We have ducklings!

Three of them, to be exact. They hatched over this past weekend, and I’d forgotten just how adorable baby ducklings are.  In terms of looks, I’ll take a baby duckling over a chick any day.  I had however, also forgotten how messy they are!  Ducklings love water, and it’s next to impossible to keep them from playing in their drinking water.  Combine that with the fact that they often toss food around when they eat, and we’re having to change their saturated bedding every day.  (Of course, the mess that three make is still far more manageable than the 30 we had in there last year!)

The kids have named them Peeper, Quaker and…. something else, I’m not quite sure. It seems like the names keep changing. They spend a few minutes holding them each day, and I’m fairly sure that yesterday at least two kids were holding a Peeper at the same time.

The goat kids are growing up, so fast that I almost can’t count them as babies any more!  These four seem a bit more playful than last year’s kids, and it’s a lot of fun to watch them all cavort together.  Peony seems to enjoy having playmates instead of just ‘old mama goats’ to hang around with.  In fact, we’ve had to start letting her sleep in the kidding pen with them because if we shut her out, she jumps the fence to join them.

And lastly, we have some baby plants! Last year we discovered that the local Soil and Water Conservation Districts have annual plant sales.  The plants are very small, but also VERY cheap.  So we ordered 20 more blueberry bushes and bought some Northern Spy apple trees. Northern Spies are an older, heritage tree that’s not particularly common, but it’s a favorite of ours and we go out of our way every year to make it down to a local orchard that offers them as You-Pick.  We’re excited to have had the chance to pick up a few for ourselves!

Additionally, we have some tomato plants. Or rather, we have some tomato seeds that we just stuck in some soil and are hoping they will become plants. This year we are just going to do a few plants. Tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots. Carrots because they’re easy, tomatoes and cucumbers because we can them for sauces and pickles and they cost a fortune at the regional market. Keeping our expectations low will hopefully keep us from getting frustrated if the growing season doesn’t go quite the way we’d like!

To sum up:  Baby goats, baby ducks, and baby plants!  (No baby Kilpatrick yet though, but I’m okay with letting all the other babies around here mature a bit before we expect that arrival.)