Category Archives: homemaking

Staying busy pre-wedding!

homemaking

On Shabbos I saw someone who upon learning that our daughter’s wedding was two weeks away, exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! How can you look so relaxed when the wedding is so close?”

Thankfully, I’ve been blessed with the ability to compartmentalize and mentally and practically break down big projects into doable steps, and when I do that, things feel very manageable.

Last week I was feeling uncertainty regarding specifics for the Shabbos sheva brachos that we will be hosting. On Wednesday or Thursday I decided where we’ll have the meals and worked out where all our guests would stay. It was a relief to have that finalized in my mind; I had been going back and forth and was mentally feeling worn down by the uncertainty.

Since I’ll be doing all the cooking and baking, I asked my husband to pick up a used freezer from a private seller on his way home from work, which he did on Thursday night. Having the ability to prepare some of the foods in advance will be helpful. Even if I don’t make anything ahead of time, just knowing that it’s a possibility is reassuring!

I made and canned pickled peppers so they’re ready and shelf stable, and am considering making some other pickled salads/relishes that can be made and canned in advance.

I made pickled tilapia for the first time this fall, and our family has liked it a lot. I’m planning to serve it for the third sheva brachos meal, so started a batch a few days ago. Since it’s a ten day process to make it, you have to think ahead if you want to have it. It’s worth making a large batch since it keeps in the fridge for weeks.

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I need to take two of our boys to buy new suits, but otherwise I think we’re set as far as wedding clothing. I did all the other shopping online and was very satisfied with how easy and affordable that was. Time is precious and I’m so glad I didn’t have to run around trying on gowns as I have in the past. The challenge with shopping with the boys is that they’re on opposite schedules so I haven’t yet managed to get them coordinated for a shopping trip. At this point I’m thinking I’ll be better off taking them separately.

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This week I had an evening of appreciation for mothers at the younger boys school. There was a full catered meal, a singer and a stand up comedian. It was nice to see other mothers, and I would have loved to have spoken with them more, but the volume of the dinner music being played made it difficult. I don’t like having to lip read. Nonetheless, the staff really invested in making it an enjoyable evening out and it was a lovely evening.

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Later today I’ll be traveling to a Jordan valley farm to hear Joel Salatin speak. Joel is probably the world’s most famous regenerative farmer, and I’ve followed his work since we were living in the US. I was excited to see that the date he was speaking didn’t conflict with the week of the wedding. It will be two hours of driving and then three hours for the lecture, but I’m really looking forward to it. I’m taking my thirteen and fifteen year old sons, in addition to giving a ride to a few women. My husband was planning to attend but decided that there’s a lot to do now and he doesn’t have the head space to dedicate that time. He’ll hear all about it from the boys and me in any case!

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Tomorrow morning I have a Zoom call scheduled with several foster care social workers. We were very tentatively approached at the beginning of the week about taking a foster child in. He and a sibling need a new placement; a family in Yavneel agreed to take the sibling, so they’re looking for another Yavneel family to take him to facilitate the continued connection of the siblings. My first reaction was absolutely not, it’s just too busy right now with the wedding in a week and a half, then Shabbos sheva brachos, the two days later is Purim, then preparations for Pesach, then tons of hosting for Pesach.

We haven’t ever requested additional foster placements but when something comes to me, I ask myself what Hashem wants of me, and try not to discount something just because the thought of all the effort is daunting. I spent a good bit of time on the phone yesterday with our social worker, wanting to understand what is involved with therapeutic foster care. It’s a very different scenario than what we’ve dealt with in the past. Right now we’re exploring what’s involved, and not ready to make a commitment of any sort yet.

Years ago when I was developing the systematic steps of the Leadership Parenting approach, I integrated what I learned from the work of Dr. Karyn Purvis, whose expertise is on parenting foster and adoptive children (this was prior to me even considering fostering). I loved her work so much (even more than Dr. Gordon Neufeld, who I’ve referenced more than once and who has had a major influence on my thinking about parenting) that I seriously thought about traveling to Texas to study with her personally. Sadly, she passed away before that happened. I was very inspired by her deep respect and understanding of children from ‘hard places’, as she calls them. Thanks to her teachings, I have a decent understanding of the post trauma issues these children deal with. Without this I’d be too intimidated and overwhelmed to consider the possibility.

