The following is a summary of our income categories this year:
Pigs~ We have 3 pigs currently that will be ready to butcher in about a month or so. Then we plan to purchase 3-4 more to raise over summer and butcher late fall. We will keep one for ourselves and sell the rest.
Meat Chickens~ We plan to raise about 300 this year. We plan to sell most and keep about 40-60 for our meat supply this winter.
Laying Hens~ We keep 9 hens to provide eggs for our family and maybe sell a few dozen a month to help reduce the cost of feed for our own egg supply.
Garden~ This is mostly for our winter supply of food. We do a lot of canning and freezing of produce and fruit each summer/fall and this will be where the bulk of the veggies come from. When we have surplus or we are just too busy to can that week we will be selling the veggies and fruits from the garden as well as donating some. The reject foods or spoiled foods will go to the pigs.
Horses~ Since we aren't financially ready for horse ownership ourselves just yet, and we love seeing horses out the window, we decided to board a couple on the property. We feed and care for the horses, and the owner provides hay to feed them. It is a great complimentary thing with our hay production because it saves both us and the horses' owner time (her in finding and hauling hay and us in coordinating outside sales and loading up a trailer. Having horses here helps to bring in $ for covering farm improvement expenses and it helps pay the property taxes as well. I am really glad we decided to do this instead of diving into horse ownership right away. This brings in a steady income flow to help float other farm projects until their harvest time comes. This income acts a little like grease in a wheel for the whole operation. We appreciate our boarder because she cares for her horses well, and is prompt with payments too. Good boarders are a huge blessing!
Hay~ We have about 3.5 acres of hay production this year. Last year we had about 4.25 acres and we got 9+ ton off of it in 3 cuttings. This year we are hoping to yield about 6 ton in 2 cuttings. We'd like to leave some taller grass and forage for fall and winter grazing to help reduce the horses hay needs over winter to help the boarder's hay budget too. It might make a little difference, we shall see.
Rabbits~ We don't have them currently (we loaned out the operation out for a while), but there is a possibility they will come back into the mix sometime this year. The goal with them will be for them to cover their own feed costs and to provide some food for the freezer.
Berries~ It is possible we will have a fall yield of berries from our ever bearing strawberry variety this year. This it he first year of production and we are trimming off all blooms for the first couple months but later in the year we should be able to let a few ripen and I am hoping for a few flats of strawberries off 200+ plants. We also have raspberries that are newly planted this year but we are unsure if they will produce the first year.
So those are all the areas we are focusing on this year. Which feels like plenty let me tell you!
Without further delay, here are the farm goals....
#1 Bless others. By Sharing experiences and time, making memories with people, and sharing the bounty in various ways. We'd like to donate to our local food pantry, and to give some of the bounty to family and friends. We'd also like to incorporate a form of ministry into our efforts: fellowship, discipleship and giving.:) Value of this goal= Priceless.
#2 Put food in the freezer/pantry at low or no cost. Pork, chicken, green beans, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, salsa, pickles, canned pumpkin, ground zucchini, frozen corn, frozen broccoli, plus fresh produce over summer too. Value of this goal= $1,700+
#3 Earn enough from farm to pay property taxes and home owner's insurance. This would also allow us to maintain our farm deferral status for the property taxes. Value of this goal= $2,600
#4 Have enough $ in the farm account from all of 2013 farm projects to cover the start-up of 2014 farm projects. This prevents us from dipping into the normal monthly budget to start up the farm projects. We will need roughly $900 to start up the meat chickens next year (to cover feed, chick costs etc for the first 1.5 batches) until we can sell some to pay the expenses. For pigs, we will need approximately $725 to purchase the feed and piglets for the year. Garden, we'd need $200 to cover supplies, seeds etc. For the hay, we need minimum of $300 to have the 1st cutting of hay custom cut. Laying hens we'd need $300+ to cover the cost of the chicks and feed to get them to laying age if we want to go into more egg production with a few more hens next year. As you can see these projects really add up and put a tremendous strain on the budget as we go along in the spring. It would be nice to not have that strain on the finances as we are getting started for the year. Value of this goal= $2,700++.
So there you have it, our farm goals 2013! We are excited to see how far down the list we can accomplish this year. We'd be pretty pleased if we could attain through goals #3. We've broken these general goals down a little more as a family and talked a lot about how we can accomplish them in various ways, but that would make for a VERY long post so I won't bore you with the details.
At the end of the year I will try to remember to post how we did with all these goals and where we ended up financially. So far we are astounded at how much it costs to raise animals, so we are praying that we end up in the positive at the end of the year.:) It's all in God's hands ultimately.
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