It's been a while since I've posted any pictures... or any topics for that matter. As some of you may remember the year before last I got my first ducks in the mail. That's all it took. I tried hard to keep the total number at six, but that didn't really work for me, I mean come on, THEY ARE DUCKS! By the end of the first year I think I had twenty something... black runners, fawn and white runners, black eat indies, black silkies, welsh harlequins, a blue runner and a handful of geese. I was in heaven and spent all my free time in the yard with the waterfowl.
At the beginning of last year we had new neighbors move in next door, and they absolutely hated our flock. They hated the flock so much that they began calling the city everyday to complain. I spent weeks with a pit in my stomach vacillating between tears and anger. Then I went into action. We worked closely with the city and found out that there wasn't anything specifically on the books forbidding us to have waterfowl, however since the neighbors were complaining everyday the city could say that we were using our property for agriculture which is not permitted in our zone. We had to reduce the numbers.
I put fliers up around town and started calling farms trying to find a place for our flock. Nothing. I left the island and put a flier up at the feed store. A single call came up from that flier. Excitedly, I drove to this woman's house and she was extremely nice and had a small mixed flock of her own, however, there was something about it that didn't feel quite right, but I was running out of time to move our flock. In a last ditch effort I called a 60 acre certified organic farm about 40 minutes away from me off the island, asking if they may be interested in leasing me some land for our flock. The woman wasn't too excited and was about to hang up when I asked her if she might be looking for some help on the farm. She told me to come over so we could meet.
That first day we spoke for about 6 hours. She wasn't sure about the fowl, but I was offered a full time job. By the end of my first week, I had a land use lease in my purse that allowed our flock access to 40 acres of cattle pasture.
It's been a year since I began working at the farm, and I am there sun-up to sun-down almost everyday of the week. Our flock has grown and they work for their keep, not only by bringing tremendous amounts of joy to most everyone, but by working the soil where we grow the crops, by working the pastures where we keep the cattle, and of course by supplying us with huge amounts of fresh eggs, fetilizer and sometimes meat. I mean it when I say, "Ducks changed my life."
Here's the picture I used for the flier I posted everywhere... I couldn't believe anyone could resist having these around!
While we were at battle with the neighbors and the city, I had a incubator fired up. Once we were sick of brooding them in the bathtub, I took them to the farm.
Here's gosling and his/her flock of ducks.
In the new herb garden
Going back to the orchard where they were housed. Note their little duck house next to the feeder in the left part of the picture. It was WAY too small for them, but when we built the larger duck house they refused to go inside of it and would cram their bodies into that little house until I moved it out of the orchard for a bit.
Gosling didn't adjust to having new geese on the farm so I moved him back home where he guards the black east indies that still reside here. S/he is always by their side and often looks to be counting them. If s/he's missing one or more s/he calls and calls until they are all accounted for. For some reason I cannot find any pictures of gosling with the black east indies!
Behind the fence is the main duck house in the orchard which houses the egg layers, a few drakes and D.G. In the right hand part of the picture, half cut off, is a hot tub I found for free on craigslist that I was going to use for a pond in the orchard. In the middle of the picture you can see the little duck house I started with. It now houses my black silky ducks.
This is where I was going to put the hot tub. I took the Cat out to dig the hole for it, but having never dug such a large hole with a piece of equipment before, I dug myself a hole I could not get the of. I stuck the Cat in the hole. I happened to be at the farm most of the day by myself, and I fretted and fretted about them coming home and finding that I had got their new Cat stuck. The more I tried to get out of the dang hole, the stucker I got. It turns out that a tractor can get a Cat out of just about anything, but by the time the laughs were done and the Cat pulled out of the hole, I only had enough time to dig my ramp and get my hole to the correct depth. (Yes, if you are ever digging a hole with a Cat, make sure you make yourself a ramp.) Overnight we had a hard rain and this is what my hole looked like in the morning. I think they like it. (The hole has never dried out enough for me to put the hot tub in it, and now I have new plans for the hot tub.)
