Being Frugal on the On-Grid Farm pt. 2

The biggest impact that a stay-at-home homesteading wife can make is (drum roll please)...Food.  Always comes down to food, it seems.  How much can I save, how much do I spend, how much can I grow, how much should I cook. 

Let's start with saving.  I am far from being an expert.  When I worked, I loved couponing and collecting points or bucks or rewards and making $90 purchases for $2; it was so exciting.  I still have soap from probably three years ago; that is not so exciting.  And, yes, 75% of us bathe everyday.  So that's not the reason.  I even gave away a lot of items. But it was so fun!

Now, I use no coupons.  Let's face it, they are usually for pricey or  ultra-processed items that are not necessary or are not good for you.   Most of the products that I used coupons for I now make from scratch, whether it be food, such as potatoes au gratin, or body care like toothpaste and mouthwash.  But as "they" say, if you have a coupon for something you use, use it!  I don't think I would save as much as the Sunday paper costs to get coupons, and I hate to print them out and cut them and, ugh!

I guess I am a bulk buyer.  I buy bulk meat from Zaycon  at 40 pounds a pop, and divide and freeze or can.  Admittedly, I hope that once our new rabbit stock gets going, and our incubator chickens are a constant, and we have the pasture pigs going well, the rest of my meat will be from local grass fed farmers and Zaycon and grocery store meat will be a thing of the past. 

I buy a lot of items at Sam's Club: beans, sugar, dry milk, cheese.  I buy 50# of potatoes for $14 at a local flea market  and can or dehydrate most of the bag.  I also take advantage of super sales or cheaper places like Aldi's for food.  Again, freeze, dehydrate and can.  One of my favorite blogs is A Working Pantry.  She always has fabulous ideas for stretching everything!  Check her out sometime.

Another thing that I have learned over the past year of being at home is saving by portion control.  I would make a huge pot of beans and we would eat it for supper and I would have a massive amount of leftovers.  I would put some in freezer bags for later use, but it seemed that "later" never came.  Eventually this bag would be thrown to the chickens when I cleaned out the freezer and couldn't figure out what it was or it didn't look appealing.  So now, I make less, and I don't put any leftovers in the freezer.  They go in lunch containers and are used up until gone.  No waste. 

On the other hand, I tend to freeze my leftover tomato sauce now.  I buy the big #10 cans for less than $3.  When I open one the plan is to have spaghetti, chili and pizza within the week to use all of the sauce.  Sometimes this doesn't happen.  So I have half-gallon jars of moldy tomato sauce in the back of the fridge.  Yes, that is just poor planning and poor followthrough.  But, since I have learned my own weaknesses and if I know that I am not going to be using it all, I will go ahead and throw it in a freezer bag, label it and toss it in the freezer.  There are days when I can spaghetti sauce or pizza sauce or even chili, and then I can use those freezer bags as well as the numerous cans with no waste.

There are many ways to save when you buy food, and different ways work better for different people.  What ways work best for you?