I Heart Homeschooling.

Homeschooling is amazing. It brings you these incredible days where you are sure you are a failure one minute, and the next minute you gaze in wonder at the intelligence of your children.

Our school day started out with math (which was surprisingly not painful, considering The Oldest is learning to find common denominators.) Then came English. The Oldest wrote me four synopses about things such as The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and the parable of the Good Samaritan. Littlest One was doing the same thing she always does: phonics charts, reading from a beginning reader, and then copy work. In two years, she still does not remember that N-E-W spells "new". Nor did she remember the words "would", "oh", or "unto". It was a painful lesson. The kind that convinces you, as a homeshooling mother, that your child will still not be reading when she is entering high school. (Because homeschooling mothers are known for putting undo pressure on themselves, and then buckling under said pressure. It's what we do. We're really good at it.)

But then, life happens. Discussions happen. Over lunch, Galileo's experiment at the leaning tower of Pisa came up. I remember hearing about that in the 8th grade. My teacher telling us that, if we were allowed to climb up onto the roof and drop a bowling ball and a marble, that they would land at the same time. I never did believe him.

Well, we didn't have a bowling ball, but we had a huge bouncy ball and a marble. So we dropped them from the deck, two stories above the ground below, and Littlest One kept watch. Indeed, they did both land at the same time.

From there, I thought I'd be all awesome and explain gravity and terminal velocity. Except that at about that moment, Littlest One (who is SIX!) piped up. "Eventually, everything will go as fast as it can go, and it won't go any faster."

And there's terminal velocity, in six year old terms.

"The balls landed at the same time because they're the same shape. So they push the air away the same."

Right.

So what would happen if I dropped a feather and a hammer?

"They wouldn't be the same, 'cuz they're shaped different. The feather makes more friction."

Seriously? I had to look it up. She was right.

"What would happen if I dropped a feather and a hammer and I was standing on the moon?" (The school book told me to ask that. Never would've occurred to me otherwise.)

"They'd fall the same. 'Cuz there isn't any air on the moon, so there's no friction."

I had to look that up, too. How on earth did she learn that? Her sister read something about it in a National Geographic magazine and told her about it. I Googled the video of the Apollo 15 astronaut demonstrating it. They were fascinated.

Why am I doing the teaching here? Clearly, the ten year old is more capable. Granted, I can claim having taught them about friction. We had an awesome time with that one!

Later tonight, she explained the process of amputating a horse's leg due to infection from a dog bite, and then creating a prosthetic leg and teaching it how to walk again.

Um, seriously? Yeah, it was in a book her sister read to her, one Grammy gave her for Christmas. So they were playing "amputated horse leg" in the living room. Because that's what homeschoolers do for fun.

This morning at breakfast, we used the computer to take a virtual tour of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. (We just finished reading aloud the Newbery award winner From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler so it fit in nicely.) Using the mouse to move through the museum, The Oldest pipes up, "Look! There's a model of Brunellesci's dome!" Ehhh... huh? She looks at me like I might be stupid. "Brunellesci. The Renaissance. Remember?" Uh... yeah, no. But apparently I read something about that to her once. Glad to know it stuck.

Homeschool is incredible. Stressful, and difficult, but incredible. They spend so much time delving into subjects that interest them, and then sharing those subjects with one another, playing them and discussing them and pondering them. The teaching that I do hardly touches the amount of learning that they do, through each of those mediums.

So about that trouble with reading? I'm pretty sure it'll come. Some day there will be a book that details the discoveries of some great inventor or scientist, and she's going to be desperate to know what it says, and she's going to read it. The hardest part of homeschooling is letting go of the standards and goals you've got in your mind. Because you can set as many standards as your heart desires, but your kids aren't going to meet them the way you planned for them to. They'll get there in their time, taking their route, and achieving so much more along the way than you ever could have even imagined.

Where does your meat come from?

Remember this little guy?


Good golly, was he ever cute. Long floppy ears and the most playful personality I ever saw in a baby goat... granted, he was also the first baby goat I ever saw.

