Duck brooder

The crib, also known as Kathy’s study. (More photos are available below.)

We brooded the ducklings in Kathy’s study, in a baby pool about 4 feet across. At four days old they were jumping up and getting their heads above the top of the pool, so we cut up a cardboard box and duct-taped it into a fence.

Sermon for a spring afternoon

Friends, I am here today to tell you that you have sinned.

Now, I don’t pretend to know what is in each of your hearts. But you know what you have done. You have referred to rich desserts, anything called “Death by Chocolate”, as “sinful.” You have forgone the gifts of grape and grain, believing them to be the work of the Devil — as if evil had the power to create! You have believed those purveyors of misery who told you that the pleasures of the body are evil indulgences.

ducks emerge from their pen

Barnyard revolution, part 2

ducks emerge from their pen

Photo by Kathy

I believe the duck revolution has been quashed.

All day Friday, Eddy and Patsy squawked at each other. When we let them out in the yard Friday evening, Patsy tried to round up the flock and make them go where she wanted. Except for Sybil (who quacked in agreement), no one paid any attention. They went right on hunting for bugs where they were.

That is probably when Patsy’s plans began to unravel. Without popular support, no revolution can succeed. Saturday saw only the occasional argument. On Sunday morning Eddy, asserting her dominance again, led the flock into the grazing pen without my orders. It has been quiet since. Relations in the flock appeared to have returned to normal.

I would make another snide comment about the dismal lack of anatine intelligence, but it occurs to me that this matter was settled after only a week, with no bloodshed and (as far as I can tell) no hard feelings on either side. Meanwhile Israelis and Palestinians, Catholics and Protestants, Sikhs and Hindus, Muslim and African Sudanese have been at each other’s throats for decades, centuries, millenia. I’ll defer judgment on anatine pacifism until I see how our ducks respond to a second flock, but having read the newspaper this morning I’ll keep mum on their intelligence as well.

Fomenting revolution in the barnyard

Eddy has always been in charge of the duck flock. She was the largest as a duckling, the first to get all of her adult feathers, the first to finish molting. She appears to be the smartest of the bunch (not that any of the ducks are particularly smart). She takes the lead when it’s time to go into the pen in the morning or into the house at night; if a duck is lollygagging off by herself, Eddy checks on her to make sure she’s all right and eventually rounds her up. She seems to be a good leader, as ducks go, and she doesn’t even seem to abuse her power by taking the best slugs.

It appears that we may have a revolution in the making. This afternoon Patsy harrassed Eddy mercilessly, chasing her around and squawking at her for the better part of an hour. Sybil, always a follower, joined in and pecked Eddy or no apparent reason. Normally if one of the other ducks gets uppity, Eddy gives her the business, but not today. Kathy felt so bad for Eddy she gave her some chard from the garden, after which Eddy waddled over to Patsy to quack at her about it.

Patsy is the duck who once spent the better part of a week sitting on a pine cone. Now Patsy has always seemed to like me best, but she is just not that bright. (Yes, yes, there’s probably a connection there. I’ve heard it.) So I really do not need to see Patsy in charge. Sybil would only be her toady, but this is the duck that always stands around squawking at everybody; even second in command is too much for her. I’m sure all the other ducks think Eddy’s a narc because she always leads them into the house when I round them up for bedtime, but that’s what I want. I want a nice, quiet, reasonably intelligent, calm, well-mannered duck in charge, not some pine-cone sitting duck who for all I know is out back reading Marx right now.

Could be my imagination, but these ducks seem to be getting bitchier as they get older.

Radish and watercress sandwiches

My grandmother taught me to eat radishes. Or, I should say, I learned the habit from her; I don’t think she had any grand plan to indoctrinate me. She served radishes and scallions with breakfast, accompanied by individual dishes of salt for dipping. My cousin and I, aged about five, theorized implausibly about why the salt improved the flavor of the radish. We could agree only that without salt, the radish tasted impossibly harsh; with it, like heaven. (I may not have been a typical five year old.)

Remembrance of produce past, part 2

My grandmother taught me to eat radishes. Or, I should say, I learned the habit from her; I don’t think she had any grand plan to indoctrinate me. She served radishes and scallions with breakfast, accompanied by individual dishes of salt for dipping. My cousin and I, aged about five, theorized implausibly about why the salt improved the flavor of the radish. We could agree only that without salt, the radish tasted impossibly harsh; with it, like heaven. (I may not have been a typical five year old.)

