Bells of the North Homestead

I write this today not for those who already know who I am, but for those instead who are new to our page.  Now I have to admit, the page used to go by the name How Does Our Garden Grow because when I first started it in Maryland, that was how it fit us more.  How IS our garden growing?  When we first moved to Maryland, we had so many things happen to us financially that, truly, we were really bad off.  We had dry goods in our pantry, but nothing fresh in the fridge, and only a small amount of canned goods.  We had no homemade canned goods at all.  Imagine being in a situation where all you have is flour, Bisquick, sugar, cornmeal, some dried beans, and a container of rice.  Yes, you can make a meal out of that, but it gets boring super quick.  To make matters worse, we couldn't afford to buy much due to issues with the condo we still owned in Alaska along with car troubles and a financial gaff by the military which left us with two and a half m...

We did it.  We finished our September challenge!  And since we did not spend a single dollar during the last weekend of September (other than gas and eating out because we did not know we'd be away from home so long on Sunday) we finished the month spending a grand total of....$53.83 at local grocery stores and $432.52 at local farms, farmers markets, dairys and chicken or beef producers.  Total for a family of three for 30 days: $486.35 Had we removed some of the items that we purchased to help us stock up for the winter, this final number would have been more near $350.00. Some people claim that "But It costs so much to eat healthy!"  Well here you go.  It cost us $486.35 for the entire month and we were eating pretty darn healthy and we were stocking up our larder for the winter!  Fresh produce, straight from the farm, fresh milk straight from the dairy, fresh delicious eggs with buttery orange yolks, wonderful, tasty pasture raised chicken...