Garden Living; The Best Leafy Greens For The Garden

Garden Living

The Best Leafy Greens For The Garden

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Swiss Chard and Kale, and even Beet Greens

We prefer swiss chard in our Maine vegetable garden for many reasons. It is so much more desirable then spinach due to its size and much tastier then bok choy.  

1. The large leaves make it easy to harvest.  Making a full meal of spinach leaves takes an exhaustive amount of time, not so with Swiss chard or beet greens. 

2. Both kale and Swiss chard are very hardy plants and we continue harvesting these leaves into winter. 

3. Sautéed with some garlic and onion, Swiss chard is delicious and the kids are even asking for seconds. 

4. It’s a very colorful veggie choice with a rainbow assortment of stem colors making it beautiful both growing in the garden and cooked on your plate.

5. Swiss chard is packed with vitamins K, A, and C as well as magnesium, potassium, iron, and fiber. 

The nice thing about growing beets is being able to enjoy the whole plant.  We eat the beet greens when the plants are still fairly small and enjoy a nice red beet at the end. 

 Beets stain everything red, so they are a colorful option full of fiber and folate (vitamin B9).  Later on we harvest large beets; they are a sweet vegetable.

A big bowl of chopped kale ready for the pot.  One of my favorite recipes from my Portuguese family; kale soup is simple and healthy.

We decided to can the soup so that it won’t take up precious fridge space and it will be ready to share on a cool Autumn night.

Preparing for the Little Lambs

 Preparing For the Little Lambs

We prepared the lambing pens so that the ewes would have their own space to lamb and then bond with their babies. We had added straw to clean sawdust and the warming lamps above to help keep them dry and warm.   Lastly, water buckets were hooked high enough for the lambs to not trip or fall in, but the ewes can still drink, 

These are the raked out pens prior to setup.

We have since learned that is actually better to leave the old sawdust with manure packed down at the bottom with clean sawdust on top and that actually keeps the space warmer. (Note: for next year)

The pens with the straw and closed off gate.  One step closer to a safe private space for birth.

We had been spending more time with the ewes Dolly and Rosie and had been patting their stomach and around their backside to get them ready for delivery.  This helps acclimate the ewes to being touched so that they don’t have more stress if they end up needing assistance during their deliveries.  This will help them be more comfortable if assistance is needed.

While we were waiting for the lambs, we were keeping an eye out on the ewes’ progress.  This picture shows that the teets were pink and the bottom was also pinker.  We had also observed that the udder was full in appearance.  At this point we should have been checking on our ewes every 4 hours or so.  Something we did better with the second pregnancy (Dolly) after sadly missing the first (Rosie).

We also wanted to hang hay feeders in these lambing pens and instead of spending money on durable permanent feeders, we came up with a repurposed feeder from a feed bag and hay bale rope.  Alexia made these two feeders on her own.  Check out her DIY project video below!  It’s a link to our Pinterest video.

Link to Amazing Recycled Hay Feeder Video

By Alexia Castonguay 

Although it was sad to lose our first lamb from mother Rosie, we have heard that this is a common risk with sheep, especially first time moms.  We have learned a lot from that loss and the safe birth of Ivy and plan to lamb again next year.  In preparation for that and showing the sheep at the fair, we are purchasing a Southdown ram lamb and a bonus weather that will be a market lamb this fall. Yay!

Here is Dolly enjoying that recycled hay feeder made by Alexia.  If you haven’t checked out her video, please do and leave her a comment on what you think.  We did add a carabiner to make it easier to fill by bringing the bag to the hay instead of the other way around.

Here is Dolly being a great mom to little Ivy.  We are glad Ivy has joined our flock.  She will be shown at the fair this year.  If you haven’t met our little lamb, Ivy: check it out on her blog post introducing her to our family backyard farm: 

Ivy: Our Little Lamb.

Ivy our Little Lamb

 Introducing Ivy our Little Lamb

Our Castonguay This’N’That Family Farm just had some great big learning experiences with the lambing process.

Alexia was there at 11:30 at night on Saturday, February 20th for the birth and the newborn care of little Ivy.  Along with myself and husband, Justin.  This photo is right after we cleared her nose and dried her up after birth.  There is a red hue because the heat lamps are on.

We are definitely exhausted from the checkups and the labor and delivery, but we are also so thrilled to have a thriving baby lamb in our barn.

I wanted to share with you all as soon as possible the good news of her birth.  She had a quick check the next day by the farmers who we got her mama from and she is 12 pounds.  Note: (we need a little scale).

