Diploma apprentice’s name	Erkki Pöytäniemi
Date Apprentice started Diploma	May 2021
Project Title	Design 6 – Ducks
Design Number	6/10
Date Design Started	2024-08-12
Date Design Completed	2024-10-21 / 2024-11-12
Has the Design been implemented?	yes
Online Link to Design (if available)	https://iso-orvokkiniitty.fi/dpaerkki/2024/09/03/design-8-ducks/
Type of Design	Land Based
Design Framework	VOEDIMET
Design Category	Land & Nature Stewardship, Building, Tools & Technology
Tools used	Ethics to state vision, Zones, Sectors, Elements and functions analysis, Input-output, Poop-loop, McHarg, PMI, Holmgren design principles, Adobe Illustrator, illustrations, Tables, Lists, Photos, Obsidian
Name of Personal Tutor	Andreas Jonsson
Ready for Presentation	Ready 2024-11-13

Content

• Brief
• Permaculture Ethics
  • Earth care
  • People care
  • Fair share
  • Animal care
• Design Framework
  • VOEDIMET
  • Design Categories
  • Integrations with other designs
• V: Vision based on permaculture ethical principles
• O: Observe & Analyse
  • Snails and slugs
    • Spanish slug
    • Copse snail
    • Succinea putris
    • Snails and slugs at Iso-orvokkiniitty
  • Ducks
  • The Site
  • Needs
  • Elements – functions analysis
  • Poop loop
  • Zones
• E: Evaluate & Goals
  • How many ducks do we need or want to have?
  • What breed of ducks and where to get them?
  • Where shall we locate the duck house?
  • What kind of shelter should we arrange for them?
  • Where can they forage?
  • How many eggs can we use, share or sell? How about the meat?
  • Goals
• D: Design using permaculture design principles
  • Holmgren’s permaculture design principles
  • The duck house and run
  • The fencing
  • Feed and water
  • Managing poop
  • Other aspects
• I: Implement
  • Ducks
  • Duck house
  • Fencing
  • Budget
• M: Maintain
• E: Evaluate
• T: Tweak
• Reflection
• References

Brief:

So far we haven’t had any domesticated animals at Iso-orvokkiniitty apart from our 2 dogs and honeybees. We have discussed chicken but haven’t been able to solve the question of where to keep them in the winter. Gradually we have also understood that we need ducks because “we don’t have a snails problem, we have a lack of ducks”. In 2024 the Copse snail but especially the Spanish slug situation has exploded and we need a solution for that. The primary function of the ducks is fighting the snails and slugs problem. The main challenge is that we don’t have any place where to put them. 

The aim of this design is to integrate ducks into Iso-orvokkiniitty in a way that solves the snails&slugs problem, provides other benefits in the form of eggs and meat and considers Animal Care ethics. The immediate goal is to start with ducks at Iso-orvokkiniitty in autumn 2024.

This design is a part of our design for Producing our food at Iso-orvokkiniitty – Iso-orvokkiniitty food system (not done yet).  

Permaculture Ethics

Earth Care

The ducks will be a part of our food system but should also increase the well-being of the Earth and Nature. Therefore it should:

• Increase biodiversity on and around our site:
  • The Spanish Slug is an Introduced species and an Invasive species in Finland. Invasive species generally decrease biodiversity so controlling them increases it.
  • Ducks will add a new layer of diversity in the system we manage.
  • Be aware of how the ducks affect the natural systems around us.
• Sequester carbon in the system and mitigate climate change:
  • Animals are an important part in the ecosystem carbon cycle and if managed correctly help in carbon sequestration
  • Duck poop adds nitrogen and microbial life to the soil (either directly or through compost) and thereby can increase life and the humus content in our soils.
• Offset emissions caused by external inputs:
  • We will need to build facilities
  • We will need to buy some feed which, even if organic, has an ecological footprint.
  • The ducks system should bind sufficient amounts of carbon and increase biodiversity to offset the above.

People Care

The food system should increase the health and well being of us and people around us:

• It should provide for our need of food and beverage in a healthy and balanced way:
  • Ducks will decrease the pressure of snails and slugs on our cultivated plants and thereby decrease our workload in fighting the snails and increase the yields and quality of our crops.
  • Ducks can be used to provide eggs and meat, i.e. produce high quality protein for us which is challenging to achieve purely with a homestead-produced plant based diet.
• The workload should be on a level to cause fulfilment, not exhaustion
  • Ducks, like any domestic animals require commitment
  • The ducks will work for us by eating snails and slugs thereby saving us the time and effort of collecting and killing them ourselves.
• Developing the food system should be interesting and empowering
• It should generate a surplus and thereby opportunities of sharing and a side income
  • Ducks lay eggs, more than we can eat.

Fair Share

• Produce a sellable surplus and exchange or sell it at a fair price
• Share the unsellable surplus when possible
• It is fair to control the slugs so they don’t spread into our neighbours’ gardens
• Share knowledge, ideas, workload and equipment as reasonably possible
• Share with the future and with nature

Animal Care

Alex Heffron argues in The basics of permaculture — ethics and principles by Alex Heffron that the 3 Permaculture Ethical Principles don’t cover domesticated animals. He proposes the 4th ethic because “Ethically-speaking I feel it’s incumbent on us (our responsibility) to consider the domesticated animal’s welfare as equal and paramount.” Having worked in the food and agriculture sector for decades we are both (Marja and me) quite sensitive to animal welfare issues. We are aware of the problems in industrial animal husbandry but we have also seen that small scale is no guarantee for high animal welfare standards. Lack of resources or know-how can lead to sub-standard or even illegal conditions for animals on small homesteading holdings.

