Why are you frugal? A quick poll

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 1 December 2010 in frugal, meta | 7 comments

I follow a lot of frugal, green, simple living and growing blogs – some of my favourites are listed in the sidebar but I read many, many more. Amongst all the great advice and ideas, I’ve noticed that just about everyone has their own reason for being frugal or growing their own – and that’s made me wonder what drives me/us too. What drives you?

I’ve listed what I think are a dozen reasonably common reasons for frugality here – but I’m sure there are many, many more reasons for it — and for many people, it won’t be just one thing, it’ll be a combination of a few – so feel free to tick as many as applicable.

For me, it’s a certainly a combination of more than a few! I’ve always looked after the pennies and I think I’d still look for offers/bargains even if I had a million pounds, I think it’s an unchangeable trait now.

Living cheaply allowed us the freedom to quit the shackles of our full time jobs and start working for ourselves – and it still allows us to do what interests us rather than needing earn a fortune to pay the bills.

I am a greeny and I abhor easily avoidable waste, and related to that, I also strongly dislike excessive consumerism – so I guess that’s part of my drive too. There are elements of frugality I find fun – cooking, growing, making etc – and I like having hobbies that help me save money and live well. I’m also definitely be ticking the “thrill of a good deal” box! Frugality isn’t all doom and gloom as far as I’m concerned.

So what about you? What drives you to be frugal? Is there something I’ve missed off the poll list?

Feeding the birds through the winter – how do you do it?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 30 November 2010 in frugal, growing | 1 comment

I don’t mean feeding the girls, they get more than enough. No, I mean feeding wild birds. Last winter, we had bird feeder on the balcony stocked with wild bird seed and nuts from our local miscellanea store – I think the squirrels raided it more than the birds but we regularly saw feathered ones at it too. We went through quite a lot of feed during the six weeks of snow.

Back in September, Colette at the Permaculture Cottage wrote about how wasteful it is to spend money – and all the carbon cost – of importing peanuts & seeds to feed to wild birds, when there are other alternatives. I had a bit of a smack-my-forehead moment when I read that – I’m doing all I can to minimise our food miles but importing food for them.

Colette has noted a number of trees & plants that are good for providing winter food – those suggestions alone are a good starting point for me. I try to maximise the good growing ground in our garden for food for us but further down the garden, in the shade of the trees, there might be some space for bird-friendly bushes. Perhaps my living fence shouldn’t be all focused around our wants & needs…

Alternately, Kate from Living the Frugal Life grows sunflowers in the summer for their nectar and cheer – and for the free-bird-feed seeds to use over winter. I’m tempted to use some of our under-utilised front garden to grow sunflowers next year – although I suspect I’d be tempted to offer at least some of the seeds to our chickens…

Do you feed the wild birds in your garden over winter? Do you buy in feed or do you grow your own? If so, what do you grow? I’d love to hear your comments/suggestions.

(Photo by PsychoPxL – I tried to take my own version but every time I went outside all the birds disappeared, the little pesks!)

The chickens in winter

Posted by louisa on Monday 29 November 2010 in chickens | 3 comments

I had to crack the ice on the chickens drinkers a few times last week but yesterday, overnight, they froze completely solid. That, more than the inch or so of snow on the ground, drove home to me the fact it’s winter now.

Since the temperatures started dropping last week, I’ve reinstated my first thing runs down to see them in the mornings – since we fitted the automatic door, we hadn’t needed to prioritise them in the morning chores list but now I’m back to it. I go down to the run with a kettle full of boiling water now – to melt the ice and to warm up the over all temperature of the water in the drinkers.

After The Compost Lady recommended it, they’ve had a warm layers pellets porridge too. Also, like The Compost Lady, I’m liberally sprinkling corn around at lunchtime as a treat since they can’t scratch in the dirt as normal.

They thanked me for these comforts with a 100% laying rate over the weekend. The new ones still haven’t started laying but the four existing ones produced an egg each, each day – pretty good for snowy November!

In related news, I had to scrap lumps of frozen poo off the coop floor yesterday. Which was fun. I’m on the look out for ways to insulate it. I’m thinking maybe a fake floor (with insulation underneath and an easy-clean top) and a layer of insulation on the roof too. Just got to keep an eye out for materials…

Bad buys: nearly all the clothes I’ve ever bought off eBay

Posted by louisa on Friday 26 November 2010 in bad buys | 5 comments

Another in my occasional series of laments about bad buys I’ve made.

I love eBay. We call our house “the house that eBay built” because we bought so much stuff – appliances, furniture, accessories – off eBay in the first few months after we moved in. I use it as a find-anything bazaar and a virtual charity shop. But I’ve had failure after failure when it comes to buying clothes off there.

From seeing just one or two deliberately flattering pictures of the item, I create a best-possible-case 3D animation in my head: me wearing the item, it fitting perfectly and looking great. Surely that’s worth £1.50 plus p&p! Unless it’s something that really excites me, I won’t get caught up in eBay drama or bidding wars – my bids stay charity-shop-price low and if I get outbid then nevermind. But often enough, I do win and my “fits perfectly, looks great” fantasy continues for a few days until it arrives.

It’s happened with the weirdly (deliberately) patchwork leather jacket, the far too boxy polyester Hawaiian shirt, the strappy tops which were apparently made for someone with a half-sized torso, the “I could fit three of us in there and we’d all look like weird scientists” dressing gown, the shoes in the picture are nice but super narrow (and clearly very cheap quality to start with)… I could go on and on. None of these items have cost more than a few quid all in, but those few quids do add up.

Fruit bushes/trees to make a living fence?

Posted by louisa on Friday 26 November 2010 in growing | 3 comments

I’ve just posted this question over at UKVegGardeners but thought I’d post it here too – all suggestions very gratefully received!

I’ve not really grown any fruit before but have big plans for 2011 (don’t we all?).

As well as getting some (currently on order) trees in and containers of soft berries etc, I’ve had an idea to kill two birds with one stone. We need a new divider between our garden and our neighbours – there hasn’t been a fence up to now but I want to discourage our dog & chickens from wandering over there – and we’d presumed we’d fit a paling wooden one.

But as there is a narrow bed where the fence will go, I’m wondering if rather than a boring wooden fence, whether we could use fruit bushes/trees to grow a living fence/mini hedgerow.

The row gets a decent amount of light but not full south-facing sunlight. We could easily “lose” 3ft or so to bushes, but the neighbours side would have to be
kept quite neat.

Any suggestions for things we could plant to achieve such a thing?

(One thing: there are a bajillion – I counted – blackberry bushes in the field on the other side of our house, so we’d rather avoid those if possible.)

Any ideas?