What do wet ducklings, fluffy organic chickens and eggplant steaks have in common? Absolutely nothing.

Once upon a time it was raining outside. Everyone inside was reading books, studying, playing quietly, screaming loudly, making messes exuberantly, and cooking meals that didn't have rice or beans in them (miracle, I know!).

Turns out the now very plump ducklings love rain and puddles and everything water. They are ducks, after all. What I didn't expect is for the chickens to love the rain. But they do. And when they ruffle up their feathers to shed all the water droplets (think shaking like a dog, chicken style), I almost die of the cuteness.

That's not to say I haven't been craving some Rosti Pollos lately. These chickens are devouring my gardens at astonishing speeds. I am not sure what compelled them to it, but the chickens have been jumping (did you know they can jump?) over the cages into my gardens and eating everything in sight. Grilled chicken is sounding really good to me at the moment.

My lovely and only eggplant, that ended up as chicken food :-(

But alas, it cannot be! We are now cooking all vegetarian (not to be confused with vegan - we still enjoy our dairy products and free range eggs!) at home in an effort to save some money. Because here's the deal - if we are going to eat meat at home, it's going to be organic, grass fed, free range, etc. Basically, we are done living in blissful ignorance about our food and we want to know the farmer (if it's not us). Think Portlandia, obviously.

Ok, never mind.

Anyway, since the price of organic chicken is rather, well, pricey (because treating your animals right and feeding them well tends to be more humane and costly), and since we are trying to save our pennies right now, we cut the meat out of our home diet. I say our "home diet" because while we aren't eating out very much currently, we will eat meat if it is served in others homes or if they bring it into ours. But otherwise, eggplant is the new in season steak.

Speaking of eggplant, Eggplant Parmigiana with fresh tomato and basil marinara is on the menu for this evening, crying out to be prepared.

**Tune in next time to read all about how your children and your parenting are probably way better than mine in the coming post, "The Epic Bedtime Battles!"**

City yard, barn yard

Our city yard is both play yard and barn yard at the same time. This tends to startle all the neighbors that walk by the front and do hilarious double takes when they glance over and see chickens and ducks hanging out by the fence (much to our amusement - and theirs!). But walking by the back door and seeing a chicken up on the steps looking inside the house and pecking at the door is pretty normal to us by now. (And Lyla was having a dramatic moment, don't judge my pantless child).

What's not normal for us is dealing with life and death on a daily basis. Last week we lost six of our ducklings. We have theories of why six of them suddenly died, but no real explanation. We made some quick changes to their food and water and thankfully, the rest are doing well now, leaving us with a total of seventeen ducklings. Even though the plan is for them to end up on our dinner table anyway, it just doesn't feel quite the same when we are burying them as babies. It's just plain SAD.

Thankfully, there is always something to be excited about, even with the sadness of the ducklings passing. The first thing is that Lexi can't count past four, so after the first one died, she never knew about the other five. The second thing is that several of our chickens are now laying daily, giving us three eggs a day right now. Lexi is OBSESSED with checking the nest boxes all day long and lets out squeals and screams of delight whenever she retrieves one from the nest. 

Our chickens have also become much "friendlier" since they have reached maturity and we can catch and hold them fairly easily now. Lexi takes advantage of this daily, and makes sure to croon original songs and kiss them while burying her face in their soft feathers whenever possible. ;-)

Chicken before the Egg

Eggs! We finally have our own eggs!

Months of waiting paid off today when we stumbled upon a hidden nest of lovely brown chicken eggs in an incredibly hidden and hard to reach area of our yard. We were rescuing ducklings (again) from our neighbor's yard and found seven eggs in a pile back by where a bunch of ferns grow in between our house and our neighbor's fence. Eric has been suspecting for some time that they might try and lay there, but we have been neglecting to go on regular egg hunts.

After a tedious time of herding the rather brainless ducklings back into the coop (where they will remain locked up for the next few days while we come up with a better solution of keeping them from escaping from all the cracks in the fencing), I climbed back into the fern area and gathered all the eggs in the bottom of my shirt and brought them inside.

