Well, I have been working on this all week, I also have been figuring out critter imputes in terms of meat, milk, eggs, last night we had a surprise in the little barn with a new clutch of peeping ducklings to greet us at nighttime chores.
So I had a hard time giving prices to everything, some things were very hard to figure out, example, what do you put on a per pd price of high bush cranberries, finally went with the local price per pd for fresh cranberries as its making the same product but is that fair?
Most of the prices make me cringe just a little, as I would not pay it if I had to buy it, I went to the last local farmers market yesterday with my little book to record prices on fall products, thankfully I can look up the prices on the store by the flyers, and I will admit to being surprised and to a point unhappy at some of the prices at the local market, I will give two quick examples
Right now at our local apple u-pick you can get 52 pds of apples for 48 dollars however at the stores its a dollar a pd, and at the farmers market it was 3 pds for 5 dollars, so 1.66 a pd.
Sqaush is the ranging between 77 cents per pd up to 1.77 per pd at the stores and the average price of them at the farmers market was 5 dollars for about a 3 to 4 pds sqaush, so around 1.42 per pd.
Fresh local organic potato’s is at a very high primium, the amount is crazy to me, but I refuse to short change my garden produces.. So now that almost all the spring/summer/early fall crops are off, I feel comfortable doing a total for the year, while there will be some herbs, some greens and some green onions and salad greens over the next two months, the big push is done..
Assorted Hard Fruits total of 261 pds = $317,
Assorted Soft Fruits total of 430 pds = $956
Assorted Veggies total of 1404 pds =$1635.
For a grand total of 2095 pds = $2908 for 2011
So next year I have the goal of getting over that three thousand mark.. so how did I do? How did you do? How much did you save with your homegrown fruits and veggies? How many pds did you produce?
Garden Counts for 2011 to date
Hard Fruits
Apples-77 pds $77
Crabapples-44 pds $35
Wild Crabapples-61 pds $60
Cherries Sour-16 pds $28
Cherries Sweet-3 pds $4
Pears- 12 pds $24
Mulberries- 4 pds (this one is hard, try and price out local organic mulberries, so priced it like gooseberries?) $12
Plums-14 pds $28
Wild Plums-8pds $16
Peaches-22 pds $33
Total Hard Fruit $317
Soft Fruits
Gooseberries-13 pds $39
Elderberries-59 pds $177 ( I went with the local health store price for frozen per pd)
Chokeberries-26 pds $52 ( Went one dollar less per pd then elderberries)
Cranberries- 2 pds $8
High Bush Cranberries- 5 pds $20
Strawberries-88 pds $176 (went with the local organic price I had down from spring time)
Raspberries-48 pds $96 (went with the current price in store)
Blueberries (both wild and farm)- 13 pds $39
Rhubarb-65 pds $195
Red Currents-11 pds $33
Black Currents-None
BlackBerries- 9 pds $27
Grapes- 91 pds -$94
Total Soft Fruits $956
Garden
Beans=46 pds $33
Cucumbers-58 pds $ 53
Zucchini- 22 pds $ 22 (the price of Zucchini locally is crazy!)
Acorn Squash-22 pds $22
Butternut Squash- 68 pds $137
Potatoes-268 pds so far. $536 pds(local organic potota are running 2 per pds)
Basil- one quart jar dried $30
Tomatoes-311 pds $172(if I was buying them buy the bushel locally for roma’s)
Storing Onions- 36 pds $22
Green onions- 22 pds $22
horseradish-8 pds $32
Kale-12 pds $12
Collard Greens- 17 pds $17
Kohlrabi- 8 pds $16
Green’s salad mix- 26 pds $26
Romane-11 pds $11
Broccoli- 33 pds $33
Asparagus- 24 pds $48
Peppers-98 pds $81
Pea’s- 5 pds $4
Pumpkin- 60 pds $35
Muskmelon-10 pds $30
Watermelons- 18 pds $14
Carrots- 44pds $29
Beets-61 pds $61
Radishes-11 pds $11
Corn- 52 pds on the cob $18
Cabbage 38 pds $78
Turnips -37 pds $74
Total veggies $ 1635
Total count for 2011 to date oct 2011 = $2908
Just another Day on the Farm 
That’s a pretty impressive number and doesn’t even take take the processign into account (how much would a jar of tomato sauce or jam cost if you had to buy them?).
