2022 Frugal Living Challenge

[Deleted User]

Yes a quiet life suits us down to the ground. Well I say quiet, I am currently sat with a cuppa listening to our cockerels asserting their authority, the ducks having a conversation and the pigs truffling away for treasure in the field 😊

Our life is slower, and as a friend of mine coined it so beautifully we are on an ‘opting out’ journey. The mainstream ‘norm’ for so many things no longer holds any appeal for us. We live well on very little money, there is a strong sense of community here and a real bartering system in place so that little is wasted. When we lived in a more urban area there were a few people who were like minded which was great, but here it’s more the social norm. 

I am proud of our little way of life, winter will be tough here there is no doubt, but my efforts to forage and chop wood over the summer months will be keeping us warm and the kettle a top the fire boiling all winter. We will all manage and no doubt thrive on the new challenges we face xx

Primrose

@aspsparklyblonde
if you ever use YouTube, do go and visit
1.  Mossy Bottom. - young guy doing a self sufficiency life in rural Ireland 
2. Simply Alaska - a couple living a self contained life in a cabin in Alaska, bottling and canning all their crops 

i think you will find a certain resonance  and have much in common with both of them and both are excellent fascinating viewing .

maryb

ASB I’ve seen your posts on various threads and love to hear about how you are making such a good life on so little.  Do keep posting 

Adapting the old saying, I find old hardships cast long shadows.  I was born just before the end of rationing.  I grew up thinking eggs were precious and expensive and my instinctive reaction still tells me that.  I buy free range as a minimum, organic if I can and logically I know 30 pence an egg is still cheap but it still makes me wince when I have to sacrifice an egg just to glaze some pastry. (I whisk up the egg with a bit of milk and freeze what’s left in a small pot that I originally got for freezing baby purées all those years ago - it’s remembering to take it out of the freezer in time that’s the issue)

florianatwobob

@maryb my mum was born 1939 and was the same about eggs. Her dad also kept chickens and geese during WWII  with the incubator behind the front door for the hatching chicks. Despite being born in the late ‘70s I’ve inherited the view that eggs are precious treasure. 

Primrose

When I was a toddler during the war I had an imaginary hen at the bottom of the garden in a grass nest my parents  built for it.   One day to make it more exciting, they put  their solitary weekly  rationed egg in the rest for me to find.

Many  years later they told me their hearts were in their mouths as I came excitedly running up the path with the egg shouting "Mummy , my hen has just laid laid an egg" in case I should fall over and smash it !    I think they were more worried about the precious egg than my tripping over  !   That,s wartime rationing for you!     

And I recall my brother pinching a can of couponed tinned fruit out of the larder to swop with some marbles with  lad who lived nearby..  That didn,t go down well with my mother either ! 

[Deleted User]

I watch Mossy bottom @Primrose he is a great chap. I will check out the other recommendation as well, thank you xx

Hen eggs - they are a form of currency to us so we treat them with so much care and respect. 

Also when you have kept checking the nesting box all morning, and see the same lady in there for a heck of a long time patiently getting that egg out, it really does make you appreciate the effort that has gone into it. On the rare occasion we go into supermarkets, it makes me sad to see yellow sticker eggs that may be binned if not sold. So much effort on the chicken’s part. 

We have a glut at present despite giving lots away, we get around 25 eggs a day. Thankfully our dog loves them, and eggs are fab for dogs, and our pigs also love hard boiled eggs and devour the lot. The eggshells are all eaten by our piggies too.

Thank you @maryb for your kind words. My life has changed so much in the past three years I hardly recognise the person I was before. Stripping back to basics and cherishing a more traditional, slower pace of life has brought us more contentment and happiness than anything else we’ve ever encountered. 

Learning to write your own story around money and it’s value, rather than follow the societal norm of placing money seemingly above all else, is so empowering. And with, IMHO, dangerous and unnerving times ahead, enables a resourcefulness and a resilience that is so empowering - self reliance as opposed to consumer driven reliance. So much of what we are taught we ‘need’ is wholly unnecessary and doesn’t make a modicum of difference to our overall sense of well-being and happiness. 

newlywed

Deleted_User said:

Yes a quiet life suits us down to the ground. Well I say quiet, I am currently sat with a cuppa listening to our cockerels asserting their authority, the ducks having a conversation and the pigs truffling away for treasure in the field 😊

Our life is slower, and as a friend of mine coined it so beautifully we are on an ‘opting out’ journey. The mainstream ‘norm’ for so many things no longer holds any appeal for us. We live well on very little money, there is a strong sense of community here and a real bartering system in place so that little is wasted. When we lived in a more urban area there were a few people who were like minded which was great, but here it’s more the social norm. 

I am proud of our little way of life, winter will be tough here there is no doubt, but my efforts to forage and chop wood over the summer months will be keeping us warm and the kettle a top the fire boiling all winter. We will all manage and no doubt thrive on the new challenges we face xx

As someone who has lived in a city her whole life, used to love visiting London, and now goes on 15-20 mile walks just to sit on a bench in a quiet village (love a village green with benches) and drink a flask of coffee or sit in a field (always on a footpath or permitted access area) and hear the skylarks and crows and sheep… your life sounds just lovely.

I often see an isolated house on a hill and wonder what it would be like to have no neighbours (I live In a flat, in an entire close full of low rise flats): and like to dream of how life and the landscape might have been 100 or 200 years ago.

Jellytotts

Not microwave rice cooking but hob cooking, I recently tried the method I read on here somewhere.  I did one cup of rice to 2 cups of water, brought it to the boil, then heat off and lid on for 15 mins....perfectly fluffy rice, a quick rinse with boiling water and it was just right.  

London_1

Just got my donated milk from my neighbour in the slow cooker cooking me a two pint rice pudding, the rest I made into a large jug of custard, and on the stove the left over celery with some lentils a few diced spuds and herbs and veg stock making me a nice pan of soup for a couple of days Lunches.
The celery was donated to me by my DD after Sundays family 'do' she said if you don't want it bin it !!!I think not .This afternoon I am peeling the reduced pack of carrots that I got for 12p on Tuesday they will go in water in the fridge and probably be turned into carrot and coriander soup tomorrow to portion up and freeze.Zero waste in my house 
JackieO xx

Greying_Pilgrim

newlywed said:

......As someone who has lived in a city her whole life, used to love visiting London, and now goes on 15-20 mile walks just to sit on a bench in a quiet village (love a village green with benches) and drink a flask of coffee or sit in a field (always on a footpath or permitted access area) and hear the skylarks and crows and sheep… your life sounds just lovely......

I caught Paul Merson (ex-football player) walking through North Yorkshire on i-player last night.  Sitting on a bench, listening to stillness, skylarks and sheep clearly has much to be commended...........

Greying X