The Polyculture Project 2020 – Week 20
We’re pleased to announce that broody duck number two has successfully hatched 9 ducklings! With 10 from the first duck, and a third clutch of eggs being incubated, we’ve never had so many ducks on site. Space is proving to be a bit of an issue, because we only have one cage available to offer protection while the duckings are small, and also from the males, who are pretty forceful with the females and apparently can be very aggressive to young ducklings. We have had to mix the 2 females and their broods, and there seems to be some occasional tension, with both mother ducks snapping at the other’s offspring but nothing to worry about so far. Hopefully, the first batch can be released into the garden within a week or 2, freeing up some much needed space.
Common chicory – Cichorium intybus, a herbaceous perennial belonging to the dandelion family, Asteraceae. The pretty blue flowers attract a lot of beneficial organisms to the garden and can be added to the salad bowl, although they are somewhat bitter.
We’ve been spending some time at the beautiful Koprinka Dam, a lovely spot to relax in the hot summer months. Construction started on the dam in the 1940’s, and during the excavation of the site, the ancient Thracian city Seuthopolis was discovered. Despite this, the dam’s construction went ahead and the city lies submerged under the water here. There has been talk over the last decade of ‘raising the city’ by means of a dam wall surrounding the ruins in the middle of the dam.
We’ve been looking at some land around the dam. The soils here are sandy clay, very different to our soils just 14 km north but still great for growing forest gardens :)
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