Buying in Bulk

I’m not a fan of grocery shopping.  I’m not really a fan of shopping in general.  I’d rather stay at home than go out and have to deal with crowds and lines and seeing all sorts of things some marketer thinks I need.  There is the rare occasion when shopping is enjoyable for me; like when time is not of the essence, or when my list of to-do’s is not growing ever longer in the back of my mind.

Grocery shopping is particularly bothersome to me because I read. every. label.  Even if I bought the same item last week, I read the label again.  I do this because manufacturers are constantly changing the ingredients in their products.  Most of the time they do it to make more profit.  That was one of the reasons pop began being made with high fructose corn syrup.  It’s cheaper than sugar.  Sometimes ingredients change because of availability, and sometimes it’s because of taste.  Whatever the case, I feel it is my responsibility to know what I am putting into the bodies of the people in my home with the food that I serve them.  I cannot afford to be lazy in this.  The health of the people I love the most is at stake.

The fact that I read all the labels means that a trip to the grocery store takes me twice as long as it used to.  Time I could use to grade papers or fold laundry or play in a Wii bowling championship game.  And the more prepared foods that I purchase, the longer it takes.  A can of soup has maaaaannnnnny ingredients.  A bag of garbanzo beans has one.

Saving time from reading ingredient lists is only one of the reasons our family has been buying in bulk for many years.  There is a significant cost savings when you buy in bulk.  The price per pound goes down considerably.  For example, where I buy wheat berries 5# is $3.80 for organic hard red wheat, 25# is $15.55 and 50# is $29.75.  That breaks down to $0.76, $0.622, and $0.595 per pound respectively.  I save $0.165 on every pound of wheat.  On just 5# of wheat I save $0.825 and on 50# I save $8.25.  Multiply that out over how much wheat I use and on many different products and I end up saving a bunch of money by buying in bulk.

The secret to buying in bulk is to buy what your family will use.  If you save $8.00 on a 50# bag of wheat but you never use it, then you have not saved anything.  You’ve wasted almost $30.00.  That’s never a good plan, but especially not now with the uncertainty in our economy.  Which is another reason why we buy in bulk.  Have you been watching the prices of food lately?  I save money by buying whatever food I can in advance.  I get to eat at yesterday’s or last month’s or last year’s prices.  Last year I watched as wheat prices went from $0.40 per pound to almost $0.90 at my local health food store back in Colorado.  Quinoa went from around $30.00 for a 25# bag to over $50.00.  Some of the prices have eased off a bit, but I’m still spending more money today for the same stuff than I did even just 6 months ago.

Another reason for buying in bulk is simply the convenience.  If you have things on hand, you don’t need to run to the store.  If you don’t need to run to the store, your chance of spending on impulse purchases is non-existent.  Having items on hand makes preparation so much easier too.  Not to mention the fact that it’s pretty much a necessity when you live off grid, 20+ miles from the nearest regular grocery store.

A fully stocked pantry used to be commonplace in homes in this country.  Sadly, modern conveniences have made people rely on the availability of food stuffs at the store instead of in their homes.  When faced with any kind of emergency, how will modern day American people survive?  The loss of a job, a blizzard, a tornado, a glitch in the shipping infrastructure . . . these and many other situations could make normal trips to the grocery store impossible.  FEMA recommends a 3-day supply of food for your family.  I think that amount is laughable, but it is at least a good place to start.  Buying in bulk will help get you there.  I’ll write about what to buy, how much to buy, how to store it all, and how to use bulk items in future posts.

Go to the ant, O sluggard;
   consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief,
   officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
   and gathers her food in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
   When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
   a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
   and want like an armed man.

Proverbs 6:6-11

My New Favorite Word

♥♥♥ Idahome ♥♥♥

I cannot take credit for the word, however.  It came from my dear friend Pamela’s daughter, Hannah.  Way to go Hannah!  I will now be telling everyone that I live in Idahome.

I Had to Do It

There were so many other things that I needed to spend my time on: grading papers, planning menus, filing papers, folding laundry, cooking dinner, putting laundry away, planning our garden, ordering seeds, baking bread, finding ways to use the eggs.  Clearly, this list could go on and on, and on, and on . . . . But I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I had to do something about it.  It was truly driving me crazy.  All of the children were eager to help me.  So, I rearranged the furniture.  Ahhhhhhhhh, I feel so much better now!

And Mr. King said, “THANK YOU!!!”

The Back Story – Part 2

It was the spring of 1998, before we had moved to Iowa (we moved in December).  Mr. King was scouring through some papers and looking for some information online.  He started telling me what he was learning about.  I did not want to believe what I was hearing him say.  It was too fantastically horrible, there was no way it could be true.  But deep down I knew it was true.  Mr. King had gathered information from several different sources about the economy.

