So I had another person come by tonight to buy a 9 week old rabbit buck kit for $15 as he had a litter of straight does and needs a buck for them when they get old enough. I put a blurb up on a local Facebook group yesterday and 2 hours later had been contacted by this person, and then last night another person made an appointment to come by on Saturday to look at them. The second person is interested in one or two, but was planning to look at some other rabbits, too. I don't know if she will buy or not, but if she does it is another $15 to $30 depending on one or two.

I am also going to look for a group who does raw meat diets for their pets and advertise there.

Between my sale last week of $60, and this coming one of $15, I'll have made $75 in less than a week. If I get 2 more youngsters sold, that will be $105. My New Zealand Reds that I am buying on the 1st will total $95. I like the idea that I could possibly pay for my new rabbits by sales of kits. Ignoring the fact that I am paying my son 1/3 of the rabbit profits because he does a huge amount of work when it comes to them and that I already have the money for the purchase budgeted. Most future money will go to pay for feed.

I also put up an advertisement for a breeding trio for $60 of some really sweet, friendly kits. If they sell, that'll be a nice boost. I ought to put up a thing on the bulletin board at the feed store, too, on Friday when I go to pick up more black oil sunflower seeds.

If I ever end up making enough money to pay for feed completely by selling rabbits, any profits will go into the Aquaponics Fund, followed by the Farm Fund. I'd have to sell at least $260 worth of rabbits every 2 months to pay for feed. That would be $180 for feed minus my son's percentage.

My son wants to start his own egg business when we move so he'll be saving some of his rabbit money for start up costs. I'll buy the brooder and incubator and egg fridge since I will want them for ducks and quail and meat chickens anyway, but he will pay for the laying chicks, feed, bedding, and egg cartons for his own business and I will collect a percentage of his profits because I know I will be helping him and also to cover the cost of constructing their housing if it isn't pre-existing. Probably 1/2 to start and when he's paid his portion drop it down to 20%. And if we don't get much in way of egg sales we can feed excess eggs to the pigs.

Back to the rabbits, I am thinking of selling Lola as well. I would like to have one more litter with her and pick out her biggest doe kit to keep. I haven't made my final decision. She is a good mother, but she is very standoffish, doesn't like to be taken out of her cage, which makes cleaning it difficult, and doesn't want it cleaned when she's in it even to the point of just removing soiled hay is upsetting to her.

Lola also isn't at weight for breed standard, so unless she gains just over half a pound (9 oz) she can't be put on a pedigree. She may do so. I know that Piper and Phoebe put on a little weight in their second year. She only turned one last week, four days after my birthday.

I don't know if she will ever reach breed standard though. She was a runt who we grew out an extra month and then we figured we'd see how she'd do if we grew her up a while longer, and the others were biggest of their litters. 3 months ago she only weighed 9 pounds, so I am hoping this break from having kits and the higher protein feed while I am improving her condition will put that extra bit of weight on her she needs.

We start breeding again the first week of March, but Lola will not be bred until mid-April. That gives her almost two months to gain those nine ounces.

DD is wanting to have a hand in the Aquaponics, in caring for the vegetables and maintaining a vegetable stand. I'm not so sure she wants to make it be her own business, but work more on a percentage basis. Even if she did want it to be her own business, I wouldn't, because it's my baby at this point and when we first start we will be providing the needs for our family first, our animals second, and only selling any surplus. I don't think there will likely be much the first year we do it. We will keep any fish we raise for our own use, too.

I think DH is going to have to build our aquaponics set up though. And the hoop house for it. The one full set up I really wanted to get, but the shipping adds almost $2500 to the cost, which was already pushing $5000. So, no, that is not going to happen. But I have found some pretty simple systems and I think that with a 150 gallon stock tank, a few water tubs, a water pump, an air stone, some plumbing bits, and some crushed rock, we could set up some media beds easy for way less money. Like $600 to $700 for a system that would grow half as much as the $5000 system. Even if I sprang for the special clay pebbles it'd still come in around $1200 or so.

I am looking at blue gill perch or trout for the fish because they tolerate our weather better and it is easier to get fingerlings in this area of those types. I'd like to do a relatively small system to start with maybe four grow beds and then expand from there. No point in building a really big system while we are still living here. Ultimately I'd like a 300 gallon stock tank for the fish and 128 square feet of growing space in the media beds. And then I'd like to build a second system after a year or two of growing. But 64 square feet is a good enough place to start. We might even just start with 32 square feet. We can always add on.

I would like to get a couple of solar panels and marine batteries to run the pump and power any additional lighting needed. I think I can use LED's so it would not take as much power. So that would be an additional expense. I know I can get a marine battery for $130 or so and a solar panel with mounting brackets and all the right bits for around $700.

Another thing I was thinking about was maybe not just growing fish for us, but growing minnows or guppies or something for the ducks we are going to get to eat. I'm not sure though. From what I remember guppies are filthy fish and they might overpower an aquaponics system with their waste. I am still very much in research mode here. But I do want to do something this spring, even if it is just a system with ornamental goldfish in it.

The mortgage hit, or rather, I finally got around to checking whether the mortgage hit or not. I didn't send as much in this month, half of what I usually send since we're still recovering from the 4 weeks unpaid time off in January, but it's still going down. New balance is $6406.71.

It has been a difficult week here and we lost another animal, Sweetie Belle, one of our breeding doe rabbits died, so I haven't felt like posting or paying attention to finances until now. She had become one of my favorites and it just hurt to see her go from a thriving, beautiful girl to losing 4 pounds in 3 days, which is a lot for a rabbit that only weighed 10 pounds 6 ounces.

We have to make tough choices in farming and paying $145 just to get in the door at the vets before they even do anything for a $25 rabbit is just not going to happen. And they don't know anything about rabbits. These are dog and cat vets. Farm vets don't see small animals, either. Rabbits get caught in the no nothing zone it seems.

I know what was wrong with her and they couldn't have done anything about it. They could have given her intravenous fluids, but she still would have died. It just would have taken longer. We gave her medicine so she wasn't in discomfort and lots of attention. We gave her some parsley to try to entice her appetite, but even that she only ate a bit of.

I gave her water by syringe several times a day. But I knew what I was facing. You still have to try, though. I kept hoping I was wrong, but post mortem examination showed me she had an intestinal blockage. It happens in rabbits. We've had it once before with a kit.

