English Muffins

I've been thinking a lot about life back when ... 

... when I was actively trying to homestead, just a decade ago.  FB regularly reminds of things I was doing to make our lives more self-sufficient.  One of my recent memories reminded me of the year that my goal was to can 200 jars of *something*.  I wasn't too terribly picky about what went into the jars.  What I mean is that my goal wasn't:

x jars of pickles
x jars of applesauce
x jars of soup stock

The goal was to have 200 jars of home-canned food with the logic being that 200 jars would give us one jar of something preserved per day for the winter.  During the summer, we have the garden and stuff we can forage, but without some preserved food, if we lose access to our on-demand supply of groceries, we'd be very hungry.  One jar a day would keep us fed, if not full.  

That said, not all jars of food are created equal.  That day when the jar was pickles, divided five ways, would be a much hungrier day than the day when it was canned chicken.

Of course, THAT said, the ultimate goal was also to have 200 jars of home-canned goodness AND a pantry stocked with dried goods, like rice, pasta, and baking supplies.

I thought a lot about that time recently, when I had occasion to visit my ancestral home deep in a hollow in the hills of southeastern Kentucky mining country.  I spent some time with my uncle, who is still homesteading the old homestead, and I brought home six quart jars of his home-canned tomato sauce, a bowlful of Chinese chestnuts we collected from the path under his chestnut tree, and a huge clump of Hen of the Woods (maitake) my uncle and I foraged from his woods.

I didn't can any tomatoes this year.  In fact, I didn't even process any tomatoes for the winter.  I only grew grape tomatoes this year, and we ate them almost as quickly as I could get them off the vines, which were incredibly generous, but rather than preserve my harvest, like I should have done, I gifted a good portion of my harvest to a local friend.

Looking at those jars of tomato sauce from my uncle and thinking about my very poor preparations this year had me kind of nostalgic for the way my life used to be ... before I started working a job outside the home ... when my JOB was the home.  

In those days, most of what I fed my family was homemade in my kitchen, including the bread stuff.

I haven't made a lot of bread recently.

I missed it.

So, today, I did. 

There's a loaf of applesauce bread cooling on the back of the stove, and these English Muffins will go into a lightly greased pan to fry until golden brown, as soon as they've had a second rise.  

Then, instead of running to the store for breads, I can make Deus Ex Machina his daily breakfast sandwich for the rest of the week, with a couple of muffins leftover for both of us to have sandwich before music class on Saturday.

Making homemade bread is time-consuming.

It's, kind of, funny that my kids grew up and moved on, no longer needing me to facilitate their education or chauffeur them hither and yon, and some how I wound up with less time to do all of those things that I used to just do, because that's what we did.  

Don't get me wrong.  I still cook, from scratch, more nights than not.  Eating out is very expensive, and we're saving up for retirement :), but also, as a loved one recently observed - when one learns to cook, especially if using fresh, local, in-season ingredients, the food just tastes better.  No offense to all of those restauranteurs out there, but the food I prepare at home is better.  It's always exactly what I want, exactly the way I want it, and I know what's in it, which means there's no chance of getting contaminated with ingredients that can make Deus Ex Machina's body hurt.  

I still have my garden, and my chickens, I still make my own soap ... but I just don't spend as much time or energy doing the homesteading things I used to do - like canning. 

The first thing I learned to can, back when I first started down this path, was applesauce.  There's a bushel of apples in my kitchen, picked when my son and daughter-in-law visited at the end of September, which will end up sauced and dehydrated.  I figure, perhaps, going back to my beginning might get me back to where I was before I veered off the trail, when I started working outside the home five years ago.

With the way things are going in the world, kick-starting my prepper life is probably not a bad idea.

And home canned applesauce with pork chops from our pig share and oven roasted potatoes, just tastes better than anything mass produced and sold at the grocery store.

What about you?  As life ebbs and flows, do you find yourself falling off of and climbing back onto your self-sufficiency path?  Do current events have you revisiting all of your homesteading efforts?

Finding Solutions to a Unsolvable Problem

This morning, I woke up, as usual, at 4:30 am.  I got out of bed, did my morning hygiene routine, let the old tom out (he's the only of the three kitties who own me that likes to go outside), started the coffee water to boiling, prepped the French press for a new pot, and plugged in the iron.  Then, I fed the cats and dogs (after tom came back inside), added the now boiled water to the French press, and ironed Deus Ex Machina's work clothes.

At some point during that routine, I started thinking about Medieval life (my brain works in mysterious ways - I don't question), and I thought how I would love if some English peasant were able to time travel to now, and I could host him/her in my home. I wonder what he/she would say about my house.

It's modest by modern standards.  The average house size nationwide is just over 2000 sq ft and in my state is 1680 sq ft.  Mine is smaller by almost 200 sq ft than the state average, but it's adequate for my needs (and some days more than I can manage to keep clean (!)).  

