life on garden time
You can spend a lot of money on specialized pickling crocks. Go ahead, be my guest. You’ll learn all about how your $25-$200 is buying you an ideal anaerobic environment in which to nurture your precious anaerobic bacteria…blah, blah, blah. Me? I don’t need another unitasker in my kitchen. I like to be able to use a [Continue Reading...]
An advertising agency in Chicago used to pay Lisa Kivirist one big paycheck. Now, hundreds of people pay her lots of very small ones. All these little paychecks – over a thousand last year – allow Lisa, her husband John and their son to live the life they want: rural, sustainable and meaningful. People write [Continue Reading...]
“If you get nothing else, please, please just get the moisturizer,” the overly plumped and overly plucked sales-cultist implores me. “You know, these are the years that really count for your skin.” The moisturizer is $75 for a two-ounce jar. The jar, it must be said, is a very pretty sandblasted green. It’s worth at least [Continue Reading...]
Last week Williams-Sonoma branched out from French dishwear, excellent knives and seasonal high-end cocoa mix into urban homesteading gear. With the launch of their Agrarian line, Williams-Sonoma now sells gardening gear, chicken and bee keeping supplies, seeds, edible plants, fruit trees and preserving supplies. Some people in the hardcore DIY community (you know who you [Continue Reading...]
Vegetable growing can be a great way to save money on food, but it can also be a dang expensive hobby in its own right. One of the biggest expenses edible gardeners run into is the cost of seeds. If you’ve been at this for awhile, you’ve noticed that the cost of seeds in the [Continue Reading...]
I am getting a lot of questions about seeds right now. A friend came over to tour the garden and said she was thinking of using seed this year – a first for her. Another friend asked if she could use last year’s seeds. Once you graduate past a few patio tomato plants (not that [Continue Reading...]
For good or for ill, it’s Bath & Body Works season, L’Occitane season, Anthropologie season, Savon de Marseille season. It’s fancy-soap-with-fancy-smells season, and even my normally bare-bones, ascetic sensibilities when it comes to home and self care can loft a bit to the girly side. But not $32 plus $6 shipping for a 2 cups of [Continue Reading...]
This is not a political blog. Sometimes my political leanings (which can be summed up as, “leave people more or less alone and don’t be a raging asshole,”) probably poke up, like so many unnoticed weeds in the raised bed of my life. But I try not to focus on politics here, or in my [Continue Reading...]
My grandma used to wash and reuse plastic bags. This Depression-era action epitomized, to my parent’s generation, cheapness and time wasting. I distinctly remember my own minimalist-minded mother laughing about the hoard of used plastic sandwich bags her mother-in-law never threw away. Well everything old is new again, and now I’m a bag washer and re-user. Say [Continue Reading...]
Last Week’s Total: $216.03$7 – Parking at the county park when we went swimming$1 – Parking, Nick’s second job$46.09 – Tank of gas TOTAL: $273.12REMAINING: -$23.12 Well, we went over. For the first time ever, I blew through a No Spend limit. And it wasn’t the kids presents that did it either – it was [Continue Reading...]
I’ll be honest. I can’t wait for no spend month to be over. I can’t wait to spend money again. This is how I’ve felt every time we’ve done the no-spend exercise – by the time the month is over, I’m ready to start laying down some cash. We all feel better for the occasional splurge, for a treat [Continue Reading...]
Updated tally for this week: Last Week’s Total: $95.76Yet more strawberries (I’m done, I swear): $26 Birthday present for a kid’s party: $6.25* Pitcher of beer at a company farewell party for a coworker (Nick): $13 TOTAL: $141.01 REMAINING: $108.99 *Actually the present for the kid-friend was more than this but I had a $14 [Continue Reading...]
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