Financial tips and emergency preparedness...NOT depression related!

[Cheryl in NM]

Okay, since I was really enjoying the tips on the previous thread before it got hi-jacked I'm setting up this thread.

 

Here's a link to the previous thread which after many requests still turned into an argument about whether or not we are in a recession, depression or wonderful economy.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39530

 

Obviously an emergency can happen in any family...someone gets hurt and can't work, someone loses their job. These things are not necessarily dependent on our economy. So I'd love to just share ideas about how to prepare for emergencies and simplify life financially.

 

Here's what we are doing:

 

• We have a garden and will can at the end of summer.
  
• I help my neighbor can her dad's peaches and she gives me some for my help.
  
• We live 10 miles from public transportation so we use that occasionally, but I just discovered that until gas goes over about $5/gal here (it's $4 today) and I'm traveling more than 25 miles from home; it costs less to drive my Impala which gets 26 mpg.
  
• I buy extra flour, sugar, beans, pasta every payday. They can be stored in the refrigerator for a LONG time.
  
• I rotate through the items that I'm stocking up on. I am trying to cook what we eat, no convenience foods.
  
• We raise chickens for meat and eggs. I sell the eggs and they pay for all the chicken costs and some of the horse costs.
  
• Dh hunts and with any luck we'll have a deer and elk in the freezer this fall
  
• Dh & Ds will fish this summer to provide our main meat.
  
• I am miserly with our money. I really make sure we need something and reduce extra spending. We are learning to be satisfied with less.

Here's what we want to do:

 

• We will be raising a steer as soon as we can save enough money to buy one at auction
  
• DH needs to fix the generator we have.
  
• Fix our canvas wall tent and buy a cabover camper - just in case something happens that we lose our house.
  
• Locate and buy land in a semi-remote area with no covenants and build an off-grid house; just in case something happens. We need more room to raise the animals necessary for us to live off the land. BTW, this is not doomsday, it is dh dream to be able to be self-sufficient (mostly) and spend all day playing in the fields and with the animals.

That's all I can think of now. Please, don't hi-jack this thread. Let's just have it for ideas. Who cares WHY we want these ideas!

 

Thanks! I'm all ears :bigear: (been wanting to use that one!)

[Carol in Cal.]

I shop at garage sales and thrift stores. I have found all the good thrift stores in town--go to the better neighborhoods and check them out. Often they support really good causes, and you can find great stuff there.

 

Also, a local church accepts donated clothes, small appliances, knick knacks, and purses and lays them out on tables for 3 days twice a year. Anyone can come and take whatever they want, and at the end of the 3 days the remainders are donated to a local charity. I always bring them a couple of garbage bags full of outgrown stuff, and often find a few things there that fit and flatter. I take clothes for DD that are a year or two too big for her, and save them for when she grows into them as well.

 

I also buy a few nice things every year. (I'm frugal but not cheap!) This means that I buy some clothes for myself at CABI, and a few things for DD at either Limited, Too or Old Navy. Those wear very well and are the cornerstone of our wardrobes. But most of the bulk of our clothes are free or quite inexpensive.

[Cheryl in NM]

bump...

 

Maybe no one really cares as much as I thought. It really seemed like people were starting to flow with ideas.

 

Oh well....

 

Here I am....

 

The Thread Killer....:svengo:

 

:leaving:

[Kathleen in VA]

Cheryl, does that make you a "Killer Bee"? Seriously, I'm glad you started this thread, but I think perhaps many of the folks who would have any advice to offer posted on the other thread and perhaps they don't feel like doing a repeat. I was the first to ask that the other thread stay away from politics only to find that a few people just couldn't resist.

 

In any case, anyone else out there have any good "thrifty tips"? I'm:bigear:, too. (There, I finally got a chance to use it too.)

[RebeccaC]

Maybe they are not posting because it is the 4th? It is the evening in the central and eastern time zones and they are out watching fireworks, or on their way to watch fireworks.?

 

Maybe because in the last few weeks we have had quite a few threads on how to stretch the food budget, ect... Do a search under Doran's name for the latest thread. Do a search on the board and you will find quite a few thread in the last two months or so about saving money. They have various titles.

