Amount of organic produce harvested today and its local value:

2 quarts of blueberries $16.00
1 pint of blackberries $8.00
1.5 pints of raspberries $6.00
1 green bibb lettuce $2.00
1 bunch of kale $2.50

$34.50 total

$109.50 Produce to date
+_34.50 Today's harvest
------------
$144.00 Total

$256 to go to pay back my garden investment for this year.

I got 3 ducks eggs today. Tally so far is 23. I forgot about the 2 I used in peanut butter cookies.

Yesterday I picked blackberries and blueberries from the garden. Today I picked some more blackberries. I was just finishing when it started to rain, so I don't know if I will get more blueberries picked today unless the weather clears.

The total so far is 2 quart-sized bags of blueberries and 4 quart-sized bags of blackberries. A half-pint container of organic blackberries if $4 at the store right now. That means each quart-sized bag of blackberries is worth $16, can you believe it? Blackberries are expensive. This is why I grow them. The non-organic ones are not that much cheaper at $3 a half-pint. Anyway, so for blackberries, the value of what I picked is $64.

Now organic blueberries are much cheaper. This may be because we are a big blueberry county, and also because blueberries don't have thorns to tangle with, but you can get a quart of organic blueberries for $8, so the value of what I have picked is only $16. Non-organic, is $6 a quart. My value is $32 for organic blueberries.

So altogether, 1 hour and 45 minutes of picking yielded me $96 worth of organic fruit. That is an impressive yield.

Adding that to what I've earned back so far on garden costs:

$13.50 Current Tally
+96.00 Amount to Add
-------------
109.50 New Tally

I have left to earn back $290.50 to pay for garden costs this year, before it counts as profit. I don't know if fruit will pay it all back or not, but the zucchini is almost ready and I'll be picking more kale and lettuce tomorrow. I think there is only about a quart of blueberries that are ripe to pick and then it'll be a few days to a week before more are ripe.

We got 3 duck eggs today, bringing our tally so far to 20 duck eggs, 19 usable. I should have collected my second dozen by Tuesday. Eggs don't go against garden costs, they go against feed costs.

So I spent $400 on my garden this year. The largest portion of that was in the straw and hay bales I bought for a growing medium. This is the first salad of the season that I had yesterday and today I had another one. I figure that so far I've eaten $2 worth of organic lettuce and greens. In this particular salad I had both red and green lettuces, baby spinach, arugla, frisee, chives, basil, thyme, and a small assortment of baby Asian stir-fry greens.

I have also harvested $1 worth of organic raspberries and strawberries so far. So $3 total to subtract from the $400. That means I have $397 to go to break even. Judging from the way things are going, I will probably have paid back my costs by the end of July, based on organic food costs.

The last year I had a garden (besides fruit) was 2012. I paid back all I spent and harvested enough food beyond that to make it well worth my while. I think this year, if all goes well, I will probably harvest about $1000 worth of produce, so will come out ahead around $600. That is a conservative estimate, because I won't count my tomatoes before they've hatched.

I hope to have enough green beans, pickles, and tomatoes to can for a year's supply, enough raspberries and blueberries to freeze for a year's supply, and enough blackberries for the occasional winter treat. I will also can some of the potatoes we are growing to make easy pour and dump stews in the winter along with my canned carrots and canned meats. I should be able to make enough applesauce for the year this year judging by the fruit on the trees. That will do wonders for my fall, winter, and early spring produce bill.

I also plan to freeze bell peppers and onions for use in stir-fries when the peppers are out of season.

This is shaping up to be a fantastic garden year. I can't remember having a June this lovely or having vegetables this far ahead in all the years I have done a garden.

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.

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.

We are well into strawberry season here, so that is why you will see strawberries listed for dinner every night this week. There is absolutely nothing out there that is as good a berry as those grown in the Pacific Northwest, particularly my part of it.

In fact I will be picking up 90 pounds of strawberries on Monday to process for the freezer. I am hoping that will be a year's supply for us. We will be buying at the height of the season when berries are at their sweetest and produce the most juice. These are the only berries we will have to buy as the raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries are all coming on strong, as you can see in my fruit garden update below.

http://youtu.be/t8ZqYw2fBUw

Sunday:
Homemade (sort of) pizza with store bought crusts topped with: tomato sauce, rabbit sausage, ham, pepperoni, yellow onions, red and green bell peppers, fresh basil and fresh oregano from the garden, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses
Strawberries

Monday:
Bacon cheeseburgers made with ground rabbit and homemade buns
Fried potatoes
Homemade coleslaw
Strawberries

