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 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.

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.

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.

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.

I didn't get around to doing this on Friday or Saturday, so thought I should get to it.

$530.02 AMEX
_400.00 Mom's Utilities
__45.30 Life Insurance DH
__41.88 Life Insurance Me
__70.86 Car Insurance
__47.17 House Insurance (Old House)
__41.16 Security System (Old House)
_186.00 Storage
_300.00 for Farm Supplies
_120.00 Physical Therapy
-----------
1782.39

I didn't do my payday report last week so this will just be a combined report for the two paydays.

$1500.00 BoA VISA
_1000.00 Loan to Mom
__400.00 Mom's Utilities
__200.00 Emergency Fund
___19.00 Dues Fund
___60.91 Electric (Old House 2 months)
___48.60 Phone (Old House)
__160.80 Internet (2 months)
___68.56 Garbage
__757.82 Van Loan (plus extra to principal)
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__239.32 Propane
__100.00 College Fund
__100.00 Vacation Fund
__100.00 Christmas Fund
__100.00 Moving Fund
__100.00 Appliance Fund
__500.00 Building Supplies
___90.00 Allowances (2 weeks)
--------------
$5546.01

I did some bulk grocery shopping in the last two weeks, spenging $526.31. We've spent $100 on eating out or takeaway. I spent $204 on prescription medications and $45.21 on OTC allergy meds. I also paid a medical bill, a physical therapy session and dental bill for a total of $341.47. And that should get me up to date for the month.

We bought our chest freezer finally yesterday. It is a 24.6 cubic foot Frigidaire Gallery with lots of dividers and baskets which should make compartmentalizing foods very easy. It costs $82 a year to run and is Energy Star rated.

It is also made in America, which I will generally do if I can and it meets all my needs. With tax it came to $850.04. Free delivery and since we bought it on a sale weekend it was $100 off. It was also $200 less than the same freezer at another store. We bought from a local business, who happens to have their own outlet store as well of slightly older models.

It will be delivered tomorrow and then after 24 hours of being plugged in we can start moving our frozen foods out of my mother's freezers and our mini-chest freezer. I'll do an inventory based on what goes into each divider or bin, too. I used to have an inventory of what was in the freezers, but with this freezer going into the garage, I'll need to know for sure what is in there and where it is located before traipsing out to the garage or sending one of the kids out there to get something.

We will still use our mini-chest freezer inside the house, but it will be more as a receptacle of meal planning, bringing in the week's supply of meat or frozen vegetables from the big freezer sort of thing, plus our very few safe prepared foods like TJ's prepared meals or pizzas. And our own homemade TV dinners, premade homemade pizza crusts, bread dough, and such.

I am looking forward to purchasing a grass-raised beef, a half a pasture-raised hog, and numerous pasture-raised chickens, as well as having the space for the rabbits, ducks, and turkeys we are raising for the table. Meal planning will go so much easier and I will have plenty of good proteins ready and waiting for me. It'll be kind of nice to only have to buy seafood.

But those are long range plans. I have to save up for those meat purchases. It is expensive to buy a year's beef or a year's pork or a year's chicken all in one go. But so worthwhile.

$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.

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.

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 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.

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.

$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.

Today I spent $59.54 on 10 ducklings. We got 6 Welsh Harlequins, of which the females can lay between 260 and 300 eggs a year, and 4 Pekins. The Pekins will be meat birds. We won't know for sure about the sexes of the Welsh Harlequins until they are a bit older. I am pretty sure at least two of them are girls. I am hoping more are.

I'd really like them to be 5 hens and a drake, but it's really luck of the draw at this point. They are one week old. Once they feather out and grow up a bit we will be able to tell them apart as the males and females have different markings. If I get at least 2 hens, though, we will be well set up for next year because Welsh Harlequins will go broody and hatch a clutch a couple times a year. Assuming they aren't all females. Which I am assuming, because who has that kind of luck with a straight run?

Any excess drakes will be meat birds, too. Too many drakes just won't get along after a certain age unless there are no females. We will keep the nicest one, possibly two depending on the ratios. They are so stinking cute right now it is hard to think about the ultimate purpose of most of them. But we are choosing to farm and to raise our own food and we know we will get there. If we can do it with the adorable rabbits, we can do it with ducks. And eventually chicks, as we will be getting meat chickens later this summer.

If you would like to see my ducklings:

http://youtu.be/WpiBAoZqkzE

My mom got 15 meat chickens so we will probably get our chicks as soon as hers are old enough to go outside and the brooder is free. And we will be getting at least two turkeys in mid-April when they come in. They will have Bourbon Reds and Royal Palm, and a few other heritage breeds. I'd really like Royal Palm, but I would be happy with Bourbons or one of each. We are planning on them being meat birds, but I will admit right now that the turkeys may end up being pets. We will see.

