Can this year get any weirder? I probably shouldn’t ask that. I am writing from our mini urban farm where I have been in self-quarantine since mid-March. With my health stuff, I am at high risk with this new coronavirus, and so I only have left (while wearing a mask and using social distancing guidelines) twice, once to the ATM down the street and once to pick up my husband after a car accident. While it has been rough not to see my mom and stepdad or my knitting friends in person, let alone my son who had been exposed and is at his dad’s apartment, it isn’t like we haven’t been busy. Duck Update We have ducklings! We got 8 ducklings (5 Pekins, 2 Khaki Campbells, and 1 Aylesbury) at TSC thinking the Pekins would be meat ducks for us. Turns out, most are females, so we will be finding them new homes soon now that they're almost adults. If you're local and interested in a duck, let me know. One of the Pekins is disabled (definitely looks to be birth defects), so he has become my daughter's main project. We don't know how long Apollo the Duck will be with us, but she is trying to make sure he has the best life possible. We will be keeping the Aylesbury, Danny, and one of the Khakis, Karen, but the rest with either be butchered or sold. We have two ducks now sitting on nests, so egg production is way down, but we do love seeing them try to be good duck mamas. Honestly, we got the TSC ducklings because none of the gals had gone broody, and we figured they wouldn't this year. Instead, Mango took the lead and is doing a good job sitting on her nest and managing it, and yesterday, Petunia (the Runner, of all ducks) joined her on another nest. Who knows what will hatch, if any, but we might as well let them try and see what happens. Garden Update The garden is coming along, though we had a bad freeze last night and another one on the way Monday. I did a video tour of the garden last week: Pandemic Thoughts
The real problem in dealing with this pandemic is making sure that we are following as sustainable a lifestyle as possible. To that end, we are growing more food than last year, aiming for enough of the things we can grow to get us through a year. I've been using Melissa K. Norris's book, The Family Garden Plan, a lot to help with garden planning and more. It's a great resource. We have also been having real discussions here at home about how to cut costs, stick to meal plans better, get by on less, and what we really need to raise ducks for meat, eggs, and pest control; grow enough food to feed us for a year, at least what we can grow; and plans for how to get by should this thing last much longer than I expect it will. Real talk for a minute: this virus is unlike pretty much anything our doctors have ever seen before, and the more they study it, the worse it is. They can't even prove that people who have had it develop lasting immunity, so even if we do get a vaccine, there's a real chance that it won't be as effective as we would expect. That means that we need to prepare for social distancing and disruptions to food supplies to last. If you haven't considered putting in a garden, please do even a little bit this year. Even just one container filled with herbs will help, let alone some five gallon buckets of tomatoes, greens, and more. Anything you can grow for yourself helps. It takes pressure off the food supply chain, and it helps you be more self-sufficient should you really need to be. At the very least, buy from your local farmers. They need all the support they can get right now. Buy from those local greenhouses to get some plants to grow, and then buy from your local farmers market, co-op, or farmstand to make sure that they stay in business, growing food for your whole community. If you aren't sure where any are, check LocalHarvest.org or even FB Marketplace. Even with working toward sustainability in your home and family with growing and raising your food, making do with what you have or doing without, fixing everything, etc., please make sure to follow basic hygiene guidelines as well as social distancing guidelines. You can't run a homestead from the ICU.
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CarinaI'm a 40s something disabled mom living the life on our small urban farm. Archives
April 2022
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