Gutted

As I was walking to the barn yesterday to start my morning chores, I noticed an unusual huddle --a wild turkey and a few crows picking at something down by the pond. The something was snow white, which puzzled me, as I knew all the chickens -- including the few white Columbian crosses we have left -- were safely locked in the barn. 

I struggled to think what it could be -- the wild ducks that we've seen visiting our pond are all dark and brown earthy colours. Then I remembered: two of the Muscovies, one male and one female, refused to come into the barn the previous night. I tried to chase them, shoo them in, but they simply flapped away from me. As I left the barnyard I felt uncomfortable leaving them outside as we'd seen a mature fox just the week before, but the male duck can be a vicious beast, so I told myself the lady would be ok.

As I walked towards the carnage crew, I realized I was wrong. As the wild birds flew away, I saw the lady duck, gutted; her chest and body cavity ripped away, with bloodied feathers scattered around her.

I didn't cry or freak out; in fact I felt strangely disassociated from what I saw. I was disappointed, sure, but we'd lost ducks and chickens before (though usually all that's left is the feathers) and my mind started spewing platitudes of all sorts -- "Where there's livestock, there's deadstock"; or "It's part of farm life"; and "Nature can be cruel."

I picked her up carefully by her limp neck and started walking back up the hill towards the barn, stopping only to grab a shovel. I continued past the barn and into the woods at the back of the second paddock, the donkeys and horse following me in a bizarre funeral parade.

I quickly dug a grave and buried what was left of the lady duck, saying some sort of cursory 'return to earth' blessing, ending with an apology. Then I returned the shovel and continued on with my chores. This is part of farm life, I told myself -- buck up and get on with it. It's just a duck.

But for the rest of the day I felt agitated, uneasy, fragile, and the more I tried to dismiss that, push it away, the more it grew. Until finally, just before the kids got home, Lucas called me on the phone to see how my day was.

My eyes started to gloss over, my throat tighten and a sick churning began deep in my belly. The details of the story gushed out and I wanted to share with him, unload, all of the gory images that were weighing heavily on me -- the shocking contrast of the blood to her feathers, her breastbone picked clean of all flesh, her unseeing eyes, and how just the night before, after giving up on trying to get her back into the barn, I had taken a moment to admire her form, her beauty, her aliveness and gentle personality, as she paddled off into the darkness after her mate.

As I shared the story, I could sense the pain lose its grip on me. I didn't feel any less sad that the lady duck had been ravaged this way, but I could feel the sadness and not suffer by it.

I thought of a passage that author Jon Katz recently wrote on his Bedlam Farm blog about how these sorts of losses are a part of life:

"This is a familiar part of life on the farm, this sickening feeling seeing things you are responsible for and live with killed suddenly, and then the process of sorting through it, because you know the foxes or raccoons or whatever will return... It is a nice life, not a perfect life, and there are no simple or easy solutions... So there is the happy time cuddling a lamb and the other time picking up body parts of animals you were talking to the day before…. It is disturbing, yet also oddly routine. It happens, anyone with a farm and livestock has experienced it. This lesson, I learn again and again. It is not a crisis, not a drama. It is life itself."

In trying to remove the drama, or what I thought was drama but was actually just feeling, I stifled a piece of my humanity. Rallying against these inevitabilities creates suffering, but so does not fully acknowledging the pain that accompanies these losses. Keeping animals on a farm is such a gift, but if you're not careful, it can become a burden, and I've wondered before that perhaps I'd be better off if I didn't keep animals as I get so attached to them. But that would deny me the happy times. 

So what's the solution? I'm learning that allowing myself to completely appreciate the joy of their life, then fully acknowledging and experiencing the sadness of their death, before finally letting both go, leads to greater feelings of peace, acceptance and ultimately freedom. It's something of a roller-coaster ride, but then again, that is life itself.

Madcap Monday -- duck daycare

The ducklings are getting too big for their brood cage (and my office!) so I put them outside to acclimatize while I figure out where to move them to. No sooner had I turned my back to go into the house to get their water when I heard movement behind me -- it was Henry, the Mother Hen... or is that Mother Duck?

Henry wouldn't even look at me while I tried to take his picture (I used the zoom lens to capture the first photo). I think he's trying to maintain some sense of dignity and decorum after getting caught fraternizing with the ducklings.

I don't think it's working.

Am I supposed to herd these?

Rhubarb made three ways

One of the things I love about growing food is that my kids get to experience the full spectrum of local, in-season eating -- the waiting, the watching, the harvesting and the eating. Ever since we discovered the pleasures of rhubarb last year, Jack has been eyeing up rhubarb row, waiting for the time when we can once again pick some fresh 'barb.

