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.

Times of Extreme Weirdness

Even for our place, things are getting strange.

I'm attempting sourdough starter and, since our place is fairly chilly, I've got it on a heat mat along with seed starts.

Stay home, stay safe, wash your hands.

Times of Normal Frugality: We Did It!

Last June our regular frugal lifestyle received a major hit: our one car was totaled. 

We avoid debt where possible so we paid cash for a replacement, but our bank account were reduced to uncomfortable levels. We vowed to get back to our normal pitiful savings asap.

Today, 8 months and 10 days later, we achieved that goal.

If you've followed this blog since last summer, you know some of the tricks we've used to squeeze the most out of our limited resources.

One important aspect I haven't mentioned is the help of others.

Americans are enamored with the rugged individual myth, the loner who takes on the world, the outsider who pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps. But the real world doesn't work like that; no one makes their own boots, let alone handcrafts the bootstraps. We all are part of a community and need the give and take of other people (a hard truth for this hermit-inclined introvert to accept).

Help has come in big ways and small, both sought for and unexpected.

The loan of a car, free bags of kindling, the return of canning jars thought long gone, a neighbor plowing the driveway after a blizzard, the opportunity to earn a few dollars working the polls or substitute teaching, free wood from a remodel down the road, a gift of cash when least expected (thanks Mom!), being able to use free social media to sell a few unwanted items, the STAR program that reduced our taxes to a manageable level, and the NYSERDA loan program that saved us when the furnace died. 

Thanks to all. As the saying goes, it takes a village to be a tightwad.

We will now take one or two days off from extreme frugality, then pitch back in and get that loan paid off!

Times of Extreme Frugality: Waste Not, Don't Want

Those of us raised by frugal parents, have the phrase "Waste not, want not" ingrained in our dna. And we can't escape the guilt if we don't use a resource, even if it's not something we're thrilled with.

Like pumpkins.

I grew pumpkins this year. I love to grow pumpkins! One little seed produces rampant, leafy vines and the varieties are fascinating. What I don't like, is eating pumpkins. Nope, not even pumpkin pie. Not a problem when we had livestock. Chickens and goats and rabbits love pumpkin and it's a natural dewormer. But Silk Road is still lacking farm animals.

A partial solution this year was growing some Kakai Hulless plants. These produce no-shell seeds, great for snacking.

 But I also couldn't resist a few Jarrahdale, large and bluish pumpkins (or squash, whatever). They are so pretty and keep well. 

I still have at least 5 or 6 pumpkins hanging out in the house waiting for me to do something with them.

The first day of a new decade seems like a good time for action, so, I decided to cook up one of the blue gourds.

There is a lot of deep, golden flesh in one of these critters.

The woodstove is going constantly now, so I decided to use the cooktop to cook the flesh. This one pumpkin filled two pots. And when done and the rind cut away, filled seven tubs with puree.

We now have enough pumpkin to overload the freezer. This will last a long time. A long, long time.*

Thanks to the internet, I have recipes for pumpkin bread, pumpkin dinner rolls, pumpkin cookies, and the tonight's treat, pumpkin biscuits.

Drop biscuits

These should pair up well with the leftover chili currently warming on the woodstove. 

Homemade biscuits, one less pumpkin in the closet, no guilt from my thrifty conscience. All in all, a good start to the year.

*Someone remind me of this when planting time comes and encourage me to cut back on the pumpkin patch.

Times of Extreme Frugality: Solstice!

The solstice; the shortest daylight of the year and the official beginning of three months of winter.

And I am already longing for spring. 

My green thumb is itchy but it is too early to start garden seedlings. However, it is the perfect time to try to propagate blueberry cuttings.

We planted six blueberry plants in the spring of 2018. We'd love more but this year we also need to buy grapes and raspberries, strawberries and asparagus. The budget is not going to stretch far enough for everything I'd love to have so I'm going an alternative route.

