Farmer's Market

Last week was our first time as vendors at the local farmer's market.  I was not sure how much to take so I didn't over do it, but in the end I could have sold lots more.  I sold spinach, radishes, kohlrabi and cherries as well as fresh eggs and the beautiful garden art my husband handcrafts. 

Within an hour or so we were out of eggs and not long after we were sold out of produce.  I was a little surprised the garden art didn't sell better, but that's okay.  I was pleasantly surprised that the produce did sell so well! 

The hardest part was pricing everything.  I didn't want to be too low so that I sold everything quickly but didn't make any profit on it and I didn't want to be so high nothing would sell.  After our first market we have decided that the price on the eggs was too low but the veggies, I think, were just about right.  I was so excited to go and very glad we did, finally!  This is something I have thought about for a couple years now and finally just made the commitment.  Our market is on Thursday afternoons, which works great for me with a funky work schedule.  

We are debating applying for a market license for meat products, which is required in our state, but will wait until we have a few more markets under our belt.  Next week we will return if we have enough produce, which we should.  We have started picking zucchini and the tomatoes may start  by then and possibly the cabbages could be ready.  Oh and green beans and sugar snap peas should be ready.  Next time I will also try to take dried egg noodles (great grandma's recipe) and maybe some bakery goods (everyone loves cupcakes!).  This is such an exciting next step for us and our hobby farm.  It's also a great place to meet more people who also farm on both large and small scale.

I would call it a success and I look forward to more markets.  We do have more to learn and it is a decent amount of work to get everything ready, packaged and hauled there, set up and to be there for 3 hours selling.  It is quite a time commitment, but well worth the rewards if I can keep up enough produce to continue!

Goats Need Exercise

My kids love to show goats at the county fair.  The biggest problem they have in getting them in shape for the fair is exercising them.  The goats don't want to run like they need to.  All they want to do is eat grass and wander.  Today we had an ingenious (maybe) idea.  We had an old set of stairs lying around and decided the goats could use that as exercise equipment!  After all, I have been told that exercising them wins the show!

As soon as we put the stairs in and made sure they would be sturdy enough the goats had a ball running, jumping, climbing and playing on them.  It was a constant game of "king of the mountain" and climb-n-slide!  

We have about a month before the fair so I guess we will see if they make a difference or not, but it can't hurt.  (Except for the small cut one received in all the commotion that we had to wrap with coban).  We also upped their feed ration today hoping for better results by fair time.  The feed we have been using is Kent Goat Kid Developer. It is an 18% protein complete feed, so nothing else is required.  They also have Kent goat mineral available at all times. I am hoping that the increased feed and increased exercise will make for muscle packed goats!  

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Love This Quote

"Country to me is living life at it's simplest: Learning to appreciate a sliced vine-ripe tomato with a dash of salt, served between two slices of good bread and eaten over the kitchen sink".

-Chef Art Smith, Countryliving Magazine

Budgets Made Easy

There is an important lesson that took me into adulthood to learn: making and sticking to a budget.  I have been using this easy budget method for years.  It takes very little time each week to pay bills and I know weeks in advance what our financial standing is.  This is not something they teach kids in school, but I believe it should be.  It is also the first step in learning to save.

1.  Make a list of recurring monthly bills and their due dates.

2.  Make a list of each payday for a month (for us and most people this would be every Friday) and how much your paychecks are for each.

3.  Decide how much can be spent each payday on bills and how much money "living" for the week requires (including gas, food, entertainment and misc items)

4.  Begin adding to each week the bills that are due then and how much they are until you reach your maximum "bill" money for that week.  Do this for each week.  Any bills left without specific due dates can be added to a week that has bill funds available.

5.  There may be weeks with extra funds available after all the bills have a place in the budget.  In this case, I put those funds in our savings.  I also put extra monies including bonuses into the savings even if it is $25 or $50.  Before you know it this adds up quick!  It is much easier for me to keep an index card in the back of my checkbook marked "savings" that I keep track of that money and don't actually have to transfer it to a savings account.  If I actually had to transfer it, I probably wouldn't do it half of the time.  Our savings would be much smaller than it is. 

At the beginning of each month I make my list of bills and income and decide where they all go.  This way I know ahead of time if we will have extra money at a certain time of the month or not.  For the most part it stays the same from month to month with variations only for sporadic things like budgeting for property taxes or vacations or similar other things that don't occur every month.

This makes it very easy each week to sit down and reconcile the checkbook online and quickly pay the week's bills without having to decide each week what to pay!  It also makes it easier to have a budget that we can stick to.  Even when an unexpected expense comes up I can usually rearrange our budget a little or use some of the "savings" money from the index card I keep in the back (money that is actually in our checking account but separate so it is not spent!)

Budgeting can be easy!