Please Help Spread the Word Before this Money is Gone

Well Earned Travel, a Fitting Tribute and Funding to Make it all Possible.

Frugal living is something that many of our parents, grandparents and great grandparents have been familiar with for years. This lifestyle is nothing new to them and they can certainly teach us a thing or two about household budgeting after what they have been through during The War.

Making the most of whatever was available, adopting a waste not, want not attitude and trying their best to eke out every penny was all part of a normal day. This has never been more apparent than during wartime.

Vegetable growing, sewing, dressmaking, batch cooking for their hungry families and keeping the home fires burning may have been essential to survival. Meanwhile, husbands, fathers and sons would be in far off places, facing the challenges and dangers of war. Back then, there were no such luxuries as computers, globally networked mobile phones or public telephony - communications were whatever brief notes could be scribbled and sent to comfort loved ones and offer a tiny fragment of reassurance to those back home. It really is amazing just how much we take for granted nowadays when we get down to thiking about it all.

The Dig for Victory scheme was introduced as soon as World War II began, meaning that every available space back home had to be turned over to food production. Stores would never last the entire nation  for six months, let alone years, so allotments began springing up everywhere.

Looking back, it is difficult to imagine how people coped living with the stresses of a war-torn nation while trying to carry on with life in the absense of many of the able-bodied men. The fight was as much here as anywhere else, only here it was a fight for survival in a slightly different way. Life was a struggle.

All of those survivors deserve recognition and all deserve to be able to afford to visit those far-flung places where they once fought or where loved ones lost their lives. Hopefully, the following will be of help to some. All that I ask is that you spread the word to all concerned before this funding is gone.

Heroes Return 2 is a £17 million scheme providing funding to WWII veterans, their wives or husbands, widows or widowers and, where needed, accompanying carers to visit the overseas areas where World War II veterans saw active service.

Launched in 2004 as part of the Big Lottery Fund's Veterans Reunited programme, the scheme has already helped thousands of UK veterans to revisit battlefields where they once fought and for widows, spouses and carers to witness where it all happened.

Many fought and died to defend our nation in order that we might enjoy freedom and safety. We have what we have because of our wartime heroes. It is only natural that we should make every effort to ensure all those affected can afford to make the trip to pay a final and fitting tribute to their loved ones who lost their lives in the name of this country.

Grants of up to *£5,500 are available to veterans resident in the UK and Republic of Ireland who fought with or alongside British forces in WWII. Widows and widowers of veterans are also eligible, as are carers and spouses traveling with veterans.

Ted Cachart, himself a WW2 veteran who has successfully been through the funding process, is more than willing to help anyone through their application process. Ted can be contacted via any of the following:

Tel: 01582 737152
Mobile: 07543 550 660 
Email: info@worldwartwoheritage.com

Please help spread the word before funding ends in January 2012.


*£5500 is the total for a husband and wife as well as a carer to the far east.

Please feel free to print this blog post and redistribute it to anyone who may not know about the scheme or even to your local newspapers, radio and/or TV stations. Full details regarding the funding available from the Big Lottery Fund website.

Frugal Renovations in Full Swing...

We Have a New Front Door!

This being a Listed Building of almost 200 years old, we need planning permission before we can change anything, so the frugal way of getting around this is to replace like with like and reuse wherever possible.

You can imagine the joiner's bemused expression when I asked him to make us a brand new, wooden door after removing all the salvageable pieces from the old one to keep costs down. Thankfully, he agreed! (Thank you, Mr. R.)

A trip into the nearby village resulted in my returning to see the joiner's van parked in the street, his workbench and a gaping hole at the front of the house where the old door had been. Everything was ripped out back to bare stone walls.

Nearby, stood a brand new door, awaiting it's frugal fate. Not only had this new door to be transformed into one identical to the old one, I had even asked the joiner to salvage the glass from the middle and from the top fan lights.

The glass was carefully removed and then my friend the brillo pad helped me scrub all the old paint stains and putty until the panes were cleaned up and looking as close to new as old, frosted glass can look.

While this was being done, the joiner was busy attacking the new solid door with his saw, removing enough of it to fit in the old panel of glass. Meanwhile, he had made up the new door frame to fit - an odd size, as one might expect for our quirky little cottage.

The sun shone all day and before long, the new frame and door were in place, exact same handles, same lock and same glass as the old one. The new wood has received a coat of sealer and the letterbox didn't arrive in time to be fitted, so literally no bills can come through the door this week!

I invested in a small tin of undercoat and the same in non-drip gloss. Kindly gentleman at the store gave me a discount and threw in some free sandpaper to help with the frugal budget - people in rural communities are so helpful and supportive of one another, constantly demonstrating a mutual respect that I know I would miss if I had ever to venture into the big city.

Tomorrow, I'm half expecting the local plumber to arrive and attempt to resuscitate the old double radiator in the hall. I say 'half expect', as that's the way these things work about here. It's very much a 'take me as you find me, I'll be there when I arrive' kind of a place. Anyhow, all going well, this radiator will be heating  the main hall this winter, powered by a new pump on the hot water system attached to the backboiler behind the coal fire. Hoping against all odds that this can be saved and fixed, as it could prove sufficient to heat up the stairs, too. I'll let you know how it all goes.

