I was too exhausted physically and mentally to write my weekly blog post on Thursday this week. Ramifications of covid-19 on our guiding business and crop failure in the garden due to weather and previously unknown pest pressure (cold temperatures, flea beetles, moth caterpillars…oh my!) wore me down. While I truly have much to be grateful for (and I do know this), the cup filling up with “things going wrong” overflowed this week and I needed some extra time to regain perspective.

Today is the first day of summer. It is overcast and drizzling. My husband and I took this weekend off from business related stress and worrying about our financial future. I personally took Saturday off from worrying about all the problems in the main garden. Instead I planted all my neglected annual flower starts into the perennial garden. It was the least priority project on the list so a perfect one to tackle on summer solstice, our 16th wedding anniversary, and a day off from necessary projects. Tim and I worked on different yard projects, visited with some friends around a campfire, and focused on being positive. The problems are all still there but we can work on them on Monday.

Usually I work in the perennial garden when the kids are swimming in the lake so I am nearby and can keep an eye out. With the cold and damp weather this year, there has been very little swimming going on and this garden has been terribly neglected.

Summer Solstice marks the beginning of the loss of our daily light. Already we are sliding towards the darkness of winter. In a season where we have barely experienced any warm weather at all, it is hard to even contemplate the upcoming winter. There is so much to do between now and then. But all I really can do is focus on one task at a time: seed succession plantings in soil blocks, plant the next plantings of lettuce, hunt for more caterpillars, weed the gardens, trim the raspberries, prep the cover crop beds…opps, I am doing it again, too many chores is overwhelming. Focus on one task at a time!

The native roses are in full bloom and I harvested a few handfuls of petals to dry for winter use while I was pumping water the other day.

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The horses are in a neighbor’s unused field this week gobbling up delicious grass by the mouthful. During an early morning check on them last Friday, wood frogs hopped away from my boots tromping through the field and I startled a snipe in the tall grass. This time of year you are surrounded by birdsong every time you step out of doors. It is glorious!

The six ducklings are two weeks old today and have grown rapidly in both body size and mess making capability. A 1020 tray has helped contain the enthusiastic water play but they still need a change of bedding every day.

The four tunnels are finally all planted though I am still working on securing them. I need to improve my knot skills!

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And best of all, this years owlets (there are two) have finally joined me in the garden. They are not as friendly as last years batch so I can not get very close without distressing them. But I enjoy their curious company and screechy voices.

I know that we can overcome any of the challenges that we have facing us right now. It would be great if they could maybe line up and present themselves one at a time instead of clamoring for attention all at once. This year is something else. Phew!

Another Friday blog post… this is getting to be a bad habit! It has been a busy week here at Wood Frog Farm. We have had a large amount of rain, cold nights and several brilliantly sunny days that end with storm cells racing across the mountains, whipping up winds and splattering rain before turning hot and sunny again between the squalls.

On Saturday our duck eggs in the incubator started pipping. I have never incubated eggs at home before. Now that we have six solar panels installed, which are keeping our battery bank topped off, we have an excess of power during the summer and running an incubator consistently is of no concern. When we were previously running a generator to charge our batteries, the system would frequently shut down which is not a good thing for hatching eggs. Our eggs from Corbin Creek Farm in Valdez were brought up to us by a mutual friend and we put the eggs in the incubator on Mother’s Day, May 10th. On May 18th, we candled the eggs for the first time and all seven showed signs of fertilization and growth though one was a bit off. We candled again on the 25th and six were developing on schedule (we pulled out the bad egg.)

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On June 7th, four hatched throughout the day. Sunday chores were frequently interrupted when another egg started “zipping” and we gathered around to watch the duckling emerge. It is a laborious process.

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One egg pipped in the small end of the shell which often means they do not have the room to turn and crack the egg shell in half (otherwise known as zipping though my daughter thought it should be “unzipping”) By Sunday night we knew that the two remaining ducklings were nearing exhaustion. After over 40 hours, there was no progress beyond the external pipping. Both their beaks stayed in the hole instead of inside the egg and they progressively grew weaker. It is very important to not assist hatching birds. There are two membranes inside the shell and the inner membrane is full of blood vessels. Part of the long hatching process is absorption of the blood in the vessels and the remaining yolk by the duckling. If you break that membrane, the duckling will bleed to death. We knew the ducklings would likely die overnight after struggling for two days to hatch and after more than 40 hours we hoped the membranes had done their thing. I found this article to be a fantastic guide to successfully assisting a difficult hatch. Tim assisted the duckling that had pipped in the narrow end of the shell by creating an artificial zip and the duckling hatched out and recovered quickly. I started to assist the 6th duckling and removed much of the hard shell. The outer membrane had completely dried but the inner membrane still contained blood vessels. The duckling was trapped in the rubbery membrane but was not able to hatch yet. We carefully cut slits in the outer membrane and put the duckling back in the incubator for the night hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Monday morning, the duckling was weak but had absorbed the remaining yoke and wiggled out of the membrane. A few hours later, you could not even tell there had been a difficult hatching.

And so, 6 bundles of cuteness are living in our house with us. They have already graduated from the standard tote to the 200 gallon stock tank. ‘Tis the season for ducklings. We saw our first wild ducklings with their Mama on the lake this week too.

In other homesteading news I processed our spring bear meat into burger and roasts this week.

Conner and I hauled two loads of peat from the roadside pit and mixed up enough peat, soil and compost to fill all our vegetable and flower pots.

I finished planting the greenhouse and all the pots on Sunday while waiting for the ducklings to hatch.

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I also planted and put up two cat tunnels in the garden for the squash plants with Conner’s help.

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We went on a family ride to move the horses to a new pasture.

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On our ride we were treated to a great view of Nelson Mountain (no relation).

I am still battling cutworms in the garden. Last year must have been a good one for the moths. I have been collecting them as I can and losing more plants every day. Such is the challenge of gardening…

The highlight of the week is definitely the new babies. I am so grateful to have these ducklings join us. Eve likes them too…

And as they are voracious slug eaters, or will be when they grow up, they will be quite useful with our new garden pest that migrated into our perennial garden two seasons ago. I am not very happy about the slug invasion. Ducklings are the answer!