 

So here is a money saving idea, Dh bought a diesel so that he can convert it to burning vegetable oil that he can get from restaurants for free. Until the conversion tho the diesel is not getting used much because diesel was $4.99 a gallon :eek: and I think it just went down to $4.89. and this truck drinks fuel. I posted this idea on this board about a month ago on a similar thread.

 

We are eating buckwheat pancakes and sausage twice a pay period for dinner. The box of buckwheat mix is $1.58 which lasts for two meals and the sausage at Aldi is $1.78. We are also eating french toast and sausage for dinner once a pay period which is again cheap. We are eating more dinners with beans and rice. Dinners like spaghetti are getting only a quarter or half the meat they used to get and sometimes I add cottage cheese in the sauce to bump up the protein levels.

 

I make extra buckwheat pancakes for my 14 yo son to snack on. He tops it with applesauce or peanut butter to chow on after playing football.

 

I add a bit of borax to my loads of laundry to make the laundry soap go further. When I do that I only need a quarter of the soap.

 

I am about to make each gallon of milk a mix of half milk and half powdered milk and water.

 

Next month I will give Angel Food Ministries a try and see how that helps stretch our dollars. http://www.angelfoodministries.com hope that link works. Looks like they have it in NM.

 

As to hi-jacking I don't think that happened at all but I guess in your opinion it did. Any thread that starts with what are you doing to prepare for the coming depression is asking to be challenged because of the faulty premise it is based on. Reading Fallacy Detective would be a good place to learn about fallacies in the media. The reading of which might save money by not falling for the many commercials we as a society are bombarded with.

 

None of this was meant to flame but to give just another perspective.

[Once]

OK I have a question but no ideas other than what is already posted either here or elsewhere.

 

My question is - Where do people get the canning jars and how do you get them cheap enough to make the canning a savings?

 

I made jam in the last two weeks and it was fun and very yummy to eat but.....I had to buy $10 of jars and that really made me think twice. Is there some information out there that I am missing. I've done the garage sale hunting and not found any useful ones just jars that are really too dirty to use.

 

:bigear:

[RebeccaC]

OK I have a question but no ideas other than what is already posted either here or elsewhere.

 

My question is - Where do people get the canning jars and how do you get them cheap enough to make the canning a savings?

 

I made jam in the last two weeks and it was fun and very yummy to eat but.....I had to buy $10 of jars and that really made me think twice. Is there some information out there that I am missing. I've done the garage sale hunting and not found any useful ones just jars that are really too dirty to use.

 

:bigear:

 

 

I bought a bunch at end of season sales. That won't help you now but keep that in th eback of your mind. The up fornt cost of canning is a bit pricey unless you can nab some like I did at the end of season sales. Maybe someone else has some ideas. I love to can applesauce .

[TammyinTN]

For our family... I try to keep a nice stocked pantry which I rotate twice monthly. A freezer full of meat and frozen veggies.

 

I try to stock up on all school supplies for the year when the sales start. I'm working on next years school plans (2009-2010) and buying ahead when items are on sale.

 

I've paid down 90% of our debt and this year we will finish with school loans and our last credit card.

 

I'm setting major money aside for an emergency fund.

 

I buy all clothing on sale. I have started buying 8 new outfits per season(good quality from Lands End) as we can wash often and thus not going to the stores when I'm bored, I go for a walk.

 

Making due with what I have. Using the library for books and magazines.

[Melissa in Australia]

I am late posting into this thread, I live on the other side of the world, and am in a completely different time zone.

 

canning jars can often be bought from second hand shops, called Op-Shops here, and I think you guys might call them thrift shops or crippled civilians or something. another way of finding them is to put an add in the local paper/or notice board. heaps of people have them tucked away in some cupboard or basement and haven't used them for years.

 

 

 

here are some of the things that We do, we try to live a self sufficient lifestyle.

