Hello and welcome! Can you meal plan your way to financial freedom?

Hi lovely people.  

I've got the kettle on.  Come and have a seat at my farmhouse kitchen table and get a warm next to the Aga whilst I introduce myself and my family.

I'm Tracy, wife to Steven and mother to Grace (13) and Jack (10). Both Steven and I work full time and run a smallholding which is our beautiful family home too.  We are born and raised in the North East of England and have lived here on the smallholding since January 2016 and love absolutely everything about it.  We are also lucky enough to have extended family who live close by and (covid/lockdown allowing) we see frequently.

As I'm sure is the same for you, we are always busy with something or other.  If we are not dashing around to school, work or days out with the kids, we are firmly planted on the smallholding (pun intended) raising our livestock and growing our own food.  Oh not to mention doing everything else that us humans do, cooking, cleaning, washing.....this is making me tired just typing!  

In my years of experience, one thing I have learnt for us to be successful is that life needs organising. By successful I don't mean anything other than have a smooth running of this place, food on the table and a comfortable home with happy and healthy inhabitants.  Being organised also doesn't mean take the fun out of things or running an inflexible military operation.  It does mean we have to be organised or things slip and don't get done, which can have negative outcomes depending on what it is.  Not having matching socks doesn't matter as much as having no food prepped/available for the evening meal, which may lead to eating out ruining our budget etc etc.  Forgetting to feed the animals is not acceptable where as forgetting to write 'bleach' on the shopping list is.  You see where I'm coming from?

As we move in to 2021 we will be making our usual plans and dreams for the coming year, one of which is already decided upon.  That leads me to this new blog.  Meal planning our way to financial freedom.  Crazy woman?  Bear with me.

Steve and I don't want to work for someone else for the rest of our working lives.  Many people don't.  Why do we have to work?  To bring in an income.  Why?  We have chosen a lifestyle choice and to have a mortgage.  To pay the mortgage we need to work and continue to earn at least one of our wages just to settle the bills every month.  So why doesn't one of us quit and the other just work?  Well then what would we do if hard times hit, we would have no plan b.  Right now, we have a plan b, one of us goes down, the other steps up and we adapt.

However ideally, we don't want to be tied to that for the remainder of our mortgage term.  

Without dwelling too much and boring you all senseless, we have given ourselves 10 years to pay our 27 year mortgage off.  There's that crazy word again.  

Well we don't HAVE to, we WANT to. Financial freedom in one respect.  Security in another?  There's many varying reasons as to why people would want to pay their mortgage off early.  Maybe you can relate this, maybe it's not a mortgage for you, maybe you want to save money for one reason or another, or simply you just need to figure out how to meet your current mortgage/rent demands.  One thing is for sure, times are really hard for many right now.

In the 4 years or so we have lived here, one thing we have managed to do, which is helping us save towards overpaying the mortgage, is reduce our grocery budget significantly.  From around £600 a month (I'm aware this is spending stupid money from not being organised, buying on a whim and eating out!) to what I think is a reasonable £300 a month.  The only way I have found to do this is planning.  Meal planning, freezer planning and planning your grocery shop.  Meal planning can be reverse planning, which I'll talk about in another post or standard planning (ie planning ahead).  Without sitting down and planning my family's meals out, I wouldn't be able to have a grocery budget of £300.  I refer to this sitting down time as one of my "Kitchen Tasks".  So this blog isn't just (or even mostly) about paying the mortgage off, it's about what we are doing with the grocery and grocery related bills to reduce them and to use those savings to over pay on the mortgage.

Other people will want to reduce their grocery budget for another reason or maybe you don't want to reduce your budget, maybe you struggle with meal ideas and would like to start planning.  Thinking of ideas to cook each day or for the freezer can be overwhelming.

Maybe my blog can help.  What you can expect in the coming posts is to join me at our Farmhouse Kitchen Table and I'll share how I manage all of these activities and my other Kitchen Tasks!  Including weekly menu plans, shopping lists, grocery hauls and related budgets.  Get insight in to our lives and follow our journey to financial freedom with regular updates on everything  I hope you find some useful or inspiring information here and even if not, I'd love for your support as we take on this next chapter in our lives.  Transparent, real life going on here!  Now, final comment for today, remember I said I live on a smallholding (homestead)?  My Aga is my favourite part of the kitchen and in the spirit of the transparency I mentioned, here's me working around a poorly duck at my Aga.

