My homestead life

I always loved nature. It is a very powerful force.
I’ve always been amazed at how it can help me being present at the moment.

It's been four years since I moved from the town into a lodge in the virgin forest, home of about 600 brown bears, lots of deer, a family of wolves, and unfortunately only a few more lynx.

I have more than 100 m2 of garden, where I grow vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs and mushrooms, for two people, for the whole year. I can it, freeze it, dehydrate it or I give the excess to friends and neighbors.

I went very low on my budget, in gardening season I spend less than 20€ per month in winter I get to spend more but never more than 50€. And food is not really cheap here...

Tips on how not to spend money unnecessarily:

• Make a garden, if you dont have a yard, place pots on the balcony or on your windows.
• Go to the countryside, buy food directly from the farmer.
• Forage the forests, you can find many nutritious wonders out there.
• Think ahead.
• Decide how many times per week/month would you like to go to the market. Try to arrange so you go as few times as possible, to save on gas. I go once a month.
• Keep away from buying processed foods.
• Before you go to the store make a list, analyze your kitchen cabinet, put only basic goods on your list, for example: flour, grains, oils, seeds, nuts, dry fruit.
• Find all the variants of basic recipes that you can prepare according to the ingredients you have and write down a weekly/monthly menu. I like to use a calendar for this, I’ve also heard that there are apps for it, but I’ve never tried it.
• Take a look at your witten menu and the recipes for it. Add in the fresh ingredients to your list according to your menu.
  Be flexible. Keep in mind that fresh food is cheaper in season.
  For example buy a large quantity of potates directly from farmers, when in season and store it in a basement or freezer.
  Sometimes at the market I come across a very ripe fruit that has a big discount and I take a whole bunch of it. I make a very nice jam out of it. Of course, we cook jam a lot of the time, but very easily and anyone who has some basic cooking skills can make a jam.
• When you have too much fresh food, freeze it, can it or dehydrate it.
• Stay away from buying processed food.

I have my garden covered with straw and leaves for the winter, to prevent carbon dioxide from escaping the ground.
I only covered the parts where I didn't plant anything for the spring harvest.

First, I started small, then it just kept growing in size.

Yes, these are magical! Don’t eat them, or at least not too much. 🤩