Here's Duck Goose, aka D.G. He's the guy on the job for making sure all the ducks are accounted for. He's also the lookout when the ducks are up to secret doings and need to know that us monkeys are coming near.
The ducks are looking to see if their secret doings place is safe.
I happened to have my camera in hand and sitting still when I caught them coming in for a secret doing.
Maybe someone can tell me what it is they are doing. First D.G. stands guard outside and a single drake and a handful or so of females come into the barn and hang a left. There's a box that the females will go behind and much quacking goes on. The drake never goes behind the box. He just stands around looking stupid. Sometimes one duck gets pecked out from behind the box and she stands there looking stupid too, sometimes she'll head bob to the drake, but he just continues to look stupid. The females take turns going behind the box and talking duck talk, always with a line of ducks waiting to get behind the box. The ducks in line never quack only the ducks behind the box. Occasionally D.G. will honk when a person gets close, and all the ducks run to the barn door and look around like they haven't been doing a thing but standing at the door. Then they go back to the looking stupid, standing in line, and going behind the box to talk. The day I took the picture above, I watched this behavior for 45 minutes before I couldn't stand it anymore and I had to get up and see what they were doing behind the box. Of course they panicked, D.G. came into investigate, ducks ran into and over each other, knocked over the box, finally grouped up just inside the door, and with a honk from D.G. marched out the door. I investigated behind the box. NOTHING! No material gathered, no eggs, no nothing. This has been going on for over a month and there is nothing there. We've decided they must be having secret communist meetings. They also do the same thing in the calving shed.
Anyway...
There's no place on the farm for animals that don't work. That includes the waterfowl.
A few muscovies cleaning between the rows this past fall. We row-covered the few crops we had in production through the winter, not only to protect from frost and freeze, but also to protect from the waterfowl.
Sometimes they get helpers.
Heading out to work.
Sometimes we're not under water.
It gets harder everyday to remember what my life was like before ducks. I know I wasn't happy. I know I wasn't doing what I wanted to do with my life. I know I didn't know how to move forward. Then ducks happened and the world seemed bright. In an effort to protect this brightness I moved out of my tiny little bubble and began doing things I had always wanted to do. I went from being a depressed woman with no real goals to a hard working farm girl learning something new everyday. My ducks made it possible for me to learn how to drive and work on tractors, how to build things, how to weld, how to care for cattle, how to have friends, how to take risks, and how to grow crops.
It's been sad sometimes like when a young calf got sick and nothing I did made it live or when I watched the butcher take the shot at my favorite bull.
It's been hard sometimes like digging 1600' of trenches in the middle of winter, below the water table, in the pouring rain for weeks to get the pasture water underground or trying to figure out how to make a two person job a one person job AND STILL GET IT DONE.
It's been frightening sometimes like when one of our steer calfs (the only one ever bottle fed because his mother died in a horrible accident a few days after he was born) went down and wouldn't get back up and even the vet said we should put him down permanently, but we didn't, and we made a sling for him and everyday lifted him for a few hours and tended the pressure sores he developed, and cleaned the manure from his body and had to start bottle feeding him again, and work his legs so he wouldn't lose as much muscle tone. Then he developed an abscess, and I was so scared that this was it so I bought my first rifle in preparation of having to do the deed.
Through it all there have been the ducks, and I can always find them somewhere doing ducky things. I can always take some time to live in ducky moments. I find them just as joyful now, maybe more-so, then I did when the first four came in their tiny box.
Ducks changed my life.
Itty Bitty the calf that died. She was born premature and never grew.
My favorite bull a few months before he graced our table
Here's Yobby, the calf we bottle fed who later went down in the pasture.
First day with halter.