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For a very long time I’ve dreamed of restoring a piece of barren land using permaculture principles. I never could see how it would be possible, but Hashem is much bigger than I am and He has sent us the amazing opportunity to develop two or three dunam of agricultural land. I can’t say how bursting with happiness I am for the opportunity. We don’t have ownership of all the land but the owners have given us a lot of leeway to plant it as we see appropriate, and we’re making the investment in terms of labor and materials cost.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the land, thinking, thinking, thinking about what to do, while learning about different permaculture strategies and considering how/where to apply them. It’s a lot of thinking right now about what the vision is, how the land will be used, etc, and I don’t yet have clarity on all of that.

We’ve spent the last month focusing on putting up fencing. I think in the next couple of days we (meaning my fifteen year old) can finish all the fencing. It’s been getting done here and there, whenever it worked out for both of us to go out there. Then this week my son made a big push to get it all done. He’s like me, he enjoys seeing significant progress being made and gets a little impatient when things are moving at a snail’s pace.

Once the fencing is done, what will be left to finish enclosing the property will be installing a large gate across the road that leads to the land. For weeks I’ve looked for a used gate of the right dimensions, and finally found one. I made arrangements for someone with a trailer to pick it up for us this evening. Then figuring out how to install tracks and supports will be a another learning project.

So that’s some of what’s going on this week!

Avivah

What to use as a substitute for eggs in baking

frugal strategies, homemaking

Long, long ago I explored veganism, and my recipe notebook still includes different egg substitute options.

Though I use eggs – lots of them, actually! – sometimes I run out and it’s helpful to have options to substitute for them. None of these replace eggs that you’re eating as eggs: hardboiled, omelettes or sunny side up. But they’re great for replacing eggs in baked goods.

With eggs jumping in price and in some countries in short supply, it’s even more helpful to know alternatives.

To determine which replacement will work best in the recipe you’re making, it’s helpful to understand what eggs do in a recipe: they add moisture, they bind the ingredients together, and they add lightness/fluffiness to a recipe. I’ve made a note as to what purpose each replacement serves, so you can match it with the desired results are.

  • 1 T. ground flaxseed and 3 T. water = 1 egg. This forms a gel like substance when blended together. It’s a good binding agent and have a pretty neutral flavor.
  • 1 T. chia seeds + 3 T. water= 1 egg. Like flaxseed, the mixture forms a gel-like substance. I prefer to mix it with water, then blend the mixture, and lastly to add it to the recipe. This is also a good binding agent and has a neutral flavor.
  • 1 T. cornstarch + 3 T. water = 1 egg. This is good as a binder but if you need some fluffiness, it’s not the option to use.
  • 1/4 c. applesauce (preferably unsweetened) = 1 egg. Adds moisture and binds.
  • 1/4 c. mashed banana = 1 egg; use in recipes that the banana flavor will blend with. Adds moisture and binds.
  • 1/4 c. pumpkin puree = 1 egg. Like banana, use in a recipe that the flavor blends well. Adds moisture and binds. I discovered pumpkin as a substitute years ago when I did a no-shop grocery challenge and was forced to look at the items in my pantry with a creative eye.
  • 3 T. aquafaba (water left from cooking chickpeas) = 1 egg. This can be beaten and used as a replacement for beaten egg whites in meringues and mousse.

Avivah

What the chief financial officer explained after firing 30% of staff, and what we’re doing about it

frugal strategies, homemaking

My husband was hired by a startup in Tel Aviv a year ago. A month after he was hired, a number of people were let go and they closed down one of the two floors they had rented in a large building.

A couple of weeks ago, thirty percent of his coworkers were let go. My husband went in for the special meeting held with the remaining employees to explain what is happening.

The chief financial officer of my husband’s company was one of the first in the Israeli tech space to be interviewed and talk publicly about the assumption there will be an economic recession over a year ago. He now explained that investment money used to go to start ups that were spending money hand over fist. No one wanted a company on a budget; they wanted to see growth.

