TKG Sunday Newsletter announces a Name Change
The TKG stands for The Kitchen's Garden. The farm is where my writing roots lie. So I have re-named this publication Cecilia from The Kitchen's Garden Farm.
Be true to thyself rings true for this change. And makes perfect sense.
If you are able to support this space by contributing a few dollars each month (with an upgrade) to help keep the barn and the newsletter going I’d be deeply grateful. (Plus you will get random videos through the week). But if that’s not possible, do not hesitate, I’m just happy you’re here, reading along. Welcome!
For all you new subscribers - welcome again. We always start the newsletter with a discussion point or a story. Today we have a story. And today’s story is a kids story for grown ups! And kids.
The Story
The other day, I went out to the yard by the barn and saw Quacker, the little brown duck, walking along the track, crying piteously. She was pacing along the path from the barn, quacking in a sad, quavery little voice, her head held high, looking round and round. Her little feet tiptoeing, hesitant.
“Are you there? Are you there?” Quacker called.
It was a cool sunny afternoon, one of those late summer days, you know the ones, they remind a person and possibly a duck too, that winter might come soon. We need to get thinking of warm beds and storing grain and hay. Gathering in.
I went over and I asked, “Quacker, what’s the matter?” (I can talk duck, you know - most farmers can talk to their animals.)
Quacker replied, “I can’t find my duck flock. Where are Mr White and Mr White the Smaller and the Miss. Browns. Has my flock left me again? Am I to be all alone, again?”
You remember, maybe a year or so ago, her whole flock disappeared all in a blink. I think a bad animal had scared them, and they flew up into the creek floated away. But Quacker had been sitting on eggs that day, so when she came out of the barn, all her feathered friends were gone. She was the only duck on the farm for a long time and still remembers that frightening day.
So I bought more ducklings to the farm to be her friends. After spending almost the whole summer together, they’ve grown into a little duck flock, even though they’re different colors and different sizes. With different mothers and different fathers. They walk together, eat together, and even sleep together on the pond with their heads tucked under their wings, floating in lazy circles in the late summer sunshine.
Quacker stretched up her neck, peering by the farm tractor and around the orange cats. “Have you seen my flock?” she asked, looking as sad and worried as a duck could look. “I was asleep with my duck friends, but when I woke up, they were gone.” If ducks could cry, I’m sure she would have.
Can ducks cry? Maybe they can. I don’t know for sure though I am the farmer and I should know these things. I do know that I am taller than all the animals on the farm and I can see further than they so helping her find her duck friends seemed like the kind thing to do.
Quacker peered into the hog field and the pigs snuffled to her. “Have you seen my flock?” The pigs said nothing at all because there did not seem to be any food offered and Quacker turned sadly away.
Quacker waddled over to Tima, have you seen my flock. Tima opened only one eye and said “It is my nap time. I am sleeping. Can’t a pig get a moments peace around here”.
Quacker looked through Tima’s gate. She called out, “Are you there? Are you there?” but there was no answer.
So Quacker, Boo, the big farm dog, and I, the farmer, walked around the barnyard with Quacker, searching for the four missing ducks. Quacker kept crying in her little quacker voice, her head held tight, searching to and fro.
“Are you there? Are you there?”
I searched from up high upon my shoulders but I saw no ducks.
Boo searched with his nose and we looked and looked through the barn and out down the track beside the corn standing in the fields drying in the cool sun. We walked under the walnut trees, past the turkeys, through the hedge, and down to the Paw Paw Patch by the pond, calling out to the ducks.
“Are you there? Are you there?”
Boo nosed in under the Paw Paw trees, and out they popped from under the big green leaves, stretching and yawning, out came the two big white ducks and the two brown ducks with blue stripes on their wings.
“Yes? Yes? Yes?” they called, quacking and rustling their feathers, their legs stretching out one after the other to show their perfect calves. They looked refreshed and satisfied after their long nap. Yawning and careless.
“Yes, yes? Boo told us, we were lost. Well. We weren’t lost. We knew exactly where we were.” They huffled and shuffled, tweaking their feathers back into place. “Who needs us? Where can we help?”
Well, Quacker shut her bill with a snap, picked up her tail and ran as fast as she could past her flock, her little yellow feet slapping in the grass, she raced past them - no word, no look. She leapt straight into the pond, a little embarrassed that they might have noticed her alarm. A little embarrassed that she was now almost weeping with relief that they were all together again. Her little flock. They had not left her after all.
“I don’t know,” she called over her shoulder. “I didn’t say that. I was just helping Miss C look for you. She thought you’d all run off.”
