It has been a rough 10 days. I came out of one virus and went directly down into another 2 days later. I couldn't keep food down for 5 days straight. Horrible, awful, nasty experience. Even when I had the bad stomach bug in October it wasn't like this. My stomach is still tender and I've gone 3 days without throwing up now. But I can't eat much. At least I can drink now, though. Getting my calories through rabbit broth and chicken broth and fruit bars.

Despite being ill, I had to help with butchering. We did 8 rabbits and 4 Pekins and I don't know how many chickens. I had to keep running back inside to be sick and I did the least handling of the icky parts, like fetching the live animals. But we have 3 full shelves in the upright freezer of just chicken parts in gallon bags and 28 quart baggies of cut up breast meat for stir-fry in our chest freezer, too. We shouldn't have to buy chicken this year at all. I am not sure if I would raise chickens again. Maybe if I could take them to a processing facility.

I can't remember if I mentioned it, but a week ago Sunday we brought home 4 one-year-old Welsh Harlequin females. Well, those ducks started laying once the Pekins were gone and we've gotten 3 eggs so far. After the 4 Pekins were butchered we've now got 9 Welsh Harlequins. At least 2 of the males will have to be butchered in a couple weeks as a ratio of four drakes to 5 ducks is too hard on the females once the drakes hit maturity. In the end we might only be able to keep one drake, but I hope we can keep two.

Also during this week we hauled all of the used bedding off the property. It took 4 pickup loads. One load went to the dump, but the other 3 went to a lady who had just moved to a farm and wanted to start a deep mulch garden, so we were able to take all of it out there. I could not do much of that work at all. I wasn't strong enough with the illness. But I rode out in the truck with my husband.

Today I spread a bit of finished compost onto the hay bales and I will be planting them tomorrow with broccoli, cauliflower, and purple kohlrabi. The husband got up two more gutters on the turkey pen. One I will be succession planting radishes in and the other will be for snow peas which will climb up the lattice.

I had a decent day on one day this week and I made some garden update videos if you'd like to see how those are progressing.

Fruit Garden Update:

http://youtu.be/M4-wkFrHLmE

Hay Bale Garden Update:

http://youtu.be/M4-wkFrHLmE

Straw Bale Garden Update:

http://youtu.be/8mRkO0xPsEM

I am starting to rethink the idea of becoming a farmer. I might just be beat and been put through the wringer, but doing just the rabbits was never as hard when I was sick as having two types of meat birds, 3 if you count the turkeys but they won't be ready for months, and 2 types of laying poultry.

I am thinking rabbits, laying ducks, and laying hens, and that may be the limit. Unless I can get someone else to process them. I am selling some of my breeding stock and reducing my herd. I sold Fiona on Sunday and Andromeda goes on Tuesday. It is possible that Leo will go with her to the colony setting. I am hoping to sell another proven buck, too, but that is harder to do than selling proven does.

I have two rabbits, Serena and Kalia, due to kindle in 3 to 4 days. I really hope we have some milder weather for it. After Wednesday it is supposed to drop back down to the low to mid 70's again, which would be perfect for delivering on the 3rd or the 4th.

The bunny that I had fed with a dropper after her mother died we are keeping. Her name is Luna Blue and she is a companion for Firefly to grow up with. Firefly seems so much happier to have another kit in with her and Luna Blue is definitely happy to not be alone after all her siblings went to freezer camp. They made friends very fast.

If Luna Blue ever hits breeding weight we may put her into the breeding program, but she will be a pet otherwise. We never expected Kalia would hit weight, either. It just took her a few months longer.

I still want to do aquaponics, too. That part has never gone away. And maybe butchering meat ducks and chickens is time consuming, but quail still aren't. So if I stick with raising meat animals, I do have some other options. I think if I do it though, I'd try to raise a batch of 10 birds every 3 weeks and not 30 to 50 birds in a short span of time and end up overwhelmed by it.

We'll see. At this point I shouldn't be making any decisions anyway.

We made a trip down to the feed mill today to buy rabbit feed. We bought 500 pounds of non-GMO feed for $135.67. We used 3 gallons of gas. The feed works out to $13.56 per 50 pound bag and that includes tax. A 40 pound bag of feed (no guarantee on no GMO's) here costs $19.56 with tax. Even adding the $12 worth of gas to the total, making it $147.67, it still comes out way cheaper. The equivalent amount of feed bought locally would be $244.50, so I come out $96.83 ahead by going directly to the mill.

500 pounds is a two month supply. Possibly longer since we don't have too many kits right now, but when the production gets into full swing again with six litters growing out at a time, it will be a two month supply. From that two month supply of feed we will end up with about 120 pounds of meat at $1.23 a pound. So worth it. Well, maybe $12 more a month in hay, too, but still. That doesn't up it by too much per pound. Plus we are feeding the breeders with that amount as well, not just the kits.

I don't know about you, but I can't find meat for under $1.59 a pound anymore and that is only on a tremendous sale, usually it is closer to $2.49 a pound and that is just for standard, not organic or at least GMO free.

We are talking about getting our fresh water fishing licenses and seeing if we can't catch a bunch of trout. We can can it up. Home canned trout is supposed to taste a lot like canned tuna. After we caught 18 pounds of fish to pay for the licenses, anything else would be free to us. Totally worth it, I think. Assuming we can catch anything. It has been a while since we have gone fishing.

I harvested my first salad and my first raspberries from the garden. I'm on my way to paying back my garden costs for the season.

Well, turns out 4 of my 5 Welsh Harlequin laying ducks are drakes. Which means I need to get some females pronto or Addy is going to be overwhelmed in a few more weeks.

I saw an add on craigslist for one year old female WH's, so I sent off an email and hopefully will hear something back from them by morning. They are a one hour drive from here, not too bad. She has ten and I'd like to purchase four. They are $25 each, which is about the going rate for an adult laying duck. So it'll be an out of pocket expense of $100, plus gas.

If we can combine it with our feed run, since the mill is on the way to the farm, we could save a bit on gas costs there.

If I can get these ducks, I will have four egg layers with them, five with Addy when she gets a little older, and 7 total females with the 2 female Pekins. I would have to butcher 2 of the 4 Welsh Harlequin drakes, probably the two smallest unless final feather color plays something into it) and 1 of the Pekin males (seizure duck as we can't risk continuing his bloodline in future chicks).

We knew some of these were going to be meat ducks. When you buy straight run it is a given that you will have too many males for a harmonious flock. I had just been hoping that we'd have more females than we did. But with the red chest feathers coming in and the drake tail feather coming in, there is no denying it with the Welsh Harlequins anymore. There was for a while because 2 of them matured faster, but all denial is gone now. I really hope she gets back to me quickly.