The average dwelling in the Middle Ages was between 600 and 1500 sq ft.  So, I guess my house isn't so big and luxurious by Medieval standards.

But I do have an actual roof (as opposed to a thatched roof), indoor plumbing (including hot and cold water on tap), glass windows (that let in the light but keep out the critters and the weather, and help to keep the temperature more comfortable), and plush, comfortable furniture throughout.  Not to mention electricity for cooking, refrigeration, and lighting.  

I wonder what someone from the Middle Ages would make of my house.  I think the biggest surprise, for them, would be to note that my house is "mine!"  It's not "owned" by a Lord (unless we count the mortgage that is owned by the bank ... hmm??!).

Of course, then, I sat down to have coffee with Deus Ex Machina (which would probably be a luxury for a Medieval peasant, especially with the teaspoon of sugar per cup I add) and read the news, and there were two back-to-back articles.

The first was dealing with the growing issue of homelessness - worldwide - but especially here in the US.  As of 2022, there were over half a million people who are defined as being homeless in the US, and per the article I read, the number is growing.  The article cited the main reason for homelessness was a lack of "affordable" housing.  That is, in most places, the cost of renting a place to live exceeds the ability for a too large portion of our population to pay for housing.  

In his book, Tell Them Who I Am, anthropologist, Elliot Liebow attempted to shed some light on the homeless issue among a group of women who lived in a homeless shelter.  His book was published in 1993.  Thirty years ago.  

What have we done as a society, to understand and fix the issue in the last thirty years?  Of course, according to this source, homelessness was an issue for the English pauper, too, with 20% of their population being homeless.  So, what have we done, EVER, as a culture, to stem the tide of those living without a proverbial pot-to-piss-in?

If the growing homelessness trend is any indication, the answer is not much.

The second article was about a lawsuit filed by property owners in New York City to lift the "draconian" laws that often favor the tenants over the landlords.  There are almost as many homeless people living in NYC as there are people living in Portland, Maine.  If those landlords are successful, how many more tens of thousands of people will be forced out of their apartments and end up sleeping in a tent (if they're lucky enough to have a tent) in Central Park (until someone comes along and forces them out)?

In a neighboring city, those wishing to build housing units (including hotels) are required to include a certain number of "affordable" housing units or they can opt to pay a fee.  The city is flush with old buildings that were once working factories, and many entrepreneurial minded individuals have bought the old mill buildings with the intention of creating high-end apartments (condos) and luxury hotels.  Too many are opting to pay the fee rather than include affordable housing units in their plans. 

I am all for rehabbing old buildings, for sure.  I just wish there could be a happy medium between revitalizing a depressed, old mill town and pricing the long-term residents out of their homes.  I wish the pendulum could stop in the middle.  

I have always been keenly aware of the homeless issue.  There was a time in my life that, by definition, I was homeless, but I was exceedingly fortunate to have a place to stay that was safe and stable.  That is to say, I have never had to sleep "rough", I have never had to live in my car, and I have never needed to take refuge in a homeless shelter.

I have been blessed in my life, and I am grateful, every day, for the abundance I have been gifted.

Working in a place where the public is not just welcome, but encouraged, I have become more intuned to the homeless issue.  Everyone knows there are homeless people in big cities, like Manhattan, Los Angeles, and Portland, Maine, but who could even imagine that in my little resort town, there are people who sleep under awnings and on park benches, and spend their days in the cool, quiet of the public library for a lack of anywhere else to go?  

It's heartbreaking.  

I don't know how to fix the issue.  I don't even know who to call when I am asked for help, because in too many places, like my town, there are very limited resources and services for the homeless population.  

I guess all that to say, as a society, we need a better way of doing something than just throwing money at it, and I don't know what the answer is (I suspect there is no one-size-fits-all solution), but I'm open to suggestions.

What can we do, as individuals?

Vivacious Vittles - a Workshop

 When I started working part-time at the library, one of the things my boss wanted me to do was to organize some classes for our community with a focus on sustainability.  She knows all about my books, my blog and my lifestyle choices, and so she was super excited about the prospect of having me do *something*.

At the beginning of June, I started a four week series called "Vivacious Vittles" in which participants learned to grow food in containers.  Small containers, actually.

I live in a resort town.  The average-sized lot is less than a 10th of an acre with many folks having even less land than that.  There are a lot of condos, where there is no land, and if they're lucky, residents might have a balcony or a front porch, where they can have a few pots of flowers or the like.

We also have a larger than average elderly population.  For whatever reason, this town is a haven for retired folks, and there are a number of 55+ communities.  As a demographic, people who live in 55+ communities are often on a fixed income, which means that being able to grow a little food is a good thing, even if it's just some lettuce in a bowl and some beans in hanging planter.

And that's exactly what we did. 