I won't ever forget that night. 7:45 on a frosty cold evening in late January, we knew Justice was getting ready to kid. By the time we went back out, there were two tiny baby goats on the ground. And this li'l guy, being the oldest, walked right up to us. I actually shed some tears that night - the awe of a perfect birth, the beauty of a mama goat instantly loving her babies, the smell of a newborn kid... it hit that emotional soft spot in me and made my eyes well up.

But reality does have to set in here up on our little farmstead. And reality dictates that we don't get to keep every cute little furry animal born in our barn.

Here's the thing with milk goats - if you want to milk them, they have to give birth. Every. Year. And they don't often just have one baby. We've got three milking does in the barn right now that are all due in about six weeks, and each one will very likely have two kids... which means six new baby goats to love... and feed.

When you're trying to live the way we are, sometimes not-so-fun decisions have to be made. Decisions that involve animals that are really cute and fun to have around, but don't serve any other real purpose. It was time for Phillip to serve his purpose as a wethered goat.

Come to find out, though, The Daddy and I are a little more sensitive than we might readily admit. And slaughtering the goat that we and our kids have loved for the past year just wasn't something we were looking forward to. So for fifty bucks, we let the local butcher take care of that job. As I type, Phillip is awaiting his fate in a pen behind the local gas station. (Because apparently in small towns, gas stations keep pens in the back for animals waiting to be slaughtered, and no one finds this odd.)

When we get him back, it will be in the form of hunks of meat, which I will then grind and make sausage. My hope is that once the soft, floppy ears and fuzzy winter coat are left behind, I'll be able to see it only as meat, and not as an animal that we once watched romp on the mountain (or jump into a freezing water trough.)

Will I still feel sad? I'm sure I will. But here's the thing: there's something so ultimately valuable about watching an animal grow up, feeding and caring for it every day of its life, and then eating it. There's nothing that can make you appreciate your food more than that. So yes, while I'm sad, and feeling pretty darn guilty, I'll be glad to know that he had a wonderful life full of fresh air and sunshine and ear scratches and animal crackers. I'd rather have that sustain me than meat from the grocery store that never had a face. I think every meat eater should have to experience these feelings a time or two in their life. If that were the case, we'd have a lot more folks who really appreciated the fact that an animal died for their sustenance. (Or, we'd have a lot more vegetarians.)

So today we'll keep ourselves busy, probably stay out of the barn for the most part, and try not to think about what had to happen. And we'll look forward to the birth of new animals this spring - a calf and many kid goats, along with a few batches of poultry. And we'll look forward to having sausage with our eggs for breakfast in the morning, and homemade pepperoni on our Friday night pizzas.

Nope, not the best day we've had our our little farmstead, but one that dutifully reminds us that this crazy life we're living isn't always going to be emotionally easy... and also one that puts life into very real perspective. I'll take the value of that lesson over 'easy' any day.

Trying New Things: Cross-country Skiing

There are some things that are just unacceptable. Like the fact that I've lived in Colorado for nineteen years, and had not been on skis until yesterday. (And no, I don't snowboard, either.) In fact, I can count the number of times I've been sledding on one hand. Honestly, my favorite thing to do when it is snowing is drink coffee and sit by the fire. I'm a sissy.

But alas, it was time. And so we decided to rent some skis and take the girls cross-country skiing. Fact of the matter is, I married a man who actually enjoys this sort of self-inflicted pain in frigid temperatures. And he wanted to share that, um, pleasure, with our daughters. And me.

To be fair, it wasn't as bad as I expected. And happily, I can still walk today which I thought was a nice bonus. And I wasn't actually cold the whole time, despite the fact that it was 25 degrees outside. Probably because cross-country skiing is an incredible amount of work, and using muscles I didn't know I had makes me sweat.

The best part was watching the girls though. Giving them new experiences is so much fun. And unlike me, they really, really love anything to do with snow.
 
The Oldest was a natural. She was ahead of the rest of us the whole time, going up ahead, then coming back to see where we were, then off she went again. She's apparently fearless, going down downhill slopes without a second thought, never afraid of falling. It was good fun watching her. I just hope she doesn't think this is something we'll do regularly now...

