I have just a few more days to get my corn planted.. and trust me.. I want my corn planted! Each day more goes into the ground..  35 pounds of seed potato’s are in the ground now.. the major planting area’s are going.. tomato’s, peppers, sweet potato’s, cucumber plants and more are in.. five kinds of beans are in..

Still to go.. root veggies.. Corn.. and I am not taking chances this year.. while we will do some fresh eating more things are going to be canned, dried.. I would like to say frozen.. I really do.. and we will have our fruit and veggie freezer.. but I have so much meat this year that I am hoping to hold frozen so that I can have the most flex in how the meals are prepared.

Never mind that within the last year fresh fruit and veggies are up 12 to 20 percent.. and that average everything is up 3 to 8 percent.. HANG ON TO  YOUR HATS!

We ain’t seen nothing yet..  the floods in the mid-west, the droughts and the tariff’s are about give our Ag Sectors a smack down like we have not seen in a LONG time.. yes I know that the here in Canada, there are 150 million this and 100 million this funds all being gifted out to keep the farmers on their land and their bills paid..  They should be.. 40,000 Canadian farms are being effected in regards to the current China ban on rape seed oil sales. Pork is next.. and you think that is the end of that.. wait! They are just starting to flex and get the point that they can mess up global trade in a big way..

I remember write essay’s in the 80’s in school that Global trade on works when we are all “flush” as soon as hard times come it will fall apart.. and believe me.. with what is coming down the climate pipeline.. its going to fall apart.. trade deals be dammed.

I expect that you will see programs happening in the states as well.. and I am happy to see it to be honest.. we do not need more people losing their farms..

Locally the farmers are as behind in their fields as I am on the farm.. depending on the crop between 3 to 5 weeks and there are fields that still can’t be gotten into.. they can try this and they can try that but for my local area if the corn is not in by the 15th.. that’s tomorrow, they can claim insurance..

But the local farmers are doing everything they can to get those fields planted.. because as they said to me.. with so much unplanted, so much under water.. everything single thing we can produce will effect our bottom line.. both in higher priced sale’sand in higher priced costs.

I am listening.. I have been asking this farmer and that.. and I am already adjusting plans on the farm.. We will be heading into winter with very lean breeding programs, very full pantries and freezers..

We had a Haying window.. and I watched with both understanding and also the feeling of o “Bleep” as so many fields went uncut because they needed that time to plant.. and also as I watched what was coming off being put into silage for the cows..

Now I have nothing against Silage but its not hay.. and when I am buying I buy hay.. this means that for me..  and from my suppliers.. so far.. no first cut..  I am not short and my pastures are growing and I have seed for the pastures that will go out over the next few days as well.. but none the less.. I would like to see that first cut coming off SOON.

We have rows of pumpkins and squashes planted and growing but I am thinking it might be a very good idea to see if I can get another row in of squashes that can help be used as feed for the laying chickens.  I have a good amount of sunflowers planted but I think I need to plant more yet.. I can get the smaller faster Black oil Sunflower seeds in and harvested in time yet.. as long as I can get them in this week..

but the biggest push is get more roots in.. I need to get more root veggies in both so that I can put up a two years supply into the pantry but also because I want them as extra feed for the sheep flock..

So from a homesteader view.. I can’t say this loud enough.. plant more food, food for you, food for those you care about, food for your livestock.. look at how you can find ways to put higher calorie producers.. (put down the salad greens!) and plant the sunflowers for the higher calories in the oil/seed.. Put down the green peppers and to a point the tomato’s and plant the potato’s, the roots, beets, turnips, carrots, parsnips..  We can get our micro’s from sprouting.. but we are going to need to be growing the calories!

Don’t have the space.. ask to see if a homesteader will share crop with you if you will give a hand?

Live in town and have a small garden.. look at beans.. look at root veggies..  I still want you to think calories.. Grow climber beans up your fence this year and put up both fresh and dried..

Ok, so lets say you do live in town.. watch for the sales.. they will be there.. but they are not going to be as cheap as normal.. its not going to get better.. so suck it up, buy the half bushel box’s and the bushel box’s and put that food up for when that prices is going to go much, much higher..

