1000 miles or Our Hopefully Brief Dip into Antifrugality

The garage is on hold. And once again, a vehicle is to blame.

When our Subaru, our one and only vehicle, was wrecked last summer, we scurried to find a replacement. We didn't do as much research as we should have or we would have found out that the 2013 Equinox we bought was named in a class action suit against Chevy which was settled last fall. The problem? Excessive oil loss via the piston rings.

Supposedly, this is a piston ring gummed up with oil.

Guess whose car was just diagnosed with excessive oil loss?

This is not a cheap problem to fix so Mrs. Squeaky Wheel Rasely got on the phone with the dealer and after a few back and forths it was determined that an extended warranty will cover the fix. IF that is really the problem.

The real snag is proving it. For that, we had to have a dealer oil change and now we have to drive it 1000 miles in less than a month, then have it assessed.

Putting in that kind of mileage flies in the face of our skinflint lifestyle. We normally go out about 2 or 3 times a week (less during this pandemic) and make sure to group errands together. Now we are trying to find excuses to drive. Not easy when many places are still closed and in-person visits and activities are onerous.

We expect to hit all the Habitat ReStores within a hundred miles and any relatives in the state may be getting a visit, whether they want to see us or not. 

This does make the next few weeks a pain but at least the budget is freed up without the garage expense! 

Maybe I can, if I am very, very lucky, score that freezer at last.

TEFR: Out in the Cold

This is our new freezer.

COVID-19 and the ensuing shutdowns and shortages didn't catch us out like it did many people.

We have always tried to maintain back-up supplies of groceries and sundries (when folks were trading their firstborns for toilet paper, we had our usual 40 rolls on hand). We have shelves of home canned goods but were hoping to stock up on local produce and milk, We also planned on layer chickens this year but with the talk of possible meat shortages (and I won't even get into the duplicitousness of the meat packing industry in this regard), I picked up 6 Cornish Cross birds and planned on maybe more later.

We needed a freezer.

We found a place in the kitchen that would accommodate a small freezer and blithely set about pulling out the existing, cruddy cabinets.

That's when we discovered we were not alone in hoping to preserve summer's bounty. Nary a freezer, new or used, was to be found.

With a little rearranging, I did manage to squeeze the processed meat chickens into our fridge-top freezer and even a small amount of u-pick strawberries but soon cherries and blueberries will be ripe, to say nothing of tomatoes and herbs and beans and peas and etc. etc.

So, before we locked down the checking account completely, I bought this freezer-substitute.

As a certified tightwad, I have in the past dried food in the sun and in a closed car. Neither method worked particularly well. This inexpensive little dehydrator does a better job.

Here's some of what I've dried so far:

These will be repackaged in the right size jars with oxygen absorbers added.

Herbs, greens, celery, radishes, lavender, strawberries, apples.

Like many folks stuck at home, I too tried my hand at sourdough. My starter grew fine but the bread wasn't as good as our regular homemade loaf. I scored a pound of yeast that will last me about a year but didn't want to discard the starter.

Therefore, in the spirit of waste not, want not, and in case yeast once again becomes scarcer than hen's teeth, I dehydrated the sourdough starter. It should keep until the next pandemic (or phase 2 of this one!).

Dehydrated food can be used as is or rehydrated. It is a real space saver for those of us without cavernous pantries and the process is uncomplicated. 

I'm still hoping for a freezer but for now I'm glad our prep options didn't just dry up.

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.

Times of Extreme Frugality: When Civilization Goes Down the Drain

We mostly take the perks of living in the first world for granted. Things like running water and drains.

Kitchen drains.

It is a real eye-opener to discover how many times a day you use the kitchen sink drain: washing dishes, your hands, veggies, and in our case, draining the washing machine. 

Buckets are not usually involved when we do laundry.

Part of being frugal and prepared for the unexpected is planning ahead and purchasing used or reduced items before you need them. Since we moved in, we knew we wanted to replace the double kitchen sink with a single one, and the right side drain leaked, so we were only using one side. We could have been looking all of that time and bought one at auction or a private sale. But with the recent tightening of finances, it was put on the wait list.

Rookie mistake.

Last week, the left side drain developed it's own drip.

I'm pretty good with plumbing. In fact, we redid one bathroom years ago and did all of the plumbing, including the tub, ourselves. But I couldn't fix these leaks.

