plants that all looked beautiful and were popping with flowers galore and set micro squashlings in droves, so it's most likely a pollination issues, which means a bee hive for next spring.

Next years pole beans will be climbing the over 10 foot tall sunflowers that we had this year, can't wait to try that, think that will be just breathtaking with the bright yellow sunflowers and the purple and pink bean flowers and purple pods I have in there (squigg)

Quinoa did beautiful for the first time this year, we harvested too early and I don't think we have viable seed, but that's OK, we will have some next year.

Had (had? HA! Still having) an amazing year for peppers. Some of the varieties I have been trying for a few years now have for the first time borne fruit. And the reward for not giving up on heirloom peppers: DEEEE-licious. White bullnose that are so creamy they taste like they are buttered fresh off the plant, chocolate peppers that are so sweet they are almost like candy (ask me about chocolate bell peppers and chocolate cherry tomatoes in a red leaf lettuce salad...)

And last, but certainly not least, I seem to have finally overcome my lifelong (and often poked at) propensity toward killing mint: All 8 varieties are doing well and spreading like wildfire in their designated and contained spots.

There's more, but lunch is over, so that's all I have for now.
Happy Pinching

Why we need a bee hive

Market more, white wonder and sikkim cukes

I desperately need them to lick my plates clean. No, wait, that's what one gets dogs for. Or is that teenagers? I forget.

No, the reason is that between the roughly 40 cucumber plants, the 12 butternut squash plants, the 10 zucchini plants and the 14 acorn squash plants, all of whom are healthy, vigorous and producing scads of both male and female flowers, this is what I am harvesting. Note the shriveled, sad little nubs at the blossom end of the cucumbers? That's an indicator that they are not being completely pollinated. And what you are not seeing here are the tiny infant fruit that just wither up and fall off the vine, never to see the inside of a pickling crock or delight my tongue in other ways.

I see some bees flying in, I get to pet the bumble bees (mostly because it freaks the hubbin out), but it's looking like there is not enough pollination happening. And what I'm not seeing is the vast number of honey bees that I have seen in years past, swarming and almost obscuring the plants during the warm afternoons, adding their happy buzzing to the soundtrack of my back yard.

Even more worrisome is that this is not just our experience, I am hearing it from most people I speak to. No midnight drops of surplus zucchini, no cries for help on how to process the half ton of cucumbers that ripened over night, not seeing/ hearing/ feeling it at all.

So the plan for next year is to not only plant tons of pollinator attracting flowers, but to also have a hive in residence. Hubbin is allergic (think epi-pen) to bees, which has been the reason we have not done so yet and this will be something he cannot help me with and we will have to be very careful where we place the hive, but this year is the final straw. No bees means no harvest. No harvest means no food.

Have you hugged a bee (keeper) today?

On a (circuitously) related note: The chickens went to live elsewhere, there's a few posts in the making about lacto fermenting and it's been kinda crazy here, so my apologies. Look for more posts soon.

Happy Pinching

Mosquitoes and Catnip

We have both in abundance. Only one of them on purpose.

Catmint/Catnip flower, purdy, ain't it?

We also have quite a few vanilla beans on hand at all times (hey, vanilla, how can one go wrong?) because we like to throw them in when brewing...

So, here's a little recipe I use to fend off the mosquitoes when I do a half hour of yard work. That's about as long as this concoction is effective and I do small increments of work to break up the larger tasks, it all works out.

Catnip (also known as Catmint for reasons that elude only those who have never seen the plant next to spearmint), a few handfuls of mostly leaves.

Vanilla bean if you have it, vanilla extract if you have it, has to be the real thing and probably shouldn't be sweetened. (Don't use the vanilla flavoured coffee sweetener you have in the cabinet, it doesn't work. At all.) This is optional and smells good, the main thing is the catnip. Also, for the vanilla, a little bit goes a long way, think drops for a quart of infusion.