 
Littlest One wasn't quite as adept. The good news though, is that she thought falling down was all kinds of fun. Good, because that's mostly what she did. Over, and over again. But at least she didn't get upset.


Eventually we traded in her skis for snowshoes, mostly so The Daddy could actually ski instead of just holding her up by the back of her coat. Then The Daddy and The Oldest could go up ahead, while Littlest One stayed back on her snowshoes to make sure I was doing okay. She was concerned about how slow I was going, I think.
 
All in all, though, it was a good day. Life is about trying new things, which is something I'm really not good at, especially when it involves something I'm guaranteed not to be good at. Or when it involves snow. I want my girls to try new things fearlessly, and this is the kind of thing we have to do to give them that confidence.

Also, it made them sleep really well. 

Farm Life's Hardest Lesson

If you read any "What I Wish I Would Have Known" articles written by modern homesteader types, one of the first items on their list is always going to be this:

You don't have to do it all at once.

Take it slow, they say. Give yourself grace, they say. Just a little bit at a time and don't overwhelm yourself.

I've read dozens of those articles. And I've always nodded in agreement, as though I've always known perfectly well that that one little bit of advice is absolutely correct.

Except that I didn't.

My best friend and I used to joke that whichever one of us ended up moving to a farm first was going to end up sitting in the middle of her pasture, crying the ugly cry, absolutely overwhelmed by what she had taken on and that the other friend was going to have to listen and comfort and try not to say "I told you so."

Turns out, I was the first one to move to a farm. And that prediction wasn't as far off as I'd like for you think it is. Except that it's snowy outside, so I was sobbing in my bedroom, while staring at my pasture. Which really isn't any better.

I haven't blogged regularly in almost a year. There's a reason for it though.

The past year has been seriously rough. My husband has been working out of town - sometimes out of state - for the past year. He's gone two weeks and then home for a week. That means that two thirds of the time, every responsibility of this property falls on my shoulders. In the past year I have raised a rather large garden, milked two goats and kept another 50 or so animals alive, homeschooled a first and fifth grader, kept a 4600 square foot house clean, raised 700 bales of hay on a 25 acre pasture using nothing but a shovel and some tarps. I've raised and butchered enough chickens to last a year, canned a year's worth of fruits and vegetables and dried or frozen what wasn't canned, cooked dinner every night,  run my kids around to their extra curricular activities, driven an hour each direction every time I needed groceries, hauled horses to 9 gymkhanas and rodeos, and hauled chickens to the county fair. And almost all of this with very little help from The Man of My Dreams, except for the weeks he was able to spend at home.

What I learned is that I really can do it all. I'm working from 5:30 in the morning until 9:30 at night, every single hour of the day, but I can get it all done. Until something goes wrong. As soon as the slightest little thing happens to upset my very rigid schedule, I lose it. I get so overwhelmed that I can't function and all I want to do is give up. Or cry.

The bad part of that, though, is that in this life, something happens to change your plans Every. Single. Day. Nothing ever goes the way you expect it to, or plan for it to. An animal gets sick. A kid misbehaves. A neighbor needs help. A fence needs fixed or a goat gets out or a deer dies in your front yard or your dog gets skunked or the well runs dry (again) and you have to spend an hour hauling water. The list of Things That Can Go Wrong is infinite. And each one of those things is guaranteed to happen when you least expect it. That is reality.

And with a schedule as packed as mine has been this year, and a brain so overwhelmed by constant mental to-do lists, there just isn't time to stop and enjoy all those little things that are supposed to bring me joy. I don't have time to watch my kids play with animals or build a fort or raise a puppy. I don't have time to relax with my husband and just sit and watch the sun go down. I've spent every waking moment just keeping up, keeping my head above water, that I've lost touch with every reason we moved up here in the first place. And that makes my heart hurt.

It's a lesson no one can just tell you and expect you to understand: You don't have to do it all at once.

You have to learn it, first hand. And it's painful. And it involves a lot of frustration and even more tears. But eventually, you take a step back, and you realize what you're doing to yourself, and you decide things have to change. Priorities have to be considered. You have to give yourself room to bend, and time to relax. You have to remember that there are so many years ahead of you to figure this all out and get it all done. And there will never be one single year when you actually accomplish everything you feel like you should. Living this life isn't something to mark off the to-do list. It's a process - a life long process - and it will never actually be finished.