Our straight run of turkey poults seems to have given us 3 toms and 1 hen. It could be 2 hens, but I really don't think so. 3 toms is okay, because that means we will have two 16 pound turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the remaining hen and tom will give us our breeders for next Spring.

I feel like half my entries these days are some variation on the theme of me being exhausted. I really, really am. I've got a nasty spring cold and it is dragging me down. I am ready to be done with it.

We are almost done on the online homeschooling front. My son has one 4 paragraph comparison and contrast essay left to do for literature and then we send all the assessments off to the state. We've already gotten his report card and he made honor roll again.

I spent two hours down at the high school today. After more or less taking the semester off after having a nervous breakdown my daughter is going back to school next year. She is doing well on the medications and is really excited to be going back and getting her life back on track.

My son is also going to be starting high school in the fall so he is all signed up now. I really, really hope it works out for both of them, because I don't honestly think I could handle another year of homeschooling. The exhaustion it causes is just really getting to me. It's like I have to have my brain on all the time and some days I just want to shut it down and go on autopilot.

Things are chugging along otherwise. The gardens are growing well and I will harvest my first lettuce leaves tomorrow. I have 7 tomatoes growing and five bell peppers. In another week I can start planting in the hay bales. The green beans have taken off and most of the sprouts are up.

I am going to make some carrot seed tape and get it planted hopefully this weekend. I am just doing Little Finger carrots which don't take too terribly long to grow.

Not too much going on on the financial front. I did have to buy 2 bales of hay and 2 bags of feed. I need to budget for a big rabbit feed buy this payday, ten fifty pound bags. We will call down to the feed mill and make sure they have the 17% protein feed available before we drive down. I think the 21% is just too high for the little kits.

I have done really well on sticking to my menu plan this week. I have been really tempted to eat out, but it is not a good idea when I am sick or I will want to do it every day.

I am not looking forward to this weekend. We have to put in an appearance at my niece's graduation party, which I don't want to go to, but since I couldn't go to the graduation due to it being held in a stadium that is not really handicapped accessible, and DH couldn't go since he was in Alaska, we need to.

Then we have to butcher rabbits and chickens. We can't put it off any longer and we need the cage space. I hope I get some sleep tonight and tomorrow night so I will be in better health to deal with all this.

DH and I have decided to drop the selling price on the house $10K. I just want it gone. We need to meet with the realtors and make an adjustment to the paperwork in order to do so.

DD has her follow up doctor's appointment tomorrow. She is doing really well on the new medication so I think we can cancel the appointment with the sleep doctor now.

$757.82 Van loan (plus extra)
_283.13 groceries
__50.00 gas
_204.00 for strawberries for the year
_140.52 Sleep doctor
__48.60 Phone (old house)
__88.15 Internet
___9.80 Book of stamps
_120.00 Physical therapy
_100.00 Emergency Fund
_100.00 Propane Fund
_100.00 Property Tax Fund
__19.00 Dues Fund
-------------
2021.02 Total Money Out

I also spent $48.03 on rabbit feed and supplies.

I finished planting my straw bale garden yesterday. I am really happy with it. The gutter garden is filled with greens and doing well. And I started building the hay bale garden. I have the center filled with rabbit poop and will be putting compost on top. Today I will start conditioning the bales after I get the soil part planted.

I can't even begin to state how much easier this type of gardening is on my body. I am really thrilled to be able to plant so much again and grow so much of my own food this year. I've put in an outlay of $350, so once I start harvesting food, I will count that against my total. I usually come out ahead by several hundred dollars on a good garden year. And I think this is going to be a good garden year.

http://youtu.be/UqleDAp2eaw

I have planted enough tomatoes and green beans to supply my family's needs for the year. I've planted enough potatoes, that I should be able to can at least 52 quarts, which will be a jar a week. And I should have some left over to dehydrate for hash browns, and of course some for fresh eating. I would like to get more potatoes into the ground, but I don't know if that will happen. The harvesting of potatoes will be the only difficult part of harvesting this year, but the kids will help.

My ducks are almost 12 weeks old and have started swimming in the kiddie pool I gave them.



They could start laying eggs anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks from now. I am really looking forward to those first fresh duck eggs. I still have to wait a while to determine sexes for certain. But I have 4 females for sure and I think it is possible that it is 6 out of 9. Once the drake feathers come in on the males, I can then determine which ones will go to freezer camp and which ones will stay around for egg laying and breeding purposes. The drake feathers can start any time from now until about 20 weeks old, so I am keeping a sharp eye out.

The turkeys are getting huge at 8 weeks old and the little pullets at 10 weeks old are growing pretty fast, too. They just look small in comparison. In another 4 or 5 weeks, depending on size, we can start integrating the pullets in with the laying hens. They can't live with the turkeys forever, but they need to be big enough to defend themselves against the older hens. Hens can be really mean to young pullets as the new pecking order is determined, so I like them to be close to equal sizes before putting them together.

I will try to get some photos of them to put up. We for sure have one tom turkey. He has done the whole tail fan spread strut thing, which is kind of funny at this age, because it's not very big but it is definitely a fan. He also gobbles. We also have two hens. I am unsure about the fourth turkey. I am hoping it is a hen, too, but the way the tom challenges it I think it might just be a smaller tom. Then again, it could be a hen aiming for the top of the pecking order. It is the second biggest of all the turkeys.

In another 2 weeks or so we will be ready to start butchering our next batch of meat chickens. The Rainbow Rangers were pretty good and they actually looked like chickens, though they were pretty lazy. I hope the Cornish cross are even better. They better be or I won't raise them again. They are pretty sad looking and their feather growth can't keep up with their body growth, and they don't move around much at all. I feel bad for them. Still, they get to be outside during the day and have fresh air and sunshine, and that is better than the commercially raised ones live. And I know what they are being fed.

Cornish cross grow faster than Rainbow Rangers, but you know what grows even faster? Pekin ducks. And they feather properly, so I may just grow Pekins as meat birds next year.

Will we end up saving money on the cost of chicken and duck meat after feed and bedding costs are considered? Yes, but not by much. Still, to know how they lived and how they died and how they ate is worth it to me. And so far the flavor is incomparable to grocery store birds. Even the organic ones. I am not counting the cost of building their housing, because that is a one time cost.

This week has been a lot of hard work and a lot of planned spending, but our turkey pen is more or less complete and it is attached to the coop and useable, so I am happy. We ended up spending about $700 on the coop and pen altogether, and $300 on the duck house we made earlier in the spring. This is why we gave up on the idea of a greenhouse and aquaponics this year.

