Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

The news these days is chock full of dramatized street theater as the “haves” fight about ridiculous things like super-bonuses for AIG grifters, amazing world-class ponzi money-laundering schemes, and how we on the low end of the totem pole get to pay through the nose (as usual) to bail these crooks out. At this point it’s not even a partisan fight, it’s just rich versus poor. As usual. We who have been actually harmed by these interminable games of economic Risk are just trying to survive with the basics – food, clothing and shelter.

While I hope that anyone who regularly reads this blog has already bought their seeds and planted their ‘taters, there are things we usually have to purchase – or trade for – because we don’t produce our own at home. Sure, it doesn’t take more than a quarter acre of yard to keep a fresh milk goat or half a dozen chickens who give us eggs for free, but often people will be unable to even do that much. Keeping that goat fresh requires breeding once a year, and then you’ve got to either deal with a smelly billy goat or transport to where the smelly billy goat is standing stud. And what about the kid? That’s something my family could never quite conscience (these youngsters, if not also female, are usually slaughtered for meat). And don’t let anybody fool you. Those chickens CAN fly (sorta). At least to get over the fence into your neighbor’s yard.

If you are lucky enough to still have a roof over your family’s heads, there are ways to save a great deal on foods you can’t produce in your garden but need to keep everyone healthy and satisfied. Nothing makes us feel wealthier than a truly fine and healthy diet. Plus, that alone can save us multi-thousands in chronic diseases we really don’t have to get in the first place. The first of these is to join a local CSA. With this membership, which is critical to purchase right now if you can, you get a portion of the crops and products of local farmers near your home. Even if you garden, this can help fill out the take so you’ve got more to work with. Buying local directly supports your local farmers, and helps them to purchase the seeds and equipment they need to keep on producing.

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Oh, For Heaven’s Sake!

Does this guy really need OUR house?

Mere days after causing a regular knee-slapping laugh riot with his claim that the average middle class American probably brings home something around $2.5 million a year (by way of being “rich” if you make $5 million a year), Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain told Politico that he’s not sure how many houses he owns. “I’ll have my staff get to you,” he said, since some of those houses are condos, and all condos look alike apparently. The correct answer, by the way, is at least seven, maybe ten.

By the way, if you’re feeling a little low because of that foreclosure notice you just got in the mail, here’s a slide show of McCain’s home (the one pictured above) from Architectural Digest, 2005. They may have sold it by now, but I don’t think it’s because they couldn’t afford the payments plus jet fuel for ‘getting around Arizona’ at the same time.

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Necessary Household Basics: First Aid

Clean, Green Living in 3 Cheap, Easy Steps

Part 3: Discouraging Bugs, Treating Boo-Boos

In this last installment of the series examining inexpensive and natural alternatives to the many household products people spend so much money on through the year, I want to look at the basic summertime first aid kit.

My family lives in the “deep woods” that Deep Woods Off^TM was invented to de-bug. We have lots of company during the summer season, adults and children. There’s not much one can do about nasty encounters with aggressive poisonous snakes (copperheads are much more aggressive than timber rattlers, who live in the area but are hardly ever seen) or bone breaks or serious puncture wounds or cuts. Those just have to go to the ER, best thing to do is make that happen as quickly as possible. But there are a host of lesser injuries and situations that can be treated adequately at home, without the fancy, expensive products that contribute so much to a weekly grocery bill.

In the first installment of the series I listed the basic ingredients to purchase – brand name or generic (I get generic, but brands aren’t that much more expensive) borax, baking soda, rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, basic soap flakes (or liquid soap made from your disintegrating bath bars), and added ammonia. In the second installment I gave some recipes for laundry soap, kitchen and bath scouring powders, drain cleaner, surface disinfectants, etc. Now, using the same ingredients (plus a few things from the garden) let’s make the first aid kit and general insect management substances…
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Necessary Household Basics: Recipes

Clean, Green Living in 3 Cheap, Easy Steps

Part 2: Keeping Things Clean

In Part 1 of this 3-part series I listed some basic ingredients to purchase that can do double or triple duty in your home cleaning, disinfecting and treating small first aid issues while saving you big money and at the same time NOT polluting your home or our collective environment.

In this part of the series I’ll list some easy recipes for mixing your basic ingredients into useful household products. This doesn’t take a lot of time or heavy effort, and can be done on a weekend afternoon easily once every month or two (as they get used up), or mixed on the spot for particular jobs.

In The Laundry Room: Everybody must do laundry. Whether or not you’ve got an infant in diapers (cloth is best!) or small children who love to make mud pies, or older kids who sweat a lot, or just working adults who must wear good clothes or uniforms daily in their jobs, you’re going to have to wash clothes. And while the price of food and gasoline keeps rising out of sight, most people already know that good laundry products are a significant chunk of change out of the budget.

I mentioned in Part 1 how to make liquid soap out of the dregs of bars that melt all over your tub and sink by just putting them in a container with water and letting them dissolve. That’s good hand soap that can be put into a dispenser, but can also provide the basis of laundry soap if you’ve enough of it. I have a friend who must travel for her job, and who collects those little motel soaps through the year, gifting them to me at Christmas so I’ve got sizeable baskets of rock-hard teeny-soaps still in their wrappers. I use these to make liquid soap, and liquid soap to make laundry soap. Alternatively, you can use Fels Naptha laundry soap bars, which are inexpensive and go quite far. The three bar package can make about 6 gallons of laundry soap, which should get most households through at least that many months even if there’s a lot of laundry to do! Ivory soap bars or flakes work very well for baby laundry, and is still among the least expensive of basic soaps you can buy.
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What’s For Dinner? …Anything?

The market news reports that consumer spending is up again this month. The problem is that this is not as a sign of possible economic recovery from the deepening recession we find ourselves in. It’s a reflection of the fact that people must spend more on basics like fuel and food – prices for both rising much faster than regular people can keep up with – thus must spend less on all that consumer junk our capitalistic system expects us to buy with our overrated “disposable income.”

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re like me – I have no “disposable income” because all the income we have must go to simply pay for the necessities of life, and there’s hardly enough even cutting corners. Food, clothing, shelter, transportation, utilities. I have previously posted about the clothing thing, as I haven’t actually purchased new clothing for at least a decade. Used clothing is good enough – even suits and formal clothing – though I don’t dress up much. But the mortgage is what it is. Gas prices are what they are, they cannot be bargained down. And as the price of fuel rises, so does the cost of food and electricity. Thus more of our money must be spent on necessities, even if we never had any left over for junk in the first place!

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Filed under Bulk Buying, Economic Recession, Farmer's Markets, Fuel, Garden, Grow Your Own, Nutrition, Staple Foods, Surviving | Comments (7)