Digging Holes and Discipling Ducks (Part Two)

Welcome to Part Two of the blog post. 

A quick update on Peter: He's still a little bastard and I had to give him the discipline already once today. I'm starting to suspect he enjoys it... which is weird, but not surprising when you're talking about ducks. 

Ok, so now that's out of  the way. I've got a bunch more stuff to tell you about and lots more photos. Let's get right into it with the seedling update! 

These are sugar snap peas. I had forgotten how quickly they grow. This is day 3 after planting them. Incredible!

The is my seed growing area in my studio. Yes, I have to use the step to get to the top shelf. Not all of the seed flats have heat mats on them and the ones that are left uncovered are ones that no longer need the dome. In this location, they get a nice amount of direct sun from about 2 pm to 7 pm. One day I'd like to have my own mini hard sided greenhouse for cultivating seedlings. But they're a couple thousand dollars and this works well enough for right now.

These are the double click cosmos that Renee Shepard of Renee's Garden sent me. She's my 2nd cousin, for those of you who don't recognize the name. If you are looking for seeds, I highly recommend Renee's Garden seeds. They are all doing really well for me and she's got a wide variety of heirloom and organic seeds to choose from. I'll be honest and say that I'm really terrible at starting flowers from seeds. My track record, though short, is not awesome. I did some pinching back and it was a traumatic experience for everyone apparently. Such dramatic little seedlings!

On the left are the Van Gogh ornamental sunflowers. Also from Renee. They were very quick to sprout. And on the right are watermelon seedlings. I have two varieties of watermelon growing- one with seeds and one without. The one with seeds are the popular Moon and Stars variety. They are on the shelf below these guys but I can't find the photo. Which doesn't matter anyway, because at this point they all look the same.

Oh my lovely and hearty Jade Bush beans from Johnny's Select seeds. This was a complete test because these seeds were from last year and I wasn't sure if I had stored them correctly. But in a few days they popped up and now I've already had to cull the dinky ones and transfer the strong ones to the bigger pots. (You'll see those photos below)

These are the sugar snap peas the day after I took the first photo of them. Yah, no joking they are strong and happy!

This is the beautiful Neon Rainbow chard from Renee's Garden before their pinch-back. I've never grown chard so I really hope they do well.

'This little lovely is a bell pepper seedling. They are slow to grow, which is fine because if all my seedlings were growing as fast as the sugar snap peas I'd be doing a juggling act I'm not sure I would succeed at.

And this fun shot are the sweet peas in their overnight soak. (With my girl's eggs in the basket) I scored them gently when I planted them, as per the advice I got online. Last year I didn't have the best results but I also had neglected to soak them. These are the seeds that are left over from last year, hopefully they survived storage and will grow big and strong this year. 

These are the heirloom tomatoes I started last month. They are also from Renee's Garden and are super happy and strong. I have to say, that I did get some tomato seeds from Johnny's Select Seeds also and those are not as impressive. They were all planted at the same time. They all got the same amount of soil, light and water. Renee's seeds are just kick-ass.

A close up of the tomatoes.

The bush beans in the organic grow pots. These are great because they can be planted directly in the soil when the beans are ready to go outside full time. 

My Jade bush beans are from Johnny's Select Seeds. They did great last year and I expect they will be great this year too.

Transferring- yeah, a bit earlier than I would have liked, but they were outgrowing the seedling flat I had them in and I figured I could give it a shot since the weather has gotten so nice. I've kept a close eye on them and they hardly need my help. These are plants are are just too excited to be growing. They are tough and resilient. 

This is the set up I've got for the seedlings while I'm hardening them off. They get the royal treatment- twice daily spritzing and at least 8 hours of sunshine. (I just typed "sunshit" and google spell correct knew what I meant and corrected it for me. I think sunshit is hysterical and the idea that you could have 8 hours worth of it is marvelous)

So that is the Seedling update. Next up, let me give you the aquaponic construction update. We are so close to being ready to really test the system with water and shortly after that, fish and plants. This is how the pit looked this morning:

Filled in with gravel and now almost fully hooked up to the system. Aaron probably has it totally hooked up by now. 

