Ok, I am wanting to track this down for this coming year.. May has been a good month, some heat, good amount of rain and lots of growth in the pasture, yard and gardens are all sprouting up.
May has been a run like it matters month.. you get up with a plans and go to bed early tired and sore as you get your garden muscles back.
Costs for May 2017
Hay-$300.00
Feed- $56.00
Straw- 12
Farm Output- Personal use only but local costs to replace if bought off the farm
- Eggs: 7 dozen at 5 per dozen as eating eggs- $35 dollars
- Sheep Milk- 40 liter -(Moving the milk price to the same as the lady down the road that sells it at 8 dollars per liter)-320
Manure: Finished composting down.. at least 140 dollars worth of compost produced this month.- 140
1 new lambs (current market value per lamb 100 as bottle babies Price dropped down since last month. -100 - Lambs info (* for later in the year, I Will adjust the price to reflect the butcher, the return and sale price sale, but for this month, lets stay with if I sold them as a bottle baby this month)
- 8 pounds of rabbit meat – 5 dollars per pound locally- 40
- 11 new rabbit kits- ( do not know how to figure them in, will do them at butcher time)
- Hatch #2 is in but we had a longer then wanted power loss, I cover it and am hoping for the best, we will see.
Farm loss’s in Feb
- 4 chickens (two hens and two roosters) all show quality, in mated sets of two.. killed by a coon.. a 100 dollar loss (and if I do not get chick’s hatched in the coming hatch, it was a total loss)
Farm extra’s Costs
- Farm Hand Help -60
Farm extra’s..
Ferrier – 150 (trims and Caleb shoes) He lost both of his shoes in the deep spring wet mud and I had to pay for a full new set, less then three weeks after getting them done.. sigh!
Vet- (meds- 80)
Garden Overview May
Total Garden Costs -$ 17
Total Garden Return – $527
Total Out cost for May on for the farm -$ 675 output cash costs
Farm impute Value – 1,122.00
Total output of the farm in returns
- Jan – In the hole –1,029
- Feb – In the Hole –1,429
- March-On the good side -$ 1,038
- April -On the good side -$279
- May -On the good side- 487.00
Yearly total Minus- 654.00
Do you think I will get to the good in June 🙂 I think we will!
Goals- No selling of anything off the farm is planned, the saving costs are what we would have to pay if we bought in the local free market to replace what the farm produces that improves our lives.
Its a tracking year..
and also I have had and seen a number of comments many times of folks saying, my 5 acres and under homestead needs to pay for itself.. well, I like to think mine does, I like to think that a well-run homestead can do just that! So lets see if I am right or not?
Just another Day on the Farm 
For sure I think your five acres will more than pay for itself – and then some. We’ve 10 acres, but half is ‘bush’. I used to toy with the idea of clearing it to pasture so we would have more grazing – but then I look at my neighbors barren flat ten acres, their lack of bird life, frogs, wildfowl, etc. and I long ago decided to leave the bush alone. It also keeps the temperature down slightly. We did finally clear a trail through it to allow the drafts in to forage – they love it. So technically, on five acres including the house and barns and sheds, our place does pay for itself. Not selling anything off farm turned out to be a large part of the equation. Raising livestock/birds for others, turns out to be a huge cost despite the belief that ‘well we have some for us, if we sell some we’ll recover all the costs’. Not so for us anyway. I’ll be interested to see your results at the end of the year. 😊
I believe it will as well, but it will be very interesting to see what the final totals will be, I had to buy new battery’s for scales and I have been reading my food flyers and been to local farmers markets trying to keep track of local prices so that I am pricing things as clearly as possible to my local costs to keep it as clear as I can. I have to admit that I am shocked at some of the prices.. I will own up when I am foraging off the farm close to me.. but it still will count.. I have not decided if locally caught fish on at the creek or river is within walking distance of the farm should count or not.. so far, I have not counted it..
I would count the fish. I often pick Saskatoons from across the road…. same diff – its food you are gathering/producing it yourself – if the river crossed your property you would count it 🙂
I actually buy my salmon once a year – it comes from the mouth of the Skeena river and its in jars on my shelf in 24 hours or so. Because I work off farm as well – a trip that far (about 10 hours away) is impractical. So that’s an ‘expense’ but well worth it when I see the price of sockeye at the store! I see you are experiencing some sticker shock as I do when I stop long enough to actually look at prices.
Question – do you count trades as expense or no – or do you do trades? I tend to leave them out of the equation as they’re ‘even’ – for example, we are raising an extra pig this year for our lagoon/septic guy – who not only did a bunch of much needed repair at no charge, is also delivering a dump truck load of dirt for the garden beds which is much needed. He pays his own slaughter/cut/wrap at the abattoir- we simply drop off the pig.
Very nice.. we do some of that ourselves but I am not counting it, I traded older laying hens for a cord of good wood.. etc