Thursday, April 30, 2009 by Hodding.

When can we stop frugal living?” Angus asked Lisa and me a few days ago. He followed the statement with a sigh so drawn out that it appeared to wilt a vase of daffodils. “I’m really tired of it.” There was a time when even these defiant words would have sent us into a crazed all-family jig. Angus didn’t speak until he was almost five, and was labeled by many to be, well, backward. In fact, we would have bribed him to say almost anything back then, even “Shut up, stupid!”—a current favorite learned from his sisters.

“What do you mean, sweetie?” Lisa asked, flinching just a hair. Once unflappable and as sweet as our homemade maple syrup, Angus is now in the throes of six-year-old boyhood, and we have the bruises to prove it. One minute he’s full of more snuggles than a nursing puppy (really) and the next, he seems to be trying out as a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot (really).

Channeling Gandhi, however, he simply closed his eyes in answer. Wasn’t it obvious, Mom? Then: “I need to get an allowance again. I want one every week,” he explained patiently. “So I can buy candy. I love candy.” As we searched for a frugal-minded answer, he decided to give us more time by counting to 100 before simultaneously punching me where I taught him to hit “bad strangers” and blurting out the three most excellent words a parent will ever hear: “I’ll do anything!”

It was early Saturday morning—normally a time when all three girls are glued to their Facebook pages, now that swim season is over. This April 24 was no different, but engrossed as they were, they heard Angus’s every word and immediately chimed in, “We’ll work for money, too! How much?”

And thus, a garden was born.

Despite many a naysayer telling us we’ve started too late and that our garden will provide a few side dishes at best, I believe we will be living off the land, except for milk and fruit juice, by midsummer. And we’ll even have enough produce to carry us through the beginning of winter if we learn how to can well enough.

Most of the weekend involved prep work—raking leaves and removing winter debris, hoeing in four months’ worth of chicken manure and accompanying wood shavings, and digging out rocks we missed last spring when Lisa rototilled the 2,000-square-foot plot by herself. (I was sick in bed. Honest.) I had already sown more than 50 tomato seeds, using a fairly equal measure of Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Ace (an heirloom new to me that is supposedly perfect for canning), and yellow pear tomatoes, but there were plenty more vegetables and herbs that needed sowing as well, including pumpkins, eggplant, broccoli, okra, and basil.

Once the outside prep work was finished, some of us worked on the indoor seeds, while others sowed kale, various lettuces, radishes, sugar snaps, English peas, turnips, cabbage, carrots, spinach, pole and bush beans, 400 square feet of corn in a new bed, and 70 feet of varied potatoes (based on what I learned from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle). We chose some of these items simply because we like them, some because they’ll be our staples, some because they will grow well in the nitrogen-rich soil we’ve made with the chicken droppings, and some because they are so, so, so much cheaper to grow than to buy—such as the five different varieties of sweet peppers we started inside.

Two years ago, I started about a dozen fruit trees including apples, peaches, cherries, and apricots, and I’ve been told they will fruit this summer. My neighbor has gone in with me on 20 three-year-old high-bush blueberry plants that a friend got wholesale. Throw in some bartering for meat chickens and maybe a bit of lamb, and I say we’ve got a living supermarket.

The weekend was one of those times when everything within the family gelled. In fact, I can’t remember anyone complaining or—even more amazing—bickering. The 13-year-olds actually stopped acting like they were in mortal combat with Lisa and me, and everybody worked for 12 hours over the two days. Well, except for Angus. He did do some work, but he also excelled elsewhere. He learned how to ride a bike in only a few hours on Saturday, and, on the following day, he landed a front flip on the trampoline.

While we didn’t pay the kids—or re-institute weekly allowances—we did celebrate their hard work by taking them to the movies. A year or two ago, they would have greeted this outing with yawns and maybe a fleeting smile or two. Now, it produced wild cheers, endless smiles, and an irrepressible bubbly mood. Of course, there was one major adjustment to the old routine: Lisa sneaked candy and juice made from frozen concentrate into the theater inside her purse, while Anabel hid the popcorn under her shirt, looking as if she was headed off to an audition for Juno II.