Aaron had to dig this ditch (I SO totally offered to help but he didn't accept my help) for the pipes to run from the grow beds to the cistern. Thankfully it hasn't rained in 48 hours so he could do this. While he was doing this, I was mowing the yard and getting some raised beds organized for plants that won't go into the system.

Here is the ditch digger. The world needs them too....

Aaron's special helper- Chairman Meow. 

Here's the fish tank, reinforced. If you can't tell, it's full of water but no fish yet. We were just testing the strength of the tank. We decided that one more reinforcement will be put on at the end so we had to drain all that water. Instead of wasting it, we used it to fill the cistern! We had to fill the cistern because when it rained, the thing started tilting because it was too light and had no anchor. Aaron adjusted it, quickly put a bunch of pipes together ("it's just like playing with legos!") and started filling the cistern in minutes. 

Here's the photo:

See all that water collected at the bottom of the hole? That's from the massive amount of rain we got, not the fish tank.

While Aaron dug the ditch, I started mowing the side yard. Might as well take advantage of a rare (seemingly) dry day. We don't have a riding mower anymore, so I was doing it with the push one. It's hard on my wrists and hands and we really need to invest in a riding one. While I was mowing, Wiley would sit in the tall grass chilling out. When I got too close, he'd get up and move further down the yard. It's nice to have company when you are doing chores.

Here are a few of my raised beds. In the far background are the garlic beds. They were planted last winter before the first frost. I can't wait to start harvesting them... soon!

The plant in the beige round raised bed is my blueberry bush. This is it's first season. So far, it's doing really well and leafing out nicely. 

The two small black raised beds with the upside down tomato supports in them will be for some of the sugar snap peas. They need supports to climb up and I had these, so I figured why not use them? This is the first time I've used these soft-sided raised beds and I have to say I really like them. I like that they can be stored over winter, moved around depending on where you want specific plants and they last for years and years. They also allow you to try out a location before creating a more permanet bed.

We have a lot of wild onions growing around the property. I collected a bunch for dinner. (These are my front steps.)

Here they are washed up. I sautéd them with butter, mushrooms, garlic and mixed that all up with rice. It was delicious! (I can't wait to do that with the garlic that I am growing!)

And lastly, Old Man Wiley Dog.

It's exhausting being a farm dog. 

And that brings us to the end of the update. Email me any questions you might have! Let me know if there are any spelling mistakes! (Mom and Aunt Norma I'm looking at YOU)

Digging Holes and Discipling Ducks (Part One)

**Head's UP! This is part one of a two part blog post.***

Hello again! I feel like the title should be Digging Ditches and Discipling Ducks, which makes for a better alliteration but my sense of truth is stronger than my love of alliteration. Because it's not a ditch, as you will see, but an actual hole. But before we get into the hole, let's deal with these dastardly ducks.... (see what I did there? HA!)

The worst offender by far is Peter. He was named after the titular character in the story Peter and the Wolf. (Yes I know it's the little boy who is named Peter and originally the duck didn't have a name until Disney gave him- her, actually- the name of Sonia. But he's a duck and what does he care about semantics?) Anyway, he behaves more like Peter the Great, claiming as much territory as possible. He even started claiming Atticus and then Wiley. Those of you who know Wiley can imagine how well that went over.... And although Wiley has had to school the ducks many times on the basics of appropriate behavior, #1 being "Never EVER sneak up on Wiley"; they never learn and rarely give up for long.

Up until recently I've ignored my little baryard Czar and watched in amusement as he led his flock all over the place while they all make loud proclamations, form and disband committees and register general complaints to anyone they spy. Unfortunately for Peter, he has started to think I'm free for playing the "I dominate YOU" game. The ducks do it to each other and the guineas and the dogs. Curiously, they give the cats a very wide birth. They still quack at the cats, but keep as far away from their neighbors as possible. (The duck coop and cat barn share a wall) Which doesn't make sense to me. The dogs are much bigger and so wouldn't you think they'd be the scary ones to the ducks? The cats are the same size as the ducks.

