The Muscovy duck is now a rambunctious teenager, much like any other teenager, growing like gangbusters, hanging out with his teenaged brothers and sisters, constantly eating and horsing around.
The Queensland Blue, on the other hand, is a gentler, quieter thing. Right now it's a bright lime-green and about the size of a half loaf of bread, working its way through set-backs toward fulfilling its destiny as a big, flattened squash, slate blue in colour with a rich orange flesh.
What follows is part of a series started mid-May to track these two local foods from field to table.
The squash is being raised by Sarah McMillan at Rootdown Organics and the duckling by Jennie Helmer on Helmers' Organic Farm, both representative of the conscientious farmers in the Pemberton area dedicated to raising wholesome food, and both our local "field" correspondents, sharing their respective tales from hatchling and seedling to dinner plate, come what may.
Teen age never changes
When we first we met our Muscovy duck in May, he was a small puffball of yellow and grey-brown fluff that had hatched only a few days earlier.
In about three and a half months he - and he is simply a "he" as the Helmers never name their animals destined to be eaten, although they are raised with lots of love - has grown as big as his mother, Hannah. He's very white, like her, with some grey on his back, and comes up to about mid-calf.
"They (boy-duck and his six siblings) have exploded in the last month," says Jennie. "They've tripled in size from mid-July to now, so you'd have no way to distinguish him from his mother other than the way they act. We call them teenagers at this stage."
And teenagers they are - constantly playing and bugging each other, enjoying the life of Riley, as Jennie puts it. "They spend their whole day together. Wherever one goes, they all follow right away. It's very cute."
One reason farmers used to keep Muscovy ducks, which are a rare breed now, given the different requirements of industrialized commercial farming, is that they're so prolific. But the cold spring this year put a damper on Hannah's first "litter", ergo only seven ducklings in boy-duck's set. However, she followed that with a set of 17, so the teenagers and their younger siblings sometimes hang out together in a giant familial jumble of 24 ducklings, large and small.
Cool weather in June held back their growth and didn't give July a very good set up, as it did with everything else on the farm. Then the August heat hit, not record-setting, but close - "and everything just went."
"The tomatoes went off, the cukes went off and the ducks went off. So August has really been very much a growing and ripening month, which is not abnormal, just it's usually spread out a little bit over July as well," says Jennie, who worked in 37-degree heat out in the fields the day before we spoke.
As for unusual events, it's been interesting times recently but no real cause for alarm. Pemberton Valley was filled with smoke from wildfires for about a week, but the animals don't react in such circumstances, staying very calm.
Then the second largest landslide in Canadian history occurred north of Pemberton when a melting Capricorn Glacier collapsed, bringing down with it a 40-million-cubic-metre wall of rock and debris.
Like others in the area, the Helmers were under evacuation order after Meager Creek and Lillooet River were blocked. But, much like their animals, they remained calm and stayed behind to look after them.
"We've had many floods over the years so we have four boats up in the rafters of our barns, so we're ready if something happens," says Jennie.
In true farming spirit, they know they have about six hours to move the cows, pigs and machinery to higher ground, put out feed high in the barns for the ducks and chickens, who can cope with rising water, and get themselves and their dogs and cats out in the boats, à la Noah's ark.
This time, however, no evasive action was needed, and so the quotidian saga of boy-duck continues.
Blimey, it's limey
Sarah McMillan grew up enjoying the delicious Queensland Blue squash, which her mom would serve for roast dinners in Sydney, Australia, where she was raised. But she'd never seen one growing, so when she and her partner, Gavin Wright, bought their first property to expand their Rootdown Organics operation, Queensland Blue seeds were part of the inaugural mail order.
All their winter squash seedlings were started in a greenhouse then transplanted outdoors June 2, around the time Helmer's boy-duck was about a month old. Now about a dozen smallish bright lime-green squashes have formed from fertilized female squash blossoms. (Squash plants have both male and female flowers.)
After a slow start in the greenhouse, where they showed signs of struggling, including not germinating as readily as other squash - something that often happens with heirloom seeds like these - the Queensland Blue plants took off, thanks to loads of manure dug into the soil and rolls of black plastic mulch.
"They were super green and strong," says Sarah, who did the Sowing Seeds program at UBC Farm in Vancouver. "They have a really big leaf, about the size of two hands put together, and big vines trailing out from the central stock a couple of metres across the pathway."
Then around the end of July, some of the leaves started yellowing. By mid-August, brown patches in concentric rings started showing, a sign of early blight. It likely started in the greenhouse and wasn't helped by the cold, grey June.
So, as organic farmers, what will they do? Not much besides watching the plants, and picking off leaves that get really bad.
"We get so paranoid... But 80-85 per cent of the time plants make it through and do what they need to do, and you're amazed," Sarah says. "We forget the strength and power they have in themselves to survive... so things tend to work out more than you ever expected."
Good news for Sarah and Gavin, who've had to work their land hard to get going, tilling and digging to get rid of grasses, horsetail and other weeds, and replenishing nutrients since the property hadn't been farmed for years.
As for the flood danger, they took their cue from the Helmers and stayed on.
"It's better to be here because we aren't insured for that sort of thing, so you might as well try and save what you can," she says.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelance writer who grew her first plant at age six.
