So do you think we've changed?

[Jared77]

Canesisters posted up a newspaper here http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=35211 and it got me thinking.....with the Great Recession we experienced do you think we've REALLY changed any of our habits or was it just a bump in the road?

I saw an article that talked about how more adults are spending less time on Facebook. I thought that was interesting. But really though are less people using credit? More people paying cash? More people gardening? Canning? More people cooking at home?

What do you think? What have you seen?

 

[seedcorn]

No changes. Maybe less garden as we age

 

[897tgigvib]

Well, I never used credit for money. I've had a few small loans in my life to purchase a used car but even those were over 20 years ago. I have a card from the bank that's shaped like a credit card that can be used in an atm machine but i found out they use tricky timings with them to be able to charge more than what you get. I might've been slow on the uptake but at least i finally learned, not me, I'm not using one of those machines, not ever. (Take out 20 bucks and it costs 1.50 how dumb is that?)

And then there's reading about recessions and property value fluctuations. Meantime for me, my inflation index works differently than everyone elses. Price of coffee goes up...get a cheap espresso maker! Price of doritos goes up...down to one 10 cent bag (that now costs a dollar) a month. Price of gas goes up...become the slowest driver on the road, and want a bumper sticker that says...
"If you want me to go faster
you can buy my gas for me!"

...and hardly ever go anywhere. It's not a real block of wood taped behind my gas pedal, only an imaginary one.

So, things financially changed for everyone else, but not that much for me.

Only, the inflations on the price of land, which seems to be the main inflation, have made my dream of owning a stony quarter acre always just a dream. You'd think a stony quarter acre would cost maybe 5,000 dollars, but noooo! It has to be not just more, but with more zeroes at the end of the number.

I guess I blame it all on real estate tycoons. Those poor folks. I mean, if things go sour for them it means having to wait another year before they buy their new 400 horsepower zoomrod for their daughter. And by golly, they surely will get the newest computerized toilet even if it means lowering the salary of their employees!

Meantime, I just found out the cost of dentures. Forgive my attitude. I think I'll carve some from some Manzanita wood!

 

[digitS']

The stock market nearly reached a record high last week. . . . it was bounding around there on Thursday & Friday but, Good Heavens, they aren't sooo smart that they've accounted for this sequestration! Nah, I think it is partly just the usual speculating . . .

The US economy lost $16 trillion in the Great Recession, CNN told us a couple years ago. That was real money, or as real as it gets - relative to other nations' paper. See, how American influence would ebb & flow with an event like that? Of course, the world's economy has been busy balancing itself relative to this "Euro-American" recession. Bumpy ride but it often is -- room for the speculators that way :/.

We had to get out from under some of the debt. There isn't a way to maintain families by having below zero savings rates! And, that was where we were in 2007.

I think it is very, very difficult for us to make large changes. Let's say somebody is buying Marshall's 1/4 acre and he/she plunked down a 2,500 square foot home on it. Heck, there was only 10,000 square feet to play with - now there's concrete driveway, shade and house on more than half! Whattyagonnado???

Food production went out the window. Food preservation went out the window. Lucky if all savings don't go out the window. Downsizing may be possible but that may just be subtracting rather than adding to home production.

Land? They are not making it anymore.

Steve

 

[Mickey328]

We're...evolving We've been moving toward a more economical way of life for quite a while, but the current conditions have spurred us to greater efforts. We have managed to get all our loans/mortgages etc paid off, thank heaven, so essentially we only need cash money for our living expenses and utilities. We're in the process of trying to cut those down as much as possible as well. I have one actual credit card (or I did...it may be expired for now ) I do use my debit card because I don't like to carry cash...but then it comes directly from our account, so there are no surprises at the end of the month.

Over the last couple of years, I've done quite a bit more canning and plan to do even more this year. Our garden will expand enormously this year...well, not the area, but we'll be putting in a lot more veggies. I've put buckets in our showers so the "waiting to warm up water" can be saved, and during the lathering process, the spray is also directed into the bucket. Can't believe it works out to about 2 gallons per shower! I use that water for the houseplants and excess is going into a barrel outside...they've announced water restrictions for the coming growing season, so we're squirreling it away now.

We got chickens; haven't purchased an egg (or what passes for one in the store) since last July; we got our rabbit breeding stock so after about June, we shouldn't have to buy much beef. Going to try to "sneak in" a couple or 3 small (maybe 5 at a time) batches of CX's this year too, so that should seriously reduce our cost of chicken. We're in the process of shredding paper to make papercrete to make bricks to shore up our new outside entrance to the crawl space...that'll be WAY cheaper than using wood, which would eventually rot and need replacing.

We've also changed our thought processes...if we decide we need something now, our first thought is to check Craig's List and thrift stores; we rarely think about buying anything new any more. We're also much, much more conscious about the 3 R's...both for the environment and for our pocketbooks. If there's anything that can be re-purposed for something useful, we do it...saves us $$ and saves the environment more stress as well.

Having more space is a distant dream for us. We'd LOVE to have enough room to have dairy goats and a cow and a bigger garden, room to grow some grain...all that good stuff. At this point, it's just not feasible There's some decent land to be had in this country, but moving isn't an option for us at this point. So, in the meantime, we're doing everything in our power to do what we can with what we have. One of the neighbors isn't too impressed with the changes we're making, but we're not breaking any rules so...tough you-know-what

 

[Smiles Jr.]

J-rod -

We have changes a few things over the past 7 years but some of our changes are due to retirement and attaining a totally different station in life.