The first class was planting lettuce in bowls. Yes, actual bowls.  I found some serving bowls in bright colors at the dollar store.  For the class, the participants poked drainage holes, then filled the bowls with soil. They were each given two bowls.  In one bowl, they planted lettuce starts and in the second bowl they planted seeds.

The second class was hanging planters with beans and peas.  We planted pea plants, because it was late in the season and added scarlet runner beans around the edges.  By the time the beans are flowering,  they will have harvested and eaten the peas.  

The third class was growing sprouts in a jar.  

The last class was planting herbs in a self-watering planter made from an old wine bottle.

Everyone had a lot of fun, and everyone took home both their plants and the knowledge that growing food doesn't have to require a piece of land or even a yard.  They can do a lot with just a few containers and a sunny spot. 

Summer Homestead Happenings - in pictures

I love my summer garden.  

I am a terrible photographer, and my phone camera isn't great.  The picture doesn't do it justice. 

**********************************************************

 Firewood was delivered.  Three cords.

With the help of our lovely assistants ... 

We got it all stacked.  It was a long day, but well worth all of the effort.  I love the way it looks, and this "fence" makes our yard feel so much more private.  

Ode to an Old Cookbook

I may not have shared here, but over a year or so ago, I was hired as a library assistant at my local library.  It's been quite a lot of fun, and I find that I very much love the atmosphere in the library.  It's a good job, but it keeps me busy.  Not a bad or a good thing.  Just a thing.

One of the things I love very much about my job is being around all of the books, and I'm not being facetious.  What I mean is that I am finding books to love that I didn't know existed, and that's thrilling. The happiest times are when a patron returns a book with the comment, "This one was great!"

Such was the case last week, when a lovely woman handed me her stack of returns, pulled out the book on the bottom, and said, "This was a great cookbook!" 

I flipped through the pages to the index and asked, "Did you make anything in it?" 

She said, "I copied the recipes.  Oh, and I made the pumpkin custard."

I nodded.

She turned and wandered off into the stacks to find more treasures, and I started looking at the recipes.  I decided in that moment, looking through that amazing cookbook, that I really love old cookbooks.  

This one, in particular, was very cool, because the ingredients are simple, whole, and accessible.   Many of the recipes call for ingredients that I have, on hand, as a rule.

Just flipping through the book, on page 192, is a recipe for Cranberry Crunch.  The ingredients are: 

1 c quick cooking oats ... CHECK

1/2 c flour ... (gluten-free flour, CHECK)

1 c brown sugar ... (sub raw sugar, CHECK)

1/2 c butter ... CHECK

2 c whole berry cranberry sauce ... umm .... 

I have all of the ingredients, as listed, except the last one, and for that one, it would take about 15 minutes for me to make it on my stove, because I have whole, frozen cranberries, which I can: 

1.  Dump in a pan.

2.  Add 1 c water and 1 c sugar

3.  Bring to a boil.

4.  Cook until berries split.

And DONE!

One bag of berries is around a pint, which is around two cups.

Dessert, and I don't have to make a trip to the grocery store.  Easy-peasy.

What I was thinking as I was reading through the cookbook is that nothing in the book is terribly difficult to make.  It's very unlike that Meditteranean cookbook I purchased recently that calls for all sorts of fancy ingredients and long prep times.  I mean, I've made what I thought was Ratatouille, but according to the fancy Meditteranean cookbook, what I was making was something different.  At best, mine is a roasted vegetable dish (very tasty, but not what I thought it was).  True Ratatouille is a stew, and it's an all day cooking event that should be prepared in a clay cooking vessel, if one wants to be authentic.

If those are the sorts of dishes we are expected to make, it's no wonder no one wants to learn to cook.  It's no wonder that so many of us turn to the experts and/or purchase processed/pre-made foods rather than delve into the wild world of home cooking.

Enter the Mystic Seaport cookbook, with its easy recipes using simple ingredients where the prep time is about 15 minutes and the cook time is 45 minutes (during which one can be doing something else), et voila, dinner!

I read an article today ... well, part of an article, because there was just too much doom and gloom in it to keep slogging through.

I know, right?!  Too much doom and gloom for ME, means it must have been pretty dreary, right?

I won't share a link, but the gist of it is that there are going to be a lot of people, this spring, who will be edging closer to that "hunger cliff" (the words the article used).  The article was about the cutting of nutritional supplement funds (or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), which is going to mean that people who are already food insecure are going to be that much more food insecure in a few weeks.  This summer is likely to be brutal. 

When I was a graduate student, I was a very poor mother of two, and one summer, I applied for and received food stamps.  While applying for the assistance and using them at the grocery store was humiliating and soul-crushing (unnecessarily, so - just sayin'), having $300 to spend all at once on groceries was amazing!  I felt RICH!  Ironically. 

I don't know what other people buy with their food supplement funds, but I bought the biggest bag of flour I could find and yeast, and I made my own bread.  In fact, I bought a lot of stuff I didn't normally get to buy.  My typical weekly/monthly food budget was usually a lot less, and I had never had that much money for groceries all at the same time.