For a baby lamb, that’s great.  She’s staying warm with her little sweater: hand knit by Ann Salisbury for our youngest son. Thank you Ann; he grew out of it just in time.  We have two warming lamps set up over the pen and she is drinking her milk very well.

The Southdown sheep Mama named Dolly, or as I now like to call her: the Dolly Mama, is doing a great job caring for her newborn lamb.

Lambs have the highest risk of death in the first 48 hours after birth, so we are checking on Ivy and Dolly often.  Our other Southdown sheep Rosie, lost her baby and we are doing everything possible to give Ivy a better chance despite the freezing temperatures!

At the time of this writing, we are just about the 24 hour mark and she is going strong. I am going to use the information we gained from this experience to put together a learning post about lambing from the early signs to the newborn care.  There will be videos and one small graphic clip of the delivery.  

Link to video of Ivy on Pinterest 

Here is one snippet of a video of our lively little Ivy... I’m working with tech support to have it show here, but it takes a while... in the meantime try this link.

Having six of my own babies, definitely helped me connect with our laboring ewe and new baby.  The pediatric experience helped too, but I’ve never been part of a delivery team, so this angle of birth was different.

The other sheep in the flock showed their concern for Dolly during labor and seemed to support her.  They were also interested in meeting little Ivy, especially after she started bleating.  Rosie had been doing well since her loss, but the addition of Ivy has brought on some sadness; she understands now what she lost.

It was such a thrill to be there to help this ewe and newborn lamb.  Come back again soon to get more updates on our newest friend and more details of our busy night.

While you are here, please mark yourself a follower in the top right corner of the blog!  And if you have any thing you want to share, comment below; we want to hear how far our backyard farm life is traveling and we want our readers to see too!   Comments are screened before showing up on this blog.  Check back in a couple days and it will be up.

Carla the Barn Cat

Carla the Barn Cat

Wishes You a Happy New Year

As requested by one of my esteemed readers in the comments section of a previous post, here is a post dedicated to our barn cat, Carla.

Most mornings, Carla the barn cat can be found at the back door.  Sometimes she is waiting on breakfast, but other times she is just asking for attention. You can see her meowing through the glass door.    

 

She does enjoy some snuggles from the kids.  They like having a pet that doesn’t run from their affection: ahem: sheep, chickens, ducks, and bunnies!

After catching someone’s attention, she will persuade one of her many admirers to race her to the barn for breakfast.  This is why her nickname is Carla the little cheetah.  She is very fast and always wins.

 

The rest of the day you can find her lounging.  This summer, she spent a lot of time on our porch swing.  She would snooze for hours, always looking purr-fectly relaxed. Now she has also become more comfortable in the barn as we put a cushion on a chair for her in there.  We have also found that she sleeps in the hay.

She does like a good snooze.

One day the girls thought she needed her own stuffy. I’m not sure she agrees.

Carla: This'N'That Family Farm Supervisor

Sometimes I believe that Carla thinks she is in the role of supervisor.  She does seem to hang about and watch us work, no matter the season.  She supervises everything from raking to building.  She monitors loud projects from afar.  She even works in the vegetable garden.  She oversaw us tying things down for Autumn; check out the post.

 

Carla at work in the barn.  She had been very good at her job.

You might wonder what Carla thinks of the other animals on the farm.  After she moved in, I hoped she would make friends with the sheep or chickens, but she is afraid of the chickens and keeps her distance from the sheep.  She completely ignores the bunnies, but she is very friendly with her people.

Carla hanging out with us in the barn during chores.

Carla's snow paw prints

Carla had been fixed before she came to live with us, but sometimes she still disappears for a few days at a time.  We have to keep an eye out for signs that she is around... like these paw prints she left in the snow after our first snow storm.  Or if her food is eaten out of the bowl.

In the evening is when our little cheetah likes to hunt.  She can be pretty well camouflaged and sometimes we don’t spot her.  But this time she hung out with us as the skies darkened and we finished our chores.

The kids can tell when she is hunting.  One clue is when she doesn’t come when she is called.  The other is how her tail twitches right as she has her eye on some tasty prey.

Carla makes appearances here and there on our blog.  Check out some other posts to see how Carla is integrated on our family farm.  The picture below shows Carla dressed up for Christmas.  Check out that post: Christmas on the Farm.

Carla is an important member of our family and our farm.  We are so glad we have her here with us.  She is such a sweet and loving cat and is good at the job we hired her to do. 

Carla

Happy New Year from Carla and the entire Castonguay this’n’that family farm!