They Sent me 20 Ducks + 4 Geese in the Mail

One new message. Hi, this is Mike at the Pet Shop. Just want to let you know that your baby birds have arrived. You can pick them up whenever you're ready. Thank you. Hey Gideon, it's like 15 minutes there. We're gonna be gone like 40 minutes. You sure you need all this stuff? Why do I need to open it? Did you want fresh water?

Yeah.

Okay. Hey, you gotta find your shoes, buddy. Town shoes are okay. Here, and you got your snacks too. Apparently there's a cat in.

Papa, lift up the couch and I can go under there.

Is that a mouse he's got? Come here. Oh, you're too smart for me. There he is beside the stove. He knows I'm putting him out. You got him, get in.

I have to go behind the fireplace.

Straighten this up. Alright, Gideon. Hey Gideon, where's your shoes?

I don't know.

Okay, you— well, there's one. There's Akeen. I would have probably already been there on my way back. But they want to go. Where— actually, I didn't say. I didn't say it. Our ducks are here. Okay, did you find the other one or is that the other one?

No, this isn't.

Are you serious?

I'm gonna see at Azariah's house because I think I left my new boots.

Okay, Jonah was asking how many I got. It's one of those mornings. Okay, um, I got 20 ducks and 4 geese, I think, if I remember right. And what are they for? Eating meat. Meat. They're meat geese. They're meat ducks. Hey Jonah, can I ask you something? Can you get the brooder ready while I'm gone? Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. The little ones are excited to go. I guess the big ones are over it. This is like our third Would this be our third, fourth trip to the post office this year?

Papa, what are you waiting for?

To find your shoes. Hey, where are you going? Okay, go get your shoes then. Go get your shoes. I'll pick you up. My shoes are right here where I take them off every time I go in the house. So what these ducks and geese are about is, well, we're gonna grow Christmas goose, have a goose for Christmas dinner. And the ducks are just to have ducks. We're gonna get 20, maybe eat 1, 2 a month, mix up our heavily meat diet with some variety. And meanwhile, while we are gone, this is what we were going to do today. Well, it's still going to happen. Arun's coming. What are we going to do? Okay, we're going to get these onions up and cure them. We're going to check out the carrots and see if they're ready. More onions, and then 2 rows of potatoes. One of the business guys I follow said something profound one time. He said, you know, as an entrepreneur— well, as a person, you only have 24 hours in a day, and the only way to gain time is to hire somebody else's time, so to speak. So it's going to be neat because Arun will be harvesting that garden We'll be going and picking up ducks. There'll be all different kinds of things going on at once. Did you get your shoes over there?

There was none.

Okay, Jonah just asked what grain do they need. Good question. I ordered this, this new country, it's called Crumble, and it's got— is it niacin? It's got whatever it is that the ducks need that goes beyond what chicks need. So feed them this. Thank you. Okay, we gotta keep finding your shoes, bro. Did you go down to the creek?

Yeah, you did? Yeah.

And you didn't see him?

No, I didn't go down.

Okay, go ahead. And then Sally— they could be anywhere. Good morning, early bird! Look at this egg harvest! Very nice, very nice.

Oh, we have to do it so it doesn't get too hot.

Are those them or those? Those are ours.

Mine.

Okay, go get them, guys. And I could have contracted Grandma to go get these ducks because we got a lot going on with harvest, but I figured the kids would want— this is something the kids would want to do. I reckon it's— I reckon we're not breaking any speed records picking up any birds. All right, we're spending some QT with the kids. They're gonna be cute, I know that much.

Don't worry, Lily.

All right, well, you get strapped in and we'll get Lily. Lily, hey, did you guys get it done?

Yeah, we need you to plug this in for us.

Okay, is this for the brooder? Oh, you can't do it in that one because it's got a ground.

Well, then the fence is gonna be off.

Why is Okay, this just broke off, guys. How'd that happen?

Some kid ripped it out.