And so, at a time when so many of my friends are moving out to the country and starting their homesteading lives, here is my advice:

You don't have to do it all at once.

Take it slow.

 Give yourself grace.

Just a little bit at a time.

Don't overwhelm yourself.

And when you are sobbing in the middle of your pasture, don't hesitate to give me a call. 

The Best Tooth-Losing Story Ever

I love the tooth-losing stage. I love the the gaps in the smiles, the lisp when they try to talk, the Tooth Fairy, the constant wiggling. And I love the awesome tooth-losing stories that inevitably come with this stage.

Every kid should have at least one really cool "How I Lost My Tooth" story, and Littlest One managed to create herself a pretty great one.

I haven't yet written about Princess (I haven't written about much lately, actually) but Princess is the puppy we got around Christmastime, especially for Littlest One. Every kid should have her own dog, we decided, to have grow up with and to have grand adventures with. And the grand adventures, apparently, even include the losing of teeth.

She was trying to leash train her pup, making her 'heel' around the living room and rewarding her with treats. When she ran out of treats in her pocket, she needed to get more out of the jar. Which requires two hands. So instead of just dropping the leash for a moment, she decided to put the leash between her teeth to hold her pup there while she got more treats.

And then the cat walked by.

Princess loves the cat, and the cat loves her. And Princess wanted to play. So she promptly took off after the cat. And she took the loose tooth with her.

I wasn't watching much of this ordeal, but when Littlest One came up to me with eyes big as saucers, she said, "Princess helped me lose a tooth!" It took a minute to figure out what happened. She looked like she couldn't decide whether to cry or laugh.. but eventually we all decided it was a great way to lose a tooth! That's a story she won't ever forget!

A New Year's Eve Bash - Family Style

It was the first New Year's Eve that both girls would be staying up until midnight, and so I decided to make a celebration out of it - one that we will all remember for years to come. We're not cool or social enough to have anyone to get together with, but we made plenty of our own fun!

I started off early in the day hanging balloons - each one marked with the hour it was to be popped. Inside each balloon was a strip of paper with an activity written on it. Then I placed corresponding gift bags filled with "supplies" on the hearth. Doing it early meant they were forced to wonder All. Day. Long. what was to come. The suspense was wonderful.


At 6:00, the festivities began. The first activity was to decorate the living room. The bag was filled with streamers, balloons, ribbons, etc. plus leis and "Happy New Year" crowns. It is apparently tremendous fun to get to do the decorating for a party. We also turned on some good music, and had snacks and appetizers laid out on the table. Throughout the night, The Daddy played guitar for us.



7:00 started the "Craziest Party Hat Contest". The supply bag was filled with every craft supply I could find in the craft room - feathers, pompoms, pipe cleaners, stickers, buttons, glitter glue, sequins, ribbon. We spread it all out on the kitchen table and set to work creating the wildest hats imaginable.

Each hat was indeed pretty wild!

 It was promised that the winner would receive a "Big Surprise" after we were finished and had voted on the best. The Daddy won, and he did indeed get a Big Surprise.

The girls had as much fun giving him the surprise as he had receiving it... probably even more!

After that, we spent an hour looking through all of the pictures from the past year on the computer, talking about the things we did, re-telling stories and remembering some of the highlights of the year. Then we made our Top 10 list of our favorite events of the year. Topping the list was our first year of baby goats, and also much to do with our other animals: getting new horses, a milk cow, a puppy, gymkhanas and rodeos, and plenty of fun experiences. After our Top 10 list was made, the girls opened an envelope that held little cards I'd made for all of us to write a wish for the coming year on. Then we attached our cards to helium-filled balloons, and sent our wishes up into the sky.

Next was an hour of more snacks and some board games. We let the kids pick the games and sat amidst the balloons and streamers and enjoyed some friendly competition.

