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Many people don’t understand why having a few cats may be important, especially on a farm. Some people prefer to own dogs more than cats, and some individuals may like cats better. But there were times when people would say that cats are lazy and carry a lot of flees, while at the same time saying that it’s easier to train a dog than you can a cat, and dogs can be your best friend. A lot of people find reasons as to why they don’t want any cats around. But one thing people don’t realize is that having cats can be great sometimes. Why? Because cats can keep the mice and rat population down when living on a farm.

Most people do not like rodents because they can get into your house and get in your food, even if it’s stored away in boxes and bags or if you put it on a high shelf. Mice can be destructive in many ways. For instance, they would rip their way through different bags of food for your livestock, like chicken feed or goat feed, and they might tear through packs of tissue or other soft materials so they could nest in them. Because of all the things some farms provide for rodents is why they can breed so efficiently. But our family has had cats on our farms for many years, and the mice have decreased frequently here.

For a while, our family only wanted cats as pets because they are nice and incredibly cute. Then we started to keep more than five cats, so we decided to get rid of most of them because we felt like we had too many. But one day, we started to notice how many rodents our cats were catching every week to eat as food. So things became much easier because we didn’t have to feed them cat food often, and they were maintaining the rodent population. Of course, we don’t recommend that you own a lot of cats on your farm, but at least one or two cats would suffice.

We have experienced many things in our life living here on the farm. I am grateful for the things we have here, even if handling the garden, animals, and a few other jobs can be difficult sometimes. Having different farm animals are excellent because you can benefit from them. Like chickens, they provide you with eggs, and they can be meat also. We also have pigeons, quail, and ducks too. The pigeons sometimes fly all around the land, and it’s so peaceful watching them. Pigeons can also be meat you can eat too. The ducks like to swim around in the pond and catch fish.

When the spring and summer come, everything looks so pretty, primarily because of all the flowers we planted. We like to use pavers and stepping stones to decorate and make pathways through the garden. Creating a garden for ourselves was one of the best experiences we’ve had here so far. Designing and building gardens are very thrilling to me. My favorite part of having a garden is planting different things here and there. There are so many things you can learn about plants and gardening and so many designs you can do in your garden.

Sometimes, other kinds of animals might visit the garden, like hummingbirds and chipmunks. We’ve seen a few rabbits roaming around the land, and there are turtles and blue herons that like to visit the pond every once in a while.

Having a garden is very beneficial, mainly if your garden contains fruits and vegetables. I find it excellent to go out in our garden to pick some lettuce and tomatoes whenever we need some. You can save a lot of money and time when you have a garden, and you won’t have to buy as many fruit and vegetables because you may already have them in your garden if you learn to grow them right. So being here on the farm is excellent because there are so many things to learn and experience.

Malabar Spinach is a vegetable that we grew for the first time last year, in 2021. At first, we did not know what to expect. Much to our surprise, we actually liked this new vegetable. Although it is called Spinach, it tastes nothing like what most of us know as spinach. The unique difference is not just in how it tastes, but also in how it grows. Malabar spinach grows more like a vine. If you are not careful, it will literally take over your garden. It is a beautiful plant, but it is somewhat invasive.

Something else to know about Malabar Spinach is that it tastes great when prepared as fritters. You put your favorite seasonings together with an egg and flour batter and voila, you have goodness on a fork. If you don’t eat eggs, then you can use an egg substitute to make your batter hold together. If this is something you are interested in growing, you may look up other recipes to test out Malabar Spinach in your garden.

Every year, there are plenty of Ginkgo Biloba seeds that fall to the ground from our large Ginkgo tree. We like to gather most of the seeds and plant them, but the ones that are left most times sprout in the ground. We also dig up the sprouts and plant them too and now we have a lot of little Ginkgo trees, and we’re still gathering more every year :). Once they are large enough, they become marketable.

Ginkgo Biloba leaves have many health benefits and are good to add to teas, lemonade, and other cold or hot drinks. Several times when we make drinks, we steep some ginkgo leaves and add them to our drinks and they taste well together.

We’ve been doing a lot of de-weeding and maintaining our garden. We recommend keeping the garden clean and neat because the weeds can take over and everything will look very messy. If you don’t de-weed, the weeds could also eat all the nutrients in the ground and the vegetable plants will not grow as healthy as they could. We like to pick the weeds before they grow really large because they will become difficult to pull up after they have rooted themselves.

Most times if your garden becomes very messy with weeds all over the place, then wild animals might want to move into your garden, which would probably be rabbits, snakes, raccoons, opossums, and other creatures like them. Some of them would probably munch on some of the fruit or vegetables that are there growing in the process.