Now the investment money is looking for companies that are lean, in order to get through the financial dip that is expected. He explained that they are making these cuts in advance, to prepare for what is coming with the hope that the company can make it through. They also have shut down their large spacious offices and are moving into a smaller space. He said that most companies still don’t see what’s on the horizon, they aren’t changing their spending or projections and a lot of them aren’t going to make it.

I was paying attention to what he said a year ago, and I’m paying attention now. Sometimes you don’t want to hear something negative like this, because it makes you feel anxious and worried about what your own future holds. But I try to move beyond my tendency to be avoidant of what I don’t want to hear, and learn from it.

If the chief financial officer is taking steps to buffer the company for an economic downturn by turning to frugal strategies, it seems prudent for us to take steps to buffer our families by doing the same.

Obviously I’d prefer to think we’ll be minimally affected by the economic bumps that are anticipated. Don’t we all?

As uncomfortable as it was to consider, my husband and I had a discussion about what would happen if we were to experience job loss. We decided that it would be prudent to scale our expenses down now. The intention is twofold: to create more savings, and to know that we could live on less if we needed to. It’s much easier and less stressful to do this as a response to a proactive and thoughtful decision than to suddenly and reactively need to cut expenses from a place of deprivation.

Though my husband has been managing the finances for many years, a few months ago we agreed that it’s time for me as the frugality ninja to step up to the helm since I enjoy rather than tolerate the minutiae of money management, and taking the above steps means looking closely at all outgoing money.

It’s taken a lot of time but I’ve been enjoying this purposeful and focused work, and have been gratified by the progress we’re making. Some of my efforts have been on cutting expenses, while sometimes it means spending more money now, so we won’t have to spend it later (eg replacing our old energy guzzler freezer with an energy efficient chest model).

We don’t have any debt other than our mortgage, as I’ve consistently stuck to my hard and fast rule of not spending money that I don’t have. This includes making five weddings in five years. If I did have debt, I would be focusing on getting it paid off.

Here are some steps we’ve taken:

  • cut expenses in different spending categories
  • looked for ways to increase income
  • increased our savings rate
  • paid down a chunk of our mortgage
  • refinanced our mortgage to a set rate
  • took care of non-urgent repairs on our vehicles rather than delay to when they become necessary
  • withdrew pension funds (a recession would affect the stock market) and reinvested the money
  • been generous with charitable giving while we have the ability to do so

Rather than being negative or alarming to think about, considering less cheerful possibilities has helped us make choices that have led us to feel more empowered and relaxed.

Expenses (energy, food, gas) are expected to continue to rise in the coming year – some financial experts say that they’re going to rise significantly. Increased job loss is also being predicted.

I don’t know if that’s what will happen. But I do know that if it does, the combination of rising costs and decreased income isn’t a good match for a relaxed home. I’m sharing some of what we’re doing to proactively buffer our family with you in the hope it will inspire you to take actions that will likewise empower your family.

If you’re already taking actions of this sort, I and other readers would love to hear about it! Please share in the comments. 🙂

Avivah

Processing our own homegrown chickens

homemaking, homeschooling

This past spring/summer, my son hatched a bunch of chicks in his homemade incubator. He sold most of them, while holding back a given number for his own flock. His intention was to have more laying hens, but as they got older, it became clear that a number of the chicks were males.

He’s already gotten requests from a past buyer and from new potential buyers about his chicks for the coming season, and has close to one hundred eggs ready to incubate. For a few weeks I’ve been asking him to dispatch the excess roosters, but that hasn’t yet happened. When he mentioned being ready to start incubating his first batch of eggs, I absolutely put my foot down – no new chicks until the roosters are processed.

That was the motivation he needed, and he made arrangements for the shochet who taught him to come over.

As soon as Shabbos was over, I drove my sixteen year old son to the bus station so he could get travel back to yeshiva and was surprised when I got home to find a yard teeming with activity.

My fifteen year old son did all the shechita; the shochet was there only to oversee him. He shechted six roosters, five of which were kosher. The sixth was a mixed breed rooster, which is very hard to get a kosher shechita done on. This was additional validation of the decision my son made to move from raising mixed chickens to a heritage breed.

While he was doing the shechita, there was a chicken plucking party with five or six boys of different ages going on! They had a great time, and I was grateful to all of them for doing it so I didn’t have to.

