Oy! Git Orf Moy Pond!

Here, then, is the post that plenty of our friends and fellow small-holders will have been expecting since February when we revealed that we were "getting ducks". Followers of the blog will recall that I had always been dead against ducks because of the damage they do, particularly to ponds. All manner of other species came and stayed or came and went, even including geese who were easy to keep off the main pond and were supplied with 3 alternative water-bodies in which to bathe and play. Ducks, though were always beyond the pale. Ducks would reduce our lovely pond to a stagnant, shit-loaded, lifeless mess with brown 'muddy-desert' margins.

Pond plants left broken and floating - the
well known downside of having ducks

The duckless pond established and then flourished with a rich mixture of plants and some good pads of waterlilies developing. It was a-buzz with damsel flies, water beetles, dragon flies, water boatmen, pond skaters, whirligig beetles and we had a good number of smooth newts. Some visitors asked why we didn't have a few fish (gold fish, Koi Carp or the local favourite 'roaches') in there but we always fended them off with the insect larvae and tadpoles arguments.

Cattle-race side gate shored up with mesh
and woodwork. 

Regular readers will know that we 'cracked' back in February. We decided that such a well established pond would have enough 'ecology' going on to be able to stay in balance with just a few ducks... perhaps 3, a drake and 2 ducks. That way we could let them breed and enjoy the sight of Mumma duck leading her little crocodile of yellow fluff-balls out onto the water. There was even a little duck house on the bank in the plan somewhere.

A run under construction for the Hubbard poults to keep them
 out of the yard and sheds.

We nipped out to the local poultry sale in March looking for a pair of Muscovies and came away, instead, with half a dozen Khaki Campbell eggs for the incubator. 6 hatched in early April and delighted us through the fluffy stages. They even convinced us for a while that, now fully feathered, they would still avoid the pond and preferred their little paddling pool.

Having another go at the Feta cheese - this time with moulds
(yogurt pot with bottom cut out) lined with cheesecloth "socks".

Well, if that was the honeymoon period, then it must be almost at its end and the true nature of this 'marriage' is taking shape. They are now 3 months old and no longer ducklings, but full size, chunky ducks (all be it not sexually mature yet, so none of the curly tail feathers on the drakes' rumps.) We have watched them with increasing alarm and decreasing conviction that we might get away with the duck thing, that they hadn't eaten ALL the plants, or damaged the edges and we were definitely not stagnant.

Cubing up the Feta 'rounds'. The cubes now get 4 days
of being sprinkled with salt and dry curing. 

They have though, pretty much eaten all the floating plants (water lilies, floating pondweeds, hornwort) plus the tops of all the emergents except bog-bean. They have dabbled up all the oxygenators which were rooted into the light sediment (there is a rubber liner) leaving them shredded and floating in a tangled mess. We also seem to have no more beetles or boatmen, damsels or dragon flies and we have not seen newts lately.

Good firm Feta cubes dry-curing (in the fridge)

We jointly decided that this was not working right and that we would keep the ducks but try to keep them off the big pond. Friends advised that they should be perfectly OK in with the geese - they would quickly learn to steer clear of the gosling, the Mother goose and George the Gander. I have now started to confine them into the orchard and the "old dung heap bit" and am having an interesting time with one particular bird who has a talent for escaping. I think my sheep wire and hurdles are duck-proof (they do seem to be for 5 of the ducks!) and I have shored up a few leaks in gates and fencing found by the Houdini-Duck. They have been satisfyingly NOT ON THE POND today anyway - even Houdini doesn't go onto the pond if he's alone. We will have to watch the pond with interest to see how it recovers.

Larch

On a related subject, I am creating a run this year for the Hubbard poults. These guys have always been fully free range before but their winning growth rates are a result of eating MOUNTAINS of food which, being chickens, they convert into meat but also a fair quantity of... um.... "guano". They are friendly (or mercenary) souls and tend to hang around lazily in the yard waiting for the next feed, and taking shelter from rain in our good sheds. Not for them the extensive grass ranging or a scratch of the woodland floor.

You can probably guess where I am going with this - all that guano tends to end up in the 'human areas' (yard, feed-sheds) and we get fed up with wading through it or slipping on it as we move about, not to mention how much can get walked into the house. The down side of full free-range? So, this year, now that they are approaching Day 50, they are getting moved to the baby-forest (also overgrown dock and thistle patch) behind our Darby and Joan chairs beyond the big pond. We have no problem with them clearing that to a brown desert - it could use it and they will not damage the young trees.

The kittens explore the "foothills" of Mount Matt. Pic by Liz

Finally, we have been enjoying a 'take 2' on the cheese making. We have learnt from the last Feta batch and this time we bodged up some moulds and Liz created cheese-cloth 'socks' with which to line them. I also cut the curds in the saucepan stage much smaller (cm cubes instead of 2 cm). You can see from the pics that these changes have all made the finished cheese 'rounds' much firmer and they taste and feel very genuine. The rounds now cubed up again get sprinkled with salt and gently dry-cured for 4 days before they get packed in brine (where they should last 3 months in the fridge). It is all looking a bit good!

The Pond is Finished!

The biggest news by far from this camp over this bright, warm, windless Bank Holiday, is that we have finished the pond! We got stuck in well today trimming and burying the edges of the rubber sheet, determined to create a variety of types of bank. A long stretch of the 'south' side is down to grass, so we simply lifted a wedge of turf with the fattest edge 'inland' and laid the rubber over a soil 'lip' at roughly water level.

We hope (and we have found on previous ponds) that the thick inner edge gives enough hydraulic connection to the surrounding soil to stop the turf drying out - we want grass growing right to the edge and dangling over into the water to give cover for and access to newts, frogs and invertebrates. At the 'west' end we have a shelf for our marginal plants (purple loosestrife, king-cup etc) and the grass margin is behind this.

Coming round by the 'Darby and Joan' chairs, we change to a line of boulders, many taken from the old 'Albert' cairn you may recall - the pile of boulders dug out of our floor during the house build, and stacked at the end of the front terrace. These stones run round the the 'north' side where we have made a flat-stone gently sloping beach to give easy access to young goslings. In the middle of this, Liz also created a small 'rock pool' which had turned out to be ideal for a special and surprising reason; more of which later.

At the end of this beach we made a headland onto which we carefully put the biggest rock that came out of the pond - the one which broke my first shovel. This is surrounded by smaller stones and is either called 'Howth Head' after the one in Dublin. or the "Hen and Chickens". Beyond that and coming back to the east end are a row of stones which are deliberately slightly lower, with their bases in water and the pond liner rising up behind them to get the right level. Again, this is all about hidey-holes for creepie-crawlies and amphibians.

The whole thing is about 10 m long and 6 m wide and is 22 inches deep at the deepest point. We love it and the geese have adopted it as a favourite place and I have been able to get some nice pictures. We were amazed to find that with this much space to play in the geese's splashing about includes some swimming under water like a penguin! Who knew that they could? They duck their heads and shoulders under then zoom along completely submerged for about 3-4 feet before bobbing to the surface! Liz has this on video. I have not yet been able to capture it on 'still' but I will.

It was during one of these sessions that the goslings discovered that they could keep to the 'rock pool' where it was a lot less wavy. The grown-ups were creating quite a 'chop' in the water and had us re-thinking where it might be wise to try to site water lilies and so on.

So, tonight we are feeling very pleased with ourselves and decided to have a celebratory meal. We had a deep, oven backed 'tortilla' made with goose and hen eggs plus potato and diced chicken. Chilled Prosecco served as our celebration.

Nice pond!