Duckling Diary and a Hog Hootenanny

In case you wondered about those sweet little babies that had hatched in the spring, they were just stinkin' adorable. Seth sent me a picture where someone had dressed their baby ducks in cupcake liners made into tutus. So on a family dinner night we played "dress up" with the babies ;)

There is no telling boys from girls. We'll just say that the ones in aqua are boys developing their feminine side- ha!

Aren't they just the sweetest?

Standing in the water bowl or food dish was considered necessary at every meal. Moma duck approves.

Here is my middle son, Seth, trying to tell a duckling about the virtues of blackberry-lime cupcakes, and why they make babies grow big and strong. He should know, he is 6'6 and wears a size 15 shoe!

 Above is when they are still at that cute yellow fluff stage, but right on the verge of "ugly duckling" syndrome. They were still so sweet here. They would peep excitedly when food came and gobble it up. Then they started to get real feathers and their voices changed. Duck teenagers, gak! Then, every time I exited the house they were watching and would begin yelling at me. Telling me to get over there and feed them. Or change the water. But whatever it was, to do it faster and better. I had thought their mom was bad, but her babies took after her. Insolent and rude to the core!

 Poor daddy duck was silent as always. When the babies got bigger he would gather his courage and dart down off of his rail perch and scoop as much food as possible before retreating from the fray. Talk about the quintessential "hen-pecked" husband! By the time they were this size you could hardly tell the young from the old. And the noise! They would be hurling duck insults at me, while I was hollering back things like, "Hush up, you ridiculous beasts!" I have a friend (hello, darling Raquel!) who said she would love it if I videoed myself doing morning chores. I considered it for all of five seconds. For one thing, I would have to strap the camera to my head like a coal miner. And after all the bending, washing, filling, petting, and hollering- you, Dear Reader, would be both seasick and shell-shocked. Then (cue the celestial music) there was the Facebook request for anyone who had ducks to give away (imagine my huge, evil grin). You see, I was filling a 5 gallon waterer every other day. That's backbreaking to get from the faucet to the pen. And every time I thought of winter, I shuddered. The giant plastic self-waterer would burst when it froze. So the only other alternative would be to fill a trough for them. Which they would stand in and poo (Oh my heavens, ducks are the poo champions of the world. We also have pigs, and it is no contest.). And it would freeze, the ice have to be broken, and refilled every. single. day. You understand now why I shuddered.

MISSION DD-DAY, otherwise know as Deliver Ducks Day. It turns out that the lady who wanted the ducks also does therapy for kids through Healing Horses. And she just so happened to have a pond with an island just made for persnickety ducks. Above photo is after pursuing the cursing critters all around the pen, until I had all of them in a cage. Need I say that it had rained all week, and their speedy little flippers could really throw up the mud. The picture doesn't do justice. I have a fine spray of mud from my feet, up my dress to my face. Then the cage went in the car and my moma and pop went on a country drive with me to deliver the quarrelsome quackers. But the time we got there, moma said that she was so glad to get rid of them. We had to yell to make ourselves heard. I breathed a sigh of relief, and later the sweet lady send me a video of the ducks merrily splashing and getting used to their new home. Hallelujah!

 Now on to a hog hootenanny, or the pig palooza. Here is the hubby fortifying the fencing against rooting snoots. They really were good pigs. Very calm, even the males never got aggressive. And the one time they did root out, my hubby saw something that looked like a pack of dogs running across the field. (I have a mental image of the puppies from the Little Golden Book "Pokey Little Puppy", all  digging under the fence and running free) When he realized it was a hog escape, all he had to do was holler and shake a bucket of grain. They all made a big u-turn and ran right back!

 These are amazingly enough these are brothers and sisters. Their moma was a red wattle. I don't have a good picture, but they had long wattles like a turkey from the corners of their chins! And the dad was a black...something that sounded like a cattle breed. Anyhoo- their babies came out to look like one or the other of them instead of a mix.

 A pile of placid porcines (have you ever noted how much I love alliteration?! :). They loved to sleep in a pig pile. Even when they were huge they liked to be touching. The worst thing about pigs is not the smell. Despite the fact that there were four of them, the smell never got horrific. And I can tell you that I would rather smell a pig pen or other farm smell all day long than city smells. If I sit behind a diesel vehicle in traffic for long I get sick to my stomach and light-headed. Give me farm poo over car fumes any day. However, I did not like the fact that they loved to flap their long floppy ears. It would shower you in a fine spray of "pigmud". Definition- mix of mud, poo, and slops. And that is a stink that does not want to wash off. After I lugged their trough one day, I washed my hands. Then I used Dawn dish soap, then gritty Lava soap. I finally rinsed with bleach, but if I sniffed them closely, there was still the perfume of Essence de Hog.

 I will say that toting the 50 pound bags of feed every day was easier after a spring of lugging thousands of pounds of mulch (64 bags on a pallet at 50 pounds each). I have a very bad neck, so I heave the bag and then "hip" it like a stinky, shifting toddler. Rosy the Riveter photo, hog style ;)

 Yet another pain was getting over the fence with buckets of slops to go in their trough. There is a round cut slice of log on one side and a rock on the other to help me up and over. I am so thankful that my son, Seth, who cooks at the restaurant The Wooden Spoon, did most of the big buckets of slops. He was able to bring home all the veggie trimmings and leftovers from the kitchen. Once he brought them three whole coconut cream pies!! After that, they would turn up their snouts at broccoli stumps or onion peels- spoiled pigs! In the picture you can see the trailer is pulled up to the pen. We were feeding them grain in it so they would get used to going inside. And on Friday, the hubby toted them off to the butcher. One for us, Seth and his wife, my moma and pop, and the last was for a friend who took hers to be butchered at home. 

The look Bella gave me when I told her that her butt was not supposed to be crushing my flowers.

Now it seems that morning chores are a breeze. Dogs, cats, and chickens, then I stand there and look around, thinking I'm missing something. But that's life on a farm. Ever changing seasons of critters, plants, fruits, and chores.  Already I am freezing gallons of wild fruits to juice in cooler weather and make into jams and jellies. Cornstalks are drying for fall decorations. Soon it will be time to cut and split wood in earnest for the winter to come. And so time goes on...