I've done calculations before, comparing the price of ingredients to the price of prepared foods, and what I have always found - always - is that the ingredients, overall, cost less.  True, one can purchase two loaves of bread for the cost of 5lbs of flour, but that 5lbs of flour will make a heck of a lot more than just two loaves of bread.

There are 18 cups of flour in a 5lb bag.  One loaf of bread takes four cups of flour.  That's four loaves of bread, plus two more cups of flour for other stuff, for the price of two loaves of bread.  I mean ... why buy bread with all of the preservatives and additives?

Additionally, if one spends all of one's money on bread, one is limited to eating bread.  With whole ingredients, like flour, the possibilities are exponentially increased.  If I have flour (and a few other ingredients), for instance, I can make sandwich bread, biscuits, English muffins, bagels, cookies, cakes, pancakes, waffles, pie crust, and pizza crust.  With a couple of eggs and water, I can make pasta.  Flour, butter, sugar, salt, and water makes crackers.  Melt some butter in a pan, add some flour for a roux, add water or milk, and I have gravy, which is both filling and comforting ... especially over bread. 

There was an article recently about changing one's mindset regarding food.  The gist was that a bread and water diet can be toast and tea - with a different mindset.   Doesn't toast and tea sound so much more ... delicious!  

What I hear from people about why buy the prepared food instead of the ingredient is that cooking takes a lot of time, and ... well, that's not entirely true.  Sure, a ready-made cake from the bakery (that costs $20) is much faster than baking a cake at home, but if one is baking that cake from a boxed cake mix, is there really a time savings?  If I'm using a box cake mix, I still have to mix it with eggs, oil, and water, pour it into a prepared pan, and bake it.  It doesn't take any more effort or time to dump some flour, salt, and baking soda/powder into a bowl than it does to open the cardboard box and the plastic bag the cake mix comes in.  

And if I have flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, I can make a lot more than *just* a cake.

I guess most of the people who read here already know and agree with what I'm saying, but it is not a bad idea to remind us why we do what we do.  

We cook from scratch, using whole ingredients, because we know that cooking is a skill.  It's not about what or how we eat, or even about what or how we prepare it.  It's about resiliency.  If I already have an "I can make that" mind-set, then even if I find myself with a smaller grocery budget (or with a food sensitivity that requires I change my entire diet), I can still eat, and eat well, and spend a lot less money buying the food I want.  

Does anyone remember that amazing scene at the end of part one of Gone with the Wind, where Scarlet O'Hara is standing in the ruins of her garden with the sunsetting behind her.  She is clutching a measly carrot - the only thing she could wrest from the parched and trodden earth.  She holds this pitiful little root to the sky and declares, "As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again!"

Not to iconize Scarlet - she was not a good person - but her determination is admirable, and while we may not want to model her conniving behaviors, we can be just as determined and resilient, and yes, we can declare that we will never go hungry .... 

Not by manipulation and treachery, but by changing our mindset to one of abundance in the face of scarcity.

And by thumbing through an old cookbook. 

 

Five Ways to Prep for Retirement that Don't Include a Bank Account

 I read an article this morning about a potential bank “bail-in.” The gist is that if the economy starts to really take a tumble and one of the big four banks (JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) goes down, the likelihood that the government will start drawing money out of personal, individual accounts is … well, likely. Again according to the article, FDIC bankers talked openly about a bail-in as a strategic option. As the article points out, it's happened, or almost happened, elsewhere (Greece, Portugal, and Cyprus), and it could happen here. Anything can happen, right?

Chances are pretty good that the banks won't take all of the money we've entrusted in their care, but they could take a portion of it, to which they are not entitled, via a government tax.

I have been a stay-at-home mom with a part-time income for over two decades. As such, I haven't had an employer-based retirement fund, nor have I started my own retirement fund. Frankly, until recently, I always thought I still had time. Then, my youngest child reached adulthood, and suddenly, I am keenly aware that I am not getting any younger. Oops!

Last year sometime, I started looking at my options for a retirement fund. At my age, there is not much of a chance that I will be able to save enough money to keep me anywhere close to my current level of spending, which means I can either keep working until I die, or I can find ways to not need so much money.

At that time, Deus Ex Machina and I set up a spreadsheet so that we could look at some numbers. If we invested 6% of my income in an IRA at current interest rates, I would have about a year's worth of salary saved when I reached retirement age. I might be to pay cash for a used car … or if costs keep going they way they are, a dozen eggs.

If I waited another ten years to start withdrawing the money, and I only took out enough each month to cover my (current) property tax, it would only last 8 years after I started withdrawing money. Looking at those numbers is incredibly depressing. Money sure doesn't grow as fast as it spends.

