Comments On Article: It Is Time

If you would like to share your comments for article It Is Time, this is where to do it! 

Click the Reply To This Topic button below to post yours.

Donna, I thought you might be interested to know that UK landlines are replacing the analogue system with digital. Which of course means in major power outages there will be no phone line to fall back on. Of course this has been a problem with "cordless" phones for a while. 

I am out of debt for the first time since I was 18 (I am now almost 60) and have no intention of going back. I am living on my own a lot of the time (my youngest daughter is at University) and I eat more simply when she isn't here (and yes I know I should be stricter with her) I guess in time she will learn. 

I've been meaning to get back to more simple eating because the past month that has slipped away from me.

Other than that, I have ordered my seeds for the year, and gotten some peat pots for transplants. I bought them on sale, so they weren't too expensive. I also love peat pots since i don't have any issues with transplant shock when I use them. With a short growing season I really need to rely on starting seeds indoors.

Today is a bit of a rough day for me (physically) so I am going to focus on some crocheting. I am making a nice wool sweater I hope to have for many years.

With everything in the world I am trying to focus on simple things, like buying what is in season and local first, starting the garden, crafts, and volunteering. Simpler living, and staying positive. And dealing with the strange weather! There is ice on the ground, but it is above freezing. Then it is supposed to go back down again tomorrow!
Maybe this weather is what is triggering migraines...

I recently took some money out of my bank account in cash, and I am trying to use that as my spending money. Unfortunately I am running into places that don't accept cash, only debit. -_- Also I got a nice notebook for a ledger to keep track of finances. It's not very hard to do, but it keeps me on track.

GDonna the fence is sure coming along nicely. I'm sure you both will be grateful when it's completed. I'm sorry to hear about Elizabeth and her seizures. One of ours had quite a spell a while back for several months and our vet who is very good determined that it was from stress or a stressful event. We couldn't figure out what would trigger it, but we just keep things very quiet..well it's hard to do that sometimes as we all know. 

I have never heard of a potato onion before or a Monique shallot. I wrote down the names to see what they look like and where you can grow them. Debt is so awful and can be just a burden on the entire body. We still have some business debt, but it should be gone soon enough after all of these years. It's very difficult in our industry to come in cash and it just always has been. Luckily the loans are only on 5 year terms generally. It's a hard 5 years at times, but there's just no other way around it with the cost of our machinery. We have to remind ourselves that they pay for themselves and without them we don't have a business. I too have a hard time with things such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. Can't count how many inappropriate things I have seen before and I never see friends on there such as there posts and such. Our land line is our business line and we have our cell phones. It's always so important to buy locally and support them. Sometimes you could be that sale that they were praying for because the budget is so tight for them. We have found out in our community that many many small businesses should've closed ages ago, but there parents are funding them each month to keep them around. Some though just need to trim their budgets is what we have heard multiple times and others are just a constant struggle to keep the doors open. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that since the 2008 crash that nothing has truly recovered and we can't seem to get ahead. 

I'm trying my best to get a better handle on things, but just when I do something seems to break. We had a plumbing clog this past weekend in the wall and wound up buying a snake to fix it ourselves. The kitchen was down for quite a while which was hard as it clogged at 10pm. After trips to the hardware store and such we now have wonderful water pressure that wasn't there before and 2 drains that flow amazing now. No matter what we did for the last 8 years we couldn't figure out those 2 issues. I'm very thankful we saved on a plumbing  bill and I'm grateful for this blog to learn and grow from. :)

my garden has gotten smaller over time as it’s become overwhelming for me. However, I’ve have a ton of fruit growing. Blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, grapes, kiwis, apples, figs, quinces, rhubarb,etc. I like to garden design with edibles. I’ll be starting my veggie seeds this week. I always overplant, so let’s see if I can limit myself this year! Your garden is an inspiration. 

It just made my day to see a new blog post from you! Your posts always make me feel calmer.   Thankfully we are debt free completely.  I am concentrating on using what I already have:  cleaning products, clothing, food, etc.  I get a little depressed when I go to the grocery store because of the prices of things and I'm afraid it's going to get worse.  Your privacy fence is beautiful, you and Charles have done a great job on it.  Is Charles still planning to retire soon?  I pray that he can.  I've never heard of a potato onion!  God Bless you and Charles!  

Bobbi in Virginia

Edit:  I just Googled Potato Onion.  How interesting.  Another thing that I am doing is when I use an onion and get down close to the root end, I plant what is left of the root end into soil and sometimes it grows another very small onion.  

I’m happy to see the fence is coming along nicely for your safety. Prayers for sweet Elizabeth 

It's good to hear from you again!

I'm sorry about Elizabeth.  We had a 15-year old dog that started seizures and had them until she died at 16.  We gave her medication and it helped, but I think for her, it was just her body starting to shut down.

I'm buying things on sale in bulk more often these days and buy more from local farms than I used to.  I also am still gardening in spite of some pretty severe weather challenges in the last two years.  I will plant what I can and harvest what I can.  I am adding to my fruits as well, similar to Lisa T.  I have blackberries, boysenberries, blueberries, grapes, mulberry "bushes", elderberries, and one of each of the following:  Meyer lemon, Satsuma, nectarine, plum, Japanese persimmon, fig, pear, and loquat.  I pick self-fertile tree varieties so I don't need so many trees, plus I am training them to be dwarf trees.  I also have two olive trees, which need each other for pollination, but I am keeping them small as well.  

