Senior Sustainable Living with Jo

Julie, The Farm Wife . and some other folks I follow and read their blogs are talking about planning for next year and the long term. In principle, this is a very good idea. Last week, I planted the onion seed starts and garlic cloves in their area of the garden. The garden is all neatly set up to grow vegetables in the spring. They won't be ready for harvesting until next summer or early fall. I also purchased two dwarf cherry trees and two dwarf apple trees to plant along the fence line with plans to espalier them. They'll joined the kumquat tree already planted there. Here I was planning ahead, just like they were talking about. I was happily doing my own thing and I forgot THE two major rules about planning ahead 1) And 2) I'm surprised I overlooked this one. It's been my governing force in my life since I met Mr. Murphey some 35 years ago and married him almost 30 year ago. God rest his leprechaun soul. There's one thing about life, it's constantly changing...

My project that I've taken on is the family's food provisions. September is Preparedness Month. Actually, I started this project in June. This house has a 20'x25' pantry with two upright, 27 cu ft freezers plus an additional refrigerator/freezer in it. It was almost bare. I've having fun trying to fill it. I've laid in a couple months of paper goods like paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper. But things like Tampax, menstrual pads, urinary pads, and adults diapers are also stockpiled. Once again, couponing has saved my bank account as I squeeze pennies into dimes. In  fact the $5.00 a week I spend on Sunday papers (2) more than pays or itself in savings. A lot of weeks, I'm buying about $500+ of products for at most $75. My goal is not years or decades, but are least six months with to start with. I've reached my goal in laundry supplies and most of the nonfood goals. I'm not ignoring the food stock either. Slowly, I've been getting this big ci...

I finally broke down and bought our family's needs worth of pineapple last week. I've watched the prices of the fresh, tropical hover between 1.50 and $1.75. I kept waiting for it to drop to a $1 or below but alas it didn't happen this year. So I bit the bullet and paid the $1.49 asking price for two dozen, mostly green ones. I would have preferred ripe, golden ones, but I realize they have to pick them green to ship them to the mainland. I set them all in my southern facing windows to ripen. It took a full week. Even the fruit flies didn't notice their existence until the day before I started to cut them up to can and freeze. I pulled 6 wide mouth pint jars out of my stash. These would be for pineapple rings. The about a case of jars worth would be crushed in my hand powered food processor with the rest being cut into cubes for canning or freezing. I knew my daughter could not help me because she has an allergic reaction to raw pineapple. But my granddaughter was anoth...

 I belong to a group of "tight wads" on YouTube called "Southern Savers." We coupon, squeeze pennies into dimes, and help others do the same. In today's economy, it pays to be a tight wad and save as much as you can. My background or mindset as a homesteader (and a couple others) has proven to be valuable assets to the group. This week's topic was Make Ahead Freezer Meals and Menu Planning in a live chat session format. I mentioned how I menu plan for two months at a time and rotate it every two months for a year. After doing this pantry and freezer meals are a no brainer. The group wanted to know the particulars. They also wanted to know how my pantry stores lasted for a year. As you can imagine, we (me and the other homesteaders in the group) got flooded with questions. The lady running the live chat got involved also after one person commented that they have trouble cooking for two and I answered back "Don't, continue prepping your meals for 4,6,...