We still built for far less than it would have cost to purchase premade coops or pens and we built it better, too, in my opinion. And everything is built in such a way as to be fairly easy to take apart and put back together again, so when we move to our farm eventually (if our house ever sells) we can take it all with us.

If you are interested in our turkey pen build I did a video for it:

http://youtu.be/iMYjVl18j3c It's about 8 minutes long, and you will see the turkeys and young pullets near the end. You will also see the guttering we attached and filled with potting soil to grow greens in. I am excited about that.

The straw bale garden is doing well. Nothing has died, even the scraggly looking extra chard plants that were stuffed in the one gallon pot along with the main 3 big ones. They are sending up new leaves from the center. I've got some more transplants I need to get in.

I also got 8 more bales to start conditioning. This time I got hay bales as I would like to see the difference between straw and hay. I found a lady on youtube who swears by hay bale gardens over straw bale. She's done both and says there are more nutrients in the hay than the straw and they grow better in straw. So I will start on conditioning that today and in a few weeks I can plant my late season crops in it. We can often grow into about mid-October, and later for things like brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, purple cabbage).

I would really like to grow onions and carrots, but root crops don't do too well in bales. I might try arranging them in such a way so that I can have a dirt row down the center of the bales to grow them in. It's a little late for onions, but I could grow some small to mid-sized ones from sets. And the dirt row wouldn't have to be conditioned, it could be planted now, if I bring in some bags of compost.

I'll have to do a little fencing, too. We've got a wild rabbit warren nearby and they are on their second set of babies and the little nibblers are out a lot. I saw a total of five rabbits of various sizes out yesterday. Usually they are just in the yard eating our clover and dandelions, but an unfenced garden is just asking for it. The straw bale garden is fenced, so we would just need to figure something out for the hay bale one. Maybe some plastic fencing wrapped around a couple of PVC frames to set over the top.

We got our potatoes planted on the weekend, so I am happy about that. It won't be enough for the year by any means, but it will be enough to can some so I have it on hand for pour and dump stews during the fall and winter. Canned potatoes are also great for making fried potatoes in a hurry. And there should be enough to dehydrate some with some onions for making hash browns. I also saw a homemade tater tot recipe I'd like to try out this year.

Oh, I also did a much shorter video update on the ducks and the rabbits this week if anyone is interested: http://youtu.be/pde7xamLO8o We will be starting on butchering some of the bigger kits in 2.5 to 3 weeks. Lola's kits will have to grow out longer since they grew up without their mother and didn't get milk after 2 weeks old, except the really small one I fed with a dropper. Dropper bunny is now 2 1/4 pounds and doing pretty well at 8 weeks old, but I think it will end up growing out longer with the kits that are 4 weeks old now. I might even keep it if it is a doe. She is so sweet and friendly. Even if she might be a smaller doe, I find temperament more important than size these days. Her size is less important than the size of the kits she'll have anyway.

Well, I've got work to do, so I suppose I should stop lolly-gagging on the internet for a while.

Yesterday I got some more transplants put into the straw bale garden. My back is sore, but I think that is more from grocery shopping and having the girl over pack the bags I had to heft both into the cart and back out of it again.

I spent $38.40 to get 4 more tomato plants, 7 pickling cucumbers (which had 3 to 4 plants per pot), 2 slicing cucumbers, 2 Swiss chard (total of 7 plants in the pots). I got them all planted out, plus two of the pots of basil that have been sitting in my kitchen window since March (each pot had 3 plants in it). It's really starting to look like a garden now.

http://youtu.be/XzYjLHuBW9k

I also spent $61.92 at the feed store, buying 50 pound bags of game bird crumbles for the turkeys and flock raiser for the ducks and chicks, and 2 bales of straw for bedding for all of the birds. We go through about a bale of straw a week for bedding between the two coops. That will probably lessen when all of the birds start spending the day outside.

They had some good sales on juice so I stocked up on apple juice, orange juice, and Simply Lemonade. Since we don't drink pop at all, and it has been hot, it will be nice to have a little something that isn't water. We drink a lot of water, it's our beverage of choice, but sometimes it is nice to have a little flavor. Right now there is 8 gallons worth. Yeah, I think that is what hurt my back over the garden.

I still need to get some more green beans, kale, and some kohlrabi into the garden. I am going to pop over to Joe's gardens and see if they have any starts for that. Otherwise I'll shove some dirt and seeds into the remaining unplanted straw bales and get those going.

My top 3 goals with the garden this year are to grow enough tomatoes and green beans to can for the year for my family's use, and enough pickling cucumbers for a year's supply of canned pickles for me, since I am the only one who eats pickles.

We've processed the first batch of Mom's meat chickens over the week (14). She has given me most of the breast meat which I have cut up into stir-fry and nugget sizes. So far I've gotten a total of 9 pounds of meat from her, since she doesn't like breast meat that much. It is not our preferred meat, we like dark better, but white does work well for quick cooking methods like stir-fry and nuggets. The flavor is very good.

In another week or two the next batch of meat chickens (29) will be ready to be processed. That is going to be quite a chore. Now that the older birds have been butchered, their coop will be cleaned out today and we can start moving the younger birds into it. They will have more floor space and they are old enough to have access to the outside now. These birds are so lazy though I don't know if they will do much more than lay in the dirt or the clover. But at least being outside in the fresh air and sunshine will be good for them.

Well, I've done enough lolly-gagging. Time to get to work on the turkey pen and the rest of the work that needs to be done today.

We've been working really hard on building the turkey pen so the turkeys don't have to spend all day inside their coop. It's been a lot of time and we will probably spend a total of $600 altogether, although that includes the cost of a reciprocating saw, a staple gun, and an electric sander.

We got Mom's freezer cleaned out and our stuff from it moved into our large chest freezer in the garage. I made up an inventory list of the food and then promptly misplaced it. Still, I've got a pretty good idea of what we have so that will make it easier to plan my menus for this week.

I started moving some transplants into the straw bale garden today. I like it so far. It is definitely holding in a ton of moisture from the conditioning process. In the long run this will use very little water and hold on to what it absorbs for a long time, which is great. I still got a lot of transplants to do, but here's what I've done so far:

http://youtu.be/xYzDaxNdn6Y

I'll post the turkey pen build video when we've got it finished.

$9044.68 Old EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
------------
$9054.68 New Balance

Financially, things have been running very smoothly here. We will finally be buying our freezer this week. I will be glad to have it so we can clear all our stuff out of my mother's freezer. She needs to butcher her chickens this week and needs the space for them.

It has been a very busy week here on our little farmlet. I have spent $68.72 this week on 50 lb of crimped oats, 50 lb of flock raiser, a new glass water bottle, a new feeder, a new rabbit chew toy, and a mixing bucket for feed.