Tuesday:
Chicken and broccoli stir-fry (cauliflower, carrots, green beans, snap peas, onions)
Strawberries

Wednesday:
Pan fried steaks
Baked potatoes
Green beans
Strawberries

Thursday:
Barbecue and teriyaki chicken
Fried potatoes
Coleslaw
Strawberries

Friday:
Fried rabbit
Baked potatoes
Salad from the garden

Saturday:
Beef chuck pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Broccoli/cauliflower
Strawberries

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We processed five rabbits today, so we now have a little over 18 pounds of meat and 1 pound of livers. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I will still miss them. They had good lives though and deaths as humane as we can make them. They should provide at least 54 meals for us or 13.5 servings per person. Considering what we spent on feed and hay to raise them to 17.5 weeks old, we are paying about $1.25 a pound for the healthiest, and pretty much the leanest, meat out there. In the future we will try to butcher at 14 weeks.

We froze the furs and when we do the next batch of kits when they grow up then we will tan them. I found a pretty simple way to do so using alum, salt, and water. It'll be about a two week process. I am thinking about making a bedspread with the furs. We want to use every part that we possibly can. The feet can be preserved, too, and sold in batches, and the heads go to the raptor rescue program for their hawks, owls, and eagles.

We kept one doe of that litter. I am not sure if we will use her as a breeder or grow her up and sell her as a breeder. She has good ears and a good body type. She seems to be far calmer now that she is not sharing a cage any longer. Her name is Lola.

I think it'll be a couple of weeks before we can eat one. We need to get a little bit further away from the process, but at least we know we can do it now and that we are one step closer to being sustainable.

I had made up a big payday post on Friday and even though I copy/saved the computer didn't so I lost it. Hopefully I'll get that reconstructed tomorrow and sent in for accountability.

I did get another $5 gift card from SB for Amazon and sent for another one. I am doing pretty good this month, though I've been too tired to get more than 40 to 50 points a day for the last couple of days. Tomorrow I have a lot of reading online to do so will probably hit goal as I will have SBTV running off to the side while I do.

DS needs to finish his compare and contrast literature essay and then he is done with home school for the summer. DD gets out of high school on the 19th at 10 or 11, I'm not sure. It will be nice to be free. We can get some real work done on the garden, turn the compost over, and do a bleach and rinse of all the rabbit cages while they are in the rabbit tractors (portable pens) on the lawn. We also need to get the grapes tied up. They are overtaking the rabbit shed door.

And housecleaning. It needs it.

I spent $55 on Saturday to buy 40 pounds of rabbit pellets, a 90 pound bale of local hay, 2 more water bottles and two more clamp feeders. I didn't spend anything today.

The kits are growing well. Today I weighed the lot individually and they vary from a little over ten ounces to almost fifteen ounces. The entire weight of the litter is 5.24 pounds. They are 3 weeks old today and the adorableness factor has hit an all time high.



The weather is finally drying out the ground so hopefully gardening will commence tomorrow. It has been so frustrating trying to do anything in the wet. Hopefully we will have a long and beautiful Indian Summer to make up for the long and wet spring. We did last year and this year feels just like last.

I suppose if all I can do is grow peas, green beans, lima beans, lettuce, swiss chard, kale and kohlrabi, I'll be okay. I'll be happier with more, though. At least the fruit is pretty foolproof. Apples, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and Italian prunes are all on track.

I will probably buy strawberries from the place in Skagit County that were spray free again. I won't make jam this year, because I still have enough jam to feed a small army, so they will be for fresh eating, and for freezing both whole, and in cut up and sugared form. I'd like 30 pounds for freezing total. That should get us through the year.

We did well with blueberries and raspberries last year. We are just finishing up what we froze on the blueberries and we will probably have enough froze raspberries to last another month when they'll be ripe. I thought we were out but I found some buried in the bottom of the freezer with no frostbite.

I was very tempted to get takeaway today, but didn't. I have to keep it firmly in mind that in order for DH to afford to go to Wisconsin if needed, we can't be wasting money on restaurant food.

Yesterday was so beautiful and today is so wet that the chickens are taking it as a personal insult. I am tired of the weather swings, but it could be so much worse. I feel guilty complaining about the weather here when I read the news and see the photos coming out of Oklahoma.

That sort of devastation seems unreal to me because I've never seen it in real life. The only things I have personally experienced are massive floods big enough to declare us a disaster area and the day the creek exploded and the town was under a black mushroom cloud. And even that can't compare to the scale of the tornado there. My heart and prayers go out to the people who have survived this devastation.