To conclude tonight's blog post, I would like to add a few lines in memory of the miner who lost his life in yesterday's tragic accident at Kellingley Colliery in Yorkshire. People seldom think much about how our fuel is generated, from where it originates or how it is produced. It simply arrives for our convenience, whether it be electricity, fossil fuel or even logs. But for this family, burning coal will forever remind us.

Yesterday, Tuesday 27th September, 2011, my children lost an uncle. More tragically, their cousins lost their father. My heart goes out to Brenda and all the family involved. Be strong, support one another and may Gerry rest in peace. He will never be forgotten.

Saving Money in the Kitchen with Frugal Meals

Another Frugal and Filling Meal - Pea and Ham Soup

Having bought a large, smoked ham hough (known elsewhere as a ham hock) for £2.00, it seemed frugally fitting to make sure I got my money's worth out of it - so I did!

After about 3 hours in the slow cooker, the ham was removed, stripped from the bone and used to make ham and cheese pasta. By using all the ham plus a whole 500g pack of pasta, there was enough for at least two meals for us, so we're off to a good start.

The water used to cook the ham was then topped up and the slow cooker set in motion to make 5 litres of lovely stock for soup-making.

Once strained and returned to the pan, I added carrots, onions and a full kilo of split green peas, plus the usual salt and pepper to season.

That's it! Let this lot simmer away slowly for a few hours and give it a stir now and again to make sure the peas are all cooking evenly.

My slow cooker is a 6.5 litre, 300w model. By the time the soup was ready, I had 5 litres of the most delicious, thick and very filling pea and ham soup. Protein from all those pulses and some vitamins from the vegetables - nourishing, warming and frugally filling.

Thick Pea and Ham Soup

Ingredients

5 litres of ham stock (homemade)
500g chopped carrots (homegrown)
1 large onion, chopped (homegrown)
1kg of split green peas
Salt and pepper to season

If the soup gets too thick for your liking, simply add a little bit more water. I like to keep mine topped up to the 5 Litres, then serve it thick with a slice of home-baked bread.

You could, of course, use lentils or yellow split peas, but I fancied some nice green pea and ham soup, which freezes just as well as any other type. This recipe can also be used with homegrown peas.

Considering one tin of shop bought soup serves two people, then 5 litres of homemade soup should provide you with up to 25 portions for a total cost of around £1.30, including the electricity you used for cooking. It's quite a luxury at 5p per serving! Mine cost a bit less than this, as I had bought my split peas in bulk while they were on offer at 49p per kilo.

Estimated costs will be slightly increased if you need to buy stock cubes, carrots and onions. We grow most of our own and plan on growing all our ow veg as soo as the new garden is fully up and running.

Dried pulses may have 'best before' dates on the packaging but they should last for years if kept in air tight storage containers. The same applies to dried pasta, flours, sugar and, lest we forget, chocolate. I never miss a chance to stock up on any of these items when they are cheap. As always, the rule of this game is only ever bulk buy foodstuffs that you know you will use. Food waste means automatic disqualification from the game, otherwise.

Cutting the Grocery Budget with Frugal Food

Spicy Courgette Soup - a Frugal Recipe at 4p per portion.

Every year, I set myself a target budget for grocery shopping. I've done this for so long that it has become more of a game - some might even call it a standing joke.

For the past few years, I have set my challenge at £1 per person, per day. And I have stuck to it!

The truth of the matter is, with finances being stretched to the limit, food waste is something that we cannot afford, nor should we tolerate it!

Elsewhere on this planet, there are people starving to death while many of us here, in this wonderful, 'developed' part of the world, take up ridiculous, faddy diets in an attempt to shift surplus fat. Sadly, at the same time, many also buy so much food that a percentage of it inevitably ends in the bin. Weird!

Frugaldom cannot afford the luxury of binning food, although it can honestly be said that I could afford to shed surplus fat! (But that's a whole other challenge.) In exchange for our happy-go-lucky lifestyle of simple living, splitting time between building up a home, earning a meagre living and developing a productive garden, we have given up on big luxuries like dining out, holidays, new cars and designer wear. All savings made, for now, are being ploughed into the house.

Without further ado, here is how I am currently coping with the glut of courgettes that are being harvested from the garden. I have only two plants, but I have lost count of the number of courgettes I have picked from each - certainly many more than I would ever have afforded to buy as part of the regular grocery shopping.

If you have read any of my posts about cooking chicken, you'll know that I can get at least three main meals from one (shop bought) bird and I always make stock from whatever is left. This time, with only two of us here, I have enough chicken for 4 main meals, the cat got fed and the stock got made. So what's next?

SPICY COURGETTE SOUP

INGREDIENTS

3 litres chicken stock (homemade)

1 large onion, chopped (homegrown)
Approx 500g chopped carrots (homegrown)
5 large courgettes, chopped (homegrown)
Coriander (None growing, I had to use ground variety from the spice rack)
Teaspoon salt

Teaspoon ground pepper

Teaspoon turmeric

I had been boiling rice for having with our chicken curry and like to add some turmeric or a touch of curry powder along with salt, to give the rice that lovely yellow colour and a bit of added flavour. Worrying that the soup may end up looking a weird colour once the courgettes had all cooked down, I reckoned the turmeric could also add a bit of colour and a bit of a kick, into the bargain. Next year, with luck, my new crocuses will provide us with saffron for such uses - frugal gourmet needn't cost the earth, it simply needs the earth in order for us to grow such fine delicacies.

