We made a trip down to the feed mill today to buy rabbit feed. We bought 500 pounds of non-GMO feed for $135.67. We used 3 gallons of gas. The feed works out to $13.56 per 50 pound bag and that includes tax. A 40 pound bag of feed (no guarantee on no GMO's) here costs $19.56 with tax. Even adding the $12 worth of gas to the total, making it $147.67, it still comes out way cheaper. The equivalent amount of feed bought locally would be $244.50, so I come out $96.83 ahead by going directly to the mill.

500 pounds is a two month supply. Possibly longer since we don't have too many kits right now, but when the production gets into full swing again with six litters growing out at a time, it will be a two month supply. From that two month supply of feed we will end up with about 120 pounds of meat at $1.23 a pound. So worth it. Well, maybe $12 more a month in hay, too, but still. That doesn't up it by too much per pound. Plus we are feeding the breeders with that amount as well, not just the kits.

I don't know about you, but I can't find meat for under $1.59 a pound anymore and that is only on a tremendous sale, usually it is closer to $2.49 a pound and that is just for standard, not organic or at least GMO free.

We are talking about getting our fresh water fishing licenses and seeing if we can't catch a bunch of trout. We can can it up. Home canned trout is supposed to taste a lot like canned tuna. After we caught 18 pounds of fish to pay for the licenses, anything else would be free to us. Totally worth it, I think. Assuming we can catch anything. It has been a while since we have gone fishing.

I harvested my first salad and my first raspberries from the garden. I'm on my way to paying back my garden costs for the season.

I feel like half my entries these days are some variation on the theme of me being exhausted. I really, really am. I've got a nasty spring cold and it is dragging me down. I am ready to be done with it.

We are almost done on the online homeschooling front. My son has one 4 paragraph comparison and contrast essay left to do for literature and then we send all the assessments off to the state. We've already gotten his report card and he made honor roll again.

I spent two hours down at the high school today. After more or less taking the semester off after having a nervous breakdown my daughter is going back to school next year. She is doing well on the medications and is really excited to be going back and getting her life back on track.

My son is also going to be starting high school in the fall so he is all signed up now. I really, really hope it works out for both of them, because I don't honestly think I could handle another year of homeschooling. The exhaustion it causes is just really getting to me. It's like I have to have my brain on all the time and some days I just want to shut it down and go on autopilot.

Things are chugging along otherwise. The gardens are growing well and I will harvest my first lettuce leaves tomorrow. I have 7 tomatoes growing and five bell peppers. In another week I can start planting in the hay bales. The green beans have taken off and most of the sprouts are up.

I am going to make some carrot seed tape and get it planted hopefully this weekend. I am just doing Little Finger carrots which don't take too terribly long to grow.

Not too much going on on the financial front. I did have to buy 2 bales of hay and 2 bags of feed. I need to budget for a big rabbit feed buy this payday, ten fifty pound bags. We will call down to the feed mill and make sure they have the 17% protein feed available before we drive down. I think the 21% is just too high for the little kits.

I have done really well on sticking to my menu plan this week. I have been really tempted to eat out, but it is not a good idea when I am sick or I will want to do it every day.

I am not looking forward to this weekend. We have to put in an appearance at my niece's graduation party, which I don't want to go to, but since I couldn't go to the graduation due to it being held in a stadium that is not really handicapped accessible, and DH couldn't go since he was in Alaska, we need to.

Then we have to butcher rabbits and chickens. We can't put it off any longer and we need the cage space. I hope I get some sleep tonight and tomorrow night so I will be in better health to deal with all this.

DH and I have decided to drop the selling price on the house $10K. I just want it gone. We need to meet with the realtors and make an adjustment to the paperwork in order to do so.

DD has her follow up doctor's appointment tomorrow. She is doing really well on the new medication so I think we can cancel the appointment with the sleep doctor now.

Yesterday I spent $90 on physical therapy.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

I sent $1236.41 to the Emergency Fund.

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

I also sent $1000 to the January Money Fund.

