From the Hinterlands

Wow, what a rainy season we have had. I have already planted and started to grow my early spring crops. As you can imagine, some are doing better than others. I buy my seed from Baker Creek Seeds. I have planted turnips, arugula, potatoes, shallots, onions, basil, parsley, and dill. The turnips and arugula are coming up by the handfuls. My onions are doing very well. The herbs are not doing so well. It's the first time I have done these types of basil, parsley, and dill. My potatoes are doing poorly, but it is the first time I have tried the raised garden bed method for them. I still have time to throw a bunch in a field. The shallots are also growing poorly in the same raised bed set up. The author I got the idea from must have had some secret trick I know nothing about.

Tomorrow I will harvest some turnip greens for soup. I will also harvest a bit of arugula for salad. I intend to plant some more items tomorrow, though I'm not sure what just yet. I'll look through my seed packets in the morning. It's getting time to plant the tomatoes, egg plants, cucumbers, okra, squash, and melons.

The goats are doing fine. One is named Butter and the other Sugar. Sugar may have been bred. If she was, we should have a baby goat in May. She doesn't look big enough to be carrying though. They like to eat the grass in the yard, but one of them got into the onions! She only nibbled a little off the tops though. Butter is a nuisance goat, though I do like her. She has broken two collars, one of them made of metal! She is quite determined to NOT be chained up. I enjoy their company in the garden...far away from my onions. It can be a chore to chase them out of the garden though, so that is why we were chaining them.

I'm looking into getting a small late flock of chickens. I swore after I got ducks that I would never go back to chickens. However, there is nothing quite like the taste of a free range chicken egg. I may get a more "wild" type which will make it harder for wild animals to kill. Docile chickens are great for children to get to learn to grow, but horrible at self defense.

That's all for tonight. Awfully tired.

Time has flown. Here it is 3 years later and the middle of another planting season. So much has happened. I want to share with all of you our struggles and good fortune, but it would be writing a book!

Our tiller broke again when a drunk driver ran it over almost killing me, my husband, and our then 4 year old son. The drunk also managed to destroy 50% of what we had planted last year.

We purchased two nanny goats. They are very young, but we should breed them this year. I enjoy their company as much as the idea of having milk form them.

We have a newer car that we got for a price I could not refuse and my husband had found work closer to home for about 9 months. He lost his job last month. I have a work at home job currently where I make 200-300 a month. He was making only 300 a month at the end of it.

I wrote two books and have started to make a few sales. Not enough to put food on the table, but some pocket change.

We took in a family of four in 2012 that I knew which was living on the street literally and gave them a home for 5 months until they got on their feet. 2012 gave me a very good garden and we fed everyone (All 12 of us) out of it until about November when the frost killed it. By December, it was truly horrific. The pantry was bare and our garden was dead. This was before my husband found work. So it was up to me to figure out something to feed everyone. It wasn't very easy. I got very creative on the recipes by adding chamomile to bread and Mullen, herbs usually reserved for teas. It made the bread sweeter when we had almost no sugar, honey, or molasses. By the end of December they found a home and work. I was so thankful. Most of the beginning of 2013 was devoted to recovering. By June, things were better, until the drunk driver showed up.

Last year was the first real Christmas from mom and dad my kids had in 5 years. My husband had good work at that time and we bought them toys for the first time in a long time. I even bought them new clothes. Now that he is out of work, I am kicking myself in the rear for spending the money. The kids did love it though.

I guess I will update on my planting later. I'm tired, it's late, and I just got off my shift.

What a difference a month makes. No, I am not employed full-time. I still have the same job making the same low pay. However, two things have changed.

First, I have been able to find 200 dollars from a lawsuit. More like the attorney found it for me. This paid for groceries. It was like manna from heaven when it came.

Second, our machinery is working! Finally, we will be putting in our fall garden in the next week. It was not an arm and a leg to fix, because my husband fixed it. We did need a 25 dollar part. This took a considerable amount of time to find also.

Finally some of you had questions and suggestions. I will handle the questions first. We grow food for our family, with an option to sell at the farmer's market. We never have as of yet, since I have a large family that gobbles up everything before I can sell or preserve it. I blame that on under planting, which means, I the farmer is to blame.

That is why we were opening up an extra acer. We knew we needed more land planted to make more food. I have grown things as John Jeavons suggested, so I know about intensive agriculture and organic agriculture. I also know, with out a lot of animals on site, it requires a lot of inputs. We currently do not have any goats, cows, or the like on site. We are looking into a Jersey cow or Water Buffalo, but they cost thousands.

Finally, moving is out of the question for one simple reason. I have a large family. The reason I had to move in the middle of no where is due in part to my large family. When we lived in the city, I needed to find an apartment. I asked around and the first thing every landlord wanted to know is how many kids. Once they heard I had 3, they all refused to rent to me. Now I have 6.

Plus, my house is paid off. I don't have to pay rent. I can't imagine being much better off after rent was removed from my pay.

Finally a Turker, is someone that works on Mechanical Turk. It's like the temp site of the world on the internet. The pay is low, usually. The days are long. Your lucky if you bring home 100 a month. Most people assume people in "other" countries work there, because the pay is so low.