It's not gonna stay in because the grounding—

oh, this— you did—

plug is gone. Okay, so it's not on. It's just the— it's not working, guys. There it is, there it is. All right, good deal. We got our brooder, our hover brooder heat plate from Premier One. And we've got a heat lamp over our feed so the feed gets warmed up and it's not cold. Now to make magic water for them, that gallon water, put it full to fill up warm all the way. Yep. And then do a quarter cup of honey and then 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and 2 cloves of garlic minced.

Mince? What's mince?

I lost him. I lost him right there.

Very finely.

Not big on the domestic. John, John don't know.

I've seen Mama make it though.

We have a little mincer. We have a little tool that minces it.

I've seen Mama do it. Do you mind wrapping it up?

You think that's easier? Why that's important, uh, for us to buy time is one, well, people need jobs and we're doing a great service to the community, but We're also growing our business, which essentially doing that frees us up to just create more for our business, which brings more of you guys, brings more encouragement to you guys, uh, inspires more people to start growing their own food. It just does so much wonders for this wonderful food growing movement we have here. I'm gonna put on my seatbelt. Everybody strapped in?

Yeah, I'm strapped in.

All right, let's go to the post office. Okay, you got it, my man. Okay, come on, Lily, help him. That's teamwork right there. We better not. We better let them be still as possible on the way home. Stress.

Do they like to swim?

Yes.

Once we get them settled, let's try to put them in your bathtub. You want to take a bath with them? All right, we're back home. Boys look like they got it under control. Stand out here, get your hands out.

Okay, just don't drop them. Oh, pop them off!

Tomatoes!

Two ripe tomatoes.

Yeah, and I can't see where I'm going. Here, let's open this.

Open the gate wide.

They got them grit, they got the brooders, they They got the water. I know that ducks are a mess with their water and feed, so we'll probably have to do something a little different than that. It's a good start. I think we're also gonna have to lower it down because they're too little to get up in that.

But then I'll get either in there, Papa.

Let's see what we got here. Oh, and by the way, thank you McMurray Hatchery. That's where I got these. They actually sent us these, so thank you McMurray Hatchery. You guys have been awesome this year. All right, looky there. Adorable.

It's adorable.

Oh my goodness, look at those little guys. Here's a goose. Here you go, Lily. One goose. Dip its beak. Dip its beak.

Oh yeah, that's two geese. That's a duck. I can't wait to play with them.

You can play with them outside, but not today. They've had enough stress today. Okay, it'd be good for you guys to bring them some greens. Are they taking the water, Lily, when you dip their beak?

Let's see.

Yep, yep. Okay, good. It gets them a good start. Oh look, the goose is already over here finding food.

Is this goose and yellow?

That one's eating.

They're both eating, but I'm feeding them water.

I don't know if I should bury this and let that be a platform for the feed. Let's check on Arun real quick.

Onion is finished.

Nice.

So these are only red onion.

Oh, uh-oh, we've run out of room, huh?

Oh yeah.

Well, I'm looking at this. Do you think this will be enough? This is like— this was used to cover a brooder.

Yeah, we can use—

we don't need that one more. That one plus another one?

Yeah, because there's a bunch of onion.

You can see the white onions. Well, I'd say we won. We had a wonderful harvest this year, huh? Oh my, we also have cattle panels that we could put boards under and some of that mesh on. We could also make a frame really quick. We have the cedar here and we have the mesh. Let's see if we have 8 feet of that, a, uh, 2x4 links. We will, we will, won't we? We had a need, we had an idea. Let's turn this into a drying rack. A curing rack. We're ready. In an hour-ish, you have us a legit—

less than an hour, I think.

Yeah, it was, uh, we started 8:30, it's 9:30. Oh yeah. All right, ready? Let's flip it. This thing is legit. Bam! Now that's serious, right? Yeah, it's a little wobbly. That would maybe help us if we did a, uh, we did a brace this way. I'm gonna do that. Let's do that real quick. I actually put braces on both ends. Oh my, that could be like a bunk bed, Arun. If we get kicked out of the house, we could, we could come and bunk right here. That's what I'm saying, man.

We could do in the future, if needed, add a third.

I like it.

Tier.