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

I added $1000 to the Appliance Fund.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This has been a rollercoaster of a week. We lost 2 kits who had digestive issues making the change from nursing to solid foods. There isn't much that can be done in such a situation as it is the mama that limits the nursing. This is the first time we have lost kits for this reason. It was sad. We tried a special liquid food and feeding with a syringe, but it wasn't enough. Very sad.

This week we also got to meet the little girl that my niece and her husband are adopting. She's a lovely little girl, just 3.5 years old, sweet and shy and crazy about her new mom and dad.

We ground up a bunch more rabbit meat and made six pounds of sausage patties. We also got 2 pounds of stir-fry meat, 8 quarts of soup stock, 2 bags of boiled rib meat from the stock, and 1.75 pounds of burger.

So far I've not had to touch any of the money that we saved for January. But I did transfer the $3000 to my main account and it will arrive on Monday. We don't have a paycheck until the 24th and there are a couple of things that will need to be paid before then. The van loan, the BoA Visa, the internet, and the phone and power both out at the old house.

Not much else going on here. We haven't eaten out at all and we've gotten take away only twice in the last few weeks. We are getting much better at that and cooking a lot. I am still focusing on leftover management. The new fridge helps with that a lot because you can see everything and nothing gets invisible at the back of the fridge.

We will have to get gas tomorrow. The tank is running on fumes. Not much else on the agenda though.

Yesterday DH and I put 6.75 pounds of rabbit meat through our new electric meat grinder.



It worked great and the results were very nice. It looks sort of like ground pork, but not as fatty. DH cooked up some of it for cheeseburgers for dinner last night using his new 17 inch cast iron pan (which I can't even lift by myself). It was fantastic. I never dreamed rabbit burger would be so good. I guess I should have because it is great every other way we've tried it. So we now have a ground beef substitute. Although we will continue to use beef on occasion the organic, sustainably raised stuff has gotten to be $7 a pound.

We've got four more that need to be cut up. I am planning three of them for mostly grinding to burger and one to do up for stir-fry meat. We'll be boiling the bones for stock and canning up some soup with the meat that falls off the bones and the resulting broth.

We also have 8 more that have hit the 5 pound mark that need to be taken care of. We will probably do them this weekend, since it is supposed to be clear.

I've been learning to cook on cast iron. We pulled the 3 pans we were given as a wedding present out of storage and have seasoned them and started using them. We've had one pan too many flake their Teflon off. Even the nicer pans are looking worse for wear, except for the stainless steel ones. The cast iron is working great. It is truly non-stick. I love using it. I just wish it weren't so heavy. I need to eventually get a 12 inch skillet. I am already planning on getting the Dutch oven for my upcoming birthday in February. Maybe I'll get both.

I need to start posting my menu plans again. We have actually done very well. We've only gotten take out once as a family since DH came home on the 19th. DH and I did get Subway one day while we were picking up feed and didn't have the kids with us. Ouch. For the two of us it was just under $25. Although my sandwich gave me two meals, I did not realize they had gotten so pricey.

I can't eat the cheap stuff anymore though. The last time I had McD's I got sick. The last time I had Arby's (with a coupon) I got sick. I think it is because my diet is normally so free of high fructose corn syrup, which they both use in their buns, that I can't tolerate it anymore. In a way it's good I guess, because I'm not spending so much money on that kind of food and am more willing to cook at home. I have better uses for the money, too.

So I've got an appointment set up for Wednesday with the principal, guidance counselor, and the horrible teacher. That woman is a piece of work, I tell you. She knew she was supposed to have the work for DD to get today. My daughter waited before school until one minute before the bell rang and the teacher was not in her classroom. She had to run to not be late to her first class.

Then after school, no sign of the teacher. She waited 15 minutes. The classroom was open and the lights on, just no teacher. I think she did it on purpose. And I think she'll try to play it like DD didn't show up for it. I am beyond livid. B***h is going down. Sorry for the language, I seldom get worked up enough to think it, let alone sort of type it out.

Oh, well, nothing to be done now. I have a weekend that does not need to be taken up with anger and resentment.

I got 10 quarts of rabbit meat canned today and plan to make soup and soup stock for canning tomorrow with all the ribcage pieces. Hoping to get at least 10 quarts of that canned as well. I also want to do 25 pounds of organic potatoes and the store has wild caught fresh Keta salmon on sale for $2.49 a pound so want to get about 3 of those to can. I also want to do a batch of pickles.