We have had some gigantic medical bills over the past 10 years that we may never recover from. If anyone thinks that health insurance will cover it all, you had better think again. Grandma (DW) ran off the road one night after hitting a deer and rolled her car 6 times down a steep hill and crashed into a creek. She sustained a concussion, a broken neck, ruptured disk, and internal injuries. Three months later I had a major stroke and was not able to work anymore.

So frugality is the order of the day for us. Grandma is still, and will continue to be, restricted in her ability to get around so our long distance and local travel is limited. So we have tried to only go out one day during the week and on Sunday for church. It's hard to do in these times but we try. One day a week we have set aside as our shopping day and we usually go either east or west to a town where there are stores for us to do our grocery shopping and have lunch at a nice restaurant then wander around in either Rural King or Walmart. Once in a while we will go to a movie, too. This is so much different from our lifestyle when we had kids at home and we lived in a suburban location. I had a full time job in mechanical engineering and grandma had a part time job at a child care center.

Now we live in a very tiny house on 11 acres in a very rural area. So we have a rule that any time we want to purchase something either for the house or for the yard we must get rid of something first. This really, really changes our purchasing habits.

We have focused our efforts on being as self sufficient as possible with 3 large gardens, fruits, chickens, rabbits, honey bees, fish, and goats. I rebuilt an old spinning wheel and when we're cooped up in the house in the winter I spin and grandma sews, knits, and crochets. I'm a born tinkerer and I barter with neighboring farmers by repairing and maintaining their tractors, implements, and other farm equipment. In 2012 I received half a cow, a hole 280 lb. hog, 4 bushels of sweet corn, 10 bushels of feed corn, 10 square bales of alfalfa, 20 nice sized large mouth bass, 20 nice sized catfish, and many other things in payment for my work. All of the meat was processed, vacuum sealed and frozen by another friend for free. I can have as much corn as I want but we cannot consume very much. We had so much silver queen and bodacious sweet corn two years ago that we got tired of it. Last year the corn crop was not so good. I also have 6 cords of wood stacked out back. Stocking up on firewood is a delicate thing - you want to store as much as possible (especially when it's free) but if you don't use it up it can get too dry and firewood that is too dry burns up very fast and the Btu value goes down.

While our lifestyle changes are partly due to financial reasons we also feel a very strong need to be as self sufficient as possible because of the nation's problems of lack of leadership, looming financial collapse, and civil unrest. I think that we're in for some very rocky roads over the next few years and stability in our country is questionable. We're not really preppers but we do have a cold cellar full of food and a small room dedicated to food and supplies storage.

 

[digitS']

Mickey, you might be able to get away with the CX's fairly well. Don't alienate your neighbors, tho'. You never can tell when they might turn over their garden space to you .

Here is what I once did about this time of year. I put 35 chicks in my greenhouse. It has a concrete foundation and only the shelves are used for plants for the first few weeks. The chicks had the run of the floor.

In my actual coop, I had pullets for laying. When I began allowing them out on the lawn, my nextdoor neighbors said, "I didn't know you had chickens again!" I said NOTHING about the 35 in the greenhouse!

Those chicks make almost no noise for the first couple of months. Before they were even thinking about creating a ruckus - they were in the freezer.

Oh, 1 tip: if you have insulation board in your greenhouse and they grow tall enuf to reach it - you might have to put them in the freezer a little sooner than you'd expected. Eating the insulation board lowers their feed costs, however :/.

Steve

 

[Mickey328]

Wow, Smiles...you're pretty much living the life we aspire to I'm sorry for all the health issues, though...but it sounds like you're coping very well! Love the idea of getting rid of one thing before acquiring one. I tend to be quite a pack rat and we're so overstuffed now that trying to find something is just a nightmare. The worst 4 words heard in our house are "it's in the garage". Yeah...we've got all kinds of stuff that's useful for all kinds of things, but it's really not much use if you can't find it! If I only get one big project done this year, it's that garage! Well my craft room (aka crap room) is also very bad...and we need the space. I pretty much don't do any scrap booking or card making any more, so I'm trying to sell off as much of my supplies as possible. The room will eventually be used for storing our canned goods and canning supplies as well as a fodder system for the critters.

Thanks Steve, but this neighbor is a major PITA The funny thing is that he was a farmer and came from a long line of farmers....but he has very, very specific ideas about how things should look and be and if you don't agree, they're you're just flat wrong. The neighbor on the other side is totally the opposite...when we got the chickens she asked all kinds of questions and thought it was a great idea...even said she might think about having some herself. PITA has some ornamentals, a few trees and lots of grass...which he mows at least twice a week, all but getting out the manicure scissors to make sure it's all even. He doesn't eat eggs or chicken, so we can't even offer to share the bounty. He allows his wife a tiny little plot for a "garden" which consists of about 3 tomato plants.

Our zoning permits 6 chickens...no roosters, and no matter the age. We have 6 layers so getting any more would leave us out of compliance. Dave's busy getting our rabbitry built on the side of the house next to the good neighbor and we plan on sneaking in a few small batches of CX's in there. Five at a time shouldn't be an issue; she doesn't care and I'm also thinking they'll be in the freezer before PITA knows they're there...if he ever even does. We'll have them inside for the first 2 or 3 weeks, then in the rabbitry for maybe a month and then...freezer camp With less than 1/4 acre, our space is limited, so we don't have a greenhouse, and really no place to put one. We have a largish garden shed and a portable coop/run. If the shed weren't packed full, we might be able to "stash" a few in there for a while, but it's also near PITA's place so...I'm thinking inside then the rabbitry will be best. And with just doing 5 at a time, we should be able to get 'em all processed in a day or less as well.