Frugality and Embroidery

At first glance, those two may seem like oxymorons.  Embroidery is fancy stuff, decorative stuff…”pretties”.  Not frugal. 

In fact, however, I’ve found a basic knowledge of embroidery to be one of the most useful and frugal skills I’ve ever learned.  I use it all the time for mending my clothing–including jeans!  Maybe the hippies had it right all this time. 

 Embroidery has the benefit of being more attractive than patches or simple stitchery mending.  I don’t feel like a ragbag when I’m wearing embroidered clothing; instead, I feel like that noble wife of Proverbs 31; she maketh herself coverings of tapestry!  Well, perhaps she had to; they would have worn out, otherwise. 

 The key to mending your clothing with embroidery, especially jeans, is to catch the problems when they’re still tiny holes or tears.  If you can, catch them while they’re still nothing more than weak spots in the fabric. 

If the hole has progressed to the point that you can’t embroider it because there’s no fabric left to embroider onto, add a patch  on the inside of the hole and cover it with embroidery. 

There’s something a bit daring about working in embroidered jeans.  It’s fun.    It also makes you feel good–at least it does me!–to know that just because you’re being frugal and relying on “make do and mend” doesn’t mean that you have to be drab or ugly, or that pretty things can’t be a part of your life. 

That’s the magic of frugality and embroidery. 

 

The Finer Points of Keeping Chickens

It finally rained today, a nice steady gentle rain.  It was exactly what we needed–exactly what I needed. 

I promised a few days ago that I’d write another post on the specifics of keeping chickens.  Chickens are wonderful for anyone who is looking at keeping animals for food, because 1) they eat so little, 2) they take up so little room, and 3) you don’t have to kill them to get food out of them. 

First of all, where can you keep chickens?  The answer is almost anywhere.  Even tiny pockets of yard can be fenced in and given a little roof to protect the birds from rain and hot sun.  A fence is necessary to keep neighborhood cats and dogs out and chickens from getting run over or leaving little presents all over your yard.  It’s important for chickens to have a little room to scratch. 

What kind of chickens should you get?  If you have the choice, Buff Orpingtons are a large, docile chicken with soft golden feathers.  Their gentle nature makes them an excellent choice for families.  Plus, they’re excellent layers. 

 What should you feed your chickens?  Chickens will eat almost anything–table scraps, grain, even dog food.  But if you want the best egg production, consider going down to your local co-op and picking up a bag of laying pellets.  (Be sure you get the pellets; laying crumbles tend to get lost and wasted.)  Give each chicken a handful of laying pellets and a couple of handfuls of kitchen scraps per day, and reap the rewards in eggs and black gold for your garden. 

 How many chickens can you keep?  An eight-by-ten enclosure will hold three to five hens, or even a couple more, depending on their size.  And the average Buff Orpington hen will give you five to six eggs a week during all but the hottest summer months. 

Do you need a rooster?  That depends.  If you have room, and you want to produce fertile eggs and raise chicks, you’ll need a rooster.   But hens will lay just as well–and sometimes even better–without a rooster.  And if space is limited, or you don’t want to keep a chicken that isn’t going to produce food for you, a rooster will be a liability. 

Similarly, you don’t want to keep a rooster if you live in a crowded suburb.  Their cock-a-doodle-do is the epitome of the farm and country living, but neighbors tend to frown on a rooster crowing from 4:00 or so until daybreak or later. 

Chickens are worth their weight in gold.  I have eight hens and two roosters in different coops.  I get an average of six eggs a day, or a dozen eggs every two days, which is plenty for our family to eat and give to friends and family.  And that’s to say nothing of the fertilizer for our garden.  When your clean out your chicken coop, put the manure in a pile to the side of your garden, cover it with leaves, and let it sit for a couple of months.  The result will be a fabulous rich soil that you can spread over your garden for the best vegetables you’ve ever tasted. 