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I didn't sleep last night. I hate it when that happens. It makes it so hard to cope with the day in a good financial state of mind. So my planned homemade pizza turned into an XL carry out pizza from Round Table instead. $29.35. It has gone up from $27.18, what it's been for the last year. That left me with 65 cents for the coin jar.

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I am so behind on where I want to be with gardening. There has been so much to do lately between homeschooling and the animals and whenever I finally get that wrapped up, it starts raining. Usually May is nicer than this, especially in the second half. I know by mid-June it will stop raining and then we won't see much of it until the fall, but it always feels like forever waiting out the nine months of the year when it does almost nothing but rain here.

I received a check from ACOP, a survey company, today for $17.10. It will go into the Emergency Fund.

The mortgage payment hit and is now under $13K at $12,993.58.

The car loan payment finally hit. I got impatient this month when the statement didn't come and paid it online. The next day the statement came, of course. I don't much like paying it online, because it takes forever for them to post it, but I just wanted it done. I think it actually posts faster when I mail it than when I pay it online.

We bred the rabbits today. Hopefully that will result in another 6 to 8 kits a month from now. It feels like we are really on our way to raising a sustainable meat supply now.

I am anxious to start gardening, but I know that I shouldn't until after the 15th. It's hard to wait, but so many people have been getting unexpected frost, snow, or hail that I know better than to push the date. If it stops raining long enough I can do some weeding though. I'll need to block off part of the garden this year or between the chickens and the stray rabbit, I'll not have any greens.

After my deposit of coin jar money yesterday and my weekly $10 auto deposit to savings, plus today's interest at ING, my Emergency Fund is now at $3021.46. My February goal was $3200, so that was met. My goal for the month of March is to get the Emergency Fund to $3200. I am not being overly aggressive this month because we're going to Disneyland. So that will be the usual $100 transfer to the EF, plus the four weekly $10 auto transfers. That'll leave me with $38.54 to scrape up.

We received our property tax in the mail and it's gone down by almost $200 for the year. That means I only need to be budgeting $71 a month for property tax instead of $100. I am going to put the additional $29 into the college fund each month along with the $100 from the Vacation Fund I am eliminiating and the $50 from the laptop fund and the $50 from the appliance fund. So $229 a month will be going into the CF, plus any Christmas bonus DH gets this year and next year's tax refund. That should cover a year at the community college and text books.

One of the courses DD is taking next year at the high school is worth 5 college credits, so that will be one less class to pay for. She is getting pretty serious about doing the peace corp after 2 years at the community college before coming back and completing college. She'll come back from that with $7000 for school, teaching experience, intensive foreign language training, and the ability to live on a budget in a third world country, all things which should bode well for her future. I would like her to go to one of the Chinese language countries as I think Mandarin would be of most benefit to her future, but it's her decision to make.

We have made the decision to start raising rabbits this year and not next. It is a big decision, but my mother was very excited about the idea of doing it. I thought she'd be down on it, but she wants us to raise them and some meat chickens and take out her large flower garden and plant it in vegetables this year. So, I am really getting just about everything we want for our homesteading ventures.

I think part of why my mother is so on board with all of this is because the way the economy is going she doesn't think she'll be able to afford to buy food, just to grow it. I have told her that we will always make sure she is provided for, that's what you do for family, but she still worries. There is a sharp rise in prices right now and there will probably be an even sharper one in a couple of months, so I don't really blame her.

I paid out $90 for physical therapy today.

It is sunny and bright outside today and almost warm at 47 degrees F. It's the sort of day that fools you into thinking spring is just around the corner and that it's time to start planting. Of course it's not. I have to wait until mid-April for most of that, though snow peas will be going in during March and a pot full of lettuce greens and maybe one of spinach will have a place on the deck and be brought in if frost threatens.

The seed catalogs are here and they bring these dreams of eating summer produce with them. I've been plotting out my garden space for a couple of weeks now. I've definitely got the green thumb fever.

The chickens are enjoying their new pasture, though I'm not sure much will be left of the grass. One thing less to mow, I suppose. And they are determined to dig into the compost bins from the bottom. Silly chickens. Of course they know there are all kinds of yummy things in there for them to eat. Since expanding their area to range in, they haven't tried hopping the fence at all. Which is nice, since there are no unexpected surprises being found in the driveway.

They will help to double our garden space though, so I can't complain too much. Chickens are very good preparers of the soil. It's keeping them out afterwards that can present a challenge. I like to fence the garden off for a good six weeks to let plants get established. After that they don't do too much harm.

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I couldn't get into the blogs last night to report this, but I spent $44 on prescriptions yesterday. The lower dose BP med that the doctor wanted me to try is $40. The one that I was on before was $80 so if this one works for me, then that will be a nice change. We pay for all prescriptions at full price until the $2500 family deductible has been met.

