One of the driving forces behind the birth of Frugalwoods was our desire to leave the city and buy a homestead in the woods. That happened in May 2016 and let me tell you, we had A LOT of preconceived notions about what it would be like to live rurally, some of which turned out to be true and some of which… not so much. It’s easy to gloss over the specifics when you’re dreaming about moving to the country. It becomes very much about the specifics when you lose power and water for a week in the dead of winter thanks to an ice storm. It’s those specifics–those powerful details–that have shaped our lives out here.

A gargantuan assumption was that we’d grow all of our own food.

Before so much as starting a single tomato plant, I nurtured an idyllic vision of us growing all the fruits and vegetables we could ever want each summer.

Continue reading We’ll Grow All Of Our Food! And Other Misconceptions I Had About Rural Life at Frugalwoods.

October and November 2021

These are the tipping point months. The months that descend into true, deep, orange fall and coast through a rough outline of winter. Leaves are loud in October–they change, they fall, they take up all the space, they are glorious. November brings a more reserved beauty, forcing us to notice the contours of denuded trees, to hear the tingle of ice-encased branches tapping their nearest neighbors, squeaking out the soundtrack of cold.

As I look back on these two months, in an early December already shrouded in full snow, I realize I once again rushed through the latent warmth of fall. I took it for granted, as I always do, and now my insulated boots are my closest friends.

Welcome to my series documenting life on our 66-acre Vermont homestead, which we moved to in May 2016 from urban Cambridge, MA. 

Continue reading These Two Months On The Homestead: October Apple Cider and November Snow at Frugalwoods.

August and September 2021

The harvest frenzy starts in August and doesn’t let up until October. These months represent the bounty of what we grow, what we harvest and what we preserve for winter.

As I write this in mid-October, I’m ready to put the gardens to bed. Ready for the welcome blanket of snow that signifies my outdoor labor is done until spring.

Welcome to my series documenting life on our 66-acre Vermont homestead, which we moved to in May 2016 from urban Cambridge, MA. Wondering about the financial aspects of rural life? Check out: City vs. Country: Which Is Cheaper? The Ultimate Cost Of Living Showdown as well as my monthly expense reports. Contemplating going rural? Here ya go: Want To Move To The Country? 15 Things To Consider.

Happenings Around Town

Our local hot air balloon festival happened in September.

Continue reading These Two Months On The Homestead: August Apples and September Sugar Wood at Frugalwoods.

May, June and July 2021

I have not disappeared into the woods. Or lost my internet connection. Or forgone my enthusiasm for inundating the internet with chicken photos. I’ve just been…. busy! Not even an interesting or original excuse, but the plain truth. I didn’t anticipate or prepare for the fantastic upending of our routines brought by this summer.

As I shared in my last Monthly Expense Report, it was a summer of visitors and house guests on top of our normally hectic summertime activities of planting, maintaining and harvesting our gardens. Plus chickens! Do not forget the chickens!

Next summer, I hope to be more prepared, to maybe even–GASP–write some stuff ahead of time (!!!). But this summer cascaded over our parched isolation, washing away the fifteen months we spent alone as a family of four, necessitating we bring the folding chairs out of the basement to accommodate all the friends around our table.

Continue reading These Three Months On the Homestead: May Flowers, June Berries and July Chickens at Frugalwoods.

April 2021: The End of Sugaring Season

Final maple syrup count: we made 19 quarts this year! Our sugaring season is over, thanks to the weather warming up, the trees starting to bud out and–crucially–the fact that we ran out of the filters we use to sift sediment out of the syrup. We boiled sap much later in the season than in past years as the gradation in syrup color reflects.

We canned five different batches and, in this photo, you can see how light it was early in the season compared with the deep molasses color of the last batch we canned.

This year’s sap had a lower sugar content, which means we had to boil it down more than normal. Typically, you get about one gallon of syrup for every 40 gallons of maple sap, but our ratio was more like 60 to 1 this year.

Continue reading This Month On The Homestead: Starting Seeds and Picking Flowers at Frugalwoods.

March 2021

Grass! Grass! In March, we found a patch of grass and stomped around on it for five hours straight. It snowed again a few days later and stole away our grass patch, but we were warmed by the memory of our early spring reverie.

Join Me on Zoom on April 28th

Ok this is not related to homestead life, but I’m going to be LIVE at the Bigelow Library in April! Actually over Zoom, so that means anyone, anywhere in the world can attend, which means YOU if you have nothing better to do.