We buried her in a place where the chickens couldn't dig her up and eat her. Even if we could have taken her to the raptor center for the recovering birds of prey (they won't take them if they have been treated with medicine), we wouldn't have. She was a working part of the farm, but she was also like a pet in that she was well loved in the short 10 months she was with us. She would have been one year old next month.

I am seriously thinking about investing in an aquaponics system. As I get older it is getting hard to garden in the ground. My knees and hips are bad, and my back is no spring chicken either. The system I am looking about can be adjusted to waist level so you can simply work on it standing or you can pull up a chair, even.

With the system I am looking at, I could eventually grow enough vegetables to feed us and supplement the rabbits' food as well year round. It would take a couple of years for it to pay back the investment, but it would be worth it for 90 pounds of fish a year plus the fruits and veggies.

It does have a smaller starter system that I think we'd start out with. It can then be expanded to make it bigger as we get the hang of it.

I've been doing a ton of research and I do think this is the way to go if I want to continue to garden with my disabilities. So I am creating a new fund for aquaponics. Time to start saving up.

$8033.19 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Deposit Added
------------
$8043.19 New EF Balance

I know what I want for my birthday next month. I want to check into a hotel and order room service and not be a mother for a day. The kids have been at each other's throats since DD came home from school. DD was in a bad mood because of that one crazy teacher she has so she started it. Then in response DS started provoking her on purpose.

Supposedly they were never speaking to each other again. One hour later they're acting like nothing ever happened, but I'm still tense. And irritated. *sighs* Motherhood, it ain't for sissies.

I spent about 2 hours today doing research on aquaponics systems. It is something I'd like to get into in the future. Not so much for the fish, more for the vegetables, but the fish would be a nice by-product. They can be expensive, but there are some DIY systems that can be cobbled together for far less money. Either I need to start saving or I need to figure out what DH is capable of putting together. Or willing to put together.

There are some that are as simple as a small fishtank, a grow bed, and a pump, filter, and bucket. That would probably be a good place to start.

I dropped DH off at the airport tonight, but before we left he emptied his wallet. He had ten ones and a bunch of coins. Altogether I added $14.42 to the coin jar. I also see little piles of coins he's left around the house that I need to go and gather up. He has a bad habit of emptying his pockets wherever he happens to be and not where the coin jar is. Probably I'll find an additional 50 cents or so.

I have a lady who is interested in buying rabbits in a couple of months. She wants to start raising them for meat and is looking for breeding stock for after she moves. I'm crossing my fingers as she sought me out as opposed to me advertising for it. Still, I may never hear from her again, either.

I haven't done Swagbucks since December. I just got exhausted from it. Not sure when I'll start up with it again. Just don't feel like it yet.

I broke my hairbrush tonight so will have to buy a new one. I am irritated. I know my hair is ridiculously thick and long, but a brush shouldn't just snap in two if it hits a tangle. Unfortunately I get a big tangle at the base of my skull where the C-PAP mask strap goes that has to be worked through every day. I am thinking about buying an old fashioned brush with a wooden handle and actual bristles. I'd have to order it online though. I haven't seen them in stores for years but I've seen them online. But I'll have to buy a cheap one in the meanwhile.

This has been a rollercoaster of a week. We lost 2 kits who had digestive issues making the change from nursing to solid foods. There isn't much that can be done in such a situation as it is the mama that limits the nursing. This is the first time we have lost kits for this reason. It was sad. We tried a special liquid food and feeding with a syringe, but it wasn't enough. Very sad.

This week we also got to meet the little girl that my niece and her husband are adopting. She's a lovely little girl, just 3.5 years old, sweet and shy and crazy about her new mom and dad.

We ground up a bunch more rabbit meat and made six pounds of sausage patties. We also got 2 pounds of stir-fry meat, 8 quarts of soup stock, 2 bags of boiled rib meat from the stock, and 1.75 pounds of burger.

So far I've not had to touch any of the money that we saved for January. But I did transfer the $3000 to my main account and it will arrive on Monday. We don't have a paycheck until the 24th and there are a couple of things that will need to be paid before then. The van loan, the BoA Visa, the internet, and the phone and power both out at the old house.

Not much else going on here. We haven't eaten out at all and we've gotten take away only twice in the last few weeks. We are getting much better at that and cooking a lot. I am still focusing on leftover management. The new fridge helps with that a lot because you can see everything and nothing gets invisible at the back of the fridge.

We will have to get gas tomorrow. The tank is running on fumes. Not much else on the agenda though.

And that, my dears, is how much debt is left to pay off my mortgage. Can't believe I'm under $7K. It feels fantastic.

No one has put an offer on our house yet. People are looking but no one is buying. The holidays are not a good time for it, I know. I just wish it would happen. I know houses can sit for years. I don't want to be one of the people that happens to. And I don't really want to be a landlord either.

I got some nice things from my in-laws for Christmas. I am looking forward to trying the ravioli maker and press. And to using the electric meat grinder. We're going to make rabbit burger this week after the rabbits are finished aging. I'd like to be able to replace our ground beef consumption with it if possible, or at least do a half and half ratio.

What's with the ugly obtrusive ads all over SA? I go offline for a few days and come back to that? Yeesh. It looks awful. One of the things I always liked about this place was how unobtrusive the ads were. Now they are totally in my face. *sighs*

The fridge is now registering at 60 degrees F. This is so frustrating. I just did not want to spend my Appliance Fund money for a fridge. I wanted to use it to buy a chest freezer. Now it looks like we have no choice. I just wish we hadn't spent the money on new gaskets now.

We saw a fridge that I liked and was more or less in our price range at Best Buy. But we are going to look at a locally owned appliance store, too, because I prefer to frequent local over box store when we can and if price is not too prohibitive.

I probably lost about $120 worth of food. We kept any condiment that had vinegar in it, like ketchup, pickles, steak sauce and mustard, and threw out salad dressings, mayonnaise, and picante sauce. We threw out all our pizza topping meats (prosciutto, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, salami) which I had just stocked up on. I had to throw out a pound of organic sausage and a package of bacon from the ranch. I also had an $20 ham that was going to be going into the crockpot, some leftover turkey necks from a big batch I did earlier in the week. We had to throw out a quart of goat milk, a bottle of lactaid milk, and a 1/2 gallon of milk from the local dairy that bottles in actual bottles.

