Frugal Things, February

 Other than our normal stuff like eating from what we have on hand in freezers, cellar, etc., baking our bread and cooking from scratch daily, and getting books from the library rather than buying them, I'm not remembering much of note in the frugal department this month.  Not that we spent money lavishly or indulged in things we wouldn't normally do, just that there seemed to be fewer bargains found this month.  Or, maybe just other than bills we didn't spend much money?  I mean, not spending money you don't have to is the ultimate frugal accomplishment, right?

Of note, DH did find a listing on Craigslist for a place that was having a used horse blanket sale the next day with nothing priced over $25, so he and I went to that to see if I could pick up any deals.  And I did. They aren't beautiful (they've had repairs), but they're solid, and have all their necessary straps and buckles.  I got one that is a heavyweight, which I don't have in Poetess's size, and one that will make a handy spare if the Poetess happens to destroy or soak her mid-weight blanket and needs another to wear while the original dries/gets mended.  Best of all, they were only $20 each. If you want to know how much of a frugal win that was, just google mid-weight or heavy-weight horse turnout blankets and see how pricey they are new. I also picked up a blue square fleece cooler with ties for just $5.  It has a small triangular tear which will be easy to mend.  

I ordered all my garden seeds and onion starts.  Of the five places I ordered from, one was having a 25% off special on all orders placed that day, another was offering free shipping with no minimum order amount, and yet another had some flower seeds I'd been thinking about for 50% off.  Which ended up being a savings of about $20 total.  With a good growing season, that $20 savings on seeds will compound into hundreds of dollars saved on food (that won't have to be bought at the store) in the coming year.

I don't go to the grocery store but about twice a month, and I'd been watching their weekly ads for the best time to go shop (as long as we didn't run out of milk, everything else is just restock, not totally out of it).  I went when they were having a 2-day special on our favorite brand of ice cream: Buy One Get One Free!  Since this ice cream is normally about $6 a carton, that's a great savings.  (Note here; due to my sensitivities to a lot of things like artificial sweeteners and soy proteins as well as some other soy derived additives, there's not a lot of brands of ice cream I can safely eat. Which is why we get the pricey ice cream.)  I bought four cartons, hoping that lasts us until the next time this brand goes on sale. 

This is probably a good spot to mention how useful a stand alone freezer can be as a money saving tool.  Without that extra freezer space, I wouldn't be able to fit four boxes of ice cream in my freezer at once!

I found the brand of wet cat food that the Yarn Thief eats on sale for $3 a box cheaper at the local farm store than it is even on Amazon, so I bought a month's worth while I was there getting horse farm stuff.

DH and I used a few tractor bucket scoops of the pine mulch we got free back in December to mulch around and in the grape arbor and the rhubarb patch.  Hopefully that will work well to keep the weeds suppressed in those areas.

I was given a whole bunch of quilting fabric. My mom was approached by a lady she goes to church with, whose quilter sister had recently passed away, and asked if I would like the fabric that had belonged to the deceased sister (since apparently my mom tells people about my quilts). It is mostly largish scraps, fat quarters, some small yardage, and a huge Ziploc bag of pre-cut strips. In total, there is about three kitchen-sized trash bags full, all nicely folded and bagged with matching/complimentary fabrics together. There are some put together 4-patch blocks, and about half of the pre-cut strips are in Christmas fabrics, which are handy for making lap quilts or table runners I can quickly sew up for gifts.  I've been thinking for a while that someday when life isn't so jam packed full and crazy I'd like to start making quilts for charity (such as women's shelters or infant/children's units at hospitals ), and a lot of these fabrics would be great for that since if they aren't Christmassy they are floral or child-themed designs.

What frugal things have you done or run across this month?

The Weird Weather Continues

 It sure doesn't look, or feel, like February in Michigan around here.  Today it's 72 degrees.  Yes, 72.  In Michigan. On February 27th.  The sky is blue, robins are singing (robins!), kildeer are arriving as I type.  Kildeer!  In February!  This is very unusual.

I have laundry hanging on the clothesline.  Don't think I've ever hung laundry in February before.

I gave both horses are good tail wash and conditioning before lunch, it was that warm all ready.  Their tails look and comb so much better now. I'm really glad that I got a chance (without freezing them or myself) to wash out all the accumulated mud and gunk from the winter.  I've been brushing their tails several times a week, but when they just go out and roll in the mud (or drag their tails through mud/slush), the hairs themselves tend to get gummy and coarse even with brushing.  This afternoon, those silky tails are blowing in the wind.

February, when it's not cold, has been way warmer than a typical mid-winter warm spell.  There wasn't much frost in the ground this winter, and it's all gone out of the ground all ready.  The mud is dried up and the ground is firm in all but the shadiest places.  