I make my own bread, have all home cooked meals, nothing fancy, just plain ordinary meals. do a huge amount of preserving of home grown food. I buy flour and oats in bulk, and always have 3 months supply handy.

have a house cow, grow the cow's offspring for beef, have 2 pigs, do our own butchering, and our own smoking of our bacon. have chooks for their eggs. get the grain for their food from a local corn seed processing company( they have culls that can be bought cheep)

have a veggie garden that is about the size of a tennis court. have a fully netted orchard that has about 40 fruit trees. have a greenhouse for winter veggies.

we produce our own hot water with solar panels. collect our own water from the rain. have a beautiful combustion stove that cooks, heats and will shortly produce hot water in the winter. chop our own fire wood.

make almost all of our own clothes.

all this takes quite a lot of time. we have chosen a self sufficient lifestyle because we enjoy it, we like being independent , and enjoy not paying so many bills, we have a fairly low income as my husband is to ill to work and is on a pension, and I am too busy to work. but with all our selfsufficiant lifestyle, we live fairly well.

[amary]

You aren't a thread killer :) Just ignore people who try to derail threads. They usually have ego issues and have to keep defending themselves. I think they spend a lot more time on the computer reading these boards than most of us do.

 

You can find canning jars at garage sales and if your thrift store has a "back room" they will often have boxes of canning jars. I used to can extensively, but my garden hasn't done well the last few years because of rain and the soil. I've found that sale items, especially tomato sauce in jars, are cheaper than I can now can. I'm hoping my garden will do well this year, but it's been almost constant rain since May so I'm not expecting too much.

 

We already make everything from scratch and except for fresh fruits and vegetables we eat from our storage.

 

Do you ladies like beans and rice? It's almost a staple in our home and we've learned to love Indian and Mexican dishes.

[I talk to the trees]

Okay, I'm all for the canning thing, but...

 

I WILL NOT can without a pressure cooker. I am waaaaay to paranoid for that! The thing is, I have a ceramic cook-top- which I adore, and I have to be oh-so-careful with the dishes I use on it to keep from chipping/ damaging it. Has anyone used a pressure cooker on a ceramic stove without destroying it? I saved and saved for this stove/oven, and I do not want to trash it all to save a couple of dollars! Kind of defeats the purpose!

 

-Robin (hoping that this question doesn't count as a hijack!:D)

[Sara R]

What we've done--

 

We're LDS and have always done food storage. But we thought we were going to move this time last year, so we had eaten a lot of the storage. Now I know we're not moving, so we got re-stocked up. I have an Excel file that has all of the non-perishable goods we have in our basement storage, and every year or so I go through that list and make a shopping list. They have "case lot sales" a few times per year here that make shopping like this convenient. I've asked my husband to stockpile things he uses, like motor oil and hardware (nails/bolts/etc). We're going to try to replace the things we use as we go.

 

I've also been buying yard sale clothes a few years ahead for the kids. Wow, my kids will be in adult sizes in just a few years. Who knew!

 

We've put in a bigger garden this year, concentrating on building up the soil. If you want commercial fertilizer, better buy it now, because it's petroleum based. I figure our goal right now is more to learn how to grow things and to teach the kids how, than on producing all of our food supply now. We're going to make mistakes along the way and now is a good time to make them.

 

We've been looking at ways we can be less energy dependent. We got a wood stove and have picked up some free firewood in the neighborhood. We looked at other alternatives but we don't have the cash in the bank to pay for them, so we won't. Not going into new debt.

 

We are riding our bikes as much as we can to replace using the car, as I mentioned in the other thread. We'll keep our cars around for winter use. This is helping us get into shape and is more fun than I expected. Once I figure out what extra bike parts to stockpile we will. The money we save on gas can go towards other preparations.

 

Another source of canning jars is looking around for people a generation older than you who used to can, whose families have grown and gone. I've stocked up on canning lids too. New canning jars used to be around $6 a box, so I guess they are going up like everything else.

 

We've moved our small emergency fund around so it should hopefully continue to retain purchasing power in the current environment. We left part in cash, part in a commodities index fund (we are part of the "evil speculators"), and part in an Everbank foreign currency account. Depending on Congress we may move the commodities money out. This was tricky to do with small balances and I talked about it in my post in the other thread.

