Homemaking Tip - Frugal Accomplishments

Each week Brandy at the theprudenthomemaker.com writes a post on her frugal accomplishments. She is inspiring and I love to read her posts.  I have learned new ways to cut expenses. She has built a wonderful readership that also share their ideas and frugal accomplishments in the comments section. Taking inspiration from her post, I'm recording our frugal accomplishments for the week in hope that someday it might help a reader of mine, too.

Here are some of our frugal accomplishments this week:

Cooking:

Calvin's Father's Day blackberry pie with berries from the garden/freezer

a triple batch of granola bars  (recipe found here)

22 trays of raspberry-apple leather (raspberries from the garden/freezer)

chicken and dumplings
we ate potatoes, carrots, and onions from the garden

I also made a crock-pot of refried beans (recipe here) and froze 20 bean and cheese burritos for future lunches.


Collecting:

the coyotes ate 25 of our laying hens, but a good friend gave us 5 hens to
keep us in stock until we get a new batch of chicks raised

cut flowers and lavender from the garden to put on the table as a centerpiece

a mouse for our cat to teach her to be a mouser

gathered eggs and fed the pigs scraps from the kitchen along with their grain

picked and froze two+ gallons of raspberries from the garden

Miscellaneous:

We planted more basil so we can make a larger batch of pesto to freeze.  I got some books from the library, and returned an unread book for store credit.  Calvin and I used a gift card for a date to a nice restaurant and only paid $1.16 for the meal. 

We watched programs on Roku.



Canning & Freezing:

We butchered between 40-50 chickens that we raised. After we bagged some whole and cut others up, we boiled the backs (as well as a few older chickens from the freezer) and canned the meat and broth. In addition to 20+ birds in the freezer, we canned about 30 pints of meat and 40 quarts of broth.

Phil, one of Calvin's friends and work associates asked us to raise some birds for him and wanted to help butcher them.  Having three of us really sped up the process.  Here are a few pictures from the butchering process.

1.  Catch the birds.

2.  Bleed them out and then dip them in scalding water to loosen the feathers.

3.  Drop them in the whizzbang chicken plucker.

4.  Eviscerate and clean them, and then cool them in cold running water.  After they are sufficiently cool, cut the birds into pieces or bag them whole and put them in the freezer.

6.  Put all the backs and too-small chickens in a big pot with onions and celery, salt and pepper.  Boil for several hours until the meat falls off the bone.

7.  Debone the chicken and fill jars.  Pressure cook the chicken and the broth.

I really like producing our meat.  Every time I hear a recall on chicken or beef or pork I can safely ignore it.



If you like reading frugal tips and seeing beautiful photography check out Brandy's blog and comment section.