And now we get to down the grind..  got very limited money.. already getting most things from a food bank.. staring at your food budget with a hard blink and a possible tear in the eye..

Sales, Sales, Sales of course!

but here is my best advice .. STOP holding things fresh.. I mean you can hold a few things fresh if you know you are going to eat it for sure in your menu plan.. and there are things out there now that are worth investing in (like the current sale happening for the Tupperware fridge smarts) everything else.. preserve it.. YES I know I am asking for a  little bit of work.. but trust me on this one..

One of the biggest things I am seeing happen is that the food quality is going down while the food costs are going up.. you know what I am talking about!? This means that our skills and ability to preserve the food we get becomes even more important.

Freeze it..  Dry it.. Meal Prep it and then freeze it.. Cook it and put it into reheat.. Can it up..  Waste nothing..  almost everything can be used in making soup stock.. think outside the box.. use up the odd bits..

Now I am not going to tell you stop eating meat.. ( I eat meat, I think its got high value in our diets) but I am going to say.. protein can come from milk, milk products, eggs, beans and pea’s..  Don’t fall for this silliness of “no-meat meat” for Bleeping Beep sake..

IF you are choosing it because of health or personal choice in life style.. then I say go for it.. but otherwise, we need to stop them in their tracks..  as much as possible..

If you are going to eat non-meat protein.. great.. beans, peas are waiting for you in the stores.. if you want milk based proteins or any Fowl Eggs.. great.. but please don’t punish the very hard working farmers by falling for this “hot” new meat replacement made from plants.

I have been shaking my head so hard..  so many folks I know that are totally into whole foods and healthy eating are suddenly.. hey.. I buy this mass produced meat-less burger on its white bun with its limp lettuce and thin tasteless tomato and its side of GMO contracted potato’s with side of plastic tomato paste and of course that sweet tea (with more sugar in it then flipping coke does) and pat myself on the back! and look.. they even have a paper straw (depending on where you are buying from)

WTF.. Marketing at its finest!

Truly those this is just going to drive up the split between haves and have nots..  Those who have land.. make the time.. put the call out locally.. see if you can share the work load.. see if there are folks that would like to trade time for food and don’t you DARE undercut your fresh garden produce..

I have had three people this week ask me if I am going to be selling plants, selling garden produce and or selling farm extra’s..   I will sell extra’s if there are extra to go.. but not before I put up that extra years worth of us..

I will be selling plants next year.. I know that and I have told them so.. sorry they are sad that its not this year but that’s just how it work..  I can only do so much and this year is the rebuild year.

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..

A couple weeks ago, I put out a call on facebook to see if I could plan a day to work on my worst fencing area. The big heavy milled Cedar posts where in place but not backfilled..

The older fence had had repair job, after temp repair job done on it.. It was a hammered together and logs tied on in regards to making it hold just a touch longer.. But while it was holding in the horses and the adult sheep.. the lambs.. those little Bleep-Bleep were getting out and I am in no shape to go chasing down lambs even with the sheep dogs help..

They are still learning how to bunch and without momma’s to lead them.. they scatter and something that would take 5 min with the adults can turn into hour or more of me moving them up and down the fence line. NOT FUN!

I had two sets of friends offer to come give hubby a hand! Grateful beyond words for their help in all ways..  the best part..  These are the type of folks that pulled the heavy massive spikes out so they can be reused.. that everything was taken out in such a way and stacked.. everything was saved..

Sure some of the older posts are not going to cut it in pasture but they can be used in the gardens, the wire is the same.. I will find a use for it.. I loved watching these down to earth folks “know” that I was going to save it all..

There was no.. burn this, there was no.. haul it to the dump.. nope.. not these folks.. it was where do you want the wood stacked, where do you want the wire rolls placed..  wonderful! A bucket held all the nails and so forth.

The posts were backfilled, the new fence went up (I had snagged a one day sale at the TSC this spring for really good sheep fencing at 200 off per roll.. online order only and deliver to the store)..

I love that this fence was stretched in a new fence tightening way that I had not seen before and I love learning things, learning ways that require no extra tools, that is all hand done but rocks it out for the end quality.. o ya! Thank you!