Isn't she beautiful :)

Please leave me a comment below if you're new here (everyone is, it's a new blog!) as I would love to get to know you.  

Bye for now, Tracy x

Can we be mortgage free?

Should you feel bad for enjoying the lockdown?  I don't think so.  It doesn't mean we don't feel for those who are suffering from it, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be enjoying it where we can, learning from it and adapting or changing our ways.  It has given us plenty of time to think about things, even more than normal and some great foundations for the future are coming out.

Whilst making this week's scones, which were blueberry by the way and I say were as they are all gone already!  I'll pop the recipe up shortly.

Anyway, I was mulling over financial thoughts and it dawned on me that when we moved in here, 4 and a bit years ago, we never thought we could be in a position to consider paying our mortgage off early.  We were just so grateful to have one and be able to buy the smallholding.  Now, 4 years on, we are putting plans in place to become mortgage free in 10 years!  Yes, that is a VERY stretched target and it may be longer but today it's 3 times that amount.  Yes, really.  We always assumed we would have to work full time as we do now, not be able to be on the smallholding working and be stuck in the paid employment cycle until retirement.  

So what's changed?  Research, people, experience, lifestyle, finances.  We have adapted our lifestyle, which we always intended to do when we moved here.  The main areas are the grocery bill, owning cheaper to run vehicles, cancelling luxuries like cable/sky and having a strict entertainment budget.  

As I said before, being in lockdown we haven't spent anything on entertainment and we have missed it all over 0%!  Yes once the kids are back in school and I have to go back out every day, it might be nice to eat out every now and again or to take them to the trampoline park etc but this should be minimal cost. 

After all, who would not want to cook on an Aga in the kitchen with a poorly duck?

We have also created our own little beer garden, also known as a picnic table in the front garden which catches the evening sun.  

We can have the dogs running round, get to see the fabulous flowers come through along with the animals in the neighbouring field, and if we are lucky, get to see a baby deer run by.

Finally, one other thing I am working on personally right now is working towards less and less wine.  This sounds like I have an issue!  

Define issue haha.  

However drinking 1 or 2 bottles a week between us does not fit in with trying to reduce our outgoings so significantly to help pay off the mortgage, nor getting up early on the smallholding to tend to the animals that get up when it is light.  So I am on a challenge right now to only drink what we either make or what people gift us....so our address is.... ;)

We last went shopping at the supermarket at the end of April and won't be going again until 25th May.  Remember that we get milk delivered (20 pints a week) along with a weekly veg box (£11) which supplements our home grown items.  We plan to eek supermarket items out to be 6 week intervals then 8 and so on.  This time we have ran out of butter, honey, juice so far.  There is an argument for doing without certain things on a permanent basis, more on that another time.  

I cook all of our bread from scratch now, having got a great delivery of flour from amazon.

As we move in to late Spring and Summer, we will most likely (hopefully) have no need for the veg box.  We are already starting to see lots of salads, greens including this beautiful kale and hopefully won't be too long until we get our first courgette as look what we saw a day or 2 ago.

Here's the newly transplanted brassica bed, right after planting when the plants went in a mood at being moved.  Hopefully they will pick up, they usually get over it quite quickly.

On the smallholding we have now got most of the laying hens in one place as Ste moves on with his next project of changing where the pens are that they have, to ensure we cover some of the overgrown areas.  Some hens are more cheeky than others.

The pigs are thriving and the (newly sheared) sheep and cows are only a tad jealous of the pigs having hard feed :)

Grace is busy rescuing animals.  This duck drowned in the pond.  Yes, ducks can drown.  She has a poorly leg and couldn't get out.  We literally brought her back from the brink of death and Grace has done her usual and looked after it since then.

 Right, I better go and get on with some of these jobs I keep talking about.  These buckets won't fill themselves!

Please do take the time to comment and stop by, we read every comment and love to have you along for the journey.  Thank you.