Oh, I like it.

So you can put in a pretty place, you can sleep there sometimes.

Look at those onions though, Rebecca.

They are amazing.

How long will that last us?

So I have no idea.

Hopefully a year.

So these ones came in when they were supposed to. The yellow onions were delayed, so they are much smaller.

Yeah, but we like red onions better anyway.

I like either side. I don't, I don't care.

You think If we could fit it right next to it, we could do it. All right. Hey, it's gonna fit. It is. Oh yeah, sweet. It's even bigger than the old one, darling. The old one was made out of screen doors. Man, I'm excited about that, how fast we put that together. All right, those are definitely fit, guys. I hate to leave you, but it's like 40 minutes past milking time. I wanted to make a platform for the ducks, but The onion drying rack took precedence, so hopefully— I think they'll be fine today.

They're still so little.

Amy and Rebecca, I have no idea. How do you start braiding our garlic?

Currently I'm not, I'm not a braider. So then you like do this, you add in one like a French braid, right? Oh, and then I don't know where to go next. So do that. So you just add them in. Oh, so like see how you had that one going over?

Mhm.

So then this, and then what do you do?

This one?

This might be a little too complex.

Not bad for a bunch of volunteer garlic.

Oh, I know.

I mean, we didn't even— we planted it 2 years ago and then it reseeded itself.

So because I didn't pull it all that for that after the first year, you had a little rough start, but it looks like you did figure it out. Like, look at this, look how beautiful. Yeah, how'd you figure it out?

I went on YouTube and, well, I follow, um, Jessica from Three Rivers Homestead on Instagram, and she recently braided her garlic and made a YouTube video about it, so So you can check her garlic video out. It's Three Rivers Homestead on YouTube.

Look at that. That looks legit.

I'm excited. I'm excited about not having to buy garlic at the grocery store.

One less thing.

One less thing.

And we have all those onions down there. I need to figure out how we're going to store those. They may store around the Cool room. Yeah, maybe we'll hang nails around the cool room.

All right, I just finished editing. I feel like you guys are destroying the house though. I guess I should— I guess I can throw away my feelings. They are destroying it.

We're not giving it any harm, but you're gonna clean this up nice.

So, okay, I'm gonna go do afternoon chores. Look, it's Indian Wednesday. That means Arun is on duty making us Indian meal. What are you making tonight, Arun?

So I'm already starting grill chicken outside, and these are the potato I harvest from your garden.

Nice.

Onion, and I need to cut some garlic. So this potatoes, and I'm gonna use some greens from your garden for greens and some rice. Yeah, just like 4 different. And this is your chicken. Everything from the garden. My garden is like Romeo's farm.

Good. Uh, first up, the ducks. They're waddling about. Okay, they're not making too bad of a mess. Okay, the water's a little cloudy, but not really. It's, it's good. Nice. Everybody's happy and alive and well. Feed's not too cluttered up. I like it. You gonna bring in the minerals? Okay, thank you. Got a couple of escapees for the supper for you guys. Guys, you didn't eat all your cabbage. Uh, they ate some of it. They didn't eat it all. I think they ate all the cabbage heads save maybe a couple. I just got off of a business call. I told them to eat without me, and buddy, they did. They didn't hesitate, did they?

Lily got— Lily ate so much the second time, I was like, you better eat all that. And she did. I was shocked.

Empty plate. Everything. You love Indian food, don't you? She did.

She went back for greens, and it was all from the farm.

Everything.

Everything. The potatoes, the greens, everything but the rice. Wow, it was so good.

Here's the finished goods. Potatoes, greens, cucumbers.

It's good.

And the rice. Now, you still doing your YouTube channel? Yes. What's the name of it?

Cooking with Arun Kumar.

Oh, nice. I'll link that. What was your last video?

Uh, it's, uh, what was you saying? Yeah, so it's just, uh, I made some dressing, salad dressing.

Nice.

It's a cilantro lime dressing.

Cooking with Arun Kumar. All right, if you guys want this to happen in your house, you're gonna have to go cook with Arun Kumar.