At 10:00 we sat down to watch a movie together after making some root beer floats.This was probably not my best idea. It was hard to stay awake while trying to watch Hercules, at a time when my body was sure it was bed time. So I had some coffee.

But at 11:30, the celebration took off again. I filled that last balloon with confetti, along with the slip of paper. The supply bag held noise makers, plastic champagne cups, and party poppers (the kind that shoot confetti and ribbon everywhere.) We filled the cups with sparkling grape juice for the kids, champagne for the adults, and tried to stay awake until midnight.



 The Oldest barely made it.

But then came the countdown to midnight - we blew our noisemakers, shot confetti all over the living room, and toasted to the new year. The Littlest One changed our 2013 banner to 2014, and we all hugged and kissed and promptly went to sleep.



It was a blast planning all of it, and seeing it play out. The girls - despite the fact that it was just our little family - were thrilled to have so much excitement. And The Daddy and I enjoyed sharing all the smiles and laughter with them. I think we can chalk this up to our best New Year's Eve to date!

Here's wishing all our friends and family a happy, prosperous 2014!
 


On a side note: All this stuff came either from the dollar store, or from my craft and party stash. This had to be the most inexpensive party I've ever thrown. Also, the dollar store is my new favorite store. I'd never been in one until this year. But seriously, who wouldn't love a place where you can buy cans of silly string for a dollar?

Happy Halloween!... almost.

 I usually wait until it's actually Halloween to post costume pictures, but seeing as I actually have internet access tonight, I suppose I better make use of it.

And so I present: Halloween Costumes 2013

Pippi Longstocking...

And a very sweet little bride. 


True to character, I have one dressed in lace and satin and the other looking super playful.

The Oldest read Pippi Longstocking recently, and helped design her own costume based on what she read. I love how it turned out, and so does she. She even did some of the sewing this year!

Littlest One really just wanted to be a princess (again) but I refuse to make the same costume twice. (Halloween costume sewing is as much fun for me as it is for them, mostly because I never get to make fun stuff like this in real life.) So instead of princess, she went with bride... which is essentially just a princess in white, with a veil and a bouquet. Works for me, and it turned out gorgeous.

The detail on the dress was the most fun I've had in a long time - I even designed it myself with a lace overlay on the front panel, ribbon woven corset-style up the front, and braid trim along the overlay and around the neckline. It really is a real wedding dress, in miniature.

And of course, the most fun comes after Halloween, when they can dress up as often as they want. Makes all the effort worth it in the end!

Happy Halloween to everyone!

Volunteer Work: Farm style

Sometimes, being homeschoolers offers us some amazing opportunities.

 

This weekend, we took a volunteer job at a local living history museum, demonstrating some of the heritage arts that we do at home. We dressed in costume and sat on the porch of a 100 year old bunk house, where we showed knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and finger knitting.

It was an incredible opportunity for Two Little Girls. For as much time as they spend doing these things as a regular part of life, it was fantastic for them to hear the “oohs” and the “ahhs” of ‘city folk’ as they watched such young girls doing them. For me to be knitting wasn’t anything special. But for folks – kids and adults alike – to see my six and ten year old daughters proficiently creating beautiful, useful works of art was inspirational to some.

 

The girls sat with other kids as they came by and taught them the basics of their skills – Littlest One taught many a young girl to knit a chain by weaving yarn on her fingers, and sent each one away with a small ball of yarn to practice with. The satisfaction she got from sharing her skill equaled the satisfaction of the children learning it.

We taught a group of girl scouts how to knit and crochet, patiently demonstrating and holding their hands as they fumbled through the stitches. A couple were so eager to learn that they sat with us for nearly half an hour, carefully making stitch after stitch across rows. It’s neat to think they may go home with a desire to learn a lifelong skill that was nearly lost to antiquity for a few generations.

When they tired of sitting and doing their needlework, Two Little Girls took turns churning butter from fresh local cream and cleaning apples to be pressed into cider for the many visitors. No matter what they were doing, watching them brought smiles to many faces. To see some of the elderly women that passed through smile so big at my sweet girls having so much fun doing what most would consider work warmed my heart. 