As often happens in farm work parties.. the sex’s split..  sure the ladies did some hands on work don’t get me wrong there.. but as there were little ones around and drinks and food to be prepared and served, we just naturally move into different working parties.. there is flow back and forth.. still when there is enough hands.. Its just a natural shifting that always seems to happen.

One more bigger item off our need to do list..  There are more posts and more wire.. another day! There was sharing of food, of plants, of compost and the farms gifts..  there was stories and laughter and so much sweat!  Many hands made much lighter work for all..

Sunday was a crazy day that had so many things going on, that I swear I could if I had time to do so, I could write at least five posts just on different things that went down..

However lets start at the beginning of the day that was when we let our dogs out to go bathroom, all kinds of insane barking started happening in the yard and when I went out to the deck to see what was going on.. I realized that there was a strange dog in the yard..

Nope, I was wrong.. there was two strange dogs in my yard and they were sure happy to see us.. all happy dogs with long tongues and wagging tails.  We got our dogs into the house and they both rolled up the stairs to come on in as well.. we got them locked onto the deck and went for leads.

I was pretty sure I know where both of these dogs lived, two different families and two different farms but just down the road, one to the left and one to the right.. Both dogs are in great health and were wearing their tags and names with phone numbers.. They have both lived on their farms for a number of years with no issues.

However, I could tell that the male was “REALLY” interested in the pretty girl, who was not nearly ready but appeared to be flirty.. I don’t know if they are intact but they sure acted like it.

Then Hubby called out.. o no..  and I saw big grow out 16 square foot rabbit hutch, the bottom ripped out in one big section, the wood broken, and two dead rabbits and three missing rabbits (two of which have been spotted but not caught, however one more still missing)

I was sad but sighed because I know that dogs when they pack up and run can have that prey/hunt kick in, I knew that both these dogs do not have livestock never mind small stock on their farms and have never been trained in this regard.

We took the dogs home and I was at farm 1 delivering one dog to the owner when the other owner pulled in as they were driving around looking for their missing dog..  I truly feel that both of them will be proactive in taking measures to adjust their practise’s in regards to the dogs.

I know I will be asked this.. NO I did not ask for any kind of money for the rabbits.. these are good people and I respect them as positive part of my local area.  I have lived on the farm for 15 years and I had one person’s new dog (not either of these farms) come and run my sheep on the outside of the fence line and once I talked them about it.. never again..

This is only the second time that something has happened and just like I would WANT my dogs brought home to me and give me the time to fix what happened that allowed them to run in the first place.

So home we came and we started looking for the farm cats to make sure all are ok.. and then came the rest of the dead small stock..  One of my laying hens dead and chewed on.. two more chickens missing and yet to be found at this time.. (hopefully they come back home) and then my big black Drake..

This was truly a loss, this big guy was bought as a year old at the spring farm sale and this would have been his 5th year on the farm, so he has certainly lived a good life for duck as most never make 6 years when you are a meat duck but he was one of my favorites.. he was protective of his hens but so friendly with us.. always wagging his tail and saying hello.

It bothers me that he had a painful death that I am sure he felt fear over.. I can only hope it went faster in real life then it looked like..  What a waste.. I do have his offspring here on the farm but that does not take my feeling of wrongness at his death.

We tracked down 5 out of the 6 farm cats quite quickly and all were good.. but we spent hours calling for our 6th kitty and when he came, he seemed good until he moved.. he is a touch limping and favoring one front paw..  thankfully he did let me check it, and it appears to have a swelling and a small injury.. I will watch it carefully and see if I can with hubbies help soak it..

Otherwise, I might need a trip to the vet if it gets infected..  lets hope that between the kitty and myself we can clear it up here on the farm.. but if needed Vet it will be..

It was not the sunday morning we were planning or expected.. but it was what we got.. we finished it with burying dead stock and searching for a missing farm cat..

I am very much hoping that this will be the first and last time these dogs visit the farm..  I will not be as forgiving in regards to animal loss if it happens again.

Ok, I know this is going to come up, yes I do have the right to call bylaw, yes in a direct attack on livestock you are legally allowed to put down the attacking dogs and yes, you have legal rights in regards to getting standardized (pre-set) pay outs for dead stock or vet bills if damages done etc.

However once you do any of that.. you are really ruining your relationships.. think long and hard before being “that” person..