Plus there was two cups of beef left of my home canned beef, 2 cups of leftover spaghetti, leftover meatballs, a package of uncured all natural beef hotdogs, a package of organic gelatin cups, 2 cups of natural peanut butter, my yeast, a bunch of green onions, 3 partially used 1/2 pints of applesauce, a bunch of kale, and a head of cauliflower.

What I was able to save were 2 leeks, a bag of carrots, 3 heads of broccoli, a purple cabbage, a jalapeno, a bunch of cilantro, a lime, a dozen oranges, and 2 apples. Also 2 bags of mozzarella cheese, 1 bag of cheddar cheese, 1 2 pound block of cheddar cheese, 1 8 oz block of extra sharp cheddar cheese, string cheese, gouda, parmesan and romano. I was also able to save all of my jams and jellies, but two that had been opened.

So everything we had left is crowded in the spare fridge that my mom and I both use. I am just really grateful the freezer is still working and that I have so much canned meat. Who knows when I'll get my freezer now. Maybe when we get our tax refund I can take some of that money and do it.

I'll have to find freezer space for what is in the fridge freezer at the worst possible time as we have to slaughter 13 rabbits in the next week and I hadn't been planning on canning it all. In fact I'd wanted to freeze at least half and then grind another quarter of the meat up for burger. Maybe if I pull out all the roasts and can them...I guess we'll see. But with 62 rabbits now in residence the one thing I can't do is put off slaughtering any longer.

Some good, some bad, some just surviving. We had two does kindle over the weekend. Phoebe had 9 kits and Andromeda had 4. We decided to foster 2 of Phoebe's kits to Andromeda, the two smallest ones, so that it would be easier on Phoebe. A rabbit can only feed 8 kits at a time so often one can easily miss out on a meal. I was really unsure about whether the runt would survive and it did not, sadly. But the other kit we fostered is now as fat and sassy as Andromeda's biological kits and I don't think she ever noticed there were more kits than she had.

I'll have to make some decisions about Starbuck come spring. I'm not breeding again until late February when the whether warms up. So far he has fathered 3 litters. The first one was a set of seven where one died and one was very undersized and we had to force nurse it for 10 days to get it to the age where it was old enough to eat pellets and thrive on its own. Then this last litter. The second litter he fathered was one of 9 kits, but 2 died. And this last litter he fathered only produced four. So his results are inconsistent and there might be something genetic going on.

But Andromeda was a first time mother and she wasn't exactly receptive during the first half of breeding so the litter size may be related to that as well. We will be keeping one of his bucks, because he is a friendly and amazing buck with really great fur and body type. Those traits I'd like to keep from him.

I think the fridge is dying. We replaced the freezer gasket and it improved for a while, and we will replace the fridge gasket as soon as DH gets home, but I think something might be wrong with the fridge fan, too. We were hoping to avoid a service call, but now we may not. I've had what feels like food poisoning and my suspicions lay on the fridge not keeping things cold enough. We may have to buy a new fridge. I have $700 in the Appliance Fund and I can wipe out the Vacation Fund to make up the rest if I need to. I am just hoping it is fixable.

Whoops!I forgot to add this to the payday report, but I also made the mortgage payment and that officially puts us under $8K owed on the house.

I didn't make a very big payment this time, just $400, which is $24 and some change above the actual payment. Just with Christmas coming up and 4 weeks of no pay following the last payday on the 27th of December, I am saving as much as I can. I will make up for it when I know where things stand for sure.

DH said that he might have the option to go back to work early. If he does that would be great. Even though we prepare for this unpaid time off every year, it still is quite a stretch of our dollars.

19 days and counting until the yearly bonuses are sent out. They usually arrive pretty quickly after they are mailed out. I am crossing my fingers for 10%, but expecting 5% or less.

My SIL has some friends interested in buying some rabbit meat from us. DH and I have set the price at $25 a rabbit. It costs $18 to raise one up to slaughtering age with feed costs (no GMO, no soy, no corn feed), hay, and organic produce during the fall and winter. And we want to see some profit for our time and effort. I see chickens go for $30 with that sort of feeding so hopefully she won't balk at that.

The weekend was crazy busy so I haven't had a chance to do my payday report from Friday. We went to the ranch on Saturday to pick up our turkey and to purchase about an eight week supply of meat. I wasn't sure when we would make it down that way again. The weather can make it difficult to get to the ranch if it snows or floods. We don't have 4-wheel drive in the van so back country roads can be difficult to navigate.

I will be canning some of the meat we bought. It has been very nice to just be able to crack open a jar of meat and a jar of vegetables when I have felt exhausted or sick and just warm up dinner and have it on the table in 5 or 6 minutes. Or if I think about it in time, just dumping it into the crock pot.

The January Money Fund now sits at $2620.84. Ideally I'd like it at $4000, but I may not have the time to get it there. Fortunately I have bought plenty of meat and have lots of canned veggies, so I won't need to buy much in the way of food in January.

$1000.00 BoA VISA
$1000.00 Loan to Mom
__400.00 Utilities to Mom
__470.00 Ranch Money
__100.00 300 pounds of rabbit feed (cheaper in bulk)
__100.00 Vacation Fund
___72.00 Water/sewer Holding Fund
__600.00 January Money Fund
__100.00 Cash for Week
___40.00 Allowances
___90.00 Physical Therapy
-------------
$3972.00 Money Out

DH ordered a new gasket for our under the fridge freezer. It cost $111, but that sure beats the $1000 or so for a comparable new fridge. It will be easy to replace as it is attached via screws and not adhesive. We really couldn't put it off any longer as the entire compartment is now filled with snow it is so bad.

We did some weatherproofing on the rabbit shed and it has made a huge difference. It was so cold in there before I could see my breath and my feet were going numb before I could finish the chores and the water bottles nearest the windows were freezing. Now none of that is happening. We were able to use supplies on hand so no money was spent on that.

I have physical therapy tomorrow and we will need to pick up a couple of loaves of bread to make stuffing, but otherwise we should not need to spend any more money until after Thanksgiving. We will avoid shopping over the weekend, too. Just not worth the craziness.

Lola had her kits yesterday and Serenity had hers today. We now have 16 more kits and a grand total of 52 rabbits in the rabbitry. We have two newly pregnant does who are due mid-December and then no more breeding until the weather warms up. We lost 2 kits. Lola and Serenity each had 9 and lost 1 each. They were born away from the rest of the litter so couldn't stay warm. Mama rabbits don't sit on their kits, they only cover them with pulled out fur, so they have to huddle together for warmth. We buried them together where the chickens can't get at them. All of the kits have been safely moved to nesting boxes and covered up with fur and hay.