Like me there is a disturbing number of individuals who don't have any personal savings. Almost one-fifth of our senior population depends solely on the federal social security system for financial support. It's usually not enough, and many seniors, these days, are taking low-wage jobs just to make ends meet.

Experts are full of great advice on how and how much we should be saving toward retirement. According to the second article, if one earns an annual salary of $74,000, one would need to have saved $1.3 million for retirement, which works out to over $900/month or $11,000 per year in savings, starting very young. At my age, $900/month wouldn't be anywhere near a million dollars. For us, putting that kind of money into a savings account and still keeping a roof over our heads and food in our mouths has just never been possible.

Experts advise us to start saving for retirement earlier rather than later.

Yeah … well, that ship sailed without us.

The fact is that it becomes even more difficult to START saving the older one gets, and when one is my age, if one doesn't already have some savings, whatever one is able to save from this point forward isn't going to go very far anyway. Sometimes any little bit doesn't really help. What's that saying, rob Peter to pay Paul? That's how starting to save at my age can feel.

Instead of putting $900 a month into an account, where the money may not be secure, I could, right now, be investing in my future in very real ways that will make my future more secure and more comfortable.

Here are five ways Preppers (or anyone) could be investing that don't involve putting our hard-earned dollars into a savings account.

1. Pay off mortgage

In her provocative tome, Possum Living, Dolly Freed describes the low-income lifestyle she and her father enjoyed when she was a teenager, which they called “possum living.” In 1975, the poverty threshold for a non-farm family of four was $5,500. Dolly and her father lived on a paltry $700 per year. I read her book. It doesn't sound like they were suffering. At very least the up-beat tone of the book belies any notion that their lack of income was detrimental to their physical or psychological health. In fact, Dolly and her father were both, if the book is to be believed, physically fit and very happy.

In the first chapter, Dolly admits that the only reason she and her father were able to cultivate and maintain their lifestyle was that they owned their home. They didn't rent, and they didn't have a mortgage.

Based on that book, alone, the best thing one can do, if hoping to live well in retirement, is to make sure that one has a cost-free place to live.

Numerous articles discuss the issues with senior poverty. Social security is less than what a person can make working a full-time minimum wage job. If that's true, a senior citizen who only has social security will be subsisting on about $1200 per month. If one has to pay rent or a mortgage out of that amount of money, it might not actually be possible to subsist on only that. As such, paying off the house and living rent/mortgage free would be a huge step in the right direction.

I may have to still pay property taxes, but at the moment, the property tax on my house is one-fifth of my mortgage payment. Renting a comparable property would cost fifteen times what my property tax is. Renting a one-bedroom condo (with no yard) would be six times the cost of my property tax.

In short, I am much better off owning my home, and the extra bonus is that if I find myself short of cash, I have enough house that I could get a roommate to help defray the costs.

I could invest in a retirement savings, or I could pay off my house. The latter is, in my opinion, a much better choice.

The best thing I can do for Old Wendy is to make sure that she has a place to live that doesn't cost her an arm and a leg.

2. Reduce the cost of utilities/invest in an alt energy system

Going hand-in-hand with paying off the mortgage is reducing/eliminating one's other bills.

Here at Chez Brown, we are already doing without cable television. The fact is that the library has all of the video entertainment I could possibly want, including a streaming service, and it's FREE!

We have worked for years to reduce out electricity usage, and at one point, had our bill down to around $50/month, half of which was the “delivery fee” for CMP to maintain the lines that brought electricity to our house. Unfortunately, over the past three or so years, our usage and cost per watt has increased quite a lot, and we're looking at alternatives.

What we have to ask ourselves is, what do we really need electricity for? As I'm writing this, the electricity is out due to a huge windstorm. I have a laptop, that's running on battery power right now, and when I get ready to upload this article to the internet, I will use my cellphone hot spot. The amount of electricity I need to power my lap top and my phone could be easily generated by a single solar panel. Our (hopefully very near future) alternative energy equipment will be sized according to what we absolutely need, appliance-wise.

We can also control how much water we use, and while the water company has been increasing our rates for a lot of years, there are things we can do. In the spring (after the thaw), summer, and fall, we can use our rain barrels for watering the gardens and the animals. And there are dozens of ways to use less water, like taking faster showers and turning off the faucet.

Reducing our overall footprint with regard to electricity usage and water usage will be valuable to Old Wendy. The less one has to pay for those basic things, the less money one needs to live comfortably.

So, instead of spending $100/month on a retirement account, one could put those funds toward setting up an alternative energy system, and then, live without paying an electric bill for the rest of one's natural life. It would take half as much time to save up the cash to pay for an alternative energy system as it would to save enough to pay off my taxes for eight years after I retire.