Join me for a conversation about money, life, homesteading and a lot of Q&A. Seriously, please bring your Q’s and I’ll do my best with the A’s:

• Date: Wednesday, April 28, 2021
• Time: 6:30-7:30pm ET
• RSVP here to receive the Zoom Link
• Cost: FREE, but you do have to register at the link above

Welcome to my series documenting life on our 66-acre Vermont homestead, which we moved to in May 2016 from urban Cambridge, MA. 

Continue reading This Month On The Homestead: A Patch of Grass, A Gallon of Maple Syrup and Some Lambs at Frugalwoods.

February 2021 = Maple Syrup Prep!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, it’s the best we can do while it’s freezing cold and snow’s covering everything because… we tapped our sugar maple trees. Yep, walked around and lightly struck each tree. Maple syrup coming soon: by which I mean in a month.

Nothing moves quickly out here, which I am on board with, as everyone who has ever emailed me can attest (shout out to the readers who emailed me in August and received a reply last week… oh, I’m killing it).

If you’ve ever purchased a bottle of “Real Vermont Maple Syrup” and wondered why it cost $500, I will tell you: it takes 79 discrete steps and 24 hours of work to produce a single quart of maple syrup. I exaggerate… or do I?

The sap of sugar maple trees–what genuine syrup’s made from–only flows when it’s above freezing during the day and below freezing at night.

Continue reading This Month On The Homestead: Tapping Maple Trees and Tapping Into Self Care at Frugalwoods.

January 2021

We are in the season of snow every day. Maybe a lot, maybe a trace. There’s no forecast to tell us what’ll happen: we look outside, we bring in more fire wood. It dips into single digits every night and still, we go outside every day. We hike, we sled, we cry (mostly the kids; sometimes me), and we love the cascade of monochrome. There is no beauty more distilled than fresh glitter snow, ready to be devoured.

Despite the frigid air, the niblets and I go up and down, up and down the hills of our yard. On sleds, on bellies, like puppies they roll and crash and giggle. I do my ab exercises (necessary on account of these children), a few rounds of sledding, then flop down in the snow, soaking up icy sunshine.

Until someone belly flops on top of me with a burst of laughter.

Continue reading This Month On The Homestead: Bonfires In The Snow and Leisure Cilantro at Frugalwoods.

December 2020

Christmas at home and online, daily hikes, snowshoeing, baking cookies, fires burning in the wood stove and wrestling children into snowsuits. These are a few of our December things.

And Bernie’s visit to the Glamour Shed.

Pandemic “Homeschool” Continues

My ‘give them real jobs’ approach to “homeschooling” continues with countertop wiping, laundry folding, egg scrambling, dishwasher loading, vacuuming, sweeping and… scribbling on any important paperwork they happen to find. All day long Littlewoods touts, “I’m a BIG helper!” and I have to say, she is (kinda)! They both are!

Now that we’re running an ill-begotten, un-asked-for homeschool (thank you, COVID), we are ON IT with the chores and the real jobs and the Montessori shit. In other news, probably don’t let your five-year-old vacuum your staircase when you have Christmas stockings + holly berries on the railing… consider this a PSA.

That Would Be a YES to Pancakes

One frosty December morning, Kidwoods and I were the first ones awake.

Continue reading This Month On The Homestead: Pancakes, Snow and Tractor Stuff at Frugalwoods.

October AND November 2020

Oh yes, you get a double dose of homesteading because I neglected/forgot to write this up last month. But who even noticed?! It’s a pandemic! We had an election! This Month On The Homestead‘s timeliness does not rate. Fall in Vermont blows in with intention. No balmy leaf-crunchers here, fall is a rapid descent to winter. In a year that’s felt like a decade, November alone spanned several years.

Wood Stacking: COMPLETE

In November, Mr. Frugalwoods hit his goal of putting up three years’ worth of firewood in our woodshed. He spent late summer and fall in the woods, felling trees, skidding logs back to the yard, bucking logs into rounds, splitting rounds into firewood, and finally, stacking firewood in the woodshed.

We heat our home with this wood all winter long (in our super efficient wood stove)  and while in one sense it is “free,” in another sense, it is perhaps the most labor intensive, time consuming, and beautiful way to  keep yourself warm and your forest healthy (old trees must be taken out to allow new trees to thrive).

Continue reading These Two Months On The Homestead: Halloween, Thanksgiving and of course, Wood Stacking at Frugalwoods.