Bredbo Valley View farm - providing quality education in Permaculture and sustainable living practices.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A clutch of ducklings


Sometimes there are jobs on the farm that you just have to leave to the kids. Yesterday one of the ducks decided to hatch out her clutch of eggs – not that she really had any choice. The problem we have at the moment is that with so many ducks, geese and turkeys the little ducklings can get stomped into the ground. So we have a farm policy to take the ducklings away from mum until they are big enough to look after themselves.

Getting the ducklings away from mum is definitely a kid’s job. The mums, as you can imagine, aren’t that impressed at first. And I’m not getting into a caged area with a rampant mother duck! That’s what kids are for (I still think we should have had more – it might handy to have a couple of spares!) – right?

The Cook will see that and I’ll get another “I’m not a brood mare” lecture.

I sent a letter/email to Maj Gen Jeffery, the previous Governor General, yesterday asking him to support the NSF movement in securing funds from the Governments Stimulus package. We need everybody we can to get he government to take seriously the benefits of such methods – if you want to email him send it too Maj Gen Jeffery through his PA - wendy.button@pmc.gov.au

We have a problem with getting native trees established on our farm. This is pretty evident from the fact that we have very few native species growing anywhere except the hill tops. Our creek lines and river bank are full of Poplars and Willows however. We had applied to the NSW National Parks for some funding to fence our gully from the cattle and use pioneer plants to establish better growing conditions for natives and help control soil erosion. But, it would appear that this isn’t going to happen.

1 comment:

Jaaam said...

Good ploy, teaching your children the skills of staring down a mother duck. You should label that as negotiating skill 101. Or as they seek professional help for their childhood traumas all they will be able to say is "The horror, the horror of it all"
As for the cook being a brood mare, well I would like to go there but as I have made unappreciated statements prior I feel I will leave sleeping dog lie