So what is happening now? Well, we have food. I am so happy to say that. We have enough for a bit now. I have gotten more telephone work, like I was hoping in June. Not a lot more, but I can tell the difference.

Now I am looking to cut back. How frugal is too frugal? I was looking at how much my electricity costs, and it is outrageous. 150 USD per month in the summer. Imagine, if that were brought down by a quarter.

I have my electricity through a co-op. I love my co-op, but I don't love some of their policies. For example, some of the people working their refuse to tell me what policies they have written for delinquent accounts, why they are charging me a "connection fee" of 50 cents a day, etc...

The lowest bill I ever had was 75 USD. That was for a black out of 2 weeks. Half of that bill was delivery fees, taxes, and connection fees. (Even though I had no electricity for 2 weeks) For reference, a normal bill in the winter is 100 USD. I think they ripped me a new one on that. How can I lower my bills, with all these fees? Should I leave my co-op?

I need to start this for myself, to put into perspective the absolute impossibility that is living in the middle of no where on next to nothing. I know, that is a terrible way to start a blog. Why would anyone want to read that? It's depressing. However. you maybe able to glean a few gems on how to reduce your costs, based on my tried and true methods. Furthermore, you may gain a more complete understanding of the desolation your fellow humans must endure. Compassion, is not required, but you may find yours here.

I live on ten acres, that I have more or less, tried to farm...with some success. The latest year has been the worst to date. My husband, lovingly and jokingly referred to as "the mule", has been working the land for all these years and no longer can. I, not accustomed to having to do his share and my own, did not get enough planted. We were going to need those plants in the ground, to eat you see. They still didn't get in there in time.

It seems someone had other plans for us. Every piece of machinery we own broke down within one week of the other. The repair bills would be too much all at once, more than our savings. Also, no one can be found to repair the machinery within a few miles, so we have to wait until one can come to us from faraway. We were left with one option, do it by hand. Do you know how hard it is to till an acre by hand with just a shovel? Never mind the fact this was a new virgin acre we were supposed to bring online, to let our old land lay fallow and recover. It is impossible alone.

Instead I planted the old land and we tried to clear the new land, to hopefully plant a fall garden in. I still hope that will happen. We don't have a lot of time left, and we still have a few pieces of broken equipment. Hope, what is there without hope? People seem to think I am an optimist. I am a pessimist, I assure you, with a lot of "let's hope for the best" thrown in.

Due to our poor spring harvest, I am having to buy groceries...like everyone else. Everyone else that has a normal job, a normal car, or at least has SNAP benefits. In the beginning, I used my savings which was minuscule. Originally, we were saving for the car...just in case it broke down. It is over 20 years old now. No, I had to use our savings for food. I don't regret it, I just wish it could have stretched further.

My savings has been gone for about a month now. I have had to become very creative in my budgeting. I receive about 428 a month in child support from my first marriage. For a while, I sold cosmetics through a large company and made about 400 usd more per month. I stopped selling them last year though, due to the expenses being higher than my returns. Gas was killing me. I also make money on the side from a call center, but it isn't anywhere near full time. It is more like part-time, 2 days a week. Nothing big. It's inexpensive to get to work, because I don't have to drive anywhere, have a babysitter, or even worry about professional appearance. I work at home with my internet and VOIP through Google. I may make 200 usd in a good month on this job. Now, this is money already allocated to bills.

As you can see, I am in a bind. All of my income is going straight to bills. One might reason, cut back. Turn off the cable, cut the internet, use less electric and try to find a real job. Trust me, I have thought about that too. I turned off my land line and only get my phone through Google Voice. I need the internet to work for the phone center. I hang dry laundry, I cook from scratch, and I sew my kids clothes when they get new ones. Yes, I am that frugal.

As far as finding a "real job" (TM), they don't exist within 30 miles of here. My car is too unreliable, gas is too high, and the returns are too low. When my husband had a "real job" (TM) making min. wage, 100 usd went straight to gas. Keep in mind, this was when gas was in the low 2.50 usd per gallon range. At the end of the week once we paid for gas, and his lunch, plus the tools he had to buy for the job... we got may be 100 usd left. For what? 40-50 hours of work a week, 16 hour shifts, leaving home at 2am to make his 4 am shift and then have to work until 6 pm? The "real job" (TM) wasn't worth all the work to get there, all the expenses to get there, and the insane hours. That doesn't take into account the toll it had on his health or the lack of health insurance.

I only need 40 to 50 usd a week to get groceries. I came up with a few ideas about how to get that money. First, I sold many of my old college books on half.com. It has so far netted about one weeks worth of groceries. Not bad, but not something I would like to bet my food budget on. I still put stuff up on half.com, but it isn't my primary strategy.

Second, I have started becoming a Turker. Yes, Mechanical turk. While sitting waiting for calls from customers for the phone center, I work on mechanical Turk. Currently I have earned almost 100 usd, about 2 weeks worth of food. That has taken about 3 weeks to make, by the way. It beats doing nothing at least.

Finally, I have begun putting in more time on the phone line. I know many don't have this option. I am very lucky I do. It doesn't yield as much return on the weekdays, so I am not getting much more. It may just be enough, to round it all out.

I am thinking of more ways I can cut back. We have a few options I will discuss later, but for right now...I am signing off.

D. L. Mitchell