So much great advice! Thank you Ingrid and Michaelg! I know someone who goes to a feed store for horses. I will tell him to pick me up some 40lb bags of alfalfa and I can collect leaves from the local parks to mulch with. Checking Ashdown and Vintage for the sales, too. Thanks Diane_nj, Moroseaz, Silverkelt, Karl_bapst_rosenut, Predfern, Terryjean, Sammy, Jacqueline3, Roselvr and Canadian_rose for the wealth of info.!!! You all have made me realize that compost makes the garden world go 'round. Also thanks Hoovb and Particentral, for putting things in perspective. I suppose it's all relative and there are other hobbies that can be more expensive, but creating a gardening budget will help me get to the point of being wealthy enough to fly airplanes as a hobby, keep show grade koi and collect expensive art. Now, dealing with show dogs is not a hobby I would pursue. :) Juliet

I found this interesting: Bill P. Back to Story - Help Arctic vault takes shape for world food crops By John Acher Thu Sep 20, 2:36 AM ET In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster. Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom. It is the brainchild of a soft-spoken academic from Tennessee who is passionate about securing food for the masses, and will back up seed stores around the world that are vulnerable to loss through war or disaster. A 20-metre (66-foot) long concrete entrance, still under scaffolding, juts out of the snow-dusted mountain above the coal-mining town of Longyearbyen. It is reached by a switchback road rising to 120 meters above sea level, offering spectacular views of the fjord below and snow-capped Arctic mountains beyond. Visitors descend through the mouth of a gently sloping 40-metre steel tube into the frosty cavern which smells of new cement and is dotted with portable lamps as work progresses for February's opening. "There aren't going to be any better storage conditions than what we will provide here," founder Cary Fowler told reporters during a recent visit to the site in the Svalbard archipelago off northern Norway. "This is a safety deposit box, like in a bank, where you put your valuables." Although this is one of the world's most northerly settlements, an electric freezer will be used to keep the seeds in the three-chambered concrete-lined vault at minus 18 degrees Celsius (minus 0.4 Fahrenheit). If the power fails, permafrost will still keep them frozen, but not as deeply. The project is at the heart of an effort by Fowler's foundation, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, to safeguard strains of 21 essential crops, such as wheat, barley and rice. Rice alone exists in about 120,000 different varieties. Ultimately, it is part of the world battle against hunger, as crop insecurity mainly hurts poor nations. "Crops important to the poorest of the poor have really been neglected," said Roy Steiner, an official at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided financial support. "Millet and crops like cow pea receive so little attention." Fowler calls such varieties "orphan crops" because they have no one to take care of them. DIVERSITY FOR EVOLUTION The aim is to preserve genetic diversity, needed by plant breeders in the future to produce varieties able to adapt to challenges like climate change. Crops consist of numerous species, some as different from each other as a "Dachshund from a Great Dane," Fowler said. If such a store had existed 10 years ago, he said, the seeds would have been needed about once a year as seed collections have been wiped out -- for instance by a typhoon in the Philippines and war in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I'm sorry to say we will be using it a lot," Fowler said. Eventually, the vault will have capacity for around 4.5 million bar-coded seed samples and it hopes in its first year to collect half a million. Not all seeds can be stored by freezing. Banana, the world's fourth or fifth most valuable crop, is one example. "The longest viability under these conditions would be that of sorghum -- about 19,500 years," Fowler said. Other varieties will need to be replaced more frequently. "We're trying to capture the diversity not just between different species but within different species -- that's the basis for evolution," said Fowler, an official of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization but his own boss at the Trust. "Extinction happens when a species loses the ability to evolve." SEED PACKETS Norway is contributing some 50 million crowns ($8.6 million) to build the cavern, a sum which Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim said was a pittance for what is gained. "I consider it a development issue ... Poor African countries have fewer resources to protect their genetic heritage than rich countries," he told Reuters at the site. The Gates Foundation, the philanthropic giant created by the founder of Microsoft, has given a $30 million grant to Fowler's effort, including money for packaging seeds in their countries of origin and shipping them to the vault. Some of Gates' money has gone to develop a new style of seed packet, a small silver-colored pouch made of a special foil and layers of other advanced materials to keep seeds dry and frozen -- the "Rolls Royce of seed packets," Fowler said. The Gates Foundation is also helping develop two software systems, one to help manage seed banks and another to link them globally so that plant breeders can find what is available. "Seeds are almost the software of the natural world that has taken millions of years to develop, and we don't know how we will need them in the future," the foundation's Steiner said.

