Sorry about the pun.  We got 3 cute New Zealands yesterday from our friends and hope to produce rabbit meat for our family.  We have a buck and 2 does.  Our buck is very friendly, but the does are skiddish right now. Tomorrow I will try to get a pic for you.  My dh built the cages and they are great.  He used hog wire for the frame because rabbits  chew on wood terribly. The inner wire is hardware cloth and their boxes for nesting are to be made from square pails, like kitty litter comes in!

Pound for pound you can't beat rabbits for a homestead.  Feed is inexpensive, care is minimal and space requirements are low. The manure is good for your garden . Plus, they won't bother your neighbors. 

A rabbit can be butchered at 8 - 10 weeks of age, and the meat is very nice.

Chickens, rabbits and bees... We're on our way to being more independent already.

Have a great week on your homestead.

Ginny

Okay it's time to face the music and diet.

I really need to lose a lot of weight and now's the time.  To help me in this venture I found a really cool website called www.myfitnesspal.com.  It counts my calories and tells me how much I'm losing. It also tracks my weight loss, inch loss, water intake and exercise. If you get a chance give it a look.  Also I'm going to be putting a note on my page here about my progress.

Wish me luck!

My 6 blessings

Here are my youngest 3 with our foster daughters at Christmas 2007

Last night toward the end of Wednesday night prayer meeting, it started sleeting. Oh, I love cold weather. This morning there was a dusting of white snow on the ground and a cold rain falling. Today is the kind of day you want to stay inside, snuggled on the couch ,with a great movie. But alas, I had much to do.  My eye exam was at 11 am, then I had to get groceries, since we just got back yesterday evening. My daughter Kate had to tutor a boy this afternoon in town. So I was out alot today.

Tonight we are having succotash soup with corn bread and watching the newest Love comes softly movie. 

Succotash Soup

4 or 5 cans of succotash ( or mixture of 2 -3 whole kernel corn and 2 lima beans)

1/4 cup sugar

1 jar of pizza sauce

browned hamburger - about 1 pound

salt ,pepper and garlic powder to taste

Mix all together and simmer for about 30 minutes.  I drain about half of the vegetable cans and only keep enough liquid for the right  thickness in the soup. It is a thick almost chili type of soup.

Anyway about the hen... she was a little mangled and laying in the floor of the coop.  We have a pen around the coop, and the people door was shut and locked, but the little slide door the chickens use was open.  Something climbed the fence and got her. Maybe a raccoon. So, the door must be shut at night from now on. 

This is the first time we've had a loss from inside the pen area. and we've had hens for about 2 years.

Our hens are laying so well right now, we get about 14 eggs a day from 17 chickens and some are too big for the carton!   We allow them to free range most days from after lunchtime until dark. My boys, Joey and Jake, sell 6 dozen a week.  We recently raised the price and asked for 1.50 since the feed is so much more with the drought we've had, but most of ther customers pay 2.00 anyway! Most customers are friends from church.

Gotta go, time for hot chocolate..yum!

Services at church were a blessing today.  We just finished our faith missions conference and todays service was our chance to promise the Lord to be faithful to give to missions.  Every year we try to raise the amount of support we give with God's help. I know it's getting more expensive for many of our missionaries because the value of the dollar is falling around the world.

Tomorrow our family is going to a preachers meeting in SC, where we will meet up with my daughter and son in law who are singing there.  We are going to visit them in GA until Wed. 

God gave us an extra blessing yesterday.....a car !!  Really, someone just gave us a red neon. It is a cute car and my daughter has been needing something to drive ,other than the van.  Also when I don't have to take everyone with me I can save on gas and drive the car.  I am so happy, we have been talking about trying to get something cheap to drive and I have prayed that God would help us find something...I really underestimated Him.

I hope we have time to visit some of Charleston's thrift store while there. They have such nice ones.

Well, I'll check back in Wed. night.

