The Frugal Farm Living life deliberately

Granola is one of those things at the store that costs much more than I am willing to pay. It is usually chock full of fat and sugar, as well, and is more like a dessert than a breakfast cereal. The naturally frugal solution is to make your own at home. Oatmeal, after all, is super cheap when you buy it in bulk. My problem with most granola recipes, though, is that they also call for exotic, expensive ingredients, and require baking for a long time at a low temperature and need to be stirred every five minutes. I do spend a lot of time in the kitchen, but opening my oven every five minutes for an hour is not my idea of fun.  read more »

On Saturday afternoon my four children happily drudgingly helped me weed the strawberry bed. I was just handing out popsicles to them all when Frugaldad came out of the addition, blood on his hands and dripping down his face, cursing like a sailor and saying something fell on his head. I grabbed some towels, told him to put direct pressure on his head, made a quick call to my sister-in-law down the road, put the kids in the van (half of them hadn't even gotten their popsicles unwrapped), dropped them off at their cousins' house, and took Frugaldad to the urgent care clinic.  read more »

How does your garden grow?

Last week I got most of the summer seeds in the ground shortly before a big rainstorm. We've had an unusual amount of rain over the last week so I haven't even needed to water the garden. Yesterday little sprouts started popping out of the ground! We've got corn, cucumbers, green beans, and squash up so far. The melons haven't sprouted yet but the weather has been a little bit cool. I haven't planted pumpkins yet or the herbs.

On the ankle front, my orthopedic surgeon has declared me clinically healed and I am splint-free! I am glad to be able to wear all my shoes again!

I also had an ultrasound last week and if I can figure out how to do it, I'll post some video from the ultrasound, and some pictures, too.  read more »

Remember the Wall of Wild? This morning we saw FOUR baby foxes! They seem to be waiting for their mother to come back. They are camera-shy, though and I could only catch two of them. I will upload pictures later when I have some extra time.

edited to add: I uploaded one picture to my image gallery and a whole bunch to my Flickr account.

My sister was pretty mortified that I'd take apart a handmade card that someone had sent me (for a thank-you, birthday, etc) to save the usable bits for reuse and toss the rest of the card to avoid cluttering up my house. Tell me, who's right? Take my poll and leave a comment explaining your answer!