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Waste Not, Want Not

I suppose I'm more wasteful than my ancestors (who were, by virtue of their genetics, frugal with a capital F). I just today roasted a turkey, in a frenzied attempt to gain some room in my freezer before Mr. Pork comes to stay. And when I finished picking the meat off the bones, I did NOT boil the carcass to make broth. I do this faithfully in the winter. Not today; I just let the barn cats have at it...

But it does bother me a bit to waste stuff. So, when we are done harvesting sweet corn (as we did last Saturday), the stalks get chopped and fed to Mr. Cow and his friends. 


And that wheelbarrow of corn we husked? The husks went to the rams. They are stuck inside, unlike the females and young'uns who have fresh grass every 3-5 days. So a bit of green was very welcome to them.


How do you "swim upstream" in our wasteful culture? What specific ways are you frugal even when it's more work? 
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  1. AnonymousAugust 14, 2008 at 10:25 PM

    Due to high fuel costs, I have definitely cut down on quick trips to town and combine as many errands as I possibly can in one trip! I miss our 4-H hog projects because they got all of our "scrappy" type stuff, watermelon rinds, (their personal fave) and whatnot. Love your blog! LuAnn

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  2. AnonymousAugust 15, 2008 at 11:23 AM

    One of my favorite ways to be both frugal and "green" is to use cloth napkins. Every few years I buy a couple yards of calico when it's on sale, cut it up and hem it into napkins. Over the years, it has worked out to about $1/year for napkins. (I think that's less than the cost of one package of paper napkins.) Plus, they just work so much better than paper - no ripping or shredding when we use them. They just go into the laundry, hardly noticable in the regular loads. It's a little way to save that also feels like a luxury.

    Of course, there are also the old standbys like only buying things that are on sale (aside from essentials like milk, eggs, etc.),
    doing everything in town in one trip, having a garden, canning and freezing stuff, etc.

    I need some animals to eat our kitchen scraps! Maybe some day....

    Debbie

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  3. PamAugust 17, 2008 at 11:20 PM

    I wash out ziploc bags and use them again and again. It's a small thing, but hey...... I also don't run the dishwasher unless it's completely full, and I rarely do small loads of laundry either (part of the reason for that could be having 5 kids). We do a pretty good job of using up leftover food too, though we could probably do better.

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