I also spent $60 on food. DD has decided to do a new exercise and diet regime so she asked for me to buy some foods for her to implement that. I will be glad when I can grow baby spinach, because it costs an arm and a leg practically. At least cabbage is always cheap. I also picked up some salmon. They had wild caught sockeye for $5.99 per pound if you bought the whole fish.

We finally got a hard frost last night. And I do mean a hard one. When I went out at 7 to take DD to school there was thick ice on the windows. Fortunately,I had some spray on de-icer. I started the car heating and defrosting while I sprayed it on. Unfortunately, there was a layer of ice on the inside of the windshield and you can't spray de-icer on the inside because of the fumes. I had to scrape it. It wasn't nearly as thick on the inside.

I checked all the windows to make sure nothing had been partially down overnight to cause it to freeze inside, everything was up. Then after I scraped it we had to sit for a while with the defroster going to get rid of the humidity that was making it fog up. The car probably ran for 20 minutes before the windows were safe to see out of. Fortunately, DD's school doesn't start until 7:45, she just likes to get there early. She was still fifteen minutes early.

I was really surprised because we've had such mild weather this fall, I was expecting it to continue. The broccoli looked like it was a goner this morning, but the leaves all thawed out just fine by mid-day and were looking as healthy and beautiful as ever.

I had to take DS to the foot doctor today. He had gotten inflamed ingrown toenails on both of his big toes. It runs in the family. Of course he did this early in the holiday weekend so he's been miserable pretty much since Thursday. The doc drained them and packed them with cotton and prescribed an anti-biotic.

We'll go back on Monday next to see if they need surgical correction after the swelling has gone down. It's a very minor surgery, he just cuts away a bit of the tissue and any torn part of the nailbed. They use a local anesthetic, lidocaine. DS had a lot of relief just by having the side of the nailbed packed with cotton. It will probably have to be corrected though if he is anything like me or his father. Bad toenails or not, DS has the nicest looking feet. He could totally be a foot model or something.

Anyway, so we paid out $4.76 for his antibiotic and I renewed my BP med while we were there for $40.00. And since that store happened to have some Haagan Das vanilla ice cream I got that too, for $6.49. A little more than I like to pay for it, but at least I found it. Considering I wanted to just tool on down the road a bit to Arby's and buy dinner instead of coming home and making stir-fry, that's not too bad. Arby's would have added about $35. And my cooking was better anyway.

I think the heater is going to have to stay on 70 tonight. I can feel the chill through the house despite having on slipper socks, a sweater, and an afgahn over my lap. I've pulled out the extra blankets for everyone, but we may still be sleeping in sweats tonight.

All of the birds were out today, even Silver (the shyest and most timid) and Lady (the duck). They've decided to be free range apparently. But they stayed in the yard and still put themselves into the coop a half hour before dark. Lady was less than pleased that her little pond was frozen over and she let the whole world know. Not that she's super loud or anything, it was just a constant murmur of complaint.

Fort Knox remains empty. It's just as well. It's warmer in the chicken coop with all 13 birds sharing body heat. We have to be a little more aware of the waterers now, making sure they aren't frozen. They will be eating a lot more feed now to keep up their body temps and be able to lay eggs. We got 7 today. There were five delivered to the box on the back porch. Both leghorns are laying in there now. Because why use a perfectly good set of nesting boxes when you have access to the world's best cardboard box?

The weather this fall has just been the weirdest weather I remember having. It's been unseasonably warm. 2 nights ago we finally did have a frost overnight and a temp of 28, but it has bounced back up into the high 40's at night. The frost didn't do any damage at all that I can see. The kohlrabi is fine, the green onions are still green and of course the cold-loving broccoli is doing great. All I can think is that because it is next to the house, maybe that is a warmer area and somewhat protected.

I've almost finished the broccoli that I have harvested. I think I'll need to cut a couple of the plants by Friday, but the rest are fine to continue their slower growth. It is nice not to have to purchase broccoli, but harvest it as I need it. I really wish I'd gotten some more lettuce into the ground in late September because we'd be eating it now.

The potato outcome is 107 pounds. These potatoes were all volunteers, too. So I've topped $1000 worth of organic produce harvested this year. Remember this is after the cost of starts and seeds. Just goes to show you really can grow a lot of food in small places. And if all goes well, I will still have twelve heads of broccoli to harvest and possibly some side shoots.

The tomatoes wrapped in newspapers continue to ripen as do the ones on the kitchen table. There is enough ripe to add to my spaghetti sauce this week.

