Living the Frugal Life

So here's a project that's taken up far more of our spring time than I would have imagined.  It's our spankin' new chicken coop.  As you can see, it's an A-frame and a rather large one.  ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-coop.html

Apologies for the long radio silence.  And thanks to those of you who sent kind inquiries about my absence.  All is well at the homestead.  While spring is always a busy season that gets in th...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2012/04/apologies-for-long-radio-silence.html

Despite my interest in frugality, I'm relatively new to thrift stores.  Generally I don't enjoy shopping, but there are a couple of Goodwill stores on routes I travel regularly, so I've bee...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2012/01/repurposing-wool-fibers.html

This winter we have a surfeit of parsnips to harvest, which is wonderful because they are one of my favorite vegetables.  But parsnips can be tricky to cook well, because they aren't very de...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2012/01/harvest-meal-roasted-parsnips.html

Happy New Year, everyone!  My conscience has been nagging at me to follow up with results from several things I've written about over the last year or so.  I'm not good about getting around to ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2012/01/few-loose-ends.html

Here's my annual publicity for PASA's Farming for the Future Conference .  I've been attending this conference for the last four years, and have always come away excited, energized, and having l...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/12/pasa-conference-coming-up.html

I promised another post on the features of our hoop house.  Despite the fact that it's still not quite complete, the hoop house is doing well and demonstrating its productivity.  Typically,...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-hoop-house-details.html

With the beginning of cold weather, I've been reaching for canning jars of homemade chicken stock a lot lately.  So much so that I'm completely out, not only of chicken stock, but of any stock w...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/11/nice-barter-arrangement.html

The freak Halloween storm that visited the northeastern US left us without power for most of the weekend and Monday.  On Saturday we watched as heavy flakes of snow fell, and kept falling al...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/11/back-in-loving-arms-of-grid.html

The randomly chosen winner of the giveaway for The Small-Scale Poultry Flock is Alexis, Baron von Harlot - an Aussie reader who blogs at Lexicon Harlot .  Congratulations, Alexis!  Please leav...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/giveaway-winner.html

When we slaughtered the last of our broiler chickens towards the end of September, we also dispatched our two Cuckoo Marans hens at the same time. The Cuckoo Maran is a dual-purpose chicken, ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/cooking-old-hen-with-knefles.html

We've been struggling to get our tiny hoop house project done, racing the first frost of the season, which has been remarkably dilatory in arriving.  Not that I'm complaining, believe me. Th...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/hoop-house-is-coming-together.html

As I mentioned in my book review of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, I received two complimentary copies of this book.  So I'm hosting a giveaway to share the bounty with my readers.  This i...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/giveaway-small-scale-poultry-flock.html

Our hens moulted about five or six weeks ago, and are slowly regrowing their feathers.  This is a calorically intensive process, and so our egg supply has fallen off a cliff.  On a good day we ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/tiller-hens-and-reconsidered-routine.html

I've got a bit of a problem today.  This is a review of a book that's worthy of all the gushing I can muster up.  But there's also a credibility issue.  I want my readers to trust that my ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/book-review-small-scale-poultry-flock.html

It's fall and my thoughts turn to lasagna mulching the garden beds to retire them for the year.  I've had the chance to observe the effects that a few years of lasagna mulching have had on o...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/10/further-thoughts-on-lasagna-mulching.html

Yesterday while running an errand I noticed that the Bartlett pear tree around the corner from our home was hanging heavy with fruit.  The owners of this property have put up a "free pears" ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/09/good-gleaning-haul.html

We sent our two largest broilers to ice camp on Sunday.  We didn't have any spare clean hands to hold a camera once we got started.  So I don't have any footage or even still pictures of the sl...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/09/slaughter-day.html

I posted earlier this year about two related projects to do with the comfrey plants.  The first goal was to get rid of the comfrey in the garden proper, because since it was planted the gar...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/09/update-on-comfrey-experiments.html

Here's a picture of most of the potatoes that came from "volunteer" plants that came from potatoes I missed during harvest last year.  They're laid out to dry in the garage for a few days, ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/09/incidental-potato-harvest.html

It seems we're getting all the rain we missed in June and July in August and September.  It's been overcast and rainy here for what seems like weeks.  We have hurricane Lee, way down in the Gul...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/09/rainy-days-and-stalled-plans.html

It's been quite a week; earthquake and hurricane alike in a region not known for either phenomenon.  The earthquake was at least as palpable as any I experienced in 14 years of living in Cal...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/08/on-natures-wrath-and-windfalls.html

For a variety of reasons, I planted a lot of catnip this spring.  It's a useful and mild medicinal, reportedly good at repelling flea beetles from garden crops, and most famously attractive ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-cat-stoner.html

I never posted about the source of the main course of this harvest meal.  It was a runty broiler that my farming friend gave me when it was half-size to the rest of her broilers, which were ...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/08/harvest-meal-chicken-in-pot.html

I had a minor freak out yesterday when, for a lark, I did a rough estimate of the energy costs of pressure canning.  On a recheck of my calculations I found a major error that put me off by a fa...

http://livingthefrugallife.blogspot.com/2011/08/reducing-canning-footprint.html