And upon the end of our day, when The Oldest took my hand and swung my arm as she skipped along in her pinafore and bonnet, and she said, “This was such a special day!” That made it all worth the effort we put into it. I love when my girls are able to take pride in this (somewhat crazy) life we live. Not every kid gets to do the things they do here, and while it doesn’t always seem special to them, times like this help them realize they get to experience a lot of things most kids never get to.

The museum will close up soon for the winter, but we hope to continue volunteering our time there next year, sharing the skills we use every day with kids who don’t get to see them often. 

Ooey, Gooey Homeschooling Awesomeness

 My children, as in all areas of life, are as different as night and day when it comes to school. They each have their strong points and weak areas, the subjects they love and the ones they suffer through... and neither of them match up with anything. The Oldest picked up reading after about two months of instruction. Littlest One is on year two of painstakingly sounding out Every. Single. Word. But where The Oldest still can't always recall that 8x8=64, Littlest One seems to have a knack for memorizing math facts - and even loves to do it. Flash cards thrill her... The Oldest would rather scrub baseboards.

And so, just when I finally felt like had "This Whole Homeschooling Thing" down, Littlest One came along to dash all my dreams of mastery.

But, as I've worked to find ways to get information to stick in the brains of young children, one concept always rings true: if it involves laughter, fun, creativity, or enormous messes, they will undoubtedly remember what they have been taught. The only problem here is that this means that I have to come up with great ideas each week to keep them actively learning. Not always an easy thing to do. We've done "Memory" type games for sight words, online games for learning math facts and phonics, apps on my phone for sight words and for multiplication drills, and I've spent countless nights searching Pinterest for more fun ideas.

Somewhere between a Pinterest preschool activity and my own brain, this amazing little activity came about, and it's one that's cool enough that it deserves sharing.

I wrote the Eight Sight Words of the Week on little bits of craft foam, using a Sharpie. Then I scattered the bits on the bottom of a glass baking dish:


And then - because I was hoping to win the Cool Mom Award for the day, I managed to bring together fun, creativity, laughter, and an enormous mess, all into one activity: I squirted shaving cream all over the words, filling the baking dish til it nearly overflowed.

Then I handed Littlest One a list of her sight words and a pencil, and set her to work. Her job: find the little foam bits with the words on them, read them out loud, then find them on the list and mark them off with the pencil.


 
It sounds way easier than it really is. I also didn't let her keep the words out when she had found them - I made her put them back in. This meant she was constantly re-finding and re-reading the words.

The other blessed benefit to this activity: it can take at least an hour. Seriously - go get some laundry done, make some dinner.... take a nap, whatever. Your kid will be entertained. I promise.

Somehow, I assumed The Oldest would find this utterly immature and not be interested at all.
 
Clearly, I was wrong. She was desperate to get her hands in that shaving cream. So I wrote out a bunch of her most difficult multiplication and division facts and let her have a go at it.
 
The verdict? Coolest sight word game of the year, so far. The only problem is, now I have to come up with more fun ideas... feel free to hit me up with any you might have!

The Inventory of the Cellar

As the harvest/preserving season wraps up for the 2013 season, I organized the cellar and freezer and took stock of how much food we’ve produced and put by for the year. I was a little more detailed in my record keeping this year than I have been in the past, as I work to figure out how much food we actually need, how much it costs and how much I save, etc. 

These records are purely for my own information, but I’m posting them in case anyone is interested (and also, because if they are on the blog, I won’t lose them.)

In the cellar:

246 jars of food (fruit, vegetables, jams, sauces/salsas/condiments, syrups, soups.)

16 delicata squash (each will provide one meal)

6 large pie pumpkins (will equal approx 20 cans of pumpkin)

22 lbs fresh-stored carrots (with more to harvest)

12 lbs fresh-stored beets (I canned half the beet harvest as pickled beets)

17 lbs potatoes (with more to harvest)

? dried beans (haven’t shelled them yet. Maybe 5 lbs? Not much.)

62 heads of garlic (enough for planting this fall, too.)