One of the men who was very concerned about the state of the economy in the U.S., and the world for that matter, had a website, booklets, and videos at the time.  I don’t know what his beliefs are today, but the information we got from him back then made a lasting impact on us.  The title of the presentation was called The Bulls, The Bears, and The Beast.  It was the first presentation I had ever seen that so clearly explained what was going on presently and what would be going on in the future of our economy and how it all tied in to Biblical prophecy.  Unfortunately we lent the video to someone who lent it to someone, and we never got it back.

The thing I remember most about the presentation is the picture he drew of how the entire global economy would collapse.  He said it would be like a dragon eating its tail and that prosperity depending on ever increasing debt always leads to financial collapse.  This is as true for nations as it is for families.

We determined to do whatever we could to get out of debt which dove tailed nicely with our desire to move to the country and live a simpler life.  So, we sold our cookie cutter home in Colorado and moved into a rental in Iowa.  It was there that we bought our first wheat berries.  One 50 pound bag of hard red wheat and one 50 pound bag of soft white wheat.  I had no idea really what the difference was or why we needed both, but that’s what the survival/preparation books said.

Unfortunately, I never got to use any of that 100 pounds of wheat.  I was treating it for critters, like the books said I should.  I chose the freezer method where the wheat is placed in the freezer for 72 hours.  Then it is left at room temperature for 30 days before it is put back in the freezer for another 72 hours.  This kills all of the living bugs in the first freezing and all of the eggs that might have hatched but not had time to lay their own eggs in the second freezing.

During the second freezing of the wheat, we had a tornado warning.  We ran to the basement and tried to watch the news on a little portable television.  There were no open outlets, so I unplugged the nearest thing and we watched the weather report.  When everything was clear, we went back upstairs.  It was about a week later, when I went to get some frozen ground meat, that I realized I had unplugged the freezer and had forgotten to plug it back in.  Not only did I lose all of the meat that was in there (which thankfully wasn’t a lot), but I also lost all of my wheat because the meat had thawed and bled all over the wheat berries.  It was totally disgusting.

We still had a lot to learn.  And, oh yes, much more pruning from the Lord . . . . .

The Back Story – Part 1

“You’re moving where!?!?!?!?!?!?” That’s a question we heard a lot after we bought our land in rural northern Idaho.  To some it seemed like a very spontaneous decision, and a weird one at that.  But to us it was nothing short of a miracle and a very direct and specific answer from Yeshua to our years and years of prayers.  But I need to back up a bit in order to paint the whole picture.

Shortly after our first child was born 14.5 years ago, Mr. King, Lady Pragmatic, and I took a trip to visit some of my extended family in Iowa.  We visited my great grandfather’s farm.  It was 100 acres of not great farm land in rural Iowa.  Rolling hills, lots of timber, an old red barn, some other outbuildings, and a dilapidated old house.  A spark was kindled.  We started dreaming about moving to the country and having a simpler, though not necessarily easier, life.  Four years and two more children later, we moved to Iowa with plans of eventually building a new house and moving out to the old family farm.

Y2K and our desire to move to the country were what started our research into living off the land and ALL that is required to do that.  There was so much that we really had no idea about, and still don’t.  There was and is so much to learn.  We subscribed to Countryside Magazine and quickly realized that we were horribly ignorant city folk.  But we were willing to learn!

  One of the first books that we got was The “Have-More” Plan.  It is a fantastic primer by Ed and Carolyn Robinson on most of the steps that need to be taken to move from the city to the country.  It was written in the 1940’s by a family that was tired of their “difficult” life in the city.  

“We faced the fact that we knew absolutely nothing about raising any part of what our family needed to live.  In fact, our utter and absolute dependency on my job was appalling.”

Ummmmmmm, hello!?!?!?!?!  We knew more than a significant part of the population in that we knew that milk comes from cows (or goats or sheep) and not from the store.  Same goes for hamburger – it comes from cows not from the store.  But we knew absolutely nothing about raising our own food.  We had also moved so many times that I was not very skilled in the garden.  What I am skilled in however is research, and I began studying anything I could get my hands on about what living in the country and living off the land would really require.  Mr. King is very skilled in taking my hours of research and netting it out to what is necessary in the near future.  It’s one of the many ways the Lord has used our very opposite personalities to yield great benefits.

“I feel, somehow, that in the years to come the U.S. is going to need all the help it can get toward happiness and peace and security.”  I’m thinking that Mr. Robinson was a prophet!  There is no security in the way that our food is delivered today and in the short supplies of food actually available.  There is no security in the way that the banking systems have run amok and the government just nods and gives them more money.  More people than ever are stressed out and unhappy and worried.

