Yardbirds

We took a giant step toward greater self-sufficiency today. We bought three laying hens. I'm very excited about having these chickens and I can't wait until they start laying eggs!

I also found a source of free fresh fruit. There is a local guy who has a ton of citrus trees on his property and he posted an ad on Craigslist. He was selling blood oranges for $5/bag. I bought a bag and asked the woman who answered the door if the other citrus was for sale. She said, "nope, that is all free." We had a nice conversation while I picked the fruit and I got an email from the property owner when I got home telling me I could come get more anytime I wanted it. I'm going back later this week.

I'm proud to report that I have not set foot in Walmart now in several weeks. I would have to look at my bank statements to do an official count, but I'm intending to stay out of the grocery store, Costco and Walmart entirely for the whole of lent (which starts on Wednesday). We'll see how this goes. Obviously we won't be able to go 40 days without milk, butter or eggs, but I might be able to find another source for these things. Thank God for craigslist.

I may have a job interview tomorrow. I have a pretty hot iron in the fire and if I was to actually get a job, this would relieve a lot of financial pressure on the family. If this one doesn't pan out, I'll have to put the job search in high-gear.

The 2nd Great Depression

Well, it seems to be here, the second Great Depression. My parents were children during the first great depression but they were old enough to understand what was going on. They lives were forever changed by it. For the first time in my life, I find that I am thankful to have grown up with older parents; I typically think of it as a liability. Now however, even though I have never practiced my parent's brand of frugality, I lived with it, and I know how it is done, and I'm thankful for this knowledge.

Just a quick background on our own situation: we are have only one major debt, mortgages. We don't have a lot of consumer debt, no car loans, no student loans, but we are used to spending a lot of money. We are a large family with 6 children. We both used to work full time and we brought home consultant's wages. Now, we are both unemployed and it has been this way now for 2 months. We have been living on some money left over in our business which we've been paying ourselves like a salary. But soon the till will be empty. We do have some Roth IRAs from which we can begin to draw, penalty free, if we have to. Then we have some money left in our 401Ks. The amounts available to us in these accounts have shrunk dramatically, like in everyone else's accounts; we did not have the money in cash, it was all in stocks. So the main way we intend to survive is by spending very small quantities of money.

It is my hope, that by sharing our experience we can help other trying to survive what seems to be shaping up to be the next Great Depression. So many people today don't know anyone who lived through the last depression and they have no idea how you survive a thing like this. Especially if it becomes protracted--and it may.

Of course, knowing about a thing second hand and living it are two entirely different things. I am right now having the experience of living through it because it has been almost three months now of unemployment. We have already cut expenses way back and I'm going to share some of the ways we did this in this blog. Some of it will undoubtedly be ethically questionable, but nothing will be illegal. We will not steal anything or sell anything illegal, which I realize is easy to say now, when we are only two months into it, and a job might be just around the corner for one of us. Two years from know who knows?