The Way Things Should Be

Ducks on Slug Patrol

Last year slugs and snails basically wiped out our strawberries, so we got some ducks. This year, the ducks wiped out the slugs and snails. We only have 4 ducks, and they visit the garden once or twice a day, and they're able to eat almost every slug and snail that shows itself during that time. They even find the snails and slugs that are trying to hide out. During the rest of the day, a small army of songbirds hunts for bugs in the garden to feed their progeny.

We're really, really far from having a closed loop, "self sustaining" farm, but it seems plausible, and that's what I'm working toward. We're also pretty far from being able to produce large quantities of food that we could make a living selling. This year I'll probably just give away the surplus strawberries we'll have--maybe 50 quarts.

Unfortunately it's taken me many years, where many of the best years of my life were squandered on nonsense, to figure out this is what I want to do. It's embarrassing to admit how effective trash like the media, movies, and even works of fiction were in leading me down bad paths over and over again to yet another dead end.