The soup was simmered in the slow cooker for several hours then left overnight to cool. I then blended it (using a stick blender I bought several years ago for under £5) before splitting it into lunchtime sized portions.

I got 10 adult portions from the above, but can't really cost it up exactly when the sums are so small. All the veg came from the garden, the stock was a by-product of the chicken, which cost me £4.99 locally, and the herbs & spices are all things I have on my shelf. The electricity used was minimal, having opted to use my 300w slow cooker. At a guess, I would say the electricity used would amount to a maximum of 3 kWh, including making the stock. On our current electricity rates, this would work out at just under 37p

Looking good for around 4p per portion. Even if you had to buy stock cubes and vegetables, soup remains one of the cheapest meals to make if you are prepared to mix and match with your ingredients.

This started out as a bowlful, except H had already eaten half of it with a slice of homemade bread by the time I remembered I was meant to be photographing it for this blog post. He was slightly amused when asked to set down his spoon and step away from the soup while I pointed a camera at it!

This courgette soup is nourishing, very warming on a chilly day, handy for serving in a mug as a tasty snack and, most of all, you get a lovely hot kick from it, depending on how much of the spices you use.

Try it for yourself, adapt the recipe to suit your own tastebuds, thicken it with lentils if you prefer, and make the most of what you've got in stock. This is a seasonal soup and it freezes well. Frugadom highly recommends it and will be making another batch next week, as there are another 4 courgettes almost ready plus a couple of patty pan squash, which will also get added.

WE LOVE SOUP!

Frugal Photographic Fun - Picture in Picture

September Sunshine and Fun in the Frugaldom Garden

Part 2

Following on from my earlier post, I have now had a closer look at the original photographs and found many more contained within them.

I spotted several things that I hadn't even noticed while taking them, so quite a few frugal bonuses and rather fun searching the photos for hidden 'clues' to what's really going on in the garden.

The initial view of the garden, on closer inspection, revealed several runner beans that are ready for picking. I'm amazed that the rabbit hadn't already helped herself to these.

This fly was one of a few that were on the sunflowers.

I'm not a great fan of creepy crawlies or flying beasties, but I was really impressed by how the bright yellow of the sunflower petals highlighted the lace pattern of the wings.

If you look closely, you can even see this fly's hairy little knees and feet!

What do you think of this sunflower yellow? It's fabulous!

Sunflowers are really quite amazing. The closer you look at them, the more fascinating they become - this brown mosaic swirl is the very centre of the flower. Each one of these will become a sunflower seed one day soon.

For some strange reason, this reminds me of an armadillo!

Moving further out from the centre of the sunflower, I spotted this strange array of what looks more like they should be swaying on the bottom of the sea bed!

I can highly recommend playing this fun and frugal game. Out of a few digital photographs, I have managed to highlight several aspects of the garden that would, otherwise, have been overlooked. (Family like to see the photo diaries, as they aren't close enough to visit in person on a regular basis.)

Hello MUM! :)

Along the dry stone wall, beyond the pumpkins and kale then past the sweet peas, there are still hundreds of rosehips of all colours.

Despite the autumnal weather that seems to be fast approaching, there are still quite a fe wild roses blooming.

It was while inspecting the photo for all these rosehips and sweetpea blossomgs that I spotted an anomaly. Can you spot it?

Almost in the centre of this clump of colourful swet peas, I can see a single yellow flower - some sort of rogue dandelion or daisy - a weed that has clambered up through the sweet peas to emerge among the blooms.

I love the smell of sweet peas and am really glad that there are so many flowers. They just keep on growing, as if coming through in wave after wave of colour.

Did anyone spot the snowball turnips growing below the kale? I will need to get out and lift a few more of these, as I hadn't spotted them on my round of the garden. Oops!

I love this photo in a photo of Floppity rabbit finding Scruffy cat beneath the brussel sprouts. It really is the cat's whiskers.

Floppity soon took off, so a closer inspection of the next photograph provided evidence of her escape route... this is her big furry feet and tail about to disappear further into the sprout patch.

All of these images are part of the photographs published in part 1 of today's blog.

If anyone decides to play the frugal photo game, don't forget to upload your findings to your own blog or site then let us all know where we can see them.

The sun shone all day, so the patio was the favoured spot for coffee drinking and chatting, especially when visitors arrived. Floppity got confined to barracks, as she can be such a pest, but Scruffy insisted she oined in and got all the attention.

In between baking, biscuit making and soup making, I did get around to planting all the spring bulbs. Frugaldom now has a selection of daffodils, tulips, irises, snowdrops and crocuses crammed into the planters that sit around the front of the house. A bit more compost needed to top these up but then it's all down to nature to do her good deed and make my bulbs grow.

Don't forget you can join us for regular updates from all the frugalers, with day to day results of the various money-making and money-saving challenges by visiting the Frugaldom Forums.

Frugal Living, Gardening and Pets Vs Pests!

September Sunshine and Fun in the Frugaldom Garden
Part 1

This is part 1 of a 2 part post for today. I hope nobody minds, but it's a bit of a frugaldom experimental game.

Better late than never - the sunflowers are all beginning to open now, bringing some added colour to the garden. What I love about these is their immense size, towering above everything else out there. They seem to lift their faces to the sun, then bow their heads to the birds and insects that descend upon them. They make ideal models for some frugal camera fun.

