What We Did This Week – Away From Home
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Hello friends! This week was a bit different for us since we were away from home, but it was still an essential part of our off grid life so here’s what we did!
We spent almost all of our nights with family members to be able to catch up and have fellowship. Even though we don’t live next door, we can still be intentional with the time we do have to bond and for the kids to have a wonderful relationship with Grandma, Grandpa, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Unfortunately our week started out rough with our middle son’s puppy getting sick. We took her to the animal hospital where she was diagnosed with parvovirus and where she stayed the entire week. She was very lucky that we caught it early and she was able to recover. She’s very glad to be out of the hospital and back home with her boy now!
One of the days we were gone was my shopping day for the month. I shopped at Sam’s Club, Safeway, and picked up some cases of produce from a local nursery. I’d have to add it all up but I believe it was around $600 for our groceries for this month (plus some extra ground beef that should last us longer than a month). That will feed our family of 6 along with what we have here in the pantry.
The apples and pears I bought in bulk (pictured above) will be stored in the root cellar to last longer.
I was also gifted a bunch of garden produce: tomatoes, peppers, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, crab apples, cucumbers, canning apples, and more. With these, I’m going to work on canning up salsa and jelly and making some of my sun dried tomatoes. The kids have asked for Zucchini cookies with the zucchini.
We also spent time with friends and did a couple of homeschool field trips while we were gone. We definitely filled up all our time!
My last stop before we got home was to load up from a case lot sale. All of this canned food was priced cheaper than Walmart prices if I bought it by the case. I ended up with: pineapple, green beans, corn, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, olives, black beans, and carrots.
Have I canned all of these things before in the past? Yes, of course. Do I know my limitations this year with a new baby, new home, and everything else going on? Yes, I do! This will fill our pantry up nicely and save me lots of time this year.
We are all very happy to be back home again on our mountain. Now starts all of the work of putting away, and canning the foods and other goods we brought home.
This coming week is a big one for us as our winter preparations will fully be underway and we will be starting back to school for the year. At least we get to do it all in some beautiful brisk fall weather (and no snow yet!).
I’ll talk to you all again next week. Thanks for following our journey!
-Merissa
Thank you for sharing your little slice of heaven and life with us. Would you please post a what (and how) to do list for your crab apples?
Sure, I can work on that. 🙂
Thank you! Looking forward to it.
Thank you for sharing your week with us. I am always impressed with all you get done on these adventures to town. So glad you were able to spend time with family, too. As a Grandma, I know how precious those moments with the grandkids are. Take care and enjoy your beautiful Mountain as you get through all the prep-work and start of school this week.
Thank you 🙂
Thank you for sharing your week. It’s good to hear you had the case lot sale opportunity; opening those cans can beat back stress and free up a nice hunk of time. There are days, seasons, even years and decades (babies, young children, homeschooling, aging) where these blessed shortcuts make better moms and happier families. Love, family, and gentleness to ourselves: great message!!
Thank you (and your husband) for sharing your faith.
We all have bad moments. We get irritable, impatient, discouraged and so on. Hang in there, you’re the Merissa that God made! Praying for you and your family!