What Became of the Duck Egg?

Audrey candled the duck egg she found in the hay field.  Candling is a time-honored method of determining whether or not your eggs are viable--you stand in a dark room and shine a bright light through the egg, to try and see what's going on inside.  The first time Audrey candled the egg, she was thrilled.  As you might remember, this little egg had a rough start.  But the contents of the egg looked just like the photos said a growing baby duck was supposed to look when viewed through a thick calcium shell.

A week or so later, however, discouragement reigned.  The veins we saw the first time had turned into dark blobs; the air pocket was getting bigger.

But Audrey knew she was no expert on candling or on the hatching of duck eggs, so she left the egg in the incubator.  Then, one night at supper, she thought she heard a squeaky little peep.

That's enough to make an animal lover freeze her fork in mid-air and listen again.  She DID hear a squeaky little peep.  Since she had read that ducklings have serious issues if they are raised alone, she peeped back at it.

"But not very much," she told me.  "I would have peeped more but I kept cracking myself up, squeaking encouragement to a duck egg."

Maybe it was a good thing Audrey peeped, since it appears that it is a lot of work to pry oneself out of an egg.

One wing out.

(Thank you Erica, for these great photos!)

Whew!  The whole process took about three hours of stretch and struggle.

Like I mentioned earlier, Audrey read that ducklings don't like to be alone.  This little guy sure didn't.  As soon as he had rested a bit and gained some strength, he peeped and jumped and flopped around his box almost constantly. He calmed down only if Audrey picked him up and held him.

But Audrey has a few other things going on this summer, and can't really be full-time Duck Mama.  She made some phone calls and located a man raising ducks not too far from here.  He has lent Audrey a duckling friend for the summer.

Now Buford and Abernathy--those are their names--live happily in a box on my kitchen floor.  Buford, Audrey's original duckling, hatched on Wednesday of last week.  Abernathy popped out on Friday.

Until they grow up a little, they'll live safely indoors. But when it rains, they get to go outside and play in mud puddles,

Abernathy (left) at 1 day old; Buford at 3 days.  Photo by Audrey.

and splash around with their outlandishly oversized feet.

I just heard Merrill say she's trying to potty train Abernathy, and that it isn't going very well.  Isn't that odd? Stay tuned.........

New Baby Chicks

and some grown up.

The Most Fun Wedding

In May, we had the privilege of hosting the most fun wedding ever.  (And I'm not biased.)

The groomsmen and David's family came from Georgia and Connecticut, and didn't have much farm background to bring with them.  So we held a "Farm Day" before wedding day.  It was a chance to introduce people to an unfamiliar way of life, and to each other, and it was a lot of fun..

We started with a little agricultural education, provided by John.  First he explained how his planter splits the soil 16 rows at a time, drops in seeds and then covers them up at the rate of 384,000 seeds per hour.

Then he demonstrated his antique, horse-drawn planter that sows one row at a time.

After Farming 101, we went to Farm Play 101.  Everybody got a chance to ride horses

and drive tractors.  Audrey persuaded the groomsmen to take a spin in a 170-horsepower tractor,

while the father-off-the-bride taught the father-of-the-groom to drive a 35-hp tractor built the same year they were.

Curly-headed cousins got to see each other and catch up

and siblings-of-the-groom posed with big horses.

I was the hostess of Farm Day.  I couldn't very well be hostess AND official photographer, so I left the latter to my competent brother.  Thanks, Marshall, for the photos.

Here's Marshall on the horse. We let him hang around because he takes nice pictures, not because he knows what kind of shirts to wear in Nebraska.   The Longhorns?  Really?   Tsk, tsk, Marshall.  ;)

Sometimes the Sister Club meets upstairs.

That's What I Like About the South

And I'm really not talking about the food.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily

life is but a dream.

A new text from Audrey: "Would you please spritz my duck egg?"

I wonder if anyone else in the world got a text like that yesterday.  Sometimes I can't figure out why I'm so blessed.

I slid my feet into flip flops, nabbed the spray bottle and went out to the chicken coop, where we have strategically placed one duck egg under a hen who thinks she's hatching baby chicks.  Developing ducklings apparently need more humidity than a foster mother hen provides, so we're spritzing the egg with warm water several times a day.