The next morning my husband salted all the chickens as the next step in the kashering process, then rinsed them all and now they’re all in the fridge, ready to be cooked. When I watched him salting them, he commented that it’s a lot of work to process your own chickens.

Yes, it really is.

Is it empowering to raise your own animals, to know what they’re fed, how they’re treated, and to know they are healthy and disease free? Yes, absolutely. Our animals all enjoy a standard of living that is far above factory chickens. But it’s also a lot of work.

Is it a frugal thing to do? A lot of time, energy and feed went into raising these chickens. Honestly, it’s very hard to compete with industrially raised food on a cost-point basis. At this point it’s not a money saving endeavor, since my son has to make back all that he’s invested into the coop, supplies and purchase of his original chickens, which cost around three thousand shekels.

So why do it?

This is something that interested my son and as a homeschooling mother, I try to support their interests. Additionally, I value traditional knowledge combined with hands-on skills, skills that were widely known for centuries but have been lost to most of us in our modern lives. I want my children to have these skills, and I myself want to have these skills. Raising chickens is a skill-set, and my son has gained real life skills in the raising and processing of chickens.

As a society, we have become dependent for all of our needs on a supply chain that is becoming increasingly fragile. It’s nice to know that there are things that we can do for ourselves, and be less dependent on others to do them for us. I like knowing we can raise some of our own food – currently we supplement our store bought food with home-raised eggs, milk and now chicken.

While we’re very far from being independent in raising our own food, every bit of progress is something to feel good about. This was our first batch of chickens, and it’s taken time to get to this point. My son bought the mother hens as week old chicks that he raised, eventually incubated the eggs they laid when they reached maturity five months later, and now has raised those chicks to adulthood. It’s quite an accomplishment.

When my son first talked about doing this, it was just an idea. Now that it’s come to fruition, I’m more enthusiastic about him increasing the number of chickens he raises in the coming months.

Avivah

My rising monthly mortgage payment, and what I’m doing about it

frugal strategies, homemaking

Back in June, I noticed a jump in our mortgage payment, which had previously been stable for years.

My husband and I wondered what was going on, so he called the bank to find out. They told him that a portion of our mortgage loan is linked to the prime rate, which means it’s linked to the Bank of Israel interest rate increases.

(Quick explanation of Israeli mortgages so all of this will make sense: the standard mortgage consists of three different loans, each with different terms. One portion is fixed, one portion is linked to inflation, and the third portion is linked to interest rates. A completely fixed mortgage isn’t a typical offering here, no doubt because the high prices of real estate necessitate loans to be rigged like this to make them affordable to the average buyer.)

Concerned about the possibility of inflation, we made the decision over a year ago to pay off the portion of our mortgage that was linked to inflation. We talked about this for a long time, and breathed a sigh of relief when it was done, relieved that our mortgage payment wouldn’t be affected by market fluctuations. (At that point we were still unaware that the prime loan was linked to interest rates.)

It was a very unpleasant surprise when we learned that we still had a portion of our mortgage with a variable rate. My husband was told by the bank representative that they’re legally allowed to raise the rates eight times in a year – though when he called someone who works in mortgages to verify this information, he assured us that they wouldn’t do that because it would destroy the economy. (Good we’re not in Australia, where I was told they had interest rate increases for eight months straight! I suppose they aren’t worried about destroying their economy?)

After seeing the mortgage go up in June, I considered converting our prime loan to a fixed rate, but assumed it would be fixed at a much higher interest rate. That obviously would mean a much higher payment, and I mentally debated if it was worth it. While I was mentally waffling, my monthly mortgage steadily moved higher, and is now up 20% in the last six months.

Two weeks ago I finally called to get the details on converting our variable loan to a fixed rate, rather than continuing building up in my mind how costly it would be.

Our mortgage broker told me that interest rates will be going up again in January, but suggested I wait to convert my mortgage until next year when he hopes rates will go down. Though generally people convert a mortgage to take advantage of lower rates, I explained that I want the stability of a predictable, fixed monthly payment.

I was very pleasantly surprised to learn I could get a fixed rate for less than one percent more than what I’m currently paying. I was sure that it would be at least 3 – 4 percent higher. To think that for months I debated converting to what I thought would be a much higher rate, when the fixed rate for a prime loan is just marginally higher than the prime rate itself!

