I mentioned yesterday about liking to read about frugal tips. One of the things I see a lot are articles about only spending something like $50 a week to feed a family of four and then there really isnt a meal plan. If there is a plan it consists of oatmeal for breakfast all week, peanut butter for lunch and a very limited dinner. There isnt anything wrong with that. If thats your thing go right ahead. Sometimes they give the low budget and will say this is assuming you have staple items on hand. Then there is a list that would cost you $100. Then you have the people who have a huge farm thats been in their family forever who raise their own cattle, chickens and can their own produce for the year and they are trying to tell you a lifetime city dweller that you too can start your own homestead. Ummmm no thank you. I love city life and dont plan on leaving it anytime soon.

 Budgeting isnt easy for everyone neither is meal planning, meal prepping, finding deals and so on and so on. Its not something that you can just pick up and start saving tons of money at once. Unless you are just one of those really awesome people which I am not.  This week my grocery bill was $46. That will feed 4 adults for the week. My menu is a 1/2 a piece of toast for breakfast for each person, a cracker with a  grape and a cheese stick for lunch and 4oz chicken breast grilled with 5 green beans and a small red potato. I hope you realize that was a joke. I actually have alot of meat in my freezer and I have a standup freezer about the size of my refridgerator. I also have tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, potatoes,  carrots, garlic, herbs and chickens for eggs in my backyard. Its taking us 6 years to get to this point. Its alot of work but we actually enjoy it.

It started with chickens. We bought our baby chicks, made our coop, bought all the things for food and water and spent around $600. Once you start getting eggs the cost of feeding the chickens and the eggs you get balance out if you consider your eggs at the free range, cage free organic cost of eggs of $4-5 a dozen. If you are someone who normally buys eggs for around $1 and I actually saw eggs for 58 cents yesterday at Aldis then your are not going to be happy with the cost of raising your own eggs. We considered the $600 start up and an investment that would take about 50 years to break even. We love watching them peck around in the garden. Never leave them unattended. They will mess your garden up! When your chickens get to be around 6 years old they are not going to live much longer. You will want to think about getting some new ones. We actually waited until spring this year when we  lost our last chickens so we have been waiting 21 weeks for egg production to start again.  Fortunately I found a family who sells eggs to get mine from. I must make a mental note to start looking a new chicks in about 5 years and not have gap this time.

As for the garden its been about the same timeline as the chickens. We started with two 4 foot by 4 foot raised beds. Bought the organic dirt and wood. we realized that they didnt need to be that tall so we cut them down and made 4 raised beds for the next year. Then we thought about the wood be bought and how it had been treated to not rot as fast and we wondered what chemicals was getting into our food so we tore them down the next year and built new ones. We have battled squirrels. opposums, raccoons, cats, too much rain. not enough rain, which is how we came to have 6 rain barrels and have definitely spent more on our garden produce than on our chickens. There is a great book at the library called The $64 Tomato. There is some truth to that.

I share all this to be honest. Its not easy or cheap to raise your own food. You should definitely appreciate those who do this for a living and not complain about the prices when you have no idea how hard it can be. You should also watch a few documentaries to see where your food comes from. I share this in hopes that if this is something you have thought about doing that you know it can be done. Just start small and know what to expect. Learn from our mistakes and ask for advice. Share your experiences with others to help them out too. Dont be like those people I mentioned in the beginning.

I will speak more about getting a garden started later. You can grow so many things in pots and containers and not have a lot of start up costs.

If you will excuse me I am going to go scramble two eggs and chop up a tomato for breakfast all free from my backyard with a total cost of about $40. What a bargain!

Lots of love,

Mrs Ladybug