We have plenty of rabbits for our meat needs for the winter, added to the beef and pork we have in the freezer. Now I just need to stock up on some chicken and we should be good until March or so. Although I do want to get some more beef and fish for canning.

We did get a turkey from the ranch. It will be ready for pick up on Saturday. We weren't sure we would get one, but we got on the list soon enough that we did. I am excited for that, because the one we got last year was the best turkey we have ever had.

Today is a no spend day, but tomorrow won't be.

Oh, I took a video of Lola's litter if anyone wants to see:

I spent just under $60 on take away today. We will get several meals from it. I just know this weekend is going to be a little stressful and I may or may not be up to cooking too much. We have 2 litters due and the temps have dropped to freezing which means an awful lot of checking on the rabbits will be done on Saturday and Sunday to make sure no kits are born on the wire, but are born safely in a nest or at least promptly put into one if they are not. I have been lucky so far in that all of the kindlings so far have resulted in only one kit born on the wire (on Phoebe's first kindling) and I was there within five minutes of it happening so we were able to save it.

I'm not too worried about Lola, but this is Serenity's first litter, so I pretty much will be doing hourly checks for the next two days. Which means a lot of walking and since my physical therapist had a migraine today and I cancelled last week due to illness, I am not in the best shape for that right now. I've had to use the cane twice this week. But it needs to be done and I'm sure the kids will take their turns at it and alert me if I need to go out and take action.

Anyway, today was payday so here is the list of money that went out:

$225.00 Monthly Chiropractic Family Plan
_100.00 Emergency Fund
_100.00 College Fund
_100.00 Property Tax Fund
_100.00 Propane Fund
_100.00 Moving Fund
_100.00 Christmas Fund
_100.00 Appliance Fund
__19.00 HoA Dues Fund
_200.00 Laptop Fund
__72.56 Internet
__47.52 Phone Old House
__41.94 Garbage
_500.00 BoA VISA
_757.82 Van Loan (plus extra)
------------
$2463.84 Total Money Out

I have a doctor's appointment for tomorrow to find out if that is what it is. It could just be a sinus infection gone really wrong. Hopefully it has not gone into walking pneumonia.

I wrote a really cranky post this morning, but deleted it. It was mostly about giant ads being obtrusive on websites *cough* SA *cough* lately. And also a top ten reasons why I hate top ten articles or lists in general. Yes, the irony of that is not lost on me.

There is not too much going on in the financial area for me. Spent $53 on prescriptions on Monday and $41 on takeaway.

We are force nursing one of the rabbit kits which takes up a lot of time. Basically you hold the doe rabbit confined and put the kit on her to nurse. He was not thriving and was starving. He is doing better now, but is still half the size of his siblings. I think he will do okay now that he has learned how to nurse.

I think the sucking reflex was not very strong in him, but that has improved. We are doing it twice a day and will likely do so for another week. He is starting to fill out and is gaining strength. He was kind of grey when we found him on day 3 and 1/4 the size of his siblings, but now is a healthy pink and white and his fur has started to get shiny. I've weighed him a couple times to make sure he is gaining. He is. His legs finally started filling out. Now I think he is going to make it.

We tried to bottle feed so we could monitor intake and because Piper really doesn't like being held in place, and he would have none of it, but he is happy to nurse. He's nine days old now and I think the worst of it is behind him. It has still been very stressful for me worrying though and I've had to spend too much time out in the cold, which is making the bronchitis or whatever worse. Not much I can do about that. It takes two people, one to hold Piper and one to hold the kit in place.

Hopefully the doctor will give me some medicine tomorrow that can kick this to the curb. What I really need is cough medicine, hopefully the good stuff with hydrocodone in it, so I won't be up all night coughing my lungs up.

We went down to the ranch today to buy our meat for the next six weeks, plus 5 beef chuck roasts and 6 pounds of hamburger extra to can this week. We paid $380. The usual amount for six weeks or so worth of meat is $300. We took $400 down to allow for the extra. $400 is half our grocery budget for the month. I will use the leftover $20 to buy some chicken legs from Trader Joe's.

We also spent $35 on Arby's because we had some coupons and we were pooped after cleaning out the rabbit shed and scrubbing cages today. No one wanted to cook. Wow, that is getting up there in price. I remember when a family of four could eat there for $20. It's not been that long ago, either.

Our house had its first showing today. I doubt anything will come of it, but you never know. It would be lovely if it did, but I know how long it can sometimes take for homes to sell and I'm not counting my chickens before they are hatched. I refuse to get my hopes up.

Tomorrow is slaughter day for six of the rabbits. I never look forward to that day, but I do look forward to having another 17 pounds or so of meat in the canning jars or the freezer this week.

Nephew-in-law also dropped off some fish that he caught today. He likes to fish, but doesn't like to eat the fish. That's a win-win situation for this household.

I am still fighting this flu bug. I have more energy than I did, but will be glad when I am all the way back to normal. If I get to be before the next cold hits.

After trying to fend off a cold for weeks, I am down. I am just exhausted even after sleeping for 12 hours. Well, there was a break in there to get up and feed the rabbits and let out the chickens and call my daughter in sick to school. But then I went back to sleep. I think it might be the flu. Everything aches, I have a headache, constant post nasal drip, coughing, and bad headache. I was doing okay yesterday, did all that canning and everything, but I feel like a truck ran me over today.

Both kids are sick, too, but they have a stomach virus. One kid is puking and the other kid has the other end of the issue. I do not want either of those things. I had a stomach virus in September and really don't want to go through that again anytime soon. I do have an appetite, though it is small. So far today I have eaten a can of soup. Neither kid is eating much of anything.

Today is a no spend day because of not feeling good enough to go anywhere. I also cleaned out my purse and added $1.76 to the coin jar.

I was able to count kits last night. Sweetie Belle had nine and Piper had seven, 16 altogether. That brings the rabbit population in our rabbitry to 44. The mother's are both doing well with their kits.

So far there are no freezes in the night time forecasts. Hopefully it will stay that way for a while. I am worried about water bottles freezing over night. I may end up putting a small heater out there at night to keep that from happening. Or possibly I can insulate the water bottles. They have that thick foam that goes over pipes. I wonder if they have some big enough to go around a 3 inch diameter water bottle? Hmm...I'll have to investigate that.