Nevertheless we think that small scale homesteading animal husbandry can be ethically the best solution in terms of giving the animals good conditions, plenty of space both in shelter and for foraging and a possibility to perform their natural behaviour including sexual and parental behaviour. In the case of ducks water is a key element and at Iso-orvokkiniitty they will have access to ponds.

Speaking about Animal Care of domesticated animals presupposes that it is ethically sound to keep animals for our own benefit. This is more a choice than something that can be objectively decided in one direction or the other. In our mind animals belong in a healthy and balanced food system. Naturally this view excludes industrial animal husbandry.

Design Framework

In Design 4 – Forest Garden I proposed VOEDIMET based on GoSADIMET and VOBREDIM that I had used until then. My main motivation was to clarify the differences between Vision and Goals on the other hand and Analyse and Evaluate on the other. My thinking is that Vision (the world I would like to see) should be formulated right in the beginning of the design but Goals (measurable goals of the design) can not be realistically set before observation, analysis and evaluation.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary Analysis is a detailed examination of anything complex in order to understand its nature or to determine its essential features : a thorough study. Evaluation is determination of the value, nature, character, or quality of something or someone. 

So observing (including borders and resources) and analysing should be closely linked. You observe and analyse first trying not to make judgements. But before designing you need to evaluate what you found relevant to your vision and aims. Based on that you can set goals for the design.

In Design 5: Mushroom cultivation at Iso-orvokkiniitty I included some elements of CEAP into VOEDIMET: What CEAP points to in developing the VOEDIMET framework further is elaborating permaculture principles. The V should be “Vision based on permaculture ethical principles” and the D should be “Design using permaculture design principles”.

VOEDIMET:

• V : Vision based on permaculture ethical principles
• O : Observe & Analyse
• E : Evaluate & Goals
• D : Design using permaculture design principles
• I : Implement
• M : Maintain
• E : Evaluate
• T : Tweak

I will use VOEDIMET in this design.

Design Categories

This design is mainly in

• Land & Nature Stewardship (PF)
  • The design is a part of the Iso-orvokkiniitty food system. Ducks produce eggs and meat and help us produce vegetables.
• Building (PF)
  • The ducks need shelter and fencing.
• Tools & Technology (PF)
  • The ducks are a tool for controlling slugs and snails

Integrations to other designs

• Design 1 – Ponds at Iso-orvokkiniitty
  • Ducks need a pond. This wasn’t foreseen when I made the Ponds design, but now it is an asset that we have the ponds. I need to asses if the ducks somehow challenge the original purpose or the functioning of the ponds or if they are helpful.
• Design 2 – Buildings and Energy systems
  • We don’t have any old barn etc where to put the ducks so something needs to be built. Fencing needs to be considered from the point of view where we want or don’t want the ducks. Electricity is not available in the winter if warming the shelter should be necessary.
• Design 4 – Forest Garden
  • Ducks have space, shelter and food in the forest garden.
• Design 5 – Mushroom cultivation at Iso-orvokkiniitty
  • Slugs can be a problem also in mushroom cultivation.
• Design (9B) – Producing our food at Iso-orvokkiniitty
  • Ducks contribute animal protein to our diet.
  • Can we grow the feed for the ducks?

V: Vision based on permaculture ethical principles

In Design 00 – My Permaculture Diploma Path I have defined:

My Vision is based on the Permaculture Ethical Principles: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.

My Vision is a world where humankind has decreased its ecological footprint to a sustainable level that enables both human kind and the rest of nature to thrive without depriving future generations of their opportunity to do the same. This was achieved in a socially just and fair way while developing societies based on the principles of equity. To achieve this humankind learned to use wisdom to understand its limits of what it should do and what it should not do.

My Quality of Life Statement

The Quality of life statement is used in Holistic Management. “It is an expression of how you, the decision-makers, want your lives to be within the whole under management (while meeting the purpose – if one has been stated).” I went through an iteration of words and came to the following:

I want to lead a life of personal growth, based on ethics and wisdom striving for ecological balance, community and connectedness.

My Statement of Purpose is that I strive to realise My Vision and Quality of life statement by means of teaching and promoting permaculture and sociocracy and implementing permaculture at Iso-orvokkiniitty while exploring and utilising all the other good stuff that is floating around them.

In Design 9B – Producing our food at Iso-orvokkiniitty I have developed the vision (Design 9B is work in progress):

Develop a high degree of food self sufficiency on Iso-orvokkiniitty while having a net positive effect on the Earth (keeping us away from the Planetary Boundaries) and on the physical and mental wellbeing of ourselves. Integrate with others locally who have similar aims to develop their own and the local food self suficiency and food sovereignty.

The Vision specifically for this Ducks design is

We have eliminated the problem with snails and slugs at Iso-orvokkiniitty and at the same time we produce valuable animal protein for ourselves and others based largely on our own resources. We do this in a way that is in line with our overall Vision and with the Permaculture Ethics, including the 4th ethic.

O : Observe & Analyse

Snails and Slugs

The first observation is that the populations of slugs and snails at Iso-orvokkiniitty have exploded in 2024. There is probably at least one Spanish slug per square meter on the whole Iso-orvokkiniitty garden, forest garden and meadow area which means they are eating 150 kg of plant material per day (10 g per slug per day) – or 4500 kg per month – on the 1,5 hectare area we manage and laying 4 million eggs in a season.