I did a float test to make sure all the eggs are still fresh and good to eat (Lyla did the lick test for me, as you can see), and then scoured the yard for other possible nests. I didn't find any, but will be on the look out. For now, I closed off the area to the back where they had laid the eggs and put some false eggs in the nest boxes inside the coop to help trick them into laying there instead. Luckily we had some Christmas ornaments in the attic that ended up looking pretty great with a light brown paint job. ;-)

It should be noted that when we rescued the ducklings the first time this morning I was unable to get them all back into the coop and had to leave the door open. Confident that I had closed off the area pretty well where they were escaping from, I proceeded to go about my day. Little did I know that I would have to herd them back into the yard FOUR MORE TIMES later in the day before I was finally able to get them all back into the coop without getting brutally attacked by the mother ducks. And good golly, are they vicious Moms or what?! There were ducklings EVERYWHERE. In the front yard, under the front porch, in the alley, in the neighbor's yard, behind the rain barrel, etc. Neighbors continued to ring my doorbell just to inform me of the antics of my ill behaved ducklings.

I finally, FINALLY got them all in the coop. Unfortunately, a chicken was in there as well, who I couldn't get OUT of the coop. Note that all this time I am also trying to parent two wild children who are climbing to scary heights on stacked lawn chairs and drinking dirty water out of the duck pool while Sami the dog is running around crazy trying to bite chickens. No joke. So the chicken in the coop won. I gave up, shut the door, and left them in the coop all afternoon while I did life and tried my best to keep us all alive. Apparently I failed a little since when I returned to check on them earlier this evening, we had a duckling fatality, most likely due to the chicken. Lexi happened to be with me when we discovered the duckling had, very noticeably, died. She has horrified, as was I, and we had a brief talk about life while I ushered her back into the house and made a teary call to Eric, who by the way, is out on business all week (of course).

In conclusion, I DID finally get the chicken out of there. I also took care of the duckling that had died and put up the partition in the coop, along with adequate provisions, which will keep the ducks safely in the coop for the next few days, and away from faulty fences and mean chickens.

To celebrate that I survived (and not without my sister's help with the kids this evening), I cooked up the most delicious free range scrambled eggs for dinner (after the kids were in bed of course), with sauteed garden tomatoes covered in fresh herbs on the side, a slice of fresh whole grain bread topped with cheddar made with raw milk, and a glass of cold, fizzy, home brewed Kombucha to fill out the meal.

To eggs, to chickens, to the survivors. 

To life. 

Swimming Lessons...duckling style

In the Business of Saving Ducklings

We wake up early every morning just to prepare and eat breakfast together as a family before Eric leaves for work. This morning is no exception. Eric is doing morning chores with the animals while I flip pancakes on the stove and receive tight leg hugs from the two girls.

Breakfast is ready. "Beth, look! I let the mamas take the ducklings out today!," Eric calls. I look out the window. The ducklings crowd together on the sidewalk in the backyard, mamas herding them on both sides. I run for my camera squealing something way too high pitched about them being so adorable I have to take pictures. No sooner had I snapped a few shots when it begins to rain. And not just your drizzly one drip here one drop there kind of rain. This is an all out downpour.

I run into the house. The ducks are racing with their ducklings back to the shelter of the coop. The four of us stand at the back door for a minute, watching the empty spaces between ground and sky fill with rain that falls hard and fast. "I'm going to make sure the ducklings made it back into the coop ok," Eric says. He runs outside.

A moment later I hear him call frantic. I tell the girls to stay inside and keep the screen door closed. Lexi is angry, but I rush out anyway. "Take care of your sister!" I call as I run into the rain, barefoot in my running clothes.

I am soaked to the skin in thirty seconds. Eric is at the back of the coop, behind the pile of scrap wood that is haphazardly stacked there between the coop and the back of the garage. "I need your help! Take these and get them into the coop, then come back for more!" He shoves two peeping, soaking wet ducklings into my hands. They weigh less than a slice of my whole wheat bread. They are wet and scared. I sprint with them to the door of the coop and set them down inside the entrance, where they run to their mamas and the rest of their brothers and sisters for warmth.

