Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

Thursday I picked 2 quarts of organic blueberries and 2 quarts of organic blackberries for the freezer. That brings my produce total for the day to:

Blackberries $32
Blueberries $16
-----------------
Berry Total $48

$144.00 Previous Produce Total
+_48.00 Berry Total
------------
$192.00 Ending Produce Total

$208 to go to pay back my garden investment for this year.

I got 3 duck eggs on Thursday and 2 duck eggs on Friday, bringing the duck egg total to 34. I will be selling a dozen to a lady tomorrow for $5. My first non-rabbit sale. If I can sell 3 dozen a month that'll pay for half a month's feed for the ducks. I wouldn't be able to sell more than that and have enough for us, though, at least not until Addy starts laying, too. And once the Barnevelders start laying in a few more weeks, then I could sell more duck eggs.

It only took 5 minutes for someone to respond to my add when I posed it. That was neat. Makes me think there is a good market for these eggs.

And last, but certainly not least the rabbit kits at 6 days old:

http://youtu.be/THCgkrx8aEU

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

We have someone who has gone back to the house for a second look, which is promising. I know we looked at it 4 times before making our decision when we bought, but it was the second look that was the turning point, really. May not be so for this guy, but it is still promising.

The lady who requested more information before the holiday is going to go and look at it in person.

I hope one of these people likes it enough to make an offer. I am tired of the drain that house is.

Yesterday I spent $34.36 on dinner. It was 85 degrees and I didn't even want to set foot in that end of the house, let alone the kitchen. I hate not having AC here. Even if we only used it on days like this it would be so worth it. Today I have to make dinner, though. I'm down to $10 in my eating out money.

Yesterday I got 3 eggs and today I got 3 more eggs, so the total of eggs I've gotten since the ducks began laying is 29.

I do not know if I will get any berries picked today. Nothing was picked yesterday either because of the heat being so bad. Today is only supposed to get up to 77, but it already feels like it is going to be the same as yesterday. I will try this evening though, because stuff is ripe.

My first tomato is almost ready. I have plans for it, too. It isn't very big, about the size you make when you touch the tip of your index finger together with your thumb, so I will be dicing it up and using it in omelets along with some homegrown green onions and some cheese. I am looking forward to that. Growing it is fun. Eating it is better. My first cucumber is almost ready, too. It'll be nice to have something from the garden that isn't leafy and green.

I am hoping to barter some produce with a lady who makes goat cheddar. She raises her own meat and eggs so I can't barter with that, but she said she was open to produce. So far I haven't had enough of anything to barter with, but hopefully I will soon. She doesn't sell it, only barters for the things she needs. I really like that idea.

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.

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

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.

A well-growing garden is like finding money in the dirt, or the straw and hay bales in my case. This week I harvested $5 worth of organic kale, $2.50 worth of organic lettuce, and $3 worth of organic berries. That is $10.50 from the garden this week, and $13.50 so far this season.

I also have collected 17 duck eggs. We did lose one. I am going to count by dozens for my accounting, though. So, so far that is 1 dozen duck eggs, and the going rate for a dozen free range duck eggs here is $5. I will sell (or give away to a couple people) any eggs we can't consume ourselves.

I will be picking berries this afternoon as well. I imagine I'll get at least a pint of blackberries, a pint of raspberries, and a quart of blueberries.

Anything we can't eat in time from the garden goes to feed the turkeys, chickens, ducks, and rabbits, cutting down their feed costs as well while they grow good protein for our table.

We had 2 litters of rabbit kits born yesterday.

http://youtu.be/-aF9HZK1hwY

12 in total, so in 10 to 12 weeks, depending on growth rate, we will have another 30 pounds of protein for the freezer.

Things are going well here on the food production front and I am very happy about that.

So I purchased something that came to $20.07. I handed the cashier $21. Her cash register computer was going slow and not giving her the change total to give me back. She stood there and stared at the machine for 75 seconds (I timed it once I realized what was going on) waiting for it to tell her what the change was supposed to be.

The whole time I was biting my tongue, because I knew what my change would be the moment she gave me the amount, thinking how hard is it to calculate that $1 minus 7 cents is 93 cents? It is basic. You can do it on your fingers even, counting backwards from 100. She didn't even try. I know I could have spoken up with the amount, but I seriously wanted to see how long it was going to take before she even tried or the total came up. And she might have insisted that she had to wait for the computer anyway to be sure.