I am very much hoping we will have our loan converted before the interest rate increase in January. The paperwork is in process so we’ll see. It’s been reassuring to have taken this step, even if it’s not finished yet.

Avivah

Why my husband cashed in his pension fund

homemaking

I’m a reader and when there’s something I want to learn about, I tend to dive in deep. So no surprise, when years ago when I was interested in learning about finance and investing, I checked out – and read – every single book on the library shelf. Literally.

My takeaway from all that reading came down to two points: 1) Since very few people can beat the stock market, the simplest approach for the average person to take was to ‘buy the market’ (ie a fund that represents the market). 2) Over time the market goes up and if you do dollar cost averaging you’ll generally do well. Don’t panic during downs, don’t get euphoric on ups, keep your emotions in check and keep in mind the history of the market.

I did different things to help our children learn about saving and investing money when we were living in the US. We lived a very frugal life, but always put something aside a little something to save and invest. That was helpful when we suddenly decided to make aliyah.

When I moved to Israel, I didn’t understand how the financial markets in this country worked, so I put any thoughts of investing to the side. That would have been necessary in any case since we went through a very challenging time financially when starting over here and honestly didn’t have any extra to put into savings. It was a major accomplishment to have stayed out of debt during those years! So my interest in investing money went completely dormant.

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A couple of years ago, I began wondering what the financial consequences of worldwide shutdowns would be on the global economy. I began listening to different financial podcasts, with my goal being to get a sense of how events affect financial markets, and to consequently make responsible choices for my family.

Almost exactly a year ago, I talked to my husband about my concerns – the potential for significant inflation and the possibility of a major stock market correction in the following two or three years – and we discussed his pension funds. We had put our financial future into the hands of some anonymous fund manager that we don’t know, who doesn’t know us, who will get ample compensation regardless of how our funds do.

To answer some of our questions, he met with the contact person at his company for the pension funds. While I didn’t get specific answers to some questions I had (I wasn’t there to ask my questions!), the meeting clarified how much we could expect monthly after retirement. The rep gave us an optimistic number and told us we’d have to supplement our income even in the best case scenario. That wasn’t surprising, seeing that we didn’t start saving for retirement until after we made aliyah.

I wasn’t worried about the supposed shortfall of the optimistic scenario. Those numbers could be doable, albeit tight. What did concern me was the potential impact on our retirement funds if the market took a big extended hit. Was it likely to recover in time for us to benefit? The market has always rebounded, but it takes time. After the Great Depression, it took 25 years until the market got back to what it had been right before the crash. Yes, that’s an extreme example. Despite my understanding of the two key points I summarized regarding the market above, which would lead me to keeping the funds invested and trusting the market to recover, I kept asking myself if we were gambling to let our funds stay invested in the market at our age?

I don’t know if it was due to a gut feeling, being a fiscally conservative person or being paranoid because of all the podcasts I listened to but I felt very strongly about this. We began to talk about withdrawing the funds, but just opening that topic was a scary thing for us to consider. When you have retirement money invested with a professional, it feels like you’re safe, that you’re going to be taken care of. That’s what everyone does and doing what everyone else is doing is reassuring.

However, I haven’t found in any other area of my life that institutions care more about me, or do better for me than I or my specifically chosen representatives can do for me. This opened a thought-provoking and ongoing discussion between my husband and me for weeks.

After a couple of months, my husband was ready to withdraw his funds. He paid a heavy penalty for early withdrawal (I don’t remember now if it was 30% or 35%). It’s not fun to see the original sum be dramatically whittled down like that. A month after requesting to cash out his pension, the remaining pension funds were deposited in our bank account, and I felt a weight had been lifted from me.

In the last couple of months, I’ve seen a lot of people talking about losing 25 – 40% of their pension funds, and now they’re wondering if they should pull their money out and pay the penalty fees on what is left, or leave it in the market and hope it’s going to recover. I don’t know what our funds would look like now if we hadn’t withdrawn them, and I don’t know what they would look like in eleven years if we left them invested. Taking them out could have been the worst possible thing to do with our money, and only time will tell. However, I’m comfortable with our choice regardless of which scenario plays out, and am glad to have pulled them out when we did.

