Farm Fresh: Ode to Ducks and Three Cheers for Parasitic Wasps

 Feeding time is a perfect time to pet the ducks.  I am becoming very partial to them.  They seem more low maintenance than chickens. No weird sicknesses. No roosts required. Everyone lays their eggs in the morning before they are let out. They don't cause much, if any, damage to the plants they can get to. They eat hornworms! and slugs. They are laying well. The muscovies brood and hatch with no help from me. And they are really taking over! 19 ducklings plus the five that we had over the winter.  Another farmer was telling me that being a different species of "duck" and not a true waterfowl, muscovies are much easier to pluck than regular ducks and very tasty... 

The muscovies are pretty friendly (for ducks) and let us pet them. The khakis are much more skittish.  Unfortunately, the end is nigh for the khakis since this is their 4th year and winter is coming. 

Some people are put off by the muscovies' caruncles.  I think they are often pretty. 

Sunny is being very patient letting brother M hold one of her newly hatched ducklings. 

These new-ish ducklings are already catching up to little call duck. 

Three of the guineas has some misadventures, but we have a nice little flock of 6. 

The high tunnel has been very problematic with aphids and we never completely eradicated the hornworms despite frequent searches.  Luckily, their predators are afoot and better at finding them than we are. Ha!  This one is so full of parasitic wasp eggs.  We are glad to live it be until they hatch. 

This worm looks like it is in the final stages of being eaten by the wasp larva.

This bad guy is doubly terrible.  Eating my poor kale AND we know from experience it stings like a hornet. They are supposed to be rare! Sometimes I wish that wildlife flourished a little less in my verdant garden.

Baby A's Life: Week 14

 He is such a cute little Chub-chub. And he is generally a very happy guy. Starting to get into the drooly phase. The kids think its hilarious when a big stream of baby drool falls on Daddy or I. 

And he received some lovely new duds from my Frenchies. They are 18 month size, but I think will fit him this Winter/Spring. He is wearing 6-9 month size clothes now and the French sizes seem to run a little smaller than ours. 

Keeping up with the action in the kitchen. 

Love how he is using his feet on the caterpillar!

He is a very snuggly baby and loves to fall asleep while someone is holding him. But he is 3 months now and it is time to start some consistent sleep routines. He can self sooth with his fist or fingers in his mouth. He also seems to like music even more than the other kids did as babies. I thought it was time to get him something else to help with his sleep cues in his crib.  Foxy plays soothing sounds and can velcro to the side of the crib. Worked like a charm for his mid-day nap. 

Family Schooling and Fun: Marine Reptiles Snorkeling

Another fun week of Marine Biology (plus all the usual educational pursuits-- guitar lessons, reading, math, and writing).  I realized this morning that everyone else is going "back-to-school" virtually starting tomorrow. WE DID IT! We did schooling very diligently all summer. We deserve a prize or something.  Swimming and pizza at our friends' pool has become a weekly thing.  It is a pretty fabulous prize. 

We saw a sale on snorkels and the swim lesson coach told me awhile ago that they are good for helping kids keep correct head/back position while swimming (face down eyes looking forward). 

The pool was a little cooler than last time (only 88F) and a storm was blowing past when we first arrived. Baby A protested and then got used to it. 

The diving board has been great practice for the kids to get comfortable with diving. It's not something they get to do much at swim lessons. 

Miss L decided their marine reptile should be "swimming" together. 

All this talk about crustaceans, bi-valves and arthropods made me so hungry for seafood.  We had shrimp with our salads Friday night. 

 

Family Schooling: Art and Marine Biology

 We finished off our unit of Meet the Masters this week with Pierre-Auguste Renoir. 

We used some nice quality water color crayons to create the project that went with this unit.  I loved the vivid colors that they made.  The instructions said to make the top landscape and fold it down on the water to make the reflection.  We did that once, but it did not work well and so just drew in the reflections on the others.

The kids loved this medium and followed up with many additional paintings. 

Then we shifted from art back to science.  We read through the botany curriculum together and felt like it was all too familiar for farm kids. Parts of a seed anyone? For example, this is brother M's avocado tree and he has a pomegranate (grown from seed also) that is on the front stoop. 

To Brother S's delight we decided to do the Marine Biology curriculum.  We did the first 3 units this week, including several fun experiments. 

We made a continental shelf, continental slope, and pelagic zone in which to test waves.  I did not have any sand, so we used local clay.  It worked for about 2 minutes and then the clay started absorbing the water and turned the whole thing into a mudpie. I am going to buy some sand for one of my landscaping projects so we may need to repeat this project. 

We used our shell collection for one of the sections about marine life's colors, shapes, and skeletons. 

We did an experiment with hot water and blue ice cubes to illustrate how ocean currents work.  This was my favorite one.  They really did move by themselves and make swirls. 

We did an experiment on buoyancy with regular water, salt water, and sugar water. 

And we did an experiment that illustrated the level of light entering the water at different zones. 

Farm Fresh: Figs, Anise Hyssop, Wind Chimes and Kitchen Towels

 The figs are starting to ripen. I learned a new pruning trick for them and pinched all the scaffold branches so that they would stop growing taller and focus on the fruit. It seems to be working. 

I had to prune back the squash and anise hyssop.  They were covering my perennial herb bed of sage and oregano. We took the opportunity to harvest the anise hyssop leaves and blossoms while we were at it. I dried them on low in the dehydrator (my screens are all full!) and ground them a little in the dry blender so that they would fit neatly.  They filled a one quart jar. I love how their natural sweetness makes a delicious tea all on their own. 

Miss Sunny finally succeeded in her quest to hatch ducklings.  That brings us up to 19 muscovy ducklings hatched this year with no help from me. 

I have been reading several interesting orcharding books recently.  One that I have loved is called: Grow a Little Fruit Tree.  She encourages us to avoid dwarf rootstock (she says they are less healthy) trees, prune mid-summer and winter, and keep trees low and manageable. Another British Gardener, Harry Dodson, described the use of weights to help fruit tree branches grow horizontally (vs. the spreaders that Americans tend to use). Horizontal branches (45 degree angle) are stronger and less likely to break.  They allow more sunlight into the tree and thus allow for more fruit to grow.  I liked the idea of weights for several reasons. One reason is that they can do double duty, acting as a weight and also a way to scare birds and squirrels away from the trees.  

All that in mind, for one of our art projects this week I assigned the kids to use upcycled materials from around the house to make wind chimes. Several of these are still in progress.  But here is a picture of the ones Big Sister A and Miss L made. Miss L's is made from painted oyster shells.  Big Sister A's is made from old keys and buttons. 

I also finally finished a functional craft project this week.  It evolved in response to two constant problems: 1. kids cannot discern between a rag and a nice hand/dishtowel.  It's impossible to teach them the difference and I am tired of buying nice dishtowels only to have them be pulled out and used for messy spills. And 2. it's been impossible to keep a nice hand/dish towel in place for more than a few hours (see point #1) or it just ends up on the floor and then is dirty etc.  I had to figure out a way to make a towel that used materials I already had on hand, looked decent, and could not be easily removed from the oven door.  I came up with this reversible design and made 4 of each. It's reversible because it can tie in the front (bow) or tie in the back like an apron.