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I am so impressed with your gardening journal.  It is inspiring me to be more detailed with mine.  Your crumpets look delicious.  Would you share the recipe?  I also try to look at the month by month cost of things.  Thanks for sharing your method

I have mentioned  I worked diligently with our water usage in 2022. We recently got a letter from our municipality that the cost of clean water is going to rise 20 percent and the sewage fee 25 percent from 1st of April on because there has been LESS water used. Oh well. We have seen this tactic used before with electricity usage, but now it seems it's the name of the game. Prices go up if there's less usage and they will go up if there's more usage.

I have used the envelope system for years for everything from property taxes to haircuts and it brings peace. I would love the crumpet recipe too please and info on the rings used to cook them ??????

Thank you for the one month update.   I really appreciate your comment about continuing to learn and make adjustments.  I get so tempted to know everything and do everything “right now” and that creates enormous stress.  In the past few weeks I have been reminding myself to do the best I can today with what I know, and make progress.  Nothing has to be 100%.   That reminder to myself has helped reduce my stress!  

My family is English, too. I was born there; and my mum emigrated from there when she was close to thirty years old. Crumpets are wonderful. You can easily make the rings with old tuna or salmon tins with both ends cut out. Or they can be bought from specialist shops for baking, such as King Arthur Flour; but are rather costly. England is only about 800 miles from Norway, so is northwestern but traditionally was not counted as Europe (as to national pride on being on their own, you know). I was raised on English food; and love it to this day. But a roast beef and Yorkshire Pud is not always the healthiest, we know now!  Glad you are getting back to your roots; we make some of the best cakes and bakes in the world!

For 10-15 years I used an overseas veterinary RX website in Australia, Petshed.com. If you read the ingredients, you will see their meds at much lower prices, and the company often says this RX =one you know - with the brand name. There is a $5 shipping fee, but things were so much cheaper it always worked out better than in the US, including the on-line suppliers. And all of my orders came within a 2 week period. Best wishes, L

Grandma Donna wrote, to those asking, I will make some scones again and take pictures and share my recipe with a post under cooking from scratch.  :) 

I'm just joining ( a little behind I guess), but I'm so enjoying catching up on these 1930s posts.  I especially like Sarah's diary.  

My grandfather grew up during the Depression in Chicago.  I wonder about the difference in rural and city life at the time. His parents were immigrants of Polish extraction.  Lots of beets, potatoes, cabbage, mushrooms and other root vegetables in their cuisine. 

I remember visiting his house in the 1980s, and he still saved everything.  He had stacks and stacks of egg cartons and brown paper bags in his basement (I miss brown paper bags being a choice at the store).  My dad said it was because he did not want to waste anything which he learned from growing up during that time.  He had many, many coffee cans full of nails, bolts, screws, etc. In the 1930s, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps which I guess was a way the government was trying to get jobs for young men.  I have a picture of him with some friends on the job with them holding their shovels and picks.  

I am looking forward to your February posts!

Grandma Donna wrote, Z T, we are glad to have you here in the forum. There is no certain time that you have to start this study, anyone at any time can jump into the study. I hope that you find some helpful information along the way.  Many of us are finding that a notebook, pencil and sharpener is an important tool for this study. :)  Thank you for your comment and I am happy you are reading along. 

I'm glad the first month is over! Since Dec. my brain was processing too many changes. At first I steeped myself in the entertainment culture of the thirties. I think it helped me make the transition. But now, things have taken a more serious turn. I made enough changes that I'm not consumed with thinking about making changes! It's time to get down to the nitty gritty. 

The change in how we think about money was the biggest one. We have cut spending quite a lot. As soon as we finish paying the plumber bill this month, we can start allocating funds. We got rid of our printer. Our printer has always been difficult since it decides when it wants to print, not us, and we don't often need to print anything. We finally realized (!!) that spending money on ink that dried out before we used the printer again and having to buy more every time wasn't getting us anywhere good. We needed to do a lot of printing lately and the library charges only a dime per copy (and we have dimes because we use cash more now). Much cheaper that having a printer at home. Goodbye to another modern convenience! 

I'm thinking a lot about growing food too. We bought a rain barrel last year and I can't wait to try it out this year. I worry about drought. I'm hoping it will help water the garden when we don't have rain. I worked hard on learning to overwinter things so I can harvest from the garden in early spring and now I want to learn how to have food available from the garden in the winter too. Our hay on the carrots worked pretty well, even with the historic freeze we had. I would like to provide most of our produce year-round. :)

I have been traveling to England the past couple of years, and feel so at home in London.  I will be visiting the British Isles later in the year, and can't wait!  Scones and apple/orange jam are my favorite.  I am looking forward to trying your recipe.  I am so thankful for my fruit trees right now.  Our gas and electric bills have skyrocketed.  Some of the people up in the mountains have gotten bills for six hundred to a thousand dollars for one month!  Such a shock...I am thankful to have a small cottage and an orchard.  I have been making food, grocery shopping and cooking the main focus.  I will try your manure trick with straw on my orchard  this month.  Thanks for all the tips.  Love the photos...such cute children!