I’m not a financial advisor and not offering advice to anyone. As with everything else I write, I’m simply sharing my personal experience.

Avivah

Breeding our goats and saying goodbye to Oliver

homemaking, homeschooling

Back when I bought our first two goats in July, I asked the seller if I could bring our females back for breeding, and he agreed. When I called him a few weeks ago, he said it would be better for the male goat to come to our home. He could bring him, but he would have to charge me for that service, and would be glad to let me take him myself for free.

I was very nervous about that, but he assured me it wasn’t a big deal and would help me get him into our vehicle.

When we got there and saw the owner bring it out, I thought, “Oh, my goodness, he’s massive!” and that was an alarming thought, not admiring. But what came out of my mouth was a mild, “Oh, he’s big.”

“No, he’s not big,” responded the owner. “He’s enormous.”

Well, yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. And that was not what I was expecting and it was very intimidating.

The owner and his son got him into our vehicle, and he was remarkably calm during the short drive home. Two of my teenage sons led him into our yard to our pen – or it would be more accurate to say he pulled them both since together they couldn’t hold him back. I had read a lot about the aggressiveness of male goats and was apprehensive about that, but Oliver, as I named him, seemed kind of shy and was actually pleasant to have around.

I was very pleased with Oliver, as the personality of the father is important to what the personality of the kids will later be. In addition a couple of other desirable traits he had, he was a polled goat (born without horns), a quality that I prefer but in Israel this is the minority of goats. All of my goats are polled – and now the kids born will be polled as well. Though many people prefer goats with horns, I’m not one of them, and I’m not interested in having to remove the horns of baby goats.

Oliver spent a couple of weeks here and it was constantly on my mind as to how we were going to get him back in our vehicle to return him. Finally, the day came when it was time to go. The female goats were all sad to see him go and very verbally expressed their feelings as he was led out.

On his way out with ds15 and ds13

Other than my fifteen year old getting pulled to the ground at the last moment when Oliver was startled by a sudden action that was intended to be helpful by my thirteen year old, it was smooth and uneventful.

Arriving back at the farm

The owner told me he’s never allowed anyone to take any of his animals on loan before. (He’s been raising and and selling animals for many years.) I didn’t ask him why he made the exception for us, but I certainly do appreciate it!

I felt kind of bad for Oliver when he was led to his pen back home, as he lives alone there (the two males are separated so they don’t fight) and he clearly enjoyed the fellowship of the does.

Back in his pen

I feel accomplished to have taken care of getting all the does bred. Now we can relax for the next 4.5 – 5 months and wait to see how many kids make their arrival!

Avivah

Lifestyle creep and how it happened to me

frugal strategies, homemaking

A year ago, my husband got a new job along with a raise in salary. Nice, right? And yet, here we are a year later with hardly any increase in our savings rate.

How did that happen? When we talked about our numbers, we both felt we were being pretty careful financially – we’re not big spenders. We sat down together a few times for financial meetings to go over the numbers, and seemingly the only answer was that our expenses had gone up. It wasn’t until this week that I could finally answer that question more definitively.

Why this week? The first year we were married, my husband was responsible for the finances. I took over the next seventeen years. And then for the next twelve years, my husband has been at the helm. This week I took responsibility for the finances once again, something my husband really doesn’t like but I actually enjoy a lot. (As to why he did it for so long if he didn’t like it, that’s another question, but it was a purposeful decision on both of our parts and we’ve agreed our goal was reached.)

Taking over again is a bit overwhelming because I’m looking at a different system than my own, and I have to wade through a lot of numbers to figure out what’s going on, what money we have coming in and what’s going out, in order to get clarity in my own mind.

Here’s what’s become clear so far: we’ve allowed lifestyle creep to sneak in. For years we were really, really frugal and careful about all of our expenses. We had to be, as our income was on the lower side (my husband’s friends who had similar incomes as well as a spouse’s second income were all in debt) and it was only by very careful and conscious management that we had any possibility to accrue some savings.

As our financial situation improved, we got a little more relaxed, and then a little more relaxed….we stopped paying attention to all the little expenses because the bills were getting paid without it.