Alcohol. You can use cheap vodka or other cheap, clear, unflavoured distilled alcohol that is at least 50proof/100%, but I personally consider this alcohol abuse, so I use rubbing alcohol of the 91% variety. Significantly cheaper and since noone will be imbibing this it's all good.

Cut the catnip and vanilla beans (if you have them, if you are using extract you would add that to the final infusion) into small pieces, you want to get a lot of surface contact without creating mush. Put the whole shebang into a container, add the alcohol and shake it up.

Every day or so. We keep it on the kitchen counter by the coffee, so we don't miss it ;).

For at least two weeks, but longer is better.

catnip infusion, better late than never, right?

Mix this infusion 50/50 with water in a spraybottle and apply just before exposure to mosquito infested areas (Amazon jungle, Mekong delta, Michigan/Florida, my back yard). You'll be good for about 30 minutes, after that you will want to re-apply or go back inside and eat ice cream while the bloodsuckers bang on your back door, pretending to sell girl-scout cookies.

For the price of rubbing alcohol and a spraybottle and if you so chose a bit of vanilla you have all natural mosquito repellent that actually works. How cool is that?

That's all I got for now,
Happy Pinching :)

What's going on at Pinch Manor? And Quick, quirky quibs about quality quinoa.

Weeeeeell,

This. This is what's been going on at Pinch Manor. Planting and weeding and harvesting and coddling and fighting the mini invaders, and more planting and more weeding and andandand...on to other things:

This is what quinoa looks like before it winds up at your local grocery store :D. Purdy, ain't it?

I've been trying to grow this stuff for the last 3 years, and this is the first time it's not simply laughing at me right before falling over and dying in infancy. It's actually blooming. I'm gonna have quinoa from my own garden.
.
.
.
In a few years. This year I'll get just enough to save seed, but that's OK, I finally figured out how to treat these recalcitrant little buggers.

First off, seed them out RIGHT after the chance for your last frost has passed, and make sure that you have your weeds under control, they do NOT like to be smothered. And then keep them weeded. Then weed some more. They seem to do fine in the location I put them this year, a fairly even mix of clay and sand, with plenty of compost, future years will tell if they have a preference.

Once they are actually established and going, they can handle quite a bit of abuse (like absolutely no weeding for a solid 2 weeks), but don't let your S.O. rip them out, thinking that they are fat hens (a common weed that they are actually very closely related to and look a lot like and WILL cross pollinate with, at least according to every source I have been able to find).

So far I have not had to support these guys, and they are now about 5 and a half feet tall. As the seed heads mature this may change, so we'll see.


As far as harvesting goes:

So far we've brought in some garlic, a few quarts of raspberries, a small handful of blueberries (they hate their location and will be moved once they go dormant in the fall), three honeyberries (yeah, 3, you have something to say?), quite a bit of mint and chives, more loose leaf lettuce than we could eat, radishes (they have now all gone to seed, which I am not at all upset about), several meals worth of asparagus, one paltry carrot (I will not be defeated by a root vegetable), about a quart of peas that are going right back in the ground this summer for a fall harvest we can actually eat and a few handfuls of buckwheat, again enough to go right back in the ground so we can hopefully have a harvest worth making pancakes with.

I'm forgetting things, and that's OK.

Oh, yeah, some of our corn has tassels (YEAH!) and the peppers that went in the ground about a month late are setting flowers (YEAH! again).

That's all I have for now,
Happy Pinching :D

Procrastination and why I'm not beating myself up over it this week

According to the Farmers Almanac we should have had our last frost on or before April 28th. So basically and according to that I am currently about 3 weeks behind schedule on planting and transplanting.

We had a frost warning for the 12th of May. Hooray for procrastination, 'cause if we had had all of the little plantiwuzels in the ground that would have sucked mightily. So my procrastination and the fact that my plants are still very much mobile worked quite well for us and I'm completely shamelessly taking credit for that.