I didn't have to use the rifle on Yobby. He grew stronger while his abscess grew deeper. I kept trying to get him to get up on his own, using his bottle as enticement. He would move his neck out trying to suck, but wouldn't move the rest of his body. One day someone came in with an apple for him and the little bugger just stood up for it. He was shaky and he didn't stand long, but it was the beginning of his healing process. Yesterday was the last night he slept in the barn as he no longer wanted us to walk him back in the evenings proven by the fact that he took us for a run through the creek the night before as he tried to run back to the main herd. I think he's feeling better
At the beginning of last year we had new neighbors move in next door, and they absolutely hated our flock. They hated the flock so much that they began calling the city everyday to complain. I spent weeks with a pit in my stomach vacillating between tears and anger. Then I went into action. We worked closely with the city and found out that there wasn't anything specifically on the books forbidding us to have waterfowl, however since the neighbors were complaining everyday the city could say that we were using our property for agriculture which is not permitted in our zone. We had to reduce the numbers.
I put fliers up around town and started calling farms trying to find a place for our flock. Nothing. I left the island and put a flier up at the feed store. A single call came up from that flier. Excitedly, I drove to this woman's house and she was extremely nice and had a small mixed flock of her own, however, there was something about it that didn't feel quite right, but I was running out of time to move our flock. In a last ditch effort I called a 60 acre certified organic farm about 40 minutes away from me off the island, asking if they may be interested in leasing me some land for our flock. The woman wasn't too excited and was about to hang up when I asked her if she might be looking for some help on the farm. She told me to come over so we could meet.
That first day we spoke for about 6 hours. She wasn't sure about the fowl, but I was offered a full time job. By the end of my first week, I had a land use lease in my purse that allowed our flock access to 40 acres of cattle pasture.
It's been a year since I began working at the farm, and I am there sun-up to sun-down almost everyday of the week. Our flock has grown and they work for their keep, not only by bringing tremendous amounts of joy to most everyone, but by working the soil where we grow the crops, by working the pastures where we keep the cattle, and of course by supplying us with huge amounts of fresh eggs, fetilizer and sometimes meat. I mean it when I say, "Ducks changed my life."
Here's the picture I used for the flier I posted everywhere... I couldn't believe anyone could resist having these around!
While we were at battle with the neighbors and the city, I had a incubator fired up. Once we were sick of brooding them in the bathtub, I took them to the farm.
Here's gosling and his/her flock of ducks.
In the new herb garden
Going back to the orchard where they were housed. Note their little duck house next to the feeder in the left part of the picture. It was WAY too small for them, but when we built the larger duck house they refused to go inside of it and would cram their bodies into that little house until I moved it out of the orchard for a bit.
Gosling didn't adjust to having new geese on the farm so I moved him back home where he guards the black east indies that still reside here. S/he is always by their side and often looks to be counting them. If s/he's missing one or more s/he calls and calls until they are all accounted for. For some reason I cannot find any pictures of gosling with the black east indies!
Behind the fence is the main duck house in the orchard which houses the egg layers, a few drakes and D.G. In the right hand part of the picture, half cut off, is a hot tub I found for free on craigslist that I was going to use for a pond in the orchard. In the middle of the picture you can see the little duck house I started with. It now houses my black silky ducks.
This is where I was going to put the hot tub. I took the Cat out to dig the hole for it, but having never dug such a large hole with a piece of equipment before, I dug myself a hole I could not get the of. I stuck the Cat in the hole. I happened to be at the farm most of the day by myself, and I fretted and fretted about them coming home and finding that I had got their new Cat stuck. The more I tried to get out of the dang hole, the stucker I got. It turns out that a tractor can get a Cat out of just about anything, but by the time the laughs were done and the Cat pulled out of the hole, I only had enough time to dig my ramp and get my hole to the correct depth. (Yes, if you are ever digging a hole with a Cat, make sure you make yourself a ramp.) Overnight we had a hard rain and this is what my hole looked like in the morning. I think they like it. (The hole has never dried out enough for me to put the hot tub in it, and now I have new plans for the hot tub.)
Here's Duck Goose, aka D.G. He's the guy on the job for making sure all the ducks are accounted for. He's also the lookout when the ducks are up to secret doings and need to know that us monkeys are coming near.
The ducks are looking to see if their secret doings place is safe.