So last night I bought a whole salmon, 5 1/2 pounds, and today I cut it up and canned it. Surprisingly it only makes 6 pints of canned fish. I will know for next time to buy twice as much fish so I can do a full canner load. The salmon was wild caught coho on sale for $6.99 a pound, so it came out to $38 and some odd cents. It will definitely be cheaper for us to catch our own fish in the future, but for now we'll have some easy to eat salmon for one of those days I do not want to cook.

I also bought a 25 pound bag of organic carrots for $22 at the food co-op. It made 19 quart jars and there was enough peels and tips and ends cut off to feed to the rabbits for about 3 days. Of course I can't feed them carrots every day because of high sugar content, but I can give them some every other day. I am keeping the scraps in water to prevent them drying out.

My back and shoulders are killing me, though. It takes a lot of work to peel and cut up 25 pounds of carrots. It'll be worth it though when we have the makings for quick crockpot stew this winter.

Sweetie Belle had her first litter of kits yesterday late afternoon. I don't know how many yet as she was adamant about me not going into her cage even when I bribed her with a piece of purple kale. She just snatched the kale and then shoved the door shut with her nose. I will do it this afternoon and make sure they are all healthy. She actually gave birth in the nesting box which is a rarity for first time mothers, but I guess she thought it was the best place.

Piper gave birth to her fifth litter this morning. Not in the nesting box, surprisingly. I will also count and check on the health of her babies this afternoon. Judging from the size of the pile of fur this is not a small litter of six kits. Maybe she felt the nesting box was not large enough.

So we've gone from a rabbit population of 28 to who knows how many. Could be over 40. Six are due for slaughter soon, but not for another week at least. And we'll start weaning Lola's litter on Thursday and move them to the one empty grow out cage. By the time they are ready to be split up the other six will have gone to freezer camp. Or pressure canner camp. Either way we'll have a whole lot more meat put up for the winter.

Today is payday and here is an accounting of what was paid or put into savings.

$1500.00 Bank of America VISA
__100.00 Emergency Fund
___19.00 HoA Dues (Old House)
__100.00 College Fund
__100.00 Christmas Fund
__100.00 Moving Fund
__100.00 Appliance Fund
___40.00 Allowances
__100.00 Canning Jars* and Rabbit Supplies**
__100.00 Cash for the Week
___25.00 Garbage
-----------
$2284.00 Total Money Out

*2 cases of quart jars and 1 case of pint jars
**Water bottles, a hay tunnel, and a bottle of Vetrimycin eye wash ($27, ouch)

I also spent $50 on gas yesterday. I will be buying a 25 pounds of organic carrots to can and a whole salmon to can.

Left to pay for the month of October is the water/sewer bill, half of which has been set aside already, and the property tax for the half year, all of which has been set aside except $25 and the propane bill, which is $80. Those will be paid next Friday. I will also pay the mortgage then instead of waiting until the first and will also put $500 into the January Money Fund. All the rest of next payday's money is allocated for November bills.

I haven't written much the past couple of days, because every time I've started a post it has been so whiney and complainy that I thought better of it. I've got a cold which is halfway between exhaustion and misery. If it were complete misery I'd just stay in bed and not do anything other than rabbit care, but it's not. It's just enough to make me grumpy and tired and wish I could breathe better, but not enough to keep me from doing things like laundry or dishes or canning the last of the apples into applesauce.

I am trying to take it somewhat easy, but I do have to breed two pairs of rabbits today. I have two litters due on Monday. If each doe has at least six kits we will have a population of 40 rabbits. Six are due to be processed in about a week and a half, though.

There hasn't been anything to do financially and won't be until payday on Friday. I will then have bills to pay and I need to buy canning jars as well so we can put up the next batch of rabbits and make some more rabbit broth to can as well. It is so good. It tastes way better than chicken soup. I can't even believe how much better.

Paydays will be different now that DH is going up on Tuesdays and coming home on Wednesdays. We'll be moving to a 5 day check, a 7 day check, a 3 day check, and no check cycle, instead of a 6 day, 7 day, 3 day check, and no check cycle. It will still be the same amount of money, just assigned to different weeks. I'll need to adjust my budget accordingly, but the stuff that will be adjusted is all short term savings stuff that can come out of any paycheck and not bills.

DH says he will be bringing home a couple days worth of work. That should at least pay for one of the extra tickets he bought. He bought 3 so he could get the Thanksgiving and Christmas time trips taken care of before they doubled or tripled in price.

DH says there is a possibility of raises next year when the new contract is negotiated. I hope so. Insurance and taxes both went up this year, to the tune of about $800 less in the month than last year. And insurance will likely go up again right before the Affordable Care Act comes into play. We've been managing well, but only because we paid off all that credit card debt. Plane tickets were also about $100 more each month, so that's about $1200 more we weren't spending in 2012, also.

We are still managing to save for both the long-term (Emergency Fund, Hawaii 2018 Fund) and the short-term (Christmas Fund, College Fund, Computer Fund, etc.), but it would be easier if college weren't looming in the fall. The community college is still $7000 a year between tuition and books, and this is with DD living at home. WWU would be $10,000 a year, but I'm not sure she has the GPA to get in there.

Her grades are screwed because of how sick she has been and she had too many absences, so unless she aces the ACT or the SAT it's likely community college for her to get her grades up. She is smart enough to do well, and she is a good test taker. At least in college she won't have classes every day and can have some down time to recover if she gets sick.

Hopefully she can get a job this coming summer. The fast food places and some of the diners are hiring again and DH and I still have an in with the owner of the restaurant we worked at when we were in college, so we can probably pull a few strings if needed. We would have done it last summer, but no one was hiring then and DD was focused on volunteering. She has no work experience at all, so strings will likely need to be pulled.

DH told me he will have four unpaid weeks off at Christmas, so I really need to start shoveling money over to the January Fund. Which means most of the short-term savings will stop for now, except the property tax fund, the moving fund, and the dues fund. Those must go on. But I can put a hold on the computer fund, the Christmas fund, the appliance fund, and the college fund for Oct/Nov/Dec, which will be $1500 to add to the January Fund. Plus the $100 a month I was already saving.

I know that he will get a bonus at Christmas, but I don't know how much it will be. It's never been less than 5% of yearly income, but we want to save that money for college, not use it to live on.