God bless y'all'

Ginny

Crystal over at  www.biblicalwomanhoodonline.com  has posted an interesting article about how she has saved money in 2007 and it got me to thinking of ways that I saved.  So here's my list...

1. Used a clothesline on nice days, and I do alot of laundry.
2. We turned down the thermostat in the winter and up in the summer.
3. Shopped at CVS and learned to really save!
4. Started planning my menu and put a limit on how much each meal could cost per person.
5. Carried drinks and snacks to town to cut down on buying fast food.
6. Cut my younger boys hair myself. 2 boys at 8.00 a cut - that's 16.00 every 6 weeks. Or 144.00 a year!
7. Cut off lights and taught the kids to do so.
8. Gladly accepted all hand me downs from friends.

That's my roundup. How did ya'll save?

Last night my son and I made a run to CVS at 9:30 and we scored some great deals.  We divided the buys into 3 seperate purchases so that we could use the great $2/ off $10 dollar order and 4/ off 20.

I hope to get a picture of my stuff  posted later tonight, but here is a recap...

I entered the store with 8 dollars worth of ECBs and bought

• 12 soy joy bars that I don't like, but they were free with overage.
• oxy plus palmolive dish soap
• aquafresh toothpaste
• 2 robutussin cold and cough remeddies

Total cost 37.27   

used 29.16 in coupons

spent 7.50 ECBs

spent 51 cent out of pocket! AND I made 13.00 in ECBs

Order #2

• Palmolive dish soap
• Fructis deep conditioner  - not a great deal but I needed some
• aquafresh toothpaste
• 2 twin packs of Gallon size zip lock bags CVS brand  - that's 4 boxes in all

Total cost 21.78

Spent 11.00 ECBs and used 21.10 in coupons

68 cent out of pocket and got back 7.00 in ECBs and 4.00 in good coupons for another trip

Order #3

• 2 keebler cookies- the little size box
• 4 soy joy bars - yuck (as I said)
• twin pack of cheerios cereal - 2 boxesc that I needed
• total  17.00

used 8.75 in coupons  and spent 8.25 out of pocket

I made 8.00 Ecbs and got a $1 coupon for hershey's chocolate!

Final count spent less than 9 dollars  on about 76.00 worth of goods

Made 16.00 ECBs for next time and got several good coupons !

Doing the happy dance

Ginny

Boys love tractors and Joey and Jake are no exception!

My daughter, Jessi's, wedding picture from July 2007My son's wedding September 2007 - Rusty and Liz

Justin, the fireman, with his foster sister

 Daughter Kate with foster baby

Our foster daughter with some of the "girls" - too Sweet

Welcome to my very first attempt at blogging.  Although my computer skills are limited, I hope to learn alot from this venture.

A Gathering of Days is simply a journal of the day to day life of my family as we try to live our lives for the Lord and become better stewards of the blessings God has entrusted to us.  Toward that end I am learning to live on a budget that is less than we make. We are trying to learn to produce more of our needs right here at home.

Already there are hens laying the biggest brown eggs you ever saw, for our family and for our boys to sell to others.  We have 3 bee hives that produced 70 pints, of golden honey, this first year. Our pond is stocked with bass, catfish, and bluegill, and we have a small supply of wood, stacked by the shed, for use in our woodstove this winter. So, I'm feeling pleased with our beginning efforts.

I plan to post about my attempts at feeding my family frugally, our progress on our farm, and homeschooling, as well as general family stuff.  Please come by here often and leave a comment. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you on this journey.

Ginny

Goals for 2008

• Cut back on processed suagr
• develop a walking routine- either outside or a Walk Away the Pounds DVD
• Stay on budget
• learn to make soap
• learn to knit
• buy ahead for Christmas and spend much less this year
• plant a garden
• can or freeze about half of our vegetables and fruit
• get my family involved in the upcoming election
• take the children on vacation to Washington DC
• clean and organize attic
• repaint a few rooms of the house.