What did you do to save $ today?

[freemotion]

I also have to post about how I saved money when we had our houseguests for a couple of days.

Meals were SOOO cheap and wonderful. We ate lots of our own hens' eggs, homemade cheese, a yummy meal of pork loin tips ($2 fed four people!) with the gravy made from Farmerlor's cream of mushroom soup recipe that I canned and our own scallions and goat's milk. Plate-lickin' good! We had grilled cheese sandwiches (more homemade cheese) and miso soup with homemade broth (from making catfood!). We had a huge strawberry-rhubarb crisp which inspired dh to dig some more in the new strawberry patch so I can put in more plants! We had homemade kahlua made with double-brewed coffee (no instant crystals) and vanilla beans, served with choice of goat's milk or cream.

We had some lovely wines that were a gift from a wealthy client. (I admit I was briefly tempted to sell them!!! Just briefly....)

I sent them home with gifts of homemade jams, yogurt, a turkey, cheeses, salted scallions, more kahlua, and a large variety of teas that I dried, as a sampler from the tea garden I planted for my mom. I also sent them home with enough plants, already hardened off, to get the garden off to a great start.

It was so nice to be able to be so generous on a budget!

My father helped me save lots of money by helping me deworm and vaccinate the four goats. It would've cost hundreds if I'd used the local vets. At least $400-500. And he fixed the top stair for me and removed the carpet from the stairs, pulling hundreds of staples and saving me hours of work....he was an installer for some years and had the right tools and technique to get it done very quickly. I was so pleased.

I realize more and more that I need to get back into baking my own bread. We can get nice, healthy, organic breads here so this has been my one indulgence. Maybe by fall when the weather is cool again.

 

[FarmerDenise]

Free, I know how you feel feeding company on mostly homegrown/made/gathered food and sending them home with same. It is incredibly satisfying. You feel like a broken record: I canned it myself, that is from the garden, we gathered that last year on a walk, that is from this years first crop, etc. ...makes all that work sooo worthwhile.
The wine counts too. You could have bartered it, even if you didn't sell it. I love those kind of gifts
I also keep wanting to make my own bread. But FIL keeps bringing us cases of white bread, which he gets for free. I don't eat the stuff, but SO does and so does stepson. And we feed it to the chickens. The last time I made bread, I sliced up the second loaf and froze it three or four slices to a bag. I am still eating that loaf.

I am glad you mentioned about the cost of vet care for your goats. that has been one of my biggest questions about keeping them. I would love to have milk goats, but I like to do my research and really know what I am getting into.
One more thing about bread. My mother had a timer on her oven. She would make the bread in the evening and put it in the oven with the timer set, so the bread would bake early in the morning, when everyone was still asleep. It would be ready when we got up for breakfast and the house sure smelled good. It also didn't heat up the house during the day that way.

 

[big brown horse]

Freemotion that sounds wonderful! Was your mother happy with the tea garden? I am soo stealing that idea! What a sweet idea for mothers.

I had a "time machine" garden for my daughter. I had about 4 different thyme plants set aside in my herb garden. It was kinda silly, but I told her that if she tasted each little thyme leaf it would help her imagine a different place in time. She dug it, that is all that counts!

Fresh turkey? I would have installed HARDWOODS for that! I have never had fresh turkey, but I hear it is so delicious! Put that on my list of to do's one day.

Doing vaccinations yourself is very cost effective. I vaccinate all of the horses (sept rabies) myself, it saves hundreds too. It is very easy too when you learn how.

Ahh bread...well I am making sourdough bread today. The starter is made without yeast and is just about perfect! I've been working on this for about 2 weeks now! I've made breads in the past, but never started my own sourdough starter. (keljonma, thank you for posting a link on how to do it! )

FD your mom was smart to start the bread during the night so you guys could wake up to the smell of fresh bread! Nothing finer! That gives me a good idea too. I think my oven has a timer too!

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

[freemotion]

Mom was thrilled. She was especially excited about the geranium leaves, rose and lemon.

Yup, BBH, I did all the vaccinations and many other injections when I worked full-time with horses. I've given literally hundreds and hundreds of shots. But I find horses much easier to do than the smaller animals! Big muscles, easy to restrain (the ones I worked with) and I could be QUICK! Goats are boney and can bend their body into quite a pretzel! So having someone here to restrain them was critical. I also rarely gave sub-Q shots, which is what I had to do 8 of this week.

I can give Mya shots on the milking stand by myself, but no one else is trained to it. I'm embarrassed to say that my pet pygmies are like some people's small dogs.....completely untrained. They were taught manners at feeding time and to respect my space, they can wear a collar and get dragged around when needed, but.....sheesh. Any new goat on my property will be trained to behave!

I did sourdough from just whole rye flour in the past. I think I will try the MEN artisan bread recipe again, I just make pizza dough with it. Gotta do some loaves, and if it sits the two weeks, it is thoroughly fermented. I put in a bit of whey so I don't have to use precious fridge space so long, with all this milk!

 

[big brown horse]

Goatie pretzels!!! Cute!!

I read about rye sourdough, I love rye bread!! I think I will try that next. I had to start with something easy first.

 

[freemotion]

I think I got the rye sourdough recipe from Nourishing Traditions. Just rye flour and water and two weeks of catching wild yeast here in my kitchen in MA......our sourdough beasties aren't as nice as the ones in CA, or so I'm told....First batch was good, quite sour, and the second batch was beyond sour. I think we don't use it up quickly enough and it got too sour. (The starter, that is.)

 

[FarmerDenise]

sourdough bread, mmm yummy. I understand that you have to do a bit of baking with yeast in order to get the good wild yeastie beasties in your kitchen. I wish I had my grandmother's sour dough. I gueass I better start baking. After all, it doesn't have to be bread.
I made 14 jars of jam yesterday, using fruit I froze last summer. I had peaches and made 3 jars of peach jam with minimal sugar for FIL (he's supposed to stay away from the sweets) the rest was blackberries, peaches and grapes mixed together. You can only taste the blackberry though, but it has a nice consistency with the other fruit added and not as many seeds to get stuck in your teeth. I also stared shelling the fava beans. I made chive vinegar and cut the zest from some lemons to dry.
I cut open a pumkin from last year for the animals and dug out the big fat seeds to toast for us. Neither the chickens nor the rabbit care for the seeds anyway. I don't want to feed the crows
I have a theme this week. Use up last year's produce, to make room for fresh stuff. So for dinner I found chicken in the freezer as well as summer squash and wild turkey broth, added dried sweet peppers and lots of garlic that is going soft. We ended up with a lovely chicken stoup.
I made more blackberry jam today and shelled more beans. We also planted three different kinds of popping corn. For dinner I made a roux, added more garlic and worcestershire sauce and put it in last nights stoup and served it over rice. Seemed like a completely different meal. SO even liked it. He made kettle corn for desert. I haven't had to make dogfood, since the dog has been getting our left overs with some doggy additions. I usually use leftovers when making the dog food anyway.
Good night.

 

[freemotion]

FD, I am starting to think I have yet another twin!

 

[big brown horse]

Yes FD, that sounds wonderful! Sourdough, well I didn't know that it liked the yeast in the kitchen, thought it was the flour. I learn something new everyday!! I should drive down to SanFrancisco and bottle up their air and mail it to y'all! My starter is extra sour too Freemotion, I hope my bread turns out o.k. Well see...

 

[FarmerDenise]

I'm closer to , I'll do it
bbh if you do drive to ., drop on by for some fresh homemade lemonade.
Free next time I visit the folks in , we'll have to try and get together. I think we are twins, raised apart