Gardeners' Holidays 2022: Harvest Home

Ever since we built our compost bin, we've had occasional cases of "volunteer" plants sprouting next to it. This isn't exactly surprising, since we're always throwing vegetable scraps in there, some of which presumably contain seeds, and the bin itself is filled with nutrient-rich growing medium for them to sprout in. But it's a nuisance, because these are never neat little self-contained plants like lettuce or bush beans or even peppers. They're always long, vining plants like tomatoes or butternut squash which, left to their own devices, end up sprawling over the entire side yard. The asparagus ferns get completely buried under them, and in extreme cases, it becomes almost impossible to walk through.

So after the first couple of years of this, I established a zero-tolerance policy for volunteer plants. Every time we spotted them, we were to root them out, no matter how nice and healthy they looked, rather than letting them take over the whole yard. And until now, we've adhered faithfully to this rule. 

But this year, the tomatoes and squash we've been growing in the garden itself have been, to say the least, disappointing. Our Pineapple tomatoes, normally so big and juicy, have provided us only one small fruit; the Premio, supposedly an early provider, has yielded only nine to date; and the new variety we tried this year, Grandma Mary's, was a complete loss, with both plants falling victim to blossom end rot. And the Little Dipper butternut squash, such prolific producers in their first year, are currently displaying only a total of five squash on four vines.

So, when Brian spotted a healthy-looking squash vine next to the compost bin, with multiple squashes already on it, he just couldn't bring himself to uproot it. And since it was staying, he figured the volunteer tomato plant curled up in its lee might as well stay too. I protested feebly at first, but when he pointed out that this single plant would probably more than double our squash crop, I had to admit the justice of the argument. After all, it's not completely obstructing the yard yet.

And that's how it comes about that the vegetable harvest we brought in to celebrate Harvest Home, the Gardeners' Holiday marking the fall equinox, includes three tomatoes we can't identify. In fact, they may not even belong to any breed that can be identified. They most likely grew from the seeds of a supermarket tomato, and most of the varieties in the supermarket are hybrids that won't breed true. All we know about them at the moment is that they're red, round, and smallish.

Fortunately, the plants in our actual garden, the ones we put in on purpose, haven't been a complete loss. We got a couple of peppers off our new Banana pepper plant, and our trusty Sun Gold tomatoes are continuing to produce tiny fruits by the hundreds. And today, Brian harvested some arugula and lettuce left over from our spring and summer plantings and put them into a nice big chick pea and arugula salad for lunch.

So this year's Harvest Home isn't exactly the bountiful burst of fresh produce we've had in years past. But at least with this massive volunteer vine in the side yard, we can hope for a good crop of butternut squash before winter rolls around.

Money Crashers: How to Monetize a Podcast

Those of you who have been reading this blog long enough may remember my short-lived attempt, about eight years back, to turn it into a podcast. I had this notion that maybe I could somehow reach more people if I simply took my existing blog entries and recorded them in an audio format that people could listen to while doing other things. This didn't work well — the number of people listening to the podcast was, if anything, fewer than the number usually reading the blog — and I gave it up after a few months.

Of course, I now know that this was no way to go about making or marketing a podcast. Simply reading from a script, posting the recordings on a free archive, and expecting listeners to somehow discover them, was never a reasonable approach. But supposing for a moment that I had figured out a way to create a successful podcast and attract a large audience, what then? Would there have been any way to make money from it, maybe even enough to give up my day job?

My latest assignment for Money Crashers gave me a chance to explore this question. I learned about, and then wrote about, all the ways that podcasts can make money, such as advertising and sponsorships, selling premium content, soliciting donations, and selling various podcast-adjacent products like books, courses, and branded merchandise.

Mind you, all of these approaches only work if you have a successful podcast already, since the amount you make with each one depends on the number of listeners. I'd probably have no more luck monetizing a podcast now than I've ever had monetizing this little niche blog, which just doesn't have enough readers to be worth a sponsor's trouble. But if any of you readers are better at the business of attracting podcast listeners and just can't figure out how to turn all those ears into cold, hard cash, this article can help.