I have $24 worth of rewards at Pinecone. I am waiting until I get $30 before I have them send me a check. I'm getting 1 to 2 surveys a week so that should happen fairly soon.

I haven't really been doing Swagbucks lately. I haven't had much time and I had to take the search bars off my browsers as they were causing too many problems and allowing viruses onto the computer. It was very annoying.

I'm having issues with Netflix. I'm not sure why, but they aren't shipping DVDs right away. The last one I sent in arrived on the 14th and they still have not sent me a new one. On my plan they should have. I am starting to think about dropping their DVD plan altogether as this is the second time this has happened. Just stick with streaming as there is plenty to see this way. At least after I finish Rizzoli and Isles, which is not available on streaming.
We go and pick up our new little New Zealand Red doe today. She will cost $55 and is purebred pedigreed. That means when she grows up and I breed her with Wildfire, their kits can be sold for a higher price. There are not a lot of breeders who do NZ reds on this side of the state, so I am excited to be adding to my possible future income with this breeding doe.

We started the ducks free ranging yesterday as they are now bigger than the chickens and no longer afraid of them. This should cut down on feed costs as they are tremendous foragers, eating grass, weeds, slugs, bugs, and grubs.

http://youtu.be/pHvVS_3d4rs

The rabbits also started going out in the tractors this week.

http://youtu.be/4BGVgVL8lAc

And an update on all the young kit litters.

http://youtu.be/1LiWIpOPoUo

Unfortunately the first kit in the vid did not make it. Well, maybe it was fortunately. It was just not doing that well and I think it was in pain from overexposure when it was born. We tried to keep it comfortable. It was a taxing week.

The turkeys and chicks are doing really well. They've all learned how to fly up to the top perch. In a couple of days we will have their enclosure built and then we can let them outside. We can't let the turkeys free range as they will fly up into trees and try to roost overnight in them. I do not think the neighbors would be happy about that.

Today is the auto deposit of $10 to savings. I added it to the Emergency Fund.

$9034.68 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Amount Added
---------
$9044.68 New EF Balance

Tomorrow is payday. It is the first payday cycle where we don't have to plan for a mortgage payment. That is such a great feeling.

Next week we will finally be purchasing our freezer. I am really looking forward to having that. Especially as the weather gets hotter and I need to store frozen water bottles to put in rabbit cages for the hot weather. They lay against them and it helps them to keep cool. Rabbits cannot handle weather over 80 very well and they only lose heat through their ears, so having ice water to lay on helps them cool their bodies. It is hard to have space for it, though with such small freezer space. We are buying the largest chest freezer on the market that isn't for industrial use. Then I can use the little chest freezer for the water bottles and other rabbit related stuff.

The rabbit who had the surprise litter has been named Fiona (partly for the F sound of her mother's name Phoebe and partly after the character from Burn Notice). Her surviving kit is alive and well and she is taking care of it. It already has fur coming in and seems to be doing just fine on its own. Probably because the weather is so warm. If I can get it to 2 weeks old it will be out of the woods.

Lola's remaining 4 orphans are doing well. The one I am feeding with a dropper hit 1 pound 2 days ago, so I have dropped it down to 2 feedings a day from 3 and will probably drop that down to 1 in a couple more days.

The birds are doing great. The turkeys are getting big, the ducks are getting huge, and the chicks are small in comparison, but the right size for their ages. They are fun to watch.

I did a small video on the birds. The link is below as I know some of you like to see these, but don't follow the farm blog.

http://youtu.be/UVqTz9ehqjM

Really, really, really rough day. I have been through the emotional wringer this week. We lost Lola, lost 3 of her 7 kits this week to whatever illness she had, and had an unexpected litter born today from a too young rabbit (not quite five months old yet) that we thought we had separated from her brother in time (clearly not) with one survivor out of six kits (that is nursing, thankfully). It just hurts to bury that many of them so close together.

Sometimes raising livestock sucks eggs. I don't even care about the lost production or the financial hit of it right now. I just want to cry instead. It may seem crazy to love animals that just end up feeding the family, but I do. I can't help myself. Sometimes farming is contradictory.

But the last dropper fed kit is thriving. And the survivor newborn kit seems like it might make it. I hope so. I'm not sure I can take another loss tomorrow. I just need one day off from death, please. Preferably many, many, many days, though.

Got verification from the mortgage holder that the mortgage payoff has been verified by them and that we will be sent our title at some point in the future (read: whenever they get around to it). It had already disappeared from the list of accounts at my credit union the day after we paid it off.

I forgot to look at my interest at Capitol One 360 until today. It was $8.03 so I added that to my Emergency Fund total. I also added yesterday's weekly $10 deposit. I am working on building that back up to $10K now.

$9016.65 Old EF Balance
+__18.03 Amount Added
-----------
$9034.68 New EF Balance

I have a dividend check from the co-op we buy our propane from for $13.35 and that will be added to the EF as well when I get a chance to deposit it.

I think I will be able to get the EF back to $10K by the end of August. Then I will refocus on refilling the funds I wiped out to pay off the mortgage.

We are going to do the 18 months same as cash on the freezer purchase. Yes, I have the money, but I see little point in taking it out of savings if I can have an interest free loan for 18 months that I'll just pay off in less than a year while I collect a little interest myself instead.

One of Lola's kits did not survive the loss of its mother. 4 of them are very healthy and eating tons of solid food. 2 of them were losing weight, so we started them on raw goat's milk this afternoon. One drank a tsp at the first feeding and the slightly larger one drank a tsp and a half.

We will feed them some more milk tonight and again in the morning. I am not sure if we will do 3 feedings a day or 4. Maybe 4 the first day and see how they take it. They are eating a little bit of pellets and hay, but it was just a little too soon for the littlest ones to have to quit nursing like that. I am trying not to get my hopes up, because I know how this can go.

The newborns are all doing pretty good, though we did have to force nurse one of Andromeda's kits last night. It was very undersized. It drank a ton though while we held down its mother and this morning it looks way better. I think it probably just missed a feeding. We shouldn't have to do it again. Which is good because Andromeda would hate us forever.

Phoebe's kits that started out as all black are turning sort of chocolate colored with some red hints thrown in, so I guess they will not be pure black after all. Oh, well. They are adorable and beautiful and healthy.

Warning, extreme adorableness below.

http://youtu.be/4LRpmpc5_xw

Right now we are about breaking even on raising our own food animals. It is all worth it, though.

Andromeda had four healthy kits yesterday and Phoebe had six today. I am very excited that Phoebe had all black kits. Since Phoebe is white and Wildfire is red, I was expecting those two colors. I was not expecting black. But clearly Phoebe's albino gene only makes her present as white. She has black genetics. So I get black New Zealand rabbits a whole year ahead of schedule! And without having to pay through the nose for one.

