Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://youtu.be/pHvVS_3d4rs

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

http://youtu.be/4BGVgVL8lAc

And an update on all the young kit litters.

http://youtu.be/1LiWIpOPoUo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://youtu.be/UVqTz9ehqjM

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

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

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

Pinecone has sent me a sign up link. The only catch is that it has to be sent to someone through an email I forward to them. I can't just post the sign up link. If anyone is interested, leave me your email and I will send it to you. Then I will delete your comment if you say so in your request to remove the email address from my blog.

I've been getting about one paid survey a week from them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning, extreme adorableness below.

http://youtu.be/4LRpmpc5_xw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://youtu.be/vbXeeVb3yP4

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

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

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

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

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

http://youtu.be/Xzjq0UY2Uy4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://youtu.be/qWrGcWXj98A

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

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

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

The mortgage is now officially under $5,000 left to pay it off. It should be $4882.62 plus or minus about 50 cents after this payment of $527. Last month's interest was $27, but it goes down a little each month and I paid it 3 days sooner this month than last so it'll be a little less than that. I should have exact numbers next week some time.

Regardless, it is a great feeling. A huge part of me wants to take half the Emergency Fund and pay it off. I'm not sure how much longer I can resist that. Once the car is gone the only official debt left is the van loan. I say official, because we still owe Mom money, but that is off any record anywhere. I keep thinking of how fast the van loan would go down if we were putting the mortgage money there.

Contract renewals are coming up soon. It has been a few years since DH has gotten a raise, since it has been a few years since contracts were done last. I hope he will get a raise that will at least make up for the higher medical costs and the higher plane ticket costs and if we are lucky the extra taxes they have been taking out since that tax break expired at the start of 2013. It is annoying when your take home pay goes down every year despite your gross staying the same.

Don't get me wrong. I am grateful that DH has a job and a job that pays so well, but I just want to be out of consumer debt and it feels like I am not making very much progress on that front since that tax break expired and took $500 a month away from us that was previously going to pay down debt.

We've been hit hard with medical this year, especially dental. And our medical insurance, Premera, the one that sucks eggs hard, I may have mentioned that before, has decided that they no longer want to pay the rates of any of the anesthesiologists in my county or the next county over, so if any of us need to have any kind of surgery again we have to go all the way to Everett, where none of our doctors work, or they won't pay for that portion.

Now the portion of the anesthetist we have always had to pay for was around $1000. I can't imagine how high it would be without the insurance kicking in for it. Hopefully no one will need surgery any time soon. I miss Aetna, which is bad enough, but it was world's better than Premera.

I've got a $1000 dental bill I'll have to pay off over 3 months and a $307 doctor bill that just came in, none of which is covered under our sky high deductibles. I sometimes really wonder what is the point of medical insurance at all anymore. I remember when it actually paid for stuff. Or we only had to pay a reasonable 20%. This is ridiculous. I miss the insurance DH had with his old company. Now they were excellent.

Okay, time to derail this pity party. I've hit the intersection of Suck it Up and Get Over It, so I shall do that now. For a while anyway.

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

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

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



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

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

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

Meanwhile, I have cute animal stuff.

Rabbit kits:

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

Sienna and Cinnabun:



Pekin duckling:



Welsh Harlequin and Pekin ducklings:



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

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

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

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

Yesterday was the weekly auto deposit of $10 to savings. I put it in the Moving Fund.

$716.23 Beginning Balance
+_10.00 Amount Added
---------
$726.23 Ending Balance

$273.77 to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since the EF hit $10K, I am now putting the weekly $10 auto deposit into savings into the Moving Fund.

$706.93 Old MF Balance
+_10.00 Amount Added
-----------
$716.93 New MF Balance

$283.07 to go to hit my goal of $1000 for the Moving Fund.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...I don't care.

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

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

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

http://youtu.be/fLi5SLzlMbg

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

http://youtu.be/tRvvDWlAYvA

So now that my Emergency Fund is sitting pretty at just over $10K, I have decided that my next focus is going to be on the Moving Fund. I will still add $100 each month to the EF, because my ultimate goal is to get it to $30K, but the extra monies that were going in there will now be diverted to the Moving Fund.