She was at least 16 years old and spent the entire time apologizing for the slow computer. This stuff is covered in 2nd grade math. I think they would have had to close the store if their computers went down. I guess they don't make people take math tests to be cashiers anymore.

I think people are so used to customers handing over plastic, they don't even know what to do anymore with paper. And they are getting so dependent on machines to do their thinking for them, they are not sure what to do when the machine conks out. I found the whole thing amusing, and a little sad, but probably because I wasn't in a hurry to get out of there.

Friday was payday and while I paid all the bills I didn't record anything in my spreadsheet or on here, so today is my catch up day. I tried not to let things slide while I was really sick, but some of it did. Fortunately it was just the record keeping part and that is easy enough to catch up on.

$300.00 Beef and Pork from the farm
__90.00 Physical Therapy
_100.00 Turkey, Chicken, Duck Feed plus straw/hay/grit
_144.00 Water/sewer Old House (2 months)
__45.30 Life Insurance DH
__41.88 Life Insurance Me
__70.86 Car Insurance
__47.17 House Insurance Old House
_186.00 Storage
__41.16 ADT Security Old House
__30.64 Electricity Old House
__80.58 Lowes
__15.00 Prescription
_225.00 AMEX
--------------
1417.59

I also spent $175.00 on a big Costco stock up of things like TP, paper towels, juice, vitamins, olive oil, and butter. Should be quite some time before we have to go back.

And I have $90 set aside for physical therapy on Thursday.

We've got a bite on the house. Please pray for us that this will be the one and we can sell this thing! Crossed fingers and good vibes wouldn't hurt either.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fruit Garden Update:

http://youtu.be/M4-wkFrHLmE

Hay Bale Garden Update:

http://youtu.be/M4-wkFrHLmE

Straw Bale Garden Update:

http://youtu.be/8mRkO0xPsEM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

$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.

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.

Well, it's been 8 months since we listed our house and the biggest thing seems to be that while people like the price and the house, they don't like the drive from town. *sighs* That was one of the primary reasons we moved to town. And apparently there are a lot of foreclosures out there that are much cheaper, but not in as good a shape.

Our real estate agent is recommending we drop the price by $10K. I hate to do that, but at this point I don't really see another option. If the house were in town it would have sold by now and probably for much higher than we are asking, which is only $129K.

$119K, if we could get it, would still allow us to pay the guy who did the repairs (he's waiting until the house sells no matter how long it takes), pay off the van, and give us a decent down payment for a new house. Just not as decent as $129K would. With the van paid off, though, we could save that money to add to a down payment and hold off a while longer on buying something.

Of course at this point I don't know if we could even get $119K. Despite how beautiful the place is, and how pretty the neighborhood is, that 25 mile drive is tough for a lot of people. We are going to have them add to our listing that it is only an 8 minute walk to the county transit stop. Maybe that will help encourage some folks that they can take the bus for their commute instead of having to drive it themselves.

I think if we don't get an offer after it has been on the market for a year, we're going to have to look into renting it out. I don't really want to be a landlord, but I hate that it is sitting empty. We do have someone who has offered to rent it for $1000 a month. That is the going rate for rentals out there of that size, so I feel it is fair. Of course that offer was a few months ago, so I am not even sure if it would still be on the table.

I wish the place would sell. It is so frustrating sitting here feeling like it never will. I am almost at the point where I feel like buying a piece of land where I want it, and having the house moved. I love the house, except for the outside color. It is the location that I am done with. And we could probably sell the raw land much easier. Since the house and land is paid for, just having to buy raw land and get a house moving loan would not be the worst thing in the world.

It just seems like it would be a world of hassle.

Well, keep us in your prayers folks, that we sell that albatross. I'd sure appreciate it.

$9269.98 Beginning EF Balance
___10.00 6/5 Weekly Auto Deposit
___10.00 6/12 Weekly auto Depost
+_100.00 Monthly Deposit
---------
$9389.98 New EF Balance

$610.02 to go to get 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.

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

I can't believe I spaced on posting my meal planning for the week. The goal has been to eat down the protein stores in the freezer in preparation for bulk purchasing in the later summer. I'm not buying any new protein for these meals. We are also processing the Cornish cross chickens this week, so I am definitely not going to run out of chicken for a while, but I'm using up what was already in the freezer first.

I'm going to post Sunday and Monday's menus even though it is now Tuesday.

