One Hundred Dollars a Month - Page 1634 of 2143 - I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Growing Vegetables in a Greenhouse – Spinach, Lettuce, Basil and More

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure
By Mavis Butterfield on April 9, 2013 · 7 Comments

I thought I would give you a peek and show you what’s growing in the greenhouse right now. Typically I crack the doors open a bit in the late morning to get a little air flow going. In the summer months I pop the vents and leave those open 24/7 but it’s still a bit too chilly for that right now.

I think this may be the last week for daffodils and grape hyacinth flowers in front of the greenhouse. I do believe I planted some tulips in those planters so they should be popping up soon.

Growing vegetables in gutters is awesome. We have spinach on the top followed by Swiss chard, lettuce and romaine lettuce in the bottom gutter.

The first set of true leaves on the spinach are starting to form.

The lettuce is bite size. Note to self: keep Lucy out of the greenhouse or she will have enough for a small buffet.

The make folding tables are filled with seedlings. I still have not gotten around to transplanting the basil or zinnias, hopefully I can get my act together soon. I think it still might be too cold to set out the geraniums, so I’ll I think I’ll wait another week on those. Everything seems to be thriving.

Round 3 of cabbage.

The slugs are back in town. I spotted this little guy munching on a cabbage leaf this morning and promptly tossed him in my salt bucket. Now I have to go on a slug hunt and see if I can find anymore in the greenhouse. How do they get in there anyway?

For the most part, I think everything is coming along pretty nicely for this time of year. I do think I will invest in a greenhouse fan this year, so if you have any ideas on what brand or type I should buy please let me know in the comments below.

I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to warmer weather.

Stay Green,

Mavis

Looking for a mini greenhouse? Amazon has the 3 foot Flower House Pop-Up Plant House on sale right now. I used the 4 foot version before I invested in my glass greenhouse and it worked great.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Reclaimed Food Show and Tell – Free Strawberries and Grapes

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure
By Mavis Butterfield on April 9, 2013 · 20 Comments

I just about fell over when I first saw the 30 boxes of strawberries. My immediate thought was strawberry jam. Then strawberry smoothies, then what the heck am I going to do with all these berries?

The chickens have some pretty fierce competition these days for the free produce scraps.

At this point I still don’t know what I’m going to do this summer when all the veggies start growing. Keeping her out of the garden beds is going to be a challenge for sure. I will admit though, vegetables are a wee bit tastier than shoes. Lets just hope she doesn’t turn in to a total food snob. Ha!

Does anyone know what the shelf life of the typical grocery store strawberry that has been trucked in from California or Mexico is? My backyard strawberries only last about 24 hours on the kitchen counter before they start to go bad.

But then again, I don’t use chemicals and my berries are about 1/3 of the size.

From the 30+ pounds of strawberries Mr. Produce Guy gave me this week, this was all we were able to reclaim. Sadly, the chickens don’t care for strawberries, so on to the compost heap the bad ones go. As for the good ones, I think I’ll make some jam today.

Something is always better than nothing.

Peace Out Girl Scouts, have a great day.

~Mavis

Would you like to see what else we have brought home over the past year?

Head on over HERE to read all the past stories and to see all the pictures.

If you have just stumbled upon this series and are wondering how I got all this food for free, you’ll want to read this story first.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Mavis Asks Readers to Send in Gnomes – Oh Gnome You Didn’t!

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure
By Mavis Butterfield on April 8, 2013 · 3 Comments

Guess what came in the mail today?

{Oh Gnome You Didn’t T-shirt}

Oh just a few gnomes for our Send in the Gnomes Fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. We have officially hit the 10% mark. Yep, over 100 gnomes have been sent in so far. Yee- Haw!

Some of the gnomes were sent in without messages. They are “gnome-less.” {Oh man I crack myself up sometimes. So many gnome jokes, so little time.} So please take a look if you sent one in so we can give you credit and let everyone know where they came from. You can see all of the gnomes that were sent in HERE.

In case you were worried about security, Mr. Pants-half-down has been doing a great job of keeping all the gnomes in line.

Which has been great because we have a lot of super jocks in the hood these days.

However there have been a few shenanigans going on though.

For instance, Travelocity Gnome {who incidentally believes he’s Santa} totally has the corner market on the fairy garden.

I’m not sure where First Time Away From Home Gnome was headed, but by the look on his face, Mavisland wasn’t it.

I think these guys are holding out for higher wages. We pay in produce around these parts. They’ll learn soon enough.

And these 3 were caught trying to escape. Note to self: research gnome traps.

Thanks everyone for your support! I am having a blast.

~Mavis

To read more about this totally cool fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, head on over HERE.

I have also set up a Send in the Gnome Wish list on Amazon.com as some of you had suggested. Thanks for all your suggestions!

And last but not least, as gnomes arrive they will be cataloged, photographed and placed on the Send in the Gnomes – Where Did They All Come From page.

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.

Is Food Love?

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosure
By Mavis Butterfield on April 8, 2013 · 12 Comments

The other day I stumbled onto an NPR article that asked the question: “How Did Our Brains Evolve to Equate Food with Love?”

I don’t know why exactly, but it struck a chord with me. I spend all day growing food and searching it out and I’d like to think I work pretty hard to make sure that my family has healthy meals on the table. But, I never really thought about WHY? I mean, I know there’s that whole we have to eat to survive thing, but would I work my arse off if I didn’t have my family?

I don’t think so. I do it because I care about them. I care that they are healthy and well taken care of–I do it because I love them. Well, there’s that, and then there is the part about idle hands…

The article talked about how we evolved to equate sharing food with creating allies, and eventually love, but it went on to ask why there is still so much emotion around food now?

Everybody has heard of emotional eating, and I’ve always associated it with over-indulgence, but I realized for the first time that food is emotional no matter who you are.

Take the holidays and pumpkin pies for example. Most people just go to Costco and buy one, but I like to bake mine from scratch because I know Monkey Boy loves them and looks forward to homemade pumpkin pies all year long. He helped his great grandmother make a pie once when he was 3 years old. And since then, he loves to help {anyone} make any sort of seasonal pie.

There are so many tastes and smells of foods that mean more to me than just surviving–food is an experience, and sharing it is can be ab awesome thing.

I came away from the article with a new, deeper appreciation for food–which I don’t think was the point of the article at all, ironically.

What do YOU think?

Is food love?

~Mavis

This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.