Photo Montage Frugal Farm Tips

Our farm is a daily place to garner tips to share on line and in person, as we live outside the box. We think long and hard about how to build things with little or no money. We share our humble lives to allow others to know that one does not need to spend a fortune to live an amazing life.

We share that it only cost about $60.00 to heat our home winter long as we heat exclusively with heat.

Because of fire risks, we have to haul the wood down to the farm to cut it up for firewood. Notice one of my sons resting after a good day gathering wood. If you peek to the left of my son, you will see my daughter too! We take up a picnic to the mountain when we gather wood and make it a family outing.

Here are the recycled pens that we have built. They are made out of pallets and logs. We are in the process of cutting the poles all even. The front has the trough and a cooler for water. Because the ram in this pen has four horns he cannot fit his head in a bucket to drink, so we came up with using a cooler! It works well. We are working on a new line of sheep, so we have the ram in with this ewe. By late February we will begin lambing season again!

Notice how clever the gate handle lock is? I write about how one can rethink how they see things. As the gate was a pallet and the lock handle is a rebar with a piece of baling wire holding it securely.

Here is a picture that shares several frugal things at once. I never took home ec in high school, but we have had to learn how to preserve work clothes, so I taught myself how to patch the knees on my sons pants. We also made scythes out of pool post attached to broken blades(from thrift store). We harvested many bales of the native grasses for the goats and sheep.

Here are some of the bales. I used the orange rope that sometimes comes on the hay that we buy to wrap these bales. Nothing goes to waste on our farm.

My daughter came up with the handle for the greenhouse, then my husband attached it!

Here is one of our chicken coops. It cost only nine dollars to build as we salvaged most of the materials.

A friend no longer is running for judge so he gave us all his campaign signs. We used them in all of our pens and shelters as they are double insulated(the perforated plastic signs on plywood).

The coop door is made from two pallets reconverted. The rooster is Colonel Sanders! The coop rest on six pallets.

The windows are made from old refrigerator shelves- neat isn't it?

The perches are made from branches! Once one begins to think frugally there is no limit to what one will create! As our economy slows down many people are rethinking their lifestyles-either from necessity or a desire to preserve the money that they have. I write about what we have done to allow others to realize that it is possible.