As for the chickens and duck, we continue to average six eggs a day. Lady continues to bunk with the chickens. She has resumed her egg laying so I think she is over the trauma of the racoons eating her nest mates, except she won't go anywhere near the new Fort Knox duck den.

Mom is talking about getting ducklings in early spring to put in Fort Knox when they are big enough, but even if she does, Lady may have nothing to do with them. It can be interesting introducing new flockmates, to say the least. As long as she puts herself in for the night with the chickens she is welcome to stay in the chicken coop. If we have to chase her down all bets are off, but I don't think that is going to happen. She's convinced herself she is a chicken and I won't disabuse her of that notion.

I never, ever thought when I planted this garden in early June that there would any chance of harvesting anything in November, let alone tomatoes. I can't even remember a year where we hadn't had a hard frost by Halloween. Not only have we not had even a light frost this year, but the forecast for the next ten days is in the mid-50's with rain. And I picked a whole lot of tomatoes.

I wrapped this set in newspaper and put them in the garage to ripen.



I brought in all the paste tomatoes and anything that was slightly turning color and anything that had split or bruised. They are sitting on my table to ripen.



And the red ones are here along with some last gasp green beans and the surprise of the fall, a bit of cauliflower.



I pulled up the spent broccoli and cauliflower plants and the bean plants and gave them to the chickens and ducks. The six tomato plants can't go to the birds (the leaves and stems are poison to them, but they can eat the fruit) or to the compost. Even though there is no blight on them, I practice prudence in not ever adding them to my compost bin. Into the trash they went (since the yard waste recycling is done for the year). I could have let the tomatoes go longer but the rain was really making things split and that doesn't bode well for wrapping and storing to ripen.

In the main garden I have four broccoli plants left growing, two kohlrabi, and the zucchini plant which is flowering. On the other side of the house I have several more broccoli plants that are heading up and 3 bunches of green onions yet. And there's plenty of chard for greens. I really hope this means we are going to have a mild winter. I'm still not over how much snow we had last winter. Mild weather would be great for the grocery budget.

The heavy rains have brought a lot of water into Mom's basement. We've had the sump pump on all day. Mom doesn't want to run it while everyone is sleeping for fear that it might go dry and burn out. It's not looking likely that it will let up overnight, but I understand her concern. I put on her Wellies and went down to lift it up onto a shelf for the night because there is always the chance of it getting underwater during the night and the water getting into the motor and ruining it.

When I look at stories from the East Coast I am grateful that it is only a few inches of water we are having to deal with and not several feet. I can't even imagine how folks are coping with that. We've flooded pretty badly before, national disaster badly, four of five feet of water, but somehow it just doesn't compare. Usually our serious flooding comes from rapid snow melt, not violent winds and torrential rains. I've never experienced a hurricane. You folks over that way are certainly in my prayers and thoughts.

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Physical therapy today was brutal. It felt like the muscles on the side of my thigh were stacked on top of each other. P.T. meant $90 out that I had forgotten about, but I still should have an extra $210 left to send to debt when payday comes Friday.

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I gave in to a craving after P.T. I has 25 minutes to kill before it was time to pick up DD, and DS was at a homeschool field trip with Mom. It is so rare for me to be alone anymore ever because of homeschooling. I don't eat before P.T. because it makes me nauseated if I do. I made the decision to swing through DQ and get a burger, fries and a bottled water. I spent $5.86. And I enjoyed every bite of it while I read my book and waited in the school parking lot.

I've done pretty well on the not eating out front. I've certainly broken the drive-thru habit. I think this is the first time I've been to a drive-thru since spring. It was good to get a little something and I feel like that's satisfied me and I can get on with the home-cooking.

I had $60 in cash left from last payday, so I took the money out of it. That left me with 4 ones and some change for the coin jar. I added $4.13 to the regular coin jar and a penny to the Canadian coin jar. Whatever is left of that cash on Friday will go into the Freezer Fund. That and $100 on Friday will top off that fund.

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I'm going to pull the tomatoes tomorrow, I think. Half of my kitchen table will be devoted to ripening them. I hope we have enough newspaper to wrap them. I do have several brown paper bags that I've saved that I can use as well.

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The remaining ducks survived the night. I was afraid the racoons would be back. The ducks look so sad though, wandering around and trying to find the missing two and calling for them. They really were a social flock. It's a little heart-breaking. Lady didn't lay today. I think she might have been shocked out of it. We'll see if there is an egg tomorrow. We got six chicken eggs, though. Life goes on.

Since today is supposed to be the last sunny day for the next ten days, and because I abhor working outside in the rain, and because I feel pretty darn good today, I spent some time in the garden. I pulled up several spent plants and tossed them in the chicken enclosure. The chickens seemed happy to get them.