My husband took to baking bread when we moved to our current property (1 hectare / 2.5 acres) some 9 years ago. We were in the grocery store one day about 4 years ago and he was reaching for a packet of crumpets. I challenged him to make his own and he took up the challenge. We purchased some deep crumpet rings and  then I showed him my old crumpet recipe. He made them, was totally amazed at how good they were and was flabbergasted that the stores call those rubber discs they sell crumpets! That was a turning point for him in regards to homemade everything and he champions every change I make in the direction of being authentic and self sufficient, and he joins in wholeheartedly. Now he makes a wide variety of savoury breads including seeded and rye, raisin bread, crumpets, hot cross buns, and more.

One thing I would add to the budgeting for any costs, be they annual or monthly, is to work in your country’s current inflation rate. It may not be accurate for each individual item or service, or each quarter, but it will get you closer to the real costs as they are changing. This probably wasn’t either available or even useful in the great depression, but certainly useful now.

  Thanks for the fine post! I am especially enjoying the parts about budgeting and saving money. I found that I am saving money and thinking differently about money. Yesterday I was doing an organizing project and I needed a book shelf. I automatically said to myself "I need to go buy a book shelf." But then my Great Depression era self said that I can't afford a new book shelf and asked me what I would do if I was completely destitute and I couldn't buy the shelves. I thought for a while and reorganized things and didn't end up buying anything. It occurred to me that a person can save a lot of money by adding 3 letters to their thoughts about money. It seems automatic in this day and age whenever a problem comes up to automatically say "How much will it cost to solve this problem WITH money?" Now I am adding 3 letters and asking instead "How can I solve this problem WITHOUT money?" Between with or without is only 3 letters difference but what a huge savings it can make in the budget.

I have been saving on food also. I used to buy shredded cabbage and carrots. It is just 2 kinds of cabbage and carrots. It is $1.49 - $1.69 a pound. I decided this was an extravagance and now I am buying the cabbage for .79 a pound and the carrots for .89 a pound and shredding them myself. It is even better than the ready made stuff because I can add more carrots like I like it.

I am also working on using up food, as well as other things that I already have. Right now it has been seven days since I have been to the store and I want to see how long I can go. I have been reading "The Long Winter" by Laura Ingalls Wilder and in this book they went over 5 months basically without buying much of anything. It wasn't by their choice of course, but it got me to thinking about what if I just quit buying groceries, toilet paper, health and beauty products etc.? How long could I last and what would be the thing that would make me go back to the store? I am very well stocked up on things and I think this is a good time to start using up a lot of what I've already bought instead of buying more.

I've been making Bubble and Squeak which is a very cheap recipe using potatoes and cabbage. It sounds like you can pretty much use up whatever you have on hand to put in it. It is very tasty too.

I used to love Bubble and Squeak, Becky Sue. It is made with whatever you have leftover from Sunday dinner, which is traditionally roast beef with a green, usually Brussel Sprouts or  cabbage, potatoes, either mashed or roasted; and a gravy. I like onion gravy myself.  I don't eat this way much anymore because there's only two of us and a roast is usually not small enough to accommodate. Also, I have lessened the times we eat meat nowadays. It is expensive, and also not as healthy to eat too much of as we get older; which we are. But when I have the occasion, I do like a nice roast beef dinner. With the Yorkshire Pud as well!  I had it every Sunday growing up.

Hi gdonna, I love your crumpets! I want to try to make them too. Your blog posts are always so inspiring. We've moved in the last year so I'll be starting my garden this spring. I so admire your garden journal. Most of all I think you and your hubs are so organized, in everything. And reading about your daily routines and yearly goals is a joy. Thanks!  

As usual, January seemed so very long, I'm glad that it's over!  Lessons learned from it? The main lesson for me is how much longer everything seems to take without our modern conveniences,, especially in the kitchen; now that I've gone 1930's.

I've become used to having a stove-top kettle instead of a much speedier electric one but am only just coming to terms with no longer having a microwave. Previously,  I've saved money and spread my groceries further by batch cooking and reheating in the microwave.  No longer an option so I'm having to find alternatives.  I have learned to cook porridge on the residual heat left in an electric ring after I've boiled the kettle for my morning tea and also turn the rings off, allowing the residual heat to finish cooking whatever is on the stove. It's a continuous learning curve.

