Geoff Colpitts

According to Pascal Badaur, their position in the ecology is "meal".
Though I believe his book and others disagree about which variety - pill, or non pill - are edible.  One variety is a millipede, which is inedible... you'll look it up anyways.

As for eating seedlings, the contest seems silly to me:  if they prefer leaf litter, then likely it's just our all too natural tendency to clean up our gardens - cleanliness is only next to godliness in medicine and... something witty.  Give them leaf litter to eat and they may not bother with your seedlings to any large degree.  If the population explodes, you probably just killed all your centipedes and ground beetles etc. etc.

The problem is more one of philosophy. Part of my critter care ideals is to not have any animal I am not willing or able to eat. While I might not dash right out to slaughter a hen, especially a favorite one, I *could*. I just wouldn't like it. Because I have managed to give my husband food poisoning with the two ducks I have tried to cook, he refuses to try to eat any more duck. I don't blame him at all, after all food poisoning two out of two times is a bit much. I don't care for the flavor of duck meat, myself. So, based on our "rules", no ducks.
quab.  :p

Allergies to various poultry do, apparently, exist.

Alternatively, perhaps he likes leg meat?  Duck legs are notoriously slow to cook and are often cooked separately.  Also, if you didn't drain the fat from the skin properly you can/will under OR overcook it.  Also, though duck is far less likely when store-bought to have salmonella, it's not a guarantee, since large companies are developing ways to tortu... sorry, I meant "developing ways to get around that issue", so assuming you bought them....  

Ducks vs chickens, seriously???   I think it's a bit macabre as a question, but I'd say that although the chicken has a sharper beak and talons, the duck is probably more lithe and muscled from all the swimming, so I'd say that as long as the duck gets in close, the chicken won't stand a chance.  It would be like a trained martial artist vs an out of shape person with a spear and a knife.

Chickens DESTROY. I can let ducks free range in the garden, and they don't really kill anything, and they eat the spiders and rollipollies that eat my plants. I'll fence them out if I'm sprouting peas or beans, but other than that, I really don't worry about them. If a chicken gets in a garden, that garden is tilled and destroyed in like 30 minutes. 1 chicken in garden bed = mass destruction.

This is what I've read from Permaculture books for what it's worth - ducks don't tend to rip out seedlings, while chickens do.  Chickens are like cows - they developed in rare areas of the planet where it was ok if they ripped stuff up.  Living in the PNW, I have no idea what that's like, if it's even true.

While it's tangential, ducks at present are less likely to be kept in chicken-like conditions, if you know what I mean, so in terms of culinary culture, there are probably more people per capita who are comfortable cooking ducks, even if there are more overall who cook chickens.  Salmonella is a terrifying ever-present spectre in chicken, so when I was working as a home care nurse, I took pleasure in cooking duck instead, just because it was more relaxing.

More like grubs, beetles, and seeds than worms for birds I think.  Berry bushes, rotting logs, and sunflowers for those, respectively.  Worms in my area (PNW Vancouver) are an invasive pest that actually prevent forest tree seeds from germinating, and the effects of that change are completely unknown and generally disturbing.

As for worms themselves, if you really want more and have... whatever also eats worms (moles??), leaf mulch most likely.  Stable temperature, even moisture, soaks up rain so it won't drown them.

Worms aren't the only soil enricher, they just have a lot of press from european writers who think european methods work everywhere because everywhere is europe... although if you're IN europe.... (Brexit notwithstanding...)

Make Ketchup instead?  Originally that which was called ketchup had no tomatoes.

Have heard of using Haws in a pinch.  Probably from the river cottage jam book.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Ah, Geoff, clearly you have an opinion, but did you bother to vote? Tsk.

I plan to start a thread vis. "Outrageous Claims and Blatant Falsehoods." (No, really, in Meaningless Drivel.) I sincerely hope you will chime in.

I don't believe one can have an opinion on garments being better than one another, unless they are part of the same grouping of garments, and my earlier comment should have indicated that I did not think of capes and cloaks as part of the same group.  In terms of Valencia Orange vs Navel Orange for example, I could vote a preference, because the pragmatic uses of them are extremely similar, but capes and cloaks (and tabards?) are to me like oranges and pineapples, and in that case I would not vote.