I love taking a photograph and then finding out that it has so much more detail than you had ever imagined. It's like discovering extra photos in a box, ones you didn't know you had taken. This morning's offerings provided many more than the handful I snapped, making this an excellent photographic game, worthy of competitive status.

The garden is a great place for playing this frugal game, but you can organise your frugal shoot absolutely anywhere you choose.

These are the handful of photographs that I took this morning.

Once they were opened up on computer screen, they revealed much more than first expected.

The garden looks lovely and sunny, you can just make out one of the ducks in the background.

The rabbit is out and about, scurrying around beneath the veggies and getting up to her usual nonsense.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, Scruffy cat is lurking, but I couldn't see her at the moment.

The wall is, once more, a blaze of colour from yet another flush of sweet peas, so I'll be cutting more of them this afternoon to refill the vases indoors - much nicer and far more frugal than air fresheners, in my opinion.

Even the dog roses are still finding the will to flower, despite there being so many rosehips around.

This particular part of the wall is a mass of ivy, roses and sweet peas, all fighting for space.

In the vegetable plots, the greenery is now reaching almost a metre high in places, as the brussel sprouts, kale and sprouting broccoli take over their allocated patches.

None of these were covered this year, so they have been open to the abuse of hundreds of white butterflies that are forever fluttering around the place. Fortunately, their numbers seem to be in gradual decline, being replaced by many more tortoiseshells.

Floppity has a whale of a time in the garden. She just pleases herself where she goes, what she does and when she eats - not always a good thing, I might add. There are numerous digging patches around the garden where she has been attempting to burrow.

Eventually, however, she usually locates the cat for us, then has a game of chase around the garden. The cat always wins the race but that's probably owing to the fact that the rabbit is bigger than her.

This morning, Floppity eventually found said cat sleeping beneath the sprouting broccoli. Scruffy cat was not overly amused by her rude awakening!

It has take me until now to realise that my purple curly kale isn't all purple! There seems to be two varieties, or else colour is dependent on some other factor.

I don't suppose the chickens will bother, they seem to enjoy pecking at it whatever type they are given.

Further down the wall are my late sunflowers. These have all decided to flower, although I'm not sure how many finches will remain in the garden by the time these turn to seed.

All going well, I'll save some heads off these glorious flowers and store the seeds for future use, probably for feeding the wild birds that frequent the bird tables and our wildbird corner at the bottom of the orchard.

These really are flowers that look like the sun! I love them and will certainly be planting more for next year.

The packs of seeds I received have both sunflowers and sweet peas, so next year's display should be very colourful if I adopt a sowing strategy to make the most of their majestic height.

If you grow no other flowers, I can recommend that you do, at least, plant a couple of these beauties, even if they are in big pots or recycled buckets. Well worth it!

For part 2 of this post, I'll be taking a closer look at what the above photographs actually revealed.

Isn't technology a fantastic achievement? We look, we see what we think we see and then, suddenly, we find out that there's a whole other world out there, just waiting to be discovered. We just need to look for it. And the best part is, it's all FREE.

Minimum Wage Need Not Apply...

How Much Money is Enough?



Fresh quail egg omlette with organic tomatoes

No matter where you live, there is a simple way to follow a frugal lifestyle and help beat the blues - if you have them.

Frugal living is not about sacrificing the good things in life, it is about living in a way that makes them affordable to you. And only you can decide what those good things really are.

What may be a luxury to someone in the town or city may be commonplace to someone from a more rural community. Think fishing, sailing, equestrian sports or even just wide open spaces, deserted beaches, bluebell woods in spring, snow-clad slopes in winter and few people around to care how you look or what you do. (Within reason, of course.)

As a prime example of the 'luxury' perception, my own children were practically reared on quail eggs. For much of their early lives (and my own, before that), they had poultry and game birds, a large garden, goats or lambs and the usual horses, ponies, dogs, cats and other assorted furry or feathered creatures. This was, and still is, our version of normal. I have things like pheasant and scallops in the freezer, prefer venison to lamb, will hopefully have a wild goose for Christmas dinner and quail eggs can be eaten like sweets. Handmade cookies, preserves and assorted confectionery, organic herbs, saffron, asparagus, freshly harvested globe artichoke... gourmet foods that stores like Harrods pride themselves in having on their shelves.

Organic produce, freerange eggs and handmade or individually designed anything can pretty much be taken for granted if you live in the country and run your suburban garden like a smallholding (or microholding), growing fruit, vegetables and herbs while keeping a few chickens. But a high-flying city career doesn't allow time for endless hours in the garden while also looking after livestock, running a household like a business, spending hours in the kitchen cooking, baking and preserving or earning a living  from home. Living and working in the city means paying a premium for such 'luxuries'.

On the flip side, city or town dwellers may take other things for granted, things that those of us living in a more rural location might look upon as absolute luxuries - mobile phones (no network coverage), fast and affordable broadband, supermarkets, night clubs, clothes shops, a local gym, buses and taxis, train stations, shopping centres... even things like mains gas, water and sewerage cannot be taken for granted. The lists are endless. But we still all pay the same taxes & National Insurance, road tax, TV licence fees, petrol, diesel, oil and unit rates on utilities bills.

