Maple Grove Farm

Looking Forward to the Weekend

We have a weekend of sewing planned.  I have been spending some time thinking about my 4 DD's clothing needs and I need to get some clothing completed before summer.  Each child needs at least 2 good dresses for church and other social occaisons.  Each child then needs about 7 play dresses or skirts.  Only 2 of my DD's have enough and 2 are in need.  Some of them just grow so fast it is hard to keep up.

Before we were dress only wearing, it was much easier to keep up because I only sewed for about half of their needs.  They are just so hard on their clothing.  On a positive note, I was able to buy a serger and expect that the dresses will hold up better now.  I am also planning on making some aprons to help protect their clothes.  This weekend our pastor's family will come over and his wife and I will spend a couple of days cutting items out and sewing.  I expect to finish at least 4-7 dresses and 2 skirts.  My oldest daughter will assist me.  Right now I am waiting on some new patterns, so that it is affecting how many dresses I will be able to sew.

With the high price of fuel, I am glad I am staying home all weekend other than a fire department banquet with my husband.  It really affected my food budget also.  I can tell that others are staying at  home as traffic is significantly decreased. 

With the rising costs of everything, I am focused more and more on raising our own food.  Our garden is doing okay, but not stellar.  I am not sure about some of the problems we are having.  Things are not sprouting, despite the fact they are cool weather items and they have been fertilized and water - spinach and peas.  Every year I have trouble with spinach. 

We will be butchering our 3 pigs that we are feeding out on corn right now.  I will be taking the hams, bacon, and a few roasts and then the rest will be ground up for sausage and ground pork.  These are the two items I use the most of.  I never seem to have enough for sausage and so I have been buying it from the store.  We are also going to buy a whole cow from my father.  After that, we will probably stop buying meat from the store altogether.

I have been working on a list of the items we will be buying at the store and pricing them.  We will be down to only staples like rice, wheat, coffee, salt, etc.  I want to know exactly how often these will be purchased and plan for their cost to make sure my grocery budget is being met.  Other than these items we will have to live off of what we are producing here on the farm.

Untitled Comment

07:02, 2008-Mar-13 .. Posted by gabbie427

We are staying home more often as well to save on gas, etc. We just bought a whole hog for the first time, and picked it up a few days ago. We are planning on buying a half of beef this spring as well!!!!

God's Blessings,
Amy Jo

saving $$

07:07, 2008-Mar-20 .. Posted by Vickie

We are trying to do some of the same things you mentioned. I only have one daughter & I'm trying to sew some for her & myself too. (I'm self taught so it has to be something easy for now)

One I would suggest is check out any local thrift stores. We have a goodwill that does 1/2 off everything about 3x per year. I do my best to make those & I usually find alot for my daughter & some for me. We don't do dresses only, but I do not allow certain things like short shorts, tube tops, etc. So the things I do allow her to wear are usually pleantiful. --Hope it all goes well & you save lots of $$.
~Take care