The garden is actually dry enough that we could till it!  Unheard of!  And I am hoping DH is willing to till it when he gets home from work later today.  We were so busy in the Fall (and I was so, so lacking in energy and stamina) that the garden didn't get cleaned up before winter.  Didn't get stakes or tomato cages pulled, and didn't get the weeds turned under.  Also didn't get the garlic planted.

This really warm weather lately has given me a chance to pull stakes and tomato cages.  And to try to redeem myself and hopefully have a garlic crop this summer; as soon as the ground thawed I tucked all my seed garlic into the part of the garden I had intended to plant it back in October. I covered it with a few inches of straw for mulch, and hope that it will be fooled into thinking it's been there all winter, instead of (delayed and forgotten about) in the garage.

Not only have I gotten the garlic (hopefully) saved and on it's way to growing, I also planted the rest of my tulip bulbs (ordered in July, arrived in September) that I was unable to get into the ground in the Fall.  Fingers crossed those grow, too.

Now, I know not to get too excited for Spring.  Because the current warmth comes to a crashing end tonight.  We're on the edge of a cold front that is due to push through (bringing storms) and temperatures that just keep falling all through tonight, tomorrow daytime and tomorrow night. Thursday we *might* see a high temperature of 40 degrees.  So I'll be feeling like winter again and wanting soup and hot chocolate and other comforting winter time foods.

Tonight, though, we're having chicken Caesar salad, with chicken breast cooked on the grill, and maybe even eating it out on the patio!

Horse Update, February

In the past month, we've had super cold weather for a little over a week. And then a warm up where all the frost left the ground and things were soupy mud, then deep mud, then fairly dried up. And then back to cold(ish) weather again, followed by another warm up.

Poetess checking out the sled that I used to carry lunch hay to the pasture during the cold snowy weather.

This was followed shortly after by a quick warm up that included an all night heavy rain (about 3"??) before the ground was very thawed.  Which meant that one Friday morning I woke up to a small pond in a portion of the circle created by the driveway.  It was quite  large puddle, and more than 6" deep in the middle.  So I took advantage of the opportunity to do some water training with the horses. 

The LBM wasn't sure she really wanted to go in the water, but with a little coaxing she followed me in both times I asked her to walk through it.  Poetess, on the other hand, seems to love water.  She really enjoyed marching through the water, even stopping in it and splashing around with a front foot as if she was contemplating throwing herself down for a good roll in it.  I suspect had it been warmer than the mid-30s she would have done just that.

During the soupy mud phase, I daily came in from leading horses into or out of turnout with lots of mud splashed onto my pant legs.  You can definitely tell how tall my waterproof boots are, LOL.

The last Saturday in January I went to a used tack sale and came home with some western gear (because somehow I got rid of the majority of my pads and the only work bridle that wasn't pony sized decades ago).  Since I'll be riding the LBM western, as well as probably a majority of future training horses and anything I might buy for the grandkids to ride, I felt like I needed to restock a bit in that area.

One purchase I was especially glad to find at the sale was some over-sized western stirrups. During our really cold spell, I found that my insulated winter muck boots are too wide to be safe in the western stirrups I had. And it was way too cold (and at times, wet/slushy) to wear my paddock boots during the LBM's training sessions those days. Wet/frozen feet definitely are not my thing at this middle-aged stage in life. So I had decided I needed to find some what I called 'big wide man-foot stirrups'.  And I did!  In brand new condition for $20 (current online brand new price $65).  

They don't match my saddle, but I don't care, as for me they are all about warm feet and safety for winter training rides, not for show.

As you can see in the picture below, they are quite a bit wider than the original stirrups for that saddle.

I've been riding the LBM a couple times a week.  So far, only on days DH is working from home (he has to be in-office three days a week now) in case there's any unexpected dismounts.  But she's doing so well (remember, she'd been in training in the past but not really worked in 2023) that I think very soon we're going to move on to riding whether he's home or not.  I always give her a quick longe session to warm her up and see where her brain is, so that will be the litmus test for riding while he's gone.  

As I told him the other day, when I'm on her back she doesn't feel any less reliable than any rental stable trail horse I've ever been on.  So, while it's definitely not the fine tuned contact and dressage horse feel I'm gotten used to in the past decade or more, I don't think it's high risk for being unsafe.  She's actually a very calm, steady horse. I think she would make someone with a horse experience and a firm yet calm hand, a super trail riding horse, or even an endurance horse.

view from her back

While the weather was in it's 'good' phase, we worked on fencing for the third pasture, getting all the posts in as well as insulators and the electric fencing tape installed.  Just need to brace the gate post and hang the gate and that one will be ready for use.

DH put together and we hung all four of the remaining  stall doors.  Two need different bottom boards; with the pitch (for drainage) of the cement floor over the 48' length of the barn we had to do some creativity with the height of bottom boards to get all the grills to look good and not like they were at different heights from one stall to the next.  Which means two of the stall doors need 2 x 8 boards for the lowest board instead of 2 x 6. You might be able to see in the picture below that we have yet to put the bottom --Wolmanized-- boards on each stall front.