While asking the children to help me dig up weeds is like pulling teeth, it was lovely to see them embrace the task of leafing through the rhubarb patch in search of the most tender and ruby-red stalks.

The is just the first of many, many baskets.

The kids asked if they could eat the stalks raw, to which I replied, "sure!" What I didn't tell them was just how tart and tongue twisting it tastes!

As they chewed, they scrunched up their faces like they'd been sucking lemons. It didn't take long before they spat out their mouthfuls and declared that while they both liked rhubarb baked "in things", raw was just "gross."

This easy-to-grow perennial can be quite prolific, so I've been on the lookout for recipes that will make the most of our delicious bounty.

I recently found one for rhubarb cinnamon muffins, made with whole wheat flour and two cups of diced rhubarb. They're a lovely not-too-sweet afternoon snack, tasting more bread-like than muffin-like, and studded with chunks of rhubarb that deliver its unmistakable tangy smack.


I also found a new recipe for rhubarb crisp (Jack's favourite); one that has the oatmeal crust on both the top and bottom. This recipe takes four cups of rhubarb and I'm going to try freezing several trays of it to enjoy later in the year.

But this season's greatest taste-tingling surprise was rhubarb juice -- a delicious twist on the traditional pie/crisp arrangement.


If you like the tartness of rhubarb, you'll love the puckery pleasure of this juice. It's a concentrate, with a 1:1 mix ratio, which we've added to water, orange juice and even ginger ale for a bubbly treat. I'm sure it would make a lovely addition to a tonic-based cocktail, too.

Here's the recipe for basic rhubarb juice concentrate:

• 12 cups sliced rhubarb (1" slices) (yes, 12 cups!)
• 4 cups water
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1.) In a large stainless steel pot, combine rhubarb and water.* Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat, cover and boil gently until rhubarb is soft, about 10 minutes.**

2.) Transfer to a strainer lined with several layers of cheesecloth over a deep bowl. If you don't have a strainer handy, raid your husband's workshop for clamps and attach the cheesecloth directly to the pot. We're really high tech around here. (Those clamps are cleaner than they look.)

Let drip undisturbed for about 2 to 3 hours, or until all the liquid has drained.


3.) In a clean stainless steel saucepan, combine rhubarb juice and sugar. Heat to dissolve sugar but do not boil. Remove from heat and skim off foam.


At this point, you can choose to can the juice (ed. update: via boiling-water canner), but I left one jar in the fridge and froze the second one in a few smaller plastic yogurt containers. It's a delicious, vitamin-packed way to capture one of spring's earliest seasonal pleasures. Enjoy!

* If you want to make "Sunshine" rhubarb juice, add the grated zest of one lemon and one orange.
** Once you remove from heat, add juice from one lemon and one orange.

P.S. No post would be complete without a new duckling photo. We're up to four now. Yep, four.

2 + 1 = 3

And then there were two

Now that May (aka Mrs. Nibbles) has a companion, my office is quiet again: her incessant peeping finally stopped. She took one look at June (that's the new one), bopped her on the head with her beak a few times as if to say, "What took you so long?" and then promptly snuggled up to her and fell asleep. Now that's baby duck love.

Ed. update: So much for the quiet! Now that it's morning, it's twice as loud as both of them are peeping for their breakfast. Good thing I don't have any client calls scheduled for today!

Even more duckling photos...

... because you can never have too many.

Hey, you gotta see what's in here.

Hello. I kept escaping from that bin thing, so now I'm locked in here at night.

I love eating...

and burping. OK, not really.

This water thing is kinda cool, too.

I dip my beak in...

... and then let 'er rip!

Phew, I'm exhausted.

Baby duck love

It looks like my computer issues are finally resolved. It wasn't the satellite after all, but the router that probably got fried during the big windstorm. My internet service is still slow at times (granted, the signal is travelling up to space) but at least it's not timing out anymore.

And that's great, because tomorrow I'm offering another giveaway sponsored by Penguin Canada.

But before I get to that, I'm going to subject you to a ridiculous number of photos of our new addition: Mrs. Nibbles. Yes, Ella named her.

I was on my barn rounds this morning when I decided to check on Betsy -- the newly-single broody hen who recently kicked out her duck partner Jemima.

I thought I heard some peeping, so I took a quick peek under her skirts.

A just-hatched Muscovy duckling.


