Do you make money?
Ya but what did it cost you to raise that chicken?
But if you had to buy it, what would it be worth?
What do you spend to have what you have?
But it does not cost that much to keep those critters?
Why does it cost you so much to raise that lamb?
Why do you spend so much on seeds?
Its got to be cheaper to just buy it in the stores.
Ok folks.. I am going to break a unspoken homesteading rule.. I am going to talk numbers! AHHHHHH.. run for the hills.. stats, data.. hard costs.. Hauling costs, Butcher costs and more.

LOL, no really, now that I am done poking fun at things, lets get to the meat of things.
Those are honestly real questions I have been asked over and over again.

So the first thing we have to do is get a full grasp on what I have on the farm as of Feb 2019

(if you want to see the list for
Jan, Here is the link to that post
Feb Here is the link to that post
March Here is the link to that post

We started the new year here on the farm with..
3 dogs (two farm/house dogs and one adorable house dog)
6 cats (mix of outside farm cats only and indoor/outdoor farm cats)
2 Geese (bonded)
1 turkey hen
21 Adult chickens (breeding pen of four purebred) the rest mixed breed
12 adult ducks
2 adult breeding rabbits
10 Grow out rabbit kits
3 goats – Two Does and One Buck
1 pig
13 sheep
14 new lambs on the farm, 16 born, 2 passed. (Lambing is now done)
2 horse’s

Coming into May.. We Currently have on the farm

• 3 dogs (two farm/house dogs and one adorable house dog)
• 6 cats (mix of outside farm cats only and indoor/outdoor farm cats)2 Geese (bonded)1
• turkey hen Adult
• 12 Growing Turkey pullets
• Adult chickens (breeding pen of four purebred) the rest mixed breed
• 12 Dual Purpose brown laying hens
• 7 mixed breed chicks
• 49 White Rock Meat chicks
• 9 adult ducks
• 11 Ducklings
• 3 adult breeding rabbits
•  5  Grow out rabbit kits
• 3 goats – Two Does and One Buck
• 13 sheep
• 15 new lambs on the farm
• 2 horse’s

We have a number of duck hens sitting on nests, we have a number a couple chicken hens that are crazy broody.. I am not sure what I am going to do with the chicks hatched yet.. sell or raise for meat.. I don’t think I need any more chicken.. most likely sell..

what a surprise number 15 lamb was.. sneaky.. sneaky momma sheep, she had a heat right after lambing and five months later.. surprise.. a new single ewe lamb.. Shakes head..  my breed can do that.. its rare but they can breed out of season.

Ok, so to make things a little easier to see, anything that changed from month to month or is new is in the slant.

Pastures
Gardens
Hard Fruit Tree’s
Cane Fruit Garden’s
Soft Fruit Bushes

Another 10 yards of topsoil $210, 10 yards of cedar mulch 620 and a ton of river rocks 90..  plants another 310.. and hired help to get things in and made.. 680.. (ouch and worth every penny)

 

And that’s it! Unless its sale that is so cheap I can not pass on it.. NO MORE on plants.. no more on yard..  Now we make it work!

However, I still have one more already paid order coming in..  so that will go for next month totoal.

Total spent so far on the above $3074

Training or Education Cost 2019

May was a flip it month, no training costs as I was teaching instead.
Total Spent to date 230.00

This is my first year that I am totally pulling back on raising extra farm gate meat for sale.. the meat raised on the farm is for our own farm use only. If this changes, I will make notes on that. This will change, we have more lambs born this year then we will need for our own freezers but I have not decided on how many will go for farmgate sales.
One lamb booked for farmgate sale so far..
Eggs however are open for farm gate sales.

All milk/milk products are for on farm use only!

Seeds/plants and plant productions are open to a point for use in farm gate sales
Photo sales directly related to the farm or farm critters will count towards farm income, however photography sessions and or sales not related to the farm or the farm critters does not count towards it.
The first thing to go will be the yearling sheep now that they are getting nice and big, they are ready to be done.. as I was growing them for my own use I prefer them to be larger/older then the “average” lamb. I very much like hoggart (over one year in age, but not older then two years of age)

The Pig.. O yes the pig.. This was part of the reason I got so quiet on the blog.. The big Pig is done.. and we are currently pigless which is so weird but all the house scraps are now going to the birds and touch to the rabbits. The pig really gave a massive yield and I went with local farmgate sale prices and then after I tried to work though sales.. I decided that a flat rate of 4 dollars a pound is really low balling it in a totally unfair way.. in part because of the way my pig was raised.. no GMO, no soy and limited corn, fresh food stuffs and the fact that if you go to the store.. you sure are not paying 4 dollars a pound for over half the cuts from this big guy..  I finally settled on 4,000

This does mean that I am counting some things at finishing prices and I am ok with that.. I still can’t believe that 4 little pork BBQ sticks are costing 5 dollars at the store.. or that right now for good quality pork chops they are 6.45 a pound.. but so be it..

The intend is to grow less meat overall, but a wider kind of types and increase the amount of fruit/veggies/herbs we are growing. I can raise livestock at a rate on the farm out pace’s our own needs very easily. This is something that I need to pull back on!

So the out costs this month are in

Ok so here is our numbers for May (it was a good month in terms of better weather, less hay needed to keep everyone in good shape, straw from the month before made two plus months in bedding, no vet or ferrier costs)
Hay Costs – $300
Straw – 0

Feed Costs – $489 The meat chicks are eating crazy amounts now and I had to buy the mineral licks and the milking rations as well as lamb rations.. so the costs go up.. plus I needed to buy extra feeders that could hold much larger amounts of feed.. but it all counts

Vet Costs- 142  (one of the farm cats had a infection in its paw, vets checked, treated, boosters and rabies given as well as antibodics for said foot)

Ferrier Costs- 0

Returns

20 dozen Eggs (at 5 dollars a dozen, which is the average cost for farm gate eggs Mix of chicken/duck eggs) – $100.00
Ducklings – 11 Natural Hatched Meat Breed Ducklings – Straight run day olds- $77 (but they will be grown out and butchered at feathering time.
Milk- Sheep- Regular Milking of Sweetie this month.. average a quart a milking.. -682 for local amount of whole sheep milk if bought from the store.

See PIG Above -$4000

Garden
– May was still a slow month, I only just started being able to do some small wild forage harvesting in the very last week of April. Foraged on the farm in the food forest yard.

Foraged greens- 40.00
Rhubarb- 22 pounds at 8 dollars a pound if I had to buy it in the store (4 dollars is the local farmgate sale prices) 176

• Jan income $105
• Feb income $95
• March income $220
• April income 1,277 (* first month I got more return value then I did output.. YES)
• May income 5,078

And with the pig butchered and the gardens starting and the milking/eggs and babies arriving.. we really had a good earnings this month but with the costs spent on the yard and extra’s at the vet and feed stores ..

Still in the red at 1,370..

I am so happy to have a year to a year and supply of pork not bought at local store prices! wow.. just wow.. what is with the cost of meat right now!

Sorry this took longer to get out.. but I am not giving myself hard deadlines on when it gets out.. I am just making sure it does get out!

I have tried to do a hard track year but things keep getting in the way.. the last time I did a full hard track year and was successful at doing so ALL year long was a while go.. I need to do so this year and get a firm grasp on where we were, and where we are.

However having said that, in many ways we are starting a lot of the yard/gardens over again because of what happened last year. This will means many things will be up in the air in regards to what can and will get done.

Throw in the fact that we are in for a wild weather ride and we will see..