 

RebeccaC--intelligent people can and do disagree!

[Cheryl in NM]

OK I have a question but no ideas other than what is already posted either here or elsewhere.

 

My question is - Where do people get the canning jars and how do you get them cheap enough to make the canning a savings?

 

I made jam in the last two weeks and it was fun and very yummy to eat but.....I had to buy $10 of jars and that really made me think twice. Is there some information out there that I am missing. I've done the garage sale hunting and not found any useful ones just jars that are really too dirty to use.

 

:bigear:

 

Definitely, like so many others posted, check thrift stores and garage sales. In a small town I used to live in the Nunnery ? GAVE all their canning jars away.

 

One thing to remember on the cost of canning versus the cost of buying....quality. I seriously doubt you could have bought the quality jam you canned for less than you spent canning it. KWIM? I agree on the spaghetti sauce, though, it's super cheap. I've found that I will pay a little more to preserve/grow something myself if there's a big quality difference. For instance, to grow a steer costs about $3-4 per pound, or at least it did 5 years ago when we last did it. I can buy meat cheaper than that on sale and I currently buy my ground beef for $1/pound now (from a local company that makes beef jerkey, the ground beef is a buy product and goes quickly at that price). I would rather raise my own meat because I KNOW what's in it. It's definitely NOT cheaper to raise chickens to eat unless you raise enough to sell the eggs to make up the difference. Again, though, you KNOW what you are eating. Of course, I think I have a driving need to raise my own food because I come from good farming stock!:tongue_smilie:

 

Maybe I AM a killer bee! That would explain alot!:lol:

[Murphy101]

My question is - Where do people get the canning jars and how do you get them cheap enough to make the canning a savings?

 

grocery stores (even wacko-mart) used to carry them brand new in boxes. Same idle as the ice cream making supplies... haven't looked in a long time though. you can often find them at the salvation army and goodwill thrift stores or local farm supply stores.

 

Now, I'll offer a word of caution about cooking all from scratch, sometimes it's more expensive - so like always shop around! For example, we have a bread outlet store less than a mile away where I can buy 3 loaves of fresh sandwich bread direct from the bakery (it's a wonder bread outlet store) for just a $1, I really can't beat that by home baking bread. Esp for my size family. It's actually fresher than what I'd get at the stores, we buy it every 2 weeks and freeze it. It only takes about 30 minutes on the counter for it to thaw. They carry everything wonder and hostess makes for anywhere from 25 - 30% of the cost of buying it at the store.

 

Also, again for large families, we've found great deals shopping at resturant supply stores. It's NOT worth buying unless you already eat it. For example, in my house a 25# tub of mustard will either last us the rest of our life or go bad.:)

 

ETA: I forget to mention that you have to look at the cooking ratio to figure the cost value on resturant foods. for example, I couldn't understand why someone would pay $15 for the same size box of stove top that I could buy at the store. So I looked at the back to see if it had gold flakes or something in it. Turns out the box at the store only makes about 4 cups, but the box at the resturant supply store makes 32 cups!

[Murphy101]

oh yeah the food home grown really does have a superior taste. In fact, if you can a lot, I'd use it like normal and whatever was left come canning time next year, you could sell for a nice amount or barter for something else.

[Once]

Your right Cheryl...I was thinking that last night as I was going to sleep. Let's say I spent say $10 for 12 jars for jam with lids and used free fruit from our garden with $2 worth of sugar. For $12 I would get 12 jars of organic jam (I buy organic sugar). So it is $1 per jar. But that is not the only thing. Next year it will be much less if I take care of the jars and reuse.

 

But I do have a hard time investing the outlay to make that work. Jars are really very costly.