It's also why I don't ever put the hot weather plants in early. I wait at least a few weeks after the last average frost date before planting them out, because this is the Midwest. Don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes, it'll change.

Also, look: New cat we are trying to integrate into the household, so that instead of lethal injection he can have a forever home. Doesn't he look just miserable?

That's it for today, because it is still planting season ;)

Happy Pinching

What's happening at Pinch Manor?

Weeeeelllll... A lot, actually.

Planting and seeding out season is still in full swing, so we're putting something else in on a daily basis and will continue to do so for the next few weeks. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a bit behind the ball on the potatoes, didn't get the tomatoes and peppers seeded out quite as early as I had hoped, forgot most of the ornamental kale until last night, think the quinoa was largely decimated by some UFO* and have a sneaking suspicion that the buckwheat drowned, so some of  that will have to be re-seeded and some of them will go in late.

Since we are planting and seeding, we're getting truckloads of soil amendment (OK, it's horse poop from a local stable) and working them in, along with the contents of the compost heap(s). My husband actually shovels tons of poop at my behest, it must be love :D

Yes, that's a gallon bag of crushed eggshells, I save them all year long, so this is what I have at the beginning of Spring 

Sprinkling crushed eggshells over the plants to try to keep the slugs at bay. 

No, those are not rabbits, those are radishes,  they taste completely different, now go defend the territory and stop chewing radish leaves. You don't even like radishes.

With the emerging of the spring plants there comes the emerging of the pests that feed on them, so there's a bit of squishing bugs, drowning slugs and encouraging cats to kill rabbits (and stop trampling the plants) going on, too. This year we broke down and bought a live trap for the neighbours resident woodchuck. He has a trip in his future...

Last night we found the first raccoon in the tree over our back patio, the joy we feel cannot be expressed in words, but let's just say we hope this baby moves on and finds a territory elsewhere. We have chickens after all. If not, there's another future resident of the live trap and traveling varmint.

Oh, yeah, chickens: They are still living in the garage, because we have not finished their coop. As soon as we stripped the old walls off it started to rain and it simply will not stop. It's like it's Spring in the Midwest or something. That's an afternoon worth of work that needs to be done when dry because power tools.  Here's me crossing my fingers for a few nice days, soon, so we can do this without killing ourselves.

For that same reason I am sort of hampered in my laundry doing efforts. It's above freezing out, so I refuse to run the dryer for anything other than unmentionables, so it's a race when I know I have a few hours of no rain to get a load on the line to dry. And by it's a race I mean that I drop everything else I am doing and run the washing machine, then compulsively check the weather forecast while cursing a blue streak.

Throw in planning and planting the permanent edibles; two quinces, 4 hardy kiwi and 5 raspberries this year, and they have all moved a few times now, at least on paper; and we have a full plate. And to my delight (no, really, I am truly tickled about this, it makes me squee) husband, who acted like a cat getting a bath about edible landscaping at first, now wants to plant a hops hedge (there's a post there at some point) in the, get this, front yard. SQUEEEE. He finally gets it. Edible and ornamental are not mutually exclusive. I think it's the berry bushes shading the central air unit and the first two trees blooming that did the trick.

Here's to hoping that this effort starts to feed us this year, because that is kind of the goal/point. Get to where I can go grocery shopping every 3 months or so and cut the budget down to meat, dairy and some grain.

On a (sort of) related note: We looked into the freezer and that thing is WAY too full to go into harvest season, so hubbin and I decided that we will do a 'let's live out of the freezer' stretch of indeterminate duration. Possibly going to combine this with a money fast to try to re-set the budget, since there have been some changes to the finances. So look for posts on what we eat and how much we spend, because even if we go on a money fast, there will be fuel put into the cars and coffee and creamer in the pantry. Thems the rules, I can go without just about everything else if need be, but the hubbin has to get to work and we both have to have coffee, because orange isn't our colour. There certainly are worse addictions to have.

