Well, for the last couple of years I think about how many hours my husband has to work to buy it and if we really need that.
I am tired of $500 electric bills and this summer we are putting up solar panels and seeing about putting more insulation (if we can) in.
Most of all the changes in the last six months have been food. I do not want genetic modified foods because dr's are now saying Americans are nutritionally deficient (genetic modified foods do not have the nutrition). Processed foods do not have the nutrition. I've not been able to find any canned corn as yet that is not gm and the vegetables we mostly use are potatoes, frozen peas, corn and carrots............ we're growing all those in the garden this year. I also got a brand new Mantis tiller last week and I hope this one lasts ten years like my other one did.
For the past 2 years I've bought a hog from someone in the area but I'm not satisfied with the taste. I think pig farmers must be trying to utilize distilled grains and the taste isn't there. I intend to get 2 or 3 this year and raise them ourself on corn and see if they don't taste better.
I believe food and utilities are going to go up further and those are what I am concentrating on to reduce my expenses.
I've become very interested in naturalistic medicine. I'm not satisfied that I have to worm the cows more often and black walnut hulls kill worms......... I'm gonna search it out more and seep my own black walnut hulls and see if that don't work better. I will have to wait until fall to try that though.
We've added grapes, black raspberries, blueberries and pecan trees to the yard. We've transplanted from the other place to here our peach, crabapple, black walnut trees and blackberries.
The pond has fish, I just don't know how many. The canadian geese stay here all year round and there's wild turkey a field over.
We've got our own chickens and I may have to get some ducks (just in case the hubby doesn't get me a goose for the table).
Oh and I've stocked up on 22 hollow points and shotgun shells.......... never ever had a gun in my house until the hubby and I got married and he brought his deer rifle and 22 over. Don't get the wrong idea, I have no intention of killing anybody, I'm just not gonna go without food when wildlife abounds, let someone else fight over roadkill (if it gets to that point).
Actually, I think many rural folks are in better shape than city folks as rural people usually help each other out and you form alliances with your neighbors. Perryville is known for its german ancestry and those folks don't waste anything (my husband was raised that way), men still open the doors for women and most children have manners and know the words, "please and thank you"
I guess the biggest change and it wasn't for financial reasons is that my folks and my husband and I went together and bought a 4 br place last september. As a little girl, I would tell my folks all the time that when they grew old, I would take care of them. Dad will be 80 in June and mom is 73 so they've finally decided that maybe they need just a "little" help. It works out fine (much better than I thought it would as I've not lived with my parents since I was 19 (30 yrs ago). Dad calls this place, "an old man's paradise" and I think we'd have heaven here on earth if we had at least 41 acres or more to go with the 9 we now have. At least then we could have
all the cows here instead of in leased pasture. Perhaps someday we may be able to add to it as there's a 300 acre farm surrounding us.
IFthings get really tight, then we may fence the hubby's acreage over at his homeplace and run most of the cattle over there instead of leasing pasture. We used 180 round bales last winter (however we still have 800 square bales of alfalfa in the barn) and we have 40 acres in orchard grass/clover and 20 acres in alfalfa. At least we have an option, plus one brother in law has 190 acres adjoining the homeplace that we could put up electric fence around after he gets his crops off and utilize some of that but that's only if things get really bad.