Sunday:
Crockpot duck (I raised it up on aluminum foil balls to keep it out of the cooking liquid) sprinkled heavily with herbs de provence
Microwave baked potatoes
Green beans

Monday:
Tacos

Tuesday:
Fried chicken legs
Baked potatoes
Green beans

Wednesday:
Pan-fried steaks
Fried potatoes
Salad

Thursday:
Hot turkey and provolone sandwiches on Rosemary bread
Coleslaw

Friday:
Crockpot Beef Chuck Roast
Baked sweet potatoes
Broccoli/cauliflower

Saturday:
Spaghetti with homemade sauce
Meatballs
Coleslaw

Yesterday I spent $90 on physical therapy.

I also spent $14.49 on a half flat of local strawberries and 75 cents on a doughnut. I've been wanting a doughnut for 3 weeks now, but kept putting it off and finally yesterday I gave in. The upside is now I no longer want doughnuts.

This weekend I want to go to one of the local farms and get a bunch more strawberries that I can do up for the freezer and do one batch of strawberry jam. Strawberries are the only berries we eat a lot of that I don't have much of growing. When we move I will put in lots and lots of strawberries, but there really isn't the space to do that here.

I'm not sure how much I'll spend on strawberries, but I am thinking $100. And then do it again the next weekend, too, but after that the season will be over. I want to freeze both sugared strawberries and whole ones for making smoothies. It is sure cheaper than buying them throughout the year, and I like buying locally so I know where they come from. I also know that the two places I buy berries from don't use GMO's or spray their fields. Not as good as organic, but good enough to make me happy until I can grow all of my own.

I had a moment of blind panic yesterday. I was checking the date for something else and I realized I forgot to pay the mortgage this month. It took me a full 30 seconds to remember that I didn't pay it because I had paid off the mortgage and anyway, I would have had until the 15th before it would have been considered a late fee even if I had. But for those 30 seconds I was a little crazy.

I wonder when that will go away? I guess 16 years of paying something became so automatic it is still hard to get used to not having that hanging over our heads. 2 months of being mortgage free is not long enough to have that fully sink in yet.

When we moved our stuff out of Mom's freezer and into our own new huge chest freezer, I took an inventory of what was in there to help me with future meal planning. I still need to go through what we have in the small chest freezer and move a portion of it out, and what we have in the above fridge freezer in the laundry room and move all of it out, and the below fridge freezer in our kitchen, but I figured this was a good start and I could put it here and then compile my spreadsheet later.

I've broken it down into categories, and then individual types within each category.

Rabbit--
15 whole cut-up
2 quart bags of liver
1 gallon bag of bones for making stock
7 bags of belly flaps for making jerky
1 container of soup
2 gallon size baggies of homemade sausage patties
1/2 a cut up rabbit

Beef--
2 skirt steaks
3 quart bags of stir-fry meat
4 pounds of ground beef
7 rib-eye thin cut steaks
1 chuck roast
2 packages hot dogs

Turkey--
1 package of 3 extra large turkey legs
1 turkey kielbasa

Chicken--
7 quart size baggies of boneless skinless
3 family size baggies of chicken legs

Pork--
4 ground
3 packages of sausages
3 packages of bacon
4 chops

Lamb--
1 ground

Elk--
1 ground

Fish--
1 package of cod
2 pounds of shrimp

Rice--
1 baggy of chicken fried rice
3 baggies of brown rice

Vegetables--
1 bag of fire roasted onions and peppers

I'm going to try to inventory the 2 fridge freezers today. The small chest freezer will probably wait until tomorrow.

I want to get through some of this meat before we buy a side of beef and a side of pork later this year. We've got the chicken way down, but only because we are going to be butchering some in a couple weeks. We also need to get moving on the rabbit as we will be butchering again in about 3 weeks and then pretty often during the summer.[

A lot of the rabbit meat needs to be ground, mixed with a little tomato sauce and seasonings, and pressed into patties. I will also do up some meatballs and cook them and freeze them for future use. The meat is packaged well, but it is from February of last year so it'll get used up faster in a more usable form. Because of how we've packaged it there has been no freezer burn or drop off in quality, but I'd still like to get the older stuff gone.

With this inventory at my fingertips I can keep it handy and we can get eaten what needs to be used up and do far less grocery shopping for protein because I will know at a glance what I have and plan around it.

Just got word from my niece that everything is all complete. It's a wonderful feeling knowing that no one can take my great niece away from her new parents. Welcome to the family, again, to the sweetest three-year-old I know.

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

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

http://youtu.be/UqleDAp2eaw

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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