 

Motherhood on the Horizon

One of our hens, Victoria, is setting.  She has 13 eggs under her, so we’re hoping for 6 or 7 chicks.  She just looks so pretty there on her grass nest, with that fanatic bug-me-and-I’ll-peck-your-head-off gleam in her eye.  I can’t wait for the chicks to start hatching.  I love babies! 

 

Urgent – Stop NAIS Now!!

I only learned about this today, which shows what a good job the government is doing about keeping this hushed up. Below is a copy of the letter I’ve just mailed to my state and federal senators, representatives, and Gov. Riley. As soon as I can, I’ll be mailing copies to the Alabama Farmers and Consumers Bulletin, Mother Earth News, the three local papers, and anyone else I can think of who can help spread the word and stop this travesty.

Please, if you live in the States, write your elected officials, your newspapers, magazines, etc. And spread the word! If this gets enacted, it will put small farms out of business and be a huge drain on homesteaders, livestock owners, and anyone who has pets.

The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) goes too far. If put into effect, it will require anyone who owns livestock, farm animals, or even pets to microchip their animals and report their every move to the USDA.

According to the USDA, the purpose of NAIS is to prevent disease, such as BSE (commonly known as Mad Cow Disease), and to track disease should it occur. However, if this was indeed the case, there would be no reason to track:

1. Non-food animals, including pets. There is little or no chance of disease entering the food stream from horses, donkeys, and dogs, yet under NAIS, these animals would be subject to the same stringent rules as all other animals.

2. Sales directly from farms to consumers. When the customer buys animal products directly from farms, there is no need for government tracking and intervention; the customer knows where their food came from!

3. Families raising their own livestock for their own consumption. People who raise their own animals for their own food certainly don’t need the government to tell them where their food came from; they’ve raised it themselves, right under their eyes!

Participation in NAIS must be voluntary for these three groups. There is no conceivable reason for the government to track these groups. Even at best, the NAIS requirements would be a useless blend of bureacracy and stupidity. The actual results, however, will be far more serious than that….

NAIS will be expensive. The initial cost for tagging the animals is calculated to run between $3 and $20 per animal. Additionally, there will be a fee for reporting each animal movement—including trips to the vet—which is likely to be in excess of $1 per movement! This is no small change. If animals are not tagged, fines could be in excess of $1000.00 per animal per day. This is simply not reasonable.

Moreover, NAIS is an invasion of privacy. The government does not need to know how many dogs I have or be informed when I sell a dozen eggs to my neighbor. In fact, the government has no right to know. NAIS violates Amendments 1, 4, 5, and 14 of our United States Constitution.

NAIS will have the most impact on small, family-owned farms. It could conceivably drive many already struggling farmers out of business.

Please take immediate action to oppose NAIS and put a stop to the USDA’s interference in our food system. The American people and the people of Alabama have the right to produce their own food and own their own pets without the government looking over their shoulders.

In January of 2008, Animal ID and Premise ID will become mandatory for animal owners. Please act now to put a stop to these absurd requirements. Your constituency will thank you.

To learn more about NAIS, please visit < http://www.noNAIS.org >. Thank you for your time and your attention to this matter.

 

Basket

My first basket is finished.  It’s a darling little thing–a bit whopsided, but then, it is my first.  And the bottom is actually flat, which means it stands up just exactly as it’s supposed to.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s quite an achievement! 

This particular basket is rather small, with an upright handle–I’ll post pictures as soon as I upload them–but I’m thinking next time I may try to do a large, shallow basket.  We’ll see.  I don’t have the vines for another basket at the moment; I’ll have to cut some more on my walk tomorrow morning. 

 

Zucchini!

One of the ladies at church gave us a bag of zucchini this morning.  Never having cooked zucchini before, a new adventure lies before me: how to prepare zucchini? 

I’m thinking that I will, perhaps, cut it up and cook it in a stir-fry this evening.  It’s hard to go wrong with ginger teriyake soy sauce.    (1/4 teaspoon ginger, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and soy sauce to taste makes the best stir-fry topping you’ll ever eat!) 

 

The Art of Basketry

One of the books I borrowed from the library last week was on making your own baskets.  It’s something I’ve wanted to learn how to do for a long time, actually, but I only just took the initiative to get a book that would help me learn how to do it. 