Ideally, I'd like to get the Moving Fund to $1000. That will cover the $300 we have to pay the HoA just to transfer ownership of a property in that development (though I am still going to try to fight that based on a spotless dues record since they only came up with it less than a year ago), and provide $700 for renting the U-Haul.

Currently it is sitting at $700. Interest of $6.81 hit my C1-360 account today so I am adding that to the Moving Fund.

$700.00 Beginning Balance
+__6.81 Amount Added
---------
$706.81 Ending Balance

I have $293.19. My goal for the end of the month is to get the Moving Fund to $800. I will have the four $10 auto deposits to add to that, so need to come up with $53.19 on top of that from coin jar scrapings and survey money for April.

After I have completed the Moving Fund my next goal will to be complete the January 2015 Money Fund. Every year from around Christmas to some time in January, DH has 4 weeks of unpaid time off. Usually we use part or all of the Christmas Bonus to get us through that time. This year I want to be a little more prepared than that. I want to have $4000 ready in savings to get through that time period so we can use the Christmas bonus for something else.

Right now I have $2267 in the JMF. Between now and the end of the year I need to come up with $1733 to meet that goal. $900 of it will come from monthly deposits of $100 between now and December. That will leave $833 to come up with. I will hit my Moving Fund goal hopefully by the end of June, so will have six months worth of $10 weekly deposits to add to the Moving Fund. That will be an additional $260. So that leaves me with $573 to come up with by the end of the year, or approximately $95.50 a month.

I can usually scrape up about $50 a month between coins and $1's so I am going to have to figure out where that other $45.50 will come from. Maybe I will need to take the cash option on Swagbucks instead of Amazon gift cards. Well, I'll figure it out. Anyway, those will be my two priorities for this year.

And that was my scream you just heard.

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

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

Monday:
Leftovers
--roast beef
--ham
--stir-fry
--green beans
Baked potatoes

Tuesday:
Homemade pizza with onions, bell pepper strips, rabbit sausage, and pepperoni
Cole slaw

Wednesday:
Pork chops
Fried potatoes
Green beans
Applesauce

Thursday:
Bacon roasted rabbit
Baked potatoes
Green Beans
Canned peaches

Friday:
Baked potato soup
Drop biscuits with choice of homemade jams
Cole slaw
Apples

Saturday:
1/4 pound uncured hot dogs on homemade buns
Homemade French fries
Cole slaw

Sunday:
Beef stew
Green beans
Canned pineapple

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.

$500.00 Property Tax Fund
__38.00 HoA Dues Fund
_300.00 Vacation Fund
_300.00 Appliance Fund (New Fund, not counting freezer)
2267.00 January 2015 Money Fund
1130.00 College Fund
_300.00 Aquaponics Fund
__72.00 Water/Sewer Holding Fund
_100.00 Laptop Holding Fund
_300.00 Christmas Fund
----------
4007.00 Total in Temporary Funds

$323.41 AMEX
_500.00 Mortgage
_100.00 Emergency Fund
__19.00 HoA Dues Fund
__75.65 Internet
__72.00 Water/Sewer Holding Tank
_225.00 Monthly Chiropractic Plan
_100.00 Property Tax Fund
_113.22 Propane Fund
_100.00 Laptop Holding Tank
_100.00 College Fund
_100.00 Vacation Fund
_100.00 Christmas Fund
_100.00 Appliance Fund
_100.00 Moving Fund
_100.00 Aquaponics Fund
_100.00 January Money Fund
_334.60 Dentist
_104.02 Medical
_168.00 Storage
__45.30 Life Insurance DH
__41.88 Life Insurance Me
__69.89 Car Insurance
__47.17 House Insurance
__41.16 Security System (Old House)
----------
$2356.89 Total Money Out

I will be having a car payment coming out of this paycheck, but it isn't due until the 19th so the money is being set aside. I will list it when I pay it.