Capes have need for less material overall.  They are useful for identifying where a person is from a distance, especially for those who have spent a large portion of their lives reading on the computer.  While it may be easier to simply dye one's clothes, or work in patterns, it could nonetheless be useful to keep track of children, so you don't put an arrow through them, which is traditionally a negative.  Many traditional toys for children happen to be things that, say, make a large noise that, while entertaining them, frightens the local werebear away.  (One could contend that adult entertainment is for frightening away philosophy.)  

I suspect however that the most common cape traditions originate from the old saying "oh ****, I just dropped the bottom of my cloak in buffalo excreta...  I guess it could still be a cape."

A friend had a desert cloak - thick black wool, which was so thick, I believe, that the sun couldn't warm it all the way through.  More importantly, she would sleep in it when she didn't find a hotel in europe, as they were for sleeping in the freezing desert nights.  They end up heavy and large though, to be good.

Cj Sloane wrote:

William Bronson wrote:
What can one do with tannin filled water?

How about adding it to cider? If you don't have cider apples, you need to add tannins somehow. For my last batch I added tea bags

Possible, but unlikely - crab apples are easier to add to cider for tannins.  Most orchards grow crab apple trees in order to boost pollination, so no problems there.  It's hard finding good quality crabs in the city though, so maybe for urban ciders, but again I think you need pretty limited numbers of crabs to make apple cider/scrumpy.  I'm using maybe 30 crabs to a 30 gallon scrumpy cider.  If it really added to the taste, perhaps.  I doubt you'd have to use the acorns anyways though - the shells still have a lot of tannins left as I recall.

I discovered that the toughest adversary to leaving acorns in a stream to get rid of tannins is the "Overzealous Park Ranger" who evidently found them and removed them.  Nevertheless, it seems the best way to do it if you have a natural stream.

Nature's Garden (Thayer) had a section on acorns which was fairly good.  I believe it was from there that I got this anecdote:  early californians were called "acorn-eaters" as an epithet, indicating that they were eating lousy food.  However, much like the europeans who replaced the pine forests with beef cattle (and gave the first nations there protein deficiencies as a result) acorns were actually more nutritious than the alternatives.  Perhaps the epithet had roots in the fact that acorns, if not processed quickly, will mold easily (those that didn't know that would assume that acorns were a terrible idea for a staple food.)  Of course, they might have thought different once the healthier acorn eaters slaughtered them with their strong limbs and oak spears....

Sharon Kallis in Vancouver did work with bio-netting - taking invasive english ivy and crocheting it into large nets.  It doesn't take that long, since crocheting is so ludicrously efficient.  The nets are laid down and pressed into the top layer of soil (on hillsides here in the PNW, because of the heavy rains) and they prevent erosion, allowing the native transplants to actually have a chance.  I will try and source an article from her, as this is about the 5th time I've needed one.

In the same vein, perhaps learn how to do basic weaving with whatever you have available, and create artificial shade to allow plants to establish themselves and get deeper root systems.  Poles and a cross-hatched shade-structure at an angle that faces the hottest sunlight.  It's a bandaid solution, but could come in handy in the future, and because it's going to have lots of holes in it, it'll have a little less wind-resistance.

Desert farming techniques involve planting things about a foot deep.  As long as there is no absolute ridiculous hardpan, plants can have a water source as long as they have time to establish incredibly deep roots (some (most?) watering is done because root systems are undeveloped, for one reason or another, not because plants necessarily need watering.)  Have to research desert farming though, there are sources on youtube etc. from Arizona/New Mexico.

Mulch is not necessarily good - according to Steve Solomon, mulch (depending on what it is) often just facilitates water wicking up to the surface.  When farming with no water, he allowed the top 4 inches to totally dry out.  This stops the wicking action from the water below that point (basically shading the 4 inch and below area.)  Watering breaks this cycle, ironically, and allows for far more water loss unless it's a lot of water.  Very dry mulch is ok, but anything that might compact is a bad idea.  It supports the desert farming techniques above, in that water should ideally be got from 4 feet down, not the top foot of soil.

It also may be easier to plant a windbreak-hedgerow and get rid of some of the wind before tackling the area.

Rotten logs can store an amazing amount of moisture, and if rotten enough, plant roots can penetrate them.  Nurse logs can provide some shade as well.  Could be possible to root things into them in a shadier area, then bring out the logs and bury them.  Another bandaid solution.  The company bandaid is getting a lot of free advertising here.