I picked up some pears at $1 a pound. I am not probably going to can pears this year, but I did want to enjoy them while they are in season and less expensive. Maybe after I get everything done this weekend I will have a different opinion on canning some. We'll see. I am definitely planting pear trees when we move. Then we can at least be assured of good organic pears eventually.

I've gotten my files from the big box store. Now I just need to update them and I can do a payday report for last week. I'm behind, but nothing is urgent at the moment. If the computer was going to go belly up, now was a good time of the pay cycle to do it.

So last night I bought a whole salmon, 5 1/2 pounds, and today I cut it up and canned it. Surprisingly it only makes 6 pints of canned fish. I will know for next time to buy twice as much fish so I can do a full canner load. The salmon was wild caught coho on sale for $6.99 a pound, so it came out to $38 and some odd cents. It will definitely be cheaper for us to catch our own fish in the future, but for now we'll have some easy to eat salmon for one of those days I do not want to cook.

I also bought a 25 pound bag of organic carrots for $22 at the food co-op. It made 19 quart jars and there was enough peels and tips and ends cut off to feed to the rabbits for about 3 days. Of course I can't feed them carrots every day because of high sugar content, but I can give them some every other day. I am keeping the scraps in water to prevent them drying out.

My back and shoulders are killing me, though. It takes a lot of work to peel and cut up 25 pounds of carrots. It'll be worth it though when we have the makings for quick crockpot stew this winter.

Sweetie Belle had her first litter of kits yesterday late afternoon. I don't know how many yet as she was adamant about me not going into her cage even when I bribed her with a piece of purple kale. She just snatched the kale and then shoved the door shut with her nose. I will do it this afternoon and make sure they are all healthy. She actually gave birth in the nesting box which is a rarity for first time mothers, but I guess she thought it was the best place.

Piper gave birth to her fifth litter this morning. Not in the nesting box, surprisingly. I will also count and check on the health of her babies this afternoon. Judging from the size of the pile of fur this is not a small litter of six kits. Maybe she felt the nesting box was not large enough.

So we've gone from a rabbit population of 28 to who knows how many. Could be over 40. Six are due for slaughter soon, but not for another week at least. And we'll start weaning Lola's litter on Thursday and move them to the one empty grow out cage. By the time they are ready to be split up the other six will have gone to freezer camp. Or pressure canner camp. Either way we'll have a whole lot more meat put up for the winter.

We dispatched four of our meat rabbits today. From a live weight of 22 pounds, 11.7 ounces, we got 11 pounds, 6.3 ounces of rabbit meat and 12.3 ounces of livers, for a total of 12 pounds, 2.6 oz of food. They ate about $7 worth of feed, $1 worth of hay, and $4 worth of vegetables over their life, so it comes out to about $1 per pound. We could get a smidge more if we saved the hearts and kidneys, too, but we don't. They go to the wildlife center along with the heads and other offal.

I'd say the rabbits are paying for themselves and we are ending up with lots of good, low-fat, lean white meat in the freezer at a price that just can't be beat by anything but the cheapest chicken hindquarters and you can bet those chickens never saw daylight.

Phoebe gave birth this morning, another large litter with 8 healthy kits. We'll have a break from kindling for a while, as the next two rabbits to give birth are only one week pregnant, so have three weeks and four days to go. In another couple of months we should be able to have rabbit twice a week if we so desire.

I am going to can some rabbit meat this week and some rabbit broth for making soup later this winter, or possibly canning carrot, potato, celery, bits of meat, and onion right in the broth and can it as soup. I would also like to make up some rabbit nuggets for the freezer. And maybe some rabbit stir-fry kits, too.

That means I'll need to dig up some potatoes and get some organic carrots from the farmer's market or the no spray garden in town. I doubt anyone has grown celery here, it is kind of hit or miss in our zone, but I can get it from the store if needs must be. Organic though. It sucks up pesticides just like carrots.

It would be great to have enough soups done up to get through winter and spring, but that may not be possible yet.

