“You don’t have a slug problem. . . you have duck deficiency”

This year, partially because of the long wet spring I’m sure, we had a lot of slugs and mosquitos around here. The slugs wreaked havoc on our seedlings and the mosquito’s drove us crazy when when we weeded in the evenings. Part of the Permaculture ethos is controlling ‘pests’ by natural means so, ducks being predators of both slugs and mosquitos, we decided to get a few ducks. 

After a quick craigslist search I found some week old ducklings here in Maple Ridge for $5. I thought that seemed like a good deal and $30 would get us more ducks than we need as long as we can protect them from coyote’s, hawks, etc. Matt, Kai and I threw the cat carrier in the back of the truck and headed down to Mike’s place to pick them up.

Mike and and his son Vick were very generous and gave us 7 older more expensive ducklings for the price of 6 new ones. They even sent us off with a red wagon Kai had found and started playing with. They really took a liking to Kai and told us to bring him back for a visit sometime. We left grateful for the kindness and generosity of strangers.

A couple days later Julie, Kai and I left for a week long vacation and when we got back I had an email from Vick saying to call him because his dad had something for us. I called him and he invited me back to their place. This time I brought Kai and Jocelyn. When we got there they gave us a tour of their farm, brought us juice and ice cream for Kai and then said they wanted to give us some full grown ducks so we wouldn’t have to wait for our young ones to start laying eggs. They packed our little cat carrier full of 5 full grown drakes and told me to come back that evening for some hens. They gave us 8 more. So in addition to the good deal on the original 7 ducklings Mike and Vick gave us 13 full grown ducks that they would normally have sold for $30 each. 

So thank you Mike and Vick… We are blown away at your kindness and generosity to us strangers who are now your friends. You are an inspiration to us and I hope I am able to see the opportunities to do the same for strangers who walk into our life.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMTEHp5o8f8?wmode=transparent]