I happened to have my camera in hand and sitting still when I caught them coming in for a secret doing.
Maybe someone can tell me what it is they are doing. First D.G. stands guard outside and a single drake and a handful or so of females come into the barn and hang a left. There's a box that the females will go behind and much quacking goes on. The drake never goes behind the box. He just stands around looking stupid. Sometimes one duck gets pecked out from behind the box and she stands there looking stupid too, sometimes she'll head bob to the drake, but he just continues to look stupid. The females take turns going behind the box and talking duck talk, always with a line of ducks waiting to get behind the box. The ducks in line never quack only the ducks behind the box. Occasionally D.G. will honk when a person gets close, and all the ducks run to the barn door and look around like they haven't been doing a thing but standing at the door. Then they go back to the looking stupid, standing in line, and going behind the box to talk. The day I took the picture above, I watched this behavior for 45 minutes before I couldn't stand it anymore and I had to get up and see what they were doing behind the box. Of course they panicked, D.G. came into investigate, ducks ran into and over each other, knocked over the box, finally grouped up just inside the door, and with a honk from D.G. marched out the door. I investigated behind the box. NOTHING! No material gathered, no eggs, no nothing. This has been going on for over a month and there is nothing there. We've decided they must be having secret communist meetings. They also do the same thing in the calving shed.
Anyway...
There's no place on the farm for animals that don't work. That includes the waterfowl.
A few muscovies cleaning between the rows this past fall. We row-covered the few crops we had in production through the winter, not only to protect from frost and freeze, but also to protect from the waterfowl.
Sometimes they get helpers.
Heading out to work.
Sometimes we're not under water.
It gets harder everyday to remember what my life was like before ducks. I know I wasn't happy. I know I wasn't doing what I wanted to do with my life. I know I didn't know how to move forward. Then ducks happened and the world seemed bright. In an effort to protect this brightness I moved out of my tiny little bubble and began doing things I had always wanted to do. I went from being a depressed woman with no real goals to a hard working farm girl learning something new everyday. My ducks made it possible for me to learn how to drive and work on tractors, how to build things, how to weld, how to care for cattle, how to have friends, how to take risks, and how to grow crops.
It's been sad sometimes like when a young calf got sick and nothing I did made it live or when I watched the butcher take the shot at my favorite bull.
It's been hard sometimes like digging 1600' of trenches in the middle of winter, below the water table, in the pouring rain for weeks to get the pasture water underground or trying to figure out how to make a two person job a one person job AND STILL GET IT DONE.
It's been frightening sometimes like when one of our steer calfs (the only one ever bottle fed because his mother died in a horrible accident a few days after he was born) went down and wouldn't get back up and even the vet said we should put him down permanently, but we didn't, and we made a sling for him and everyday lifted him for a few hours and tended the pressure sores he developed, and cleaned the manure from his body and had to start bottle feeding him again, and work his legs so he wouldn't lose as much muscle tone. Then he developed an abscess, and I was so scared that this was it so I bought my first rifle in preparation of having to do the deed.
Through it all there have been the ducks, and I can always find them somewhere doing ducky things. I can always take some time to live in ducky moments. I find them just as joyful now, maybe more-so, then I did when the first four came in their tiny box.
Ducks changed my life.
Itty Bitty the calf that died. She was born premature and never grew.
My favorite bull a few months before he graced our table
Here's Yobby, the calf we bottle fed who later went down in the pasture.
First day with halter.
I didn't have to use the rifle on Yobby. He grew stronger while his abscess grew deeper. I kept trying to get him to get up on his own, using his bottle as enticement. He would move his neck out trying to suck, but wouldn't move the rest of his body. One day someone came in with an apple for him and the little bugger just stood up for it. He was shaky and he didn't stand long, but it was the beginning of his healing process. Yesterday was the last night he slept in the barn as he no longer wanted us to walk him back in the evenings proven by the fact that he took us for a run through the creek the night before as he tried to run back to the main herd. I think he's feeling better