I was pleased to see a Carolina wren hopping in and about my greens, looking for worms and bugs.  Free pest control - I hope they keep it up. I keep bird feeders and water out for birds.  They pay me back by eating bugs, especially in nesting season.  I once saw a nesting cardinal pair grabbing a huge tomato hornworm off the vine.  They also provide free entertainment. They are so fun to watch.

As I replace things that wear out and break, I now look for the least "bells and whistles" models.  Our appliances last less and less time, and the more fancy features they have, the faster they seem to break down.  

I am also washing most small loads with my handy little manual washer and homemade detergent.  I have a portable manual wringer to wring the excess water.  Then I hang them on the line outside or the big, 22-year old Amish-made rack inside. 

I don't know if this was mentioned here before:  for those with English ivy; the leaves can be used to wash clothes, as they have saponin in them.  Following an internet recipe, I have boiled them briefly then steeped them overnight, strained the "tea" and used it in the laundry.  It won't stay good for all that long, so refrigerate it or make small batches.  The clothes came out clean, though. 

Well I have been ordering very few plants for my garden beds this year.  One reason is to cut down on the cost and another to keep me from enlarging flower beds.  I already have too many to easily manage the upkeep of them these days.   I only ordered 10 things but 5 of those are bare root so less expensive and ordered "early specials" so more for the money.  Lots of seeds ordered and already here, mostly annuals.  One that  I have never grown, is amaranthus. This variety is a dwarf most grow quite tall and so I've just skipped by them.  This one, Pygmy's Torch, though has a mounding habit and only grows about 16 inches tall.  The most beautiful color, a dark saturated burgundy, with spiky plumes held upright.  So a clump of those somewhere will add a real pop of color without totally overwhelming other nearby plants with all the height of the usual sized plant and will make an interesting addition to bouquets.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it grows here.

I do have some spring ephemerals up and blooming and some perennials beginning to poke up out of the ground despite the terribly cold weather that we had in January and February.  So I am hoping that spring comes on without much in the way of bad, cold weather and discourage the early risers.  Despite the cold weather a few warm days have allowed the opportunity to do some winter pruning of shrubs and some cutting back of the tops of perennials.  But cabin fever is running high here and I'm really looking forward to spring.  The days though are lengthening and houseplants are beginning to perk up and are looking more alert so that is very encouraging.

I was a stubborn holdout and continued to use a landline as my primary phone until about a year ago.  I only gave it up because as the lines in my neighborhood aged, the call quality became worse and outages more and more frequent, and the best the phone company would do was "sort of" repair it.  There were so few customers left in the area, they were no longer maintaining infrastructure.

I already had a cell phone to carry in my car for emergencies, but it didn't have data or free minutes so I literally only used it when my car broke down.  

I was also paying for a separate internet plan for my laptop at that time.

Being forced to give up my landline actually worked out great financially because I ended up combining three services into one and saving quite a bit of money.  I moved my cell phone from a $15 a month (as long as I didn't actually use it) plan to a $45 plan that includes talk, text, and data AND allows it to be used as a modem for my laptop, and canceled the internet and landline at the same time.  Turned out to be a net savings of around $50/month.

My only real regret (but it's a big one and something I'm really struggling with) is that once people found out I had a cell phone, they started texting instead of calling, which doesn't really do the same thing for me in terms of social interaction.  It used to be friends or family members might call for a specific thing, but then we would go on to have a whole conversation.  Texting is a very poor replacement for that, and has left me feeling more isolated this last year than I've ever felt in my life :(  

It's gotten to the point where I just see a text, feel sad about it, and don't even want to respond.

G’Donna, you mentioned canceling subscriptions, and that is something I did as well.  It is so easy for them to creep up.  For example I buy on Amazon, then I did a trial that turned into six months of Amazon prime.  I also had let other expenses creep up, first one hair color, then a nicer hair cut etc.  I did my 2025 budget two months ago and was horrified at what I was spending on things I could live without.  So over the past two months, bit by bit, I am chopping away.   I am doing it slowly because I know if I cut all the extras out at one time, I will feel deprived.   A lot like dieting, better to go slow.   But I cut expenses down by one third.

I love potato onions! We grow regular onions to use the regular way and I plant potato onions when I plant the garlic in the fall. In the spring I use the potato onions as my green onions so the regular onions can be left alone to mature. They finish in the summer and die back and we save the bulbs with the garlic until we start all over again in fall. They are very hardy and very prolific. We get so many bulbs that we eat those too, but they're hard to peel because they're small. 

I hope your fence is making you happy!

What a perfect blog post for everything I'm feeling right now. I know some people have said this is their safe space so I don't want to say too much about being worried, but I am. I take so much comfort in knowing Grandma Donna is here helping me think these things through and giving me very good ideas which really help! 

EDIT: I wanted to add that you can plant potato onions in the spring too. They're fast growers. Our winters are getting so cold that we lost some of our bulbs this past winter and I might start planting them in the spring instead the fall. I'm going out today to replace the dead ones with some of the extra bulbs we have. 

I had no idea about english ivy for that use. I always wanted to keep some in a pot since they are very much an invasive plant. I will know do that. I find it amazing how many things God gives us and for what purposes.