I have met few people since — all right, no one — who can match my love of radishes. It stems probably from the combination of a country upbringing and an addictive streak that demands excitement and strong flavors. To eat them for breakfast, as I still sometimes do, strikes me as so impossibly old-fashioned that it isn’t even country anymore but rather a bizarre twenty-first century transplant from the German-speaking rural Pennsylvania of 1925.

Saturday I bought the season’s first radishes at the market along with a bunch of watercress, another treat the Pennsylvania Dutch side of my family enjoyed in springs long past. Lacking any direct experience with that tradition, I made this sandwich for lunch, and lacking any desperately pressing work, I did the very German thing and drank a dark beer with my radishes. After all, I needed something to toast my ancestors.

Radish and watercress sandwich

  • 2 slices chewy, hearty whole-grain bread, preferably homemade
  • 1 tablespoon butter, softened
  • 2–3 large radishes, sliced thinly
  • several sprigs watercress
  • salt

Butter the bread. Cover one slice of bread with half the radish slices and sprinkle with salt. Add the remaining radishes and sprinke with salt again. Top with the watercress and the second slice of buttered bread. Serve with a bock or porter.

Remembrance of produce past

When I was young my mother tended a small garden. I’ve forgotten most of what she grew. I assume there were tomatoes (why have a garden if you’re not going to grow tomatoes?). Probably zucchini. My father would have insisted on parsley. There were peas, which I remember because when I was about five years old we ate them for dinner on the Saturday before Easter when the temperature reached ninety-three degrees. (Why we remember certain things from our childhood and not others is a subject for another posting, but suffice to say that nearly all of my most vivid memories from before the age of seven involve food. I can always tell you what we had for dinner the night of any major event.)

What I remember most from that garden are beets. In the early spring, when they were young and tender, we ate beet greens with butter and salt; later in the season my mother pickled them. By the time I was nine or ten she no longer gardened, and I was an adult before I tasted beet greens or home pickled beets again. You can’t buy baby beets with their greens still tender in a supermarket, and store-bought pickles never stack up.

We didn’t plant beets this year — an oversight — but this morning I bought a bunch of baby beets at the farmers market. For dinner I steamed them with their greens If my mother had been here she would have enjoyed them, but I had to enjoy them for the both of us. I offer the recipe (such as it is) in case you are lucky enough to have them available.

Baby beets steamed with their greens

For this recipe, the beets should be no bigger around than a penny and the greens young, tender, and bright green. They should come as whole plants, pulled from the ground, bunched for sale.

  1. Thoroughly wash the beets and greens. Trim the long roots and cut the beets from the stems, discarding the tough part where stem meets root. If necessary, cut the beets into small pieces (no larger than 1/4 inch). Chop the stems and set aside with the beets. Chop the greens and set aside in a second pile.
  2. Place the chopped beets and stems in a pot and barely cover with water. Add a half teaspoon of salt per bunch. Bring to a boil and cook until tender (about five minutes). Then add the greens, return to a boil, and cook another two to three minutes until they too are tender. (It may take longer to cook the greens, but if it takes longer than five minutes, they were probably too old.)
  3. Most of the water should have boiled off, but if some remains, drain the beets and greens. Add a tablespoon of butter and a few squeezes of fresh lemon juice per bunch. Taste for salt and serve hot.

But all the cool kids are doing it

I read today in the New York Times Magazine that Alice Waters is on a new crusade to make school lunches in Berkeley organic and to have kids grow their own food in school gardens. A middle school garden she created has an outdoor wood-fired pizza oven in it, so the kids can bake pizzas from the produce they grow. Taste, she argues, and not health concerns, is what drives kids’ decisions and will make them support local and organic produce. That’s in contrast, I’d note, with adults, who buy organic food — if they do — overwhelmingly out of concern for personal health.

Now I’m all for giving kids something decent to eat at school, although I wonder how many parents would be willing to cough up five dollars a day for an organic lunch program. And while I’m all for school gardens in principle, I’m not sure that this is a case where change will start with the young. Nearly everyone I know who grows their own food or is a dedicated farmers’ market shopper either grew up in suburbia with no exposure whatsoever to this sort of thing, or else grew up on a farm. They’re either doing what their parents did or reacting strongly against what their parents did. I can’t think of any serious moral or cultural decision that anyone I know has made because their teachers told them to.

Eddy the duck

Raising ducks: The second year


Eddy the duck
Eddy, still the smartest and best-looking of the bunch.

As spring and the close of our second year with ducks approaches, I should offer an update on our experiences. I apologize for its somewhat random nature, but that’s life with poultry. Or with anything else, really. Covered here are molting, a hawk attack, duck first aid, and a new house.