I spent $25 on wood and hardware to build a brooder box for the garage. It should be really easy to make. They cut the pieces to size to make a box that will be 4 x 4 x 2. We are keeping them in the bathtub for now and they won't go to the garage until they are older.

I will be raising them on organic feed and of course they will have free range of the fenced back yard during the day. I have really missed having ducks. They are such a happy animal to have around.

So DH and I drove down to the Willamette Valley on Friday as part of an early anniversary getaway and to pick up our new purebred pedigreed breeding stock of New Zealand Red rabbits. We drove back on Saturday. It was nice to get away, the weather was beautiful on Friday, but we hit a snowstorm on the last leg of the trek home on Saturday. We had a great time, though, and even though he won't be home for our actual anniversary (our 19th) on the 18th, we still feel like we got to celebrate. We had a nice steak dinner out.

Meet our new buck Wildfire:



And our new does Sienna and Cinnabun:



They are very sweet, gentle-tempered rabbits. No biters or scratchers in this lot.

Costs for the trip (I'm rounding):

$90.00 for the rabbits
$80.00 for the hotel fee
$82.00 for 2 tanks of gas
150.00 for six meals out
-----------
402.00 total spent this weekend

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

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

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

Yesterday when I was doing my grocery shopping at the food co-op for produce, I still checked out the meat just in case there is something on sale. Yesterday I lucked out and they had a rack of lamb on sale because the sell or freeze by date was about to expire. It was $5 off so I ended up paying $19.03 for it. It was 1.44 pounds of local organic lamb. That still worked out to $12.50 a pound, but most conventionally raised rack of lamb imported from Australia is $15 a pound, so I felt I did pretty good.

We only get lamb a few times a year (maybe a total of 15 pounds a year) and rack of lamb maybe once a year. Since we ate dinner early and I knew we'd be having a late night, I had my daughter go ahead and cover it thickly in Herbs de Provence and put it in the crockpot with half a cup of water, cooking it on high for 4 hours. Oh, it came out so tender and delicious, as good as I've ever had it in a fancy restaurant. Actually, better.

The kids and I split it (DH is in Alaska) and had it as a late night (11 p.m.) dinner. It was perfect, just enough to keep going until midnight. I am glad I bought it. It was a little expensive, but it was within the grocery budget to splurge a bit and I don't splurge on much of anything.

$1000.00 to Mom
__144.00 Water/sewer Old House (2 months)
__600.00 Mortgage Old House
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__100.00 Emergency Fund
___19.00 Dues Fund (HoA Old House)
___90.00 Physical Therapy
+_100.00 Cash for Week
-------------
$2153.00 Total Money Out

I've also got to pay the kids' allowances for the last two weeks and buy groceries. I don't need to get that much. Milk, potatoes, lettuce, kale, chard, parsley, salmon, cod or snapper depending on what is in, deli meat, turnips, maybe a winter squash, and cabbage. I think I want some pears, too, but it will depend on how they look. I still have some apples and oranges, a couple of bananas, and a very unusual for me out of season imported watermelon, so not doing bad on the fruit front.

I need to pick up some black oil sunflower seeds for sprouting with the barley fodder, for the rabbits and some new chew blocks to hang from their chew toys. I am glad they are refillable. I also need to pick up some locking hardware for the 2 outdoor rabbit hutches that never had it put on and two feed cups. I have plenty of extra water bottles. We will be using the outdoor hutches when we bring the new rabbits home. They will be in quarantine for 4 weeks before I put them in with the other rabbits to make sure they have no illnesses.

I am going to risk breeding Piper with the red buck after he settles in simply because I don't want to wait a month. I want our first batch of spring bunnies by the end of March/beginning of April. I will breed them outside in one of the rabbit tractors (movable pens) to minimize exposure.

Piper is our best doe so she'll be the odd one out. The others I will pair up so I am having two does having litters at the same time. When Kalia is old enough to breed she will be paired with Piper. Then when the two red doe kits grow up I will pair one with Piper and one with Kalia, because end game is to have two unrelated litters growing out at the same time so if someone wants breeding stock that is not related I will always have that option for selling.

Okay, that kind of went off on a tangent.

