We’ve seeded all our greenhouse starts, ready for planting time in late May. Mostly tomatoes, onions, leeks and various flowers. I hope many of you will be able to get seeds or plants to start a garden this year. It’s a great way to keep both body and mind relaxed and in shape; and you’ll know that the food you grow is fresh and healthy. I realize it’s not equally practical for everybody, though.

In the Bible, in Genesis chapter eight, God said he would never again bring such a curse on the earth that there would be no seed-time and harvest. So, pandemics and economic disruptions notwithstanding, we have the promise that farmers will always be able to grow something to eat. I am very thankful to have a solid hope in God’s providence.

By the way, there is always free food in the form of edible weeds in your neighborhood. You may want to learn to identify some of them, and begin to enjoy them shortly as the growing season begins. Check out chickweed, daisy, Japanese knotweed, plantain, and of course dandelions. Most of those are good in salads, except for Japanese knotweed. Japanese knotweed is a tall, bamboo-like plant that can be used like rhubarb. You have to get it when it’s still young and tender though (less than 10 inches). And it’s high in resveratrol, which makes it useful to help prevent and treat Lyme disease. There are many more wild plants and weeds that grow right around you.. you just have to learn to identify them. Here’s a great website that cataloges many edible Nova Scotia weeds: https://www.northernbushcraft.com/guide.php?ctgy=edible_plants&region=ns

Greener pastures ahead!

We have enjoyed the milder days, and so have our animals. We’ve even let the chickens out in a little pasture area, which is nice for them, even though they don’t get much grass yet. The cows are not yet on pasture, although they do have a small dirt paddock. The pastures are looking good this year, so we might be able to get them out earlier than normal this year…. oops, there goes my optimism again- I’m forgetting maritime springs!

We just bought a cabinet incubator that holds up to 180 eggs, so we are just now incubating the first batch of eggs. We’re doing Chanteclers and Blue Australorps. These will be our replacement laying hens eventually. It’s always exciting to watch baby chicks hatch! We are hoping with a new electronic incubator we will have a better hatch rate than we had in some of our batches last summer. The clock is ticking.. another couple of weeks to go.

Update to the Pig Story..

Since our new Kunekune cross pigs are still quite young and we knew they wouldn’t have babies for a while, we decided to check around for another sow. We figured this would make it possible to have baby pigs sooner, and we were also interested in trying other traditional breeds. We found a farmer in New Ross that specializes in the old British type of Berkshire pigs. He had a young sow that will have piglets around the end of May.

We ended up buying her—she’ll be arriving any day now we hope. The old Berkshires are a smaller sized pig than modern American Berkshires, with shorter legs and a very pleasing “chunky” look to them. We’re excited to have found these —I think we’re starting to get attached to pigs. I took the above picture of her when we went to buy her.

Berkshires have a reputation for having the best tasting pork to be found anywhere. The downside is that Berkshires do of course, like most pigs, like to dig and root a lot. However, we’ve realized the area at the back of the farm that we are renovating would be a good place to keep the pigs, so rooting won’t be a problem for this year at least.

..ending on a Sad Note

The other day Caleb came into the house and said that one of our young Kunekune cross pasture pigs had babies. That’s not what we were expecting! She was simply too young to be a mother, and besides, we hadn’t prepared at all. We would have separated her from the others and provided a warm place for the piglets if we had known. This was going to be a challenge, but just the kind that Caleb, our animal guy, takes head on.

It turned out this young sow had given birth to five babies, but she didn’t seem to know how to take care of them. Because it was a chilly night and we hadn’t provided a safe place for them, two of the piglets had already died by morning. She gave birth in the spot where all the pigs are used to sleeping, so the other pigs had evidently laid right on many of the new babies. A third piglet was very weak and cold and died shortly after, even though Caleb put it under a heat lamp and tried to revive it with warm colostrum.

One of the remaining two was also struggling and was probably injured as well. That one just died today.. Although that was very sad, the last one is still alive and seems healthy so far. I think this one might just pull through. The sow never knew enough to lie on her side to nurse them, so Caleb has been feeding them cows’ milk.

It’s another case showing that there will be complications with young pregnancies. The young sow seems to be totally healthy though.

A bit of a rough start to our pig business.. but we’re aiming for better days ahead.