Living on a Farming Budget

Living in a farming budget

Good morning friends.  It’s a Monday here in PA.  Thank you for taking a few minutes of your time to peak into our life.

Today I wanted to share with you how our household works.  We live on a very tight budget and many ask how I manage it as I do.  Here are my tips/tricks

11.  Monthly meal planning with 2 bonus meals

22. Buying in bulk as I can

33.  Making all that I can from scratch

44.    Do I really need that?

These 4 things really sum up our household.

1

1. Monthly Meal planning.  I started this when Pete and I were first married as meal planning for 2 weeks at a time.  2 weeks was the amount of time it took us to use up the Raw Milk we got and would drive out to Dubois (45 min drive) to get more and consequently hit up the grocery stores as I went.  When we got our own dairy cow we don’t have that 2 week requirement so I’ve started menu planning for the entire month. 

a.       About 1-2 days before a new month begins I sit down with a blank calendar print off page and all my recipe books.  I write in things I know are happening.  Monday, Wednesday and Fridays – I feed our Apprentices additionally, Thursdays Pete isn’t home so I usually eat at my in law’s house, Fridays are always Pizza nights, Saturdays are almost always Business Meeting Nights that rotate houses, Sundays are lazy meal days.  I pencil those things in so I know how to meal plan those days.

b.      I then start going through and thinking what we’ll eat depending on what we have on hand.  I use my 13x9 Cook book for Mondays and Wednesdays because those are big meals to feed lots of people!  We have a constant supply of eggs, turkey, chicken & pork at my disposal as well as very limited beef and sometimes some lamb.  Those factor in immensely.  Our garden is bursting with lettuces, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and potatoes: so that helps my food budget greatly. 

c.       Here’s what my Monthly Meal Plan looked like for this month:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Foods Needed
AUGUST	2015					1 In Nashville
2 In Nashville	3 In Nashville	4 Sausage	5 homemade Chickfila Sand	6 roasted chickens	7 Pizza sausage &white	8 tacos	-parm cheese -cheddar chz
9 salad with chicken	10 pasta putanesca	11 At Linneas	12 At Fritsch’s Cornbread	13 Chicken	14 Pizza ham pineapp	15 Pulled Pork	strawberry -anchovies -Olives -pasta -Red Onion
16 Beer Can Chicken	17 Guadeloupe Beef Pie	18 Pork Chops	19 Kielbasi Dogs	20 Not home	21 Pizza – bbq chicken	22 Girls Night Tacos/shoulder	-Cheddar chz
23 Church Party	24 Chicken Pot Pie	25 Steak	26 Potato Soup	27 Not home	28 Pizza sausage	29 Business Meeting Away	-roasted rd pepper -mushrom -Monterey jack chz
30 Philly Cheese Stk	31 Bowtie Chicken Alfredo						-provo cheese -mozz chz -bowtie pasta

d.      I always need more items for the house than just what’s needed for the meals. My additional items were: Peanut butter, butter, powdered sugar, grapes, apples, bananas cane sugar, brown sugar, chocolate chips, American cheese, pepperoni, Italian seasoning, garlic salt, barbeque sauce, ketchup, zip lock baggies, toilet paper, and tape. 

Having the farm keeps my budget on point.  Our budget for food is $25/week.  Other additional items have a different budget. 

3.   Buying in bulk.  We are distributor for Dutch Valley Foods.  We buy all our flour, evaporated Cane Juice (sugar), wheat, salt, peanut oil, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, cornmeal, cocoa, rolled oats, raisins, craisins, nuts, cinnamon, Olive oil, honey, rice, beans etc. from them in large quantities.  This means we sell all that we don’t use and use what we don’t sell.  I have 5 gallon buckets of King Arthur brand unbleached white flour, rolled oats, cocoa and cornmeal in my kitchen!  Having this helps keep my budget in check because I don’t have to purchase these regularly.  We buy them maybe 3 times a year.

3.   Making all I can from scratch.  You may have noticed that I have no “mixes” in my grocery list.  And if you’d look in my cupboard you won’t find any boxed ones either.  Why is this?  Even though the boxed mixes are “cheaper” sometimes I have come to understand that the convenience of the quick mix is not worth the artificial fillers and un natural things they put in them. I love cooking and baking so why not just make my own brownies, breads, cakes, and cookies that will taste way better and I can know what I put in them.  I only cook with butter no margarine, lard – no Crisco, peanut oil, Olive oil and cocout oil.  Yes making a batch of biscuits from scratch in the morning is more time consuming than just microwaving a pop tart but smelling that biscuit baking and tasting it melt in your mouth is so much better than feeling ucky after ingesting that fake food. Prep is critical in making cooking from scratch work.  You have to give yourself time to pick, clean and cook the veggies, thaw the meat, rise the breads and make those desserts!  It’s so worth it in the end though!  We feel better because we eat well. 

44.       Do I really need that?  That’s my question to myself as I go through the grocery store isles.  Can I make that from scratch?  Do we have any of that at home?  Do I need it?  Come the end of the month my cupboards are bare because I shop for my menu +2 bonus meals.  We don’t have tons of snacks around because I don’t need them and they aren’t able to fit in the budget.  It keeps us healthier and keeps that budget tighter.

“It is too expensive to eat naturally/organically” Is it really?  Where else can you cut on your monthly budgets to buy from local farms and eat fresh and local?  Try as hard as you can because it’s easier to change your eating habits and help your health than to pay your medical bills because of the fake food you ate killing your body with its petrochemicals.  Do you have a back yard?  Raise some chickens for eggs!  Raise some for meat.  I’ll even show you how to clean em’ up real quick!  Have lots of land?  Consider raising a cow or a lamb.  Have a spot you can fence in in a wooded area?  Raise a pig!  (They are incredibly clean and smart animals!)   

If you’d like help in any of the areas I mentioned today I’d love to talk with you.  From budgeting, organizing your kitchen, buying in bulk, ordering local meats & Eggs, finding farmers near you, eating naturally, why it is important to cook from scratch… etc.  Please email me.  I will gladly share my tidbits with you. 

Have a great day!

In His Service for it is all for Christ’s glory and edification that I live,

Tara 


** Additional notes added on 8/26/2015**
-I realized I never clarified that Friday Pizza night is always made from scratch! We have a mozzarella cheese making kit and make dough, sauce, & cheese from scratch for pizza night.
-  I also never tossed in that we rarely, if ever, eat out.  We go out to eat probably once ever 4 months or so.   Maybe less.  This also keeps the budget in line.
- Breakfasts :  Our breakfasts tend to be an egg of some sort and a bread of some sort.  Scrambled eggs and toast, fried eggs and muffins, biscuits and gravy etc.
-Lunches:  Usually left overs from previous dinners, tomato sandwiches, or pbjs.  If nothing else is available I'll fry up some sausage for sausage sandwiches. :)
- Keep to the schedule.  Try and think of all the ingredients you need for the meals your planning so that when it comes time to do it you have what you need.  Try to keep to your schedule so that you don't use and ingredient that you had planned for another dish because you are going off schedule.