Spanish slug (en.wikipedia.org, fi.wikipedia.org)

“The habitat of Arion vulgaris includes all agricultural ecosystems, as well as natural environments such as river and lake margins, forest edges, forests in valleys or meadows.

It is a serious agricultural and horticultural pest in large parts of Europe, eating a cosmopolitan range of growing plant parts as well as decaying vegetation. Opportunistically it eats carrion, including squashed conspecifics. It is active mostly during the night and in wet weather during the day. Densities can reach 50 individuals per m2 or locally even higher.

Whilst a slug can crawl several metres within a night, long-distance dispersal is believed to be on vegetables, on horticultural seedlings, and on plant debris disposed of as waste.

The species has an annual life cycle with mating starting in July and eggs first laid some weeks later in late summer. Clutches are laid on the soil surface or in crevices up to 10 cm underground, with an average clutch size of about 70 eggs; an adult slug typically lays about 400 eggs in its lifetime. The eggs hatch from autumn to spring. Neither eggs nor slugs can survive temperatures below -3 °C, so overwinter survival depends on hiding under shelters. Adults normally die off in autumn before winter frosts.”

The Spanish slug was first found in continental Finland in 1994 and has gradually spread north and individuals have been found all the way up at the polar circle.

Copse snail (en.wikipedia, fi.wikipedia)

Arianta arbustorum lives in forests and open habitats of any kind. It requires humidity. It lives also in disturbed habitats. In Finland it is found almost solely in cultural habitats (gardens etc) mainly in Southern Finland.

It feeds on green herbs, dead animals and faeces. It is a good climber. It can eat 1/3 of it’s weight in a day, i.e. 100 snails can eat 2 kg plant material in a month.

If snails hatched more than 50 m distant from each other, they are considered isolated since they would not move more than 25 m (neighbourhood area 32–50 m), usually they move about 7–12 m in a year, mostly along water currents.

It has spread in recent years in South Finland and can locally reach up to 500 snails per square meter!

This species of snail makes and uses calcareous love darts during mating. Reproduction is usually after copulation, but self-fertilization is also possible. The size of the egg is 3.2 mm. Maturity is reached after 2–4 years. The maximum age up to 14 years.

Succinea putris (en.wikipedia, ötökkätieto)

Succinea putris is a species of small air-breathing land snail in the family Succineidae, the amber snails. The shell is 10-17 mm. It thrives in moist vegetation. It is not considered a problem in gardens but it gets easily picked together with berries.

Snails and Slugs at Iso-orvokkiniitty

Over the years the Copse snail has caused the biggest damage in the garden. We have it in huge numbers all over the property. It can be found all over the neighbourhood here so it is not limited to our property. Not found in the forest.

We have most probably imported the Spanish slug with plant material several years ago. We found it originally only in our garden and tried to manage it by picking them and killing with boiling water. In 2023 we could observe that it was spreading into the grasslands around the garden. In 2024 the population exploded and managing it by collecting them became hopeless. They are also now on the whole property spreading in the grassland and having reached at least our neighbour to the south and probably also our neighbour to the north. Fortunately it has not spread into the forest – probably it is not a suitable habitat for it. We see Spanish slugs even after frosty nights and definitely we have deep ground frost most winters so -3°C killing Spanish slugs doesn’t seem credible.

Succinea putris can be found on berry bushes etc.

We also have Limax cinereoniger (ash-black slug) in much lower numbers. They are big but considered harmless. It can be found also in the forest. Also the common Arion fuscus can be found.

Ducks

The common duck originates from the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and has been bred in China for over 2000 years and was also kept in the Roman Empire. Ducks are bigger than mallards weighing 1,8-2,7 kg and normally they are unable to fly. Eggs are somewhat bigger than chicken eggs (80-90 g) and ducks can lay up to 300 eggs per year.

There are several breeds of ducks, in Finland most of the ducks are cross-breeds. Pekin ducks, Running Ducks and Swedish Ducks are mentioned as possible ancestors. There doesn’t seem to be a Finnish landrace.

Information about ducks:

There is no recent literature about ducks in Finnish, so I am using other sources like the Ducks Facebook group in Finnish for localised information. I ordered the book “Dave Holderread – Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks” (2) which was recommended in several sources.

It is common understanding that ducks can be used for controlling snails and slugs and a statement to that effect is made already on page 2 in Holderread’s book.

The site

The site is already familiar to the reader from previous designs. The map shows the Ponds and the main cultivation areas:

• the Potager (perennials)
• The Field
• The Annual Vegetable garden (fenced)
• The Vinyard (fenced) and the planned extension to the Vinyard
• the existing buildings and roads and the mowing robot’s route (red line).

All the cultivation areas were considered Zone 2 in previous designs.

Limiting factors:

• no buildings where to put the ducks
• no extra electricity in the winter period

Existing elements

• ponds
• plenty of space, distance to road
• exsisting fences around the vegetable garden and vinyard

Needs

Our needs have been stated above:

• primary need: manage the snails and slugs
• secondary need: animal protein (eggs and meat)

The Ducks needs:

The official minimum needs of ducks are defined in the guide booklet “Ankka ja hanhi – eläinsuojelulainsäädäntöä koottuna” (Ducks and Geese – summary of animal protection legislation) from the Finnish Food Safety Authority (Ruokavirasto). Some specific points:

• all the birds need to have space to settle down simultaneously
• ducks need water where they can dip their head
• there must be sufficient dry matter on the floor
• rodents should be prevented from getting in the shelter
• bird flu restrictions (8.2. – 31.5.)
• ducks used for breeding that have access to outside can be kept max 4 ducks /m2
  • (for meat production 20 kg/m2)

Our main concern has been the ducks’ cold tolerance in the winter. With lack of electricity we don’t have any easy solution for warming up the duck shelter. In Finnish discussion forums different views are given, some giving -10°C as a minimum recommendation, some referring to old guidelines saying -20°C is ok and some siting their own experience of ducks still showing preference to being outside at -34°C when the alternative is a warm chicken shelter. Also the observation is made that wild ducks (mallards) will swim at basically any temperature as long as there is an unfrozen spot available for them. We also watched North American youtube videos about cold climate ducks and the consensus seemed to be that cold is not a problem for ducks: down to -30 or even -40°C is ok as long as they have sufficient feed and a shelter (f.ex. Hidden Spring farm and Gold Shaw Farm).