-------

The repair around the skylights and the final application of stuff to make the floors look like shiny wood instead of dull wood, will get put on this weekend. We just need to find out how long it takes for the shiny stuff to dry. Then we'll go in with the realtor and see where things stand.

Is it really only Thursday? Feels like I hit the ground running and never stopped. Just outdoor farm chores and indoor house cleaning and organizing and building rabbit tractors and moving rabbits outside in the morning and back inside in the evening and chicken care, etc.

We ate our first homegrown, home slaughtered, home butchered rabbit today. Took me almost a month before I was ready to take one out of the freezer and cook it, but now I know we can do this self-sufficiency thing.

I have been very busy picking berries. Because of the heat wave we have blackberries, raspberries and blueberries all ripe at once. This never happens. It is always staggered through the summer. So we are hustling to get as much picked as we can to freeze for the upcoming year.

We have spent very little this week. Mostly for things like milk for us and fresh chard and carrots for the rabbits. We are sticking to the meal plan well and DS has stopped asking to go to the store and buy chicken pot pies, his weakness. I am determined to keep our spending down and I am feeling better with several home cooked meals under my belt again. When you get out of the habit, you really get out of the habit.

One of my rabbits, Phoebe, kindled yesterday. It was an accidental mating that we thought we had interrupted in time, because she was a little young. But just to be on the safe side I gave her a nesting box a few days ago. A good thing I did, too, because she had nine kits. One was born on the wire, but I must have come in within minutes so we were able to rescue it and get it safely tucked in with its siblings. Despite being not quite 6 months old (she will be on the 2nd) she has done very well for her first litter.

That is going to be about 30 pounds of pasture raised meat for us when they grow out, since we have them in the rabbit tractors on any day it isn't raining. They'll eat about $30 worth of feed in those 14 weeks as well as all the fresh grass, herbs, and berry leaves I can harvest from around the lot and a few veggies like chard that are growing in the garden. That is going to work out to be $1 a pound. This is starting to pay for itself now.

We also bred Piper today. Her seven kits will be weaned starting next Sunday and will be out of her cage by the time she is two weeks pregnant. Her current kits will be ready to harvest in 7 weeks.

Our new cages came and we will start assembling those on Wednesday when DH gets home. We spent $305 for three cages, a stacking frame, 3 feeders, and a couple more nest boxes plus shipping. We will likely spend $200 more to make 4 more rabbit tractors. Then hopefully we won't have to spend any more on housing this year.

It was very hot yesterday, it got up to 90 degrees F. I had to spend a lot of time checking on the rabbits as they don't do over 80 very well. I've got two circulating fans in the shed, and they have frozen water bottles that go into their cages and they lay against them to help cool off. Rabbits only lose heat through their ears, so they need help in keeping cool when the weather is like this. It's supposed to be like this all week so I won't be going anywhere for very long. I do hope to get some swimming in though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And housecleaning. It needs it.

Not too much going on here today. It was a no spend day. I added $1.72 to the coin jar. I got a $5 giftcard from Swagbucks for Amazon, bringing my account to $135 in gift cards. This will be helpful at Christmas. I was also able to cash out today for another one. SB has been going pretty well this week. I hit the daily goal 4 out of 7 days. I would have hit it yesterday, too, but my daughter came in to have a serious discussion at 11:30 p.m. and I missed it by 6 points because I thought she needed my full attention. Oh, well. Some things are just way more important in life than an extra few points.

I haven't made it over to the food co-op yet. I think I probably could avoid it altogether, but just really want to buy some fresh wild salmon, so will be going tomorrow. I'll buy tortillas, freshly ground peanut butter, raw honey, and ice cream cones while there, since they have the type DS can have with his allergies. And maybe some Sundrops, too. Those are like M&M's only without artificial food colors, fake vanilla, and HFCS. I'll also see if they have Lima bean seeds. Lima beans are the only dried bean I can stand so I thought I'd grow and can some this year if I can find the seeds. I am hoping to spend no more than $100 there.

I also want to buy a watermelon and more strawberries from the farm stand. Although I should probably hold off on the strawberries since I managed to consume 2 pounds on my own since Friday. Okay, I had them with all three meals each day, but even I know that is an awful lot before they are fully in season.

