A Farm Quilt

I've had the idea of making a farmyard quilt/play mat for a long time. Many babies of our acquaintance have been born and outgrown the play-on-the-floor-with-tractors stage during that time and I just hadn't pulled it off.

And then the sweet young couple who own the farm where M works had a baby in December and I knew it was exactly the right time to finally make the quilt. 

M and I used to pick strawberries at the farm and shop at the farm store when he was little. It was under different ownership then, and he named the farmer and little girl in his Playmobil tractor set after the farmer and his daughter.

As a tot who loved tractors ("tack-tah" was his second word), I think M would have dug driving all his toy farm vehicles around on a farm quilt, and hopefully the little guy who will be driving around toy (and probably real) tractors way sooner than his parents can possibly imagine, will dig it too.

 I modeled the barn after the one where M sits in the summer, handing out quart containers and ringing up pick-your-own strawberry purchases (though I accidentally tilted the asymmetrical roof the wrong way—oops). And I hid a little cowboy behind the openable barn door, for a fun surprise.



I don't know how to do the quilting part of quilting (I usually take mine to be done at the quilt store) and I lack a proper walking foot (though I learned later that for freehand quilting, the thing to do is use a darning foot and put your feed dogs down). So I just kind of winged it on this one. It ended up a little rumpled and puckered, but I figure the more imperfect it is, the easier it will be to throw it on the floor or grass and let the littlest farmer have at it.

New Duckies!

About a month ago, Z came inside after dinner and said, "Has anyone seen Fatsykins?" One of our white layer ducks had gone missing (he and E claim to be able to tell them apart). C and I helped him look high and low, roaming through the woods and down to the river and up the driveway, much farther than any of the ducks has ever traveled before, but we could see no sign of Fatsykins. Which was weird, because I had been home all day and hadn't heard any ruckus and the other ducks were as calm as can be, not acting as if they had all nearly avoided a hawk or fox. Z was pretty upset, and when C asked him if he wanted more ducks he said, "No, because they'll just get killed by something." This was our second duck loss in two years (which isn't bad, compared to our chicken fiasco). I didn't want more ducks, either, because they're messy and gross and a pain in the butt if we want to go away for a night or a weekend or a whole summer. But somehow C prevailed and three new little peepers made it to our house this week (did you know that baby ducks peep?).



They are, clockwise from left to right: Duck Norris (a giant Pekin), Daffodil (a buff Orpington), and Princess Layah (as in "Layer" with a Maine accent; there was some discussion about whether she should instead be Princess Layer, as in "Leia" with a Maine accent. There is a thing here about taking the R off the end of one word and putting it on the end of another. I, for example, am "Andree-er").

Now that they're here, peeping and making a mess and inconveniencing our weekends, even I have to admit they are pretty darn cute.

About Those Ducks

I've been meaning to write about the ducks for some time. I mentioned last time when I wrote about them that they're a lot more work than chickens. Since our chickens only lasted two months, I can only speak to the first two months of work, but here's where ducks made trouble: 

1. They grew a lot faster and bigger than the chickens (jumping out of their enclosure after just a couple of days; moved to an enclosure with taller walls, and jumping out of that, too).
2. So, so messy. They splash water everywhere, so their bedding had to be changed daily. When we moved them to their outside home, we didn't change the bedding every day and it grew maggots. So many maggots.
3. They're dumb. Like really, really dumb. (Z said, "If they were a knife in the drawer, they'd be the frosting spreader."). They run around in a clump like a kindergarten soccer team, following each other off a cliff if they get in a huff (or at least off a low retaining wall). They're as terrified of the people who feed and water them as they are of wild animals (and these are supposed to be calm breeds).

But they're (mostly) still alive, which is more than I can say for the chickens. This is the house we kept them in over the summer: Duck Knox.

It has 1/2-inch mesh screening and triple locks to keep out the predators. We did lose one to a raccoon while we were on vacation, because our house-sitter left them in their less-secure daytime enclosure overnight, and we almost lost one to a fox or coyote in early September. 

I woke in the middle of the night to a loud, quack-quack-quack-quack-quack, and ran outside in nighty and rubber boots. I'd grabbed a flashlight on my way out the door and by its light saw that we had somehow forgotten to shut the ducks up in Duck Knox. They were huddled inside, and by the beam of the flashlight, it appeared they were all inside and accounted for, but I could hear a rustling in the woods nearby and, as I was wrestling with the door, what should come waddling out but one of the white ducks, with a droopy wing and four bloody holes in her back. She hobbled over to the pool and stood there while I filled the night water and then made her way inside with the other ducks.