So I'm sure if you've all been paying attention by now, you know how much I think my insurance company sucks. If not, well, Premera sucks. I mean their website is so bad, that if you try to find a specialist dentist, like an oral surgeon, for, say, a root canal, it lists things like this:

Dentist--urologist
Dentist--breast prosthesis
Dentist--colon and rectal surgeon

Now I have long thought this company has its head up its colon, but I know that's not where I keep my teeth or where any dentist cares to visit. We had this same problem when we are trying to find an orthodontist. *sighs* DH will call them and make them find us an oral surgeon. Because I do think I am still looking at a root canal in the foreseeable future. Which is a whole other story.

Now, I had to fill some prescriptions and one of them goes on the deductible, the Crestor, because if there is one thing Premera is deathly afraid of it is paying for non-generic name brand drugs even if that is what your doctor thinks you should be on. So that makes the drug $185 for 30 pills, or $6.17 a pill. Ugh. But, the Walgreens pharmatech told me they have a discount card for that drug and he whipped it out in the hopes it would give me a reasonable price to pay. You want to know what that reasonable price was? $25! Not $25 off, but $25 total. So I walked out of the pharmacy paying a cool $40 for 3 prescriptions instead of $200.

He also told me that he would mark it in my file because it is an ongoing discount, not just a one time only. Yay! But to also always ask about it because they don't always pay attention to the little notes.

I was a little resentful when we had to switch over to using Walgreens, but today made up for all of it, except losing my long time pharmacist when our little locally owned pharmacy went belly-up.

Also I can use my rewards card at the pharmacy. I haven't figured out what the rewards points are for, but I am racking them up.

I also spent $29.51 on over the counter meds while I was there, too, and got a $2 off coupon for a brand of vitamins I buy.

Every 2 to 3 months we go to Costco and do a big grocery shop. The only meat there we buy is chicken now that they have organic boneless skinless thighs and organic bone-in legs in family size portions. Today was that shopping trip. We pick and choose from items to get the good deals and ignore the bad ones.

Periodically I like to record what I buy and the prices and compare it year to year. I had a rebate coupon for $12.46 so I got that discount. Anyway this is that post.

2 cases of Charmin @ $20.99 per
2 pounds of sea salt @ $2.79
3 4 packs of butter (12 pounds) @ $8.99 per
3 quarts of organic coconut oil @ $22.99
Kitchen garbage bags @ $14.99
Family size 3 pack of Q-tips @ $8.99
2 half gallons of organic e.v. olive oil @ $14.99 per
Disposable razors @ $19.99
10 pounds of Krusteaz pancake mix @ $6.39
20 pounds of organic unbleached flour @ $12.49
2 10 pound bags of organic carrots @ $5.79
14 pack of pink lady organic apples @ $9.79
1 case of oranges @ $11.99
3 pack organic chicken drumsticks $12.42
3 pack organic boneless skinless chicken thighs $16.04

I've only got 2 things that I am brand loyal on anymore and that is Q-tips and Charmin toilet paper. All the other ear swabs bend when you use them. And Charmin is the only TP that does not cause an allergic reaction for my son and I. Otherwise, I don't care about brands at all.

The Krusteaz pancake mix is not strictly necessary, I could make them from scratch, but I also use it to make biscuits, which I could also make from scratch. However, I do like a few things in life to be a bit easier in the kitchen, DS eats pancakes almost every day, and Krusteaz is a brand that doesn't have ingredients that make my son sick, so we go with that.

The garbage bags and Q-tips should last for a year. The rest of the staples should last about 3 months, except the fruit which will get eaten in about a month to six weeks and I'll supplement it with what I have canned of fresh from the food co-op.

We also spent $22.49 on gas since it was $3.15 a gallon.

Oh, and the reason you don't see any sugar on that list is that I am still going through a 50 pound bag leftover from canning jam the summer of 2012. We don't eat a lot of it.

AMEX was higher than usual because of buying the food saver on that card. The MC DH accidentally charged on because he forgot the right card at home. I've restarted my Appliance Fund and my Vacation Fund after wiping them out to buy the new refrigerator. Everything else is business as usual.

I closed out the January budget and started the February one, though very little was marked off the February one, most was finishing up January's short term savings funds. But dollar wise most of it was for February.

$1500.00 to BoA VISA (DH's travel expenses)
__540.00 Mortgage (Old House)
__400.00 to Mom for her Utilities
__350.09 AMEX (in full)
___67.53 BoA MC (in full)
__100.00 College Fund
__100.00 Vacation Fund
__100.00 Moving Fund
__100.00 Christmas Fund
__100.00 Appliance Fund
__225.00 Monthly Chiropractic Plan
__100.00 Cash for Week
___40.00 Allowances
+__90.00 Physical Therapy
------------
$3812.62 Total Money Out

It was good to see a payday again after 4 weeks without one. It is interesting to see how we live off of savings during that time period though. It makes me wonder how many of the people that DH works with make it through. Do they save up ahead of time or do they let some bills slide until the income comes in again? Not everyone gets a Christmas bonus to help things along, and some are quite small in comparison to what DH gets.