I found that using candles and oil lamps as a light source wasn't practical for me.  I live in a metal walled, converted porta-cabin and the continuous use of candles left a fine layer of soot on the walls (and especially on the cobwebs that festoon the place, it looked like a cheap version of a Scooby Doo style haunted mansion!).  So I've resorted to a solar powered lamp instead.  I charge it up during the day and use it during the evening and if I wake at night.  I hope to be using it less and less as the days get longer.

The slightly warmer, slightly longer days means that my fingers are itching to begin sowing in the garden - growing my food is going to be even more important this year. It is still a little early to be direct sowing yet though, although I may risk sowing some onion seeds in the greenhouse. 

 I am using the envelope system for everything including my groceries - and I'm even more determined to stick to it this month!  I'm having my hair cut this month but have budgeted for it, ditto the car insurance.  

One thing I am being much more diligent about, is filling in my daily journal.  It's more about my thoughts and feelings than my actual activities but I feel I need to change this.  It would be nice to look back and see exactly what I've achieved this year.

One goal that I really haven't made a start on,  is to dress more 'challenge appropriate'. I've put away my fleeces and jersey fabric clothes but haven't gotten around to sewing more 'age' appropriate clothes.  I have the fabric, the basic skills and some patterns - just not made the necessary start.  Maybe in February...

Laura, thank you so much for the information on Petshed.com.  I'm looking forward to trying them out for some much needed savings. 

Hi! Wow, I haven’t been to this blog since last year and I am loving catching up. It is so timely for me. My husband has changed jobs and his income is less than it was before. I am a stay at home mom, homeschooling my three growing boys. I have been trying to budget groceries without getting overwhelmed. And meal plan. And fill everyone up. Thank the Lord, we always have plenty. But I know my mindset needs a shift. I already make a lot of our food from scratch. Nothing like homemade bread. And biscuits are so convenient!
gdonna, where did you get those little canisters to save your seeds? That is brilliant. Would love to see that set up. Mine are all in their envelopes and it gets quite messy and sometimes they spill out. 
I am looking forward to starting some seeds soon. And I don’t think I need to make any purchases for our garden this year except some compost. 

Also wanted to mention colcannon. It’s an Irish dish of mashed potatoes and greens (cabbage or kale). It’s very tasty! 

If you bake a lot of russet potatoes and eat some with dinner, any left over chop up in the morning and put in skillet with some oil and a little salt.They get so crispy and good. Serve with eggs. Or my mom would cut up hotdogs and crisp those up together for a lunch. 

I would love chickens but our property doesn’t allow! Even though I am rural and on 1 acre. Hard not to break the rules sometimes

well Donna you may gasp but I’m actually removing one raised vegetable bed this year.  We realized we have only partially resolved a serious drainage problem in the yard.  I guess instead of “death cleaning” we are “death gardening” i. Trying to resolve now while we are still able all the issues we can predict will come up years down the road.  To solve the next step requires dirt.  At our age we are looking for the simplest, most expedient, and cheapest way to resolve that need.  It will be the dirt from one raised vegetable bed.  My vision is that I should still be able to raise either the herbs, lettuce, and/or possibly my short carrot variety there.  We shall see as there isn’t a lot of sunlight in that spot, so it will likely be the green veges.   That would also resolve the need for some kind of planting there to slow water runoff without buying plants.  
 I think that is a huge part of understanding how life worked during the Depression….make do with what you have.  Think of the best way to accomplish your goal.  Not having a microwave means you have a house more like where people were living in the Depression.  However, my dirt poor Grandma cooked over a wood stove in a very tiny kitchen.  To say it was miserable in that kitchen in summer would be the grossest of understatement.  I think she just might have given her right arm for something like a microwave that could cook food quickly while she saved her energy for her gardening and other work she was doing for that passel of younguns.  And with the microwave cooking so much cooler today it would save from heating up my own kitchen with the stove or oven and thereby save a little money.  So I think I will use the darn thing for more than just reheating food this year.  I think that is key as you have pointed out before, each person has to evaluate their situation and seek out solutions that make the most sense.

If you haven’t already done so you really should read The Worst Hard Time which is about the Dust Bowl days.  A box of tissues is required at times like the chapter where a man frequently writes in his diary “I just don’t know how we are going to survive.”  I was just so impressed by the people’s toughness.    My husband’s Grandma lived through the dust bowl on the Eastern plains just off the foot hills of Colorado.  She talked about them setting the table with everything turned upside down to keep some of the dust off.  Things placed in cabinets were upside down and a rag over them.   And even though they had stuffed rags around the windows every drawer you pulled open would reveal dust inside.  These were tough folks!  Her husband was later on a road crew building some of the scary roads through the mountains of CO.  She would herself haul a trailer over the precarious unpacked roads just being built to set up housekeeping in new areas.  I asked her how in the world she did that.  Her response:  well honey if you have to do it you just DO.    Pretty much the motto of every pioneer and person who lived through the Depression, don’t you think?