Most of the time I only manage to get $25 in gift cards to Amazon from my Swagbucks stuff, but I had a little more time to waste in September since DS is actually doing most of his homeschooling without my input. So I managed to get $50 in gift cards this month.

And I hit the daily goal every day, so will get a bonus for that on top of the daily goal bonus here in a day or two. Probably my biggest change is doing their surveys. I didn't even start trying to do surveys until August. I tend to qualify for 3 to 4 of the big ones each week and at least one of the smaller ones.

I had originally planned on using my Amazon gift cards for Christmas, but I have been saving cash for that as well and have a good balance. So I am thinking of using my gift cards to buy quail supplies instead. I can get a good book on raising them and an incubator with quail egg inserts from Amazon.

I can make the brooder out of a cattle watering tub and a plywood board we already have with a spot cut out for the heat lamp to go through. They would live in the garage. We have the feeders from raising chicks and all I'd need is to get some marbles to put in the chick waterers we have. The marbles prevent the baby quail from climbing in and drowning.

The quail stay in the brooder until they are five weeks old. We'd have to build a pen for them to finish growing out in. We will be raising coturnix and they start laying eggs at 7 weeks old and are fully mature at 8 weeks old. We will then choose three males and 9 females. We will set them up in the outdoor rabbit hutches as breeding quartets for eggs. The rest we will butcher for meat. Incubation of eggs only takes 17 days. I'd like to eventually have 6 males with 18 females for breeding and eggs, but space constraints make that impossible before we move.

I canned my first batch of rabbit meat. I've never canned meat before. I ended up with six quart jars of meat. I didn't can the ribcage sections. Instead I used them to make stock and canned it, too. You can read about that on the farm blog if you like:

We dispatched four of our meat rabbits today. From a live weight of 22 pounds, 11.7 ounces, we got 11 pounds, 6.3 ounces of rabbit meat and 12.3 ounces of livers, for a total of 12 pounds, 2.6 oz of food. They ate about $7 worth of feed, $1 worth of hay, and $4 worth of vegetables over their life, so it comes out to about $1 per pound. We could get a smidge more if we saved the hearts and kidneys, too, but we don't. They go to the wildlife center along with the heads and other offal.

I'd say the rabbits are paying for themselves and we are ending up with lots of good, low-fat, lean white meat in the freezer at a price that just can't be beat by anything but the cheapest chicken hindquarters and you can bet those chickens never saw daylight.

Phoebe gave birth this morning, another large litter with 8 healthy kits. We'll have a break from kindling for a while, as the next two rabbits to give birth are only one week pregnant, so have three weeks and four days to go. In another couple of months we should be able to have rabbit twice a week if we so desire.

I am going to can some rabbit meat this week and some rabbit broth for making soup later this winter, or possibly canning carrot, potato, celery, bits of meat, and onion right in the broth and can it as soup. I would also like to make up some rabbit nuggets for the freezer. And maybe some rabbit stir-fry kits, too.

That means I'll need to dig up some potatoes and get some organic carrots from the farmer's market or the no spray garden in town. I doubt anyone has grown celery here, it is kind of hit or miss in our zone, but I can get it from the store if needs must be. Organic though. It sucks up pesticides just like carrots.

It would be great to have enough soups done up to get through winter and spring, but that may not be possible yet.

-------

The repair around the skylights and the final application of stuff to make the floors look like shiny wood instead of dull wood, will get put on this weekend. We just need to find out how long it takes for the shiny stuff to dry. Then we'll go in with the realtor and see where things stand.

I had guesstimated on Friday when I paid the mortgage that the balance would be around $8937.89, but it was actually $8931.90. That's $5.99 less, not the $1 or $2 I thought I'd be off by. Nice. Just that much less left to pay the thing off.

The roofer is most likely going out on Thursday at that is the only day it is not supposed to rain this week. If it doesn't rain tomorrow though he will give a call and have Mom meet him out there. I've got too much going on this week between homeschooling, DH coming home, running R around, and having to do a meat rabbit slaughter on the one sunny day we have.

On top of that I start Piper's litter weaning on Thursday as they will be 8 weeks old, so I'll have to figure out who are the two biggest and take them away to start the process. AND Phoebe is due to kindle her second litter on Thursday and with all the going in and out of the rabbit shed I'll be doing, she may not get the privacy she will want. I am anxious if the big first litter will be the norm. Since all the other rabbits seem stuck on six kits, it would be nice if she'd kindle 9 again.

And I found a 13 acre spread that I desperately want to go see because it is absolutely perfect for our farming wants. We would easily be able to expand the rabbitry. We could have our flock of chickens, our ducks, our geese, our quail, pigs, goats, and a guard alpaca or two to free range with the chickens. Not all of once of course, but over time.

I should not even be looking at farms until our house sells and we can't put it on the market until the roof is repaired. That ranch will probably be long gone by the time we are ready to buy. But I fell in love with it just from the photos. And it is in our price range.

...just how much money I can save when I go shopping at Trader Joe's. I walked out of there with 4 bags of groceries (large canvas totes), 2 bags of chips, and a gallon of milk for less than $95. The same stuff at the regular grocery store would have cost me twice that.

It's been a long time since I have gone there simply because the parking situation is atrocious. But at 7:30 tonight it crossed my mind that the parking lot should have some spaces at that time and I really wanted to get some canned corn. They have the best tasting canned corn, hands down. It tastes fresh and sweet and it is canned in BPA free cans. I got 20 cans. I would have gotten more, but I wanted to leave some on the shelf for others. Corn is one of the things that is very labor intensive to home can so I don't bother.

I was excited to see they now have both a Funyun and a Dorito replacement. We can't eat the originals because of allergies to about 5 ingredients in each. The onion ones were better than the originals and the nacho cheese ones were the closest thing I've found. DS was a happy camper.

Shredded cabbage had gone up in price. It used to be a $1.29 for a 16 oz bag and now it is a 10 oz bag for the same price. I know I should always shred my own cabbage, then it is .39 a pound, but I do get tempted by these bags because it makes it so fast and easy to make coleslaw. I mean, it takes all of 5 minutes to shred up a cabbage. LOL I try not to be that lazy often. But the big box of not Cheerio's is still $1.99 a pound so you win some, you lose some.

I picked up a pound of frozen bell pepper strips (yellow, red, orange, and green) for $1.69. Single bell peppers are running $2 right now. So I will have my strips for pizzas and can dice them smaller for omelets. It should last a few months.