How to Monetize a Podcast – 12 Ways to Make Money

Yard-sale haul 2022

Every year, it seems to get a little harder for us to find bargains at the annual town-wide yard sale. I don't think it's the sales themselves that are getting worse; this year we saw lots of good stuff, including tools, musical instruments, and clothing. The problem is that, first of all, there's just not as much stuff we need. We've been homeowners for about 15 years now, and we've already acquired all the basics (furniture, tools, housewares). We can no longer benefits from bonanza finds like our $70 futon and $10 kneeling chair, because we have all the chairs and futons we can reasonably use.

And second, of the things we do need, there are fewer that yard sales can supply. We still have nine niblings (three nieces, five nephews, and one who now prefers gender-neutral pronouns) to buy holiday gifts for, but most of them are teenagers now — too old for the outgrown toys, clothes, and books you tend to find a lot of at these sales. Even the youngest two are ten and eight, so they're no longer likely to appreciate toys like the marble run and jungle adventure tent that so delighted the kids on Brian's side of the family when they were little.

So this year, when we set out on Saturday morning, we decided to head straight for the one sale we knew was most likely to yield pay dirt: the local library's fall book sale, timed to coincide with the town yard sales so it would attract as wide an audience as possible. There were indeed lots of people there, and lots of books (two boxes' worth of which we'd donated ourselves to make more room on our bookshelves ahead of time). We found a total of eight that looked interesting, some for ourselves and some for friends and relations, and shelled out $16 for them. So we knew even if we found nothing else, the day wouldn't be a total loss.

Which is good, because that's just what happened. We spent a total of four hours roaming through the parts of town where the Saturday sales were thickest on the ground without finding one more thing to purchase. I was in the market for a new fall coat and (as always) shoes, and I tried on several items in those categories, along with a few less practical garments, but nothing fit. So when we eventually turned homeward around 1 pm, we had nothing but the books to show for it. 

Right before we reached home, however, we happened upon a table full of stuff marked "free" (one of several we'd passed that day, as a lot of people had apparently decided the money to be earned at a yard sale wasn't worth the time spent supervising it). On it were a couple of games, including one that we'd played before and enjoyed. Since it was free, we figured we had nothing to lose by popping it in our bag. We checked it out at home and were initially discouraged to find a slip of paper inside listing several pieces that were missing — but when we examined the set in detail, we discovered that all the missing pieces had been replaced. The new ones were marked up by hand, but the game was still playable. So that was a nice little bonus that helped make up somewhat for a disappointing morning.

After our lack of success on Saturday, we weren't in too big a hurry to hit the sales on Sunday. Based on past experience, we'd found that many sellers who signed up for both days don't bother setting up shop on Sunday, and the ones who do have only a picked-over selection to offer. So we took our time eating breakfast and tending to chores and didn't venture out until around 11 am, and then we headed for the areas on the south side of town where the map showed the largest number of Sunday-only sales.

But, to our surprise, we ended up faring much better on Sunday than we had on Saturday. We found several more books, this time including several that looked like nibling-appropriate gifts. We also found a toy sophisticated enough to make a suitable gift for our youngest nephew and a little kitchen gadget that looked suitable for one of our brothers-in-law. I also found a new Chico Bag, something I'd been specifically on the lookout for, to replace my old worn-out one. I even got a pair of rose quartz earrings for free from an acquaintance I ran into hosting a sale.

Some of the books we picked up were from free piles, so everything we acquired on Sunday came to just $15, which includes $1 for a lemonade I bought from a kid's lemonade stand. (He gave me a pretty good-sized cup for that amount, so it wasn't such a bad value.) So, all told, we spent $31 for 18 books, one board game, one pair of earrings, one shopping bag, two gift items, and one lemonade. All in all, it's a better haul than we expected, and a halfway decent return on the 7 hours or so we devoted to sale shopping. We may not have been able to get that much else done over the weekend, but we certainly got plenty of exercise.

Money Crashers: LGBTQ Finances

My latest post for Money Crashers is something a little bit different from usual. It's a guide to the particular financial challenges faced by LGBTQ+ Americans and ways to overcome them. Some of these problems, like student loan debt, affect other Americans as well, and the solutions to those are the same for us as for our cishet peers. But others, like discrimination in housing and insurance or the cost of gender reassignment surgery, are truly unique to the LGBTQ+ community. They require more targeted solutions — some personal, some political.

