all about duckies 🐤

Photo by Jaeda Me on Unsplash

hola?

yup, i’m writing this in a corner of a coffee shop in my hometown.

i’m taking my time to enjoy life as a princess here. it’s very nice to be taken care of after being a super independent girl for so long. ngl, it’s quite tiring. i just want to be babied at the moment 😭

i’m not sure, but i think i’ve grown an unhealthy obsession with duckies more than i realize.

“duck egg” is my nickname at home. where did they even get that from?

growing up, every morning before school, i loved eating two duck eggs, sunny side up, alongside rice and veggies. my gramma always told me that i would grow up smart if i ate them. i always rejected chicken eggs because they tasted less yummy, and my gramma insisted that duck eggs were more natural and had more nutrients.

and i remember when i was in elementary school, after class, i used to go to our orange farm. it was located in the middle of the rice fields.

there was a little dead-end alley across from my house. at the very end, you wouldn’t find anything except greenery stretching as far as your eyes could see. you could also see the mountains, and in the distance stood a mysterious hill. people said it was haunted. there was a graveyard on the hill, and farmers often claimed to see creepy stuff when they went there early in the morning.

in the mornings, you could feel the cold breeze. that place became my playground after school with my brother and cousins. we were all around the same age.

after school, i used to walk to our orange farm. it took about five to ten minutes through narrow paddy paths covered with dirt and a little wild grass so they wouldn’t get too slippery. during the rainy season, everything became very muddy, but when it was sunny, the mud would dry up and you could walk freely without worrying about slipping into the water canal beside the path.

the water was crystal clear. you could see tiny fish and lots of apple snails. a lotttt.

if you paid enough attention, you could spot their eggs attached to rice stalks or along the sides of the water canals. i thought they were cute. little kids love bright-colored things. their eggs were pink in every shade imaginable. if you’ve ever ordered a strawberry milkshake with extra strawberry syrup, that’s probably the closest color i can think of.

but the farmers hated them.

apparently, their existence disrupted the growth of the rice fields. they were considered serious pests because they reproduced rapidly and loved eating young rice seedlings. so, we often collected them. in our village, they could be turned into a pretty yummy dish. although some people insisted they were poisonous ☠️

i used to have a favorite orange tree. out of all the trees scattered across the farm, i chose the one closest to a shallow, clear pond filled with tiny fish. i would scoop them up with a cup or try catching them with my bare hands. my brother had his own favorite tree too. we used to play under those trees, pretending they were our little camp houses. whenever we got hungry, we would head to the field hut. that’s where the workers ate the meals prepared by our family. i joined them too.

i don’t know. rice fields have their own kind of magic. the food tasted a thousand times better out there. considering how picky i was as a child, it’s still surprising that i could eat almost anything when i was sitting in that little hut, surrounded by green fields and fresh air.

then, right before dusk, it was time to go home. that’s when i would often see the duck farmers. i’ve always been amazed by them. watching a flock of ducks being guided by a farmer carrying a stick with a little white flag attached to it was the most fantastic thing ever. these animals were so disciplined. they would walk neatly in a line, following one another through the rice fields.

most of the time, i imagined myself doing the same thing with my favorite animal.

maybe i’d wear boots so my feet wouldn’t get dirty. maybe a bigger hat so i wouldn’t get tanned. although, looking at me now, i’m already very brown anyway 😭

and of course, a white shirt. it’d be so cool !

up until now, my favorite food is duck.

whether it’s the chinese version, roasted duck with crispy skin. ooofff, that’s so nice when you wrap everything together in a thin pancake, the crispy skin, slices of meat, scallions, cucumber, and then dip it all into hoisin sauce. heaven 😭 or the one i’ve been obsessed with since university. it’s called “bebek galak.” well, that’s actually just a nickname, not the real name of the restaurant.

as a huge fan of spicy food, that’s the best thing ever. i once tried to figure out the recipe myself, but i failed every single time. it’s still one of my favorite meals until today. sometimes, i even order it across islands. thankfully, they ship all over indonesia. usually it’s the frozen version with a minimum purchase requirement, but honestly, i don’t mind at all.

i love it.

speaking of ducks, i suddenly remembered tweety (?!)

my father used to buy me stuffed animals. i still have them, and my mother keeps them neatly arranged on a shelf in our tv room. there are tigers and duckies. tweety too, which is still technically a duckie in my head 😭

maybe i’m just too little excited ✨

lately, i’ve been thinking about building a small business back in my hometown.

i used to dream about having a house that looked like something straight out of hay day, with a kitchen garden inspired by a UN program in africa that promoted food security across communities. i was fascinated by how they adapted the european style of farming, combining a kitchen garden with small-scale agriculture so families could grow their own food while creating a more sustainable system. ever since i learned about it, i’ve wanted something similar for myself. a place where i could grow food, raise animals, and maybe create a little ecosystem of my own.

well, i haven’t achieved that dream yet. i still need to work harder, and may God bless me with abundance.

for the past year, a duck farm has been sitting in the back of my mind. i’ve even secured a plot of land in the village where i might build one someday.

but before i really, really start, i realize i still have so much to learn. not just about raising ducks, but about building a farm and a business from the ground up. i need to talk to people who have done it before, visit farms, ask endless questions, read books, watch videos, understand the market, learn from other people’s mistakes, and maybe make a few mistakes of my own too 😭

i need to understand how many ducks are enough to start, how much feed costs, what diseases i should be worried about, who would buy the eggs or the meat, whether i should focus on one product or several, and what happens if things don’t go according to plan.

then there are the numbers, the money coming in, the money going out, the margins, the risks, the possibilities, and all the little things nobody tells you until you’re already doing it.

there’s a lot to consider. a lot to think about.

but maybe that’s how every dream starts.

ˢᵖᵉᵃᵏᵉᵃˢʸ