Dad, Andy, and Craig worked on building the duck house all day today. They got the base finished, and I started priming it while they worked on framing the walls.

I ran out of primer, and they ran out of 2x4s. Dad and Andy went off to the store, and Mom and I decided to whip up some jam. Too bad the propane ran out right before the fruit began to boil. Bummer. We weren’t able to get the tanks off, so we had to put things on hold and wait for the guys to get back and use their muscles of steel to unhook the tanks. They ran down to J&Js for a fill up, and we finally got to make jam. It’s YUMMY. Would be better without the seeds, but still yummy.

We made 8 pints of jam, and used up most of the berries we picked on Saturday. Time to pick more! I’d like to try and make a pie tomorrow, so not only will I need more berries but ‘ll also need to figure out how to strain most of the seeds out. It’s all a learning experience.

A couple of days ago, we started herding the ducks back and forth between their daytime pen and their brooder (which is getting very small for them!). It took two people to keep the ducks moving in the correct direction because they are easily distracted by things like bugs, grass, puffs of wind. Here’s a picture of me trying to coax the ducks up the hill by wiggle their food bowl at them.

Tonight, for the first time, we opened the door, I wiggled the food and called to the ducks, and they came running. They followed me all the way up the hill with no detours! One got a bit lost and wouldn’t head up the ramp back into their bed. She was so confused and sad, but finally I got hold of her and put her with sisters.

My parents and brother are here for the long weekend, and we thought we’d teach them a few of the ways of the Loafkeepers. My dad decided he wanted to learn to mow, so Andy took him down to the flat part of the lawn and gave him a few quick lessons. Dad said he’d stick with a lawnmower and weedeater.

While Dad and Andy were mowing, Mom and I wandered around and looked at plants. Raspberry plants. Dad passed the scythe over to Andy, and the next thing you know we had filled up Mom’s hands with berries. We send Dad up to the house for a container, and after a while we wandered down the road to a bigger patch of berries. The only problem…the patch was behind a lot of rather tall grass and weeds. I twisted Andy’s arm, and he mowed a path around the berry patch. But he couldn’t stop there and hacked away to make paths for us to get to more berries.

We picked and picked, and I went back up to the house for another container. Dad and I finished off the patch, and Andy went searching for more patches. He came back over to where Dad and I were. I asked him if he found any berries.

He said, “You know the taco bell dog?”

“Yeah.”

“What is he always saying?”

“Umm…yo quero taco bell?”

“I think I need a bigger box.”

Andy found a ton more berries, and we quickly filled up the second container.

The bushes are all loaded with unripe berries. We could probably pick a couple of buckets every day for a long time. What will we do with all these berries? Perhaps we need a freezer.

At least one of our ducklings has started to quack! It’s not a well-defined quack…more like a baby-talk quack…but it was quacking nonetheless!

The ducks are now nine days old. In celebration of this occasion, they got to go outside and play. They have outgrown their mailing box, but luckily we still have moving boxes. Not only are the ducks bigger, but they are smarter and faster and more difficult to catch to put in the box to take outside. The first duckling in the box and the last one left outside the box both peep extremely sadly…confused and frightened at suddenly being all alone. Once they are reunited with their sisters, they stop the sad peeping instantly. Andy decided to start picking up the ducks more often to try and get them more used to being handled.

Since ducks don’t eat birthday cake, I decided to give them just a cake pan.

Yes..that is a cake pan we regularly use. If you visit us and have cake or brownies, you may very well be eating something cooked in a pan that ducklings played in. At one point, two of the girls were practicing their Olympic synchronized swimming routine.

When the ducklings were done with their birthday swim, they hopped out of the pan and wiggled and shook like dogs to get some of the water off. They wiggled their little tails and flapped their little wings and shimmied and jigged. Then back into their brooder for a nap.

We were out all morning/afternoon running our weekly errands and buying a tire. (Thanks L. & D. for the anniversary money! It’s quite a nice tire.) When we got home, I dashed up the hill to check on the Crumbs while Andy put away groceries. It was over 95F! Aie! The ducks didn’t seem to care, truly, but with the heat and the smell (ducks poop, you know) I thought it was an appropriate time to air out the garage, clean the brooder, and let the girls have some time in the yard.

We loaded the ducklings back into the box they arrived in for the journey down the hill to the duck tractor. Look at how they’ve grown in just a few days!

Andy guarded them from hawks, vultures, owls, and rabid frogs while I cleaned out the brooder. PHhhhHhhHewie! The lawn hay sure does work well because I had no idea there was a lake of brown liquid at the bottom, and the ducklings probably didn’t either. Here’s a photo of Andy keeping guard.

We bought some grit today, too, and put it out for the girls to chomp. From what I’ve read, if ducks are eating commercial food they don’t really need grit (I guess it’s squishy?), but it’s good for them to have it.

While we were out today, we also stopped in at the Radford Farmer’s Market, which is nice but puny. We also visited the only yarn store I’ve found in the area. It’s not really a store; it’s a corner of the basement level of a store. What they have is nice, but they don’t have a lot, and unless I missed something, they don’t have many books. I guess yarn/knitting isn’t as big around here as back in AA.

No pictures today, alas. The battery died on my camera, and I’m not sure where the charger is. I did want to point out (in case you missed it) the groovy, homemade lawn hay the ducklings are toddling about on. For reference you can view yesterday’s photos.

Baby ducks _love_ lawn hay bedding. It has lots of knobby seed heads to chomp at. Some of the seeds float about on their stems like little flying bugs. It’s good hunting practice for the girls, who I think I may call “The Crumbs” for now. The lawn hay also has a nice bounce to protect delicate duckling knees when running and is flexible at roosting time, flowing around the birds like a bean bag around a human butt. Finally, lawn hay has gaps for things to fall through. Things like food pellets that are for some reason not acceptable to the selective duckling pallet(te?). Things like droplets of water shoveled out of the tray by dark brown bills. Things like duck poop.

Yes, duck poop.

Ducks poop. Everybody poops. (Really! I read it in a book!!)

It’s easy to tell when kitties are going to poop because they (hopefully) go to the kitty box. It’s also easy to tell when bunnies are going to poop because they are _always_ pooping. So, it makes sense that it is also easy to tell when a duckling is going to poop. She stretches out her little body, head going in one direction and tail in the other. (It looks like she’s squatting over an imaginary potty.) Once in position, she wiggles a little bit and–SPLAT–with the sound of a wet fart a sixth-grade boy would be proud of….the duckling poops.

(Okay, so maybe the duck poop doesn’t really fall through the lawn hay. It’s more like the poop settles into the nooks and crannies of the hay. I needed a lead in to talk about duckling poop, and I really wanted to talk about lawn hay, and I like transitions and working topics all in together, so I took some literary license. Or mabye that was a parking decal. I’m not sure.)