crunch crunch

Quite by accident, I've been sliding down the slippery slope into being some kind of homesteader.

It started, likely, with my childhood love of crafts. I learned sewing, knitting, crocheting, beading, quilting, loom knitting, moccasin-making...if there was a kit for it, I probably tried it.

In college, I learned to knit socks. When you make your own socks. you don't want to throw them away when they get their first hole, so you start learning how to darn holes. I was also on a very strict student budget, so I cleaned almost exclusively with baking soda and vinegar. After that, I always made my own cleaners. I've never quite stopped being cheap frugal.

Pre-Instant Pot yogurt making on the stove. Warning: this may require effort.

After I got married, I started making my own chicken broth. You see, before I had children I was on a kick to make lots of things from scratch, like bread, granola, and yogurt (the latter two in the crockpot, because that was before the fancy Instant Pot entered onto the scene). Some of that went away for a while when my son was born, but later came back. Some I never really did again after having children. It's a lot cheaper and easier to buy our sandwich bread at Market Basket.

The trifecta: pressure canner heating up jars, stockpot heating up broth, and Instant Pot making dinner.

When you make your own chicken broth and cook family-sized meals, you either need to dedicate a lot of freezer space to the broth--even if you cook it down to gelatinous, concentrated stock--or learn how to pressure can. So I started pressure canning my broths, which was a slippery slope to preserving food through jam-making and fermentation and sourdough starter babies.

With the quantity of broth we were going through, I started religiously freezing vegetable scraps and bones so that the broth was far cheaper to make. Meanwhile, I was growing cherry tomatoes and herbs in pots every summer and buying bagged compost. So, I eventually decided to stop throwing away perfectly good coffee grounds, fruit and vegetable scraps, and eggshells, and make my own compost. At the apartment, I used an old plastic storage tub with holes drilled on all sides outside (we did have a yard, but I wanted something closed to keep curious children and animals out) and added lots of shredded junk mail since we didn't have much in the way of yard waste. I collected compostables in a washed-out yogurt container, but eventually upgraded to a 2-gallon bucket when we moved and the trip out to the compost bin got longer.

Fancy.

Our outdoor compost bin is now five wooden pallets (four sides and a top) held together with zip ties. It cost me about $3 in zip ties and whatever amount of gas it took to make three trips to and from the nursery ten minutes away (which was getting rid of the pallets). Despite the freezing temperatures we had in the last two months, I can see the materials breaking down when I get around to turning the pile. As I said, I've never stopped being cheap frugal.

My crunch cred regarding cloth diapers has already been addressed, although I'll confess that we use disposable pull-ups at night now that both kids are potty-trained. Does homeschooling count?

What's next? I'm excited to start a larger vegetable and herb garden next summer, now that we have a large yard. I may risk starting some of our plants from seeds, now that we have older children and enough living space that they probably won't inadvertently kill the seedlings. I'm not sure if our town bylaws allow chickens, but since we live on a small dead-end street I would rather stay on my neighbors' good graces anyways.