Ducks grow freakin' fast!

And that's the truth!

My three ducklings, which we have yet to name (other than the Three Sisters, which I don't even know is technically true) are growing and growing. Almost two weeks old, they still live in our living room, but they have already started making an accounting of themselves (in honor of Edward Kains) by eating slugs and dandelions on excursions into the backyard and composting greens, slugs, and feed into great fertilizer almost instantly (and seemingly in larger quantities than they ate!).

However, their growth rate is so fast, I can no longer conceive of a day when they will stop growing. I imagine three duck versions of Clifford the Big Red Dog sticking their giant heads into our bedroom and filling it with thunderous "peeps!" I also can't imagine them quacking, yet.

Here are a couple of photos to explain my growing issue:

One day old...
And today...

And, for the record, their living quarters get completely changed out every day... today's picture is less than 18 hours after a complete changeout of straw.

My setup

As a first post about my garden, growing things and raising things (right now ducks and plants) on 1/10th acre total, I guess I should start with a list of what we have, so far:

Sweet corn, pole beans, bush beans, radishes, broccoli, spinach, swiss chard, nasturtium, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions, leeks, garlic, zucchini, tomatoes, boysenberry, orange, pomegranate, parsley, sage, dill, thyme, basil, oregano, strawberries, walnuts, ducks, cedar, redwood, roses.

My goal right now is for one meal per week to come completely from our little space. We live on a 1/10th acre lot in a city near Sacramento, worked a little garden space last year for tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, corn, beans, and peppers, and watched the soil bloom with worms and oxalis. This year, the soil looked much better, although the plants still grew well last year, with the notable exception of the squash and cucumbers.

Those two plants were beset by some disease which rotted the plants right at flowering time. The plants would grow and flower prolifically, but just as the flowers turned to fruit, the vine had shriveled up to it, and killed it. Exactly one cucumber and one zucchini last year, the former inedible, the latter shaped like a baseball bat.

So, I'm hoping this year that the better soil will prevent that, and if it does not, then I'll have to do some research.