3. Learn to grow food/forage

One of the biggest problems that I hear for the elderly is having enough food, and that's especially true

with today's sky-rocketing food prices. I read an article in which the author recommended that the elderly utilize food pantries. I don't disagree, exactly. The service the food pantries provide is invaluable to a lot of people. The problem is that relying on a food pantry for all of one's dietary needs is foolhardy. Food pantries aren't designed to be an alternative to the grocery store. The function of a food pantry is to provide a supplemental food source for low-income individuals AND to keep edible food out of the garbage. It isn't meant to be a substitute for grocery shopping or other sources of food acquisition.

What can be a much better supplemental food source, though, is a garden. There is a misconception that one needs a large piece of land, and that simply is not true. In fact, there are plenty of examples of people growing food in very small spaces.

Having a garden is a hedge against bad times, and I'm finally figuring a few things out. Potatoes grow really well in bags. Actual seed potatoes are much better than trying to reuse those grocery store potatoes that grow long and spindly in the cabinets. Diatomaceous Earth is awesome. I never plant enough garlic. Raised beds, straw bale gardens and container gardening are the best methods for my small space, and I should stop trying all of the other techniques I've tried and failed at.

Which actually works to my point. Those methods of growing are easier and yield more for me, but they are also easier for older people. Raised beds and straw bale gardens don't require all of the bending, stooping, and tending that a traditional garden with rows requires.

But also, having a garden is a very cheap way to supplement one's food supply. When I was volunteering at the pantry, we had a couple of elderly clients who also had a plot at our local community garden. We didn't see those patrons for most of the summer, because they were able to grow what they needed to supplement their diets. With a slightly bigger plot and the ability to preserve some of their harvest, those patrons might not have needed to use the pantry at all.

One 4'x4' garden bed can feed one adult two vegetables per day for the growing season. That's the statistic I've heard over and over again. I have much more space than just two 4'x4' garden beds, which means that, depending on the crops I choose, I could grow enough vegetables to feed Deus Ex Machina and myself for three-quarters of the year. If we keep raising chickens and rabbits and it's just the two of us, I could raise enough protein (between meat and eggs) for the whole year. If we forage the wild apples and berries we find and add them to the grapes, apples, blueberries, and raspberries we have growing on our property, we have plenty of fruit. If we include maple syrup, we have completely rounded out our diet and the only thing we aren't raising is dairy and grains.

The only reason we aren't more food self-sufficient right now is that there isn't enough time to properly grow and tend the garden, because we work, but since we already have the infrastructure in place and the knowledge, when we do retire and have more time to spend in the garden, we could be supplying nearly everything we need to have a calorie-rich, healthy, organic diet.

4. Cultivate self-sufficiency skills

Deus Ex Machina is fond of saying one either has time or money, but rarely both. Money allows us to pay someone else to do the things we would/could do for ourselves, if we had the time. In retirement, the one thing most people have is time, but it's best to begin learning those skills before they become a necessity.

Skills like: cooking from scratch, canning/preserving, butchering animals, darning socks, mending/making clothes, changing a bicycle tire (and riding a bicycle, if that's not something one learned as a child), sharpening a knife, cutting one's hair, cooking without electricity or gas, building a fire, turning tree sap into syrup, making soap, tincturing herbs for medicine, fermenting vegetables (for preservation and healthier food), making cheese and yogurt from milk (to prevent spoilage and waste), and doing small home repairs (like painting the house, changing filters, repairing a faucet, patching a

hole in the wall).

None of the above skills require great physical strength or are particularly difficult to do, but knowing how to do them, and more importantly, doing them, could save a great deal of money.

For instance, we all know that cooking at home costs far less than eating out, but cooking from whole ingredients rather than buying the prepared foods from the freezer section, also saves a ton of money. If it's just the two of us, and I still cook like I do now, one day of cooking will give us three or four meals. The leftovers can be packaged and put into the freezer or, depending on the food, put into jars and pressure canned for meals at some much later date. Get stocked up enough, and we wouldn't even have to go to the grocery store, except for the odd item here or there. Retailers count on consumers spending more than they intended at the store. It's built into the store design for everything from the lighting, music, and temperature, to the way the food is displayed. They want you to impulsively purchase that package of cookies or potato chips. Not going to the store saves money just from eliminating impulse buys. I've already discovered that from using online grocery services like Misfits and Boxed.com.

5. Stay Physically Fit

A few years ago I was having a conversation with a friend. I said, “If my house is paid for and I don't have any debt, and I am growing my own food and making my own electricity, what do I need money for?” She said, without hesitation, medical expenses.

As someone who hasn't had very many medical issues, I wouldn't have thought of that one, but the general notion in our culture seems to be that age is equal to poor health. In fact, an estimated 75% of people in my age bracket are taking prescription medications. I guess I'm in the minority among half-centenarians. But I approach health differently, I guess.

A while ago, I went to the doctor for my annual physical, which included a blood test, nothing in the results worried him, except my iron levels. He recommended a stool test, and I asked him why. Low iron, he said, might indicate internal bleeding. I scoffed. I have had low iron/anemia since … well, since I can remember. It's not new. If it's caused by bleeding, then, I've been suffering from internal hemorrhaging my whole life. Seems like there would have been other symptoms, if that were the case. I declined the stool test.

