Things like making beer, cutting firewood, growing a garden, hunting and fishing don't really save you any money, especially if you put a price tag on your time. The best you can hope for is to break even, in which case you can count it as free recreation. If you enjoy doing that sort of thing, then it's worth it but, if all you care about is the money, you'd be further ahead working a job someplace and buying everything.
Speaking of ice cream, that's my latest do-it-yourself project. My daughter bought me this ice cream machine for my birthday last September, and I am still experimenting with various concoctions. This is not one of those old fashioned machines that you have to crank by hand. It has an electric motor, and a double walled container with some chemicals between the walls, you don't use any rock salt. You put the container in the freezer overnight, or you can just leave it in there all the time so it's ready when you want to use it. You set the container on the drive unit, turn it on, and pour in the ingredients. It's done in about 20 minutes, but it's soft like the stuff they serve at Dairy Queen or Tastee Freeze. You can eat it like that, or you can put it in the freezer for couple hours to firm it up. While it's still in the soft state, you can stir in bits of fruit, nuts, chocolate chips, or whatever. I've got a batch in the freezer now with cherry preserves from a jar mixed in, but first I've got to eat the one with fresh strawberries because that one's older. I tried stirring in regular ice cream toppings but, for some reason, they tend to settle to the bottom before the ice cream completely freezes.
Now that I think of it, my study of the Bible was kind of a do-it-yourself projects. After hearing about it from other people who didn't always agree about what it said, I wanted to read it for myself. I never thought of the Bible as holy writ, it was just a book about religion to me. I found some stuff in there that seemed pretty strange until I realized that it was written a long time ago when cultural norms were different. To really understand it, you need to learn something about those ancient cultures, which leads you to history, which was another interest of mine anyway.
I got to thinking after I signed off last night and remembered that my beer consumption not only didn't increase when I went back to store bought beer, it actually decreased. I was drinking three quarts a day of my home brew, 96 ounces, which is the same as eight regular 12 ounce beers. Within a few days, I was only drinking six regular beers a day, which is about what I used to drink before I started making my own. I didn't consciously try to cut back either, it just came natural. To this day, I don't know why that happened, but it contradicted what that goofy doctor told me back in the 70s. He predicted that my consumption of alcohol would gradually increase until it reached the toxic level. If I didn't die directly from alcohol poisoning, I would get killed in a car wreck or from passing out and falling down the stairs, or something like that. Well, I'm still here 40 some years later, and I'm down to one or two beers a day. Again, I made no conscious effort to cut back, that's just all I want so that's just all I drink. I don't remember the last time I was legally drunk, but I understand that a certain amount of memory loss is normal at my age.
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