I got off work this morning and got straight to work. It had started to rain already. I had three rows left to plant in our front corn patch, and just enough of my best seed to plant it.
When that was done and the critters were cared for, I hit the hay. I'd been up for nearly thirty hours at that point, and hours well spent! When I woke from some real quality rest, Melissa had transplanted our seedlings to bigger pots and started some new. 
Our Willow tree cuttings look about ready to plant now. Look at that jar full of roots! Willows will bring medicine, material for weaving, fire starting tinder, rabbit fodder, more leaf mulch, and more depth of beauty to the homestead. I have five, and I think they'll be split 3/2 between the forest and a small stand by the rabbitry. Whenever I've seen a wild stand of willows, there's always been blackberries with them. I'll mimic that pattern, adding strawberries and either comfrey or curly dock to the guild.
In a telegram group I'm in, someone shared an article about doing elderberry cuttings the same way, so as soon as I find my pruning shears I'll start a fair bit of elderberry cuttings. If nobody in my community needs them, I'll start a stand down at the woods. I'd like to manifest some linden trees, as that's one tree I've not worked with and have heard awesome things about. So I'm putting that out there as a prayer.
So now I need a place to plant a peach tree and five Willow trees. And blackberry canes. And soon some linden trees. Good problems.
Still no litter from Other Mombun yet. I'm anxious for her bunnies this round because this is her last chance to show me she's a good mother. Her first three litters got neglected, and I will have to cull her if she's not productive. We'd have a lot more rabbits in the freezer if she was a better mother. It sucks because she throws good sized litters. Her first three had nine, ten, and eleven kits respectively, that are now being turned into peaches. I love peaches, but I'd really rather have those thirty animals in the family's meal plan.
Last night I put in my second big order on purse.io using last week's blog earnings to fund homestead equipment and projects. Here's a list of what all I picked up:
- 20 pig nipples for a pig waterer
- a brass 4-way hose splitter
- some bolts
- a fiber reinforced rubber feeder trough for the pigs
- two 7:1 pulley blocks for hoisting pigs to quarter (one for us, one for a friend)
- two pig scrapers to shave the hair from the pigs so we don't have to skin them; increasing the harvest (one for us, one for a friend)
- a butcher knife
- a boning knife
- and a 21.5 quart stainless steel water bath canner/stock pot
Aside from that, the rest of the earnings went to my friends for various transactions; a motor for the lathe, some gun parts, and some other stuff that I can't recall. I've been wanting to list it all here so as to let everyone know I'm grateful for your support. It's making a quantifiable difference in my quality of life to have this extra income that I don't have to work into my regular budget. Melissa sends her gratitude as well. When I showed her everything she said it's enabling us to pay extra towards our debts and get out of debt sooner. As I mentioned on the list, it's actually pouring over into my immediate community as well because a couple items were able to be purchased for a friend too. Our cup overflows. Thank you all.
With the next earnings, I'll continue the same direction, likely switching from things for harvesting and supporting animals to things for preserving our harvest. Lots of salt and seasonings (on top of our current herb seeds), as well as canning jars. I've stopped putting my fiat allowance into crypto because coinbase has such exorbitant fees on small transactions ($2 on $10 purchases!) and I've moved that into buying a pack of jars every two weeks. I reckon we should shoot for around 200 jars of various sizes between pints, quarts, and half gallons. I don't know if there's a way to tell how many you'll actually need for a family, but I want to start with a number that sounds pretty high to me, and 200 sounds good. A hundred quarts, thirty halves, and seventy pints, or whatever is close to that in normal packaged quantities. I'm going to need to clean up my sweat shop to be able to store everything...
Do you can your own food? How many jars do you use in a year? What book could I buy to help me determine that kind of thing?
I'm gonna wrap up for the day, it's getting late into my work day now. If you like what I'm doing and want to fuel my progress, shoot me an upvote and a comment!
Love from Texas
Nate 💚