Unfortunately, as soon as Betsy saw that her tiny charge wasn't one of her kind, she freaked out a bit and started pecking at her. Given last year's tragedies with our duckling losses, I simply couldn't go through that heartache again, so I quickly scooped up the new hatchling, cupped her between my closed hands and brought her back to the house.


She was still crusty, so I'm thinking she was less than an hour old.

As I wasn't finished the day's editing work, I set up a makeshift brooder in my home office, using a deep plastic bin, some dried grass newly warmed by the sun and my desk light, refitted with an old incandescent bulb that throws off a surprising amount of heat.


It didn't take long before she started fluffing up and looking more duck-like and less on-the-brink-of-death like.

When the kids came home from school, I fabricated some excuse for getting then into my office -- even though I'm usually telling them to get out of my office. It took them a few moments to notice the brooder on my desk (perhaps a testament to just how messy it is in here) but when they did, Ella gasped and Jack broke out into a huge grin.

"Where did this come from?" they asked. Given that I was the kid who brought home wounded birds, stray pets and even tried to convince my parents that the garage was the perfect place to house a horse (in Toronto, no less) -- and never truly outgrew these tendencies -- it seemed a fair question.

"Betsy the chicken hatched her," I said.

"Really?" said Ella. "Wow.... Can I hold her? Please, can I?"


I said yes, but only after they washed their hands, unpacked their bookbags and lunches, and had a snack. We were gone for about 10 minutes, if that, when I hear a "peeping" sound clear across the main floor.

"Maybe she's hungry," said Ella.

"I don't think so," I replied. "Maybe she just misses us," I said with a smile.

Ella and I walked back into my office (nothing gets between Jack and his post-school snacktime) and even from across the room, I could see the brooder was empty. Empty? Where could the duckling have gone? She could barely stand up, let alone fly...

Right. I looked down and there she was, stumbling around my office rug like a drunken sailor.

"Are you my mother?"

Ella dropped to the floor, gathered the duckling in her dress and proceeded to stroke its tiny fragile body. She started chewing on Ella's dress buttons, so I thought maybe we could introduce a bit of food to our new charge.

I was out of the room for all of five minutes.

I guess any creature that comes to live on Rowangarth Farm has to get used to some degree of silliness around here. That and a whole lotta love.

Madcap Monday -- Together again

Last April, I posted about an unlikely pair: Jemima and Betsy, a Muscovy duck and a Columbia Rock x Rhode Island chicken who had decided to co-nest on a clutch of eggs.

Looks like they're back together for a 2011 hatching!


Happy belated Mother's Day to all you wonderful mamas!

Madcap Monday -- Let sleeping ducks lie*

* A nod to James Herriot, author of "Let Sleeping Vets Lie".

One of these things...

... is not like the other!

Madcap Monday

What do you do if your pond is frozen over and it's -30 degrees Celsius out? Take a paddle in the horse's heated water bucket, of course.

It's hot tubbing, duck style!

To all of you who have left comments over the last few months or sent emails checking in to make sure we're ok (no, the giant mushroom didn't do us all in!): thank you. You rock my world...

The darker side of spring

Spring is a time for new beginnings, fresh starts and miraculous birth. But as there is birth, there is also death, and I'm getting really tired of the latter.

When the two Muscovy ducks went broody, I decided to let them sit on their eggs and let nature take its course. I'm a total bookworm and I spend far too much time reading up on everything from starting seedlings to using cold frames, always searching for the best way to do things “right”. I often have to push myself to get my nose out of the book and get into the field or the barn or wherever, so this time I thought, let's just see what happens next. It'd be a hands-on lesson in hatching eggs naturally, rather than in an incubator. Mother Nature knows best, yes? I’d forgotten that Mother Nature can sometimes be cruel too.

The first duckling that hatched was a wonderful surprise. Despite almost being trampled by four clumsy mature ducks, almost being eaten by a crafty barn cat and falling out of the brooder area, it rallied for two days until I left a container of water in overnight and it drowned in two inches of water. The second duckling didn't survive the hatching. I found it dead besides the mother duck with no clue as to what happened.

Despite being upset over the natural loss of the second duckling and my sheer stupidity that caused the loss of the first, I thought as there were still eight or so other eggs under mama duck, we'd have more ducklings soon. I couldn't have been more wrong.

A few days after we lost the first duckling, I found an egg that had been pushed out of the nest as far away as possible. It was partially cracked open and in it was a mature duckling that was dead. The sight and the smell of it made me gag. I quietly disposed of the tiny corpse and went on with my barn chores.