Frugal Tip of the Week*

Look for roadkill at all times: while on a family bike ride, when passing in a no-pass zone, and even while arguing with one’s spouse about whose idea it was to clip the dog’s nails so short. More importantly, when cooking a wild young mallard you found by the side of the road, NEVER cook it as if it’s a fatty, store-bought duck or chicken. By this, I mean don’t do as I did last weekend: Get the charcoal going; place the three-day-aged duck on the grill off to one side; put the lid on the grill; and leave for the evening’s festivities, thinking the fowl will crisp from the early high heat and then cook to perfection as the coals die out. If you do this, when you return, your precious duck will be as light as one of the many feathers you painstakingly plucked beforehand, drier than jerky, and tougher than leather. And since this is the first week of tips, here’s another: If you have an electric hot-water tank, turn it off when the kids leave for school and don’t turn it on again until they return or even until late that night. The water will be very warm until dark and you will save tens of dollars a month (at least in Maine).

*I will attempt to provide a useful frugal tip on a weekly basis from this point on, with the understanding, of course, that previous EF posts have been chock full of expert advice.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

Posted in Extreme Frugality | 1 Comment »

Thursday, April 23, 2009 by Hodding.

A funny thing happened on a recent trip to the grocery store. But first, a quick update on various projects. Our hens are now producing 15 eggs a day. Even if that number doesn’t climb any higher, if the kids sell as many eggs as they claim they’re going to, the hens will have paid for themselves by next winter, and we’ll be eating fresh free-range eggs whenever we want. Sadly, I can’t report the same success regarding our maple syrup: We ended up with a pint. (It’s amazing how quickly the sap stopped running the moment nighttime temperatures rose above freezing.) The syrup, however, is delicious; it’s similar to store-bought Grade B syrup, which we’ve always preferred. Anabel is already talking about how much more we’re going to produce next year. Speaking of warmer weather, the laundry that’s been draped throughout our home has finally gone outside. I’ve headed outside, too, to cut up felled trees and ready them for splitting. Having learned how much wood is needed to heat our vertically challenged home, we’re trying to make sure we have double the wood we had this past winter. And lastly, we’ve started making faux mead. We didn’t have enough honey to make more than a gallon, so I’ve adulterated it with blackstrap molasses, cut with ample amounts of orange rind for flavor. I’m expecting it to turn out much better than the last time I made it, which was on board a replica Viking ship in the Arctic Circle. It never really fermented.

Back to that trip to the store. My discussions with various supermarket managers about getting their old produce for my “pigs” didn’t go well. Apparently, everything is spoken for: Local farmers already get the old produce from two of the markets, and the third gives it to a food pantry. Based on a comment from a reader who goes by the user name nattles, I decided to give dumpster diving one more try by targeting smaller, upscale markets. So the night before last, I set out in the minivan with a pair of pantyhose to pull over my head, a headlamp, and a snow shovel to hit the rats with. Since it was not only dark but also misty, I was driving slowly down Route 52 when suddenly my frugal eye spotted a vibrant green-and-orange something lying alongside the road. Given the conditions, it was just a blur, but my sharply honed penny-pincher’s sixth sense knew it was food. I jerked the car to a stop, ran out in front of a truck, and snatched dinner from a certain squashing.

It was … sniff, sniff … fresh roadkill. A mallard, in fact. Judging by the scent and a smattering of feathers across the pavement, it must’ve happened in the past hour or so—or else, surely, some other scavenger would have made off with it. I threw the duck in back next to the recycling bags and returned home, even more excited than when my friend Adam Scott gave me his suicidal hen.

At this point, I’d like to tell you how I cooked it and what the kids thought of its gamy flavor, but I can’t. We haven’t eaten it yet because I’ve hung it in the basement. According to my man Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, writing in The River Cottage Meat Book “…there is no doubt that hanging game makes a considerable difference to its eating quality. As with beef and lamb, a period of hanging relaxes the meat so that it will be more tender.” Of course, there are no clear instructions about what to do with roadkill mallard, but he suggests letting regular mallards hang for three to four days. It’s a relatively short period compared to that for grouse or woodcock because, as Fearnley-Whittingstall points out, they’re a water bird and have cold-loving bacteria that will break down the meat quickly, even in a dank, nearly freezing basement. In general, the length of time you hang game depends on how strong-tasting you want it to be. Given that at least one of the kids has expressed an interest in trying the duck, we’re going to hope two days is long enough to do some tenderizing. Unlike aficionados of gaminess, we will not be waiting until the body separates from the head because, again, according to Fearnley-Whittingstall, waiting for natural decapitation is a bunch of bull. He once forgot about a brace of pheasants, and when he finally checked on them a month later, not only were they inedible, but the heads and bodies were still attached. We want our kids to like and learn from these experiences—not run away from home.

