Our livestock age group became unbalanced when Michael underwent foot surgery last year. We normally harvest ducks in the fall. This year we started yesterday.

The ducks began to molt, but due to the late spring were not terrible for pin feathers.

Pin feathers are like stubble: sharp and short. They are hard to remove from the skin, which has led us to discard the entire skin at times. We hate doing that as duck skin is about half of the harvestable weight. It also makes delicious sausage, cracklings, and rendered duck fat. No one eats feathers, not even coyotes, with good reason. Pin feathers also reduce the amount of down salvageable from the duck. Sharp is antithetical to downiness!

We sacrificed 5 drakes and a hen. These small stones came from the hen. The drakes only had sand sized grit in their gizzards. We added the hearts and gizzards to the sausage meat mix now sitting in our freezer. Out of 6 ducks we harvested a 10 pound package of a meat/skin mix for sausage (80% meat, 20% skin), a 5 pound package of pure skin and fat (to add to other sausages), and 3/4 pounds of livers for dinner tonight. We try to use as much of the duck as we can, not least because it took us about 7 hours of hard work to put duck in the freezer.

Many people would not go to the trouble and would simply kill the old ducks and bury them. Harvesting our ducks is part of loving them and celebrating their lives. Pear blossoms mean future work, but present beauty.

Same with plum, apricot, and cherries. Having food literally be the fruit of one’s labor provides a level of appreciation for what energy it takes to feed people.

We hope not only to feed another generation, but to pass along that appreciation.

Michael’s motto: Raise them right. Don’t plant them too deep.