First of all, plumbing fixtures are not meant to be tightened by someone with very small hands; hands that don't even begin to reach around the drain fixture.

Second, I'm pretty sure the entire bottom of the drain is just plain rusted out.

So, we need a new sink. And since we use a lot of large pots, a high faucet is also called for.

I started haunting the online sales sights with little luck. Finally, I did win an Ebay auction for a faucet at a not too bad price.

No luck on the sink. 

By this time, the novelty of carrying buckets and dishpans to empty in the toilet has worn off, so I bit the bullet and ordered a sink from Home Depot. At least it was on sale and it should be a simple installation.


Most homeowners know this is the kind of thing that happens regularly and this is not even in the top ten of house repair expenses we've faced in the Silk Road house.


I'm just a little steamed at myself for not following my own advice and planning ahead. I guess some lessons you just have to learn and relearn and learn again.

Times of Extreme Frugality: What the Heck is Hugelkultur?

It's been a while since I posted but the beginning of autumn and the end of garden season has meant a mad rush here at Silk Road.

We've been harvesting and processing tomatoes, picking apples, pulling carrots and onions, digging potatoes, mining for sweet potatoes, gathering pumpkins, and trying to take back the garden from a massive weed invasion. 

Tom has also embarked on the adventure of substitute teaching, getting calls at 7am to be at the school by 7:30. Needless to say, being blasted out of bed and pushed immediately out the door is hard on a night owl like my husband. But he's managing.

And we have finally managed to try our first experiment with hugelkultur.

Hugelkultur (say it like you're baying like a bloodhound. Don't you just love German words?) is gardening with raised beds built on rotting wood and other biomass, providing long-term humus and fertility production. It has been practiced in Europe for decades and is now the latest darling of the hipster gardeners. 

Since part of our garden was water-logged long into spring, I thought a super-raised bed might help. 


The first step is to dig out the soil.

We did this with two shovels and two aching backs, so we didn't dig that deep.

Next, you put wood in the hole. We didn't have any rotting or otherwise useless wood hanging around, so Tom ventured into the edge of our lawn and hacked off some dead limbs.

We had saved the hay mulch that was on top of the bed. This went in next.

Then we got to re-shovel the same dirt, back where it came from.

Not as high as a traditional hugelkultur mound and it will settle over the winter, but I'm hopeful it will drain faster than this spot did last spring.

We can now say we are up with the latest trend in gardening; two  hepcats swinging to the hugelkultur beat *plays bongos and snaps fingers*.

Times of Extreme Frugality: Taxes Are Nothing to Sneeze At

Summer came to an abrupt end here with cooler temperatures, ripe tomatoes, the start of fall allergy season and...the school tax bill.

New York is legendary for its high taxes* so I was leery of what our bill would be. I did apply for the Enhanced STAR discount (School Tax Relief Program, which should be STPR but this is the government we are talking about here) but the powers that be don't deign to notify you what reduction, if any, you will receive . 

The mechanics of this program are truly masterful in diabolical thinking. You get your bill, you pay the FULL amount. If you qualify for STAR, you get a rebate check. This replaces the former process where you got a reduced bill; this was deemed to be too straightforward and logical to be part of a government program. I think they hired Scrooge McDuck to invent the new system; I am not a fan.

So I was treated to a moment of absolute panic when I received our bill, it was more than double last year's. I had visions of us spending our golden twilight years working at Walmart to keep a roof over our heads.

Panic was replaced by elation today when the mail brought the Star check. And just like that, our taxes are an almost embarrassingly low amount; however, I will be a big girl and not complain.

I do blame New York State for my mood swinging almost bipolar in degree. But at least now I can breathe...at least as long as I take my allergy meds.


*Interestingly, in Michigan we paid approximately the same rate in taxes and received bumpkus in services.


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Times of Extreme Frugality: It Don't Mean a Thing, if It Ain't Tied with String

Conventional wisdom would tell you that the world is held together with duct tape.

However, on our homestead, we've got the world on a string... baling twine, that is.

We were introduced to the wonders of baling twine back in our Woodchuck Acres days when we bought our very first chickens.

If you want to be able to deal with the delightful odor of chicken poop, bedding in the coop is a must. In a bit of serendipitous luck, our neighbors up the road baled and sold hay, and they were willing to sell us spoiled hay cheaply.

