Frugal Living

Wednesday, 1:30 pm: I stopped by Dona Rosa’s fence and delivered pieces of Brazilian style fruitcake (made with prunes, raisins, guava paste, condensed milk, muscatel wine, ground almond ) and puba cake. The last one is made of mandioc roots left 7 days in water to be fermented, then ground, and dripped to dry. I was a little bit suspicious of the puba, as I don’t know I can trust home fermented food. If any weird bacteria gets in? The other package of the same goodies went to my other neighbor who was at home, snoozing. Even though I woke him up, he thanked me for the cake and for an hour conversation we had under a big flamboyant tree. Sunny, slightly windy, and dry day. I felt fortunate to cheer a friend who had his wife away taking care of her hospitalized sister. Only where time doesn’t cost much is that I can have the privilege of spending so much of it, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. Having times like these, disallow us to take vacations. Our holidays are ingrained in our day-to-day activities. Not that we don’t need rest – but we don’t have the need to go away, to take a trip, to see new places and new people. What we like are these old places with old friends. They are not old friends of mine, as I’ve met them not too long ago. However, for knowing each other’s struggles and victories that have the feeling of closeness. We all agree that the best thing in life is friendship. If our time doesn’t cost much, I can afford to spend more of it. We don’t think of the time in terms of investments and returns, but in letting, life goes by beside people that we love. The big secret of having a frugal living is not valuing life like a commodity, of wanting more out of it, to have the maximum profit. It’s the opposite. It is expecting nothing out of life, but to have it pass by. If I don’t feel I am entitled to possess things, to experience emotions, to collect memories; if I don’t feel I am entitled to have a life that is when we start getting a life. As part of my pursue of simple living, I also have chosen to eat less, but correctly. I was tired of feeling sick after gorging and gaining weight as a consequence. I am not overweight in any sense, but be a glutton seems immoral, in face of the world’s hunger. My biggest challenge is to cut down on my expenses on meat, trading for cheaper fruits and vegetables. That’s where frugal living comes in. As part of my plan to pay less and get the same, I attend to exercise classes for free done at community centers, five times a week. At 8:00 p.m. I turn off the TV, go to the bedroom for devotionals. I still do other things, such as writing, getting information on the internet, but I don’t surf, as I think it is a waste of time. I end up sleeping early and wake up before the sun. I love it: to beat the sun. My next project is to use less cleaning products, especially laundry soaps. I plan to use my homemade soap instead, and wash the clothes less often, as my habit is to do several loads a day. I keep my trips to the town to a minimum, so I can save not only on fuel but on any risk related to a car accident. Keeping risks to a bare minimum is a great way to save money. Frugal living also allows me to enjoy times of silence – for being alone is one of the greatest gifts we get – and it is still free.

Nothing is All on Sundays

June is over. Many thoughts, no writings whatsoever. End of Fall, but thankfully we haven't had cold and dark days. It's been a year since my father passed away. Like the days that precede Easter, I can't express my feelings into words, remaining in a contemplation mode. Today is a beautiful Sunday. Perfect sunny day, the most pleasant temperature, no wind, no dust, no flies. And also silence on the farm. I had built a "nethouse" for my vegetable garden, but the veggies seem not wanting to grow. We had a long drought, a few days of very heavy rain, and no cooler days. The great advantage of placing a net all over is the absence of white butterflies and other flying critters. I was just not prepared for what came under the earth - ants. The hardest one to kill using natural methods. I remember the year I arrived at the farm how bountiful we had. Vegetation was lush, wild cucumbers and other goodies grew abundantly, trees were carried with juicy fruits, and best of all, I had a great vegetable garden cultivated with a minimum of knowledge. This year, the poncan orange tree shriveled, the lychee tree got some kind of new bacteria, no cashews, no mangoes, and almost no avocado. The new fruit trees that I planted yielded sour or tasteless oranges. Except for the lime tree, everything else seems to have gone wrong. Can you believe that my smooth skin chayotes grew some tough spikes? I only collect the young ones, as the older ones can really hurt. I watched a TV rural program this morning. It said that the swine raising is having many losses and some towns have gone to emergency state. It is really hard to bear with all the heartbreaking that farming brings. It doesn't depend solely on hard work, but on the weather, the international market, the world economy, and everything else. I still don't know what I should do in case my chicken coop tenant decides to leave, or if my mother's pension stops. I greatly depend on these two for a steady income and family survival. As I have told you before, my farm is almost all rented out, and I have kept a part of it for my orchard and garden. I don't even have animals such as pigs, cows, goats, sheep, or chickens. In truth, I can't have some of them because of my dogs, some other because of a lack of know-how, range-free chickens for the prohibition for having commercial egg farm on here. The only thing that I could have were pigs, but my daughter said that she loves spare ribs, bacon, sausage, loin so much that can't have them. So we continue having dogs only. The two cats that I had adopted got killed by our Border Collie mix. Sometimes I feel that I am not living a real farm life - of course not. I can't have the basic things such as farm animals. But I still love living on the farm. I wake up early and can breathe fresh air while sipping a cup of coffee, which was roasted and grounded by me. While the farm is not producing as much as I expected, the town is fun. On Sundays, there is a nice farmer's market on the main street, close to butcher shops, which we have many alongside with pharmacies. While the restaurants are poor in town, the butcher shops roast beef, pork, and chickens for our Sunday lunch. The cheapest and most popular item is the roasted chicken with potatoes. The meat falls apart, while the bones come out clean. Some chickens get seasoned mandioc flour or cornflour stuffing. That's a plus too. But to me, the real advantage of living on a farm has to do with Sundays which used to be very boring - the "nothing to do" day. Now I expect Sunday especially for being a "nothing to be done"day. I want all the silence it can offer. Like orthodox jews observe their Sabbath, I want my Sunday even motionless. No driving, no going out, no visitors, no phones, no decision to make. I just want to rest my head on a cushion and stare at nothing. Nothing is all on Sundays.