$9425.29 Old EF Amount
+__10.00 Weekly Deposit
------------
9,435.29 New EF Amount

I forgot to record the weekly auto deposit to savings this week.

$9415.39 Beginning EF Amount
+__10.00 Deposit Added
-----------
$9425.39 New EF Amount

I added the $5.41 interest from C1-360 account to the Emergency Fund.

$9409.98 Beginning EF Amount
+___5.41 Interest added
-----------
$9415.39 Ending EF Amount

$9399.98 EF Beginning Amount
+__10.00 Last Week's Auto Deposit
------------
$9409.88 New EF Balance

$9389.98 Starting EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
----------
$9399.98 New EF Balance

$600.02 left to go to bring the EF back to $10K.

$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.

$9264.68 Beginning EF Balance
+___5.30 Interest from C1-360
------------
$9269.98 New EF Balance

$730.02 left to finish refilling the EF to $10K.

$9254.68 Beginning EF Amount
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
------------
$9264.68 Ending EF Amount

$735.32 left to go to return the EF to $10K.

$9054.68 Beginning EF Amount
+_200.00 Amount Added
-----------
$9254.68 Ending EF Amount

$745.32 to go to get the Emergency Fund back to $10K.

$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

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.

I was able to roll quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies today out of my coin jar and deposited that plus all the ones I had, a 50 cent piece, and a nickel I found in the parking lot when I got out of the van.

$726.93 Beginning Balance
+_48.05 Amount Added
----------
$774.98 Ending Balance

That leaves me $225.02 left to finishing funding this portion of savings.

I added $4.89 to the coin jar. It was change from the pizza I bought yesterday. It was my first takeaway in a while. I was just so wiped out yesterday I didn't even want to think about cooking.

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 found $3 in ones and a 50 cent piece this morning in an old sweatshirt pocket. I added it to the coin jar. I almost never put money in a pocket so this is a rare find for me. I love it when I find money.

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.

And that was my scream you just heard.

$_9,948.36 Beginning EF Balance
+__57.00 AMEX cash back
------------
$10,005.36 New EF Balance

I've done it. I've got the Emergency Fund to $10,000. I never thought this day would come. I am so excited that it has.

$9787.91 Beginning EF Balance
__100.00 Monthly EF Deposit
___16.00 Rabbitry Sales Money
___17.40 Safe Driver Rebate
+__26.00 Coin Jar Money
------------
$9947.31 New EF Balance

Now if I can just get myself over to Costco by month's end and get my AMEX check cashed I will hit $10,000. I am sure you will hear my screams of joy wherever you are when that happens.

$9777.91 Ending EF Balance
+__10.00 Amount Added
-----------
$9787.91 New EF Balance

$9767.91 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
------------
$9777.91 New EF Balance

I was actually surprised at how quickly the tax refund came. We were way behind on getting it sent off this year, but it came 8 days after we sent it in. Total this year was $6236.41. It would have been $60 higher if we hadn't done it online. But it cost $30 to do it online and we chose to pay for it from our bank account instead of with a credit card, not realizing until it was too late that it cost an additional $30 to do that, which is a major rip off in my opinion, but DH didn't read the fine print until too late. Oh, well, what is done is done.

I sent $1236.41 to the Emergency Fund.

$8531.50 Beginning EF Balance
+1236.41 Amount Added
-----------
$9767.91 New EF Balance

I also sent $1000 to the January Money Fund.

$1000.00 Amount Added
+_167.00 Beginning JM Fund Balance
------------
$1167.00 New JM Fund Balance

I added $1000 to the Appliance Fund.

$1000.00 Amount Added
+_200.00 Beginning Appliance Fund Balance
-----------
$1200.00 New Appliance Fund Balance

I set aside $1500 to pay for DH's sleep study and the remaining $1500 will go to pay for materials to build our green house and duck house.

We did not qualify for the child tax credits this year, DH worked too much overtime and it bumped us up, and our daughter is 17 this year anyway, but we were able to deduct the full amount for our HSA since we maxed it again this year. Without that our refund would have been much lower.

I think I am going to try to get the Emergency Fund to $10,000 by the end of the month. I think I can do it. I got our safe driver's refund check to cash, our AMEX check to cash, a $16 check for rabbitry sales to cash, $100 to come out of this coming week's paycheck and two more $10 auto deposits. I basically need to come up with about $30 to hit it and there are already 7 ones in the coin jar. I can do that.

Once the EF is at $10,000, then I am going to change my focus a bit. I will still deposit $100 a month to the EF, but the $10 weekly deposits, the refunds that come in, the rabbitry money, and the coin jar money are going to be used to build up the moving fund account. Right now there is only $600 in that account and $300 of that is going to have to go to the HoA for their extremely ridiculous new rule of paying the HoA $300 to transfer ownership of a property in the development to a new owner.

Even though we plan on renting a U-Haul to move, I know we'll need it out for a week so we don't have to rush things. I also need to pay for a piano mover to move the piano. And I'm pretty sure we'll need to pay for a few meals out while the kitchen is in transition. So I'd like to get that fund up quite a bit higher than it is. Maybe $1500 or so.

As soon as DH gets home we are buying our chest freezer with the Appliance Fund Money. I am going to get the biggest one they have at 24.6 cubic feet. That way we will have plenty of space for rabbit meat, a steer, half a hog, and a couple of lambs. Then the small chest freezer we currently have will be for chicken, turkey, and duck meat and the freezer under the fridge can go strictly for frozen fruits and whatever vegetables are not canned.

$8420.50 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
-----------
$8430.50 Ending EF Balance

DH cleaned out his wallet before heading up to the slope. I added $18 to the coin jar.

$8410.50 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
-------------
$8420.50 New EF Balance

I made a deposit to the safety net portion of the Emergency Fund yesterday.

$8335.90 Beginning EF Balance
___30.41 Reimbursement check for buying Mom vitamins
___28.00 in ones
+__17.00 in rolled coins
-------------
$8410.50 Ending EF Balance

I don't really have a monthly goal at present, but I need to deposit about $160 a month to hit $10K for the end of the year. Most months I hit around $180 to $200 saved, so that shouldn't be a problem.

The interest on my Capitol One 360 account hit. It is $5.74. I added it to my EF.

$8345.09 Beginning EF Balance
+___5.74 Amount Added
-----------
$8350.83 Ending EF Balance

$8335.09 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit
-----------
$8345.09 New EF Balance

I spent $45.87 for two prescriptions yesterday, an antibiotic and one of my maintenance drugs. I have a UTI and I hate the world. That should probably improve by tomorrow. I did not need this right before we have to drive to Portland and back in two days time.

I am very excited to get our new rabbits, though. And to have 24 hours away from the kids. Even if we will have to stop at every rest area between here and Amity. *sighs*

$8235.09 Beginning EF Balance
+_100.00 Amount Added
----------
$8335.09 Ending EF Balance

Funds Update

$400.00 Property Tax Fund
__19.00 Dues Fund
$200.00 Propane Fund
$100.00 Vacation Fund
$100.00 Appliance Fund
$167.00 January Money Fund 2015
$500.00 Moving Fund
$930.00 College Fund
$100.00 Aquaponics Fund
$100.00 Christmas Fund
-------------
2616.00 Total Money in Funds (Excluding EF)

$8225.09 Beginning EF Balance
+__10.00 Weekly Auto Deposit Added
------------
$8235.09 Ending EF Balance

I will be glad tomorrow when I can finally send $100 in. I like to see it jump a little more than $10 a week.