Ideas for Recreation while cutting food bill in half (farm, lakes, acre)

[ItIsWritten.]

Not sure if I can do it but moved to a new area 5 months ago. It's getting close to summer This is a very expensive area and my work hours are cut about 40% so wanted to cut our food bill while keeping our exercise up.

So far...

1. Found areas with many blackberry bushes on the nearby rivers and lakes. Pick blackberries, freeze, Eat whole & make blackberry syrup (which we've done prior and it was delicious winning a ribbon at the fair)

2. Fishing-trout and bass. Keeping the heads putting into cages to attract crawdads.

3, Crawdads- Husband is looking into building some crawdad cages. While blackberry picking, we'll probably throw them in unless there is another way to attract them. Once one attacked my white foot so maybe that will duplicate itself. Keep water used for boiling as stock for soup.

4. Gardening- Probably just start with potatoes, tomatoes, kale peppers, lettuce and squash. Advance to corn after we get the fence up. Plant complimentary plants surrounding the vegetable plants to attract bees. Also grow an herb garden.

5. Raise chickens- Grow much of their food.
keep the eggs, possibly kill some of the chickens for meat. Allow some meat birds to mate so we always have new meat. Have about .50 acre but in sub division so no farm animals

6. Compost pile-possibly. We have bears so neighbors are discouraging us from doing this but it provides worms for chicken food, bait and helps break down compost

7. Lots of forest fires here. Make a day trip out of going to each fire (study conditions needed) to pick the mushrooms in the following spring. A friend did this before a few times says the mushrooms are flavorful, more than the store bought. He made batches of soup.

8. Mini greenhouse.

We just bought a few bicycles with fat tires to ride in snow. 4 months out of the year we get snow so everyone here has 4-wheel drives.



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