I noticed that some of the broccoli plants that I thought were never going to do anything have small heads on them. These ones were the first planted but seem to be the last to do anything, even though they had plenty of time. Same type as I planted on the other side of the house, too. With at least ten days of non-freezing temps I think there will be some to harvest in about 10 days.

Thank goodness broccoli thrives in cool temps. I was so disappointed that they didn't do well over the summer, but I was too stubborn to pull them up, hoping for an Indian Summer, and I'm glad I waited. Now I'm wishing I had gone ahead and planted some lettuce at the start of October. It's so unpredictable. I do not remember a year that we did not have a good hard frost by now.

If I am able to harvest every broccoli head that is presenting when it gets to full size, it'll likely be another ten pounds of produce. And organic broccoli in the store is currently $2.99 a pound so about $30 worth. If any more appear and the weather continues to be mild, who knows what I'll end up with? I really was not expecting to be harvesting anything so it's wonderful that I can. Every little bit helps reduce the grocery budget for the month and allows money to be reallocated elsewhere.

Aside from all of that, I added 47 cents to the coin jar that I found when I cleaned out my purse.

It seems like I seldom have one of these anymore, but since I was too out of it to drive again today and the weather didn't cooperate with walking, I didn't go to the store and buy flour. I really must manage it tomorrow because it's hard to make a menu plan for next week without one of my main ingredients. Well, I do have whole wheat flour but I use it in 3:1 ratio (white being the 3) because it doesn't rise well if I use just whole wheat.

I'm just glad I have plenty of eggs, because they are figuring prominently in breakfast and lunch without flour to make bread. Speaking of eggs, the last two holdouts (the black Australorps) of the new chickens started laying yesterday. It's so funny seeing pullet eggs because they are so small, but they size up pretty quickly. So with those two laying we got 8 eggs today (2 duck, 6 chicken).

We have not had a frost yet. We were to get close on Thursday, but it didn't drop past 36, so my gamble to leave the tomatoes on the vine has paid off. The lowest temp in the forecast in the next 10 days is an overnight of 43 F, and that is November 5th. So I'm going to continue to gamble and try to let those tomatoes ripen. It's supposed to rain all but one of those days, so the tomatoes may not make it due to that, but I am still hoping to extend the garden season as long as possible.

The level of food in the freezers is definitely going down. I can see it visibly now. I am trying to use up the items in them over buying new because I want to defrost everything. If I am very careful with my spending over the next 6 days, I will have $300 leftover from the last pay cycle. I am going to throw it at the credit card.

I have to pay property tax on the 31st. The money is sitting in the account just waiting. This is the second time I've budgeted for it, saving $100 a month. It is nice not having to scramble at the last minute.

I have over 3/4 of a tank of gas so I am good there. Other than buying the flour and some milk and orange juice, I shouldn't have to spend any money this week before payday.

With a definite chill in the air, the garden has slowed way down. It was quite cold this morning when I got up to take DD to school. I think if it hadn't been raining we might have gotten a light frost. Tomorrow is supposed to get down to 37 F.

Here is today's harvest:




I decided to pull most of the kohlrabi and just left two out there. I cut three of the Romanescu broccoli and pulled up their plants since they won't produce side shoots. The chickens were very happy with the freshly disturbed dirt. They grow more like cauliflower, but are supposed to taste more like broccoli. There are several more out there that just need to gain size so I'm going to let them go for a bit longer hoping the weather will cooperate.

I pulled all the tomatoes on that side of the house though. They were just volunteers anyway. That side is less protected and will get a frost sooner. The other tomatoes I pulled the yellowish ones, but decided to chance it a little longer on the green ones. I also left the bunching onions in. It's a gamble trying to beat the first frost.

There will be plenty of delicious home grown veggies this week just with what I did harvest, no need to purchase any. And the kohlrabi will keep for quite a while if I cut off the leaves, so they can provide veggies for next week.

I checked my spreadsheet and I have saved about $800 on produce by growing my own this summer. That is after taking out the cost of the sugar for making jam and the salt and lemon juice for canning tomatoes, the cost of the rings and lids and jars for canning, and after the cost of the starts I purchased. We harvested about 400 pounds of organic food and that does not include the potatoes I'm going to dig tomorrow. I reckon that will be about 100 pounds of potatoes if it did as well as last year.

I think that's pretty darn good considering the space and time constraints and only doing a halfway job of gardening. I think I can probably double that next year by starting earlier and watering more often during the worst of the summer heat. And my main garden helper won't be dealing with a concussion like he was this year so it won't fall mostly on just me and my wonky leg. Plus I'll have lots of homemade compost to ammend the soil with come spring.