I have a seven pound bone-in picnic ham in the crockpot to cook overnight, as I don't have any lunch meat for DD to take to school. She will be happy to cut a hunk off that come morning to take with her and DS and I will have breakfast and lunch taken care of (ham and eggs and hot ham and provolone cheese sandwiches).

I weighed the rabbit kits today. They are four weeks old. The biggest two are 1 pound 8 ounces each. The biggest last week was 14 3/8 ounces, so they have grown a lot. All kits are over a pound now with the smallest being 1 pound 1.5 ounces. Total litter weight is 8 pounds 2 ounces. Last week it was 5 pounds 4 ounces, so they have gained just 2 ounces shy of 3 pounds this week.

They are all very, very friendly so I think handling them daily since they came out of the nesting box was the right move. I am not seeing much skittishness at all. I am hoping one of the fast gainers is a female. Since I decided not to keep any of the 16 week olds for breeding because of skittishness, I'd like to keep one from this litter. Also, if I decide to sell any, extreme friendliness is a much wanted quality.

But right now I'm not sure I want to sell any, since our rabbitry is still small and it'll be a while before we can cover our meat needs and have surplus to sell. I'd like to get to the point where we have enough in the freezer to have rabbit once a week and be able to sell live, too.

Once we actually get to that point I will probably start raising coturnix quail as well for both eggs and meat. For the time being our egg needs are nicely met by the chickens, but once we move we won't have them unless we want to start from chicks again and I'm not sure I do. Plus coturnix hit maturity at 7 weeks old and they are so much easier to dress (maybe 2 to 3 minutes per quail), they are much more efficient at converting feed to meat than chickens, and have a much smaller footprint.

The quail are something we are looking at for next summer, since we'd have to buy an incubator. We can convert the outdoor rabbit hutches to quail cages, though, although we'd still need to buy or make breeding cages. Hatch rates on quail are about 50 to 70 percent and most of them will not sit on their own eggs, hence the incubator. Either that are we get a broody banty or silky chicken. When eating the eggs, it's about 4 to 5 eggs to equal the equivalent of a chicken egg, but they lay every day which chickens do maybe every 36 to 48 hours. We'd need about 15 females to meet the family's egg needs and then several breeding pairs for hatching eggs that would then be raised to maturity for butchering.

Also both quail and rabbits fall under the pet category for petsitters, so they are great livestock to have if you want to be able to go on vacation once in a while. Petsitters/house sitters are easier to find than farmsitters and don't require a ton of care, though they do need some stuff done daily.

Some day I'd really like to be sustainable enough with the rabbits and birds that we could also trade for organic grass-fed beef, milk, and cheese, organic pork, free range chicken, and the more difficult fruits and vegetables to grow.

Our newborn kits are a week old already. They have sure grown!

We spent a good portion of Saturday at a meat rabbit expo. I fell in love with a New Zealand Red and a couple of the New Zealand Black rabbits. They are really beautiful and I wanted some, but we have made the decision to not buy any more rabbits for our little rabbitry until next year. We have enough to make a go of it, and we don't want to bite off more than we can chew.

Most of them were for sale for $20, so I will keep the expo in mind for next year when I am ready to buy rabbits. Rabbits usually cost $25 to $30 directly from breeders, but they were less at the expo just because they are trying to encourage more people to get into it and the whole homesteading movement with small, sustainably raised meat animals.

I wrote more about it on my farm blog, so if you want more details than that you can go there to read about it. My side bar has details how.

This payday was a small one and there wasn't much to do. The only bills coming out of it are $72 to savings for the water bill, and the phone bill from the old house. Oh, and we renewed our license tabs. They were $85.70.

We worked some more on the PVC hutch frame, adding a second layer. It's going to make things so much easier. In fact it already has. The new rabbits we bought last Sunday have one more week in quarantine before I can put them in with the other rabbits. That will streamline care again.

Yesterday and today all of the non-carpet flooring is going down. No more excuses, although the guy did have a good one, he sliced his hand open last weekend and had to get 14 stitches, he didn't use it. He was working only in a supervisory capacity today, but the work is being done. It's both bathrooms, the laundery room the kitchen, the dining room and the walkway from the front door to the dining room.