Annual Council Tax in rural Scotland (and many other areas) is about double what it costs in Westminster but, lest we forget, here in rural Scotland, we can buy a 3-bed house outright for under £60,000.00

In Westminster, £60,000.00 could rent you a 3-bed flat for less than 2 years. (Quite a nice flat, in Sufflok Street, a stone's throw from Trafalgar Square!)

Let's look at the financial differences between both sets of lifestyles. At the moment, the UK Government sets the national minimum hourly rate of pay that an employer needs to pay an employee. Note the bold type - here in ruralite land, there is a relatively low percentage of employees being paid by regular employers. In fact, I'm hard pushed to think of anyone I know who is employed fulltime, most are self-employed and/or working part-time jobs in order to earn their living.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has announced the national minimum wage rates from 1 October 2011:

•the adult rate will increase by 15p to £6.08 an hour

•the rate for 18-20 year olds will increase by 6p to £4.98 an hour

•the rate for 16-17 year olds will increase by 4p to £3.68 an hour

•the rate for apprentices will increase by 10p to £2.60 an hour

Consider this:
 
If a frugal household can live on £5,000 for a year with no rent or mortgage to pay, how well off would that household be if all occupants earned £6.08 for every hour they worked?
 
With 3 adults sharing, how many hours would each need to work on minimum wage to earn the £96 in total per week to live in Frugaldom?
 
With 3 adults sharing, what rate of pay would each need to earn the £696 in total per week to live in the 3-bed, Suffolk Street flat in Westminster?
 
Interesting number-crunching result, isn't it?

Just a little extra with a few photos.

A Stroll Along the Badger Walk

Today's roof-repair works went well. The rain stayed away, the sun shone and the man on the roof said it's now strong enough to jump up and down on - although he didn't recommend doing it too often. I'm happy with that, it means there's scope, once the work is completed, for some growing space. Not quite a green roof, but certainly a micro-roof garden of some description. 

This evening, after the workmen had gone, we went out for our frugal walk to make the most of the dry weather. We didn't wander far, only down to the old mill ruins at the bottom of the road, then along what I like to call the 'badger walk'.

'Badger Walk' is so-named (not in any official capacity) for good reason. Part of this particular track has been concreted, presumably for the benefit of farm vehicles, but there in the middle of it, for all to see, is a perfect set of badger footprints. You can follow them right along the middle of the road for a short distance.

This always makes me laugh, as I can imagine the lost badger trundling along, paws sinking and sticking to the soggy concrete, wondering where he had gone wrong to end up on such a road. (It had to be a he, a she would have stopped and asked the way!) Then, of course, there would have been the problem of him explaining the concrete in his nails to the wife, as he sat chewing out the gravel from between his toes.

What can I say? I have a vivid imagination, I'm easily amused, it costs nothing and it entertains me.

The return journey was around sunset. The sea looked dark and cold in the distance, with no island to be seen. There was a brisk breeze blowing up from the shore, whirling the wind turbines at ever-increasing speeds. Have you ever noticed how loud these can be? They sound like shredded bin bags caught in a hawthorn hedge, being thrashed by the wind. Even H thought that's what it was and he's meant to be the sensible one in this frugal household.

Overhead, the sky was a pale shade of blue with white clouds swirling one way and pink clouds crossing the other way - they looked as thought they were moving in opposite directions! I can't decide if this is good or bad, as there's a definite nip in the air. It wasn't your typical pink sky, these were more like the beginnings of rain clouds tinged by the setting sun and, like the silly badger, they just didn't know which way to go.

As we got nearer home, it was looking clearer and really quite promising for tomorrow's stint of roof work. But then again, who knows what the good old Scottish weather has in store for us? If the Met Office can't say for sure, then who are we to play ill-educated guessing games? We need to take what nature has to give, that's the one thing that is certain.

That's all I have to say tonight - not much.

I hope nobody minds my sharing some of the sites that surround us here in Frugaldom.

Frugal Living on a Shoestring Budget...

My Shoelaces aren't Leather, they're Baler Twine!

(Title created in honour of Archie Sparrow)

Frugaldom is about frugal living. It's the kingdom of a frugal entrepreneur, or 'frugaleur'.

A 'frugaleur' will judge their successes on freedom from debt and fulfilment of a simple lifestyle dream. If it happens to lead to a fortune in the bank, then so be it.  It's simply a by-product of that frugal lifestyle of making do, mending, bartering, recycling, reducing, reusing, sharing and helping others reach their goals. You can always give the cash away if you don't want it.

The original challenge was set several years ago and was based on a minimum wage income for a household of 3. There are no social security benefits, no rent rebates, council tax rebates, bus passes, pensions or grants of any description incorporated - we work from home and save every extra penny we can.

After deducting 12 months' of rent (or mortgage payments) and annual council tax, the household budget was set at £4,000.00 for the entire year. Anything over this amount gets transferred into savings for a good life. It's now fast approaching the end of 2011 and that same £4,000 household budget has remained in force for 5 years, despite all odds. I should add that if you have debts, then all debt payments should be deducted and any excess set towards overpaying those, as it helps to speed up the process of becoming debt-free.

In April 2011, those years of scrimping and saving finally reaped some rewards - we pooled our resources and bought this relatively cheap, 3-bedroom fixy-up with about quarter of an acre of badly neglected garden land. No more rent to pay, no wacko landlords, no mortgage, no more housemoves.