And with Lola's death, I have room in the rabbitry to grow up a doe as a breeder, so hopefully there are some girls in the litter to choose from. Then in a year I can bring in a black buck from elsewhere. It is nice to have some good rabbit news for a change.

I have someone who wants to buy some rabbit meat, so hopefully I will have a little more profit from my rabbitry this month. At least enough to pay for 150 pounds of feed.

Today was the day. We officially have a $0.00 balance on our mortgage. And I still have over $9000 in the Emergency Fund. I am really excited about finally having the house paid off. We bought it 16 years ago, so I think we did a pretty good job in getting it paid off early. Now if it will sell, I will be ecstatic.

We have been crazy busy these last two weeks. The last five days were spent building the turkey coop. We got enough done to move them in tomorrow, which is when DH leaves for Alaska. We will do the run when he comes back in two weeks. The turkeys aren't allowed to go outside for 3 more weeks so that will work out.

Here is a vid of the turkey coop being built if you are interested:

http://youtu.be/vbXeeVb3yP4

The ducks are getting very big and are now 7 weeks old. The turkeys will be 4 weeks old on the 7nth and the chicks will be 6 weeks old on the 8th. They are all growing very fast, too. I'll try to get some photos or vids rendered to put on here in the next couple of days.

Lola died today. Her kits are just 4 weeks old. It's a little early to wean for my comfort, but kits can be weaned at this age, and we have no choice. I am not going to breed from the genetic line anymore. There is a flaw somewhere and it is clearly not recessive in this generation. I don't care what they say about line-breeding being perfectly safe. I'm not doing it period, and I won't buy anymore stock that has been line-bred either.

Andromeda kindled today, but no idea how many are in her litter yet. I wasn't entirely sure she was done giving birth and didn't want to bother her.

Phoebe is due today or tomorrow, but no sign of kits yet.

It has been a day of mixed emotions. So far the good has outweighed the bad. The house is paid for and that frees up a ton of room in the budget and I can't stay sad on a day like that, but I can't be entirely happy either.

http://youtu.be/Xzjq0UY2Uy4

The ducklings are very happy with their new space. I was glad to get them moved in yesterday and boy were they glad to go.

We got the turkey poults and chicks moved into the garage brooder today and they were happy with their new space, too. We modified the brooder to put a perch about 8 inches off the floor. They love it. I think the turkeys are mad though because we have a screen over the top of the brooder and they can't fly out like they were doing out of the bathtub. 2.5 weeks old and they can fly really well. They don't even have all their feather yet, but they have their wing feathers and that's enough.

DH and I worked on fencing. Right now we are just keeping the ducklings locked in their house for a couple days until they realize it is home now, and hopefully we will get the new fencing finished tomorrow and can let them out in their little yard. I say little, but it'll be at least 128 square feet.

This week it feels like we are handing our paycheck directly to the home improvement store. We're not, we're actually taking it from savings, where we put it earlier in the year, but it is still the same feeling. It is worth it though for all the animals. It is fun to raise them, but they sure are work.

Mom's meat chickens got moved into their new coop tonight. It was quite the process and they weren't sure they liked it at first, at least until they found the food and water. I'm sure they'll be happy for the space as they get used to it, though.

I am still debating paying off the mortgage. I just really want it over with. It hit today and the new balance is $4860.40. I had estimated it at $4882.62, so was off by $22.22 in my favor.

If I wiped out all of my funds except the Property Tax Fund, the Dues Fund, and the College Fund, I would have $4293.93 to put on the mortgage. That would leave me with $566.47 to pay it off. I could justify taking that much money out of the Emergency Fund to pay it off. And I could pay it back to the EF within a couple of months. I need to talk to DH about this tonight and see where he stands. I am so ready to be done with this.

This is what we've been up to for the past 4 days.

http://youtu.be/qWrGcWXj98A

We spent about $250 (part of that on drill bits). Something comparable in a store bought kit would have been around $800, so I think we did pretty well. I have learned some serious skills, too.

Once we get the corrugated roofing on we will begin construction of the turkey coop. At least we will have a string of dry days to do that on. Turkey coop will probably run us about $500 in supplies, but would cost about $1500 if we weren't doing it ourselves.

Both the duck house and the turkey coop will be easy to take apart and move when it is time for us to buy our farm. We are building with that in mind.

I don't know what it is, but I sure don't seem to be into my finances this month. I mean, I'm not ignoring them or anything, I'm staying on track for my goals, I'm not overspending (though I am doing a lot of planned spending), but it all seems sort of boring at the moment.

I go through this from time to time and I guess it is normal not to want to always have a pinpoint focus or to track every cent. I pretty much just feel like I'm a well-oiled machine that just keeps on keeping on. I think about making blog posts, but they just feel like they lack a certain spark right now. I guess after eight years blogging (I totally missed my blogoversary on the 9th) there just isn't always that much left to talk about anymore.

I did do one frugal thing this week. I made and canned dandelion jelly. It turned out awesome and tastes like honey.



But you can read about that on the farm blog if you want:

http://whendidthisbecomeafarm.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/first...

I'm sure I'll get my mojo or whatever back in a while. These things come and go.

Meanwhile, I have cute animal stuff.

Rabbit kits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZhLreFgkg

Sienna and Cinnabun:



Pekin duckling:



Welsh Harlequin and Pekin ducklings:



Royal Palm turkey poults (yellow ones) and Barnevelder chicks:

Gee, it feels like it has been a while since I've had a no spend day. First I went to physical therapy, so that was $90. I hope one day I can get through a week without it, but that day has not yet come. Still, I do what I must to continue to walk, so it is totally worth it, even if it comes out of my pocket.

I also spent $108.36 on medications and medical supplies. We were out of almost everything so I did a major stock up. I like to have everything on hand because when you feel sick the last thing you want to do is head to the store. And of course when you start bleeding you want to be able to stop it right away.

Hopefully tomorrow will actually be a no spend day. I don't foresee any expenses at this point, but who knows.

My daughter is finally going to get her driver's permit this week. If she passes the written. She doesn't have to take a class now that she is 17 and 1/2. I hate the fact that you can't go to the DMV anymore to take the tests though. They've outsourced to the local driving schools. So irritating. Because you have to take the test at one place and then if you pass, you have to go to the DMV to get the actual permit, and the places are on opposite sides of the town so you have to go all over the place.

The little turkey poults are doing great. They are learning from the chicks and getting less stupid each day. One of the little chicks is already flying. They have their wing feathers, but she seems to be the only one who has figured out what to do. No tail or other feathers yet. She is not getting any height yet, but she zooms from one end of the bathtub to the other.

