Regenerative Farm Combines Ducks and Blueberries | Parc Carreg Duck Eggs, Wales

[Music] hi i'm josh and we're on park carrig the uk's only organic duck egg producer we have approximately 500 ducks on our 10 acre regenerative farm here in wales southwest wales we also have approximately 700 blueberries and a small flock of sheep and we also have young kyo and hachi our two dogs always by our side abigail and i used to live and work in london we had some good careers working in offices there and we were really concerned with the environmental problems that the world is facing and we felt pretty helpless and we just

we want we wanted to do something that made us feel like we were making some sort of positive impact and improving our own lives as well so we actually started off with the blueberry patch that was the first thing we knew we wanted to do so the blueberries was actually the starting point um and the ducks followed soon after that we started off with a small little flock of ducks as sort of pets just because we were interested in them but also you know we had no farming background and no history in agriculture so we

had been educating ourselves about how to produce food based on what we could find on the internet and a lot of that was permaculture related content and of course in the permaculture world ducks are heroes they are the slug the slug slayers we noticed and started realizing that there were actually very few people raising ducks commercially it wouldn't there was no one else in the country raising ducks um in a regenerative way on a large scale they just are way better for the welsh climate than chickens you know when it starts raining chickens tend to

run back to their to their coop whereas ducks do the opposite they just love it they preen themselves and they they have a bath the other reason we chose ducks is that they're flat-footed we have this blueberry patch where we we're mulching a lot we were using a lot of wood chip at the time blueberries tend to have really fine shallow root systems sort of live on the surface of almost on the surface of the soil so too much scratching would be detrimental to the blueberries so the flat feet of the ducks really works well

with the blueberries and the mulch and on top of that we had loads of slugs when we first moved here um to the area i mean we literally just had slugs crawling up our legs it was terrible so the quantity of slugs was a huge motivator to to get ducks on park carrick we have three different breeds we have the infamous khaki campbell which everyone knows as the ultimate slug slayer and egg layer we have then two closely related breeds one is the dark campbell and the other one is the welsh harlequin the welsh harlequin

another name for the welsh harlequin is honey campbell so they're also a campbell and they're very much related to the khaki campbells so they're equally good layers equally good slug slayers and they also welsh harlequins also happen to be really rare they're one of the the most rare of all duck breeds so we think it's great that we can help expand the the population a bit here most ducks that are raised commercially actually pretty much all ducks that are raised commercially in the uk are raised on concrete yards with access to maybe a small amount

of free range that tends to just be mud so um there's not much ability to select for the ducks that are really good at actually foraging on a large scale and free-ranging on a large scale so that was one of the reasons we decided to start breeding our own ducks and once we started that we realized actually we're the only organic duck breeders in the uk so so we we really got into into breeding so that we could actually take charge of the genetics and be more involved in that side of the business we have

two different uh houses at the moment for our ducks so our first house was the small one in the background there and and the second house we've recently gotten is a livestock tunnel ducks they really don't like change they that actually prefer to have a single location that they can go to bed at night a single location that they can lay their eggs and you can herd them so when you let the ducks out in the morning you can herd them to where you want them to be on that particular day so you can still

rotate your ducks like you might with chickens but you do it slightly differently you keep the house in one place and you herd the ducks to the location you want and you make sure that your water stations are set up there because the ducks are going to spend most of their time around those water stations are working with uh hundreds of ducks is fantastic um it's really they're like they're full of character and they're really they take themselves very seriously and they're really comical little things so we've been at this for five years and puns

is absolutely something that we want to install on quite a big scale here so we've started off with mobile paddle pools so they're little kiddie paddle pools that we fill up with water the ducks swim in them and then we just empty those onto the closest shrub or tree that happens to be nearby and that that that works really well the ducks love it and it's not like you know they're not disturbed by the fact that they don't have a big pond so that system works and we could carry on doing that for a while