That means we should be able to call the carpet guys tomorrow to schedule an appointment. Carpet is going into the living room and the four bedrooms. The floors get too cold out there if you are only using the wood stove to heat with to not have carpet in the main rooms. It's not as bad if you are using the propane furnace, but I still always wore socks out there. After the carpet is laid, the doors go into the frames, new laminate goes on the bathroom vanity tops and then the house is done. We may have to do a bit of landscaping outside, but hopefully not too much more than add a couple of plants, keep the lawn mowed, and the ditches weed-eaten.

I hope this means we can put it on the market in June. I really want to have it ready for the summer buyers. It can take people up to 90 days to get approved for a mortgage sometimes, even with pre-approval, so even if we do find a buyer, unless they are using cash, it's still going to take some time. I just really want to be on the other side of this and seriously looking for our dream home/farm.

Today was long, but everyone is now snuggled up safe and warm and happy and we are nine bunnies richer (or a lot of money poorer, but they will eventually pay us back).

Here are the hutches for the does:



And the one for the buck, which has a silver roof instead of brown:



This is Leo the Storm Master, our nine month old buck:



This is Piper, a nine month old doe, with her litter of 3 week old kits:



And this is Phoebe, who is 9 1/2 weeks old and will be a breeding doe when she is old enough:



So far we have paid $551.40 for start up costs. I figure it'll take about a year to earn that back. Plus I want to get another grown doe and buck from a different breeder and we'll need to make a few cages, so that will add a bit. On the plus side, though, we already have someone who wants to buy rabbit meat from us, our daughter's best friend's mother.

I need to find out for sure what license I need to get to butcher for sale. I've saved a couple of .PDFs with the info, but haven't had time to read them yet since I've been reading the stuff on care. We are 5 to 7 weeks away from butchering though so I have time to find out and do the proper legal stuff. And we probably won't sell any of this first batch. I want to keep the biggest, strongest girl to grow up for a breeder and that will only leave five to go to freezer camp. I might part with one. We'll see. She knows it may be half a year before we have enough to sell some.

And tonight is setting out to be an insomniac night. Anyway, I had my sleep study done, and it was a doozy of a night. They might call it a sleep study, but it was more a study on how many wires they could hook you up to and then put you in the most uncomfortable, unsupportive bed on the planet, make you sleep on your back and then wake you up every so many hours. It was exhausting.

I do have problems with breathing though. I don't know exactly what but I had 30 incidents during the first two hour test, so then they tested me on the CPAP machine. I did okay until about 5 a.m. when I got stuffed up. Then I used some nasal spray and was fine to put it back on.

Anyway, I go in on the 13th to meet with the doctor about the results and get a mask fitting done. Then on Thursday the 14th, I will get my permanent crown since they screwed this one up and it was an ugly yellow color instead of tooth color. So they will redo it, which means I get to have it 2 days before we go to Disneyland. Ugh. I did have my cleaning done today though. I get them every four months because of some serious troubles I had with my teeth. We are looking at about one more year of that before the healing has been enough for me to go back to the twice a year the insurance actually pays for.

I made a payment on the crown anyway today of $336. I will pay the final payment of $328.57 the first week of April. I may very well be spending my Emegency Fund back down to pay for all of this and all of the sleep stuff if I don't want to carry a balance on the credit card. *sighs*

And our insurance rates just went up. Our portion is now $753.95. It has gone up $107.29, but since it is pretax, it will only affect the take home pay by $65 a month. Only, I say. Since it's now a change of $665 a month between this and taxes, it's getting tighter. Same ridiculous $2500 dedictible per family, $1250 per individual. I will be meeting mine pretty darn soon, I imagine.

I will remind myself in the future that if we go to Disneyland again, we need to get it away from the first of the year when medical is so high because of the deductible. It would be much better to go in September or October. But at this rate we won't be going on vacation again for a good five years or so, so this one better stay in our memories for a long while. Not unless DH gets offered a way better job with better pay and better benefits somewhere else on the slope. *sighs* Not likely right now.

