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My budget for the month of September is $490 divided between Cow share ($54), Beef CSA ($50), Azure Standard ($135.23), Dining Out ($50) and Grocery Store ($200.77). I say the budget is for the month of September but it actually coincides with my husband’s once monthly pay day so starts on August 23 and ends on September 22.
So far here is what has been spent:
- Cow share: $54 (this is for the boarding and feeding two ‘shares’ of a milk cow. In return we usually get 2 gallons of milk each week. Right now, the cows are dry so we are still paying our share but not getting any milk. Hopefully a cow or two will give birth soon so we can once again enjoy fresh real milk)
- Azure Standard: $135.23 (see below)
- Grocery Store:$101.71
- Dining Out: 28.88 (one trip out to a Mongolian Grill place)
Azure Standard
- Redman’s RealSalt 26oz
- 5 lbs evaporated cane juice crystals
- 2 lbs Sucanat
- 1 lb Coconut milk powder
- a really big head of cabbage
- 40 pounds of nectarines (see what I did with them)
- 12 cans of coconut milk
- 25 pounds of hard red flour
Grocery Store
- Coffee
- Sugar
- olive oil
- Jug of honey
- can of olives
- baking soda
- ground ginger
- can of pineapple
- black pepper
- 5 pounds Tillamook Cheddar
- 4 pound butter
- 1/2 pound mozzarella
- Yogurt
- gallon milk
- 1/2 pint buttermilk
- raisins
- baking powder
- .52 pounds bananas
- 1.38 pounds apples
- one lemon
- 2 avocados
- 6 pounds organic carrots (on clearance)
- 2 pounds organic celery (on clearance)
- 10 pounds potatoes
- 3 pounds onions
- 2 bell peppers
- .64 pounds mushrooms
- Spaghetti Squash
- Bacon
- Pectin
Still to spend:
Beef CSA: $50 (we usually get this the first or second week of the month)
Dining Out: $21.12
Grocery Store: $99.06
With my remaining grocery money I plan to pick up frozen seafood, veggies, butter and any other items that my menu tells me I need. We do still have a fairly well stocked freezer with beef and lamb that was given to us and I even have a few of our home raised chickens in the freezer. Chickens for meat and eggs are something I haven’t really talked about in my budget. We currently have 18 hens and 4 just starting to lay pullets for eggs (we do have some very young pullets that will start to lay Octoberish also). From those chickens we usually have enough eggs for ourselves and a few other families. The eggs I sell to others covers the cost of feeding all of the hens so in a way we eat free eggs ( I do not count the time we spend caring for the chickens each day which is minimal and in some ways extremely entertaining). We also raise chickens for meat for ourselves and a few others. Again, the chickens work out similar to the eggs and the few chickens we have put in our freezer have been covered feed-wise. That may change with future batches of meat chickens but for now it is working out well.
We have been very blessed to be receiving surplus produce from others lately. I love getting extra squashes and tomatoes. I even like the zucchini we receive that are the size of baseball bats. They shred nicely for muffins 🙂
One thing I wanted to mention is my cow share. Currently the cows are dry. When buying milk from a grocery store only, the cows never go dry. But in a real life small herd of dairy cows or goats they do (they go dry a couple of months before birthing). Another thing that will be happening soon at my house is my chickens will molt. The molt is a time when the chickens shed their old feathers and new ones come in. During this time the hens will most likely stop laying. I suspect that most of my 18 hens will molt which means that egg production will be almost non existent. In some ways eggs and milk are seasonal. Eating with the seasons is a hard concept at first (and one my family is having difficulty adjusting to) but it makes sense in so many ways. That being said, I am looking forward to the milk cows no longer being dry and I’ll be pleased when the chickens are finished molting and/or my young pullets start laying. So much to look forward to!
>When I got our 3 grown hens, they were in molt and it was 100+ degrees here. I was considering myself lucky to be getting 1 egg every other day or so. Now they are through molting and it's "cooled" off into the lower 90s and we're getting an egg a day from each girl.
I'd love to see a blog post about butchering your chickens. We got 31 Welsumer chicks yesterday and they will be 18 weeks on 12/24/2010. Obviously, we won't butcher them on Christmas eve, but sometime between Christmas and New Years.
Dh wonders what I am going to do when I have 15-20 hens laying one egg day. I told him we'll either sell the eggs on Craigslist or at his shop! More than likely, we'll eat them!
>Paula,
The heat has been an issue here too for laying. It has not been as warm as at your place but apparently warm enough they thought laying was a little much.
I have found that I have absolutely no trouble getting rid of surplus eggs. In fact, with the egg recall I've been turning people away.
What would you like to see in a butchering post? I'm hesitant to do a how-to since there are so many good ones available now. And we are so new at this we are not very efficient yet.
Did you get straight run for your Welsumers?