The book is quite interesting, although a lot of the baskets look much too complicated for a complete beginner such as myself.  Some of them look doable, however, so this morning I brought home some kudzu vines which are currently soaking in water to make them more pliable. 

I can’t wait to get started. 

 

Why Everyone Should Keep Chickens

Breakfast this morning cost just pennies to make, and it was both delicious and satisfying.  Lunch will be, too. 

Breakfast was French Toast, slices of bread dipped in egg and skillet-toasted over low heat.  We bought the bread at a thrift store; three loaves of white bread for $2.25, or about 75 cents per loaf.  Each loaf has between 20 and 25 slices of bread in it, for just over 3 cents per slice, and we each had two slices.  Call it about 7 cents per person. 

The eggs are harder to figure, because we get them “free”–but we have to feed the chickens.  We give them both cracked corn and laying pellets; the extra cost for the laying pellets is more than made up for in the consistency of their laying.  It costs $6-$8 dollars per month to feed our flock (which currently has 8 hens and 2 roosters), and we get, on average, a dozen eggs every two days (15 doz. per month).  That’s about two dozen eggs for $1, or a little over 4 cents per egg.  We use two eggs, lightly beaten, for two people.  Add in about 2 cents worth of margarine to cook them in, and you reach a figure that’s approximately 25 cents for breakfast for two.  Not bad for something so utterly delicious!  Of course, if you’re naughty and add sugar, the cost goes up a little, but only by a penny or two at the most. 

 Lunch will be very similar, only we’ll be having scrambled egg sandwiches.  Again, two slices of bread per person, or about 14 cents for two, four eggs (two apiece), for about 18 cents, and perhaps 5-10 cents worth of mayonnaise in place of butter.  We’ll also add a couple of lettuce leaves, but those are from our own lettuce, so there’s absolutely no cost except the seed. 

Even rounding up, you still come to 42 cents for a meal for two people–and that’s 42 cents for the meal, not per person! 

Eggs are a wonderful source of protein, and the chickens who produce the eggs also produce wonderful fertilizer for the garden.  And they hardly take any room; a 10×15 area will house a small coop and a large yard for as many as five or six chickens without being crowded.  (A crowded chicken is an unhealthy chicken.)  If you want to raise your own chicks and keep your flock young, you’ll need a rooster; otherwise, hens lay just fine on their own, and you don’t have to feed an extra beak. 

Later, I may post on the fine points of keeping chickens; how to keep the coop from smelling, for example, and the one thing chickens need more than anything else to stay healthy.  For now, though, just remember: it’s something to think about.  A few good laying hens are worth their weight in gold. 

 

A Promise of Rain

This morning, the sky was low and heavy, and for a few hours, I thought it might hold a promise of rain.  Unfortunately, the promise burned off with the noon sun, and we remain stubbornly drought-bound. 

I’m more than ready for rain.  Everything is so dry.  There’s a blanket of dust lying over the leaves on the trees by the side of the road. 

 I’ve been watering the perennials and herbs by hand, hauling buckets up from the creek, because I’m concerned about the well with the drought.  Our land is currently resting for the Sabbath year (which, for us, begins and ends on August 9th), which means there are no annuals to water, including no vegetables.  I’ve missed having fresh vegetables, but at the same time, I’m very glad to not have the extra watering to do right now. 

 I hope it rains soon…

 

Living the Good Life

Did you know it’s possible to support a family of three on less than $6000 per year?  Have you ever wondered which vegetables give the most food for the least amount of space?  Are you interested in sustainable living that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?  Have you ever wondered how to make your own cheese? 

 If any of these questions describe you, then you’ve come to the right place.  My name is Keesa Renee DuPre.  I’m an author, and my family and I are working towards a sustainable lifestyle.  This blog is where I’ll share the things I’ve learned over the last 14 years as a modern homesteader.   I’m hoping you won’t just read the entries on this blog; my hope is that some of them will inspire you to save money and live sustainably yourself in some small way or another.