It was a bit of a challenge for me figuring out how to use pronouns in this. The original title my editors proposed was "LGBTQ Finances: Money Issues They May Face," and that "they" felt misleading to me. It seemed to imply that I was speaking as an outsider—which, as a bisexual woman, I'm technically not. So using "they" felt like I was deliberately keeping myself in the closet.

But on the other hand, using "we" felt a bit misleading also. As a woman who's married to a man and has never been seriously involved with a woman, I really haven't had to deal with these issues in my own life. I've can't honestly say I've ever personally faced anti-queer discrimination in any form, and so it felt a bit dishonest to claim membership in this oppressed minority group.

In the end, my compromise was to say "we," but not say it a lot. I thought this would make it clear that, yes, I'm part of the community and I get you, while still allowing the article to be mostly about "you," the reader, and not about me. I hope I succeeded in striking the right balance.

LGBTQ Finances: Money Issues Facing the Community

Recipe of the Month: Peanut Black Bean Noodles

Last month, I tried a vegan version of Pasta a la Caprese with two modifications: replacing the mozzarella with cubed tofu and replacing the noodles with some black soybean noodles we picked up at Ocean State Job Lot. The first of these changes worked well; the second did not. The nutty flavor of the noodles didn't harmonize well with the tomato-basil-garlic stylings of the sauce. 

However, we thought the pasta was pretty good on its own, and we decided to pick up some more and try it with a non-tomato-based sauce. So, on our last trip to Ocean State Job Lot, we bought three boxes of these noodles — all the store had left in stock. (We'd discovered in the interim that the $4-a-pound price tag, though much higher than most kinds of noodles, was actually a bargain for this variety; the best price we could find for them online was around $8.35 a pound.) 

Brian then started hunting through our recipe collection looking for a suitable peanut sauce to try them with. Most of the recipes he found called for coconut milk, which we'd just run out of (making this delicious vegan chocolate ice cream I'll tell you about some other time), but eventually we remembered that there was a coconut-free one in our Vegetariana cookbook. He whipped up a half-batch of that and combined it with half a box (four ounces) of the black bean noodles, a grated carrot, two scallions, and a quarter-pound of tofu. (Probably we didn't need the tofu since the noodles are already made from soy, but we had to use it up anyway.)

This sauce worked better with the black bean noodles than the Caprese sauce, but it still wasn't a complete success. For one thing, the dish seemed a bit soupy, with too much sauce for the noodles. Part of the problem was that these noodles seem to have a less porous surface than most kinds of pasta, so sauce doesn't cling to them very well. But also, the sauce itself seemed a bit thin. Even though it had a quarter-cup of peanut butter in it, it also contained two tablespoons of soy sauce and a tablespoons of vinegar, and the liquid seemed to drown out the solid matter. (The recipe calls for an additional quarter-cup of water on top of that, but fortunately Brian didn't add it, or the sauce would have been even runnier.) 

Another problem: despite the high peanut butter content, this peanut sauce didn't taste all that peanutty. The predominant flavors were the soy sauce and the teaspoon of grated ginger in the mix. If we try this particular peanut sauce again, we'll probably bump up the peanut butter content by another tablespoon or two. Or we could just get another can of coconut milk and try one of the coconut-based peanut sauces instead. 

We still think the black bean noodles are a tasty pasta alternative, and with 25 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber per serving, they're certainly a healthy one. We just haven't hit on the perfect sauce for them yet. But we still have two and a half boxes left to experiment with. 

