How do you make ends meet?

I never thought it could happen to us but here we are, 8 months and still unemployed. He was laid off Jan. 5th. The day he got back from Christmas vacation he was called into the office and they rang in the New Year by dissolving his department.

How do you do it? How are you making it? I get asked that a lot.

Are we making it? Yes we are! We haven't been kicked out of our house yet, we haven't had the utilities turned off yet, the phone gets turned off every other month or so but that isn't vital to our existence although sometimes it feels like it!

No matter how much we cut back we still need cash. We haven't figured out how to live without it! There are utilities, prescriptions, gas for the car that drives my man around looking for jobs, insurance, property tax, etc. So how do we do it?

Farm Girl's Amazon store and Ebay is one way. I have been going through the house and making hard choices about what we REALLY need and what is just fluff. We had a lot of fluff! I am also listing things for friends that don't really have the time or inclination to sit for hours editing photos, researching prices and creating listings. They provide the merchandise, I do the leg work and they pay me a portion of the profits.

Freshly baked bread sells well and is popular with friends and neighbors. I also make jelly, chutney and preserves. I can all summer in preparation for the November craft fair season. I take jellies, fresh baked breads, cookies, fudge, and fresh eggs. All of my items are priced under $5 so I sell a lot of them.

I sell eggs from our chickens too but after buying chicken food we pretty much break even. At least we get our eggs free and they also provide meat and nice compost!

I do a little sewing here and there and I have been asked to teach classes on canning and preserving, gardening, cooking from scratch and other homemaking skills.

We have yard sales every couple months. Anytime someone I know is getting rid of something I ask if they mind if I take it and if it is okay to put it in a yard sale. I would never sell something someone gave me without asking them first and offering them the money I receive from it. Most people just tell me to keep it. I appreciate having more 'stuff' at my yard sales because it draws more crowds. I don't mind selling for other people at my yard sales as long as they have a set price in mind so they aren't disappointed if I go too low.

I keep my eyes open for rare books when I go to yard sales, goodwill or half price books. I try to keep up to date on what books fetch a good price in home school circles and then keep my eyes peeled. I have purchased books for $1 or $2 at goodwill and turned around and sold them online for $40-$50. Doesn't happen often but when it does it's great!

I coupon when I shop but I only use coupons on items that are already on sale for a good price and I try to only use coupons on things we really need and use. A lot of coupons are for convenience foods or junk food. I cook from scratch and try to stay away from junk food. I don't mind making a cobbler or homemade cookies but that is a far cry from Twinkies or florescent colored sugary goo. I have been known to buy a box of pop tarts occasionally and some easy meal starter mix to have on hand for the kids or the man to make if I am not able to.

I used to subscribe to Grocery Game and it was great. I don't subscribe anymore because after several months I got the hang of it. It is more time consuming to do it myself instead of downloading their easy list but doing it myself saves me $20 every 12 weeks. They have a 4 week trial that costs $1 so I would say try it and learn all you can. Before you sign up for the 4 week trial collect as many coupons from the Sunday paper as you can so you have a good collection. When they provide a list with the weekly sale they tell you which coupon to use on that product and the coupon called for may be one from a few weeks before. So it helps to have several weeks worth of coupons BEFORE your 4 week clock starts ticking.

Those are just a few things I do. What do you do to make ends meet?

Check out YouTube for some thrifty videos.

Cherry Berry Jelly

This is a new fave for the kids. After pitting 25lbs or so of cherries I just couldn't bare to throw away all the pits with little bits of cherry still clinging to them. That was a lot of work and it seemed a shame to not make more out of what was left. I simmered the pits for about an hour until most the flesh fell off and I had a pan of dark cherry-ish liquid. I strained out the pits (and still couldn't stand to throw them away!) and poured the liquid through a Norpro Jelly Strainer and Bag I added enough berry juice to make 6 cups then followed the directions on the pectin box for making jelly. It turned out super yummy!



Oh, and the pits were dried well in the dehydrator. I will use some of them for heating pads and let the boys use the rest as sling shot ammunition.

Dehydrated Hash Browns

I love playing with my dehydrator. If I can find a way to preserve food and save space I am a happy Farm Girl Wannabe! I grated and dried 10lbs of potatoes into instant, shelf stable hash browns. I peeled and grated the potatoes using the shredding attachment for my bosch universal kitchen machine. I set the shredded potatoes in a big bowl of cool water until all the potatoes were finished. This seemed to keep them from turning brown. Once they were all sliced I sat them in a colander and dipped them briefly in boiling water. I then spread them out on the mesh trays of my dehydrated set it to 125 and let them dry overnight. Don't toss out that big bowl of soaking water, your plants will love it!

To use the hash browns I soaked them in warm water along with dried onion, dried bell pepper, dried garlic for about 10 or 15 minutes. Drain well (save the soaking water!) and fry until all the veggies are tender. I poured a little of the soak water into the pan and covered it to help speed up the process. Salt and pepper according to taste. The soak water has the flavor the of the potatoes and other veggies in it. I usually save that water and use it as my liquid in the crock pot if I am slow cooking something for dinner that night. If not I toss it in the compost or in the chicken bucket.

Canned Chicken

Canned chicken is a pantry staple in my kitchen. I can use it to make quick soup, salads, casseroles, stir-fry and tacos or spaghetti. I have found store bought canned chicken to be very dry and flavorless. By canning my own I can control the ingredients, seasonings and my stuff doesn't get recalled! I can the chickens I butcher and also chicken I buy at a good price from the market.

My canned chicken has chicken and my homemade broth. My broth is cooked overnight with chicken bones, carrots, celery, garlic, onion, parsley and any other veggie or herbs that I have on hand at the time. I strain it through a cheese cloth to get a nice clear broth.

The store bought stuff looks something like this: Cooked Chicken Meat, Mechanically Separated Chicken Meat, Cooked Chicken Skins, Chicken Stock, Water, Contains Less than 2% of: Salt, Modified Food Starch, Sodium Phosphates, Natural Flavoring.

The store bought stuff doesn't look THAT bad but I would like to know what is in natural flavoring and what does mechanically separated mean? Why food starch and are sodium phosphates good for me?