As a conclusion cold doesn’t seem to be a problem for ducks as long as

• they are used to it, i.e. they are consistently outside through the autumn into winter
• they have a shelter that is dry and draft-free and suitable litter
• they have straw also outside during snow periods
• they get liquid water every day for washing their head and nostrils
• they have enough food (energy consumption increases in cold)

Feed
Most sources refer to using the same commercial feed that is sold for chicken. However vitamin B3 (niacin) is critical for ducks so this should be supplemented especially in the winter. Calcium and gravel should be available. In the summer need for feed should be quite low when the ducks are foraging. However the feeding period will be quite long, from end of foraging when snow comes in November until the end of birds flu restrictions in the end of May.

Externally purchased feed should be organic for it to be somehow in line with the Earth Care principle. Consuming commercial feed and grain – even organic – is a weak point of homesteading ducks (or chicken). It links the ducks to the industrial food system. Of course this should be put in context: we are anyway linked to the industrial food system through the food we buy from supermarkets. Are the ducks going to increase or decrease this link? An important point is in which point of the value chain is the linking happening? If we buy organic grain or feed mixes directly from a local (or even just Finnish) organic farm the link is much weaker than buying consumer packed food from a supermarket. In that sense homesteading ducks and chicken can be seen as decreasing our link to industrial agribusiness.

Mid-sized non-laying ducks will eat 110-160 g feed per day with 16% protein content when they are not foraging. In the winter when the ducks are not laying eggs the protein content can be lower and they can be fed wheat (wheat grain in a water bucket; see Feeding Domestic Ducks). A very crude calculation for 10 ducks would be that a 20 kg bag of chicken feed will last for 2 weeks. 10 ducks could eat up to 500 kg feed in a year.

Organic chicken feed that is available is for laying hens. It should be noted that the niacin content is too low and should be complemented. On the other hand the Calcium content is 3,7% which is far too high for non-laying ducks (should be max 1,2%). Therefore only about 1/4 of the feed for non-laying ducks should be chicken feed and the rest could be other grains. Raw leguminous grains should not be fed to poultry (they should be cooked).

Elements – Functions analysis

I’m using the Elements-Function analysis to be sure I take into account all the interactions in the system. The system is the Ducks and the main Need is managing Snails and Slugs. The illustration below was the preliminary visualisation of relations in the system. In the Table below I am taking a more detailed look at the Elements and Functions of each. In earlier designs I have felt that the functions-elements analysis is very closely related to the input-output analysis. Therefore I decided to test combining the 2 in the same table this time.

Element	Function/Need	Input	Output	Comment/Conclusion
Ducks	Manage snails and slugs, Produce egg and meat	Feed, water, fencing, shelter	eggs, meat, off-spring, less snails, poop	Ducks are the key element in the system.
Us	Caretakers	eggs, satisfaction	Work & Care, Feed, Kitchen waste	The system doesn’t function without us managing it.
Duck house	Keep ducks safe and dry; protect from weather, predators and too much poop	Litter	Litter+poop for compost, Water from the roof	We ended up ordering a storage building that we need to put up on week 34/2024.
Duck run	Safe space for feeding and water	Litter, feed, water	Litter+poop+ liquid poop, food for rodents, Water from the roof	2,3 x 3,5 sm cage attached to the Duck house. Roof water could be directed into a basin in the run with overflow directed out.
Snails and slugs	Food for the ducks	all greens	food for duck	They have spread all over our property and already to neighbours as well.
Dogs	Protect the ducks (don’t eat them!)	Dogs food, i.e. extra eggs and duck meat	eat rodents, keep fox away	Hopefully our dogs will accept the ducks as “family members”. Dogs can eat eggs and meat.
Cats	Rodent prevention	Cat food	eat rodents	we don’t have cats so far. neighbour’s cat seen once in a while.
Geese	Protect the ducks, alarm	Feed, grass	eggs, meat, offspring, alarm, protection	can be kept in the same shelter as ducks
Fox	external threat to Ducks (kills and eats ducks)	eats ducks		Fox-proof Duck-house and Run
Rodents	eats duck feed	feed	more rodents	Rodent-proof shelter. Do we need cats?
Water	a key need for ducks every day	clean water, pond	dirty water	Ducks should have access to pond.
Well	daily clean water	groundwater	clean water	Needs to be close to the duck house and run
Ponds	wash and swim for ducks	Ducks and Geese poop	muddy and pooped water?	To what extent will the ducks mess the ponds up?
Cleanwater pond	Access always if not frozen	poop	pooped water	Closest to the Duck house
Garden pond	Access when ducks are free	poop	pooped water	Closest to house, not a lot of water in the summer
Eutrophic pond	Access when ducks are free	poop	pooped water	Relatively far from duck house
Big pond	Access when ducks are free	poop	pooped water	Relatively far from duck house but probably attractive
TWL	Prevent access (avoid extra nutrients)	preferably no inputs		Moss should have limited nutrients
Biochar filters	Bind nutrients	Biochar	Charged biochar	Would it help to set biochar filters below duck house?
Wildlife				What is the interaction with wild waterfowl in the big pond?
Vegetable garden	Needs protection from slugs	Ducks outside growing period	Collect slugs in the summer for the ducks, garden waste	Fencing around the garden where ducks can keep slugs at bay.
Vineyard	Needs protection from slugs	Ducks outside growing period (already when strawberries have been picked?)	Collect slugs in the summer for the ducks, garden waste	Fencing around the vineyard where ducks can keep slugs at bay.
Potager, Field, Forest Garden	Needs protection from slugs	Ducks have access when free	Grass, garden waste	Ducks need to be herded and fenced where we want them.
Fenced area	slug-free zones around garden and vinyard, prevent snails/slugs from entering, protect from fox.	ducks, fencing material		needs to be electrified poultry fence to protect from fox
Neighbours	buy eggs	eggs, meat		Can we borrow the ducks to them?
Our private road	access	signs		Set up signs to be aware of ducks
Varkalahdentie	access for us and neighbours	signs, whatsapp		Notify other road users about the ducks
Feed	feed the ducks and geese	Chicken feed, grow feed, kitchen waste	poop	in the winter most feed will be external unless we grow feed, f.ex. grain, potatoes, pumpkins
Litter	to keep duck house dry and duck run	straw	straw + poop can be composted/ used in compost blends	we still have a lot of straw from building the house
Hay	To subsitute straw as litter	We can harvest hay from our grass fileds	possibly ducks can eat some of it / hay + poop can be composted/ used in compost blends / geese eat hay	A large part of our site is growing grass that should be cut once a year. In this case it should also be harvested and dried.
Eggs	food		eggs, offspring	nutrition for us and dogs
Meat	food		meat	nutrition for us and dogs
Other people	buy eggs, share			Sell or share eggs and meat