Our story goes back to 2002, when my husband was laid off in the last downturn. We were living in a house that was at the top of what we were comfortable paying (though the banks thought we could afford oh so much more!). Fortunately, my husband was able to replace his income within a year by starting his own business, but it was a wake up call and we changed some things. The big things: -we live in a house that is about half of what we can afford and now have no mortage (we sold our more expensive house when we were at the top of our earnings) -we buy gently used cars with cash and drive them forever -we have catastrophic heath insurance and try to keep ourselves as healthy as possible through diet and exercise -we never spent money on preschool or private schools - we homeschool (though not for financial reasons, that's just a bonus) -we enjoy eating out, but we have potlucks with close friends more often. You can have an awesome potluck for what six families would spend eating at a restaurant! -no cable tv, just Netflix. You can watch television shows over the internet or get the DVDs from Netflix. -I purposefully cook to create leftovers. For example, my pot roast on Friday night became pot roast pasta on Saturday, so that stretched our meal over two days and saved us money. -No Starbucks or anything like that. Though like many here, we do spend some of our budget on wine ;). -I make a menu plan and a grocery list and I stick to the list when I shop. No impulse shopping! That'll get you every time. Things we haven't cut back on: -the housekeeper. They come once a week, and that will be one of the last budget items to go. It is a huge help to me as a homeschooler with a toddler, and I also don't want to hurt their business if I don't have to. -quality groceries/ organic. There are somethings I buy that are important to me and I don't mind spending extra on it. For example I prefer to buy Organic Valley dairy products because I prefer their business model to other organic producers that are available to me. -home maintenance. It's more expensive to replace an AC prematurely than to maintain it regularly. -giving. The people who need charity need it even moreso now. We also keep money in the budget for my husband to go on international mission trips, and I'll be doing that again after the baby is a bit older. Good thread!

I have a $125 per month food budget for two people, but that's possible because I have room for food storage, grow a portion of our food - indoors and out; and I live where food is "relatively" inexpensive. We also have a much larger list of foods we use than your restricted dietary choices and that's helpful with the bottom line. I lean towards whole foods, raw foods and use meat sparingly. -You can also make rice milk and nut milks in your diet, which would be less expensive than goat milk. Kefir is better for you than yogurt, can be used like yogurt, plus kefir is less expensive to make. -Make and use more pre-digested foods. Rejuvelac is a good source for enzymes that helps friendly bacteria grow and is cheap and easy to make with water and different grains. Even if you can't digest grains, you will probably be able to enjoy Rejuvelac made with it. Make your own sauerkraut and other fermented foods. Check your local library for books by Ann Wigmore. How to Make Rejuvelac: For approximately 3 cups, you�ll need: - 1 cup organic whole grains (soft wheat berries, millet, rye, brown rice, barley, etc.) - 3 cups pure water (preferably distilled) - a container, e.g., a wide-mouthed glass jar, a ceramic or stainless steel bowl Soak the grains in the water for 48 hours. (You can place a plate or towel over the top of the jar or bowl.) After 48 hours, pour off the rejuvelac. Drink for that day or store in a jar. It doesn�t have to be refrigerated, but if it is, it will keep several days. Pour another 2 cups water over the grains. Allow to ferment only 24 hours before pouring off. Repeat another 24 hour cycle, so that the grains are soaked a total of 3 times. A dark quiet place is ideal for setting your jar or bowl. The temperature of the fermenting environment is important. Warmer temperatures will shorten fermenting times. In the summer, try soaking the seed 36 hours to start, then 16 hours instead of 24. Let ferment to your taste. It should be tart, not sour. Adapted from Recipes for Longer Life by Ann Wigmore. -You should be able to grow something - indoors (if you have a sunny south window) or out (if you have the space). Sprouting is a good example of a garden-in-a-jar you can grow fresh food anywhere. In the winter when "fresh" food is literally unavailable because it's been shipped in from who-knows-where, I don't purchase much produce but depend on sprouts and herbs I grow indoors as my source for REAL fresh food options. Living in the middle of nowhere, local produce is only available in the summer. I use frozen food (commercial as well as frozen produce from the garden) as a better option to so-called "fresh" food. Frozen food is high in nutrition and can be less expensive. I also dehydrate a lot of produce as another method for preservation. I also grow micro-greens and wheatgrass as other sources for fresh food. Hope there's some new...