cash crops
Our trip to the farmers market Tuesday alerted me to the fact that we have a gold mine on our hands. This week, the only raspberries for sale at the market were going for an eye-popping $4.50 per half-pint, which meant that that very morning I had harvested, in an easy ten-minutes' work, $13.50 worth of berries!
Our raspberry total for the season, at last-week-in-June prices, now stands at $31.50, and that's just for the berries that managed to make it inside the house. Cutting back the trees overhanging the canes last fall really paid off; this is our best harvest yet.
I'm not counting most things like that; we talked about weighing all the harvests this year like the Path to Freedom folks do, but then we decided that would be too much work. So I can tell you that we've gotten alot of peas, and there were a fair number of strawberries, but strict numerical accounting eludes us. Rhubarb, though, has been measured, because most recipes call for it by the pound—so I can tell you that we've harvested around nine pounds which, at mid-season prices of $3.99/lb, gives us another $36 or so.
The best part about those two crops is that they're both entirely free to us. We got the rhubarb from my mother and the raspberries from Leah's dad, and besides a little water and compost we haven't done anything for them since. So pure profit! All we need to do is expand a little and we'll be ready to make our living as farmers.