So, finding myself with a little “hang” time, I decided to dumpster-dive last night but, regrettably, my nighttime raid turned into an early-morning expedition. (I kept hitting the snooze button.) By the time I sidled up to my first dumpster at 5:30 A.M., it was already getting light out. And when I saw a calico cat peering at me from the second floor of the house that is only 15 feet from the dumpster, I quickly tiptoed away, as the owners of that particular house have a child in the same grade as one of my kids.

I might still be mad as hell about food prices, but for now, I’m going to Caswell’s—at least until I can quit hitting the snooze button.

Photograph by Eliza Carter

Posted in Extreme Frugality | No Comments »

Sunday, April 19, 2009 by Hodding.

As I plodded through my local grocery store yesterday, I was seething with anger and discontent. All four kids flitted about, still fuzzy from vacation and thus asking for no-no’s such as chocolate biscotti, hummus, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. That’s not what was making me so mad, however; we’d lived the high life ($25 per day) while on vacation for a week, and I’d assumed they would be wanting things we’d long since given up.

No, what made me want to strike hard and give no quarter wasn’t Angus falling to the floor in tears when I didn’t buy the aforementioned Reese’s, Eliza slipping expensive items into the shopping cart, Anabel incessantly asking for fresh mozzarella, and Helen pulling me over to the $14-a-pound scallops. No, I was near hysterics over the outrageous prices and unconscionably insufficient number of sale items. Nearly everything was full price; not a single vegetable was marked down; and again and again, I found myself removing things the kids had just placed into the cart. Out came the broccoli at $2.99 a pound and the Roma tomatoes at $1.75. And that block of $5-a-pound sharp Cheddar didn’t even make it off the shelf.

Although we’d spent an hour shopping, we left with a cart nearly as empty as when we’d started.

I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t buy.

According to a recent news report I caught on TV while in Florida, 70 percent of our economy is a result of consumer spending. Well, if I have my way, all that is about to change. It’s about to become 69.999 percent.

We’re broke as hell and we’re not going to buy anymore!

I’ve hit a wall that I have no desire to get around, and it’s turned me into a combination of Howard Beale (Peter Finch in Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”), John Paul Jones (“I have not yet begun to fight”), and SpongeBob Squarepants (“I smell the smelly smell of something that smells smelly”). Aargh. So, last night as I rushed around the kitchen helping Eliza make chocolate-dipped almond biscotti for about 40 cents instead of $3.99, while also blending up hummus to save another $3 or $4, I decided it was time for a little offense. Enough of always reacting and meekly turning in coupons. It was time for Plan D.C. I was going after the free stuff: dumpster cuisine.

After the kids were tucked in bed and Lisa had taken her nightly position—asleep on top of Maine’s Rules of Court—I cased our supermarket’s trash facilities. In truth, I had planned on doing a bit more than casing. I was going dumpster diving and would return home a hero with a cornucopia of tossed foods. I was mad as hell, after all. But that was pure fantasy. Bringing home the bacon…well, actually, I’d probably pass on the bacon. Bringing home free food was going to be a bit more involved. The dumpster, with its reinforced steel sides and hydraulic hatch, was like a small, odiferous Fort Knox.

How’d it go? Well, while I didn’t actually bend my hammer, I have had to move on to Plan B.S. Here’s a short recap of a conversation I had earlier today, while undertaking phase one.

Me to assistant manager in charge of shelving: “Is Frank here today?” (I was acting like Frank and I are good friends, although I had only learned his name a few minutes earlier.)

Assistant manager in charge of shelving (AMCS): “No, Frank has Wednesdays off. He’ll be in tomorrow morning at eight. Eight to nine P.M., in fact.”

Me: “Well, I was hoping to talk with Frank or maybe somebody else about getting your leftover produce. The stuff you throw away.”

