TEFR (Times of Extreme Frugality Redux): You've Made Your Bed, Now Garden in It!

When we tell people we garden in raised beds, they probably envision something like this:

Well, boy howdy, wouldn't that be nice? And pricey. A wooden 4' x 4' frame runs around $100, which makes raising your own food a pretty expensive hobby.

At this point, 5 out of our 8 beds are framed. All with lumber we had scrounged, a few screws and nails, and a lot of sweat.

Front yard beds

Today we just finished enclosing our strawberry bed.

We had 2' x 6's and some 2' x 4's free from a neighbor who was rehabbing an old house. This bed is in the front yard and on a slope so it took extra work to cobble together the sides; we did get it almost level, if you look at it a bit cross-eyed.

Yes, there are gaps, Yes, it is not as pretty as buying cedar or other fancy wood. We're more interested in what grows in the garden than the aesthetics. 

And to my mind, a bed of ripe strawberries or a trellis of green beans is a darn beautiful sight.

Someday we'll get around to framing the remaining beds (wooden sides make it a lot easier for Tom to mow around them). 

Backyard beds, only one is framed

Eventually, all of the various and sundry woods should weather to the same grey and our garden beds will match. 

But the berries and beans won't care.

Times of Extreme Frugality Redux

Narrator: When last we visited Times of Extreme Frugality, Tom and Cindy had recouped their finances to levels last seen prior to the Great Car Incident. Now they are ready to embark on another frugal adventure, this one intentional...


We find ourselves in great shape financially, for a change. Reduced spending due to the pandemic,  a job with the Census, and the stimulus checks means we are less poor than we have been in a while.

Can't let all of that money sit around. We decided to help the local economy, so...

We are getting a garage!

Ours won't be quite this big.

A garage should be a good investment for us. It will also, of course, eat up most of the money we just accumulated since last year. 

2020 (in addition to it's many other colorful attributes) will now be known in the Rasely household as:

"Times of Extreme Frugality Redux"

Stay tuned for more cheap fun, hacks, and, invariably, fails.