Duck dinner redux (ha!)

We had roasted duck, haricots verts, and garlic wild rice for dinner last night and it was outstanding! I made a sauce with red wine and some berries and currants that I picked last weekend, but the duck didn't really need it. I was amazed at how light the meat was, it was just a bit darker than chicken breast. As someone who has eaten a lot of wild duck, I was expecting it to be much darker. One duck was just about perfect for two people, there was only a little bit left when we were done. It was very rich and very delicious, but I still don't think I will bother with ducks again. Maybe one or two....

Picked a couple of cherry tomatoes out of the garden last night and they were great, some of the Yellow Pear tomatoes are getting close to ripe and I can't tell when the Green Zebras will be ripe because they stay green! I guess it will be trial and error. It also looks like will be picking zucchinis this week. I heard someone once describing their neighborhood this way, and it also applies to our neck of the woods, I thought it was pretty funny : " No one locks their car doors around here, except during zucchini season!"

Duck dinner

EDITED FOR ALL OF THOSE SEARCHING FOR A DUCK PLUCKER:


Check out the photos here for an inexpensive home-made plucker: http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j227/Ardwyn_Farm/poultry/

Please email me at dougjonz@yahoo.com if you have any questions.


I like this picture, it looks like the turkeys are planning a raid on the ducks. Who on earth could have predicted, even just a few years ago, that we would have a scene like this in our yard? The unpredictable twists in the path are what makes life exciting I guess.

There are fewer ducks on the farm now than there are in that picture. I think we will have roast duck for dinner tomorrow night! I'll let you know how it is.

I got to use my "$6 Duck Plucker" yesterday and it worked like a charm. It is a simple contraption, just 3" rubber "fingers" cut from a bungee cord mounted around a 4" PVC end cap with a long carriage bolt as the driveshaft . I just chuck it into the drill, wire down the trigger and away she goes. Once I figured out how close to hold the bird to the spinning drum it was quick, maybe 3 minutes to completely defeather a duck. I'll post a picture of it if I remember.

In other news, it looks like the pigs may be completely sold, still waiting to hear back from someone on the last 1/4 of a pig. That is a relief, even if the last 1/4 doesn't sell we can just add it on to the 1/2 we were keeping for ourselves. More bacon for me!

Speaking of bacon, we'll be harvesting the first tomatoes this week and I can't wait for that first BLT! I told Nikki that I'm going to eat nothing but BLTs and sweet corn for a month. The rest of the garden is doing pretty good too. Some of the sunflowers are pushing 10' and they are just starting to get their heads.

If anyone is interested in a duck, shoot us an email or give us a call, we could probably spare a few.

Failure!

Since I posted an entry with the title "Success!" the other day, I thought I'd better share some of the failures so that people don't start thinking we're perfect!

Sweet corn. Total and complete failure, the tallest stalks are only about 3 feet tall and they are already starting to tassel out. I don't expect to harvest any corn from my 5 rows of corn, and since the stalks are so short the companion beans are going to need a different form of support or they will be a failure too. The only thing I can think of is that the soil is no good for corn, but nearly everything else is growing so well!

The pear tree. Hundreds of pears, but they have developed some type of scale or other disease. They are all undersized and ugly looking.They might still make good pig feed though.

Beets. The first planting of beets I did are stunted and don't appear to be growing. The second planting did great, however.

Ducks. Not really a failure as they are all healthy and happy and ducky, but I had a very romantic notion of ducks calmly wandering about the yard. Unfortunately the reality is they are loud, unfriendly, demanding and messy creatures.

We survived...

We survived the heat wave, all of the critters included. The swimming pool sure helped us, even though by Sunday afternoon the water temperature was up to 85°. A nice storm front came through yesterday evening and dropped the temp from 93° to 75° in about 20 minutes and it was very welcome. After it passed we sat down by the barn and just watched absolutely constant flashes of lightning filling the sky to the south for about half an hour. It was tremendous.

The pigs seemed to take the heat better than anyone on the farm, it actually stays pretty cool in the barn basement area that they have access to, and along with a big mudhole and a few soakings with the hose they were just fine. The ducks went through about 7 gallons of water on Saturday, luckily I thought up and built an automatic refilling waterer for them that holds just over 5 gallons, so it's a lot less work for me. I am pretty proud of that waterer, there are even some really bad pictures of it in the Poultry album.

Also in the Poultry album are some pics of the turkeys from this morning. No doubt about it, Whitey is a Royal Palm tom and is going to be a striking looking turkey when he is mature. We also have a Blue Slate tom (Ghost), a domestic Wild Turkey tom (Smarty), and 5 Bourbon Reds, at least one tom, maybe 2 (Brownie x 5). Whitey and Ghost are featured in today's picture.

HOT!

It is supposed to be really hot this weekend, mid 90s and muggy, so I am glad I finally have the pool straightened up, I might spend the whole weekend in it.

I found a really nice spot for a mud wallow in the barn, it doesn't dry out like the old spot did, so the pigs should be happy and cool. I've got another packet of Pig Gatorade on standby though in case they get stressed.