The ducklings are doing great. The one that was having seizures stopped having them once I started the vitamin regimen with them. It's been five or six days now and not a sign of a seizure. Since it was having one at least three times a day before, and probably more but I only checked on them 3 times a day, and I haven't seen any at all, I think it is out of the woods. It is still a little brain damaged but it seems like it is learning to compensate for it.

Their tail and back feathers are just starting to emerge. Ducks are slower to feather than chickens. All of the meat chickens my mom got when I got the ducks are fully feathered and they are five days younger than the ducklings.

The rabbit kits are growing and starting to get the lightest dusting of white as their fur comes in. Both mothers are doing well and holding condition pretty well, despite losing a good chunk of pregnancy weight. They are getting oats with their pellets for an extra nutrition boost.

I am happy with how well things are going on our little homestead. I thought I might be overwhelmed with so much to care for, but it is going well. I still would like to add quail, but I don't know if that will happen this year. I would just raise them for meat if I did get them this year. That's an 8 week commitment. Not too much. But until the duck house and the turkey coop are built, I'm not even going to think of it or try to pile more animal housing building onto DH's plate. Especially since we still have to get the garden up and running.

I am finding all kinds of money this month, which is kind of nice. Today I found a shiny nickel.

I put it in the coin jar along with the rest of the change and ones from all my shopping yesterday. It totaled $8.74.

The turkey poults and chicks all made it through the night, though one of the particularly stupid poults got herself trapped between the cardboard put down under the newspaper and pine shavings and the bathtub wall a few times. We ended up duct taping the cardboard to the bathtub so that she can't do it anymore. She still hangs out in that corner though, silly thing.

They are all eating and drinking and I swear they have grown since yesterday.

We almost lost a kit last night, but thankfully we saw that it had fallen out of the nesting box and I was able to get it warmed back up and then back in with the rest of the litter. It survived the night. Hopefully it will survive the day as well. Then I will stop worrying about it.

I need to go and buy the first of the straw bales for my straw bale gardening project. They have to be soaked daily for 2 weeks and fertilized with organic kelp every other day, before adding compost to pockets I put in the straw and planting, so I need to get started. I don't want to build raised beds here, but I need the garden to be up off the ground because of my knees. I can sit in a chair next to a straw bale and garden easily. By the time I am done preparing the bales we should be past the last hard frost of the year.

I spent $116.91 on Royal Palm heritage turkey poults and Barnevelder chicken pullets today. Barnevelders are a very old breed and lay a nice dark brown egg, similar to a black copper maran. These guys will pay me back with eggs in about 16 weeks.

I am hoping that I got at least one male and one female turkey, but since they were straight run, I won't know until they are quite a bit older. If I got at least one of each, they will remain as our breeders. Royal Palms are still capable of breeding naturally and don't need AI like the more commercial breeds you'd find at the grocery store that have been bred so heavy breasted they can't support their own body weight at maturity so can't breed. They just fall over if they try.

The Royal Palm poults can be sold for quite a premium so it will be well worth the investment eventually.

Two of the turkeys will be for Thanksgiving and Christmas regardless of whether they turn out to be male or female. It'll be cheaper to raise them ourselves than to buy heritage birds at the holidays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8ZBsHvnB9E

I also spent $41.26 for a 50 pound bag of game bird starter feed, a waterer, and two feed troughs, since the ducklings are eating enough now to need a second trough.

Then I spent $59.19 on a tank of gas for the minivan and $210.63 on groceries. They had a huge sale on turkey legs so I stocked up on a lot since they are so easy to make. I also bought a lot of other staples and some fresh veggies.

I canned 3 quarts of pickles today. Unfortunately the bottom of one of the jars cracked off during the canning process. I lost about $3 worth of food. Still, it is rare that something like that happens. I've never had a jar crack before in two years of canning. It is still far cheaper to home can even with the occasional loss, than to buy them already made when you are working with organic foods. And I can make it exactly the way I like it and in the quantities I want them to be in, with no yellow #5 or MSG. Well worth it.

I added $9.68 to the coin jar. DH cleaned out his wallet last night before heading back to Alaska and that was all the ones and change that he had, plus 3 quarters from my purse that were knocking around.

After all the building we have done so far this spring, we have decided to put the green house on hold. With the duck house yet to be built and a turkey house next on the agenda, then fixing all the rabbit tractors with new roofs and building a large outdoor hutch with two big grow out cages for the rabbits that we can put in deep shade during the heart of the summer's heat, I just can't see it getting done.

That is okay though. We are planning on a straw bale garden, so it will be an easy set-up. We can put low tunnels over them to keep the birds out of the ones they would love to eat.

There have still been no serious buyers on the house. There are people that want it but don't have any money ready to buy it. I am hoping that now that it is spring and we are heading into summer that there will be someone who actually has money who wants it. It is such a nice house. If it weren't for the location I'm sure it would be long sold.

If it doesn't sell by summer, I think we are going to try to rent it. I know of one person who has said they would rent it for $1000 a month and pay all the utilities. That was the guy who painted the house in exchange for our old car. That way I could at least start paying the handyman back. He did the work based on being paid when it sold and being allowed to use it for his portfolio book, though all materials were paid for at the time. We just owe him on the labor.

If the house ever sells, we are planning on paying off the van with part of the proceeds. That will give us a smaller down payment, but it will free up a lot of money each month.

The mortgage hit and the remaining balance is 5362.82, so after May's payment it will be under $5K. I am so tempted to just pay it off using half the Emergency Fund. I could then use the money I've been putting on the mortgage to get the Emergency Fund back up to $10K. It would be a risk. Everything is these days, but to own the house free and clear means that at least in an Emergency situation no one could take that away from us, evening if it means moving back to the boonies.

I have been thinking about getting a used fridge and washing machine to put in the house, too. I am wondering if that might not be a small issue with some of the people looking to buy. They might want to have it ready to just walk in and live, not have to buy a few big appliances themselves. If they are only looking at the listing and seeing it doesn't have that, it might be enough to keep them from coming out and falling in love with the house. At the very least I think it needs a fridge. I see fridges on Craigslist for $100 quite often and washers from $50 to $150. It would be a small investment to possibly make a big difference.

I am so flipping tired right now. The last week has been so much work and we had kits born yesterday. Lola's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKSf0uDl9T0

and finally, Serenity had hers after spending most of the last two days looking at us like, "Pregant? Who is pregnant? Not me!" every time we go in to check. Like the nest she's dug out doesn't give it away. She hid them so well in the nesting box, though, that we almost thought she hadn't had them yet.