Brining the leg of pork and winter fun

When the pigs went to slaughter early August, we filled the freezers to the brim. We made bacon which was nice, just not very big on the medallion (pigs were lean from their breed and free ranging).  I brined the topsides and thick flanks which we then cooked and used as ham. I also froze a leg ready to brine for Christmas. We had so much meat that I decided to hang fire and do it now for mid January when we can have it as a centre piece for a get together or just turn into slices.  We scored the skin and prepared the brine. We used the river cottage brine last time which was lovely. I added slightly less sugar this time, purely as I didn’t have enough.



Once ready I put it all into the wine bucket and put it outside on the step as we have cold enough weather at the moment. In fact, I’ll have to bring it in tonight as it’ll freeze!  This will stay in here for a couple of weeks, after which it’ll be ready to cook (or smoke?).



It’s snowed here today and this is the first proper snow we’ve had that has stuck around. The kids loved it and had a good time playing out before they got too cold and came to warm up in front of the Aga.





As we’re in the thick of winter, we’re having to find alternate methods to exercise the horses. Sometimes it is simply too slippy to ride out safely. Our parking area is all stones which doesn’t get slippy, so we put the horses in there to let them have a roam around whilst the fields are out of action.





Annie got to meet the sheep yesterday before the snow came. I got the impression she was telling them a story!



No time in the potting shed today. I have onions and cauliflower that I want to get in. I’m also putting the project list together for 2018. We’ve some big ideas! More about that soon tho.

Using the Aga

More often than not you can fine Steven's overalls drying on the Aga, keeping warm for him putting on the next morning to go to work. I can't dry everything on here as we have too much but it is very handy. Nothing better than warm overalls to put on when it is a chilly morning going to work at 5.30am!

My son has just made me smile. He went outside to collect a bag for Steven as he's stripping the wallpaper in the dining room and needed an empty feed bag to put the rubbish in. He didn't put any boots on to go out and his socks were soaked when he got back in, he took his socks off and put them on the Aga to dry. Of course he should have just worn boots! However the fact that the Aga is an integral part of our every day lives after just 9 months here make me feel all warm and cosy inside.

Sheep move and a bit of sad news

After more hard work from Steven we moved the sheep to their next grazing spot which has lots of grass and trees for them to chomp down on. Of course only time will tell if it's secure enough for them as they are quite the escape artists. They do come back for the buckets if food we offer them though so at least we have a plan b if we see them running up the lane!
I also bagged a load of cooking and eating apples today which I am really pleased with. I made a tester stewed apple which was lovely so I think I will do a big pot and then freeze individually but also save some whole apples to see how long they will last.
We were lucky enough to be invited to Sunday lunch today so I haven't had to make our own which was nice.  However that was the softener to the hard task of dispatching a duck. It was in pain and had something wrong with her that we couldn't put right.
Remember I mentioned were moving in to the time of the year where we need to be on top of the muck heap and keep it as low as possible? Well thanks to freecycle we now have a few regulars who come and make a big dent in it literally! I'm also nearly ready to fill the rest of my beds with it too. I didn't get in the veg plot today but there's not too much left to do so I will try and plan it in this week.
Also I've moved the dogs' beds back in to the kitchen in front of the Aga. They've been living in the utility on a night through the summer but Buddy is looking so thin (his condition) so I feel they are better where the Aga is for him to sit in front of if he prefers. The puppies will no doubt lay on the kitchen seats instead. Cheeky.

Aga in the summer

We decided to keep the Aga on during the summer despite many of our neighbours or friends switching theirs off.  Our kitchen is a big old farmhouse kitchen that is north facing.  In the winter, it’s just a nice temperature in there despite the Aga kicking out some heat.  In fact the whole house is cold so we tend to congregate solely around the Aga in the colder months. 

I did think it would be too hot in the summer and although it’s been hot, we’ve been able to manage it.  Now why don’t we turn it off?  Well we use it every single day for a multitude of tasks.  Steven’s overalls for work (he’s a butcher) dry on there a couple of nights a week, the kids clothes that inevitably get wet, dry on there before they dash back off outside, our boots dry in front of it (yes, even in the summer), we have toast on it daily, boil the kettle and every main meal of the day is cooked on it plus the dogs love laying in front of it! 

