I left the gate open from the chicken yard to the potager garden for 10 seconds. I know it was 10 seconds because I was programming an Arduino system for a solar powered water pump. I was programming it for a 1000 ms interval. 1000 ms is all it took. These ducks waddle, but they waddle with the speed of the wind!

The upside is ducks don’t eat vegetables persay, but they love seedlings. Plantings for winter crops are toast! And their big 28 x 45cm (12” x 18”) bodies and two big waddle paddles tend to crush vegetables and tender vines indiscriminately. My pathways work great for humans, but ducks move in straight lines everywhere. How can I train ducks to use the 16 28cm pathways through the four quadrant potager.

I wonder what colonial farmers used to keep poultry and pests out of garden beds? Applied STEM Research is in the works!