The conclusions column shows conclusions from the analysis which are guiding the design.

Poop loop

The poop loop might be the most important loop or cycle in the world. Can we keep the ducks’ poop loop as a loop or does it turn into a linear system? If all the feed for the animals is from the site and all the poop is binding on the site, the loop is closed. Of course nature knows much bigger poop loops (including whales) but in a human designed animal system we should strive for a manageable closed loop. Is it possible?

Poop is what is left over from the animals metabolism after it has extracted the energy and nutrients from the feed it consumed. So by definition it contains less energy and nutrients than what the animal ate. It means that a foraging animal that is not receiving external feed extracts energy and nutrients from the landscape where it is foraging. If the animal eats and poops where-ever it happens to be it will have decreased the amount of nutrients in that place (it will have eaten more than pooped). This equation of course changes if the animals are fed from the outside.

In a chicken tractor pasture system about 1/3 of the feed comes from the pasture so 2/3 must come from elsewhere so the chicken tractor is pooping more than foraging. For ducks we can presume that the proportion of foraging is much higher – even close to 100% in high season, so ducks are actually extracting nutrients from the pasture. But that is only for max 4-5 months, i.e. one third of the year (from the end of bird flu restrictions 31.5. to end of September).

If we presume 10 ducks and therefore up to 500 kg feed per year with 16% protein content that equals importing 13 kg nitrogen into out system per year (protein/6,25 = N). Spread evenly over the field area we manage, that is less than 10 kg/ha so from an agronomic point of view not very much. The natural nitrogen load into watersheds is 70-200 kg/km² (0,7 – 2 kg/ha) (1) so 10 kg/ha is relevant in terms of protecting the watershed. These numbers are indicative but show that relevant nutrient leaching into the watershed can be caused by just 10 ducks – but also that the nutrients 10 ducks “produce” is just a minor part of the nutrient flow in a cultivation system like ours.

Ducks poop “all the time” so we can presume that the poop load is created where they eat. That could be in the Duck Run, foraging on land and foraging in the pond. The most important way to control that we don’t cause nutrient leach into the water shed is that the external feed is offered only in the Duck Run and that the poop there is bound into litter (straw etc) and later composted and used in cultivation to build soil. In principle the ducks will not increase the nutrient load in the ponds if they only eat from the ponds. Therefore even though the ducks should have access to ponds, the ponds should be at a relatively long distance from the Duck Run. Thereby the poop resulting from the external feed ends up in the duck run or on land while walking to the pond.

Ideas for decreasing external feed:

• extend foraging period as much as possible
• feed food waste and side streams
• grow grain, potatoes, pumpkins and leguminous crops for the ducks
• grow hay for the ducks (which can also be used as litter to replace straw)
• collect deciduous twigs for the ducks

Ideas for avoiding leak of poop from the farm:

• extend foraging period as much as possible
• let the ducks forage freely in as large an area as possible
• change the foraging area periodically (rotation)
• use sufficient litter under the ducks and compost it
• prevent rainwater from getting in the run
• don’t empty the dirty water into the run (when replacing drinking water). In the summer it can be used for irrigation in the garden.
• if necessary direct liquid overflow from the duck house to a absorption area (imeytyskenttä)
• use biochar to bind nutrients

Zones

Zone in permaculture reflect the intensity of use of different parts of a place. I have written about Iso-orvokkiniitty Zones in Evaluation and site analysis 2: Zones. There the area we are discussing in this design was placed in Zone 2 (Garden of annual and perennial vegetables, mushroom cultivation, apiary; places visited on a daily to weekly basis).