but we are working towards a system where we will have ponds around the farm that we can allow 500 ducks to go and swim in obviously they're going to dirty that water and we're we're coming up with a system where we we will have a sort of a photo fertigation pond that we can then drain onto crops that need fertilization we're very excited about the potential of having multiple ponds on park carrig which can drain from one to the other and then potentially into the blueberry patch or into a tree row or something similar we

like to refer to the dark house as our compost factory we produce all our manure there spread it onto the garden which is directly downhill of the dark house and then we grow the planters and what we've been growing this year is a very hungry crop winter squash which is doing incredibly well um growing all over the side of the duck house we'll harvest that and sell that to our local organic wholesaler just across the road so um it's a great system and we're we're we're not by any means short of fertility here we've got

plenty of it we really need multiple businesses uh we could you know any one of these businesses wouldn't be enough um to make a livelihood and also uh we want diversity on on the farm we don't want just one crop or just one enterprise because without diversity we're not creating enough habitat for for you know the wildlife and we're not creating those opportunities to sink carbon and to grow trees and you know add to the local environment so by having multiple enterprises on park carrick we've got that diversity it's wonderful to see sheep and geese

and ducks and blueberries and trees all inhabiting the same space but trying to like keep order in that space is a real challenge and it's been it's been a learning process but it is it's it's beautiful to look at and it's also more productive economically the flock of sheep have expanded and contracted over the years and we've at the moment we've settled on a really small flock of of about um 20 sheep in total and they're really here to help manage the edges of the farm and the grass because they have a service to provide

they bring biodiversity they bring manure they um they move nutrients around the farm they nibble the hedges and move those nutrients to another part of the farm having a wild farm that has lots of biodiversity and having something that's completely wild where we can't be productive at all so the sheep help us with that dance they help us keep nature at bay but also bring some diversity at the same time the unique thing about geese is that they are grazers and they can live a hundred percent off grass but they are poultry ultimately they're still

birds they're and they're not ruminants so they they have this unique ability to gray to to consume a lot of forage and break it down in their crops and actually digest that and turn that into meat whereas most other poultry or all other poultry you know require dense food they're all they're all monogastrics just just like us and they need food which essentially you could argue could go towards human consumption whereas geese can take something that we can't eat and they can turn it into meat they're the only grass-fed livestock that that can purely be

fed on grass forage that isn't actually producing methane at the same time and whilst i think there's absolutely a place on all farms for some rumen and animals that happen to produce methane and my belief is that they're part of the ecosystem and we can't be getting rid of them on a large scale but i think it's an interesting conversation around geese and what they have to offer when we started trying to find a market for our duck eggs that was challenging we chose duck eggs because they were a niche product differentiated and something that

we could be the best at but at the same time the flip side to that challenge is that actually you have to build the market and you have to find the people who want to eat the duck eggs and a lot of people are very squeamish about duck eggs chicken eggs is just the norm and to change someone's habits is very difficult so any food that you're going to produce that is significantly different to what people are used to eating just be aware that it's it's good because it's niche and it's different and you've found

a point of difference but it's going to be hard to find a market over time i think that we will help increase the market for local duck egg sales abby and i both feel strongly that if we are privileged enough to have this 10 acres of land here that it's our duty to not only produce for ourselves but to be productive enough to produce food for others for us it's really important that our farm is both ecologically sound as well as economically sound we don't feel like humans should be separated from nature and that you

know all business and farming activity should be on on on some land and then you should rewild the rest of the country we feel like there should be a marriage between agriculture and wildlife and biodiversity because if you can scale that up across the country then the impact you could have would be amazing we see humans as being part of the ecosystem rather than separate perhaps it's a bit um idealistic and naive but it's what we've set out to do and i think so far i feel like we're on track to manage to earn a

basic living from our farm whilst also creating a diverse and um ecologically sustainable space and hopefully we carry on you know hopefully we survive and we manage to keep doing it [Music] [Applause] [Music] you