Do you ever stop and think about how much money you spend on some things? Relatively small (or large) purchases add up over time. A gallon of milk is a little less than $3 unless you live on a farm. Eggs are about $2/dozen, again, unless you live on a farm. Beer and wine can be anything from almost trivial to very expensive. But none of this sounds like a lot, until you look at consumption over time.
A family may go through 3-4 gallons of milk a week and that's $500 per year! Say you drink 1-2 bottles of wine per week at $12 each. That's not much for 2 people, and $12 can be getting off pretty cheap. Still, that adds up to about $1000 per year in wine. And that's not counting house gifts or dinner parties.
We had a trip to the South last year and visited a winery. They didn't do much with grapes because the climate there wasn't good for grapes. But they did a whole lot with fruit of all kinds, most of grown locally and in some cases sustainably. This gave us some ideas. So this summer we started home winemaking. This was done mostly for the flavors we enjoyed but cannot obtain locally. Sure, we can get 6 bottles of whatever we wanted delivered to our door for the low-low price of $240 (not!), but we really like to provide for ourselves. We especially like to tailor our things to our tastes.
It was a trip to our local discount food store that really put us over the edge. We picked up 3 flats of strawberries (8 quarts each) for $10. Next stop, the home brewing store for a one time purchase of enough hardware to get us started (about $150, including some special equipment for fruit wines, but if we knew then what we know now, it would have been under $100). That plus sugar and we were off to the races. Total cost per bottle excluding durable goods, including the sugar and glass will be around $3 for strawberry wine. Same thing happened the next week when we found 56 LBS of plums for $10. Yield on these two batches will be around 2 cases of wine, per batch.
Added bonus: not this Chirstmas but next, a lot of people will be getting homemade wine for gifts. They like that because they don't really want more stuff, it's something truly unique, and they can use it up. Double-added preparedness bonus: if something awful happened to our economy, I can think of worse things to have to trade than 15 cases of wine.
Is processing fruit for wine time consuming? Yes, but so it watching TV. Is there risk? Yes, we don't know how these will turn out. They may be awful, and we know people that had bad experiences making wine. But we also know people that routinely have very good experiences making wine, and don't shop in liquor stores anymore. There are easier ways to do this; you can buy kits that are essentially everything but the water and yeast. But what is there to learn in that? If we rely on a pre-mixed product, did we really gain much other than a price break?
The best thing is to really learn a skill and understand a process. It's been done for thousands of years. Sure, biblical wine wasn't as good as we have today, and chemistry from the 19th century improved the process, but now we understand it at a fundamental level. We can take what we learned and start over anywhere with some very rudimentary equipment if we had too. We can also pay it forward by helping others to understand that modern conveniences, no matter what they are, can be learned and done at home with some good old fashioned learning and elbow grease.
Freedom lives where there is independence, and little is more independent than providing your own shelter, food, security, and best yet, luxury items. That is a statement of real personal power, so what can you do to be more independent?
A family may go through 3-4 gallons of milk a week and that's $500 per year! Say you drink 1-2 bottles of wine per week at $12 each. That's not much for 2 people, and $12 can be getting off pretty cheap. Still, that adds up to about $1000 per year in wine. And that's not counting house gifts or dinner parties.
We had a trip to the South last year and visited a winery. They didn't do much with grapes because the climate there wasn't good for grapes. But they did a whole lot with fruit of all kinds, most of grown locally and in some cases sustainably. This gave us some ideas. So this summer we started home winemaking. This was done mostly for the flavors we enjoyed but cannot obtain locally. Sure, we can get 6 bottles of whatever we wanted delivered to our door for the low-low price of $240 (not!), but we really like to provide for ourselves. We especially like to tailor our things to our tastes.
It was a trip to our local discount food store that really put us over the edge. We picked up 3 flats of strawberries (8 quarts each) for $10. Next stop, the home brewing store for a one time purchase of enough hardware to get us started (about $150, including some special equipment for fruit wines, but if we knew then what we know now, it would have been under $100). That plus sugar and we were off to the races. Total cost per bottle excluding durable goods, including the sugar and glass will be around $3 for strawberry wine. Same thing happened the next week when we found 56 LBS of plums for $10. Yield on these two batches will be around 2 cases of wine, per batch.
Added bonus: not this Chirstmas but next, a lot of people will be getting homemade wine for gifts. They like that because they don't really want more stuff, it's something truly unique, and they can use it up. Double-added preparedness bonus: if something awful happened to our economy, I can think of worse things to have to trade than 15 cases of wine.
Is processing fruit for wine time consuming? Yes, but so it watching TV. Is there risk? Yes, we don't know how these will turn out. They may be awful, and we know people that had bad experiences making wine. But we also know people that routinely have very good experiences making wine, and don't shop in liquor stores anymore. There are easier ways to do this; you can buy kits that are essentially everything but the water and yeast. But what is there to learn in that? If we rely on a pre-mixed product, did we really gain much other than a price break?
The best thing is to really learn a skill and understand a process. It's been done for thousands of years. Sure, biblical wine wasn't as good as we have today, and chemistry from the 19th century improved the process, but now we understand it at a fundamental level. We can take what we learned and start over anywhere with some very rudimentary equipment if we had too. We can also pay it forward by helping others to understand that modern conveniences, no matter what they are, can be learned and done at home with some good old fashioned learning and elbow grease.
Freedom lives where there is independence, and little is more independent than providing your own shelter, food, security, and best yet, luxury items. That is a statement of real personal power, so what can you do to be more independent?
I'm with you all the way!!!! xxooxx
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