Audrey hit the duck's nest last week while cutting hay.  Mama Duck thought that hiding herself and her clutch in the tall alfalfa was a good idea, but she was wrong.  She didn't enjoy her contact with the windrower, a big machine that cuts hay and crimps the thick stems and isn't good for ducks.  She is broken beyond repair, as are all but one of her eggs.  It's the greenish one, laying low and hoping Mama Hen won't notice the stowaway.

Duck eggs take between 19 and 29 days to hatch.  Chicken eggs only take 21.  We're going to be out of town from Day 7 to Day 15 after disaster struck.  We won't be here to spritz a duck egg or make sure the broody hen hasn't given up on it.

So we borrowed an incubator today, which is not only supposed to hold the eggs at the proper temperature, but also rotates them (five to seven times a day, just like Mama Duck would do) and provides the correct humidity.  So far, in our test run on the kitchen counter, the enclosure has been way too hot and way too cold; the reservoir providing the water doesn't flow into the hut, and the mechanism that rotates the eggs  is being wayward and difficult, sproinging its arm skyward and threatening to whap the motor upside down on the table.

This not a 1940s hairdryer or a brain-sucking machine in some cheap sci-fi flick.  It is THE INCUBATOR!

Isn't it amazing that hens and ducks and other birds can so easily take care of all these details, even though their brains are smaller than walnuts?  God's ways are best.

If we ever actually see this duck walking across the yard, I'm sure we'll laugh and remember why we believe in miracles.

Nuthin' but a Hound Dog

Peace

Sounds and Colors

I love walking outside and picking my breakfast off the vine.

Rachel and I have been emailing a bit about the differences between her new home in Atlanta and her old home in Nebraska.  They are both full of colors and sights and sounds, but in very different ways.  She wrote:

This morning I paid the train fare for a homeless man who was dragging on a cigarette and asked me "could you buy me 3 or 4 trips?"  (I paid for 2 - $5).  He seemed very thankful and kept saying "God bless you, sweetie, God bless you, you have a wonderful day" until I was out of sight.  Then as I walked to my office building I went by another homeless man, perched on the side of a garden planter, singing gospel music at full volume.  A big black lady walked by and shouted, "Hallelujah!" and he shouted right back, "Amen!"  Guess I'm back in Atlanta.

I thought about Rachel's day and my day.  Sometimes it is amazing that big city Georgia and our farm in Nebraska are on the same planet, much less a part of the same sovereign nation.  Last night, I was gardening with Audrey toward dusk.  I heard an owl, and then, while I waited to hear it again with my head cocked, a wild turkey gobbled from the trees by the river.   Then we heard a mourning dove, and then a calf bawled from the nearest neighbor's, a half-mile away.  The sound carried across the still air as loudly as if the baby had been calling from our own barn.  We started counting the sounds....owl, turkey, dove, calf... frogs drumming out their croaking tones; insects and numerous unnamed birds cheeping, chirping, flapping and calling...a horse banging the feed bunk with its heavy hoof, the wind tickling the trees  Audrey mentioned that she had heard quail earlier in the day, and then there was a meadowlark and then the wren who is nesting in my little bird box and who warbles and dances around the yard at all hours of the day.   

I was thinking about the sounds and began to notice colors --- three deer grazing the tender corn plants across the road, their coats shining golden in the setting sunlight.  Red strawberries peeking from under dark green leaves.  Green pasture grass, green soybeans, green elms and mulberry trees --- all green but none of them the same color. And many different browns--soil, bark, mulch, rust. Bright and muted colors in flowers and sky.  Dots of white in the pasture where the bindweed blooms, dots of white on the window where a bit of rain had yet to evaporate.

This little bubble of space in Nowhere, Nebraska, is vibrant, but these hues and tones are not wrapped around dense humanity as they are in Atlanta.  Not at all like the colors and sounds on the mass transit, or in the foreign tongues and mysterious bright clothing that weaves and bobs outside a busy Atlanta BBQ joint. The difference between Rachel's immediate surroundings and mine is a pretty wide swath.

From my vantage point, the Georgia city and the Nebraska plain are both ripe with lovely and intriguing aspects that, in a Venn diagram, have very little overlap.   But I suppose that if you compared them with a place like المملكة العربية السعودية, located in Saudi Arabia or some other hinder part of the world, her home and mine might begin to look quite similar.  Attitude is everything.

Did you note that today was National Donut Day?

Audrey did.