After this trip the belts get tighter and we will push out some of the meager luxury items once again. We barely had them, so we shouldn't miss them too much. And once we get our rabbits going, and our chicken fryers, our food costs should go way down in the protein department. And our massive garden this year should bring down produce costs as well as providing plenty for canning. One way or another we'll find ways to save money and not go back into debt.

Well, seems like the dairy industry is up to its old tricks. Bad enough that it fought to keep bovine growth hormones off dairy labels and won, and that those that label their milk as having no hormones have to also say that the government has shown no danger from it (in this country, anyway) but now they want to put synthetic sweetners into dairy products without having to put it on the label. I can't even... With my family's allergies, this could very well cause serious damage.

Artificial sweetners cause us hives, swelling, respiratory problems, and digestional upset to the point that you feel like your intestines are trying to become out-testines at the same time you are vomitting up your stomach. Making these changes without labelling them is irrepsonsible, reckless, and dangerous to many people. I don't like going to the hospital so that I can breathe and I don't like my kids having to do that, either.

This is taken verbatim from the Feingold Newsletter I received today. Feingold is the diet my son is on due to his food allergies. They fight hard for truth in labelling, because of what lying labels or lack of labels can do.

The dairy industry has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to change their rules governing what is allowed to be put in milk and other dairy products. The industry's main goal is to be able to add synthetic sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose (Splenda), and other such chemicals, to dairy products without having to tell the consumer.

The articles that are coming out on this proposal have been confusing, but that's not surprising since the wording of the dairy industry's petition is vague and confusing!

The petition discusses adding the sweeteners to flavored milks -- marketed widely to schools -- but without labeling the milk as being lower in sugar or calories because the children would not like that. (So they apparently believe that the typical student, with about 12 minutes to eat lunch, is going to actually read his milk carton!)

The dairy industry claims that this will help reduce childhood obesity, even though studies have shown that fake sweeteners actually increase the desire for sweet foods and can cause weight gain.

Moreover, the dairy industry claims consumers don't know that flavored milks are sweetened anyhow, and such changes will "promote honesty and fair dealing." What they have neglected to say is that with the sale of milk steadily declining, this is an effort to boost sales, especially in schools wanting to limit sugar.

/newsletter

Me again. What gets me is that they think we don't know that flavored milks are sweetened. I mean, BIG FAT DUH! We do so. It doesn't come out of the cow that way. And such changes will not promote honesty. How can it promote honesty when leaving it off the label is lying? No ethics whatsover in these people, if they're going to pull that.

The public is not stupid. Mostly. What the public is, more or less, is powerless. Don't stay powerless. At least let your voice be heard. Here is a link to give your opinion of this insane idea. It won't hurt them to put it on the label, but it will hurt countless people if they don't.

http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2009-P-0147...

/rant

Maybe getting a milk goat is not as far-fetched as I once thought.

I picked up my first rabbit hutch today and the guy is going to make me two more tomorrow. They cost $85 each. It's an expense that will eventually pay for itself. We love rabbit meat so it is going to be worth it. I am glad we had set aside some of the money from our tax return. I guess we are really going to do this.

We'll go to the rabbitry on Saturday to get our New Zealand whites. It's a big step, but I think it will be just as positive as raising poultry has been. It's a big step on our path to sustainable living.

I also spent $38.52 at the grocery store today. Paleo is a bit more expensive than even the lower carb diet I was on before, but I feel the benefits so much more, too, so I guess that's okay.

I might actually be getting rabbits in the next two weeks. First, I thought I was a year out from this, then I thought a couple of months, but the perfect opportunity has arisen and if all goes well, I could be the proud new owner of 14 rabbits. It's $175 for the lot, 2 does, 1 buck, and 11 5 to 7 week olds. That works out to $12.50 per rabbit. I think if we get them we will save the best looking young doe of the babies for breeding and the other youngsters will end up going to freezer camp after they've grown enough.

I can really see this cutting down our food budget in the future. Obviously this lot will be the most expensive, but after we breed the rabbits again, it will just be the cost of feed to get them to size. A few years ago, I never thought I'd be raising livestock, but now I'm turning into a mini-farmer.