I got a cold during this last week from the weather swings and having to be outside when it was freezing. Our night time and morning temps were below freezing, but our daytime temps were at 50 and it was gorgeous. But having to go out in it when it was freezing twice a day has done a number on me. I know they claim that you can't catch a cold from being in the cold, but I think it certainly does help any virus that might be around invade your system.

This is the best cold I've had in ages, though. My immune system actually seems to be fighting it. I guess now that I'm no longer being beaten down by food poisoning my body has a chance. Though I still feel the effects of all those months, each week away is a little better than the one before.

On the other hand, I used the cold as an excuse to get pizza and deli food from the store and blew through most of the money I'd hoped to save to throw extra at the mortgage. Oh, well. I am still going to try to send extra to it.

So, on to the payday stuff.

$1000.00 to Mom
__100.00 to Emergency Fund
__125.oo Half Year HOA Dues (Old House)
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__100.00 Aquaponics Fund
___90.00 Physical Therapy
__434.61 Propane (Old House)
___74.40 Dental
____8.58 Sleep Doctor
___40.00 Allowances
__100.00 Cash for Week
___95.00 January Money Fund
-------------
$2267.59 Total Out

I had $200 in my propane fund, but I decided to leave it there since I could cash flow the propane bill. We will have one more really large one before we turn the heat off in the old house from the end of April through October. The danger of freezing the pipes won't pass until then. This tank should last until the end of March or so.

Next week I'll have a larger than normal AMEX bill of $350.09. This is because we used the card to buy a Food Saver from Costco and not just gas. It is making a big difference in our frozen meat already.

I found out that we do have orthodontia covered. They will pay 50% up to $1500. DH is looking into which doctors in our area are in network. I don't mind doing that for an unestablished doctor/patient relationship. I just don't like being told that my doctor for years isn't covered. I'd go to the one my daughter went to but he is retired. I'm hoping his partner is in network, because it is really close by.

We are going to use part of our income tax refund to pay for fixing my teeth. Part of it will go into the Aquaponics Fund, part of it will go into the Emergency Fund, part of it will go into the College Fund, part to the Moving Fund, part to the Medical/Dental Fund (which is not funded at the moment) and I want to go out with DH to a really nice steakhouse sans kids with a little bit of it. I know DH needs a new stylus for his Boogie Board. And I want a Victorio Food Mill for processing tomatoes this summer.

We should be able to get our income tax done the first week of February and get it sent off right away. I have all of the interest info, we are now just waiting for the property tax slip (though we know the amount) and the slips from DH's work (again, we know the amount).

I feel like we are finally getting on solid ground. We started so far under water and then when we got our heads above, it was like slogging through mud flats when the tide is going out. Then it seemed like an endless progression of rocky beach. Now it feels like we've finally reached the sun-warmed sand. We're not quite ready to plop down and sun ourselves, but we can at least see the beach towels, you know?

I ended up buying some things after all that I hadn't planned on. I decided that I needed to get 2 new pairs of jeans. I have been wearing my jeans to do farm chores and they are becoming too shabby to wear off the property.

Then DS informed me he had outgrown all of his underwear but two, and DD informed me that she had outgrown all of her socks. I got DS 3 4 pks of underwear because they were cheaper that way and DD 2 6 pks. DD needed a cheap bottle of conditioner and both kids wanted a new brush because they didn't like the one I bought to replace the broken one. I do like it though. It is way better at getting out tangles. So DD wanted a round styling brush and DS just wanted one like the broken one. I also bought a hair dryer because ours shot out sparks and ceased to work.

Fortunately it was all at one store and I had over $13 in credits on my store card. I also ended up getting $5 credit for my next purchase. I was able to ignore any further suggestions from the kids, one of whom wanted yet another pair of PJ bottoms and the other wanted a new sweatshirt and a shirt. None of those things are needs, though.

Oh, and I did buy a set of headphones, but DD is paying me back out of her allowance. Total spent was $130, with DD owing me $20 of that back.

DD gave DS a haircut last night. Someone called him a young lady when he was out with his grandmother so he decided it was time. It wasn't that long, maybe 3 inches, but it was long enough that it was curling so it did give a little bit of a feminine style, but he was wearing boy clothes so not sure how he got mistaken for a girl. DD has gotten quite good with the clippers. I only had to trim up a bit around his ears. So that saved us $15. It's not quite a buzz cut, but no one will be mistaking him for a girl with it, that's for sure.