AMCS: (Doesn’t say anything. Just stares blankly.)

Me: “Oh. It’s not for me. It’s for my…um, chickens, er, I mean…my, um, pigs. Yeah, pigs. They need a lot of food and can eat old stuff, even. Can you help me with this, maybe?”

AMCS: “Pigs, huh? No, you’ll have to talk with Frank. He’ll be here tomorrow. Eight A.M. Have a nice day.”

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the Carters, we do not have pigs. I will go see Frank tomorrow.

Photographs by W. Hodding Carter; Kathy deWitt / Aurora Photos (Shopping Cart)

Posted in Extreme Frugality | No Comments »

Thursday, April 9, 2009 by Hodding.

What could be better for a frugal family than a free vacation? Four days into said “vacation,” a few things come to mind, actually—a hole in the head for starters, and then maybe a long session with the “dentist” in Marathon Man. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Considering our monthly budget of $550 for everything except mortgage, insurance, taxes, and medical bills, a Florida vacation was not in the picture this year. Hell, even camping at a state park would be pushing things. However, when I’m not trying to barter for a Boston butt at the butcher’s, I coach the swim team at the local Y. Two of our swimmers qualified for the annual YMCA National Swimming Championships, and since my room, travel, and food were being covered by the team, it seemed like a perfect opportunity. Not only could we vacation for free, but if we shopped frugally, we’d end up living for free for an entire week. By seizing the chance to body-surf, bake in the sun, and coach my swimmers, I’d be richer than if I’d stayed home and kept my nose to the grindstone. So taking the family away with me seemed like a safe bet, even though it would mean missing a few days of sugaring maple sap. The excess Vitamin D and long, warm, sun-drenched days would far outweigh the loss in syrup. Once we survived the 27-hour car ride.

Oh, did I forget to mention that caveat—the small factor that can mean the difference between a happy marriage and one teetering on dissolution? Because Lisa couldn’t miss an important conference, we had to drive straight through. On paper, it didn’t seem so tough. Hadn’t I done that three-day, non-stop road trip to California (25 years ago)? How bad could 27 hours in a car with an extremely tired lawyer and four sleep-deprived kids be?

Just as we hit the New Jersey Turnpike, it was beginning to dawn on me that we might have made a mistake. By the time we reached a massive pile-up on I 95 south of D.C., I was wondering whether I’d be able to fly down to the meet on time if we turned around. Hours later, as Lisa was googling the letters d-i-v-o-r-c-e on her Blackberry and as all four kids came to the realization that once we arrived in Florida (which we hadn’t yet done), we’d still have nearly seven hours to go, I knew we had made a colossal mistake.

That was three days ago, and we’ve since spent endless time running back and forth between the ocean and our hotel’s pool. The Margaritas are cheap during happy hour, and Lisa just smiled at me.

Too bad we have to drive back.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

Posted in Extreme Frugality | No Comments »

Thursday, April 2, 2009 by Hodding.

I don’t even know where to start this week, I’m feeling so frugaled. Yes, that’s a word as of this very minute. I just made it up because embracing the concept of being frugal and gaining some ground in its practice has never been as necessary as it is today. My newfound conviction has become full-blown evangelical euphoria, and I feel that the time has come for a word that denotes its transformative power.

And why am I feeling so frugaled?

I almost can’t count the ways.

Except, of course, I can—20. That’s how many eggs I found in our hen house¹ this morning. After cleaning guano off the chickens’ waterer, something compelled me to get on my hands and knees to check under their laying boxes, where Nibbles the rabbit lives in what I thought was complete privacy. There was a pungent mix of moldy wood shavings and three weeks’ worth of manure on the floor of the coop, so dropping down on all fours was definitely not a rational decision. But still I found myself inexplicably squeezing my six-foot-one, 170-lb frame through the 15-inch-wide opening that leads under the laying boxes (all made from scrap and found wood). Although I couldn’t see a thing, I crawled forward anyway, drawn toward my destiny like Richard Dreyfuss’s character in Close Encounters, minus the funny music. Then I narrowly missed putting my right hand down on something warm. It was a freshly laid egg. Next to it was another. And another. Pretty soon, still cradling all 20 eggs, I was reporting my discovery to the kids by phone via the receptionist at the middle school, who not only promised to tell them but also offered a hearty “Congratulations!” as we hung up.