Blueberries, according to the internet, can be multiplied by either softwood cutting (spring new growth) or hardwood cuttings from dormant plants.

My thermometer is reading 10 degrees and there is a foot of snow on the ground. Those blueberries are about as dormant as they're gonna get, so hardwood cuttings it is.

The procedure is simple. Cut a "whip" about a foot long or longer from last year's growth. Divide it into 3 or 4 sections, including at least one leaf bud (pick off any flower buds--larger buds found at the top of the cutting) and put in damp growing medium. Keep moist and cross your fingers that the cuttings root in a month or more.

The reality was a bit more complicated. Finding potting mix in late December in upstate NY took a bit of doing. I prefer organic mixes but had to settle for Miracle Gro and was lucky to find that.

Then I had to locate my pruning shears in the shed. I somehow managed to lose the shears I have had for years but did replace them last month and they were...shocked face here... exactly where they were supposed to be.

Wellies should be in everyone's top ten list of necessary garden tools.

Tromped out to the blueberries, thanks to my wellies, and cut my whip. 

Full and slightly embarrassing disclosure: I have no idea what variety I cut this from. I keep a garden diary with diagrams of plantings but, for some reason, didn't label the blueberries. They still have their tags around their trunks but we won't see those until spring.

Brought whip inside, cut it into 3 pieces, and plunged them into the prepared pots. Try to contain your envy of my free, reusable, just-the-right-size, growing pots housed in the gleaned-from-my-neighbor's-trashpile, handy, dandy dishpan.

Now it is waiting. For roots, for leaves, for spring. Happy Solstice, everyone!

Times of Extreme Frugality: Rainy Day Grab-bag

It's a dark, wet day here on Silk Road. I'm stuck here at home awaiting delivery of the new sink*, so I've been puttering with several small projects.

1.This place has two bathrooms--a novelty for us. We finally settled on which one will be the "master" bath, the one with the newest tub and least gross sink. The other one has an absolute horror of a bathtub so that has become storage. 

It did look weird to see boxes of junk in the tub, so I decided to make a curtain to cover it. We had an extra shower curtain rod but no brackets to hold it up. However, what we do have plenty of is... canning jar rings! So I took two, spray painted them white, and screwed them to the wall. It doesn't look fabulous but, for now, it works.

2. My favorite seed catalog, Pinetree, usually has a pre-season sale in November. So in anticipation, I inventoried my seed collection. Seeds are probably one of the best bargains available, as well as almost miraculous. For instance, two Herb Marigold seeds from a $1.95 packet, grew into this:

A three foot tall bush still bravely blooming after three frosts. Best bang for your buck around.

3. And more about seeds. Most of what I grow is open pollinated, so I can save the seeds from those plants to grow next season. I'm not as diligent about this as I could be (note to self: remember this for next year) but I did save the seed heads from some lovely Cosmos and sorted them out this morning.

A bit tedious but the gorgeous flowers will be worth it.


4. Almost everyone has a bag stuffed with seeds or rice or cherry pits that can be heated in the microwave for use on sore muscles and aching heads. Tom bartered for one at a craft show over 30 years ago and it's still working fine. I have made at least 10 replacement covers for it since then; here's the newest version:

The fabric is leftover from some insulated drapes I made, using fabric I got at an auction.


5. "I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day." Well, not exactly, but we will have a brighter shed when we get this solar powered light installed in our non-electrified shed:

This arrived yesterday and I put the solar panel inside by the window. Even though it was overcast, the bulb still charged; this bodes well for the next few months when sunshine can be scarce around here. A light in dark places for a mere $14.99.
What thrifty projects occupy your rainy days? I'd love to hear some adventures from my fellow bargain hunters!

*The sink did arrive but the drain assembly, WHICH WAS SUPPOSED TO BE INCLUDED, was missing. Customer service got it ordered quickly and even gave me a small refund for my trouble. So until next week, we are still toting dishpans to the bathroom.