Of course, if we do find a sauce that works really well with them, we'll then have to hope we can find more of them. The selection at Ocean State Job Lot is (as the name would suggest) a bit hit-and-miss, so there's no guarantee they'll be available next time we go there. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

The ecofrugal challenge I'm not taking

As regular readers know, I love a good challenge. I don't mean just something that's difficult to do, but a Challenge, something you basically dare yourself to do for a week or a month or whatever. In the 12-plus years I've been writing this blog, I've challenged myself to follow WWII rationing rules, eat on a food-stamp budget, and live on the minimum wage. I completed roughly the first half of the 52-week savings challenge before realizing that most of the weekly challenges weren't saving us any money, and that I had better things to write about. I've designed my own challenges as well, including two local shopping challenges (finding a new outfit locally and finding a different bargain in town every day) and decorating an entire apartment with a $1,000 budget at IKEA.

So in theory, the Take The JUMP challenge should be right up my alley. Because this challenge is all about ecofrugality: "Less Stuff, More Joy." It comprises a set of six specific steps you can take to "protect our earth and live with joy" — exactly what I've always said ecofrugality is all about. You can challenge yourself to take these steps for 1, 3, or 6 months. 

The six steps are:

1. End Clutter: Keep electronic products for at least seven years. Actually, the description on this one is a bit inconsistent; it says seven years in the headline, but within the text it says to "keep electronic products for 5-7 years - their full optimum lifetime." And in the video, it says, to keep them until they are "past repair, and aim to keep all electronics for at least seven years."
2. Travel Fresh: Get rid of private vehicles. Entirely. Simply switching to an electric vehicle isn't enough, the authors argue, because a big part of their carbon footprint comes from their manufacture, and because even EVs contribute to congestion and "cause pollution from tyres and brakes." (As you can see from the spelling of "tires," this challenge originates in the UK.)
   
3. Eat Green: Move to a plant-based diet. Eat everything you buy. Eat healthy portions. The full description of this one concedes that not everyone is willing to go full vegan, and that replacing "most" of the meat and dairy you consume is good enough.
   
4. Dress Retro: Only buy three items of clothing a year. Once again, the full description clarifies that this is not as extreme as it sounds. They're really recommending that you get most of your clothing secondhand and buy no more than three new garments per year.
5. Holiday Local: Keep short haul flights to one every three years. (Note the use of the British "holiday" in place of the American "vacation.") Again, the full text provides further clarification: you can take a short-haul flight (less than 1500 kilometers, or 932 miles) once every three-years, and/or a long-haul flight every eight.
6. Change the System: Make at least one life shift to nudge the system. This last step acknowledges that individuals shouldn't be expected to fix the environment by themselves. Thus, the most important changes are ones that push governments and big businesses in the right direction. Examples include switching to a green power provider, making your home more energy-efficient, moving to a green bank or investment firm, and writing to your political representatives (MPs for them, Congresspersons for us).

Now, in principle, I approve of all of these. In fact, I already do most of them. I did recently replace my first smartphone after a mere four years, but only because it was actually past repair (the battery just wouldn't hold a charge, and I'd already tried replacing it), and my last two computers each lasted ten. We've already given up nearly all meat and dairy, and our food waste is negligible. (You can argue about whether our portion sizes are healthy, but they're not ludicrous.) We currently buy most of our clothes secondhand, and while we don't limit ourselves to three new garments a year, we probably could if we had to. The last time I flew anywhere was for my grandmother's funeral in Florida over ten years ago. We're already using green power at home, and I not only write to my Congresspeople, I call them every month to push for climate-friendly legislation.

And yet, as you've no doubt deduced from the title of this post, I haven't pledged to Take The JUMP, and I don't intend to. The sticking point is #2: giving up the car.

It's not that I love driving. I dislike it, in fact. When I lived in Princeton, I routinely took the Dinky (the shuttle train from Princeton to Princeton Junction) to work, even though it was much more expensive than driving. I generally walk to doctor's appointments in New Brunswick, over two miles each way. And though Brian doesn't mind driving as much as I do, he still prefers to take his bike when possible.

But where we live, a car is often the only practical way to get around. Maybe in the UK, it really is true that "Depending on where you live, taking the train, tram or bus usually doesn’t take much longer than driving"; here, it emphatically does take much longer. And I mean, MUCH longer.