There have been even more frugal successes as of late. The weekend before last, I was sent down to the Broward County Library’s Book Feast in Ft. Lauderdale for four days to talk about my last book, and I only spent 18—yes, 18—dollars. My flight and hotel were paid for by the library, and I only ate at festival events. There was always something going on morning, noon, and night, so I never had to wait more than four hours to fill my stomach with delicious free food and wine that would otherwise have been beyond my budget.²

In fact, I timed things so well, I could have gotten by on the $3.55 I spent on doughnuts and coffee at the airport the first day, but I didn’t know Delta charged $15 for the first checked bag. Even so, in the past, I would have easily spent $418 on this kind of trip. So, I may be bragging right now, but why not? This new approach is finally working, and not only roosters can crow.

Even when I make colossal mistakes, we end up making lemonade out of lemons, or, in our case, maple butter out of ruined syrup. As I write this, I’m eating a mound of maple butter slathered on homemade bread. We had been trying to make syrup out of about five gallons³ of sap that Anabel collected while I was gone. It’s a fairly easy process (check out the explicit instructions in Storey’s Basic Country Skills if you’re interested).⁴

You just boil the sap to a desired thickness, pour it through a coffee filter to strain out the odd bit of bark, and soon enough it’s time to flip some flapjacks. Unless, that is, you leave the sugar shack (in our case, the woodstove) at the wrong time. In my defense, it was less than five minutes, and when I walked away it was still thin sap, not viscous syrup. It had been that same consistency for more than an hour. A friend had forewarned me about maple sap’s ability to go from perfect syrup to a disaster in a matter of seconds, but I thought he’d been exaggerating. I had plenty of time to … wait, what’s that stench? It smells like burning marshmallows but it’s coming from the woodstove. Oh, no. I sprinted through the house, tripping over our dog, Ginger, and then a computer cord, but I was too late. The stiff, gluelike substance was stuck to the pan like one of my many failed science experiments during childhood—until Lisa came home and tasted it. After adding a little water and a stick of butter, she turned it into this mouthwatering, smoky maple spread that I now can’t stop eating.

Of course, that’s what I, in my frugaled state, meant to do all along.

Footnotes:

¹ Yes, careful reader, there is a rooster living in there, so technically it’s not a hen house. But the rooster’s days are numbered. He scares the girls. He pecks at Angus. And he even dared to attack me the other day. In fact, we’re planning on having Southern Fried Rooster two Sundays from now. We originally had two roosters, but last week some friends visited with their black Lab, and in less than a minute, the testosterone-loaded adolescent canine had killed one testosterone-loaded fowl. Hours later, after Eliza figured out what had happened by following prints in the snow, and she and Angus had retrieved what was left of the rooster carcass, the kids demonstrated how far they’d come recently by asking, “Is there enough to still eat it?” Sadly, there wasn’t, but just the fact that doing so was a reasonable expectation for them fed my frugal, parental soul.

² All alcohol is beyond our budget, as I’ve mentioned before. The only alcohol we’ve had was at other people’s homes or wine brought to a rice-and-beans dinner party we threw a few weeks ago. My friend David Guenther and I distilled some hard alcohol from maize when we worked in Africa together, and so I’m thinking about giving it another go with some of the corn we grow this summer.

³ We have since collected another 37 gallons of sap and will soon have an entire gallon of dark, strong maple syrup, which is much better than that thin, weak Grade-A stuff that we’re usually forced to buy at $20 a quart. Not bad for about an hour of labor—30 minutes of drilling, tapping the trees, and hanging jugs and buckets to collect the sap, 15 minutes of toting the sap to the house, and 15 minutes of careful watching and stirring at the end. Later today, we will have $80 worth of our favorite sweetener. Even better, all six of us worked on the project together, and that small fact alone makes it all worthwhile.

⁴ If you ever decide to play at being 21st-century Nearings, who wrote extensively about their back-to-the-land life, then by all means, do not overlook this essential guide to basic living, written by 150 authors and edited by John and Martha Storey. It’s now daily reading.

Photograph by W. Hodding Carter

Posted in Extreme Frugality | No Comments »