The rain continues to pour. Eric keeps handing me ducklings. In the commotion of the sudden rain and a mad dash of chickens to the coop, the babies were separated from their mom and lost their way. A duckling escapes Eric's grasp, running on it's webbed feet to the side of the coop that edges our neighbors yard. Eric chases it towards the front and we catch it, huddled under the edge of our overflowing rain barrel. Back at the scrap pile we hear distressed peeping. "There is one buried!" I yell. "We have to find it!" I am almost crying. We have to find it! We lift up the scraps of wood, trying our best not to let anything fall and potentially crush the duckling underneath. Layer after layer until finally, it hops free and runs, not into Eric's outstretched hands, but through the chain link fence and into our neighbor's yard!

I am frantic. It's barely 7 o'clock. It's storming like crazy, and this duckling is going to die if we can't save it within minutes. Eric runs around the front of the house into the neighbor's yard. The duckling runs into the hardest place imaginable to catch it - the space between the fence and the garage. I climb over the scrap wood barefoot, in the rain, and scale the fence, dropping into the mud below. I find the duckling under a hasta plant, but it runs away from me, heading towards the next neighbor's yard. Eric, at this point, has come back into our yard and now has to jump over the rain barrel (that is heavily overflowing and spilling water everywhere), hop the fence again and try to catch it before it is lost forever.

The duckling races along the side of the neighbor's house that is furthest from us, Eric is close on it's fuzzy little tail and fast little legs. He finally catches it cornered next to a flower pot and the front steps in the neighbor's front yard. He hands the rogue bird to me and I race it back to the coop, where the mamas promptly come at me angrily as I hand back their missing baby.  We set a heat lamp on them in the next few minutes and they all huddle beneath it for warmth. The rain is settling. All 24 are safe.

I remember my own babies waiting for me inside.
I run into the house, dripping cold rain everywhere, hoping that Lexi heeded my instructions.
My daughters are in the kitchen, happily munching on grapes that Lexi got from the fridge. "Mom, I got Lyla and me a snack!" she says proudly. And she is not the only one who is so proud.

We are finally dry and munching pancakes when I look at my happy three-year-old and say, "Thank you, Lexi, for doing such a good job of taking care of your sister while Daddy and I were outside saving ducklings!"
Eric laughs. "Who even says that?!"
Even so, this is our normal.
Saved more than ten ducklings from imminent death before 7 AM. Check.

Duck...duck...duck..........Chicken!

I have had ducklings on my property for four days and still had not held one, petted one, or been anywhere within two feet of one. Thank goodness for long camera lenses, right? Our two mamas, Oreo and Cookies&Cream and extremely good at team parenting. They have decided to co-parent all the ducklings together, which is actually very common for Muscovy ducks. This is all well and good for the ducklings, but terrible for us when it comes to wanting to hold one. Instead of fighting off one Mama to borrow her baby for a bit, we have to fight off two. With the instincts of a Mama Bear. 

Now you know why I still hadn't held one.

Thankfully, my sisters came to visit. Convincing Eric to ward off the crazy Mamas turned out to be extremely easy with seven pairs of female puppy eyes and whiny voices added to the mix. Eric bravely crawled into the coop, held the ladies back with a big tree branch, snatched up the closest duckling in sight, and took off, closing the coop door behind him, with the Mamas bawlking, hissing and running to attack his heels. We are forever indebted.

And, we got our wish.

Lyla can now point and say "Duck!", adding one more word to her teeny tiny vocabulary of about, oh, four words. ;-)

 Finally, it was my turn! I tossed Eric the camera and cradled the fuzzy duckling in my hands. It was so warm and started to settle in, closing its eyes as I stroked its head. It felt like it was humming. Perhaps a ducklings version of a kitten's purr.

Mama moment. "My turn" holding the duckling actually means I'm just holding it for my kids to crowd around and pet. 

 This is what happens when an (almost) 16-month-old gets her hands free....

Thankfully the duckling was spared, no harm done.  

I can't get enough of this cuteness. It's a good thing we don't eat ducklings. 

Speaking of eating, I am no longer giving Lexi naming rights to the animals. When she began calling the ducklings, "Chips," "Salsa," "Peanut-butter," and "Coconut oil," I drew the line. We are NOT naming these ducklings. Unless of course, it's something appropriate, such as "Thanksgiving entree," or "Christmas a la duck."

Getting so big already at four days old!

And lest we not forget our other feathered friends...

Abby sporting "Chubby Buff", one of my favorite Buff Orpingtons, due to her mass amounts of fluffy feathers

...CHICKEN!