We're based in Scotland, where it can get rather cold, wet and windy. We live in a rural area, where mobile telephone signals haven't yet reached us, where broadband is not yet broad enough, where no bus travels this route and no gas main will probably ever come. It's 3 miles to the village store and 17 miles to the nearest supermarket. It isn't remote, we're terraced and live in a street of about 25 houses. We love it!

As Government-imposed austerity measures take effect and inflation hits 9 times the Bank of England base rate, frugal living provides a cushion to the worst of these blows. It's simply a case of having already adapted to living on a tight budget.

It's never too late to start, so why not start now, with a 2012 pledge to follow a more frugal lifestyle and give debt a final kick into oblivion? It's a rollercoaster ride but it can be fun!

Frugaldom is about stretching every penny to ensure life is worth leading. It's about an entire lifestyle revolving around make do and mend, batch cooking, gardening, poultry keeping, bargain hunting, foraging and any other thrifty, moneysaving pastimes you can imagine. Ultimately, it is about debt free living with no reliance on the 'State', while fighting to earn your own income from home. In a nut shell (some call it a nut house!), it's about self-sustainability with an element of self-sufficiency thrown in for good measure.

This past week has seen Defra release the new 'Guidance on the application of date labels to food' (.pdf document) in an effort to cut down on the amount of food being thrown out, but that could hit some money saavy grocery shoppers hard. For anyone who actually enjoys the thrill of bagging themselves grocery bargains when stores start slashing prices to shift their stock quickly, this may mean the end of an era!

I can't see it making one blind bit of difference to wasteful households. In my opinion, those who bin perfectly good food will continue to do so, only this time it will be based on the 'best before' dates. Where will it all lead, I wonder? Will some future committee sit debating the pros and cons of 'best before' dates and decide that they need to meet the same fate? I hope not!

Then there's the power struggle. Utilities companies continue to fleece huge profits for their shareholders, forcing thousands of people into what's being brandished about as 'fuel poverty', but let's get realistic about this; how many people truly afford themselves the luxury of maintaining a temperature in their living room of 21C and 18C in their other rooms? This has to be city mentality, as it certainly isn't something that anyone I can think of would attempt to do. For most of us, 16C is almost attainable without breaking the bank, but it's also dependent on burning fossil fuels - coal, if you haven't the luxury of a central heating system run off oil or non-mains gas. Logs are great, if you have a reliable supply and space to store them, but what other methods are available to anyone on a tight budget?

Insulate your home! The Government was hell bent on pushing their insulation policies. Many companies jumped on the bandwagon with subsidised offers and freebies, but no thought was given to people living in old, traditionally built, stone houses. These old houses need to breathe. We can't suffocate them or wrap them in fibreglass wool, nor can we insulate walls that have no cavities. What alternatives were made available to us mere country-dwellers who stretch our budgets to afford to turn old houses into affordable homes?

And to top all of that, let us never forget our national heritage. Many of these old buildings, which can make perfectly good homes, are Listed. This can pose a serious problem for the uninitiated or unsuspecting buyer, it can mean extra costs involved in any alterations to your otherwise frugal home.

On 20 January 2011, Parliament passed the Historic Environment (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2011 and it received Royal Assent on 23rd February 2011. Among other things, this act has the power to, "raise the level of fines to £50,000 on summary conviction for unauthorised works to a scheduled monument or listed building."

Don't let this put you off buying an old property here in Scotland. There are hundreds of them, crying out to be rescued and renovated. We can make changes to these houses, but at a cost. For a start, we need planning permission before we can even contemplate something as simple as double glazing or replacing a front door. But frugal living embraces recycling, so let's recycle. It embraces local trading, so let's trade locally. Following the planning permission route to double glazing and all mod cons is not an option for us, nor would we even want to transform a traditional stone cottage into ultra-modern living accommodation.

Our leaking roof will soon be repaired, but it won't ever change its overall appearance. Our old slates will always be slates, our wooden, single-glazed, sash windows will, no doubt, always be wooden sash and single glazed. Our front door, which is literally hanging in there, needs to be replaced, but there's no 'off the shelf' or uPVC options for us, oh no. We eventually found a local joiner who is prepared to make a brand new door, identical to the existing one, reusing the old glass and reinstating the same skylight. The council planning department is happy with this, it has saved us the hassle of applying for planning permission and, to all intents and purposes, there will be no physical change or visible difference to the appearance of the building.

I guess what I am trying to say is, if you are prepared to keep your own house in order, follow a frugal lifestyle and say good riddance to our money-driven, debt-ridden society, then anything is possible.

We all need to earn a living, pay our taxes and contribute to society in some way, so why not plan for a future where you are contributing to a society you want to be part of in the first place?

Even if it's a gradual process, each step of the way taken penny by penny, pound by pound, wouldn't you prefer freedom from debt and freedom to enjoy life?

In 2012, NYK Media will, once again, renew the challenge to follow a frugal lifestyle on a tight budget. As yet, a final calculation has not been done to establish whether or not the Frugaldom household can afford to run on £4,000 (excluding council tax, as this is non-negotiable), but I sincerely hope that it proves possible. This being the case, then Frugaldom will continue to beat inflation and that's something that not many investments can achieve in this economic climate.

Beat inflation, invest in your own frugal lifestyle.

Cat on a Wet Tin Roof

Making the Frugal House Watertight

Yesterday dawned fine and bright. The workmen arrived at 8.30am, the rain  arrived at 8.45am!