 

Thanks for the ideas ladies. I will start hunting in thrift stores. :driving:

[Margaret in GA]

We have a little farm and have the *ability* to raise all our own food; however, we don't yet and mostly we just play. But, dh has been obsessed with the next great depression for years and it makes him irrationally happy to prepare for it. DH does have a "real" job and he owns his own business so we're in control of our destiny to a certain degree but a series of unfortunate events could change all that. He secretly hopes ;)

 

We can, freeze, and barter quite a bit. DH has bees and we've been able to trade honey for pecans and veggies in the past and hope to do it again this year. Our garden is rather large and we have planted fruit trees, (not mature yet) and blueberries (getting there), and we have wild blackberries and a pecan tree. We also have dariy goats, which we don't milk but dh plans to "someday" and chickens which we use for both meat and eggs.

 

Anyhow, at this point it's not about saving money, but practicing ...Just in Case. ;)

 

Margaret

[Only me]

I live in the suburb of a large city but my town is fairly small. Since I live in a subdivision I can't raise livestock and don't have room for a big garden or fruit trees. My dh has a 30 mile per way commute every day so of course he couldn't ride a bike to work. Public transporation wouldn't work either because he doesn't work in the city. All of the kid's activities and grocery stores, etc. are too far away to bike to. So in some ways it stinks because we don't have the freedom and land available in the country yet we don't have the resources that would be readily available living in a city (public transporation, places to bike to, etc.)

 

So I'm curious about ways to prepare and cutback for those living in the suburbs.

[Once]

Robin, I have been thinking about your post since I read it. I too love to can and pickle and it was a suprise to me to hear that you can not do that on certain stovetops. We are planning on renovating our kitchen in the next year and this has been "eating" away at me.

 

I wonder if you have seen the single and double elements that are sold at K-mart or WalMart? They seemed affordable and they are portable so you can put them away when you are done. Do you know what I mean? I think they are called a hot plate and the one I saw in K-Mart was electric not ceramic stone.

 

My question is - Do you think that it would work to pickle and can? Have you used one to save your stovetop?

[Murphy101]

I live in the suburb of a large city but my town is fairly small. Since I live in a subdivision I can't raise livestock and don't have room for a big garden or fruit trees. My dh has a 30 mile per way commute every day so of course he couldn't ride a bike to work. Public transporation wouldn't work either because he doesn't work in the city. All of the kid's activities and grocery stores, etc. are too far away to bike to. So in some ways it stinks because we don't have the freedom and land available in the country yet we don't have the resources that would be readily available living in a city (public transporation, places to bike to, etc.)

 

So I'm curious about ways to prepare and cutback for those living in the suburbs.

 

I'm in the same boat and posed the same question in the previous derailed thread that might help.

 

I'm still looking into what a "victory garden" is....

[KarenC]

Maybe they are not posting because it is the 4th? It is the evening in the central and eastern time zones and they are out watching fireworks, or on their way to watch fireworks.?

 

Maybe because in the last few weeks we have had quite a few threads on how to stretch the food budget, ect... Do a search under Doran's name for the latest thread. Do a search on the board and you will find quite a few thread in the last two months or so about saving money. They have various titles.

 

So here is a money saving idea, Dh bought a diesel so that he can convert it to burning vegetable oil that he can get from restaurants for free. Until the conversion tho the diesel is not getting used much because diesel was $4.99 a gallon :eek: and I think it just went down to $4.89. and this truck drinks fuel. I posted this idea on this board about a month ago on a similar thread.

 

We are eating buckwheat pancakes and sausage twice a pay period for dinner. The box of buckwheat mix is $1.58 which lasts for two meals and the sausage at Aldi is $1.78. We are also eating french toast and sausage for dinner once a pay period which is again cheap. We are eating more dinners with beans and rice. Dinners like spaghetti are getting only a quarter or half the meat they used to get and sometimes I add cottage cheese in the sauce to bump up the protein levels.

 

I make extra buckwheat pancakes for my 14 yo son to snack on. He tops it with applesauce or peanut butter to chow on after playing football.

 

I add a bit of borax to my loads of laundry to make the laundry soap go further. When I do that I only need a quarter of the soap.

 

I am about to make each gallon of milk a mix of half milk and half powdered milk and water.

 

Next month I will give Angel Food Ministries a try and see how that helps stretch our dollars. http://www.angelfoodministries.com hope that link works. Looks like they have it in NM.