For instance, to get to Princeton for an 8pm dance practice on Thursday, Brian and I would have to leave the house at 6:40, walk a couple of blocks to the bus stop, catch a bus to New Brunswick, walk another couple of blocks to the train station, take the train to Princeton Junction, transfer to the Dinky, and arrive in Princeton at 7:48pm. And when practice ended at 9:30, we'd have to reverse all those steps to get home, except that the bus would no longer be running. We'd have to walk a mile and a half from the train station to get home, arriving around 11pm. That's over two and a half hours of travel for an hour and a half of practice, as opposed to a car trip of roughly half an hour each way.

And mind you, this would only work in summertime, when we practice in an outdoor location right near the Dinky station. In winter, we practice at a church at the north end of town. To get there, we'd have to leave home by 6:15 and take a different bus into New Brunswick, then transfer to another bus that would get us to the middle of Princeton, and walk a mile north to the church. But by the time we left practice at 9:30, the buses would no longer be running, and neither would the Dinky. There would be literally no way for us to get home short of calling an Uber to take us to Princeton Junction. Which means we would still be relying on car transportation — just in someone else's car, at considerably more expense.

And that's only one of the places we go regularly. Grocery shopping? Well, we'd probably have to confine ourselves to stores within walking distance of home, which would mean going without some foods and spending more on others. All other shopping? Guess we'd have to buy most things online. Concerts at the Troubadour in Morristown? Once again, we could only make the trip in one direction before the trains stopped running, so we'd just have to watch online. Visiting friends? We do have a couple of friends we could manage to reach by rail, but everyone else would have to come to us if they wanted to see us. Visiting Brian's parents in Indianapolis at Christmas? With both driving and flying off-limits, it would take over 26 hours each way by rail and bus. And visiting my parents in Hopewell, a mere 45 minutes away by car, would become literally impossible, because there is not one single bus or train that stops anywhere within walking distance of their house.

The creators of The JUMP acknowledge that for people who are disabled or "live in remote areas," a car may indeed be a necessity. But Highland Park is not, by any reasonable definition, a "remote area." It's smack dab in the middle of the most densely populated state in the country. A major highway runs within a mile of our house, as the crow files. We're within walking distance of two rail stations, and within two blocks of the nearest bus stop. In short, we are much better off as far as transit options go than the majority of Americans. And still, we can't go everywhere we need to without a private vehicle.

The simple fact is, the US as a whole is a car-dependent society. That is not my fault nor my responsibility to fix. The reason America is dependent on cars is not that there are too many people like me selfishly refusing to give up their private vehicles; it's because our entire society is built around the automobile. Convincing Americans to give up their cars will not make their lives more joyful; it will make them more stressful, because they'll have to spend so many of their hours on buses and trains — or figuring out which buses and trains can get them from one place to another — and so much less time doing things that actually bring them joy.

If the authors of The JUMP want to create a version of it that works for Americans, they need to change step 2. If they're not willing to get rid of it altogether, perhaps they could ditch most of the text and focus on this one little paragraph at the very end:

If you do need to have a car then try to keep it for a long time rather than swapping it out for a new model (and when you do swap it, choose electric!). Cars can last more than 20 years, and the shell and interior of a car can last even longer if well cared for. But if you replace it with a new one every 3 years you’re generating 5 or 6 times the amount of emissions involved in making these cars over that period. 

When and if there's a "JUMP for Americans" that doesn't require me to be car-free in a society built around cars, I'll take the challenge happily. Until then, I just can't. It would be making a promise I know I can't keep.

Money Crashers: Are We in a Recession?

Back in June, Money Crashers had me rush through an article on the question of whether a recession was on its way. But apparently, it only took a couple of months for that question to become obsolete. They put me back to work answering a new one: Is the recession already here?

Spoiler alert: The answer is a definite maybe. There are different ways to define a recession, and the current state of the U.S. economy fits only some of them. It's possible that we have entered a recession at this point, but it's just too soon to make the call.

But one thing is clear: Times are getting tougher. Inflation remains high, and the Fed's attempts to tame it with interest rate hikes, necessary as they may be, will inevitably bring economic pain. So whether we're already in a recession or not, it makes sense to recession-proof your finances. At the end of the article, I discuss ways to do this (and another of my pieces covers these strategies in more detail).

Are We in a Recession Currently? Could We Be Headed That Way?