I Love FREE Stuff
I am the self-professed queen of cheap. Even better than cheap is FREE!
Check out the mason jar full of wild roses I stopped to snip as we drove into our neighborhood yesterday. Not only are they pretty, but they didn’t cost me a dime. My daughter use to buy me a beautiful bouquet from the local florist every year on HER birthday (thanking me for giving birth to her, AWW). My favorite bouquets were the ones SHE picked, arranged and found a cool bottle to put them in. She got to keep her $, I got a beautiful display of wildflowers. My adult son still makes me mothers day cards, and I love them dearly.
Who needs to pay for arugula when you’ve got a yard full of dandelion leaves (not me). Gathering firewood when I’m hiking or coming into the neighborhood is fun, too. Free wood burns with a greater satisfaction. I’m anxious for the wild berries to kick in around here. I’m going to get a belly-ache from pickens.
Free stuff isn’t always free. Yesterday Lance identified a puff-ball mushroom in our yard. After doing some research online and checking with his buddy Guido, he decided to take a bite of the free shroom mother-nature popped up in our yard. Within minutes his tongue became numb and his whole body felt odd. Not wanting to find out too late if it was poisonous after all, we high tail it to the nearest urgent care (which isn’t so near) with the toxic shroom bagged up. By the time we got to town he was feeling better. We go to McDonald’s (because they have FREE wifi) and we surf some more. Deciding it was probably just an allergic reaction. At least we didn’t have a doctor visit to endure (time and $ wise). But it was still a scary ordeal (for us both).
Then there are the FREE eggs we find in the yard! We bought 2 ‘laying chickens’ (who knew chicks would take up to 6 months to lay). The chick farmer threw in 2 FREE ‘Banties’. I know full well, these fresh, free range eggs are far from free. The amount of time, effort, wood, fencing, paint that Lance has put into the coop is, well, a lot. Then there is the feed… We ate our first ‘home-growed’ eggs yesterday. I like to call them the golden eggs, since this leg of homesteading has been costly.
Here are the 2 Rhode Island Reds, they’re already ‘putting out’! We’ve yet to name them. When Lance went to move out the huge coop, he let them roam free. They hadn’t been with us for 24 hours yet, so we were hoping they’d stick around as they were turned loose. They seem to love Lance already. The very first egg we got was laid right on his chair on the porch. I’m thankful he didn’t sit on it.
Here’s a view of the really cool coop Lance constructed. It’s a whole lot nicer than the dog house that came with the house when we moved here.
Our 7 little chicks are doing well. They eat, sleep, peep and poop. Lance built them a mini roost (in hopes that they’d not roost on their feeder). It’s turned into a new place, to poop. They have become my entertainment.
So, in conclusion, I guess nothing in life is really FREE.
