I'm just finishing up Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life  by Barbara Kingsolver (fantastic read, by the way!).  It has the rusty wheels in my clogged brain spinning again, working to figure out what my family can do to make smarter choices again.

To start, ds1 and I are attempting to garden again.  Our growing seasons are fall, winter, and spring here.  We've been blessed to get a good many bakery buckets for free and have been using those for our current modest gardening efforts.  Obviously the more of our own food that we grow, the better (not to mention it's educational and fun to boot!).  I'm about to have to put a stop to the free bakery bucket flow, however.  The bakery has been extremely generous in just giving us the buckets (most around here reuse the buckets for other purposes so it took a while for us to locate a source), but they don't rinse/wash them out for us.  Some that come our way aren't too bad to clean up, yet others are a complete mess.  The buckets are only available on Mondays and dh picks them up on his way home from work.  With him rolling in about 6pm or so, ds1 and I are off in a mad rush to get them cleaned out and washed before the mosquitos start attacking and darkness sets in.  With daylight saving time coming to an end at the beginning of November, I'm going to have to put a stop to the flow of free buckets after two more Mondays.  I'm not going to subject ds1 and myself to being dive bombed by the mosquitos while cleaning up the buckets in the dark.  They are far too messy to bring in the house and clean out in our bathtub (and with dh working in the plumbing industry, he'd never allow it anyway).  Hopefully we can set up something with this particular bakery to start getting the buckets again in the spring when daylight saving time begins again.

My next search has been for local organic farms, or at least those that use organic practices but aren't necessarily certified due to the high cost.  Farms are far and few between around here.  I've read before that "local" is considered anything within 100 miles.  To me, that just seems like an enormous distance to be "local."  Think about it - if I located a farm 100 miles away and make a trip there, that's a 200 mile roundtrip for me.  With gas prices so high, that's just not doable on our overly tight budget right now.  Plus, when you factor in the limited availability most of the farms I've found have, it's really not worth it.   One farm we've done business with for a few years.  They, however, are moving away from growing their own fruits and veggies and instead are buying from a source across the state (who buys from other parts of the country) and having them trucked in.  There's nothing "local" about the process.  One of the farm owners has ventured into other environmental efforts that he feels passionate about and the farm has been put on the backburner.  They do offer grassfed organic beef though (from their farm) so that's been a plus for us.  They also have a little store of sorts that has been beneficial to us, carrying some items that we cannot get at our local health food store and beating the health food store's price on other items.  We are also hoping to do some bulk buying through the farm.  The second farm I located is also certified organic, but we've never been able to catch it open (it's near the previous farm I mentioned so we just stop by both when we're in the area).  I was able to finally get in touch with one of the owners this week and it turns out that the farm caters mostly to "local clubs" in the city and whatever is left over is available to the public (and not much is left over, if anything).  Their advertisement certainly doesn't come across as such, so this was a huge disappointment for us.  The third farm we've done business with a bit during the last year.  They use organic methods, but are certified naturally grown (a less expensive certification than organic).  We had hoped to do a good deal of buying from them over the coming months, but I'm not quite sure what's going on with this farm either.  They advertised being open mid-October, but one of the owners this week stated it would be mid-December (maybe) before they are open and even then there is going to be little available (they sell to stores in a nearby city).  All this has put a big dent in my hopes and plans. 

I'm also trying to make better choices when I shop stores now.  A bogof sale started yesterday at the store we mainly shop.  The boys and I made a quick trip (at dh's urging) and I'm glad we did.  The store was packed with others doing the same thing - stocking up on the bargains.  The store does not issue any rain checks on bogof sales so whatever you are fortunate enough to find in the store is as good as it gets.  We came home with ...

* 30lbs. of a variety of Bionaturae pastas (semolina spaghetti, fusilli, and chiocciole and whole wheat spaghetti and fusilli)

* 8 Crofter's jellies and fruit spreads (grape, strawberry, raspberry)

* 14 bags Cascadian Farm spud puppies (tater tots)

* Late July  products - 8 boxes saltines, 4 boxes classic rich, and 4 boxes bite size cheddar cheese

* 12 Stonyfield 6oz. yogurts (not our usual brand, but the 2 that have been consumed thusfar got a thumbs up)

Sure, I could make my own pasta, jelly, saltines, and yogurt, but you know what ... those aren't areas I'm ready to venture into right now.  The cheese crackers, however, I will be making myself (or some version thereof).  The classic rich we use for one particular recipe that dh makes so buying cheap is probably the wisest thing to do budgetwise for us.  Tater tots ... hmmmmmmm.  Can you make those homemade?  I'm sure there's some sort of process (and honestly I haven't searched online to try to find anything), but just thinking about it seems like it might be a tedious process and not something I have the time to venture into right now either.

So, just a bit of rambling from me today thinking everything through and trying to figure out the best way to make the dollars stretch while trying to be kind to the environment at the same time.