September Totals

September is generally our biggest month. Unfortunately we didn’t think ahead and scheduled a vacation right in the middle of it, thus making it less productive than usual. Less harvesting did mean more wasted food. Our green beans finished out their days while we were gone, all of them swelling and drying out. Never fear! We just harvested all of the dry pods and will be using them for soups and stews.

The cucumbers also finished up. This wasn’t our best year with them. The old adage “don’t fix what ain’t broken” definitely applies here. We had a good thing going with growing Double Yield Heirloom cucumbers but decided to try something else this year which wasn’t nearly as productive. You live you learn.

Bonus for September was our honey harvest, which I’ll go over in an upcoming blog post. The bees were really productive this year considering this was their first year here. We harvested two honey supers totaling over 51lbs of honey. They really did force our hand as we either had to harvest or add a third honey super. This past weekend we checked in on them for the last time of the season and found that the honey super we put back on is once again filled so we know they’ll have plenty of food for the winter. We’ll make sure to provide them with pollen patties and sugar water if it comes down to it, but so far they are looking really good. It’s a bonus that there isn’t much competition here and during the winter the Eucalyptus start blooming to produce even more forage for them.

Fruit Trees
Apples – 2.69 lbs
European Pears – 1.69 lbs
Quince – 7.38 lbs

Shrubs, Vines & Groundcovers

Rose hips – .19 lbs

Vegetables
Dry Beans – 9.5
Green Beans – .5 lbs
Beets – 1.63 lbs
Carrots – 4.51 lbs
Celery – .81
Corn – 2.06 lbs
Cucumbers, pickling – 15.31 lbs
Cucumbers, slicing – 4.63 lbs
Eggplant – .94 lbs
Kale – .06 lbs
Leeks – .38 lbs
Melon – 8.06 lbs
Onions – 10.7 lbs
Parsnips – 4.88 lbs
Peppers – 9.51 lbs
Potatoes – 5.32 lbs
Squash, summer – 11.39 lbs
Squash, winter – 128 lbs
Tomatillos – 30.0 lbs
Tomatoes – 69.45 lbs
Watermelon – 13.94 lbs

Animal Products

Rabbit – 9.5 lb
Milk – 3.69 gallons
Honey – 51.5
Eggs – 250

Total Produce – 343.53 lbs

Expenditures
This month we had another high cost item for the livestock, however, in the long run it should be worth it. We stocked up on animal feed at wholesale cost – a fairly large amount at about $350 worth. That brought our livestock expenditures to $583.83. We still have to buy alfalfa, though I’m looking into getting a cheaper source that’s organic. Nursery stock this month was fairly inexpensive. I bought new seed potatoes and a few other items, totaling $41.90. No water bill this month though.

Savings So Far
Our gross savings so far this year (from Jan. 1st) is $8,344.75 with expenditures running at $4,910.28 for a total net savings of $3,434.47. We’ve grown a total of 1,014.78 lbs of produce, which isn’t as high as I would like. The biggest savings, however, has come from animal products. The milk this month was a lot less because we were gone for a week, so there wasn’t any milking to be had. Fortunately the boys are still here so instead of milk production going down, they actually increased it for us. This month it should actually go up substantially since the boys will be leaving us and we’ll be milking twice a day.

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