Getting Our Ducks in a Row

Chris loves a good challenge and homesteading provides several opportunities to stretch one's physical boundaries as well as knowledge base. He has been working on both a brooder and a chicken coop for our chicks, not yet arrived, and he began thinking about ducks. When Chris starts thinking about things, watch out! He'll stay up all night long reading about the topic du jour but it continues night after night until his brain is saturated with mostly valuable, sometimes useless, information that spills over. Right now he's giving me a fact a day about ducks. I'm learning a lot from him, but I have to tell you, raising ducks is something I never thought I'd be doing. So, of course, he wants to try out his new brooder with ducklings first before the chicks arrive. It makes sense, considering the weather. We've had nothing but rain and ducks love puddles!

That brings me to one of his newly discovered and amazing facts:
Did you know that, if you raise little hatchling ducks that haven't been around their mother, they don't get her natural oil and that means that, if they go into a pond without that protective oil on their feathers, they won't swim? Their feathers will instead absorb the water and the baby ducklings will sink and drown! It takes a few weeks for their own oils to coat their feathers enough to keep ducklings afloat! I don't want to test that to see for sure that it's factual so NO PONDS ALLOWED!

Today I placed our order for a few baby ducklings, Pekin ducks from Meyer Hatchery at http://www.meyerhatchery.com. These ducks will be white as adults and I'm actually getting excited.

Part of that excitement is that I enjoy an occasional meal of duck and that gets me thinking about a glass of Pinot Grigio, which reminds me--I still would like to try growing some vintner grapes! I'm looking for just a few vinifera vines that are suitable for growing in southern Ohio's clay soil and humid climate. After all, it takes planning to produce your own meal of duck with white wine but I can imagine that this venture could be fun! Anyone know of a good source for vinifera vines in Ohio? And, please, don't mention to Chris that his "foxy" lady is planning to eat his ducks. (And yes, I mean "foxy" as in "conniving"!)

As you can see, whether ours is a marriage made in Heaven or not, Chris and I were meant for each other. We bought ourselves a beautiful and cherished calligraphy painting for our first anniversary almost 28 years ago that says it all:   I was meant for someone who welcomes a challenge!