We also bought a bunch of 2" x 6"x 12' boards for making the remaining dividing walls between stalls, but at least half the batch the lumber mill gave us were not good and will have to go back and be exchanged before we can finish those walls.  Boards with multiple raw/live edges just don't stack vertically very well and won't work for our purpose. As DD2, who took several classes in forestry as part of her wildlife management degree, said "These look like they were made from pulp sticks, not saw logs."

During the week where we had a string of days in the mid-40s and even up to 60 degrees, I stained the walls for the next group of stalls. Which is one entire stall. two stall fronts, and all but the dividing wall in the adjoining stall. The doors will get stained once we have the right bottom boards for them (DH put in some scrap ones in the meantime).

Do you remember in January's update where I mentioned having cold weather problems with gate posts shifting? One gate no longer lined up with it's latch and I had to use a chain to hold it shut.  Well, once everything thawed, DH was able to use the tractor to fix that post and now the gate and latch meet up correctly.  Hooray!

We have discovered a new gate woe, however.  With the gustier winds of the Spring-like days, we found that when the big 16' gate is opened (say, to drive the tractor through), the wind will take it and ram it into the mesh, bending the mesh, getting the prong that goes into the latch caught in the fence as well as allowing the top of the gate to lean on the strand of hot tape.  Not a gate you want to touch without unplugging the fencer in the barn first!

We are going to have to rig up some sort of 'door stop' for this issue so the gate can't open quite that far.  Gates touching the fence is not allowed!

Oh! Almost forgot to add that the water hydrant in my barn thawed and had been back in use for a few weeks.  Then we had two cold windy days in a row (highs only in the 20s) and it froze again.  :0(  But only for a couple of days, then the temperatures returned to 40ish and the sun came out and it thawed.  We definitely are going to have to do some investigating and repairing of that issue this summer so that it doesn't happen next winter.

Sewing and Stitching Update, February

 I did quite a bit of counted cross-stitching in the past month.  I guess I started it since the January update, and have the cross stitched portion (not to count the backstitching, etc.) about half done already!

The pattern is one I purchased off of Etsy and is by the same designer as the fox I stitched last winter.  It's a cute little Eurasian red squirrel in a very warm and comfy looking sweater.  I decided not to do mine on quite as dark of cloth as the original and am using a piece of  'natural' colored Aida instead.

In addition to stitching the squirrel, I've been working at least a few hours a week on the baby quilt for grandbaby #6.  It took a week for me to get all the pieces for the star blocks cut.  31 blocks with 17 pieces per block = 527 pieces.

Then I started sewing the star blocks together, beginning with the lowest number of stars needed in a particular fabric combo and working my way up the the highest number.  That took about a week and a half of my designated sewing time.

one of these for the center

two of these

eight of these

eight of these also

(color really off in this photo)

twelve of these

You're probably thinking "how are those blocks ever going to be in the same quilt and go together?"  If the mental picture I have, and the rudimentary drawing in colored pencils that I did before even starting to cut any fabric turn into reality, it's going to work.  Trust me.

It'll be a loud quilt, that's for sure, but hopefully cohesively chaotic rather than just a clashing mess.

first four rows

Knitting Update, February

This month, I finished sock #1 of my Textured Lace socks, and have five repeats (of 7) of the leg chart done on sock #2!  Does that mean in March I'll be showing you a totally finished sock #2?  That would be nice.  Maybe I'll make it my goal to complete sock #2 in February.

I read five books (!!!):

1. Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher.  I think I liked this book.  Although for most of it I was just kind of half-interested reading along.  I did read it all the way through, and it did get better (as in, start to look like a cohesive plot line rather than random stuff involving random characters).  Overall, I didn't think it was as good as it had been hyped to be--I mean, I requested it through my library and then waited more than three months for it, it was supposedly that popular.  But it wasn't bad.

2. Voices by Arnaldur Indridason. Another in the Detective Erlendur series.  Another great read, as the previous two in the series were.  Not a cozy mystery, yet not overly gory or graphic (in murder or in romantic scenes) either.  Will be putting the next one in this series on my To Read List for later in 2024.

3. The Half-Stitched Amish Quilting Club by Wanda Brunstetter.  Some of this author's books I like and some I really find not as well written.  This one was fairly decently done with just a few spots I thought not so great.  I will probably be seeking out the next one in this trilogy and seeing if it's good too.

4. Dream Town by Lee Goldberg.  This is the latest in the Eve Ronin series, and it did not disappoint.  I absolutely devoured this book in three days (no knitting got done those evenings!)

5. Hello Stranger by Katherine Center. This is her newest novel, and, like her others, it sucks you in and is hard to put down.

Currently I'm reading The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan.  I just started it, so will talk about it next month rather than today.