It started the way a lot of good bad ideas start: driving past Agway. What began as an offhand comment turned into a very real plan. The thinking was simple — three ducks, one for each of us. Modest. Manageable. A nice little addition to the yard.
That lasted about as long as you'd expect. Three became twelve. Twelve became fourteen by the time our first season wrapped, spread across seven different breeds — three of them heritage varieties we didn't even know existed when this whole thing started.
Learning as we went
Neither of us came into this with a farming background. What we had was a lot of curiosity, a lot of research, and — pretty quickly — a lot of respect for heritage breed conservation. The more we learned about breeds like Cayuga, Blue Swedish, and Rouen ducks, the more serious we got about doing this properly: not just keeping ducks, but contributing to keeping these breeds around.
That's become the throughline for The Dank Duckery. We're working toward becoming a small heritage-breed and egg-production farm, with FSA and USDA registration currently in progress to make it official.
The part that surprised us most
Somewhere between naming every single duck (yes, including a Taco Bell) and figuring out which breeds actually like to swim the most, we crossed over from "this is a fun project" to "we are 110% invested in this." We didn't see that coming. We just know we're not turning back now.
If you want to meet the flock — Charlie, Maggie, Twiggy, Ginger, Pancake, Waffle, Maple, Peg, Indy, Sydley, Taco Bell, Ollie, Hazel, and Teddy Fresh — come say hi. We'd love to show you around.
--Matt