I have been a subscriber to Countryside for more than 10 years now, and your magazine has seen our family through every step of our transition, from city-dwelling 20-somethings with young children to established homesteaders with two strapping teenaged sons, living on a seven-acre century farmsite in south western Manitoba. We have gone from reading to each other nuggets of wisdom published in the pages of your magazine to using our now rather extensive collection as a kind of reference library. My husband asked me only today if there was a searchable index available online for Countryside subscribers...I became very excited by this. Imagine the usefulness of such a tool!

Part of our journey was (as it is for many) rethinking our priorities, setting a goal, and being financially creative enough to attain it. A huge part of that was learning frugality, and I have a feeling that many more people are going to be learning that particular lesson the hard way in the coming months. With the economy in the state that it's in, perhaps more will see the benefits of this lifestyle. I do hope so, as there is nothing more wonderful than knowing that you can rely on yourself, and your garden and livestock, to provide for your family's needs.

One of the ways in which our family saved a great deal of money was by watching our food budget very, very carefully. Over years, our home became known in our circle of friends as "the place to go if TSHTF." For several years, my family's food budget was $400 a month, and living in a major Canadian city, populated by very well-off young professionals with a great deal of disposable income, that's no mean feat. However, reducing our grocery expenses was one part of the plan, and there were only a few stringent rules: it had to be healthy, it had to be natural, and it had to be as local as possible. The most important thing was that whatever we ate had to be unprocessed, because both of our children have food sensitivities, and meeting those needs was non-negotiable.

Food, however, should be a joy, not drudgery, not repetitious, not flavorless. I adopt the Mediterranean belief that every meal should be enjoyed as an event, that good nutrition depends on good quality ingredients, the presentation, and in the experience of the meal itself. I am a passionate foodie, and I will not apologize for it. After all, it's part of what made this final move onto our seven acres of lush, beautiful southwestern Manitoba possible.

After our move here, when the economy really started to head downhill, I stopped wondering about other people who might want to do as we had done, and started wondering about people who were simply trying to make ends meet, much less save for a dream. In my few forays into grocery stores, I saw young mothers with small children filling their carts with unhealthy, chemical-laden processed foods, and looking worried as they approached the checkout. I saw people stocking up on frozen microwave meals marked down for sale, and wondered if they knew that, while their financial budget might be kept happy, their health budget was definitely going to suffer.

So, I set to work. Years of experience, learning, and finding ways to save money on our grocery budget in order to pay off debt and save for our dream set me up with a great deal of information on how to feed a family well on little cash. My mother's teachings, having fed her family of 10 on a single carpenter's salary, had served me well, why couldn't those lessons and the things that I had learned through experience in the years since help others who were finding themselves in lean financial times with hungry children to feed?

Several weeks of work resulted in a 22-page document, entitled More Month Than Money: Tightening Your Grocery Budget While Feeding Your Family Well. It is available for free download in PDF form from my website at www.newcenturyhomestead.com. I hope it proves to be of some help to others who are trying to cut back, save up, and perhaps continue to work towards a dream or two.

Here is a sample shopping list from Tracy's More Money Than Month:

Week #1 Shopping List

15 lbs flour
9 teaspoons instant granular yeast
10 cups quick cooking oatmeal
2 1/3 cups brown sugar
1 gallon milk
16 eggs
1 lb. butter
1 1/2 cups oil
2 cans tuna
1 lb. cheese
1/2 lb. mozzarella
4 cups chickpeas
8 onions
2 cups pinto beans
2 bulbs garlic
salad greens
2 tomatoes
5 1/2 gallons soup stock (ingredients to make this—see above, or equivalent stock powder)
1 lb. stewing beef
1 cup diced cooked chicken
1 cup rice
1/3 pint peanut butter
15 carrots
12 potatoes
1 pkg. spaghetti or pasta of choice
1 lb. ground beef or pork
3 cups tomato sauce
1/4 lb. pepperoni
1 whole fish
3-5 lbs. beef roast
1/3 jar jam
1 bag of apples
1 bag of oranges
1 bunch of bananas
1 lb. popcorn

Basic Stock

5 lbs. meaty beef or pork bones, or chicken backs and necks
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic (alternatively, I clean a head of garlic, saving the cloves in a small jar in oil in the fridge for later use, and use the trimmings in the stock)

Place all ingredients in a heavy-bottomed stock pot and cover with water to 1 inch above meat/bones. Bring to a gentle simmer and keep it there, never a rolling boil, for 3-4 hours, adding water as necessary. Cool to lukewarm and strain out the solids, then reduce the stock by half by boiling it down. Freeze in 2 cup measures until needed.

The annual grocery list

Miscellaneous

104 cans tuna
286 gallons soup stock or equivalent stock powder
35 quarts tomato sauce
18 pints jam
18 pints peanut butter
5 lbs. parmesan cheese

Meat

104 fish fillets
18 x 3-5 lbs. pork roasts
18 x 3-5 lbs. roasting chickens
30 lbs. chicken pieces
18 x 3-5 lbs. beef roasts
18 whole fish
18 lbs. ground beef or pork
18 lbs. stewing beef
4 lbs. pepperoni

Grains & Beans

800 lbs. flour
140 lbs. oatmeal
96 lbs. beans
35 lbs. rice
70 lbs. pasta
52 lbs. popcorn

Baking supplies

9 lbs. yeast
52 lbs brown sugar
26 quarts oil
Dairy
52 gallons milk
72 dozen eggs
52 lbs. butter
70 lbs. cheese
18 lbs. cottage cheese

Produce (fresh and frozen)

350 lbs. onions
90 bulbs garlic
salad greens
122 tomatoes
173 lbs. carrots
350 lbs. potatoes
260 lbs. apples
260 lbs. oranges
104 lbs. bananas
18 pkg. frozen spinach
35 large eggplants (or vegetable of choice, a mixture of potatoes and spinach or peas is good)
18 green peppers
18 lbs. mushrooms

Because of the bulk nature of this list, and the things you may change through the year, I've generalized a lot. It's up to you to look over the lists of what is available through your supplier and decide what to order—by the time you start ordering bulk, you'll be well versed in what kinds of beans your family prefers, if you aren't already. Otherwise, simply pick a generic type—like navy beans or garbanzo beans, and fit them to whichever recipe you're using. Remember, when buying bulk annually, the key is buying things that are equivalent and planning your recipes around what you've got in storage.

For instance, perhaps navy beans are expensive in your area—but what about Great Northern beans, or pintos? Also, buying 270 lbs. of apples to eat fresh once a year is not a wise thing to do—but buying 270 lbs. of apples on sale in the fall, when the harvest first comes in and apples are plentiful and inexpensive, and having fresh for up to a couple of months, dehydrating what you can, making applesauce and freezing apple pie filling is a very good idea. Other fruit is the same—not a good option to buy your year supply all at once and expect it to stay fresh, but the idea is to buy fruit that either will keep for extended periods or preserving it in some way—or alternatively, have a list of some things that you simply buy fresh every few weeks—like fruit and dairy items.