Anyhow- when Peter started charging me in an aggressive manner a few weeks ago, I went online to find out how to stop this behavior. Turns out, the advice is just as strange and centered around sex as everything else about ducks is.. are... whatever.


Look at the photos below:

I told him his humiliation would be public. He cares not! Look at that diabolically defiant gleam in his beady little eye!

Ducks are so soft but have really strong necks.

Ok, so let me explain. Yes, I am simulating mounting my duck. The theory goes as follows: You have a dominate drake in the flock who isn't satisfied with bullying the other ducks and animals on the farm. Now he wants to dominate you too, and starts to nip at your pant legs and charge at you menacingly. You could ignore this- after all, he's only about 5 lbs of feathers and noise. But if you do, and you have shorts on, or a small child is visiting the farm to enjoy the wonders of farm animals, he'll go after your bare legs and then your friend's little kid too. Now you've got a welt and your friend's kid not only has a welt- ON HER FACE BECAUSE DUCKS ARE TALL AND CHILDREN ARE SHORT- but has now been traumatized for life and they won't come back and visit and they'll go tell everyone what an asshole you are and what a jerk your ducks are.

So your options are limited. You could re-home the drake, in which case he'll probably become someone's dinner. You could kill him and eat him yourself. Or you can first try to modify the behavior by reminding your special little tyrant who the real Queen of the land is. And to do that, you gotta mount that duck for a solid 5 minutes. You will have to repeat this activity on a daily basis. Multiple times.

There's actually one other thing that I can do... and that's get a bunch more females. The flock is imbalanced for sure, and there's a lot of homosexual stuff going on, which is great because that means the one female, Penelope, doesn't have to bear the brunt of all the attention. But having more females around will chill the boys out. I do plan to get more, I just need to make some space in the coop.

Now for the ditch that is actually a hole.

In the aquaponics system, if you recall, we have two grow bed styles. One is water based with floats for the plants and the other is medium based with clay balls. So the medium based grow bed is also what is called and "ebb and flow" style. It's great for bigger plants like tomatoes. So to make this work correctly, we needed to install a cistern that is below the water line for the grow bed. That means digging a big ass hole. Here are some photos and videos with notes about what you are seeing.

Here is Aaron on the excavator we rented. 

Beginning to dig. As it turned out, this was not the best spot for digging so this hole had to be filled back up and we moved the operation just past this towards the pool. I asked Aaron if he was having fun. He said, "Yeah! This is a childhood fantasy come true!" 

So naturally, he dug the hole WAYYY too big.

 What's a cistern you ask? Well it's a big tank that you hold water in. They come in different sizes and shapes. 

Here is ours:

The semi had just left after dropping off this tank. It's only about 175 lbs. 

Even though it's not too heavy, the tractor was used to move it for speed, ease and to minimize the chance that it would get damaged.

I'm sort of going out of order here, because we got the cistern the day before Aaron started digging the hole. Here's a video of some of that:

So once the hole was dug, we had to put the sand in. It took two truck loads to fill the bottom of the hole. 

Then it rained just before we could put the cistern in. 

Here's the video:

The rain made the whole area into a sticky mud mess worthy of the best summer outdoor concert event.

Atticus loved it.

The ducks loved it more.

So now that the hole was dug and we got a ton of rain, we realized that back filling the hole with the soil we dug up was not the best choice. Aaron had the brilliant idea of getting a dump truck load of gravel delivered. We'll use it to fill up around the cistern but we also need it for around the farm. We have decided we need a lot of gravel paths around the farm after this particularly wet winter and spring. 

Here's the video of that:

Next up in Part Two: The Search for More Time..... we'll have trench digging, pipe laying, seeds growing like crazy and of course, dogs.