 

As to hi-jacking I don't think that happened at all but I guess in your opinion it did. Any thread that starts with what are you doing to prepare for the coming depression is asking to be challenged because of the faulty premise it is based on. Reading Fallacy Detective would be a good place to learn about fallacies in the media. The reading of which might save money by not falling for the many commercials we as a society are bombarded with.

 

None of this was meant to flame but to give just another perspective.

 

 

 

How much borax and laundry detergent do your typically use?

 

Thanks,

Kare

[Cheryl in NM]

Robin, I have been thinking about your post since I read it. I too love to can and pickle and it was a suprise to me to hear that you can not do that on certain stovetops. We are planning on renovating our kitchen in the next year and this has been "eating" away at me.

 

I wonder if you have seen the single and double elements that are sold at K-mart or WalMart? They seemed affordable and they are portable so you can put them away when you are done. Do you know what I mean? I think they are called a hot plate and the one I saw in K-Mart was electric not ceramic stone.

 

My question is - Do you think that it would work to pickle and can? Have you used one to save your stovetop?

 

Not Robin...but I have a friend who cans on her front porch so she doesn't heat her house up. She has some sort of double burner thingy on a stand hooked up to a propane bottle. She prepares some of it inside and then brings it outside to a table she has set up by the "stove". I"m going to try to do something like that.

 

In another vein, kind of, I love the solar oven idea and since I live in NM there would probably only be a few months of the year that I could NOT use it.

[senunk]

My question is - Where do people get the canning jars and how do you get them cheap enough to make the canning a savings?

 

I made jam in the last two weeks and it was fun and very yummy to eat but.....I had to buy $10 of jars and that really made me think twice. Is there some information out there that I am missing. I've done the garage sale hunting and not found any useful ones just jars that are really too dirty to use.

 

Really, good quality jam is expensive. I know I pay $3.59 for a pretty small jar of organic blackberry jam. You are making jam without all the fillers like corn syrup, so it is much better for you. It's good to keep that in mind when considering cost. I know several elderly ladies who are finished canning and are always trying to give me their jars. Ask around.

[RebeccaC]

How much borax and laundry detergent do your typically use?

 

Thanks,

Kare

 

 

I think that will depend on if you have hard water or not.

 

It also depends on what I am washing but if it is a normal large load I use about a half to quarter cup of borax and then about half of the smallest amount the laundry soap says to use.

 

Borax is really good about getting odors out, If the evil elderly cat has peed on something I will use a cup and on the dog blankets I will use half a cup. Clothing coming home from a Boy Scout camp out that is full of mud, smoke smell, been lived and slept in for a few days and God only knows what else gets 3/4 cup of borax and the full amount of the smallest marker on my laundry soap. Hmm hope that made sense.

 

What I did was play around until I found what worked with our water. I do a lot of laundry dh's job is very physical and my boys do a lot of physical activity, foot ball, long bike rides as in 20 to 50 miles, working on cars etc..... We have a lot of pets that cause a lot of laundry too. I bought a 2x Ultra Tide with Dawn says it was for 78 loads I paid $12 and it lasted for almost 3 months before using borax it last a month. A box of borax in my neck of the woods at Walmart is between 2 and 3 dollars and lasts two weeks to just over a month depending on how dirty the loads are.

 

I think I figured I was using on average 27 cents a load on borax and laundry soap. What you use will depend on how soft or hard your water is. The harder the water the more borax needed.

 

I did have 50 posted but I went and looked at my records and it was more like 27 cents perload for 80 days.

 

HTH

[Sharon H in IL]

I made jam in the last two weeks and it was fun and very yummy to eat but.....I had to buy $10 of jars and that really made me think twice. :

 

My mother always poured her jelly into any kind of glass jar, usually leftovers from other groceries, then topped her jelly with wax. I don't know what the rules are about jelly vs. jams and other spreads. Might be worth a little investigation.

 

Ask all your friends and spread the word among neighbors that you are in the market for canning supplies. You might be pleasantly surprised at what turns up for free. Check freecycle, too.

