Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[willowridgefarm@iowatelecom.net]

>
Carrie,
I know what you mean...I too was at the feed store yesterday, rabbit
pellets up $2.80 in the last 7 months as well as chicken/layer feed. Our
eggs that we sell from our house have been forced from a dollar a dozen to
two! My girls aren't fed a lot of feed because they receive so much other
but it stills is a huge hit. It is now cheaper to feed our sheep and goats
grain than hay in this part of the country. Hay is selling for $5-8 per
small bale...don't have the equipment to move large bales or it would save
some $. We feed almost 1,00 bales a year to everything...you do the math! 
We own a  fiber business so getting rid or thinning out the herd isn't an
option. Selling offspring in the Spring has been a way of recouping some
of our investment hopefully folks will have the extra income to buy.
We raise and grow as well as barter most of our own food...but walked
through the store yesterday just to "look" at prices! Talk about sticker
shock. This year we will expand the garden...start more indoors early and
expand our varieties. I am wondering if more people should take notice and
do the same.
Cherie
Willow Ridge Farms




I'm no financial whiz, but dh's 401K went down $2,000 in just a few days.
> I don't know how you can say the market evened out when the charts and
> records are always so few years at a time.  Somewhere I read that
> financial reporting is regularly skewed by timeline manipulation.   This
> past weekend I was reading a bank trade journal in which the editorial was
> stating the facts of looming large recession.  Seems they're not trying to
> cover anything up, though the entire editorial seemed cautiously padding
> the awful truth to come.  Reminded me of my most social security letter
> (nothing paid in 10 yrs as I'm a homemaker training the next generation to
> be self-sufficient productive thinkers) that finally states that in 2018
> they'll be paying out more than they'll be taking in and will be reducing
> benefits to only 75% --- my paraphrasing, not verbatum.  Did you guys read
> that letter too?
>
>    It doesn't take much to interpret how much it now costs to buy feed for
> two weeks for my animals or how much it costs to buy groceries for a
> family of 5 in comparison to the increase in earning wages.
> basically if I don't decrease the feed bill all around, then the wage
> increase doesn't go that far above the food increase, sort of like
> spinning wheels.
>
>   At the feedstore yesterday they were again raising the prices on their
> white board and I paid $9.50 plus tax (my fault for not getting a new
> farm or 4-H tax # yet) for one  50# bag of alfalfa cubes.   Seems to me
> that same bag was only $6 just a few years ago.  A 50# bag of rabbit
> pellets was $5.95 and now is over $8.     The cost of the animals and
> their products has to go up in order for me to pay for this.
>
>   I'm currently reading The Food and Heat Producing Solar Greenhouse by
> Rick Fisher and Bill Yanda and discussing with DH how we're going to
> remodel our new house to be more energy efficient (we bought it with the
> intention of adding a larger kitchen and decking and a bedroom in the
> basement -- the existing kitchen we want to turn into a library and
> music space partially open to the living room).    This is pretty
> inspiring reading:
> http://www.earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=03.08.01&article=finch
>
>   I'm planning to get a couple cattle panels and do something similar to
> what Claudia's done in creating a small and simple effective seasonal
> unheated attached greenhouse and get busy on a few cold frames.   My
> hoophouses have the chickens and rabbits until we make a plan for how to
> house them permanently.
>
>   Blessings,
>   Carrie
>
>
>
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