Foraging areas are in zones 2-4.

E : Evaluate & Goals

The Observe and Analysis step shows that Ducks can be a solution to the challenge we have with snails and slugs and that it is possible to keep ducks in our situation. Questions that should be answered are

1. How many ducks do we need or want to have?
2. What breed of ducks and where to get them?
3. Where shall we put them on Iso-orvokkiniitty?
4. What kind of shelter should we arrange for them?
5. Where can they forage?
6. How to use the eggs and meat?
7. What are the inputs and outputs?

Finally I will state the specific goals we need to reach in order to reach our aims.

How many ducks do we need or want to have?

The number of ducks relates to several aspects:

1. How many ducks do we need in order to control the snails and slugs?
2. What is too much in terms of decimating the snail and insect populations so that the ducks don’t have enough to forage any more and the biodiversity effect is negative?
3. What is reasonable in terms of what size shelter we can provide?
4. How much feed do we need to buy?
5. How many eggs can we use, share or sell?

Dave Holderread ((2) page 3-4) writes “Under many conditions two to six ducks per acre (0.5 ha) of land are needed to control Japanese beetles, grasshoppers, snails, slugs, and fire ants. To eliminate mosquito pupae and larvae from bodies of water, provide six to ten ducks for each acre (5000 m²) of water surface.” “8-15 ducks per acre will control unwanted plants in ponds.” So our 1,5 ha would require 6-18 ducks and the ponds some more. On the other hand (p 10) a “high density of duck will muddy the water and cause bank erosion”. He considers 15-25 ducks per acre as reasonable. Our total pond area is 1330 m2, so that should support 4-7 ducks. Of course we don’t plan to keep the ducks exclusively in the ponds.

The above gives a range but to answer questions 1 and 2 we need some experience – a definite answer is not available at this point. We presume our number will be between 5-15 ducks. The number can be tweaked after we acquire experience. However the shelter could be sized according to this guestimate. Already 5 ducks will produce more eggs than the 2 of us can consume. We can use the extra eggs for our dogs, share with family or sell to neighbours.

What breed of ducks and where to get them?

The natural choice is cross-breeds as pure-breads are not common. There are several people with small flocks in the region around us. We have asked around and found a young flock that is available.

Where shall we locate the Duck house?

Using McHarg’s exclusion method:

A practical way for deciding where to place something is to check where it can not be placed. McHarg’s exclusion method is used for exactly that.

Ducks should have a pond and we have several (4) ponds. So the Duck house should be located at reasonable distance to a pond (not at the pond). However looking at the Site map again we can exclude some pond areas:

• The Big Pond and the Eutrophic pond are too far from our house and not visible from there.
• There is very limited space around the Garden pond for the Duck house and Duck run and adjacent fenced area. The vegetable garden is on the other side of our road.
• The Clean water pond is supposed to be clean water.

So there is no ideal choice but we decided for the Duck house to be connected to the Clean water pond as the only practical solution.

Other exclusions:

• We don’t want to block the road with a fence, so the Duck house needs to be on the south side of the road (same side as the clean water pond).
• The path the robot mower takes to the forest garden should not be blocked with fencing.
• The Duck House should be visible from our living room window.

Other considerations:

• In the winter we will have to carry water to the Duck house so the distance to the well should be reasonable (the well has a winter hand pump, while hosing water from the house would be problematic because the hoses freeze.)
• We can use the vegetable garden and the vineyard as extensions to the Duck run outside growing season so it should not be too far from either one.
• It should be possible to fence around the vegetable garden and vineyard so that the Duck house is included in the fenced area.
• We don’t want to block the road with a fence.
• The path the robot mower takes to the forest garden should not be blocked with fencing.

The conclusion is to locate the Duck house between the vegetable garden and vineyard. The fencing will include the west, south and east side of both including the clean water pond. The road (north) side is left unprotected. The well is close.

With this design it is obvious that the zoning has to change because the ducks will have to be visited on a daily basis. In the summer the ducks need to be closed into the Duck House and Run every night and in the winter they must be offered feed and water preferably twice a day into the Duck Run.

The new zoning looks like this:

In terms of Zoning the location of the Duck House is not optimal as it is 40-50 metres from the house (depending which way you take). As shown above it was not feasible to place it closer to the house. In this case zoning did not really affect the placement of the duck house (we couldn’t put it closer to the house), rather I adjusted the zoning to reflect what happened.

What kind of shelter should we arrange for them?

As stated earlier, keeping the ducks warm was originally our main worry. However cold doesn’t seem to be a problem for ducks so they just need a shelter to keep safe and dry.

PMI works well to analyse the different ideas we had on the way:

PMI – Plus, Minus, Interesting

Idea	Plus	Minus	Interesting
1. Some kind of Shack based on available material (pallets, strawbales etc)	Cheap, Low need of external inputs, Relatively easy to set up.	Might look like a shack, Short-lived, Not safe for the ducks.	Based on resources we have at our site.
2. Self-made building from purchased timber	Free to design what we want, (Possibly cheaper than no 3.)	A lot of planning and construction work, Takes time to finish.	Combine with on-site material.
3. Order a suitable storage building and set it up	Easier to set up than no 2. Fast. Reasonably good looking.	(Possibly more expensive than no 2.)	The fastest solution (the ducks are already waiting to get here.)

We decided to go for no 3 mainly because it requires the least amount of work and is the fastest solution. Generally speaking these ready-made solutions are not necessarily more expensive than building from timber because the manufacturer can purchase the timber cheaper than a consumer and generally they originate from Estonia. A consideration is also that the Duck house will be in a very visible place so it should look good. We will have to build the attached Duck Run ourselves anyway.