The two things that did worry me, at that time, but didn't phase my doctor were my blood sugar levels, which looked high to me, and my weight, which was a bit more than I had thought. I was surprised by how much I had gained. I knew that I was getting heavier, but since I don't own a scale, I pretended not to notice that my pants were a bit snugger than they had been and that my aching knees were my age catching up with me.

When I got those results, the first thing I did was to reduce the amount of sugar I ate. I didn't cut back on food. I didn't count calories or go on a diet. I just, simply, reduced the amount sugar. No soft drinks (we bought a soda stream for seltzer water). No sweetened tea. No iced coffee with a sugar sludge at the bottom.

The second thing I did was to start getting more exercise. It started with walking in the mornings. Just around the neighborhood with Deus Ex Machina and our dogs. Then, Deus Ex Machina and I started doing 10 minutes of Yoga five days a week. In nice weather, we have a number of regular activities: walking (with the dogs, but our old pupper can only handle about two miles); biking; kayaking; and hiking. Deus Ex Machina likes mountains that are at least 1000 ft of elevation gain. He likes to go higher. I like less elevation gain, but a longer trail. I like to walk. We also take dance classes and Qi Gong. When we added these activities to our lifestyle, I lost 10 lbs and two pants sizes.

None of the above is medical advice. It is simply what I did when I was confronted with medical issues. I could have done nothing, continued to gain weight, continued to enjoy sugary drinks and snacks, tested positive for diabetes and been prescribed a diabetes medication. Maybe none of my changes will stop me from developing diabetes, but if it does, I've saved future Wendy thousands of dollars in medication expenses. Not spending my social security money on medication is cash in my pocket, and not needing medications, means that I can survive on less cash.

All of the above ways of preparing for retirement are cumulative, like interest ... only better.  Once .one starts doing them, the savings start to pile up, both the savings in actual dollars, but also the savings in stress and worry from not having an adequate bank account.

How to Thrive in the Suburbs, When the Grid Goes Down ... 'cause it will!

It snowed.

Big, fat, wet, HEAVY flakes that aren't the kind Julie Andrews wants sticking to her nose and eye lashes.  Rather it's the kind of snow that is back-breaking to shovel and often results in downed trees and damaged power lines, both of which tend to disrupt people's lives.  

In fact, a co-worker of Deus Ex Machina's had to find an alternate route to work this morning - as he said, "looking for a road without downed trees."

And, perhaps, worse, in town, less than two miles from where I live, many homes lost power this morning, which means that most of those people will be hunkering down and waiting until CMP can repair the line or fix whatever it is that's broken.  

Losing power means more than just no television or electric lights.  For many it means life comes to a complete standstill; they are paralyzed, unable to do much more than wait.  Without power, even the simplest, most quotidian tasks (like boiling water for a cup of tea) become impossibilities, because most of us depend on electricity for EVERYTHING.  

For me, that sort of dependence and lack of control is terrifying.  We lose power with enough regularity that it would be horribly disruptive, if we were wholly dependent on it, and for me, that's an uncomfortable feeling.  I do not want to be wrapped in six layers of clothes, huddling in a blanket in the dark, starving, dirty, and bored, because we don't have electricity.  Or worse, end up with a caffiene withdrawal headache, because I can't have my morning cuppa.

So, I did something about it.  I made my lifestyle about preparedness - or maybe better would be to say that I looked at those things I need to be comfortable, and I found a way to have them without electricity.

Don't get me wrong - there are things for which I depend on electricity to make my life a little easier (more convenient), like washing clothes.  I don't "love" my clothes washing machine, but having done clothes by hand, I am thankful for the ease and convenience of throwing a bunch of dirty clothes in the washer, hitting a button, and walking away.  

Refrigeration is essential.  To be completely honest, my freezer is the primary way we preserve our food, because a significant part of our diet is meat, and if the harvest season gets busy (like we're in the middle of renovating a bedroom, but the tomatoes are coming in at the same time), I can put the extra produce in the freezer until I have time to deal with it.  I also do a lot of baking when we have a glut of eggs, and I will freeze the extra baked goods to enjoy when eggs aren't so abundant.  We don't have a back-up system for the freezer, but we do keep it fully stocked, all of the time, so that we have a couple of days of buffer before stuff starts to thaw to unsafe levels.  

For me, a hot shower is one of life's greatest pleasures!  Which makes it both fortunate and unfortunate that we have an on-demand electric hot water heater.  We have unlimited hot water, if we have electricity, but when the power goes out, so does the hot water in the shower and at the kitchen sink.  

I suppose none of those things is essential to our survival, but they are nice things to have, and I didn't want the very fragile power grid to dictate, to me, how comfortable my life would be.  