The ducks looked at me the farmer then at Boo, still sniffing under the trees then at Quacker, splashing in the pond, then waddled gossiping gently to the edge of the pond and slid into the water with Quacker, to glide along beside her. The frogs plopped into the water after the ducks. The golden gold fish swimming lazily below. The ducks smiled a little and nudged Quacker -“ It’s ok to be frightened. It happens to us all now and then”.
Boo sat down on his doggie bum, right beside the PawPaw patch, scratched his ear with a doggie paw - not to be confused with a pawpaw and said, “Ducks.”
Then after one last fond look at his good friend Quacker, swimming with her flock family in the pond, BooBoo hauled his great doggie self up with a sigh and followed the farmers boots back to the barn.
And that’s my little story for today. And it’s a true one.
And now for The TKG walkabout:
My favourite! This one stars the PopPops!
The Fast Farmy Round Up (in no particular order at all).
Cows
When you wake up sleeping on the compost heap - you know it has been a cool night.
Lovely, healthy, shiny beasties.
Rescue Pigs
Jude and FreeBee are still waiting for me to harvest all the pumpkins so I can move them (the big pigs) into the vege garden field for a day so they can clean up the sweetcorn patch.
While they are cleaning up the corn I will mow their field and do repairs and fill their root cellar with more straw. It will be a days work. But like everything we have to go backwards a few steps before we can go forwards.
Ducks
The flock is lovely.
And usually all together. Except when Quacker gets lost.
Turkeys
The turkeys took a hit this week with the loss of the big ostrich turkey.
He died in the night. I suspect foul play so (as you saw on the video) I am training them to sleep in the barn. We do have coyotes. So far I have not had any trouble from them - but I am not going to leave the turkeys out in the field as bait either.
Chickens
Laying well again.
Which is good because we feed a lot of eggs to the hogs.
The PopPops
The American Guinea Hog piglets are impossible to photograph because these little American Guinea Hog piglets move at speed everywhere.
They are the easiest pigs to train I have ever had and have adjusted easily to being moved into the barn in the evening and released back to the field in the morning. (As you saw in the rather hilarious video, above).
The Charlottes
Not to be rude but look at those lovely fat hams!
These rascals have finished cleaning out their three gardens but still get lots of exercise running between them. As we thin the mulberries they get great branches thrown in for them to chew on. Hogs get up to no good when they are bored.
White Chicks
We have 28. This flock is being grown here by a family in town as part of my community collaboration.
Families can grow their food on my land and contribute with feed or hours. They are also being fed piles of grated zuchinni, pumpkin and pond weed from the gardens. I have a special water tank where I grow the pond weed for chicks.
Go HERE for a very sweet vid of the chicks. This link should take you to my UTube channel where I store sundry farm shorts.
The Pumpkin Patch
We are finally harvesting the pumpkins. And they are mighty. I will adjust the varieties next year. This year John just wanted some for his grandkids and I take all the rest for the animals. Cows love pumpkin too. The white ones are great for puree. But next year I will also plant the pumpkin seed pumpkins.
Styrian or Lady Godiva have good fat seeds.
HERE is my pumpkin soup recipe from 2011 (yes I have been blogging a long time, with almost 20,000 readers of the blog now) and this week at the kitchensgarden.com I will publish my roasted pumpkin and garlic pumpkin soup. It is quite divine!
I will be making lots of roasted pumpkin puree for the freezer over the next couple of weeks.
Click below to get to thekitchensgarden.com
This cold weather (42F/ 5C last night) has stumped the tomatoes. Though I never have enough tomato sauce. But I am on to preserving pumpkin puree and storing pumpkins now.
The CornField
On average a corn field will have about (maybe in a good year) 30,000 plants per acre.
We are surrounded in 180 odd acres of organic corn. My rudimentary math skills tell me that is - um - a lot of corn.
So - yup! The fields are doing ok. Though we have not had a lot of rain lately which would be nice for plumping up the kernels. I am sure the rain will hold off until the week of harvest as usual! Sod and his laws.
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end!
Have a great day!!
Celi
What a fabulous and cheerful read. All the animals happy, in the right place and good. Good old QUacker, l felt sure that would be a happy ending, from your writing style. Have just returned from a farm stay. Among other things there were three kune kunes, 2 peacocks, not a patch on dear old Mr Flowers mind. Lots of assorted chickens (a very noisy cockerel ) and lots of inquisitive guinea fowl running about. Also some gorgeous Donkeys and a Shetland pony that had deposited all his poos in a long line! Oh and some Pygmy goats. I think l drove my husband a bit bonkers explaining your set up compared with this. All good though😊
I love the Quacker story! It reminded me of a book I used to read to my children called Are You My Mother? It's a Dr. Seuss book about a baby chick trying to find his mother, asking all kinds of animals. Very fun.