Duck Tails

Yes, it is an easy pun, but yesterday, I spent some time around a duck tail and it wasn't fun. Two mornings ago, as I let the ducks from the barn loose on the world, I noticed one hen struggling. She was having trouble moving with her usual speed, so I pursued and got hold of her. Her belly was warm and distended. As I gently touched her stomach, I could feel two eggs, a sure sign she was eggbound. My previous research on this topic told me that I had to get her by herself, warm her muscles, insert some oil in her vent, and if possible, work the backed-up eggs out. Other research I'd consulted said the opposite, though, leave it alone and let nature and the duck work it out, literally.

The problem for duck wranglers like me is that so damned much of the info out there is of this nature-conflicted. On one hand, you should intervene. On the other, leave it alone. The answer so often is, it depends. While I'm as comfortable with ambiguity as the next person (not very), I aim in my writings to provide information that might help others doing what I do.
The amount of information, for instance, on raising chickens, hogs, sheep and cattle is relatively ripe for the picking. The information on ducks, I fear, is rarer.

If anyone reading this has particular questions about ducks or better, has a suggestion for how I might best distribute the info I've acquired and am acquiring, let me know. The paucity of information I've so far found online has almost always helped, even when that information is inconsistent because it provides me perspective and experiences I can weigh against my own as I decide how to move ahead.

When I let the girls out this morning, I'm going to hope that my eggbound girl has fewer eggs today, but I'm not confident. I wish all of farming were as romantic as it seems in the magazines, but it's not. Worrying over an eggbound duck, deciding how to proceed when you don't have a good clue . . .it's part of the work, just not a part I prefer.

Spring Mornings

One of my favorite novels of the last decade or so is Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. Here is a novel full of musky mountain ripeness, laugh aloud observations, and a sensuality that nearly stains your fingers as you turn the pages. I read the book the year it was published, and recall that it perfectly fit my springtime mood of feeling younger than I am, of sensing some liquid filling up in preparation to burst and bloom, and feeling love and connection to every beautiful thing. And in spring, I am convinced most everything is beautiful and so everything can be loved.

This season is for farmers the time of dreaming and seeing what others don't yet. It's a moment of sighing and letting go of the tightness built into our our bodies, a way of holding ourselves that we perfect sometime in mid-December as a protection against the winter cold, and early and late dark and the random sloppiness of the elements surrounding us. Now, in February, or maybe early-March, but as soon as we can, we release and open again to the life within the soil, the power of the golden sun, the miracle of the colors of green and brown and red that thrust upward awake and alive, and to the songs of the birds and the insects and the leaves forming on the trees and bushes as the movement of air sweeps and caresses and moves them softly and wildly.

Springtime, ah. I'm in love and you're beautiful. Aren't you now. Springtime is the promise that life is itself all the wonder we need. It's a promise we can fulfill. Plant something.