My gardens were poor this year but I’ve had some luck foraging and gleaning so while no where near you numbers, our shelves are decently stocked with very little monetary output.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Callie
It surprised me honestly that it was that much, I am glad a couple folks asked this spring for me to keep track, got to admit that the weighing is a pain as its just one more thing to do in the routine, but it was worth it to be able to have some solid numbers to work with..
O boy did your comment about what it would cost to replace just made me both groan and also get a look on the face, how would you figure it out, I will take a stab at it, but going to have to try and figure out costs as well to do a proper breakdown, still will see what I can get figured out.
Foraging and gleaning makes such a difference that is for sure, there is so much out there right now for the taking that so few seem to want.. Happy thanksgiving to you as well.
Love this! Doesn’t it just make you feel great (maybe tired, but great)? 🙂 Was it what you were expecting? I was a little floored when I did this last year, but there are certainly some price differences in how we figured out the worth of what we grew. I don’t know if you are short changing yourself or if there are some drastic differences in what things are going for in our respective areas – the two that jump out at me are the red currants and peppers. Red currants here are easily $3 or $4 for half a pint! 11 pounds would cost me roughly a bazillion dollars. And peppers I’ve seen going for $1 each at market (yellow and orange). Also, I think you could easily double what you came up with when you take into account you are preserving it all and not paying out of season prices. And like Callie said, you are making all sorts of great stuff out of all of it, and you just can’t buy that kind of goodness. So awesome, Farmgal. As for me, I’ve found it thoroughly enjoyable not weighing a single thing this year! 😉
Hi Daisy,
you are correct, they have been charging a dollar a pepper at the local farmers market most of the season and I went with the price I would be able to buy a half bushel at the most reasonable vender at the height of it being on sale.. so yes, if looked at that way I am short changing myself there.
Same with the currents, no one sells them around here so I went with frozen prices as they were the only ones I could find, so looks like they should have been much higher priced overall,
The funny thing is that when I did a quick math (with everything on the lower side) I figured at a min of another 3 thousand for added value for my own canned stuff but when talking to my mom, she said I had really undervalued my prices on that as well, like putting a 2 dollar per pint on my homemade relish where she just got a pint for 6.99 in her local area so I am guessing that I could safely double to triple that number.
It does make me feel really good, and yes a bit tired, having said that I really looking forward to lots of projects that I have coming, and I am already looking forward to preparing the garden for wintersowing planting and we already were noting what we want to grow more of or less of next year today.
Was it what I expected, can’t really say what I expected, it was such a great garden year but some things got planted early, some on time and lots late, some things were done in new ways that worked great and others that failed..
Wow, you spent a lot of time getting the numbers!
I’ve never weighed out our garden harvests, only milk, rabbits, and chickens (live and butchered). I’ve always felt it’s too much of a bother and turns a passion into “work” when quantifying home grown produce. Also, there are the added bonuses of homegrown foods like seed saving and composting that go hand-in-hand with gardening and I don’t believe people track that sort of thing but probably should if they’re interested in seeing a more accurate accounting of homegrown versus store-bought.
Once in a while, I’ll make a mental note of the per pound cost of some produce and chuckle at how much we harvested through our own toil. As for saving money, it’s not a factor that we consider. I can’t put a price on our own homegrown foods because they’re organically raised and so safe that I can eat them fresh-picked, standing along side a garden bed. I wouldn’t even do that if I bought something organically raised. So how can you price the confidence in the freshest and the safest foods when comparing your homegrown foods to store-bought? Know what I mean??
Hi Lynn
Yes, it did take a bit to get all the numbers, but thanfully I did it in tiny small amounts of time over the whole spring/summer/fall on the blog, not sure I would want to do this yearly but then again, it sure was nice to be able to give that kind of information to the hubby,might be worth the work to do it for a couple years to get a base line now that we expanded the garden to the full acre this year, not that it all got planted properly.
While the food quality is top of the list, the fact that I work full time on the farm does mean that having a idea of what I have saved us, is a good thing, but I really do get what you mean, and yes there is really no way to compare the foods.
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