The next day, I found two more broken eggs with two more dead ducklings. The third day, I knew what I'd find before I even got to the brooding pen because I was hit with a putrid smell when I was still about a foot away from the door. There it was - another fully formed but dead duckling. One by one, mama duck had pushed the dead eggs out of her nest until there were only a few left.

When she left the nest to get some food, only after carefully covering her remaining eggs with white downy feathers from her breast and clean wood shavings, I carefully and quietly pulled out the last of the eggs. All smelled rotten and horrible, a smell that lingered in my nose for hours.

I took the last of her eggs, filled the nest again with clean shavings and quietly tucked in two newly laid Rouen duck eggs. Mama duck squeaked at me, ruffled her feathers in indignation and then resumed her maternal post to sit for another 28 days.

Since then, I've tried to find information about natural incubation but most of what I've found online refers to incubating eggs artificially. Based on my limited reading, I started thinking that that perhaps the second egg harboured bacteria that contaminated the nest and the rest of the eggs in the nest, killing the un-hatched ducklings. If this is the case, then maybe I shouldn’t have introduced new eggs to the nest at all. But the softie in me couldn’t leave her with an empty nest. (Yes I’m anthropomorphizing, but that’s what happens when you read and love books like, “The pig who sang to the moon: the emotional world of farm animals” by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.)

But then yesterday, I found a dead chick outside the area where the duck and hen are co-nesting. And today I found a dead duckling. There was no horrible smell, no sign of disease, no evidence of trauma or malformation. Just more dead.

I hate going into the barn right now. Since this all started, it's been a horrible way to start the day. Every morning I’m reminded of my lack of experience and knowledge. It's one thing to kill seedlings or plants because I didn't know better but it's an entirely different feeling when living creatures are dying at your hands.

I've always had a huge heart for animals -- both real and fictional -- that was easily wounded if it sensed any pain or hurts. As I child, I couldn't watch the movie Dumbo, especially the scene where his mother held him in her trunk and rocked him through the bars of her circus cage. Even as a small child it just seemed so unfair that he had to suffer at the hands of grown-ups who should be taking care of him. Even today, animal movies such as Lassie, The Fox and the Hound and Old Yeller send me into full-out blubbering fits that leave me weepy for hours.

So it's no surprise that I'm taking these deaths hard. If I could chalk it up to experience then it might be easier to deal with. But the problem is, there's no lesson learned here.

I have no idea what's going wrong.

Madcap Monday

"One of these things is not like the other..."

Meet Jemima and Betsy. Jemina is the Muscovy duck on the left and Betsy is the Columbian Rock x Rhode Island Red chicken on the right.

About a month ago, I noticed that the other ducks were picking on Jemima so at night, I put her on her own in the feed/prep area of the barn. Soon after, I noticed that she was stealthily building a nest behind the "cubby area" where we store hay (hence the name Jemima, after Beatrix Potter's character Jemima Puddle-duck, who tries to hide her eggs from the farmer's wife so she can hatch them herself).

Then came Betsy, who also liked to nest in strange places. I thought the two of them might get ornery with each other as while the ducks and chickens don't pick fights, they're certainly not chummy. It appears these two have worked something out.

A few days after these two started co-nesting, Betsy left for some power scratching in the barnyard. She ran out through the barn doors, wings flapping and comb twitching, and beelined it to Gall's morning manure pile as fast as her little chicken legs could carry her. She was on a mission: to scratch at all the undigested grain kernels in his poop. While she was engaged in her gross buffet breakfast, I got a chance peek at the nest.


The white eggs are Jemina's and the brown ones are Betsy's.

I wondered what would happen when the eggs started hatching -- chicks hatch after 21 days while Muscovies take 35 days -- but again I decided to let nature take its course.

Seems like I made the right choice this time.


Now what I can't figure out is, how did a Barred Plymouth Rock egg/chick get in to the nest???

Not again

I went out to the barn this morning and once again, found a quiet duck pen. The little duckling, who was doing so well last night when I last checked in before closing up the barn , had drowned in two inches of water.

While I had the drown-proof duckling water dispenser in the pen, I also had a small container for mama to drink out of. Looks like baby got herself in and couldn't get out.

I feel horrible. I should have known better. This totally sucks.

Please tell me this gets easier.

Our morning sadness

After yesterday's wonderful surprise, when I found that new baby duckling, I was looking forward to being welcomed by a chorus of peeps this morning. Instead, I found only silence.

When I shut down the barn last night, I discovered that the second duckling had completely hatched from her shell. She was still all curled up in a ball -- hatching is exhausting work! -- but she was already starting to dry off.