I think I am fairly glad this week is almost over. I am fortunately doing a lot better than I was. The doctor thinks I had a sinus infection on top of the flu and that is why it has taken so long for me to start to shake it.

He also gave me some medication for my chronic insomnia. He started me on 75mg which knocks me out cold for the night. He gave me both 25mg and 50mg pills to take together. That way if 75mg is too much I can easily lower the dosage. After a few days of getting 12 hours of sleep and catching up on my sleep debt, I decided to try the 50mg dosage last night. That was much better, with me waking up after nine hours of sleep.

Now I just need to determine when to take it, since I will need to be up at 7 to take DD to school starting Tuesday, since DH goes back to Alaska on Monday. So far it has seemed that if I take it at 9, I fall asleep around 1 a.m. So maybe I need to take it around 7.

I am just happy to be sleeping again for more than three or four hours a night. Life looks different when you get enough sleep. And getting enough rest is definitely helping me to kick the flu and the sinus thing.

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Last night was cold. It dropped to 41 degrees and it smelled like frost, but we didn't get a frost. It can't be much longer before we do. Today it is very sunny and 50 degrees. On Thursday night it is expected to hit 34. Not quite freezing but probably enough to kill the tomatoes off for good, so I will pick them and wrap them in newspapter to ripen inside.

The green beans are definitely done. If the zucchini get 3 more days I will have a couple of them to harvest. I can cut some of the broccoli today. I want to give the rest a few more days. Supposedly broccoli tolerates the cold. We'll see. I'll pull the remaining bunching onions Thursday. There's only two bunches left. I'll also pull the kohlrabi that is ready.

I will definitely miss garden fresh eating. And I will miss having a lower grocery bill. We have plenty of fruit preserved and the tomatoes, but very little in the way of vegetables. I guess that is what happens when you plant late in a horrifically rainy June and then have a heatwave in July and August that messes with tender plants. Next year I really need to plant in early May, downpour or not.

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DD had a fantastic time at the Homecoming Dance, and she and the boy that she went with are now officially boyfriend and girlfriend. I met him before the dance and he was more nervous than my daughter. He seems like a sweet boy, a good match for my daughter and her tender heart. I hope all goes well there. I am excited for her, but of course a part of me worries about the eventuality of a broken heart somewhere down the road. But we can't protect our children forever.

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The chickens are definitely slowing down production. Today there were only 4 eggs from them. The ducks seem to just be keeping on. Maybe the lack of sunlight doesn't bother them. I think Kyri has finally finished molting because she looks less like a raggamuffin and more like a nicely groomed hen again. Usually the end of a molt means they'll start laying again (since they don't when they are growing new feathers), but since the days are shorter, she may not until much later.

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I added $10.80 to the coin jar yesterday. DH is filling the tank again on the van. It is only at half, but I don't want to deal with getting gas if I a still feeling sick next week. A full tank should last me until he gets back from Alaska next time. Oh, which reminds me, I found the receipt from the last fill up, which was $73.83. Gas has dropped from $3.94 on that fill-up, to $3.74 as of last night.

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I am about 1/3 of the way through reading the Democratic platform. Then I will read the Republican one. So far it is very dry reading, but I am noticing a lot of very careful word placement. This may be because I've done lessons on persuasive essays and on propaganda essays and I am noticing some of those elements. I am sure there will be equal amounts of that in both platforms. What I wouldn't give for a no-nonsense Moderate party who believed in being socially responsible as well as fiscally responsible.

I think I am fairly glad this week is almost over. I am fortunately doing a lot better than I was. The doctor thinks I had a sinus infection on top of the flu and that is why it has taken so long for me to start to shake it.

He also gave me some medication for my chronic insomnia. He started me on 75mg which knocks me out cold for the night. He gave me both 25mg and 50mg pills to take together. That way if 75mg is too much I can easily lower the dosage. After a few days of getting 12 hours of sleep and catching up on my sleep debt, I decided to try the 50mg dosage last night. That was much better, with me waking up after nine hours of sleep.

Now I just need to determine when to take it, since I will need to be up at 7 to take DD to school starting Tuesday, since DH goes back to Alaska on Monday. So far it has seemed that if I take it at 9, I fall asleep around 1 a.m. So maybe I need to take it around 7.

I am just happy to be sleeping again for more than three or four hours a night. Life looks different when you get enough sleep. And getting enough rest is definitely helping me to kick the flu and the sinus thing.