[Sharon H in IL]

But, dh has been obsessed with the next great depression for years and it makes him irrationally happy to prepare for it. a series of unfortunate events could change all that. He secretly hopes ;)

 

 

LOL over here, Margaret. My Dad has always been *exactly* like this. He loves to plan for catastrophes, and gets all happy and excited talking about it. He was practically set up with a bunker and self-sufficiency supplies for Y2K and was terribly let down by the lack of chaos.;)

[Melissa in Australia]

LOL over here, Margaret. My Dad has always been *exactly* like this. He loves to plan for catastrophes, and gets all happy and excited talking about it. He was practically set up with a bunker and self-sufficiency supplies for Y2K and was terribly let down by the lack of chaos.;)

 

:lol::lol::lol::lol: I have relitives like this as well

[RebeccaC]

My granfather in IL built a shelter in his basement during the Bay of Pigs. When he died in the 90s we went into the shelter, that amounted to a crawl space, for the first to clean it out so we could sell the house and it still had old old rusted canned food from that time period and cans to put water in :tongue_smilie:

[Sharon H in IL]

I'm still looking into what a "victory garden" is....

 

It's a term coined during WWII, when normal supplies of food were disrupted. Patriotic citizens were encouraged to grow their own vegetables in their yards, dubbed 'victory gardens.' This way more of the crops could be diverted to war use.

[Murphy101]

Really, good quality jam is expensive. I know I pay $3.59 for a pretty small jar of organic blackberry jam. You are making jam without all the fillers like corn syrup, so it is much better for you. It's good to keep that in mind when considering cost. I know several elderly ladies who are finished canning and are always trying to give me their jars. Ask around.

 

I just got back from wacko-mart and they had jars w/ lids fairly cheap imho. 12 1/2 pint jars for less than $7. Now, that's not much, but it's a start. I'd can a small batch like that first until I got a feel for it. Now the pressure cooker they had was $60 and would hold all those 1/2 pint jars in one go. That's a lot. They had a enamel coated canning pot (not pressure cooker) for $20. I guess it depends on comfort level and money, which one a person would need to buy. I bet you coudl find that stuff cheaper used or whatever.

 

Still for something you can reuse, that's not a bad start. Heck dh's first batch of home brewed beer cost us about $150, but now it's about $50 a batch. (A batch is 48 bottles) We always have to replace some beer bottles and then there's the ingredients. But it makes an awesome gift or barter item. We've got folks in two other states that drive in just to get a couple 6 packs in return for tree trimming. And it was the only thing a friend asked for a birthday present - just 1 beer.:D

[hillfarm]

A word of caution to those of you who will be first time wood stove users this winter: please be careful and read up on the subject. We usually burn wood that has been cut and drying at least a year. If you burn recently cut wood or certain types of wood, you drastically increase your chances of a chimney fire. Definitely avoid having low heat, slow burn, smoldery fires. It is tiny sap and moisture particles in that dense smoke that becomes deposited as creosote(sp?) on the walls of your chimney and can actually catch fire. See if your local fire department does chimney inspections and cleaning and get yours done before your start burning--late summer would be the ideal time, before everyone else wants theirs done. Unfortunately, open fireplaces usually give off very little heat to the home and often allow the house's warm air to flow up the chimney and on outside. If you are burning for warmth and not atmosphere, I really recommend a woodstove or a fireplace woodstove insert.

 

Another helpful wood hint, sprinkle a little DE (diatomaceous earth) on your stacked wood and it will keep spiders and insects down, so you won't be bringing them into your house. Cover your wood or keep it inside a barn or garage to keep it dry. You waste a lot of BTUs of heat trying to dry wet wood. We use inexpensive tarps and weight them down with sand filled milk jugs attached to each other by a rope. Also, stacked wood weighs hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds. Do not allow your children to play near it. A stack can slip suddenly and anyone near would be crushed to death.

