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As you can see from earlier posts, one of my experiments this year was with four-season, hoop house gardening. I really wasn't expecting much for the first small try, but I have to say that I am thrilled with the results. Here's today's Bok Choy and Merida carrot harvest. Isn't that gorgeous?
Some days I have little white turnips ready to harvest, other days it's chard or corn salad. I love hoop house gardening in the winter.
The red light is from their heat lamp; without their feathers grown in they can get chilled. I'm not at all an expert on raising ducks now, but I do have expertise on raising ducks in a bath tub. For those of you who are charmed by this picture and want to try it, I have two words: duck shit. You really have to not mind it...or mind cleaning the bathroom twice a day and a certain (large) amount of sleep deprivation.
I have to say that after doing this for a month that I have a new appreciation for the phrase "duck soup". And no, it's not edible.
It's been almost a month since I last posted. The reason would be: ducks. Or, as in this case, ducklings which arrived at 3:00 am December 2 at the post office. I had alerted the Post Office the day before, so they knew to call me in the early morning. This is an agricultural area so they do get a lot of chicken deliveries, although ducks aren't popular here. Perhaps because our long dry summers mean extra work for duck owners.
The Post Office opened to the public at 6:30 am, so there I was to pick up my ducklings. It's part of the routine that you open the box at the post office to check the viability of your critters. Chicks are usually stressed and panting, so I had brought electrolyte solution to give to them. I was expecting some very anemic, exhausted babies. I opened the box, which was madly cheeping and shaking, and out popped the ducklings, evidently tired of their box. There were only nine of them, but it seemed as if the post office was over-run by my "raft" of lively , vigorous ducklings as they popped out of the box with agility, escaping all over the Post Office floor. This is an elegant old Victorian Post Office, so you'd have to picture the effect. Luckily our area has a numerous amount of elderly women who are early risers and stop for their mail first thing in the morning. They were charmed by the ducklings...luckily also they were amazingly agile elders who rounded up the strays in no time flat. Just their usual morning duck run...the things I must miss because I'm not usually an early riser.
I popped the duckings into their bathroom bathtub brooder,which had a heat lamp (an extra $100 to the electric bill). I had thought I would have to introduce the ducklings to food, like chicks, but they were born hungry. As soon as I introduced food they were on it. And on it, and on it...they doubled their size every day for weeks. And, like little babies, they cried for more food and water 3 times a night. Now you realize why I hadn't posted; new mother syndrome, a.k.a. sleep deprivation.
I would love to tell you that we get along "swimmingly", but there was the unfortunate meal worm incident. You may perhaps recall that I was raising meal worms to supplement their diet. At 3 weeks old they were such great big downy babies that I thought it was time to introduce their meal worm treat. I had put half of the 5000 meal worms in the fridge and saved half to breed more meal worms. I pulled out the chilled semi-hibernating meal worms from the fridge and sprinkled about a hundred of them over the ducklings. The result was far from my expectations. The ducklings immediately began shrieking (I think they said "snake!") and formed a duck huddle as far away from the meal worms as they could get...trying to form One Big Duck. I have to say that the did a fairly impressive imitation. And every time an itsy bitsy meal worm (their natural food) raised it's head or uncurled itself as it warmed up the ducklings went into new paroxysms of shrieking and huddled farther away into One Big Afraid Duck. What a bunch of girls.
And they stayed afraid until I removed every blessed last meal worm. Ever since, to the ducklings I've been The Lady Who Throws Snakes and when I walk into the room they make One Big Afraid Duck. This doesn't endear them to a woman who gets up 3 times a night to feed and water them, swims them twice a day, cleans up endless piles of duck poo and schedules her day around duck needs. They're a month old now, and it's getting a little better in our relationship since I've learned that they'll eat fresh micro-greens out of my hand. Still, I don't believe that I'll offer them meal worms again. I have emotional scars.