The building should have inside space for 5-15 ducks, a separate space for storing feed and straw and a duck run (predator proof cage with roof) of similar size should be attached to it. Inside space requirement can be calculated as up to 4 ducks per m². It sounds a bit cramped but in practise the ducks will almost always have access to the duck run which would more than double the space.

Where can they forage?

There are different options for the ducks to forage:

• A fenced area around the duck house, vegetable garden and vineyard. This area should be fenced with an electrified net fence that should stop fox from coming in.
• The vegetable garden between harvest in the autumn and seeding / planting in the spring.
• The vineyard between harvest in the autumn until early summer (we grow strawberries in the vineyard). The Vineyard has poles so it could be easily covered with a net to protect from predators from above.
• The ducks can forage freely elsewhere when we are at home and have an eye on them.

How many eggs can we use, share or sell? How about the meat?

At the moment we practically don’t consume eggs. This is because we don’t consider even organic eggs as ethically produced. Eggs from other homesteaders are difficult to come by and it is not always clear how the chicken are fed and kept. So when the ducks start laying eggs it will change our diet from no eggs to a lot of eggs. 6 female ducks will produce 5-6 eggs per day in the summer season, which will already be much more than the 2 of us can consume. I do believe that it will improve our nutrition in terms of providing us with good quality animal protein. Protein intake becomes more difficult when a person gets older and animal protein is easier to digest than plant protein. On the other hand duck eggs are supposed to contain more cholesterol and therefore duck egg consumption should be limited to 2-3 eggs per week if you have high cholesterol and blood pressure (like I do). My plan is to have my cholesterol measured before the ducks start laying eggs in the spring and f.ex. 6 months later so measure the effect. Maybe ducks that are foraging in our permaculture garden only produce good cholesterol 😀.

Eventually we will get ducklings and statistically half of them will be male. Extra males can not be kept in the flock so they should either find a new home or be slaughtered and used as meat. I presume there is not a lot of demand for male ducks unless we are able to breed especially nice ducks. Neither one of us has any experience in slaughtering anything so that needs to be learned eventually.

So what can we do with the eggs and meat we can’t eat ourselves?

• We can supplement the food we give our dogs. At the moment minced meat for our dogs is the main animal product we buy – and it is not organic. If we can substitute some of that with duck eggs and meat it will improve our food balance sheet.
• Our family members can certainly use some eggs but they don’t visit us regularly so other solutions are also needed.
• If we increase the number of laying ducks to 10-15 the surplus will be in the range of 10 eggs per day. Possibilities to sell those include
  • setting up a self service sales box at our road where neighbours can pick them up and pay with cash or MobilePay.
  • sell in the Karjalohja-Sammatti “Local food circle” WhatsApp group.

Our Goals

In the brief I stated: “The aim of this design is to integrate ducks into Iso-orvokkiniitty in a way that solves the snails&slugs problem, provides other benefits in the form of eggs and meat and considers Animal Care ethics. The immediate goal is to start with ducks at Iso-orvokkiniitty in autumn 2024.”

Based on the evaluation above goals for getting there are:

• to have 5-15 ducks
• build a shelter for 15 ducks, a separate space for storing feed and straw and a duck run (predator proof cage with roof) of similar size should be attached to it.
• acquire hardy cross-bred ducks
• connect the duck house to the clean water pond
• ensure safety against predators

D : Design using permaculture design principles

I am using Holmgren’s Permaculture Design Principles as a checklist:

Design Principle	This Design
Observe and interact	We have observed and interacted with the snails and slugs. After implementation of this design we will do a lot of observation and interaction with the Ducks which will lead to Evaluations and Tweaks.
Catch and store energy	Plants catch energy with photosynthesis and herbivores like snails, slugs and many insects are catching energy and nutrients from the plants and those again are caught by the ducks. We can benefit from that energy in the form of eggs and meat.
Obtain a yield	At the moment we don’t have a means of benefiting from the slugs and snails. Ducks will obtain a yield from them and offer us a yield of eggs and meat. Also our yield of plants will increase as the snails are not damaging them.
Apply self regulation and Accept feedback	It is important to find the right balance in terms of how many ducks we should have. We need to observe and accept feedback from the system and apply regulation, i.e. adjust the number of ducks.
Use and value renewable Resources and Services	The whole idea of the design is to solve a problem (snails and slugs) with renewable resources (Ducks) and services they provide. At the same time the system should be regenerative in that it increases our resources.
Produce no Waste	My biggest concern in the design is to keep the poop loop closed. As stated in the Ponds design, there should be no nutrient leaching from Iso-orvokkiniitty into the water-shed. Due to the ducks there will be a nutrient inflow but we need to control the outflow.
Design from Patterns to Details	The Pattern of a Food Web. Almost all creatures can eat / use several sources of food and are food for others. The Spanish slugs and snails don’t seem to have natural predators that are effective in controlling them. Ducks as omnivores introduce a layer in our food web that balance the snails and slugs.
Intergrate rather than segregate	Ducks can be integrated in Iso-orvokkiniitty in several ways. See separate analysis of integrations below.
Use small and slow solutions	Get a few ducks first and see how it goes.
Use and value diversity	Ducks will be a new element in the Iso-orvokkiniitty food web and will increase diversity in ways that are difficult to foresee.
Use edges and value the marginal	Snails and slugs are on the edge of our mind and marginal, basically one does not want to think about them much unless they force us to. When they become a resource it also changes our attitude to them.
Creatively use and respond to Change	The Spanish slugs have been here for several years (brought in with plant material) but the population exploded in 2024. The design is a response to that change.