I believe the ducks are intentionally trying to aggravate me at this point. I go out to fill their kiddie pool every morning and if I walk away to do any other chores they come and stand on the sides of the pool, letting all of the water drain out over their feet. So I have to spend 15-20 minutes every morning standing there doing nothing, just to keep them away while it's refilling. I tried posting the dog by the pool but they just go stand on the other side. They also spend the night in the coop and sleep right next to the water faucet, so that there is always a nice giant accumulation of duck manure right where I have to walk.

We did have one moment of amusement from the ducks yesterday, one of them found an old bird nest and somehow got it entangled on it's bill, it looked like he had a big gray beard. This scared the daylights out of the other ducks, they started quacking like crazy and running away from the "bearded" duck and, since they always travel as a group, he went running right after them! Which made them run faster! It was pretty funny and also shows just how dumb they are.

A day no ducks would die

None of the ducks went to meet their maker last week. My neighbor stopped over and, in discussing the ducks, told me I'd be crazy to kill them now because I would be picking pinfeathers for hours, so I'm putting it off for a few weeks. They continue to be the least popular creatures on the farm, and their newfound interest in quacking their heads off is not winning them any points.

Grandma Jones and Leonard came by yesterday to see the place, they seemed to think we're doing OK . It was great having them over to see the place. We picked a couple of quarts of mulberries for my great-uncle Don, who is a big fan of mulberry pie. I hope Betty, my great-aunt, doesn't mind making one!

I picked and shelled peas on Saturday, looks like we will have enough to freeze some. I also harvested some carrots, trying to pry carrots out of our clay-heavy soil is a frustrating process. The ground just does not want to let go! Next year's garden soil should be a little fluffier with all of the organic matter we are adding to that patch. All of the tomato plants have little tomatolings growing on them now, so you can be sure that I am getting more and more restless every day , looking for that first sign of red.

In other news, the pool is open! Finally have it all filled up, balanced out and cleaned up, looks like this weekend is going to be a warm one so that will be nice. My nightmare now is that the ducks will find it, oh please, don't let the ducks find it!

Horror!

So I walked up the hill to the little woods to see if any of the wild black currants or gooseberries were ripe yet and, to my shock and horror, found a FOURTH mulberry tree growing on our property! I have decided that I am going to pretend it doesn't exist, I don't have the time to pick berries from yet another tree.

I got a LOT of weeding done in the garden yesterday and it needed it. The Yellow Pear tomatoes look like they are trying to take over the garden, they are very bushy plants. Zucchini has blossomed and so have the canteloupes and cucumbers. I also found a Napa Cabbage growing in the garden that I never planted and I do not even own those seeds, very odd .

The compost/deweeding plan for next year's garden bed seems to be working really well, hopefully it will result in much fewer weeds than in this year's garden. Basically I am hauling up the bedding from the hogs and birds and letting it compost in place in what will be next years garden. I let it sit for a week or so to kill the weeds underneath, then I turn it over into a new spot to kill the weeds there and encourage decomposition of the bedding material.

Happy Fourth of July

Hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday. I got up this morning and read the Declaration of Independence and then got to work. I picked 4 more quarts of mulberries and a quart of black raspberries, still need to get the currants picked yet this afternoon, looks like we'll get 3 or 4 quarts of those too.

I took the day off yesterday and cleaned out the duck coop (yuck) and got a lot of weeding done in the garden. I also sharpened up the hatchet and made a special knife for dispatching poultry, at least 2 ducks are going to the freezer this week. Then I twisted my ankle and had to take a break so I spent most of the afternoon inside.

Anyway, happy Independence Day!

Mulberries

A few little-known facts about mulberries:

- Mulberry leaves are the sole food source of silkworms.

- The last Tuesday of May is International Mulberry Appreciation Day.

- The berries are very high in resveratrol, a substance from which anti-cancer, anti-viral, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory and life-prolonging effects have been reported.

- They have a very high sugar content, second only to grapes.

- We have them coming out of our metaphorical ears!

I started picking mulberries today. First, I made the annual Pact With The Robins. They are welcome to all of the mulberries at the tops of the trees if they stay away from our cars and drying laundry afterwards. I picked 2 quarts of them (pictured above) in about an hour today, just from one limb of one tree. We have 3 mulberry trees. PLEASE come and pick some mulberries to take home. I'll even provide latex gloves ( if you don't want to stain your hands purple) and cold beer. Take a duck home with you too! Hopefully I will figure out a local farmer's market to sell berries and some other produce at soon, things are just busy, busy, busy. Black raspberries are really starting to ripen and so are the currants, so I have to get as many mulberries in as I can before they distract me.

Everything else is doing well, have started to get some responses from localharvest, which is encouraging. Picked the first kohlrabi (or as I call it "the alien vegetable") today, carrots are getting to be harvestable size. Some of the turkeys are starting to strut around all macho-like, all 11 inches tall of them, it is funny to watch.

See you at the farm!