I've put 3 doe kits up for sale. Hopefully I will get a nibble. Sales do help pay for feed and bring overall costs of raising our own meat down.

The ducklings turned 3 weeks old on Sunday and I was able to start them on flock raiser crumbles. I am still mixing in some of the chick starter because abrupt dietary changes are not good for animals, but should be all the way over to crumbles by tomorrow night. Which is when I will run out of chick starter so that works out well.

I ordered some special duck vitamins which should be here soon. I got 2 packs because the shipping was the same as one pack and 2 packs is almost a year supply. One of the Pekins has been having seizures, but I haven't seen her have one in the last two days since I started adding 1 crushed super B complex vitamin to their daily one gallon of water they drink.

Hopefully that means she has stopped having them, but I may just not be there when she is having them. I think she is brain addled though from all the ones she did have. She's just off a bit, stares at the wall a lot, but seems to do okay still. She is one of the meat birds though, so it's okay if she is brain addled so long as she can eat and drink and walk and grow.

My turkey poults come in on Thursday so hopefully I can get there before anyone else and get the pick of the clutch. I want four. All I care about is that I get one hen and one tom. The rest can be whatever because the whatevers will be for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The hen and tom will be breeding stock so we can eventually sell poults of our own or fertile eggs.

This farming thing is getting more and more involved as we go. I love it though. Even if it does lead to exhausting weeks like this one.

...I don't care.

I got interest on one of my small CU's today. It is 12 cents. I am adding it anyway, to the Moving Fund.

$706.81 Old Balance
+___.12 Interest Added
----------
$706.93 New Balance

And here's a video of some of the animals here on our homestead just for fun:

http://youtu.be/fLi5SLzlMbg

And the day we moved the chicks and ducks into the new brooder boxes we built in the garage:

http://youtu.be/tRvvDWlAYvA

Yesterday we went down to the farm we buy the meat we don't raise ourselves from. I spent $297. For that I got:

6 packages of bacon
1 package bacon ends (they threw in for free)
12 pounds pork chops
12 pounds of hamburger
2 pounds of beef stir-fry
4 2.5 pound chuck roasts
2 packages of uncured hot dogs
2 pounds of ground pork

Yes, it is a little pricey, but it is all pasture-raised and organic, humanely slaughtered animals. The quality of the meat and flavor is incredible, and the nutritional value is higher than CAFO-raised meat when scientifically analyzed. You also feel full faster on this so eat less at a time. We can afford to do this and have made this type of food a priority now that we have no credit card debt. Eventually we hope to raise it all ourselves with the exception of beef.

We are going to can all of the hamburger and 3 of the chuck roasts. I love having home canned food on the shelf for those days I don't feel like cooking at all.

We will also be canning some ground rabbit meat with taco seasoning in it and trying to make some rabbit jerky as well with our new jerky kit (part of my birthday present).

----------

We've had a rough week here. We lost Piper to an illness similar to the one Sweetie Belle had. This was even more devastating since Piper was pregnant and due on the 5th. She was my first rabbit and my best mother rabbit and she was very sweet and affectionate. We loved her like a pet, even though she was a working part of the farm.

Worse than the fact that we lost her while pregnant, though, is the fact that she was the one carrying the possibility of red kits. We will breed Wildfire to Phoebe soon and hopefully we will get some reds out of that. The female reds are too young still to breed.

A couple of days before Piper died we lost one of our young bucks. No sign of illness at all in him or on him, he was fine the night before and just dropped dead overnight. This happened once before quite some time ago. So I don't know what is going on, but we've discontinued using fodder and are sticking with straight pellets, hay, and greens from the yard and garden.

There is no sign of illness in the other rabbits at all. Having new, young life around also helps not to get as depressed when there is unexpected animal death. Although I think you should always be expecting some animal death on a farm. It is the nature of the beast.

At least the little ducklings and chicks are all doing just fine. We moved them to their new brooder boxes in the garage this afternoon. They have more space than in the bathtub. The brooder boxes we built are 4 x 4 by 2, so twice as much space to move around in. We went with sand for the floor as it is much easier to keep clean, just using a cat litter scoop on a pole. Sand is what ducks like to be on in nature and it dries out quickly, especially under a heat lamp. The chicks seem to like it, too.

The older chickens, especially Curious and Georgie, had to come in to the garage and see what all the peeps and cheeps were about. Georgie got up on the hay bale so she could see into the brooder box with the chicks, and Curious perched on the back of a chair to peek in at the ducklings. Then we shooed them out and shut the door so that we didn't have to worry about the older ones trying to get in with the little ones and boss them about.

We spent about $200 on fencing and brooder box supplies. We will spend about another $125 on supplies to build the duck house and we need to buy a miter saw and possibly a reciprocating saw. These are all planned purchases.

We are putting up the fencing this evening. Hopefully we will get it all done. We have to fence off the chickens from the pasture area we are reseeding with red and white clover. They won't like it much, but they'll just have to deal. The next door neighbor is going on vacation for 3 weeks so said we could open up the gate between our fences and let the chickens into her backyard since her dogs will be with her kids. That will distract them at least while the clover has a chance to establish itself.

I am getting anxious to start the garden. It is too soon to be planting outside yet, our average last day of frost is 4/15, but we've had surprise snows and frosts as late as the last week of April, so anything we plant between the 15th and the end of the month can be at risk and will need to be protected.

We will try to rototill some compost in though before DH goes back to Alaska. We are aiming to grow all of the green beans, peppers, and all of the tomatoes we need for the year. A few other things, too, but those are the main two goals since we eat green beans, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, chili, and salsa all the time through the year. We need the tomatoes for a base.

We want to plant a good portion of our potatoes, carrots, kale, chard, and cabbage for the year. And of course there will be just the fresh eating foods like lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi, broccoli, cucumbers (for fresh and pickling), zucchini, squash, melons, and peas.

We will have our blueberries, raspberries, and apples taken care of from our perennial plantings and will likely do a massive U-pick for our strawberries. I had meant to plant some but there isn't much space for it with all the other foods we want to grow and since we can get organic strawberries locally it is one less thing to try to find a space for. Unless...hmm, we might be able to do it on the patch between us and the neighbor. We'll have to ask her if she minds. She can certainly have some.

I really wish our house would sell so we could buy our farm and get moving on doing this stuff on five acres instead of squeezing it all on to just under a 1/2 acre. We keep having interested people but they don't have their finances in order. *sighs* Why do people go house hunting without getting their finances in order first? I will never understand that.