Grandma Donna Wrote, Anna G, your question gdonna, where did you get those little canisters to save your seeds? That is brilliant. Would love to see that set up. Mine are all in their envelopes and it gets quite messy and sometimes they spill out.  Early in 2022 I purchased two bead organizers.  They are used to hold small glass beads for making jewelry.  I purchased two and numbered the tops and then we wrote down all the information of what was in that particular vial. I purchased it on Amazon, it has 60 to a case.  Look under 60 grids bead organizer. I hope this helps. 

Grandma Donna wrote, Dell O, this time of year (spring not far off) seems brutal since we are finding all of these things we need to fix before we cannot physically do that anymore. I cannot tell you how many of those those things are on our list right now. Yikes!  My new mission is to do this without complaining on how bad I hurt.  I am starting to think everything outside that has to be done is too heavy.  But then comes harvest time, and soon those labor pains have been forgotten and moved on to a new type of labor pains with canning.  But then comes winter... :)  You have a lot of work ahead of you, be careful. 

I have not read the book The Worst Hard Time.  I cannot even imagine living in that kind of dust and having to cover the food to be able to eat it without dust all over it inside your house.  How it must have felt when they found a  location that they were not breathing in dust.  I hope that the farming practices are different now but I do wonder if it could happen again.

Thanks for mentioning that book. It should be an interesting read!

Becky Sue

Thanks for sharing about The Worst Hard Time.  My husband got me a copy of it for Christmas, but I've not found time yet to crack it open.  I'll certainly prioritize it now (with many hankies nearby!).

Thank you for this update.  I am glad I follow along here on your blog because I was prepared as I could be for what just happened to our family.  We were in the Jan 12 tornadoes and one tore up our house leaving a hole in the side and our roof needing replacing!  We were all safe and tucked in our basement area under the porch where three trees fell. (most of the trees in our woods have also fallen but these were the ones on the house) They hit both sides of us but we were safe in the middle of the room and the trees, luckily, didn't come through the porch.  Our animals were trapped in the crawl space area on the other side of the house but we got them out a few hours later.  We have been cleaning for three weeks straight.  We had no electricity for 6 days and lost our freezer foods!  I didn't have canned meat but I am stocking canned meat now for sure!  

You are right, agencies showed up and volunteers too.  We just finally had help cleaning up our tree debris and fallen trees on this past Saturday.  They were nice to come and help.  We had been working and made a small dent and they helped make another dent in the work.  FEMA is near and helping the victims so that is good too.  Insurance is taking a long time to settle it seems but I know they are busy.  I feel like I am rambling.  But it helps...this was declared a disaster area by the government (as I am sure it was in many other areas where they hit.)

We were stuck in our dead end neighborhood until the next day unless we walked out. The trees and power lines were everywhere.  It took my dh two and a half hours to get home and he works 20 minutes up the road!  He thanked God we were all ok and gave us all a hug and then looked at the damage in the dark that he could see, then freed the animals!  The cell phones didn't work and the land line quit when they turned the power lines off after the clean up crews saw the damage.  They had to replace miles and miles of electric and telephone lines!  Our neighborhood and our property looks like a war zone.  It was hard to look at at first, but I guess we have all been so busy with cleaning up and staying safe from ragged trees that were fallen to notice hardly anymore.

I feel I am rambling....I just wanted to say, thank you for what you share here.  I do not feel like I would have been prepared as much as I was (which wasn't as much as I should have been) if I hadn't  been following your blog for so long, since before covid, and reading the diaries you post here and the posts you make!  You are a wonderful encouraging person and I am happy to be here.

(sorry so long....)

Grandma Donna wrote, Christina A, I am glad that you all are okay physically.  We just never know when something can happen.  Canned meat and veggies is a very good thing to keep on hand, and a camping stove but I caution to always make sure there are no gas lines affected before lighting anything.  Charles and I keep a small tent in the back of our car and we keep a family tent put away to the safest place we can find to keep it. We do this so we could stay on our property if our house had bad damage.  I am not sure if I ever mentioned that before.  Basic camping items are a very good thing to have so you can leave or stay.  

I hope they can get your house repaired soon and I know your animals must have been relieved to see you these kinds of storms traumatizes them so much. I hope the spring storms stay away from your house.  Love and prayers for you.