December 22, 2020
Merry Pandemic Holidays! How We’re Celebrating, How Readers are Celebrating
Merry Pandemic Holidays!!!! We’re ready to celebrate how much we love our families by…. not seeing them!!! This holiday season will be different, but no less merry and jolly. Primarily I will achieve this by making as many desserts as I’d make if we were hosting 15 people. Since there are four of us x…
December 17, 2020
The Uber Frugal Month is BACK!
You might’ve thought I forgot about the Uber Frugal Month and that would be totally justified because I DID forget about it in July. But NEVER AGAIN. You frugal mavens aren’t going to ring in 2021 alone–you’re going to do it WITH MEEEEEEE and thousands of other Uberly Frugal folks. The Uber Frugal Month is…
December 9, 2020
Christmas Lights, Lightbulbs, a Headlamp and other November 2020 Expenses
Let there be LIGHT!!!! I’ve surrendered all restraint and decorum with regard to Christmas decorations. This year, we are lit. It’s dark, it’s cold, there’s nowhere to go and so I transformed the interior of our house into a beacon of light/some might call it tacky. Up to this point, we’ve used hand-me-down and garage-sale-purchased…
December 4, 2020
These Two Months On The Homestead: Halloween, Thanksgiving and of course, Wood Stacking
October AND November 2020 Oh yes, you get a double dose of homesteading because I neglected/forgot to write this up last month. But who even noticed?! It’s a pandemic! We had an election! This Month On The Homestead‘s timeliness does not rate. Fall in Vermont blows in with intention. No balmy leaf-crunchers here, fall is…
November 24, 2020
Reader Case Study: Furloughed Behavioral Therapists Wait Out The Pandemic
Anne and her husband Michael live in rural Colorado where, until the pandemic, they worked as behavioral therapists for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Now, they’re on voluntary unpaid furlough and requesting our help deciding what to do next. They recently sold their behavioral therapy practice, have a five-acre homestead with dogs and farm…
November 20, 2020
Oatmeal And Other October 2020 Expenses
The pandemic, the election, rising Covid cases and deaths, intonations of entering a dark winter… shall we talk about that today? Nah. In a world that’s (potentially) spiraling out of control, let’s focus on the things we can control. I can’t control politics, I can’t control the coronavirus, I can’t control what other people do…
October 28, 2020
This Month On The Homestead: Pumpkins! Need I Say More?
September 2020 Our pumpkin crop is in! We (by which I mean I) harvested, rinsed, dried, and carried all the pumpkins from the patch to the house in mid-September. Started from seed in our kitchen last March, our pumpkins thrived and were–somehow–not eaten by a varmint. I now have pumpkins on every windowsill, each table,…
October 15, 2020
A Dishwasher And Other September 2020 Expenditures
I’m convinced that large appliances are in league against humans. This month we had to replace our dishwasher and our TV and this is not the first time we’ve had a confluence of such events. Revenge of the Appliances hit back in 2016 when our oven, refrigerator and closet door all broke in the same…
September 30, 2020
Reader Case Study: Making Full-Time Farming a Reality in Arkansas
Sara Beth and Colt operate an 80-acre livestock farm in the Arkansas delta with their three dogs. They raise cows and goats, have chickens and ride horses. Running the farm is their dream. The only problem is that it isn’t profitable (yet) and so they’re both working full-time jobs in addition. They’ve asked for our…
September 25, 2020
This Month On The Homestead: Carrots, Sunflowers, Tomatoes, and Sugar Wood
August 2020 This month on the homestead, last month on the homestead, any month before that… it’s all running together in a stream of continuous, monochromatic green. Nevertheless, I’m thankful to be here, grateful for this space for my children to roam, not to mention I can go outside and scream into the void anytime…