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Last night was cold. It dropped to 41 degrees and it smelled like frost, but we didn't get a frost. It can't be much longer before we do. Today it is very sunny and 50 degrees. On Thursday night it is expected to hit 34. Not quite freezing but probably enough to kill the tomatoes off for good, so I will pick them and wrap them in newspapter to ripen inside.

The green beans are definitely done. If the zucchini get 3 more days I will have a couple of them to harvest. I can cut some of the broccoli today. I want to give the rest a few more days. Supposedly broccoli tolerates the cold. We'll see. I'll pull the remaining bunching onions Thursday. There's only two bunches left. I'll also pull the kohlrabi that is ready.

I will definitely miss garden fresh eating. And I will miss having a lower grocery bill. We have plenty of fruit preserved and the tomatoes, but very little in the way of vegetables. I guess that is what happens when you plant late in a horrifically rainy June and then have a heatwave in July and August that messes with tender plants. Next year I really need to plant in early May, downpour or not.

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DD had a fantastic time at the Homecoming Dance, and she and the boy that she went with are now officially boyfriend and girlfriend. I met him before the dance and he was more nervous than my daughter. He seems like a sweet boy, a good match for my daughter and her tender heart. I hope all goes well there. I am excited for her, but of course a part of me worries about the eventuality of a broken heart somewhere down the road. But we can't protect our children forever.

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The chickens are definitely slowing down production. Today there were only 4 eggs from them. The ducks seem to just be keeping on. Maybe the lack of sunlight doesn't bother them. I think Kyri has finally finished molting because she looks less like a raggamuffin and more like a nicely groomed hen again. Usually the end of a molt means they'll start laying again (since they don't when they are growing new feathers), but since the days are shorter, she may not until much later.

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I added $10.80 to the coin jar yesterday. DH is filling the tank again on the van. It is only at half, but I don't want to deal with getting gas if I a still feeling sick next week. A full tank should last me until he gets back from Alaska next time. Oh, which reminds me, I found the receipt from the last fill up, which was $73.83. Gas has dropped from $3.94 on that fill-up, to $3.74 as of last night.

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I am about 1/3 of the way through reading the Democratic platform. Then I will read the Republican one. So far it is very dry reading, but I am noticing a lot of very careful word placement. This may be because I've done lessons on persuasive essays and on propaganda essays and I am noticing some of those elements. I am sure there will be equal amounts of that in both platforms. What I wouldn't give for a no-nonsense Moderate party who believed in being socially responsible as well as fiscally responsible.

After 4 days of rain, today was a lovely, sunny day. You can still feel the chill in the air, despite the brightness. Most of the day lingered around 50, but it finally climbed up to 55 for a few hours. I've been watching the forecast closely and it looks like I'll get one more week out of my garden if they are correct. After that nighttime temps will be in the high 30's and I don't think much of anything will like that, except maybe the broccoli. Not quite freezing temps, but not veggie friendly, either, especially to the tomatoes.

Today's harvest was pretty small, as you can see:



Just 2 green beans and that was the last of it. Well, there are still blossoms, but I doubt they'll have time to grow into beans. There are 3 bunches of green onions still growing.

There is a bunch of heirloom broccoli coming on. I will be able to harvest one in about 3 days, I think. This one is as big as my fist:



All the other ones are smaller. There's not too much for color left in the garden, although the blueberry bushes are a brilliant red since their leaves have turned. And there are these brilliant orange lanterns everywhere:



Today's egg count was six chicken and 3 duck. Henrietta and Goldielocks, two of the Auracanas got out today. I've never seen them out before. Also out were Queen (of course, never met a fence that could hold her), Curious, and Pipsqueak (who is now, by the way, the 3rd largest chicken we own). A crow went after Henrietta today. Not to attack her, just to warn her off something the crow was eating. If it had been Queen she would have chased the crow off.

We've decided not to put in a light for the time being as they are keeping up with our needs just fine. We really don't need 15 eggs a day.

The ducks have been really happy with the rain lately. There are lots of puddles for them to grub in.



That is Patches with the green head and wonky wing, our only male. Next to him is Noisy. She is starting to get white feathers. Apparently Cayuga ducks turn white by the time they are four or something like that. Miz Len Tao is there behind Patches and all you can see of Lady Henry Inigo Montoya is her backside sticking out. Obviously the ducks were named well before we knew which ones were girls. But Lady and Miz never responded to their names anyway.

On the financial front, I gave DD $10 to buy a ticket to the Homecoming Dance. She was asked by a boy (her first date!) but I feel better having her pay her own way so there are no expectations. She is really excited. I am really nervous. When did I get old enough to have a daughter who was of dating age?