I feel like I have been spending money right and left this week, but our stock of so much had been used up. My cupboards were not bare, but they were getting there. I still have to do a Costco run, ugh. Just a few things from there that I can't get good prices on elsewhere, like butter, the right kind of tomato sauce, and the type of toilet paper that my son is not allergic to.

We also need to buy rabbit feed. I am thinking about getting 250 pounds this time. That is five bags and will cost $93.50 with tax. I wish tax wasn't on animal feed. We don't have tax on people food in this state, and since it is food, you'd think they'd give it a pass, but no. We have 3.5 litters growing out at present and those guys eat. Feed costs are worth it in the amount of meat we get out of it, but I am tired of going to the store so often for it, so hopefully this will be enough for a month.

On the 19th Sweetie Belle and Serenity will be old enough to be bred and then we'll have five does in various stages of pregnancy or raising litters. Wonder how much feed they will go through then? We are at the point where we are eating rabbit almost once a week now, but there is no surplus to build up our freezer stock with (or to be canned). Since I don't want to have litters born during the coldest months of January and February, I will do my last breeding in early November and not breed again until mid-February. So I want to have enough meat put up to get through those months of no production.

Although Andromeda will be old enough to be bred in December I will not breed her until mid-February. A first time mother does not need to have her first litter in the freezing cold. I have been fortunate with both Phoebe and Lola on their first litters. First time rabbit mothers can often lose their entire first litter. I'd like to keep that track record up.

The big box store guys were able to access both my hard drive and my desktop, so they are copying all of my files off it to a portable hard drive. So by Sunday I should have all of my spreadsheets, photos, music files, and documents back. Then they will shoot it off to Seattle for repairs. If they can fix it in Seattle they will ship it direct to my home. If they can't, then the big box store will give me a voucher to purchase a new one.

I really hope they can fix it. I really like the keyboard and with the amount of writing I do, a keyboard that is easy to type on is one of the most important things I look for in a laptop. Since I didn't bust the screen this time, it should be cheaper to fix it than to replace it. And I want my Windows 7, though I am grudgingly getting used to Windows 8, but I still don't like it.

Lola had her first litter of kits on Thursday, six healthy, strong ones. She is far more protective of them than Phoebe or Piper are of theirs. She takes bribing with a carrot and some subterfuge on our part to get a look at them, but we mostly will just leave her be since she is so protective until they are older. I'm not very hands on until they are ten days to two weeks old anyway, but I do have to check to make sure none have died every so often.

Our current rabbit count is at 33, with 4 litters being raised. We will be sending 5 to freezer camp this weekend and then we'll be down to 28 rabbits and 3 litters (9 weeks old, 4 weeks old, and 2 days old).

We bred Phoebe on Sunday and she will be due on the 26th of September. At the rate we are going we will likely be processing a litter every 4 weeks. I want to get to the point where we have enough in the freezer to eat it once a week and have some leftover to can.

Serenity, Sweetie Belle, and Starbuck will all be old enough to breed on the 19th, so we will breed Piper to Starbuck when she's ready in a little less than 4 weeks. And we will breed Serenity and Sweetie Belle to Leo. Andromeda won't be old enough to breed until December, but I likely won't breed her until February so she has her kits in March when it is not as cold. I really don't want kits being born in January or February as it can be bitter then.

It is nice to see all the work and money I have put into raising these rabbits starting to come to fruition. A couple more litters processed and they will be paying for themselves.

Do you ever have one of those months that it just feels like things are cosmically aligned to be out to get you? *sighs* August is one of those months for me.

The latest bit of news is that my pharmacy is closing. This is one of the last locally owned places in town, but the entire store and its sister store are going out of business. Mostly, though, I am upset because I am losing my pharmacist, who was awesome and went above and beyond the call of duty on numerous occasions.

Also they transferred all of my medication
information to Walgreens. I don't really think that's legal to do without patient permission because of medical privacy laws. I know doctor's can't release records without the patient signing something, so I can't see why they would do that.

I don't even know if Walgreens will accept my insurance, so now I have to have DH get on that. And have him check out the grocery store near our home, too. If Walgreens will take it I'd have to have them transfer it to the closer one to us, not the closest one to the old pharmacy, which is what they did.

I don't think the generic blood pressure medication is working. I have felt like crap since going off it. Headache with lots of pressure, average reading has been 130/90 and tonight's was one 140/95, and I feel swollen. And I'm getting dizzy the last few days as the readings have trended up. I'll call my doctor tomorrow and see about trying something else or upping the dose. They gave me a 90 day supply (do not know why because I was only supposed to be trying it for a month to see if it worked). Also my hands and feet have been very, very cold today. I'm not sure if that is a sign of hypertension or not, but it's not normal for me.

And to top it all off, Sweetie Belle bit me. We were doing so well with the behavior modification, too. She didn't break the skin, but it did hurt for a few minutes. I gave her a sharp no, because in my surprise I totally forgot I am supposed to let out a high pitched squeal like a rabbit does when it is hurt to let her know she hurt me. Don't know what I am going to do about her. If she continues to bite, she's out the door after she gives me one good litter. Maybe one of her babies will be nice like our bucks and not crazy like their mother.

She's purebred and pedigreed so I should be able to get a reasonable amount for her. I'd like to at least recoup the feed I've put into her. Despite her being insane, I can't see sending her to freezer camp. She has good bloodlines and will breed well and maybe someone with more patience and no kids would be a better owner for her.

I managed to trip and spill a full glass of water on my laptop earlier in the week. I have been in the process of drying it out with a fan while searching for my service contract which I finally did find today. Meanwhile I raided the laptop fund and bought an inexpensive laptop (will replace another one eventually, anyway).

So Windows 8 bites. It really, really bites. I hate it. I loathe it. I cannot even describe the depths of my annoyance with this super user unfriendly system. And I got to know it pretty well, because about the fifth thing I did on it after installing antivirus software and antimalware software and ad block software and Office was contract a virus.

It should not take an act of congress to figure out how to reboot a system in safe mode. It should not be difficult to find the control panel. It should not be hard to get a text list of programs to easily search through for the suspected virus. All these things can be done in Windows 8, but it takes a ton of effort and a lot of internet searching to figure out how. What was Microsoft thinking?