I really haven't been around much on the blogs this week. It's been a little crazy around here. We bought our new fridge and it is wonderful. I had to get a different type than we had before. While they still make the ones with the regular fridge on top and the freezer on bottom, they no longer make them as wide or as tall or as deep. So I couldn't just get an almost identical replacement, which was what I wanted.

We ended up getting one with a freezer on the bottom and a fridge with French doors on top.



The freezer is really nice. When you pull open the door the bottom bin comes out and the top bin stays in the freezer. If you want the top bin then you pull it out over the bottom bin. I will keep things like ice cream in the top bin so that if I am looking around in the bottom bin for a bit, everything in the top bin will stay cold. I have the top bin pulled out partially for the photo.



The top has three individually temperature controlled drawers. The bottom one stretches the whole width of the fridge and is shallow and it is for things like deli meat and cheeses. And then the other two drawers are for fruits and veggies. I love that I can set the veggie drawer to a higher humidity than the fruit drawer. It also has a shelf that lifts and stacks on itself so you can put a taller item in (the blue pitcher in this case) without having to move or take out a shelf to accommodate it.



It is a deeper fridge than the one we had before. It has 26 cubic feet of space. It uses LED lighting and when you open the French doors (or at least when I do) I feel like the angels are singing Hallelujah! It does light up like the heavenly host, LOL.

It has an ice maker and an interior place for filtered water. None of that is hooked up. We won't hook it up while we are living here, but will when we move to our farm. I really, really love this fridge.

It was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but the low end models just were not big enough. We need something that can hold a lot of produce when we are processing during the garden months and during canning season.

It has a digital read out of the temps in both the fridge and freezer so I don't have to guess or try to find a thermometer to put in there if I suspect something is going wrong like we did with the last fridge. That is a very nice feature to have.

We ended up getting one that cost $1595. I had been aiming for $1200. We got the $149 five year service agreement. That covers as many calls as we might need and if we never use it will be credited back to us for a future purchase at that store if we spend over $799. Since we have bought things over that price range 3 times now from this store in the last 15 years, I figure it will be used one way or the other. We also paid for delivery and to have the old fridge hauled away and recycled.

With tax it all came to close to $2000. I used $700 from the Appliance Fund, $400 from the Vacation Fund, and the rest came from the Christmas Bonus. It was nice to be able to pay for it with cash (which did get us a small discount).

And we bought from a local business instead of a box store, so I feel good about that. We bought it Friday and they delivered it on Saturday. Excellent customer service. One of the guys who delivered it was one of the guys who delivered our bed a couple years ago. I love small businesses with low turnover.

After using this fridge for a day, I love it just as much as I thought I would. It was a good purchase that I don't feel bad about at all. I would have felt bad settling for a fridge that had less than what I wanted. I also would have felt bad if we'd gone for one of the $2500 or $3000 fridges. But this one was just right.

$1400.00 BoA VISA
__100.00 Emergency Fund
___19.00 Dues Fund
___72.56 Internet
___72.00 Water/Sewer Holding Tank
__757.82 Van Loan (plus extra to principal)
__100.00 Property Tax Fund
__100.00 Propane Holding Tank
___40.00 Allowances
__200.00 Laptop Fund
__100.00 College Fund
__100.00 Vacation Fund
__109.00 January Money Fund
__100.00 Moving Fund
__100.00 Appliance Fund
--------------
$3370.38

$700 of the payment to BoA VISA was the $700 I had set aside for Christmas presents. Since they were bought with the VISA I used that money to make the payment. I will make another payment next week to cover the other half of the travel expenses for DH.

Also had 3 Medical Bills:

$90.00 Physical Therapy
$10.62 Doctor
$13.70 Sleep Doctor
----------
$114.32

$380.01 AMEX
$100.00 Emergency Fund
__45.30 Life Insurance DH
__41.88 Life Insurance Me
__69.89 Car Insurance
__47.17 House Insurance
__41.16 Security System Monitoring
_168.00 Storage
-----------
$893.38 Total Money Out

I also have a haircut for DD coming out today and I need to by flannel sheets for both kids.

Other than that I have $600 for groceries and gas and one physical therapy appointment between now and when DH gets paid again on the 13th. There are no bills due between then and now and all I should have to buy at the store is 3 kinds of milk due to allergies (goat's milk, lactaid free, and normal organic), produce, some lunch meat for DD's school lunches. I have enough bread to get through at least a week and I really want to get back to making it again myself anyway. I made mustard last night so I'm even good on condiments, though I do want to pick up more mustard powder as I only had enough to make 1/4 of a pint.

So we should be good there. I'm even hoping there might be a bit extra left over at the end, but not counting on it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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