October’s Totals

This month has been interesting to say the least. Our garden is definitely dying down. Most of our summer crops, except for a few stragglers have been pulled out. No more tomatoes (more on that later), corn, beans, or cucumbers. The only fruit we harvested were our apples.

Our chickens are seriously molting right now. They look awful and their egg production has dropped off. We’ve also come to the realization that we just have too many of them. Really, what are we going to do with a dozen eggs a day? 

The stars of the month were the goats. Bella and Daisy weaned the boys and then it was time to take the boys to the slaughter house. Our milk production nearly tripled. We’re still just a bit behind in costs on them. I’d be happy to break even if we can.

Fruit Trees
Apples – 21.50 lbs

Vegetables
Beets – 1.88 lbs
Carrots – 2.63 lbs
Cucumbers, pickling – 9.51 lbs
Cucumbers, slicing – 7.19 lbs
Eggplant – 2.88 lbs
Kale – .82 lbs
Leeks – .38 lbs
Lettuce – .06 lb
Onions – 19.33 lbs
Parsnips – 6.56 lbs
Peppers – 20.07 lbs
Potatoes – 2.25 lbs
Squash, summer – 11.08 lbs
Tomatoes – 57.07 lbs

Animal Products
Goats meat – 54.5 lbs
Milk – 8.57 gallons
Honey – 51.5
Eggs – 205

Total Produce – 162.83 lbs

Expenditures
Surprise surprise, the chickens went through all the feed we bought in bulk for them in about 5 weeks. Fortunately someone failed to pick up their bulk order this month (we didn’t make one) so we were able to take it. We also spent quite a bit of money on the slaughter and butcher of our goats. We spent a total of $334.55 on the livestock this month. Our water bill was also really high. I’m pretty sure it’s because of the hot weather we had. The water cost was $110. On the flip side we didn’t spend anything at all on the garden.

Savings So Far
Our gross savings so far this year (from Jan. 1st) is $10,075.63 with expenditures running at $5,354.83 for a total net savings of $4,720.80. We’ve grown a total of 1,177.61 lbs of produce, which isn’t as high as I would like.