Waddle Waddle Waddle

The Genuine Faux Farm (yep, that's us!) was recently featured in Iowa Ingredient in their episode featuring duck eggs and duck meat.  If you don't know Iowa Ingredient (an Iowa Public Television production) then you should go view the episode at this link.  All pictures in this blog post were shared by Iowa Ingredient on Facebook.

 It's amazing to think exactly how much footage was taken in an effort to have the quality snippets that were needed to make the show work.  Theresa Knight and the videographer (sorry, we have since forgotten his name) had to work very hard to get these shots with the inclement weather that made the whole thing much more difficult than it should have been for all of us.  In fact, we had to schedule and reschedule multiple times to get a second date where there would be some sun.  To make matters worse, the rain was not in the forecast for that day and it was a strange system where it came out of the Northeast.  Not only were we forced to adjust with the IPTV crew, but we had to do a great deal of adjusting with our own work crew by re-making our work plans on the fly.

These things happen every season - just not normally on the same day that you have a 'special event' going on.  Ok, maybe they always happen when you have something different at the farm - Murphy's Law you know.

Why are these eggs so wet?

 It's always interesting to see a finished filmed project and see the snippets that are used.  We have the context that surrounds the clips that viewers do not.  The IPTV crew were taking shelter in our garage while the rain came down, so we went and got some eggs out of the fridge so they could show the difference between duck and chicken eggs.  The eggs are sitting on top of our grill and they got a bit damp due to a combination of raindrops and condensation.

ok, this one is our picture.

It's amazing how perspective can make something look like more or less than it is.

Silver Appleyards with one Muscovey in foreground

 We're glad we were able to help Iowa Ingredient with this program and it's always nice to be associated with a quality product/program.  We will happily host them again in the future if they should desire it.

And now for the difficult part.  We no longer have ducks on the farm.  We actually liked raising them and would not mind trying it again.  But, the reality is that we couldn't find enough of a market for the duck eggs and duck meat.  We realize that the cost is higher (especially for the meat), but that is a function of the higher cost of ducklings and for processing.  In fact, we just recently cooked what I think is our last duck that was in the freezer this past weekend.  (yes, yes...our duck was cooked).  We love the taste and might consider raising a few for ourselves if nothing else.

So, the question is this: do you want us to continue raising ducks?

If you want us to, we need to hear it and we will need some commitment from you to make it work.