Now if I switched it off, I’d have to find alternate methods to do all of these things, using electricity instead of oil and to be honest, I don’t want to.  Whether we will feel the same next year, our second summer in the house, I don’t know.  It will also depend on how much the price of oil rises too.  Not to say that we have money to burn on oil this year, we don’t.  I just don’t feel as much pressure from it as I would should I be paying double the amount.  It is a part of the family now, I simply love it and I think I would always have one now. 

Ours is 45/50 years old according to the engineer who services it for us.  He installed it in the farmhouse many, many years ago and it was a good age then as he bought it second hand and reconditioned it.  It’s an amazing little thing. 

When we moved here, well just before, my Mam and Dad bought me Mary Berry’s The Complete Aga Cookbook and it’s extremely good.  It's very informative and so many recipes in there that I’m working my way through.  I think I will pick a month and make a dish a day (or so!) from it.  This will help me get through the recipes too as I am terrible for having recipes books and then making 1 or 2 from them and shelving it.  I’ll maybe do that through November, when the clocks have gone back and I have less time outside.

Aga toast - from when we first moved in and ever since!

 

Quite comfortable here

 

Poor Buddy!

 

Yummy food from the Aga

 

He seems to be here a lot!

 

See what I mean?

 

The Aga fixes poorly children

 

and sends you off to sleep if you sit there too long

Wild plum jam

I'm still on holiday which is why I am MIA and we're having a lovely time. I wanted to quickly share with you that the wild plums we found have made the most delicious jam. This is a large kilner jar which lasts our family of 4 a few weeks before its empty and I'll fill it back up with more yummy preserves. This one's going straight in the fridge and the other 2 that I made (I didn't want to make a lot as I have a bad experience with plum jam before, many moons ago) are going into stores for winter.
It's still very warm here though we've had a few days of torrential rain. Assuming we get some sun now, the rain was welcome as the fields were so dry.
Yesterday was Steven and my 11 year wedding anniversary. He took me out for a lovely meal at a pub called the george and dragon at Heighington which I would happily recommend. My parents looked after the kids and my uncle and aunty came over to see us all too. It was lovely to catch up and look what my parents bought for 'us' for our anniversary. The Aga baking and roasting trays I have been eying up. Spoilt rotten we were as they bought us some stag cushions too and a bottle of wine! It was like Christmas. We're very lucky.
Normal blog service will be resumed later this week, I hope everyone who reads this is well. 😊

Visiting friends and last of the rhubarb

This morning we drove to see a good friend at her livery yard where she keeps her horse. She's moved there since we moved into our smallholding and we've not got round to going to see them, so today was the day for that.
It was lovely to catch up and the kids made some new animals friends too!

When we got home the rain started, which is a relief. I think I'm the only person  pleased by the rain! The fields are gasping for it and the mineral dressing I've just put on the smallest paddock won't be worth it until it rains in. It's due to rain most of today and tomorrow then be sunny again next week, which is just perfect.
The kids and I walked the puppies out as usual and took our food for free book which we recently ordered. I was surprised that I couldn't find damsons in there but maybe I missed them. Here are ours in the orchard.

 

When we got back, Rodney was tired and wet so he decided to dry off and have a snooze next to the Aga.  There were some other berries that I couldn't identify either, so will Google when I get chance.  I didn't get a photo this time round but they are red berries with a yellow base, small and the leaves have 3 points larger but similar in style to the hawthorn (which has 5 points I think).
Given the wet weather, I decided to use up the last of the rhubarb that I picked and made rhubarb and vanilla jam. It is a huge success despite the expense of the vanilla. I will definitely make that each year.

Today is Ste's last day at work for the week. I bet he can't wait to finish. We're going to collect the wild plums tomorrow, assuming they're ready and a few windfall apples if any are there. They're not ready to twist off the tree just yet so I'll not remove them directly. We're off to a party tonight, a great way to start the holidays as a family of 4. I've loved my week off with the kids so far. I might even put a lottery ticket on to see if we can extend it permanently!

 

Kids ready to walk out and see what goodies we can identify

My rescue hens are producing extremely well.  This one looked more painful!