The Duck Dilemma and Blackberry Picking

     Sigh...I suppose that it should go as no surprise that as soon as I got complacent about Stripe and her brood coming up to the barn every night, everything would change.  When they came up to the barn yesterday afternoon, I decided that I didn't need to bother putting up the portable fencing to keep them in.  Not the case.  As soon as they'd filled up with food, Stripe took everyone back down to the pond where we were taking our evening walk.  I asked Bruce what we should do and he said, "Nothing.  They'll work it out."  I didn't really like that answer, but knew that he was right. 

     But, as pragmatic as Bruce sounded, before going to bed the guy was down there with a flashlight to check up on everybody.  He came back to report that every single duck on the place was stuffed onto the little duck raft.  That would be Big Love, Smudge and her brood of eight, Stripe and her brood of twelve, and Smudge's first brood of eight.  If my math is correct, that makes 38 28* ducklings and 3 adults on one 4x6' raft. 

*Oops. Not so good with really big numbers, especially when you have to carry and do complicated junk like that.

     Forty-one Thirty-one ducks is too many for that raft and, to be frank, too many for our pond.  And those forty-one thirty-one ducks are all going to be breeding (interbreeding, actually) very soon.  In all our years of living here, we've never had a single duckling hatch and now we have this absolute avalanche of babies to deal with.  This is the strange thing about success -- too much of it can quite suddenly flip flop completely around and turn into catastrophe.  We simply have to get rid of the majority of them.  Soon.  If they were cats, we could get them spayed/neutered to stop the cycle, but I don't think that one can do this with ducks (and I can't imagine the expense involved)... The practical course of action is to slaughter some of them for the table (Muscovies are a meat breed and supposed to be very good eating).  In a world where the majority of the population goes to bed hungry every night, it seems silly not to use our excess ducks for food.  But still... My friend, Dorothea (who is much more of a country woman than I will ever be), suggested taking them to the local livestock auction and selling them.  Again, I don't know.  But I do know that we're going to have to figure something out - and quickly. 

     Speaking of Dorothea, she came up yesterday for a visit, bringing mosquito fish to release in the troughs and pickled herring to eat. We had a grand time chatting, feasting (Bruce made a German potato salad from our own homegrown potatoes), and comparing projects (she brought her knitting and I showed her my weaving) -- but the highlight was picking blackberries.



With our wet winter and mild summer, we've got a bumper crop of berries this year.  And, amazingly, the birds haven't found them.  Yet.



We started with the bushes up on the dam (carefully avoiding the poison oak)









 Here's a quick comparison of containers -- Dorothea's is on the right.  I'm not sure how it happened, but at first the majority of my berries somehow landed in my mouth.  :)

Then we went to the really huge clump of blackberries that grow at the base of the dam where the water seeps out.  This pic was taken standing by the blackberries, looking out towards the riding arena.  You can see in the foreground our own little Swamp Frogpond .
















Dorothea very kindly took my picture as I was slowly being sucked into the bog.  Notice that I am able to smile even as I'm frantically trying to pick up my foot while not losing my clog in the mud.  And I didn't drop the berries either! 






I tell you, when these two grown women went out to pick blackberries, they turned right back into the two tomboy-girls they are at heart.  We came back to the house with muddy legs, stickers all over our pants, and a goodly number of ticks.  We had a blast!



Yeah, it was worth it!