The story of a duck named Stella (Artois)

Ducks are an interesting pet to have, we know. Fact of the matter is, they are actually really great pets. We got Stella in June 2010, from efowl.com, she was 24 hours old when we opened the box. We had seen some chicks in a feed store in Half Moon Bay the month before, and my boyfriend, Daryl, wanted to impulsively buy random chickens. I began to tell him what we would need to raise and keep fowl in an urban setting. He did not let it go.

So Daryl started to look into different types of urban fowl, and came across the Indian Runner Duck. Native of the Island of Java, they are flightless, great foragers for your garden pests (bugs), excellent producers of poop (a key soil component, natural fertilizer, high in phosphorous) and one of the highest producers of (free range) eggs in the duck world, over 200 eggs/year. These 3 beneficial qualities led me to give in to his pleas.

We ordered 2 ducks and named them Stella (my duck) and Confit (the BF's duck). This is a somewhat of a sad beginning, as you can see we only have Stella (our duck) now. We lost Confit at 2 weeks of age.

Stella and Confit in their brooder

Stella, 24 hours old

My girls

You can buy anything online, including duck diapers

We brooded them (and then just Stella) for a month inside. After a month we built a duck house for her and she has lived free range in our garden ever since. We lock her in her duck house at dusk every night and let her out at dawn every morning, this is crucial, unless you feel like feeding the raccoons. Raccoons have been knows to burrow up to a foot to get into fowl enclosures. It's important to build an impermeable barrier (with a very strong, very high lock) between wildlife and your domesticated fowl.

My Modern Art

Lets face it, I fell in love. With a duck? Well, she fell in love with me too. Ducks have extremely strong bonding mechanisms when they are very young, called imprinting. Usually ducks imprint on their mother, a duck. They tent to imprint on the individual who feeds, waters, and handles them, but most importantly, the individual they can physically see. We brooded Stella in my side of the couch in a big tub. They could not see Daryl, just me.

The result of this? She follows me like a shadow, talks to me, hugs me, loves me. I love, am loved by and have bonded... with a duck.

She still loves Daryl, but if she has a choice, usually she follows me. She's a nice girl. People are always worried about petting her, because they are worried she will peck. I just laugh.

On cold days, she gets a warm bath, one special duck

Her friend, and frequent visitor, free range chicken, Lucy

Stella's 2nd egg in a row after her last molt

This morning, sorry about the broom in the background

This mornings present

Perfect timing, a free range Stella duck egg omelette for Sunday breakfast

The poor radishes - Week 6

Ok, so maybe I spoke too soon. This has been a really rainy year, and the storm on Thursday literally uprooted my radishes and exposed the tops. AND THEN STELLA SAW THEM! and she had lunch.

I had placed all my seeds on elevated rows of dirt, with water escaping canals between all of them. Unfortunately the rain was so hard this last storm, that the mounds eroded into the canals, and made it all flat so everything flooded. Fortunately if did not kill them, but there were a few casualties.

Radishes on Thursday

By Friday, they had drained, and I was alble to mound dirt around their bulbs, and this is what it looks like now, not too bad. Stella apparently only found the row on the left.

ALSO, something to note in the picture, is I did a Neem oil pest test on the row farthest to the right, I am testing to see if they get eaten less without it effecting the plant, I will post those results later.

Rehab'd radishes on Friday after the rough storm

Elephant Garlic that I stated from one clove

Starting indoors

Brandywine Tomatoes after 5 weeks inside (rear center)

Midget Melon - week 2

Watermelon - Week 2

Mini green-house & larger tubs in the sun window

Arugula micro-greens - harvest @ 3 weeks

One hairy tomato plant

White squall

I woke up to this

Surviving the storm - Week 5

Its been rough, raining, pouring, and well, lets face it, the old man is snoring. I was really worried about losing a lot of the direct seedlings with such heavy rain so early in the season. Although some have washed away, and some were literally pound into the ground, the rest have survived and are thriving, which is great so early in the season. These pictures were taken today, which means that we have finally caught up.

Broccoli from last season going to seed

Broccoli, that came out more like broccolinni

Here is some fennel that I just transplanted to the ground from a pot that I started in October. It finally took off, I had it in the wrong soil this whole time. It has doubled in size every week for 4 weeks.

Fennel

 Chard in the foreground, re-seeded from last year

Radishes are in!

 Radishes, Onions, and Sweet Peas

Arugula & Lettuce (at top)

Coming along - Week 3

Arugula update(bottom of pic), Lettuce (top of pic)

Lettuce

 

Direct Seed Radishes w/ Onions and Peas @ top

Welcome to the farm - Week 1

After we prepped the front beds, with the exception of the broccoli patch.

Beds Prepped

Germinating organic Brandywine heirloom tomatoes (at night)

Germinating arugula- day 3

Germinating arugula- day 6

It's spring time...

...and I have been wanting to do this for a while. I wanted to try to document the growth my little urban farm, and try to not only remember what I did last year, but hopefully share my experiences with others, so we all can have better urban farming success.

A little about me...I love to garden, farm, produce, whatever you want to call it. I was the dirty kid. The tomboy(ish). I was always outside when I was a kid, always asking questions. My parents took my older brother and I camping, a lot. We loved it. We recycled, and were members of the Sierra Club. The one thing I always wanted, and never had, was a vegetable garden. Not enough light, steep slopes, rocks, sand, it just never worked.

My brother and I started going to a leave-no-trace backpacking camp all summer, every summer until college, Camp Jack Hazard. It changed our lives. We learned vital lessons about nature and the importance of leaving no trace.

I took my love for the environment to college where I ended up majoring in Environmental Studies, and Geography. I got a little house with a garden my sophomore year, and started experimenting with growing my first garden. I got a job at the on campus environmental resource center and worked under the Environmental Department chair, who I looked up to, and learned a lot from. His garden inspired me.

After college, I ended up not going into anything environmental, largely due to the shitty economy, but found a job I still truly love. One thing it lacks though, is the connection to the soil, the earth, the outside, and the environment.

I spend all the spare time that I have, in the garden, or thinking about plans for the garden. I like to call it our urban farm. I live in a cottage with my boyfriend who definitely helps me with everything in the garden, and mostly, Stella, our precious blue Indian Runner Duck. We use Stella's poop, vermicompost (worm poop) and compost as fertilizer in the garden.

Stella

We try to keep everything as organic and sustainable as possible. This year we replaced about 80% of the soil in our 'raised beds' with organic vegetable garden soil and compost. We bought all of our seeds from the Petaluma Seed Bank. They sell organic heirloom seeds from the oldest seed company in America, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. Also, check out the Petaluma Seed Bank on facebook, they have a lot of interesting information.
 

Petaluma Seed Bank

Oldest seed company in the US

Neem Oil

We use neem oil as a pesticide, a naturally occurring deterrent of pests, mostly because it smells god awful. I heard about this stuff in one of my sustainability classes in college, and always remembered its name. It not only has the ability to repel most living creatures, but Indians call it the 'Pharmacy Tree', because it cures lots of medical conditions as well, from eczema to malaria. Works great on my plants, that's all I know. Just make sure you get the one that is specifically designed to be put on your plants, some neem products can burn them, as I have found out the hard way. I order my organic neem products from Amazon because they are pretty hard to find.