We began to see the writing on the wall for these things 11 years ago and have slowly been making steps toward “a better life” for our family ever since.  It has not been an easy road by any stretch of the imagination, and it has taken us much longer than we had ever planned.  But Yahweh had to do some major pruning on our hearts, our desires, our lives before He could lead us to our Promised Land here on this earth.  I’ll tell you more about that in Part 2.

About Chickens and Change

Change happens.  It’s part of life.  There’s no use trying to avoid it because it is unavoidable.  Babies grow into toddlers who grow into teens who become the workforce.  One day that ice cream sundae doesn’t taste the same as it used to and it takes three weeks to exercise it off.  Olives and pesto become common words and ingredients when they were once dismissed out of hand.  Things that used to define a person no longer have so strong an impact in their lives.

Elphanant.  That’s what I called the huge grey animal with a trunk for years and years.  Elphanant.  From the time I was three years old and saw my first elephant at the zoo, they have been my favorite animal.  They are amazing, majestic, beautiful creatures.  I wrote more reports on elephants than on anything else while I was in school.  Did you know that an African Elephant’s ear is about the size of a twin bed?  Or that they live for an average of 70 years?  They are hugely loyal and do in fact have a terrific memory.

When I got married I brought about 200 elephants with me, along with a cat, but that is another story.  I used to collect elephants.  People knew that I collected elephants and I often received them as gifts.  I had elephant bookends, elephant thimbles, elephant salt and pepper shakers, elephant earrings, and elephant chotchkies galore.  They. were. everywhere.  Mr. King is not much for decorating with chotchkies.  To him, things need a purpose otherwise they become clutter.  Sometimes that purpose can be “just because”, or “it’s pretty”, but those reasons are the exception, not the rule.

Over the years my elephant collection has dwindled down to about 30 or less.  I have a shadowbox full of the tiniest of them – always my favorites, and a few choice larger ones.  These are also the ones that survived my children’s toddler years.  Ahhhh, such is life.  Unless we needed to sell one of these remaining elephants to buy food, I can’t imagine that I’ll get rid of any more of them.  But I also cannot imagine that I’ll be adding to my collection anytime soon either.  I have moved on.

Oh, elephants are still my favorite animal.  I mean, how can something that majestic, that glorious, that h.u.g.e. be replaced by, say, a chicken????  Well, they can’t.  But chickens have quickly become one of my favorite animals.  Smart, they are not, but there are many breeds that are incredibly beautiful.  And there’s just something so relaxing about watching them do their thing.  Whenever I feel stressed, I just watch my girls clucking around, pecking at the dirt, eating bits of leftover food, and I forget whatever was bothering me.

Then there’s the whole egg thing.  I never got an egg from an elephant.  Okay, so I never had an elephant as a pet either, but you get the point.  The blessing that they provide to our family day after day, nearly every day, is amazing.  It is truly a marvel of the Lord that part of our food can be supplied with such regularity from something that also brings our family such delight.  We stopped counting when this batch of chickens delivered 2100 eggs.  It was shortly after we had had them for a year.  Mr. King says that chickens are great because they are pretty *and* have a purpose.

My parents have found a few chicken “things” that are pretty for me to look at and do indeed have a purpose.  Bonus!!  It helps that they know my favorite color is cobalt blue.  That’s not likely to change.  So, here are a few of the items that will be making their permanent home with us up at “our place” when we move up there, hopefully this spring.

 

Cookie Jar with Salt & Pepper Shakers

 

Pitcher and Mugs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bowl with 4 Dozen Eggs

A Math Story Problem

I’ve been MIA a little.  I’ve really been hunkering down and working with the children on their school.  I figure that the winter months waaaaaaaaaay up here in Idaho are going to be the months that we get the most schoolwork done because of the short daylight hours and the cold temperatures.  The chickens haven’t been bothered by the cold temperatures and short days however.  In fact they are eating me out of house and home and producing a huge amount of eggs in return.  In light of their generosity and my focus on education, I have come up with a story problem for you all.

If you have 15 chickens and each chicken lays one egg every 27 hours, after 3 weeks time, using 18 eggs every third day, how many mommies will there be trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the eggs?

A Daily Blessing

Here you can see white eggs from our California Leghorns, brown eggs from our Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks, and green eggs from our Ameraucanas.  

 

Tracks in the Snow

Moose track

Deep moose track

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cougar track in the snow.

Cougar tracks near the driveway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes scary stuff comes through our yard, so it’s a good thing we’ve got these to watch out for us.

Eyes in the Night

Lila & HaYom on guard.