That's all I have for now,
Happy Pinching


*Unidentified Feeding Outrage

Why would I put up a picture of my dinner???

Well, because this is a meal that has absolutely no preservatives in it, everything is made from scratch and quite a bit of it did not come from a store.

That brown, deliciously gooey looking substance is venison stew, made with onions, home made broth from last years chickens, some mushrooms I dehydrated last year, some of this seasons sunchokes and thickened with the potato starch from this post. From the same post we have the instant mashed potatoes, seasoned with butter and some chives I stepped out of the back door and cut off one of my plants while the water was coming to a boil.

I bought the onions (they are one of the clean 15 and we ate everything that came out of the garden last year before it made it through the door, so I bought a few 50 lb bags), the potatoes, the mushrooms and the butter.

Because we had the venison courtesy of friends (thank you Brent and Linda) this meal (and the roughly 6 more portions of it that are there and the two hubbin and I already had) cost a total of $ 2.00. And that's being generous. So we're looking at 20 cent a meal. And that's a nice meal right there.

The stew cooked in the slow cooker over night, so hubbin could take some for lunch, which he did. Quite possibly gleefully.

Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and eat now, y'all have a good night :D

Happy Pinching

Planting seeds - yeah, it’s that time of year

For me that means saying goodbye to 80% of my kitchen counter. I have lights under the upper cabinets that are my surface lights most of the year, but come seedling season (early February through early May for my growing area) they become my grow lights and most of my kitchen counters turn into a mini nursery.

My calendar looks like this:

I’ve put in info about my average last and first frost dates, how many weeks before and after those dates, because that’s how I know when to seed things out and plant them into the garden. 

This calendar tells me when to seed something out indoors (‘si’ for seed indoors, in red), when to seed something directly into the garden (‘so’ for seed outdoors, in olive), when to transplant the little guys (‘t’, in bright green) and when to expect to harvest (the cells that are outlined). This helps me plan my crop rotation and to some extend also when and how I can put up my harvest.

For my little plant guys I have a few different methods of seeding them out. For example my tomatoes and all of the brassica (cole crops like cabbage and cauliflower) go into cut to size paper towel (and toilet paper :D) rolls I save throughout the year. I do this for different reasons: Tomatoes set deep roots, so I want them to be in a tall seedpod to give them the best start I can. I usually do not transplant them, but seed them in a few inches of seed starting mix and then add a little to the top as they grow. Tomatoes put out roots off their stems and this seems to work rather well for me. YMMV. The brassica are a bit different and I put them into the deep rolls because once I put them out into the garden they will be vulnerable to cutworms, so I want to give them a little bit more protection with the higher lip around the tender little shoots.

I also use origami seed pots with planting mix (made over the winter from newspaper pages, while watching the rare but of TV), the little pods that expand in water (rarely) and I do this in the foil turkey roasters with the clear lids, because they are taller than the little seedling greenhouses, so I can let the seedlings grow taller while still keeping them protected from the predation of Felis sylvestris catus:

Around this house those are the prime predators of indoor seedlings, despite the laid back image they are trying to project... That is just to lull us into a false sense of security, so that they can then POUNCE onto any and all baby plants and devour them, only to 'give them back' at 3am :D You may not need to protect against those, so YMMV ;)

 

One thing I do not have marked in this calendar is the hardening off that needs to happen to any seedling you take into the great outdoors. I usually do about a week, week and a half worth of it prior to planting them out, depending on what plant it is. At that point our back patio becomes the plant nursery. It provides a bit of shade and overall a gentle introduction to sun and wind and a bit of rain.

Because I have this plan with the growing season and how long each plant takes to mature I can plan around my garden and if I am behind by a week or two (like right now…) I can prioritize easier. Another thing I have been able to do with this plan has been to adjust how things work in my particular micro-climate. Just because the seed packet says something will take 90 days to mature does not mean that it’s exactly 90 days. It may be 80 days in my backyard, but 112 in yours. It’s all about learning how things work :)