I didn't expect her to live out the night, but she was alive the next morning and over the next week or so, she kept her neck tucked to her back and moved around gingerly. I didn't see her eat or drink and the other ducks picked on her a little, and I still expected her to die (we decided not to try to treat the wounds, figuring our attempt to catch her and pour alcohol in her cuts would stress her out and be more hindrance than help to healing). But after a week or so, she was back to her old ducky self, and now we can't even tell which duck was the injured one.

C has built them a two-story duck castle in the garage for their winter quarters, and he ran electricity underground from the house so we can give them light and heat their water this winter. They've gotten a little less skittish and spastic (though they're still quite ridiculous).

And they've started to give us these:

For the last two weeks they've been dropping eggs here and there (sometimes even in the nest box). They're surprisingly good--with nice thick whites and golden yolks that cook to creamy perfection.

Duckies!

Introducing Mrs. Feddle, Duckie-Duck, Fatsykins, Buttercup, Striker, Sir Eatsalot, and Godzilla, aka Admiral Drake.

This was going to be a nice little post about our seven new family members.

And then C took E and Z to a baseball game and left me with the task of fetching the ducklings from their outdoor pen where they spend the day, put them into a box, and carry them back inside into the large Rubbermaid that is still their nighttime home.

By the time I rounded them all up (after finally giving up on keeping my work clothes clean and crawling into their shit-strewn pen), the D in "duck" had been replaced by F and an "er" added to the end of the word. With "mother" for a prefix.

Anyway, Z has been begging for a duck for months and months and months.

So I showed C a picture of a duck house, from a book that shall remain nameless, which suggested that eight full-grown ducks could live inside and be wheeled around the yard, eating bugs and fertilizing the lawn, with nary an iota of human input.

After C built the house and we informed E and Z that they were getting ducks for their birthday, I ordered a duck raising book which said, in not so many words, "Don't be fooled by charlatans and four-season gardeners who suggest that ducks are really easy to take care of. In fact, they're quite a lot more maintenance than chickens."

Call me had. 

But E and Z are really, really happy. 

I guess that's what it's all about, right?

In any case, say "hello" to our ducks.

Corn-mazin'

Sometimes I overthink things.

Sometimes, I think, "Oh, we should go do such-and-such," but then I can't quite triangulate the two free days a week to fit such-and-such in.

And though most of the time it's nothing very important, or life-changing, like a corn maze, it's nice to get out of my own way now and then.

The last time we went to a corn maze, M was three years old. The next fall, I had two babies. A corn maze was out of the question. And all the falls since, I just never could get around to it, even though there's a farm with a corn maze only fifteen minutes away from home.

Then a friend suggested we go to a different corn maze--one an hour-and-a-half away--on Halloween.  And because that was way more daunting than the corn maze down the road, that I hadn't mustered the energy to go to in then years--and, let's face it, because I like to be in control of the situation and do everything on my terms--I got it together and we headed out one late Sunday afternoon. 

The boys got their money's worth--running up and down the rows of corn with their friends for nearly an hour, eating ears of roasted corn, making friends with the chickens that free-ranged in the maze. I wandered the rows, a bit in awe of this grass--grass--growing higher than my arm can reach. It's not much of a corn patch, by Iowa standard, I suppose. But it was a pretty amazing place to spend an afternoon.

5K to Farm

After last month's run, Z had the idea of doing a 5K every weekend.

Conveniently, our house is located almost exactly a mile-and-a-half from each end of our road, so a trek down to one end of the road and back equals just about a 5K.

And they're both walks I have taken many a time over the years, pushing a stroller, and then a trike with a push bar, and then a double stroller, with a training-wheeled bike following along.

But it's been a while since that walk has been part of my routine. Something about no strollers to push, or the advent of both twins on bikes being way too crazy for me to deal with on the road (I did take them as far as the daycare center many times when they were on training wheels, but not three miles. Nowadays, the boys all ride their bikes all the way to the General Store with their dad).

So Z and I had decided to do a weekly 5K to the end of the road, but with one thing and another, hand't yet gotten around to it. 

Until last week he mentioned he'd like to visit the farm we pass at one end our road. So I suggested we do his 5K and visit the farm all in one trip.

Sunday morning he got up early (but not too early––I had persuaded him to not set his alarm clock), fixed us each a bagel with jam, and got geared up for the run.

He ran ahead, stopping to wait for me at each driveway (yes, I walked the whole thing--still don't believe in running, plus I needed to take pictures along the way).

He stopped now and then to collect maple leaves or observe great blue herons.

We got a tour of the farm––ducks, cows, sheep, goats, two adorable little farm girls, and all––despite having disturbed the farmers' breakfast.

Z failed to catch either a duck or a turkey, but braved petting the cows and goats.

And now he wants to make it a weekly adventure.