We're in Scotland, we expect these things. Besides, it didn't exactly pour down, it was more of a steady drizzle that kept the inquisitive cat indoors while work continued in making the frugal house watertight for winter.

By lunchtime, most of the foam-filled tin sandwich that had been our flat roof was piling up in the back garden awaiting its next adventure. Who knows how long it has been sitting up there, above our kitchen!

This roofing should be able to get recycled into a new roof for the outbuilding or some other such project.

Around lunchtime, the drizzling rain decided to stop and the day brightened up a bit, thankfully! This allowed the pitch of the 'flat' roof to be altered slightly, then the new wood decking was fitted before felting began.

The rain was threatening to return by 5pm, but the roof was 99% watertight with a layer of felt and the edges torched down at the joins.
Temperatures aren't too low at nights yet, so the 6" gaps around the overhang wouldn't cause much of a problem. Luckily, the swallows have long, since, finished nesting, otherwise they would have been straight into the kitchen, the way they did every time the door was left open during summer! Had it been any earlier in the year, I'd have been hiding from wasps and bees!

That was yesterday. Thankfully, today dawned bright and sunny, so we are hoping for progress in leaps and bounds.

The leaves on the trees at the bottom of the garden are gradually turning to russet and falling to the ground. There are a few evergreens, so we won't lose all colour or shelter down by the hen run, but it is going to look quite bare soon. For now, I'll make the most of what is still growing and prepare for 2012.

While work progresses on the back roof, Floppity bunny is confined to her hutch. It was too wet for her to venture out last night, so I'm sure she'll be desperate for a run around tonight.

I really must organise more stockproofing for next year's veggies, though, as I can't begin to imagine how any of the newly planted carrot seeds will germinate after the number of times she has dug up the bed. I'll say that I'm hopeful of seeing some carrots grow, but won't go as far as saying that I'm confident.

The strawberry runners are rooting nicely in their pots, but some have already been snipped from their mother plants, compliments of... yes, you guessed it.... Floppity! The only things she doesn't seem to be  interested in at the moment are the pumpkins! My guess is that even she couldn't manage a whole one on her own!
I need to bake a loaf of bread today, but the kitchen is kind of off limits on account of the men on the roof. If anyone is visiting this afternoon, expect a breadmaker to be set up in the livingroom.

Typical Scottish Weather - We had a Mini Heatwave Today!

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."
John F. Kennedy


This evening, I noticed the above great quote flagged up by Wiegert, a Dutch guy in San Fransisco, who goes by the name 'MarketYrSuccess' on Twitter. It was so apt that it prompted me to post this short update with some wonderful news from Frugaldom...

The weather forecast in southwest Scotland is for sunshine with only the occasional showers over the next few days! Isn't that brilliant? Yeah!

No, no, no... I don't simply mean that it's brilliant for Scotland to be expecting some dry weather, I mean that it's the window of opportunity we have been waiting for, the dry spell  needed for work to begin on our flat roof! The telephone call this afternoon confirmed that work has been scheduled, at short notice, to begin at 8am tomorrow morning.

Frugaldom is a 'fixy-up' project. When we bought the place a few months ago, we bought an overgrown garden with a small house attached! Working in the garden takes very little money, but turning this house into a frugal home could take a while on such a frugal budget.

We reckon the bathroom used to be either a stable or a pig sty, with a larger lean-to built on at some later date to represent a kitchen. If we added a stable door, the tin roofed, concrete floored kitchen would make a great home for a couple of goats! But I digress... this 200-year-old terraced cottage will become a proper home one day. It is, afterall, the 'forever' house.

So, as tomorrow dawns, we'll be up bright and early, preparing for the next stage of our renovation journey - to remove the old leaky flat roof, which will then be replaced with a nice, new, non-leaking one. It's a job that simply has to be done, otherwise the main fabric of this old cottage would be under further attack from who knows what in the future.

It is taking us months to dry the place out and I'm forever tripping over the assortment of ice cream tubs and margarine cartons that litter the concrete kitchen floor every time it rains. Scruffy cat will miss the leaks, as she likes to drink the drips as they fall., but I know she'll forgive us once she's snuggled up in a warm corner indoors when outdoor temperatures have fallen below zero.

Never let it be said that frugality left our thoughts while spending thousands of pounds on making the Frugaldom household wind and watertight. The old roof that's being removed tomorrow will, hopefully, be fully recycled to make a new roof for the outbuilding.

JFK said,"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

NYK said "Hope the sun keeps shining so we can fix our roof."

The Rain Fell, the Ducklings Looked up in Amazement!

It's Never Too Wet for Ducks, it Seems.

We really haven't had anything to complain about, weatherwise, here in Frugaldom, but yesterday's downpour came as a bit of a shock, even to the ducklings.

One minute it was slightly breezy and overcast, the next we were hit by a torrential downpour - it was probaby the first serious rain that we've had since the ducklings went outside.

This was quite a site to behold!

Did the ducklings all run for cover and shelter from the deluge? No! They came running up to the gate, 9 heads tilted sideways, staring skywards and quacking at the falling rain!

QUAIL: One of the projects we are working on here in Frugaldom is that of establishing a small egg production unit with the quail. Have you ever tried to photograph a quail? They are not the easiest birds to get to sit still and smile for the camera! After much to-ing and fro-ing, I managed to get one half-decent shot out of my dozens of failed attempts, so we now have the face of 'Frugal Gourmet'.