The kids are already trying to name the buck Stormaggeden the Destroyer. I'm like, no, I was thinking Leo, Piper, Phoebe and Prue for the breeders. If we get them.

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

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

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

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

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

I paid out $90 for physical therapy today.

I am a bit outside my 100 mile food shed this week with both fresh pineapple and fresh kiwi, but not outside my West Coast food shed with the Cali oranges and orange bell peppers. We've been fighting sniffles for two weeks here, so a big boost of vitamin C was in the cards. And everything was on sale, so didn't bite the budget too badly. I may not be terribly seasonal on anything but oranges with the fruit but the veggies are in season except the canned green beans.

I still have frozen prunes, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries, not to mention six kinds of jelly from summer, but some days you just want to go a little more tropical. I will be planting far more peppers this year to freeze and hope to be getting a couple of cold hardy kiwis once we move. They can grow in Seattle so I think they will grow here okay. If I ever have a greenhouse I will try to grow pineapple bushes and some miniature citrus trees, but those are still pretty unlikely to thrive here.

Anyway on to the food:

Monday--
Homemade pizza with homemade sauce, mozzarealla, orange bell pepper strips, ham, onions, and pepperoni
Pineapple

Tuesday--
Oven baked chicken
Baked potatoes
Cole slaw
Pineapple

Wednesday--
Braided chili loaf
Cole slaw
Oranges

Thursday--
Spaghetti with Meatballs
Green beans
Oranges

Friday--
Baked Wild Pacific Salmon
Broccoli/cauliflower
Carrots
Homemade sweet potato fries

Saturday--
Bacon cheese burgers
Homemade French Fries
Kiwi fruit
Cole slaw

Sunday--
Roast Duck
Roasted potatoes and carrots
Broccoli/cauliflower
Drop biscuits with choice of homemade jam

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most, but not all, of the debt repayment hit our credit report. We have a monitoring service through Experian due to theft years ago. I'm paranoid enough about it, to keep tabs on at least one of our reports. So it is lagging one month behind on the mortgage, but it was lagging 3 months behind as I think the credit union only reports it quarterly, and it is one payment behind on both the AMEX and the BoA, but it will catch up. Meanwhile our credit score went up to 790.

Now I'm all antsy for February 8th to get here and I can start paying the Chase card off. It's kind of contagious, that push to get further and further out of debt. Paying Chase off probably won't have much of an effect on our credit score. It's the car loan that is likely keeping it from going over 800. Still, we are positioning ourselves well to buy a new house.

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We went down to the sustainable, free-ranging, organic (and grass fed in the case of the beef, no soy or GMO's in the case of the chickens) farm today and I spent $297.78 of my $300 monthly meat budget. We came back with 4 chuck roasts, 8 pork chops, 2 beef stir-fry, 2 bacon, 2 whole chickens, 10 ground beef, and 2 ground pork. We still have a couple of packs of bacon and some hamburger from our last trip, so this should meet our protein needs nicely for the month. And of course there are our free eggs from the backyard chickens.

I really hope to be able to order a half a steer this year. We will see how it goes. I also wouldn't mind a whole pig, but the ranch doesn't do that so we'd have to find another source. They do a $300 box of pork though. I'm not really sure if it's worth getting though, because we pretty much only eat bacon, ground pork, and pork chops when it comes to pork. Very occasionally I will make pulled pork for burritos from a roast, but not often.

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On the way back from the farm there was a gas station that had gas for $3.17 a gallon if you had cash, so DH and I ransacked his wallet and my purse and scraped together $31 (including the last couple bucks of the meat budget money) for gas, since the absolute cheapest it is in our county is $3.25. So the tank sits at 3/4 full now. Well worth it since we were driving by it anyway.

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We went to Costco after we got home and I used my rebate coupon. We stocked up on some toiletries, garbage bags, canned pineapple, butter, and oranges. Charmin had a $2 off coupon, so that was nice. We stopped at another store for Organic milk, green onions and bananas.

I feel like I put myself through the wringer today, though. On the bright side my knee isn't hurting. On the not so bright side everything else is. I'm sure it will be better in the morning, though. It usually is.