Today I spent $59.54 on 10 ducklings. We got 6 Welsh Harlequins, of which the females can lay between 260 and 300 eggs a year, and 4 Pekins. The Pekins will be meat birds. We won't know for sure about the sexes of the Welsh Harlequins until they are a bit older. I am pretty sure at least two of them are girls. I am hoping more are.

I'd really like them to be 5 hens and a drake, but it's really luck of the draw at this point. They are one week old. Once they feather out and grow up a bit we will be able to tell them apart as the males and females have different markings. If I get at least 2 hens, though, we will be well set up for next year because Welsh Harlequins will go broody and hatch a clutch a couple times a year. Assuming they aren't all females. Which I am assuming, because who has that kind of luck with a straight run?

Any excess drakes will be meat birds, too. Too many drakes just won't get along after a certain age unless there are no females. We will keep the nicest one, possibly two depending on the ratios. They are so stinking cute right now it is hard to think about the ultimate purpose of most of them. But we are choosing to farm and to raise our own food and we know we will get there. If we can do it with the adorable rabbits, we can do it with ducks. And eventually chicks, as we will be getting meat chickens later this summer.

If you would like to see my ducklings:

http://youtu.be/WpiBAoZqkzE

My mom got 15 meat chickens so we will probably get our chicks as soon as hers are old enough to go outside and the brooder is free. And we will be getting at least two turkeys in mid-April when they come in. They will have Bourbon Reds and Royal Palm, and a few other heritage breeds. I'd really like Royal Palm, but I would be happy with Bourbons or one of each. We are planning on them being meat birds, but I will admit right now that the turkeys may end up being pets. We will see.

I spent $25 on wood and hardware to build a brooder box for the garage. It should be really easy to make. They cut the pieces to size to make a box that will be 4 x 4 x 2. We are keeping them in the bathtub for now and they won't go to the garage until they are older.

I will be raising them on organic feed and of course they will have free range of the fenced back yard during the day. I have really missed having ducks. They are such a happy animal to have around.

The new rabbits are adapting well. Wildfire has gotten very friendly and Cinnabun and Sienna are becoming less skittish. We bred 3 pairs of bunnies on the 8th, Piper and Wildfire, Serenity and Leo, and Lola and Starbuck, so around the 6th to 8th of April we will have litters again. I am hoping for some reds out of Piper's litter.

We slaughtered seven kits for the freezer yesterday. Again, most of these will end up ground. We are really making a good dent in our meat bill, even subtracting out the costs of feed, though it is still not the easiest part of farming.

I have selected the last of Serenity's does to grow up to breeding age. She has great confirmation and does not have the bend at the tip of her ears that I am trying to breed out of my rabbits. Since she will be here long term, we have named her Serena. She has a great personality and has never bitten or scratched.

I may keep one of Andromeda's boys, too. There is one without the bending ear tips as well, and he would be good to breed with Serena when he gets old enough. He has a great, friendly personality and a generally happy demeanor.

I sold another doe this week, Serena's sister, actually, for $20, so that will help offset feed. I've now made a total of $95 selling rabbit breeding stock, though my son did get a cut of that.

While I probably won't keep Serena long term or the buck I will breed her with, I will eventually sell them as proven breeders, I would like to keep a doe or a buck out of one of her litters.

5 of the kits get to grow out a little longer, including the buck I might keep. That leaves us down to 17 in our rabbitry at the moment. We haven't had so few in such a long time. Feed costs this month will be much lower.

I am still researching aquaponics, but may end up putting it off for another year. We will put up a greenhouse, though, this year. I am also researching goats, further. I am debating breeds at this point. I'm still leaning toward kinder, but I'm also looking into dairy sheep as an alternative.

We need to make a decision on ducklings soon. They either need to be ordered from a hatchery or we can go to the feed store this week and get potluck choices. I'd like to get some for future egg-laying. The chickens are getting old for layers and are so very noisy. I swear hens are louder than roosters sometimes. Some of the duck breeds are very quiet. They just murmur or hiss. Some are noisy, so you have to be careful you know which are which before buying them.

I still need to do my payday report for the last two weeks. I've been putting it off, because I've had a pretty bad headache and doing math stuff and analytical stuff just makes it worse.

So DH and I drove down to the Willamette Valley on Friday as part of an early anniversary getaway and to pick up our new purebred pedigreed breeding stock of New Zealand Red rabbits. We drove back on Saturday. It was nice to get away, the weather was beautiful on Friday, but we hit a snowstorm on the last leg of the trek home on Saturday. We had a great time, though, and even though he won't be home for our actual anniversary (our 19th) on the 18th, we still feel like we got to celebrate. We had a nice steak dinner out.

Meet our new buck Wildfire:



And our new does Sienna and Cinnabun:



They are very sweet, gentle-tempered rabbits. No biters or scratchers in this lot.

Costs for the trip (I'm rounding):

$90.00 for the rabbits
$80.00 for the hotel fee
$82.00 for 2 tanks of gas
150.00 for six meals out
-----------
402.00 total spent this weekend

$1000.00 to Mom
__144.00 Water/sewer Old House (2 months)
__600.00 Mortgage Old House
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__100.00 Emergency Fund
___19.00 Dues Fund (HoA Old House)
___90.00 Physical Therapy
+_100.00 Cash for Week
-------------
$2153.00 Total Money Out

I've also got to pay the kids' allowances for the last two weeks and buy groceries. I don't need to get that much. Milk, potatoes, lettuce, kale, chard, parsley, salmon, cod or snapper depending on what is in, deli meat, turnips, maybe a winter squash, and cabbage. I think I want some pears, too, but it will depend on how they look. I still have some apples and oranges, a couple of bananas, and a very unusual for me out of season imported watermelon, so not doing bad on the fruit front.

I need to pick up some black oil sunflower seeds for sprouting with the barley fodder, for the rabbits and some new chew blocks to hang from their chew toys. I am glad they are refillable. I also need to pick up some locking hardware for the 2 outdoor rabbit hutches that never had it put on and two feed cups. I have plenty of extra water bottles. We will be using the outdoor hutches when we bring the new rabbits home. They will be in quarantine for 4 weeks before I put them in with the other rabbits to make sure they have no illnesses.

I am going to risk breeding Piper with the red buck after he settles in simply because I don't want to wait a month. I want our first batch of spring bunnies by the end of March/beginning of April. I will breed them outside in one of the rabbit tractors (movable pens) to minimize exposure.

Piper is our best doe so she'll be the odd one out. The others I will pair up so I am having two does having litters at the same time. When Kalia is old enough to breed she will be paired with Piper. Then when the two red doe kits grow up I will pair one with Piper and one with Kalia, because end game is to have two unrelated litters growing out at the same time so if someone wants breeding stock that is not related I will always have that option for selling.

Okay, that kind of went off on a tangent.