#frugalskill

[thestudentfarmer]

Hello everyone!

I've just gotten back from a much needed vacation. So things here are gonna be a lil off for a short bit.

This week, I've got to do some cleanup in the garden, plus some seed selecting and starting/direct seeding. And some new garden space set up, now that we no longer have the ducks, this space is being used for more garden area. in addition I'll be getting home ready for swinging back into "normal" mode. (Yay meal planning!)

Thank you for being patient with me while we get back into the swing :) there will be a few small random posts this week as I'm able to get to things~

For now, this lil pic to tide over :)

Sunflowers, kale, hollyhock are finally taking off :)

I'm hoping to use this area as a supplemental feed zone and shade zone. If I can get it to mostly self seed even better :)

I seeded a bit thick as this is a "minimal/no touch" zone. As they grow out I'll thin a bit more, but mostly I've been leaving this to do its thing alone.

🌱🌻Happy Homesteading and Gardening 🌻🌱

[thestudentfarmer]

Hey everyone,

my apologies, but it may be a little sparse on picture posts for a week or two. I've been working on taking care of laundry now that theres some calm, sunny weather again for a bit and been getting around to a bit of a home cleansing/purge while preparing for the next planting season :)

For now, i thought id share a bit of a ramble. I found a store near me that sells packs of beef fat which is pretty rare so I grabbed one to see if I could figure out how many I might need for a master batch of tallow for the month. Finally got around to rendering it and For $4.00 and a few hours of time I got 1 and a little over 1/2 pints of beef tallow. This'll be enough fat for cooking for maybe a week? Depending on what I'm cooking.

Plus a decent chunk of the crumbles tuff afterwords for salad topping. :D. It's delicious fresh and hot tossed with seasoning too!

But if your someone who doesn't like the crispy bits, if you've got chickens its a liked snack for them too.

Next time I'll see about probably double the amount to render for at least 2 weeks so we can pull away from butter for a bit (it's gotten very expensive for butter and heavy cream recently).

I'm hoping this store will have some chunks of pig fat similar too. If so I'm going to buy some next month to render and make soap. I'm down to the last few bars now and have been procrastinating heavy on making the next batches.

If not I suppose I may need to research a good tallow bar recipe to add to the homemade recipe book. Good thing I'm cleaning house, it'll make some space for curing bars and help me find the molds so I can make a few batches at once.

End of my ramble for now, the laundry pile calls.

🌱Happy Homesteading everyone🌱

2 16 2024