I don’t know about you, but April’s weather made us nervous! Our last average frost date is typically the first week of April…except this year we ended up with freezing temperatures and ice on the chicken waterers that week. Yikes! We had already planted our potatoes at the end of March and had our fingers-crossed that they would survive. Thankfully not all the leaves were frost-kissed in the end! Read on for how we saved (and made $$) in this edition of April 2021 on the homestead.
April also allowed us to slip off for a short vacation away from the Cottage and farm to relax and get ready for the busy growing and food preservation season ahead. So numbers this month will be skewed low a bit due to not being at home to eat from our own garden. That being said, we still ate a fair amount from the pantry…and started putting up our winter carrots for future soups, stews, and broths.
Chickens
The flock continues to lay at an amazing rate! Even missing a few days of record-keeping due to our vacation they more than earned their keep this month again. No freeloaders in the flock…until the very last week when Miss Alice decided to go broody. She’s currently in time out trying to convince me she needs to hatch some eggs.
Farm fresh eggs around here go from $3-7 per dozen depending on raising practices. We’re fairly middle of the road, so we price ours right in the middle at $5 per dozen.
Egg Totals
- Brown Eggs: 71
- Green Eggs: 46
- Blue Eggs: 42
- Total Eggs: 159
- Total value: $66.25
Chicken Expenses
- Bedding: $7
- Feed: $20
- Total: $27
- Chicken Net: $39.25
Homestead Kitchen
As I mentioned in the intro, we traveled this month so we consumed less of our own food. We also ate many of our pre-frozen soups for lunch the week after our vacation. Therefore the numbers here are a bit lower. Also, we opened up our last spaghetti squash and it was all gross inside…Food preservation season nearly upon us, so we definitely need to up our pantry/freezer food consumption and toss out the things beginning to rot to the chickens.
- Total grocery savings: $48.71
Flowers
While I enjoy bouquets of flowers around the house, I don’t love spending money on something that is going to die and go into the compost pile in a week. Growing your own flowers is quite cheap (especially from seed!), so we are hoping to grow plenty of flowers to fill vases from spring to fall this year. Flowers around here run about a dollar per stem, so that’s how I’m calculating the cost savings for this category. This past month I cut fewer flowers as there were PLENTY of bouquets leftover after my sister-in-law’s wedding to keep our vases filled.
- Flowers by the stem: 7x $1 = $7
Selling Extra
A new section here this month now that we are starting to ramp up production in our garden. We often over grow more than we could possibly eat, so we often sell our extra produce through Growing Green Family Farms consignment-style. We also plant extra seeds every year to sell unique vegetable varieties to local gardeners and April is the month we sell the majority of them. Brings a little extra $ into the household budget to restock the pantry with items we can’t or don’t grow ourselves (like chocolate, coffee, spices, etc.) and to pay for our seeds and seed starting soil.
- Transplants – $131
- Extra Herbs – $13
- Extra Carrots – $50
- Total – $194
Wrap up: April 2021 on the homestead
- Chicken Net: $39.25
- Grocery Savings: $48.71
- Flower Savings: $7
- Selling Extra: $194
- April Totals: $288.96