Mama only let me take a quick glimpse of her newest charge before settling back down on the nest. I secured the duck pen, making sure the barn cats couldn't get in and then turned off the barn lights for the night. I debated whether or not I should bring the babies into the house or simply put the heat lamp back on as I know ducklings need supplemental heating for their first few weeks. But I decided that since mama was here, I'd leave her to take care of the new arrivals. Perhaps I made the wrong choice.

When I checked in to the duck pen this morning, there was mama sitting on her nest. And lying still beside her was one of the ducklings. While she'd started to fluff up she was still a bit crusty in spots (so I'm assuming it was the new one), but she was long gone. I'm not sure what happened -- I know babies are very fragile and perhaps she died shortly after emerging from the shell and no matter what I'd done, we would have lost her. But it's hard not to think, "or maybe she froze to death because I didn't turn the lamp on or take her inside."

(Thankfully, I found the other duckling -- still alive -- with her head shoved into mama's chest. She seemed no worse for wear and in fact, showed quite a healthy appetite for her duckling feed.)

The kids and I buried the new hatchling down by the pond and then slowly made our way back to the barn to continue on with the morning chores. As I was feeding Gall his bucket of grain, I felt some comfort in the sheer numbers of living beings around me -- especially the fully-grown ducks that I'd raised from day-olds.

But what got me about the dead duckling was an overwhelming feeling that because of my inexperience, I'd made the "wrong" choice.

The qualities that make me particularly well suited to caring for these creatures -- my deep love and commitment to raising them to the best of my ability, my appreciation for their quirky personalities and the immense sense of satisfaction I get from just being with them -- also creates a lot of pain as a caretaker.

With life, there is death, just as with happiness exists suffering and I think I'd find a much greater sense of peace by simply accepting these moments without taking personal responsibility for each and every one of them. It still sucks, though.

And now, I'm faced with another decision. Do I leave the remaining duckling with mama or do I take her inside? My instinct is to leave them together -- perhaps put the heat lamp on tonight just to help -- but I'd really hate to be met with more silence tomorrow morning.

Our morning surprise

The barn is usually a fairly noisy place first thing in the morning. The chickens are clucking, the rooster is crowing, the goats are bleating and the ducks are quacking. Well the Rouens are, at least. The Muscovies try hard but only manage a pitiful little squeak.

But today, I noticed another sound amongst the usual cacophony -- a tiny "peep, peep, peep." I looked down into the duck pen and there she was -- our very first hatchling!

After screaming and scaring the hell out of the donkeys and horse (they're a little touchy before breakfast), I went tearing across the barnyard while shouting at the top of my lungs, "Go get the camera, there's a baby duck in the barn!" once again, providing ample entertainment for our barnyard creatures.

We have two ducks sitting on eggs right now. One is in the feed area (she deserves her very own blog post) and the other is in the duck pen. Recently, I'd looked up the incubation period for ducks and while baby chickens hatch in 21 days, Rouen ducks hatch in 28 days and Muscovies in 35 days.

As this is our first time hatching our own -- in fact, we're not hatching anything... we just allowed the ducks to go broody and let nature take its course -- I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm horrible at marking dates but I didn't think she'd been sitting on the eggs all that long. I didn't even know if they were fertile, though I must say that our drakes are quite insatiable when it comes to their attempts at procreation.

Obviously, the boys did their job and so did mama duck.

What I find amazing is that the duckling isn't even technically hers. Mama is a Muscovy while the duckling is a Rouen. Doesn't seem to matter though. Lovely, isn't it?

By the time I finished taking a bazillion photos and finally got the rest of the barn crew fed, I realized it was 11:40 am. Because we weren't expecting babies yet, we had no duckling food on hand and the closest farm supply store -- which is 30 minutes away -- closed in 20 minutes. What's more, it wouldn't be open again until Monday (today is Saturday).

I quickly called the feed store, explained my predicament and pleaded for them to stay open another 15 minutes. After some hawing and humming, the disgruntled voice on the other end of the line agreed and 30 seconds later, the kids and I were in the truck and racing down the driveway.

It's a good thing too because when I got back with the duckling feed and put it and some fresh water into the pen, mama duck finally got off her nest and gave us a peek at the rest of her eggs.

Looks like duckling might have some siblings soon.

This first photo was taken at 1:00 pm.

And two hours later.

I just checked on them about an hour ago and mama is still sitting on her nest. I've read that hatching can take 24 to 48 hours so perhaps by tomorrow, I'll be met with a chorus of "peep, peep, peeps."

In the meantime, I've told the kids that mama needs her rest. She's going to have her wings full with this lot.