And that hay was tied with baling twine.

I took one look at that string and thought "Safe fine, safe bind", channeling my best Dorothy Sayers in BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON. 

Since then, everywhere we have moved, we have found more uses for the stuff.

In McDonough, it kept the smoker going when I worked with the bees and kept tarps snug over firewood.

In Indiana, it helped hold together the electronet encircling the sheep.

In Michigan, it helped hold stuff on the trailer when we moved back to NY.

Now we no longer have farm animals, but still import hay for mulch. The weather this spring was a real detriment to getting in hay but when the rain finally stopped, the farmers made up for lost time and we have found several good deals on mulch hay.

And the stash of baling twine has been replenished and put to good use.

Tying up tomatoes,

and peas,

fixing the hummingbird feeder,

or hanging a homemade bird feeder.

Baling twine. A reusable, free resource that is invaluable here on Silk Road. Or as we say, blessed be the twine that binds.

Times of Extreme Frugality: The Easy Repair

Replacing the thermostat to our oven was billed as an "easy repair". And, compared to a lot of other projects we've undertaken, it was.

Have you ever noticed that often the hardest part is the preparation for the job? 

We had to pull out the stove to access the back panel and it proved to be a pain in the neck (shoulders, back, elbows, etc.). 

We pulled and wiggled and then Tom had a brainstorm. Our massive yellow handtruck!

Putting it under the front and tipping the stove upwards worked like a charm. It's true--the right tool for the job makes all the difference.


One thing you should understand here: the folks who lived here before us were Grade A slobs, we will be cleaning up their trash for years and years. So it was no surprise to find all of this behind the stove.

After a bit of clean-up, I was able to squeeze behind the stove, take off the back panel and replace the thermostat. Some of the connections gave a bit of trouble but it was sliding the sensing rod through to the oven which was tricky. Thanks to Youtube, I knew to attach a bit of string to the old one to guide the new one in and, hey presto with a minimum of cursing, it was done.

The vinyl flooring under the stove didn't go all the way to the wall (of course) so Tom cut some thin plywood to even things out. We managed to finally get the stove back in and, wonders of wonders, the oven works!!

Neither of us is particularly handy with appliances, motors, electricity, etc. But as I often say, between the two of us, we have one pretty good brain. And this time, that teamwork saved us the price of a new stove.

Times of Extreme Frugality: Friday Night Massacre

"You should write about making pizza and post a photo of me grating cheese" said my ever helpful husband.

Grater sans Tom

I opted out of that idea but did make our regular Friday night pizza which came out overdone. Very overdone. Very, VERY overdone. The oven was heating up way beyond the set temperature.

And then we discovered the it wouldn't shut off.


Spooky narrator voice:

Technology has gone too far. The machines are alive and out for revenge! Coming to a kitchen near you:


                  "The Oven Won't Turn Off!"

Rather than heat up the kitchen indefinitely, we turned off the breaker, which, of course, turned off the stove entirely.

Tom's first reaction was pure Tom, 

"How will I make coffee?"

Now, I'm not Elizabeth Warren, but lying awake at 3am, I came up with a plan for that--our underused Coleman stove will serve fine as a temporary burner. Or we could just turn on the breaker, but I like the image of us bravely toiling over the propane stove in the backyard.

Temporary fix aside, we do need a plan of action.

We could:

1. Buy a new stove.
      Nope. Nopety nope. Not when we have just started putting a bit a money back in savings. Nope.

2. We could buy a used stove.
      Maybe. If we can find one that is cheap, works, and fits in the same space.

3. Call a repairman.
      This is 2019, not 1959. In our disposable culture, a service call often costs as much as a replacement appliance.

4. Do without.
       Buy a hotplate and a toaster oven. This would get us through regular cooking but not much use for canning and tomato season is coming.

5. Cook on the woodstove.
        This will work...in November, and not much help for baking.

6. Fix it ourselves.
         Dollars to donuts, the problem is a broken thermostat. Youtube videos show this as an easy repair. "Easy repair" is an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp or honest politician, but if I can figure out what part I need, it may be worth a try.

       
Ok. Finally found the model number and after wrestling with the GE website, located the part. It should arrive Monday.

So stay tuned for Friday Night Massacre, Part II: The "Easy Repair".