And we began to spend a little more money here, a little more money there – nothing major or budget busting that we could point to as to where all the potentially savable money was going.

Now I’m back in the hot seat. The first couple of nights I sat for hours, going through details of months of expenses, trying to get a clear sense of where our money goes. I felt like giving up because it was so frustrating to me. But I stuck with it, and after a couple more nights looking at printouts, am excited and energized to be our financial money manager again. I’m looking forward to seeing how much money we can save and funnel into savings.

That’s going to mean becoming more conscious again about expenses, assessing the value of where we spend money rather than just spending it when it seems necessary. I’m going to be carefully tracking all of our spending – neither of us has been tracking our cash expenditures at all, and all the itemized expenses have to be gone through regularly – and plugging the many small leaks that our budget has sprung. There’s no one big item to point to – yes, prices have gone up, but even more than that, what I’m seeing is a general increase in expenses due to lack of attention.

I’m recognizing lifestyle creep and taking steps to counter it. This is a very hopeful and empowered place to be, and I’ll be sharing about different things I’m doing and how it’s working out for us.

Avivah

Late night preparations for a healthy school birthday party!

homemaking

My ten year old son’s birthday was the week after the school year ended, so we opted to delay his class party until after the fall holidays. After his teacher and I coordinated the date, she sent me a note about what refreshments to send. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was quite different than last year!

  • rolls
  • cheese – sliced or cottage
  • salad or sliced vegetables
  • hard boiled eggs
  • birthday cake
  • 1 bottle of drink
  • papergoods – plates, cups, napkins, silverware

I don’t know what prompted this change, but I’m really glad to see they’ve shifted to a very different menu than what I was asked to provide last year. I’m going to let the teacher know how much I appreciate this.

It’s the night before his party and I’ve been getting ready the last couple of hours. I honestly was ready to go to sleep at 9:30 and thought I’d wake up early to bake, but realistically it would be hard for me to wake up at 4 am to start baking, and I would be likely to wake other people up with the noise. So here I am getting it done now with gritty eyes and a body that is yearning for bed. 🙂

It’s more work to prepare for this kind of party – especially since until a few hours ago I thought we were going to push it off for a week – but I’m really glad to provide something more nourishing for the class to eat.

I don’t want to send regular rolls for everyone else and to send my son with some substitute that would look very different from what everyone else was having at his party. However, I’m not an experienced gluten-free bread baker, and didn’t have time to play around trying out different recipes. It feels like a bit of pressure to make a gluten free roll that all the kids who are used to regular white bread will be willing to eat.

The stars in the sky all lined up when I found a recipe for which I amazingly had almost all the unusual (for me) ingredients. White rice flour, millet flour, potato starch, and tapioca flour. I didn’t have xanthum gum and a google search told me I could substitute potato starch. I just took the rolls out of the oven and tasted one when it was still warm. The flavor was good, though a little crumbly. I baked them in a silicone muffin pan and after waiting another ten minutes, they came out in one piece, so I think – hope? – they’ll will firm up when they cool down.

For the cake, my son told me he wanted cake with frosting and sprinkles on top. It’s late and I’m tired, and just didn’t have the energy to make frosting. I made him two pans of gluten free brownies and baked the colorful sprinkles directly on it. I hope he’ll be happy with it when he sees them in the morning.

I’ve chopped up the salad, boiled the eggs, packed up cheese and paper goods. I have no drink in the house to send – other than bottled water – and the boys have to be ready so early for their bus that it’s unrealistic to go out to the store before they need to leave. I’ll send the water so there will be something. At this point all that’s left is to wait for the baked goods to finish cooling down and wrap them up. Then it’s into bed for me!

Avivah

Getting ready for the fall season, plans for the week

food preservation, gardening, homemaking

Last week we were busy getting our yard ready for the rain, which turned into a race against the weather!

I’m so glad we enlarged our goat pen before the holidays, because there was so much to do to get things in the yard waterproofed before the first rain of the year (for about seven consecutive months a year we don’t get rain here in Israel). First and most important was the goat pen: the boys built a roof frame, then lined it with what they were told was a waterproof tarp.

We were rushing to get the hay covered as the rain began. It quickly turned into a downpour, and we were relieved to have finished the goat pen roof in time…until it became clear that the waterproof tarps we used weren’t waterproof after all, when we saw the water was dripping through onto our unhappy goats.

