And so it begins!

I've got a bug up my butt! The bug is that I want the best of both worlds. I love me some technology; after all, I'm a tech major. I love my modern comforts such as a/c and heat, water heaters, lights, my gas guzzling 4 wheel drive. At the same time, I've also adjusted myself to living on a farm. While its not a fully working farm its land and trees and fields and lots of space. I've enjoyed raising a few Buffs (thems chickens), I've raised a garden and canned/froze food for the winter and even dabbled in making freezer jelly. I'm finding myself wanting MORE of this. More of the homesteader ways but I don't want to lose touch with reality so to speak. I have to work. I'm the sole provider for our family, plus I'm addicted to the Internet besides I'm working on my degree and need Internet access for classes.

So my new mission in life is to figure out how to do both without going crazy, broke, or without my spoiled comforts. I've started without even realizing it by having my few chickens, raising a garden and preserving the food for winter, and of course setting up home wireless network. Yes, the last sounds like spoil but I can now take my laptop anywhere around the house to look up recipes and direction on living a simple life. Now that's funny. Homesteading as I'm learning is not easy at all. Well not at first anyway. The baby steps I've taken I did without really realizing it so they didn't seem so hard at all. Now that I'm attempting to do this with planning ahead of time, it seems quite overwhelming. But baby steps will be how it goes.

My next big project is going to be attempting to build a wind turbine to help with the electricity. I found an awesome site that actually has a "how to build your own" step by step guide. I'm going to give it a go and see how I do. Hopefully I won't 1. burn down the house and 2. be without electricity. Intitally I plan to use it to supplement our electric and not completely disconnect from the grid. But I would love to be able to eventually sell excess power to the local electric company for a supplimental income. Yes these are big dreams but I would like to at least attempt a small wind turbine to help us out on our ever increasing electric bill.

So why this blog? Well, while I've been researching different methods for different things, I've found a ton of radical homesteading sites. Some of these are a big too extreme for me at the moment so I decided to make my own and keep track of my progress. (This also keeps me accountable for my homesteading movement.) So here it goes!

Long term goal: research and build a small home wind turbine (without burning the house down)
Short term goal: get the corn picked, shucked and put up for winter. Find some black berries and learn to make jam.

Thats all I'm starting with for now. Baby steps right? Wish me luck!

Xtra Savings

I have been out of the coupon clipping, sales paper searching mode for a few months. I know shame on me. But I happened upon a great deal this past Friday at Rite-Aid. They had 68.75 Fl Oz bottles of Xtra laundry detergent as well as Nice N Fluffy on sale for $1.88 a bottle . I was able to get 4 bottles of detergent and 2 bottles of fabric softner for a little under $12!

Tight Rope walking again

We’ve hit the bottom of the financial barrel. Of course, we normally do this time of year. I always seem to go overboard trying to make summer fun and this year I really over did myself. Actually, between the have tos and the Oh my the fuel pump went out things we did pretty good considering. So with school starting in a few days my budget is gone. There is no money in the barrel. I’m using this time to get creative and challenge myself to do more with less. I was able to find whole tenderloin on sale for $1.69 a pound and some ground beef yesterday. Yippy skippy! I’ve got garden food coming in and a pantry full of the unusual. You know the stuff? The things that tend to get left behind in the pantry. You never really remember when you bought them but they’re always there. Usually they end up being Food pantry donations. I’m also going to dig up some from scratch recipes and make some snacks for after school. I know we can do this. I just get lazy and forget this is actually fun not just a survival tool. I always feel proud of myself for digging in and making due. So tonight the menu consists of fresh corn on the cob, tenderloin cubed up to be stir fried with potatoes out of the garden and possibly corn bread. Mmm! I’ll just see how it goes. I’ll post pictures later hopefully.

In the meantime, here’s a few sites I find helpful when looking for cheap ways to make the paycheck stretch time more tolerable.

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/
http://www.cheapcooking.com/
http://jane4girls800dollarannualbudget.blogspot.com/

Swagbucks.com

In my never-ending search to make very little stretch very far, (and my love for free stuff). I just started using Swagbucks.com. Basically, its a search engine portal that allows you to earn Swagbucks for purchases and the chance to win prizes.

"www.swagbucks.com is an online portal dedicated to helping you earn digital dollars called "Swag Bucks," which can be redeemed for exclusive swagbucks.com merchandise." -Swagbucks.com FAQs

you can check it out here:

I've only been on it a few minutes and have already earned about 10 swagbucks. The site also gives points for turning in old cell phones and video games. That's a pretty good deal to get something out of those old useless objects laying around the house. The search engine so far seems comparable to Google so why not earn some extras while searching for things you do everyday anyway?

Take a look and tell him Gertie Sent ya!