75 onions

several bunches of dried herbs (dill, parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, lavender)

8 quarts of dried fruit and tomatoes

24 sheets of fruit leather (equals about 96 “fruit roll-ups”)

 

In the freezer:

5 lbs carrots

2 lbs broccoli

5 gallons of soups

4 quarts of chopped green onions

2 lbs chopped bell peppers

7 cups of spaghetti sauce

14 cups of pesto

I chose to can most of our food this year when it was possible, since freezer space is limited.

These totals don’t include the fresh veggies we’ve eaten through the summer, beginning in May and lasting about 5 months. Most meals were planned around what was coming out of the garden.

Meat:

16 chickens

3 turkeys (yet to be butchered)

1 goat (yet to be butchered.)

(hoping this will total about 40 meals’ worth of food, plus broth for soups.)

(There is also hope still for one -or two- elk this year, which would provide a full year's worth of meat, and enough to share.)

Dairy (year totals)

About 50 gallons of milk (I don’t keep daily records. This is a close estimate.)

About 45 dozen eggs (again, this is an estimate. They slow down in the winter, but produce 3-4 dozen per week during the summer.)

I wish I had the numbers to put a value to all of the food in this house right now, but I’m not that organized yet.

But the total cost of all of it?

$175 in locally, farm-purchased fruits and vegetables that I didn’t/couldn’t raise myself.

$60 in garden seeds

$60 in meat birds

Approx $120 in meat chicken feed

Another $120 in egg hen feed (not including the feed cost of the show birds.)

$240 in grain for goats

Not sure of the cost of jar lids, bought about $24 of canning jars this year, plus spices, sugar, etc. that I didn’t keep records of. Estimating about $75 in those supplies.

So total cost for the above listed foods? $824

Also, figure at least 250 hours of work. At least. Honestly, it’s probably a whole lot more, but sometimes it’s hard to decipher work from play around here.

The amount seems enormous, but when it's spread over 6 months or so, it's not terrible... and if I make the effort, I could cut our monthly grocery bill down to about $100 for 5 or 6 months.  That puts us at roughly $233 per month, eating healthy, organically grown vegetables, pastured meat, raw milk and fresh eggs. I realize some folks live on plenty less than this each month, but seriously y'all, we eat really good food!

 

So is it worth it? Absolutely.

 Raising meat chickens is utterly uneconomical, between the cost of the birds and feed, the amount of work required in the raising and butchering of them… if we could find a way to hatch our own meat chicks and raise our own feed, it would make more sense. (I’ve heard you can raise chickens almost entirely on clabbered cow’s milk. I’m not opposed to trying this when our cow is in milk) Turkeys are a much bigger bang for your buck, even when raised from poults. Goats can be expensive, since grain is a requirement, but the milk they provide for drinking, cooking, plus yogurt, cheese, etc. is so worth it… and goats provide a lot of fun, too. (Most people pay more for a monthly cable bill than we do for our goats, and goats are far more entertaining!) We also raise all the hay our animals will use, and they graze pasture during the spring, summer, and fall. This cuts down significantly on the cost of meat and milk production. It’s hard for me to estimate the value of the egg chickens vs. the cost of their feed, since most of our chickens are show-breed bantams that The Oldest raises for fun (and are therefore worthless when it comes to laying.)

The garden is amazing, though. The sheer number of pounds of food produced with just $60 worth of seeds in incredible. Fresh vegetables all through the summer months and well into the fall and winter. The fertilizer is provided by the menagerie in the barns, the water comes from our irrigation, and the man-power is provided by Two Little Girls and myself. (Bonus: gardening and other farm chores also provide a great daily workout, omitting what some folks pay in gym memberships.)What doesn’t get eaten provides extra feed for the animals. 

Are we anywhere close to self-sufficient? Not at all. Until I can grown my own wheat and oats, we'll still be making monthly trips to the grocery store. Though I have started looking into the details of raising sugar beets, just as an experiment...

When I sent Littlest One down-cellar the other day for a jar of pears, she came up with them and said, “Do you know what I thought when I went into the cellar? I thought, ‘I’m so proud of my mom for putting all this food in here for us to eat.’”

So is it worth it? Yep, you betcha. And it's even kinda fun, too. :-)