I try to avoid politics on this website, but there has been so much hand-wringing this week in the sustainable agriculture community about Barack Obama’s agriculture choice for Secretary of Agriculture that I feel compelled to respond. I can’t find much good to say about Tom Vilsack, but I have low expectations for the job he’s filling, and I would have been surprised had Obama picked somebody I really liked.
Monday morning
The weekend’s storm tore the remaining leaves from the trees: in great clouds fluttering like blackbirds taking wing, were the world turned upside-down. Lonely survivors cling to their branches while the bodies of their brothers, summer’s corpses, lay strewn on my windshield. I should put dimes on their eyes to mark the season, but they have none, and there are too many. The wipers flash, tick-tick, and it is winter.
A fable
The king of Ustreasia was a wealthy man, wealthy beyond compare. His kingdom was peaceful and lovely, and his people were hardworking and kind and ethical, for the most part. But for all the riches of his kingdom the king’s true pride was his herd of elephants. And what elephants! Bulls all, with slashing tusks and stamping feet and trumpeting calls that echoed throughout the capital. For generations the royal trainers had taught the elephants to march in procession, to carry the king and queen upon their backs. They passed the knowledge of their profession on to their children and were respected with soldiers and priests. The people watched the royal parades and felt pride, and visiting rulers smiled in appreciation of such well-kept animals.
Life cycles
The miracle of a butterfly is a cliché, but it’s a miracle my daughter, who is four, hadn’t yet witnessed, and she gave me daily — if not hourly — updates on the caterpillar’s progress. And, really, it’s a miracle that never grows old. When the aptly named “Parsley” went off into the wide world we were all a little disappointed that we wouldn’t see her emerge as a butterfly.
On grass
Originally published in the Northern Agrarian, July/August 2008.
My back yard has never been in danger of winning any awards from glossy design magazines. Plantain rules a few patches where I let the ducks graze too freely. The old garden bed the dogs use for naps is grown up in weeds that are fascinating in their diversity and virulence but neither productive nor conventionally attractive. And one corner is littered with the detritus of a series of projects and incidents, planned and unplanned, that beset us last year.
Khaki Campbell egg production
During their first year of laying, our seven Khaki Campbells laid 332 eggs each. That is 47 pounds (21 kilograms) of eggs per duck, in a single year.
When we were debating breeds of ducks, we read that Campbells typically lay about 300 eggs a year. (The record laying bird of any breed, any species, was a Campbell duck who laid more than 365 eggs in a year.) Several sources confirmed this figure, but we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to believe it. It just seemed fantastic. An egg a day, with only an occasional miss and time off for molting? Surely these ducks must be pushed to the limit of their genetic capacity.
But we never consciously pushed our birds. As far as I can tell, they’re just extremely happy and healthy ducks.
Duck eggs: A primer
Never eaten duck eggs? Most people haven’t. The differences between chicken and duck eggs, while slight, are noticeable by people who aren’t used to the latter. Most of the people I know who have tried them prefer duck eggs, but not everyone likes them. In this primer I’ll set out the differences between the two, but you really will just have to try them for yourself.
Cooking with duck eggs
Cooking with duck eggs doesn’t call for a major revision in technique. But there are differences: the yolks of duck eggs have more fat and the whites more protein than those of chicken eggs, and you need to take these differences into account when cooking. Somewhat gentler cooking is the key.
Ducks: Frequently asked questions
Some basic information about raising ducks and why we do it.
On growing potatoes
Originally published in the Northern Agrarian.
When I write about gardening I sometimes, without meaning to, give the impression that I wake every morning to survey a vast domain of neatly tilled beds and a refrigerator bursting with home-grown produce. In fact we have very little space. We own an acre and a quarter, but nearly all of it is wooded; very little gets enough sun to support a garden — and most of that is in the backyard, which has the twin disadvantage of being underlaid by a septic field and being overrun by basset hounds. The former means we can’t dig, while the later means that anything we do plant will be dug up.