Learn how to cut down bills
Learning how to slash your grocery bill and be more sustainable is easy when you know how, says Lyn Webster.
The frugal Northland dairy farmer has spent the last 12 years decreasing her grocery bill and eventually avoiding the supermarket all together. Lyn is largely self sufficient and makes her own cheese, yoghurt, soap, pasta and bread and says she will never go back to her old spending habits or fritter her money away on things she can make herself for a fraction of the price.
Author of the book Pig Tits and Parsley Sauce — which was re-printed this year as Save, Make, Do — Lyn will host a talk at the Taranaki Pioneer Village next week to encourage others to follow in her footsteps.
Lyn says a big part of her talk will be on the $1000 supermarket challenge she set herself this year and she will also give demonstrations on how to make basic products like lip balm and laundry powder.
Lyn’s $1000 challenge follows on from many goals she set herself following hard financial times as a solo farming mother including a $100 weekly grocery limit and a supermarket ban.
Her latest challenge is to have a $1000 grocery budget for the year and with around 70 days to go, she has $359 left. Lyn says the last bit will be be used at Christmas when her children arrive. She says it hasn’t been too hard staying away from the supermarket and some of her purchases included tinned food as well as bulk rice, flour, yeast and coconut oil.
Lyn, who used to live in Taranaki, urges people to look around and see what resources they have and look into basic ingredients to make everyday items which cost a lot, including shampoo, soap and laundry powder. One of her staples is baking soda, which she buys in bulk and uses for everything from cleaning the house to washing her hair.
She says something easier than gardening is foraging and she often heads out to find watercress, chicory, rose hip tips, mushrooms, purselane, dandelions and onion weed. She has even harvested onion weed bulbs to make pickled onions.
Lyn says saving money was born out of necessity and to save her business. People tend to overlook it as a way to get by as it’s too simple and obvious.
■ The Make Workshop is being held at the Pioneer Village on November
21 from 12.30pm- 2pm. Tickets are
$20 each or $25 if you want to hold a stall. The ticket price covers a coffee, slice and raffle ticket and all funds raised will be donated to the Taranaki Rural Support Trust. To buy a ticket call Krystie Harvey on 027
879 0281.