a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: September 2017

  • Ducklings Love Tofu


    Ducklings love tofu, which isn’t a surprise. It is a favorite of the chickens too. Little ducklings are voracious eaters. No manners with them. It is gobble, gobble, gobble with them. I can see how slugs don’t stand a chance when ducks are after them.

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    You’ll notice that ducklings like nibbling on greens too, which means I’ll need to navigate a way to protect seedlings from them as they scour the garden for slugs and bugs. Growing up, I often heard, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” You get to my age and you spend a lot of time pondering if the “way” is worth the effort.

  • After the Rain


    After last week’s rains, it’s as if we closed the door on summer and opened it to fall. The air is clear without a hint of smoke. The rain toppled many a blooming stem, and now they lean down and sigh, tired from standing upright all summer, and ready to go to sleep.


    Sunflowers bare their faces to the waning sun, their petals pulled back to expose their faces to as much sunshine as possible. Along the garden paths, the chickens gather and cavort. Novels could be written from all the intrigue, deception, scheming, and clandestine affairs of the hens and roosters. No sooner does a rooster establish his dynasty, than along comes another rooster plotting to toss him off his pedestal. Hens he thought were loyal to him are of no help. They can be as fickle as passing clouds.



    Claire doesn’t have to worry about any of that. Safe in the hoop house, alone with her four ducklings, she doesn’t even have to worry about the rains or winds. She can devote all her time to feeding her brood. As you can see in the short clip below, she’s quite adept at digging up bugs and worms for her ducklings to devour.

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  • Moving Day


    After sitting for 28 days on Cayuga duck eggs from our neighbor, Claire hatched four ducklings on the 6th of September. I moved her into a small nursery on the 7th, and today it is moving day, time to move her and the four ducklings into a spacious, protected home, our hoop house in the garden.


    Goodbye tomatoes, goodbye peppers, goodbye eggplant. With just a single mother hen and four ducklings the plants may survive, but maybe they won’t.



    It took no time for Claire and the ducklings to settle in. The ducklings are ecstatic with all the bugs there are to eat. “Go for the slugs! Go for the slugs!” I root them on. Claire won’t show them that ducks are supposed to love slugs above all other things. It may be something I have to do, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. Claire’s first order of business is enjoying a fresh dirt bath after being without one for a whole month.


    This is my first experience with ducklings. The biggest surprise so far, they peep a lot like baby chicks, which led me to ask, “When do ducklings start to quack?” The answer seems to be from about three to six weeks of age.

  • Smoke Gets In Your Eyes


    We stepped outside this morning to the sight of a bright red moon, only to realize later that it was the sun. The smoke from the forest fires in the Cascades poured into the valley during the night and is thick today. The smell of burnt wood fills my lungs. The mountains are obscured and the sky is Martian orange. This must be what it is like to look up at the sky on Mars.

    The forecast is for marine air to move in tomorrow and our blue skies to return.

  • Just a Few More Days


    Our heat wave is almost over. Just a few more days and we’ll be back to our regular Pacific Northwest days. The forecast is for the sea breezes to return Wednesday evening.


    Thanks to a deep well which lets us water freely, the garden is verdant and flourishing. It is a world of green, punctuated by blooming sunflowers, arugula, clover, and more.








    Fissures wide and deep enough to make one trip or stub a toe have opened on the Great Western Dog Trail. In many places in the woods, the ground is cracked from our long, unusually warm summer.




    In preparation for fall planting, I cleared an overgrown section of the garden and discovered where I’d placed a shovel and scoop I’d been looking for the last few weeks. During the summer, the garden grows so fast that a misplaced implement is quickly swallowed up and lost. A good reason to always put your tools away after you’ve used them. Leave them out over night and by morning you may not be able to find them.


    In addition to discovering the shovel and scoop, I have a mountain of brush that will make good compost, and a basket of scrumptious onions. These are Ailsa Craig onions, are named after the island of Ailsa Craig off the coast of Scotland.