This’N’That Backyard Farming

This’N’That 

Backyard Farming with the Castonguay’s!

Welcome to our Maine homestead! This page is a compilation of the farm projects we are working on and our fun farm animal friends.  This is an ever-changing page and is currently under renovation. Here I will have links to the blog posts related to each topic.  You can also search my blog for specific topics on the right or sift through my archives by date.

Here is our barn as of January 2021. See what the barn looked like at its early beginning on our blog post:

 The Building of a Barn.

Starting Spring 2020, a separate post with updates of the barn’s progress into a functional farm building was created to keep my readers updated on our week to week developments.  Check it out at:

  Building the barn: The Finishing Touches.  

Spring of 2021, we started having some little gains... have you seen the post showing the development of the barn?  

Check out: Spring Cleaning

By the end of summer, the inside pen was completed for the sheep. Prior to living in the barn with their larger pasture, they were living in their sheep shed and paddock. 

Check out their transition to the barn on our post: 

The Big Move into the Barn.

We have two Katahdin sheep: Nala (pictured above) and Natalie who we got as lambs in the Spring of 2019.  They are a hair breed of sheep so they are not providing any fiber.  They are bred for meat. They were joined the summer of 2020 by Rosie and Dolly the Southdown sheep.  Check out their arrival on the post: 

What’s Two More?

Ivy our little lamb was born 2/20/21 at 11:30 pm.  She is 12 pounds on day 1 of life.  Her Mama Dolly is doing a great job.  Check out our first of many posts about 

Ivy our Little Lamb.

March 2021 Lambert the Southdown ram lamb and Boston our Hampshire wether joined the barn on the boy’s side. Boston will be a market lamb and Lambert will be the father of next season’s lambs on our farm.

Carla the Barn Cat

We are so pleased to introduce Carla, as a working member of our farm.  She has an important job to do as our barn cat. We adopted her from a friend and she is a perfect fit for our family and farm.

Learn all about Carla the Barn Cat on her blog post.

The ducks in the duck coop

Spring of 2020 was our first year raising ducklings and we got ten. 

 We were hoping to have mostly female ducks for laying eggs.  Unfortunately, we got mostly drakes (male ducks).  Obviously you can tell by their dark green heads, but also their tail feathers curl up in the back, so we could tell even before they got green head and neck feathers. Turns out only  two were girls, so we kept Caesar with the yellow marking on her neck and Puddles and Eggbert  the most handsome drake.

Alexia did her 4H project on ducks: check her blog post out by clicking this link at Khaki Campbell Ducks.

Here is what they looked like when we first got them.

It’s cold these early weeks outside in Maine, even with the heat lamp, so we keep the babies in our mud room the first few weeks.  Their neighbors, the turkey chicks were right beside them.  There is a little clip below of them waddling around their outdoor coop for the first time.

 I made this video to show a friend who was coming to take care of the animals while we were on vacation, but it came out so good, I want to share it with you

Front Porch of the Chicken Coop

I made a fun post about our favorite features of the chicken coop.  It is the Ten ways to Soup Up Your Coop!  Well not long after that, we had to move said children coop across our yard, which was a scary adventure, but with some physical effort and some physics, we relocated our coop.  Check out that exciting post.  Adventures of Moving a Chicken Coop.

The old girls are getting some fresh air on their front porch.  They love it on days when we're home and let them spend the day outside.  They are so satisfied to be scratching at the ground and pecking at bugs and we are very happy to have less ticks.  For these colder months, we are bunking the three ducks with them.  Check out our post: Tying Things Down for Autumn.

We have about 30 hens and 3-4 roosters.  They are great egg makers and they even let the kids hold them and pet them. We bought 20 more chicks Spring of 2020 from cackleberry glamour chickens.  They are awfully cute. Check out our post on our Unique Breeds.

Raising Turkeys

This is our third year raising turkeys.  We did put together a post showing the possibilities for all the meat that comes from this project: Raising Turkeys; The Possibilities. 

Turkey chicks grow really fast and they’re ready to try out their little wings so when we make their little nursery we always have to put up high walls and usually that is with cardboard. When we first introduce the turkey chicks to their new home we always dip their beaks in the water so that they know where the water is and are sure to drink.  We don’t even add the grain for them until a few hours later after we are sure they’ve all had a good amount to drink. Another trick that we have learned is to add a teaspoon of sugar to the water to make it more appealing for them to drink. Just that first day.

Another important step when getting that baby turkey chicks comfortable is the heat lamp needs to be adjusted so that they are all happy moving around their  space. If they are all cuddled together underneath the lamp then that means it is too cold and we have to move the heat lamp closer or turn up the heat in the room. You can see in the photo to the left how they are all huddled together and then to the right how they are all happily moving around their space. If they get too hot they will collect themselves as far away from the light as they can and that would indicate the need to move the light away or even turn it off if it is a hot day.

     Too Cold...                         Just Right!

Turkeys do grow very Quickly so it doesn’t take too long for them to move into their outdoor pen. Watch the video below to see them checking things out.

Garden Living

The beans are sprouting in the vegetable garden.  See my post about our battle against the elements in Garden Living.

Our new shipment of blueberry bushes has arrived; 20 new little saplings all ready to be planted. They’re going to be 4 to 5 feet tall and they’re supposed to be mostly in the sun; about 60% of the day hours so we’ve decided to try and intermingle them with our flower gardens.  To learn more about this favorite crop of ours, see our Maine Blueberry Season Post.  Justin calls it the edible garden. This butterfly agrees! As I’ve spent more time with my camera ready, I have captured some great moments with birds around the homestead including a chickadee going into its bird house to feed its babies.  Check it out in my post: The birds and the flowers.

The strawberries are growing now and the first one has started changing color from that light green to bright red.  They’re ready for picking when they’re mostly red.  Too late and the chipmunks or ants get to them.  But, too soon and they’re sour.  Knowing a little bit of this’n’that can really help.
Read more about my post about home grown strawberries.

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