 

We don't have a furnace and we are in Ohio. We have heated exclusively with firewood for the last 8 years. It costs us about $100 per winter to heat our 2-story farm house. And we don't skimp! We usually keep our woodstove room in the mid-80's. However, in the dead of winter we have to stick fairly close to home and have had to rediscover the true meaning of "keeping the home fires burning", if we let them go out, our plumbing would freeze and burst. One last hint, burning wood causes the air to dry out severely. Put an old pot of water on top of your stove and keep it filled. It usually won't boil away but will gradually evaporate. In the middle of winter we usually go through 3 or 4 gallons of water on the stove per day.

 

And finally, don't forget about cooking on your woodstove! There's nothing like doing hs lessons while listening to your foil-wrapped baked potatoes sizzle on the stove or taking breaks to stir a pot of yummy soup put there to simmer all morning. Sometimes we just keep a kettle of hot chocolate or herb tea on all day, to sip on as we feel the urge.:001_smile:

[kzdaisy]

We have food allergies here that makes it very expensive to try to eat when we have plenty of money.I am already feeling the pinch.I bake my own bread but the flour I have to use it cost 5.00 a loaf.I and my dd are celiacs cannot have any grains but corn or rice.I just cannot shop at one store like I used to. I now spend one day shopping at the store that has the cheapest price on what we need. Whatever is on sale is what we eat that week.I am trying to shop only twice a month for our bulk of food.I figure the less I go to the store the less I'll buy.I have found the best places for meat gluten free items and canned foods.I also am leery of the dollar stores sometimes I can find it lots cheaper at regular store!!The dollar store I like is the one where everything is 1.00 not just one row!! Some of them have dollar in the name but not true dollar stores.I never used to buy canned food but I am now.We are using the soup and fruit and spam and potatoes are a good meal.The only snack food I buy anymore is popcorn.Cut out the chips and pop.We have koolaid, tea or water.

[tmkclscroggins]

We just bought a cook top stove and I asked the guy at Lowes about canning. He said that the cook top was "supposed" to hold 200 pounds. He also scraped the one in the store with a razor blade to show us it didn't scratch.

 

You might want to find the stove you want and then check it out. My mother in law cans on her cook top, no problem!

 

 

hth,

melissa

[Ria]

We have a coal stove (we are lucky - coal is widely available here in PA). Our dryer is on the off-peak service so we save there. I can some food (this year some jam, salsa, and pizza sauce). We freeze sweet red peppers since I can get them cheap from the Amish in the summer ($12 for a bushel!) and blueberries. We dry tomatoes in the dehydrator.

 

I make everything from scratch and often make my own bread (I grind wheat for whole-wheat flour and make half white/half ww bread). We make our own yogurt by the gallon and make our own granola. I buy meat in bulk and freeze it in smaller portions.

 

I rarely drive to a single destination anymore...if I go out, I try to run as many errands as possible in whatever area I'll be in. That's really saved a lot of gas. We get lots of our clothes at thrift stores. I make my own laundry detergent, too.

 

Ria

[bumbledeb]

I make my own laundry detergent, too.

 

Ria

 

How do you do that?

 

Really enjoying this thread!

[Raders Fan]

Like another poster said, we are practicing the skills we'd like to have. We planted 10 fruit trees this spring; we hope to plant another dozen or so next year, as well as some berry canes. The garden did not do well--it probably had something to do with The Gardener having major abdominal surgery in the middle of summer. We'll do better next year.

 

Ds15 is doing a Life Skills/Survival Skills/Tech class this semester. He has several self-sufficiency projects that he is going to build, use and then blog about. He's been working on a solar funnel. It's pretty easy and inexpensive to build. So far he's boiled water and made chili for lunch. Yesterday's stroganoff didn't work, but that's probably due to a few too many clouds. He's going to try a few other methods of off-grid cooking, making ice with the solar funnel, purifying water, raising vegetables--I think there are a few other things on the list.

 

I'm learning how to can more foods. Learning how to make a whole lot more from scratch.

 

Jennifer

[LMA]

I've learned to post for big, unusual, or expensive items on Freecycle and try to get the item used. Sometimes I just need an item for an occasion and that's it. I've found people are willing to give it to you. If I don't need the item anymore, I post it back on Freecycle.