Whoever designed this so-called upgrade should not be allowed to have children. Their DNA should be removed from the human gene pool. Okay, maybe I am overreacting a smidgeon, but it took me two days to get rid of the bloody thing and that only happened because I did a system recovery. Thank goodness I hadn't put much on it yet.

The stupid virus was Quick Share and datasrvrs and made pop up windows that talked. Ugh. Nasty, nasty piece of work.

Then Swagbucks pulled a stupid, but they fixed it for me. Awesome customer service, but then it had better be. I was ready to quit altogether if they didn't.

I also had a meat rabbit die on Sunday, which I don't think I mentioned, so that just set my mood for the week, between weepy and angry and slightly off-kilter. It was 13 weeks old when it died. If we'd have had the time we would have harvested at 12 weeks, but things got in the way, so we are waiting until DH gets back from Alaska. It was just over 6 pounds so it was at least 3.5 pounds of meat we lost. At least it didn't appear to have suffered.

On the bright side I have done really well at cooking meals this week. We had gotten pretty bad about eating out again so I've tried hard to get back on track again this week. One of my favorite things to make is fried potatoes, but I hate peeling them raw. I also hate that it takes quite a while to cook them from raw. So I baked them in the microwave first, which makes them very easy to peel and does not require any attention on my part. Then I cut them up and fried them and it only took ten minutes. A great short-cut and I can always bake them earlier in the day if I know I will be short for time later.

Also on the bright side, all of Piper's kits have their eyes open and have ventured out of the nesting box. And all of Phoebe's kits are turning into fat little butterballs. They are having so much fun playing in the grass and going through their tunnels or jumping over them or playing king of the mountain with them. Watching them makes it hard to keep a bad mood, but then I'd come back inside and growl at my computer again.

Well, venting helped. Thanks for listening.

Today was payday. I sent $500 to BoA and spent $38.70 on 100 pounds of rabbit feed. I switched to a new feed (will mix with the old to prevent tummy troubles, until old is gone) that was $15.99 for a 50 pound bag plus tax instead of $25.26 a bag plus tax. This is a feed that uses no soy, no corn, and no GMO. It's about 80% organic which is the closest thing I can find to organic in anything other than a 5 pound bag. It is also milled in the next county and most of the ingredients come from my state. They mill weekly so it is pretty fresh.

I've found a few houses that I am very interested in. The front runner at the moment is a fixer upper, but not a devastatingly bad one. It just needs new paint inside and out, the deck needs to be sanded and painted, the light fixtures need updating and the carpets could do with replacing. Normally I wouldn't even look at a house like this. But the bones of the house are very good, the price is great (foreclosure), and the pond is amazing, and the acreage made me look twice. It is $260,000 for five acres and over 3500 square feet. It has outbuildings for the animals. It is about 15 minutes from town. So it is on the list for now. If it is still around when we have sold our house, we will have our contractor look at it and give us his opinion. The taxes are $4500 a year, but with a $1100 mortgage payment, they are affordable.

Not much else in the financial arena.

On Monday I added $6.08 to the coin jar. Yesterday I added $2.55.

Yesterday we bought 2 bales of horse quality hay and a 50 pound bag of feed for the rabbits. We also bought three feeder dishes to attach to the tractors for the various sets of kits and one of the 32 ounce glass water bottles since they had one in. And we bought a tunnel for the littlest kits. I can't find my receipts, DH might have them, but we spent close to $85.

We got takeaway yesterday from the Polynesian place, so that was $33.85.

I got gas on Tuesday, $50.00. (It shuts off automatically at $50, and I didn't want to go inside to further authorize my credit card). We haven't spent that much on gas this summer at all. This is the first time I think I've filled up since June.

Yesterday I got a prescription for $11.03.

And I think that covers all of the spending this week.

DH's paycycle is weird because of how he works, so we always have one week out of four that doesn't get a paycheck. And during that time it seems that there is nothing financial to do, because we budget accordingly.

Frugal things I've been doing:

1. Getting organized. The kitchen counters are clean, the cupboards are organized, and the floor is swept. The kitchen table is almost clutter free and will be by the end of the day. I found four bottles of ginger and three of garlic. Also plenty of mustard powder for making a new batch.

2. I've been pulling chunks of clover out of the cracked concrete pad where the old garage used to be many years ago. I've been feeding it to the rabbits who love it. They look at me like I am the bringer of all things wonderful when I give them piles of it to eat. So this is the sixth free food I am giving them, including grass, lemon balm, oregano, raspberry leaves, and blackberry leaves from the yard. Actually seventh if you count apple tree twigs.

3. I've sewn up the armpit seams of two shirts and one pair of my son's underwear where the hem was unraveling but was otherwise perfectly serviceable.

4. I've organized my canning supplies. Without a garden this year I am going to go out to an organic U-pick farm and pick 25 pounds of green beans. Not sure when, but sometime soon. Then I will can them. Then I will do it again. That should give me about a year's supply of green beans the way we eat them.

5. I have discovered that we have enough canned food to survive at least 3 weeks if disaster struck, but not near enough water. We have far more food than that in the freezer, but I am assuming if disaster strikes it will mean no electricity. I am going to can some rabbit meat next time we slaughter, because our stores of canned protein are pretty low. We'd have the chicken eggs of course, and if it came to it, the chickens. I'm not foreseeing a disaster, mind you, but neither are a lot of people and they get hit by them. Next payday I am going to buy a couple of cases of bottled water to put under the bed, just to be on the safe side.

That's really about it.

Is it really only Thursday? Feels like I hit the ground running and never stopped. Just outdoor farm chores and indoor house cleaning and organizing and building rabbit tractors and moving rabbits outside in the morning and back inside in the evening and chicken care, etc.

We ate our first homegrown, home slaughtered, home butchered rabbit today. Took me almost a month before I was ready to take one out of the freezer and cook it, but now I know we can do this self-sufficiency thing.

I have been very busy picking berries. Because of the heat wave we have blackberries, raspberries and blueberries all ripe at once. This never happens. It is always staggered through the summer. So we are hustling to get as much picked as we can to freeze for the upcoming year.

We have spent very little this week. Mostly for things like milk for us and fresh chard and carrots for the rabbits. We are sticking to the meal plan well and DS has stopped asking to go to the store and buy chicken pot pies, his weakness. I am determined to keep our spending down and I am feeling better with several home cooked meals under my belt again. When you get out of the habit, you really get out of the habit.