Talk about finding alternative solutions quickly! I suggested grabbing the large blue foam mats that we used under the pool and stapling them up; they did that in the pouring rain and then we all ran for cover.

They took the entire roof off to redo it on a sunny day, but it began raining before it was put back on. They once again ran to get it over the goats, but the pen had gotten soaked and the next day I and one of the boys had to completely clean everything out.

Until now, I’ve been cleaning out the dirty hay by shoveling it into a thirty liter barrel, then carrying to the chicken run and dumping it in. I do a load every two or three days. The chickens love picking out any insect larvae and with their constant scratching and pecking, break down the hay and in essence, compost it. My plan has been to eventually pull all that composted hay out of their coop to use on the garden beds.

With the sudden huge pile of wet hay, it was too much work to take it all to the chicken coop, so I changed direction and after shoveling it all onto the garden beds, suggested to my son he let the chickens out into the yard to work the hay. They’ve been loving free-ranging again, and we’re enjoying our ‘chicken tv’ again, as we sit in the yard watching their antics.

Speaking of the chickens, we need to cover more of their coop area with a waterproof material as well. Since part of their coop is rain-proof, we put our focus on getting the rabbits and goats waterproofed. Then after the downpour I noticed some of them were wet; I suppose they didn’t want to limit themselves to staying in the dry area. So this week my son will extend that for them.

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Today my plans include making a huge pot of compote, then canning it all up so we can enjoy it in the winter.

I’ve done all my winter clothes shopping for the boys, but I still need to organize it all. We’re at the stage of the days being hot but the mornings being cold enough for winter wear. So in the next couple of days I hope to finish getting all the clothes sorted.

Also in the next couple of days I need to figure out how to transport a buck to our home for breeding. I’ve been pushing this off until the pen was enlarged and then rainproofed; now I need to get this done or risk missing the breeding season. (Goats need to be bred to continue to produce milk.) I think we’ll keep him here for a few weeks, and will see how that affects what has been a smooth running daily routine with our three females. Male goats have a reputation for not being fun to have around and their presence supposedly makes the milk taste more ‘goaty’.

When I ordered two bales of hay, it was with the thought it would get me through until the next hay season. Then we got a third goat (it was going to be for my daughter and then ended up a better fit for us), and now with the male goat…we’re going to be needing much more hay than I initially planned for! In a non-shmita year, I would order a bale at a time, but now even though I have a lot left, I need to order more this week while the hay farmer still has non-shmita bales (from the year before last) available.

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When I bought barrels for animal feed from a private seller a few months ago, he offered me a couple of rusty hoes for free (just the head, no handles). Seeing they were heavy duty metal, I accepted them, figuring we could sand them down and get new handles for them. I’ve been very disappointed with how poor the quality of new garden tools are – almost every rake and shovel I’ve bought has broken after less than a year of use. Not heavy duty use, either. The first shovel that I bought seven or eight years ago is still going strong, though, even though it’s seen much more use than all of the new implements put together.

I haven’t gotten to sanding them down these rusty hoes yet (and it’s not on my list of immediate projects to do since they’re usable without sanding) but we did get new handles that fit perfectly at the hardware store. Additionally, I’ve bought a couple new shovels and two hand trowels. The trowels look like excellent quality and if I can keep track of them and not lose them (I tend to put them down and then forget where I put them…) they should last a long time.

After a year of not touching the garden because of shmitta, there has been a lot of work to do – weeding, trimming, pruning. I’ve gotten a lot of garden clean-up done in the last couple of weeks. This week I’d like to get some seeds into the ground and will see if I can get a crop before it gets cold. The vegetables I’m thinking about traditionally are planted in the spring so I don’t know if planting now is being smart by optimizing the planting season or being overly optimistic. We have a warm climate and sometimes even in January it’s warm so it theoretically could work; all I have to lose is some seeds and some time, so I’m willing to experiment.

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There’s lots more to do this week, but these are my ‘discretionary’ projects. I’m conscious of how much these activities add to my day, but I do them to the degree that it works for me, and it’s a nice feeling to be purposefully busy.

Avivah