So, I did some things to ensure that WHEN the power goes out, I'm not hamstrung until CMP gets around to fixing the issue on my low priority, side road.  Have I ever mentioned that one time that the only road in my part of town to lose power was mine, and it took two nights and three days to get it restored?

The most important piece of my off-grid infrastructure is my woodstove.  It provides heat and has a cooktop so that we can cook and heat up water.  Our woodstove is our primary heat source.  We don't just use the woodstove in inclement weather or *if* we lose power.  It is a part of our every day life.  

We use it for more than just heat, too.  We make our morning coffee using a French Press.  Add coffee grounds and hot water, et voila! in four minutes, we're ready to enjoy a steaming cup of heaven on earth! I always have a kettle on the woodstove, and so there is always hot water - no electricity needed!  

I also regularly use the woodstove for cooking.  Most of my daily cooking is still on the electric stove in the kitchen, because everything is in the kitchen and it's more convenient, step-wise, to just stay in there, but I do enjoy putting a roast or a whole chicken in my Dutch oven, and letting it slow cook all day on the back of the woodstove.  In a lot of ways, it's better than a crockpot.  It's certainly less expensive, and more sustainable.  In a pinch, I can use (and have used) the woodstove for all of my daily cooking.  I've even baked on the top of the woodstove using a Dutch oven or an inverted pot to capture the heat.  

In the immortal words of Ron Popiel, but wait, there's more!  I also use it for clothes drying.  I have a drying rack that I use in the winter, and it sits in front of the woodstove.  The clothes get dry, but the damp clothes also add moisture to the air.  It's a win-win.  

And it requires zero electricity ... and is sustainable.

A second very useful part of my off-grid infrastructure is lighting.  In emergency preparedness, it is recommended that one have flashlights and batteries, and candles.  I have both, probably, somewhere, but if we're being honest, those wouldn't be my go-to in a grid down scenario.  Instead, what I have are these bulbs* in several of my light fixtures, and, indeed, I purchased some inexpensive lamps from the Family Dollar, specifically, so that we could use the Boundery bulbs.  The bulb works exactly like any regular LED bulb, but as a bonus, these bulbs have a built-in battery.  They are actully charging when in regular use, so that when the power goes out, I will still have my lamp, exactly like I do on a regular day, when the electricity is up and functioning. I use those lamps every day, and the fancy bulb is just the bulb I use.  So, if the power goes out, and lamp stays on, and ... I don't have to think about it, and I don't have to search every hiding spot for that flashlight and batteries I know I put ... somewhere!

For fun, I have kerosene lamps and kerosene, and a bunch of candles, and a couple of different styles of solar camping lights and lanterns.  The ones I have also have a USB charge option, and so if I have to use the lamp, but I can't recharge it with the built-in solar panel (because it's cloudy or night time), I could plug them into one of my USB chargers.

A third part of my off-grid infrastructure is my connectivity.   My FB memory today reminded me that we haven't had a television since 2010.  It's been even longer since we had cable television.  For the record, we do use a streaming service.  We also have cellphones, but did away with our land line six years ago.

What's different about us and other folks is that we don't connect our phones to our wi-fi when we get home.  Our phones ARE our wi-fi.  Instead of a cellphone bill, a cable bill, an Internet bill, and a bill for our streaming service, it's all lumped together ... except cable, and ... well, we don't have a television, so we also don't need cable.  

The benefit is that, even if we lose power, nothing about the way we connect to the outside world has to change. We can still access our phones, still connect to the Internet, and still even stream movies or binge-watch Community.  We are only limited by our ability to keep our devices charged, and well, we have options for that, too.  I don't know how much the average user pays for cable, Internet, phone, and streaming services, because, for some reason, Internet service companies won't allow me to search their prices without giving them my address, which I'm not doing, because I don't want them to contact me, but the cost per month for our cellphone plan, which bundles all of it and includes a Netflix subscription with two screens, costs us $40 per line, and we can have up to four lines on our plan.  

There's another benefit to having our connectivity through our cellphone service rather than a grid-dependent ISP/cable company, and that is that, working from home and doing online classes are possible, even without electricity. I was chatting with a friend today who didn't have any electricity at her house, and she lamented that her family member had to "go to work" in the storm, because he couldn't work from home with no electricity.  

Fact is, for most of 2021, I worked from home over the Internet, and ... see above.  I don't have a "normal" Internet connection, but I had no problem doing the work that needed to be done, including connecting to my employer's virtual machines and/or downloading their files.  

In short, I can heat my house; boil hot water; cook dinner; dry my clothes; have "electric lights"; write my novel; do a blog post; scroll Facebook; and watch Netflix - even if we don't have any electricity.    

I guess the only everyday activity that I am not prepared to do if the power grid goes down is iron, and well, I'm thinking I need one of these. 

How much of your daily activities have to change when the power grid goes down?