She is a 2010, homebred, Italian quail hen. This colour variation of the Japanese coturnix quail is sometimes referred to as a Phoenix Golden quail, a far prettier name, in my opinion. Despite it being very pale, the colour is dominant when breeding in mixed colonies, so I'm expecting to end up with the majority of my homebred hens looking similar to this.

Yesterday, while outdoor work was seriously curtailed by the rain and kitchen work seriously curtailed by the array of tubs scattered across the floor catching the drips from the leaking roof, I finally got around to designing the labels for the quail egg boxes.

Aample labels have now been printed and we are getting ready to begin sales proper. (I've omitted part of the labelling for obvious reasons, but the new web page has been uploaded and we're almost good to go.)

At £1.95 per dozen, I see no problems in selling, trading or even exchanging these eggs for other things that we need. I'll probably make a couple of small improvements to the final labels but, for now, we have the face of 'Frugal Gourmet'.

The latest quail chicks are nearly four weeks old and are about ready for transferring outside to their new quarters. The hens among them should be laying before the end of October!

Last time around, I separated the white males from the females prior to collecting eggs. This will ensure we have sufficient unrelated stock for next year's breeding programme. With luck, we should be able to have at least a dozen hens laying each day to see us through winter, then we'll set to work on improving the set-up to enable a larger flock to be maintained on a self-financing basis from 2012.

We aren't here to make our fortune, we are here to sustain our own lifestyle. If the birds can pay for themselves and supply us with eggs, I'll be delighted. Anything extra is a bonus that will be swept into savings for the next step of our Frugaldom journey.

Quail eggs for breakfast, anyone?

Riddle of the Mystery Plant solved!

Blue Sky, Sunshine, Gardening and a Mystery Solved

Not so long ago, I posted about my mystery plant in the hope of finding out what it was.

It had seeded itself in one of the hanging baskets that are attached around the bird table, so my guess was that it was produced from seed out the wild bird mix. Thankfully, it wasn't hemp!

Several suggestions were made as to its identity, with the most likely being some type of red stemmed buckwheat. This, indeed, is what the mystery plant has turned out to be.

Now that the flowers are beginning to die back, you can clearly see the buckwheat forming. I've never seen this plant before now, so still haven't a clue where it came from or how it got here: there doesn't seem to be any buckwheat in the wild bird mix I'm using. I'll save the seed and replant it all next year, as the plant looks rather pretty with its tall, slender red stems and clusters of pale pink and white flowers.

After the windy, wet weather that resulted from the tail end of Hurricane Katia, it was great to see the sun shining and the temperature soaring today. By lunchtime, it had reached a balmy 24C here in Frugaldom, so it was definite T-shirt weather and perfect for getting out into the garden.

Weed, weed, wedding again - cobbled front yard done and then I set about tidying up the strawberries.

Plenty of runners have appeared, so I potted up over twenty of them for transplanting next year.

While weeding between the plants, however, I noticed a new set of flowers coming, which surprised me! As I was cutting away the old growth where previous strawberries had been harvested, I kept finding more and more new shoots.

As usual, I never kept any of the names of the varieties of strawberries we have, so if anyone can let me know what I should do with them, I'd be really grateful. Do I leave these flowers in the hope that they'll bear fruit this late in the year or should they be nipped out to allow the plants to strengthen before over-wintering them?

More broccoli was harvested, along with the last of the peas and some tomatoes. While picking the tomatoes I noticed how much fruit was coming on the cape gooseberries. Who'd have believed these would grow so well outdoors in Scotland?

In preparation for winter, I built a mini glasshouse around the tiny grape vine to see if it survives until spring. There's no space to take it indoors, so here's hoping we get a mild winter. Failing that, it will get moved into the outbuilding and can sit by the window.

The pond got topped up today, to the great excitement of all the ducks! It wasn't long before they were all in there, splashing and diving around like the crazy feathered marauders that they are.

It was great fun for Scruffy cat, too, as she was pawing the water and trying to catch the splashes. Daft cat!

One of these days she is going to fall right in and Joey, our drake, will take great pleasure in chasing her.

By early evening, it was still bright and dry, so we headed out for a walk to see if we could spot any badgers. We have seen them, but not close to the house.

A neighbour a few doors along from us has one coming into his garden at nights, so we're hopeful of catching a glimpse of our resident Mr Brock sometime soon. Unfortunately, it wasn't tonight.

Our walk took us along the lane by the woods, which is where we normally see deer and badgers. We did see a fox, but it disappeared before camera was at the ready. I'm amazed at how many flowers are still in bloom and the heather is still a rich purple along the bank of the stream.

The calves in the adacent field were having a great time, chasing one another around, tails straight up in the air and hooves flying all ways.

They all came to an abrupt stop when we passed, some being more inquisitive than others. This one was very brave and ust kept following us.

Thankfully, there was a fence between us and them, as heap big daddy bull was out there, too!

By the time we were returning home, the sun was setting over the hill and it was getting quite dusky.

Probably, this would be a great time for badger spotting, but the hens and ducks still had to be put to bed and Scruffy cat found to ensure she didn't try to sleep in the chicken hut again!

What a lovely day it has been - we need a full week of this so we can get the kitchen roof replaced but, sadly, the weatherman reckons otherwise.