The Duck House and Run

We looked for a suitable storage building in web-shops. The purpose was to find something with a bigger part for ducks and a smaller part for storing straw and feed. We targeted 5-6 m2 for the ducks that should be plenty for 10 ducks. We ended up placing an order for a simple 2×4 m2 storage building made of 45 mm “stock” Duo Varastopuucee | Hyvän Kaupan Paikka

The Run will be built as an extension to this building and be 2 x3,5 m2. We wanted the run to be slightly bigger than the inside. The limiting factor was space (there are trees planted in front). The Run should be Predator proof so that it is safe for the ducks to stay there. The run must also be bird proof for preventing contact with wild birds during bird influenza restrictions. It is built with a timber frame and 25 mm mink iron net. It has a roof to prevent extra water from entering the space. The top soil is dug out and replaced with gravel. The iron net is inserted in the gravel under the whole area to prevent predators from digging in. I designed it on a piece of paper in sufficient detail so that I could buy the material.

The placement between the Vegetable Garden and the Vineyard was a bit tight but finally the best location was found adjacent to the Vineyard. The passage between the Duck Run and Vegetable Garden fence will be tight so we’ll move the fence a bit in the SE corner.

Access to the Duck House for us people are the doors on the west side and to the Duck Run from the north side. Ducks will have access to the Run through the north wall, access to the Vineyard through an opening on the east wall of the Run and access to the fenced area through the Run door. An opening is made in the Vegetable garden fence so ducks have access there.

The Fencing

The placement and rational of the fencing was described earlier. The length of the fencing is 100 metres (it is sold in 50 metres pieces). Electrified net fencing is recommended to provide protection against predators, f.ex. foxes. Net fencing also gives flexibility in where to put it compared to fixed fencing.

Feed and Water

In the summer foraging season there should be very little to do regarding feed as long as the ducks have access to sufficient foraging area and a pond. But for most of the year this is not the case.

The principles for feeding are

• as much as possible use resources from our farm and kitchen waste
• grow potatoes
• other local resources like fish from our neighbours who go fishing
• organic grain and peas or feed mixes bought directly from a (preferably local) organic farm
• commercial organic chicken feed
• lime, yeast, mineral and vitamin supplements that are necessary for the health of the ducks.

Raw-materials of f.ex. Rehux luomu organic feed for laying hen are: Oats*, Pressed Hemp*, Wheat*, Barley*, Calcium carbonate, Pressed Soy*, Mono calcium phosphate, Salt, Vitamin-mineral mix, Magnesium oxide. * = organic. So all the agriculture based raw materials are organic. Apart from soy, they are also produced in Finland. The origin of the soy is not declared but usually organic soy is European because it is almost impossible to get elsewhere. Nevertheless it would be better to replace the soy with domestic protein sources like peas or fava beans. “Ellun kanat ja munat” (Ellu’s chicken and eggs) sells organic grains from their farm and feed mixes. They are 50 min drive from here. It is better to buy the peas and fava beans separately (not in a grain mix) because they should be cooked before serving to ducks (extra work but can be developed into a routine as the wood heated stove is hot every day anyway in the winter period). The grains and pulses would have to be complemented with vitamins, minerals and some fish liver oil in the winter. Mäkelän luomutila would be a good first solution while exploring possibilities closer by.

Feed for the 1st winter

• 10 young ducks (not laying eggs)
• 110 – 160 g feed /mid-sized duck / day = 1300 g / day for 10 ducks
• targeted protein content of the feed 12-14% until laying begins in March – April
• non-laying ducks should get max 1,2% Calcium in their feed (0,6-1% is sufficient)
  • Ca : P should be 1:1
• Full chicken feed for laying hens is available as organic
  • 15% protein
  • 4% Calcium
  • can be used up to 25% in order not to exceed the Calcium limit
• The following feed mix could be used
  • 25% Organic Chicken feed for laying hen
  • 58% wheat (grain)
  • 15% whole oats
  • 2% feed yeast (to cover need of B# and other Vitamin B
• Volume per months: 10 kg Chicken feed, 24 kg wheat, 6 kg oats, 800 g yeast
• Wheat can be freely available to be sure that the ducks can cover their energy need in cold weather

The feed ratio needs to be fixed when the ducks start laying eggs. Some of the grain should be substituted with pulses to cover the increased protein need, Calcium should be increased and feed yeast still added to cover B3 need.

When foraging starts in May -June feeding can be gradually decreased.

To cover a part of the ducks feed for the following winter, growing potatoes and pulses should be increased.

In 2025 hay should be harvested as it can have some feed value and it can substitute straw for litter.

The ducks must have access to water every day and always when they are offered feed. In the first stage water must be carried from the well which is close to the Duck house. Possibilities to direct the water with some kind of trough will be explored but it can be difficult to make a functional system for the winter. The distance from the well to the Duck Run door is less than 10 meters so I don’t consider carrying with buckets a huge problem. Water from the Duck house and run roofs can also be collected.

Managing poop

As explained above, poop is not a problem when the ducks are foraging and they don’t get extra feed. Of course the pond water will not be clean but in principle the ducks are extracting more nutrients from the pond than the poop contains. Foraging and pooping on land is even less of a problem. Feeding external feed or kitchen waste will happen exclusively in the duck run (the outside cage). This in order to limit pooping inside the duck house and to limit pooping outside. The ducks have 40-45 metres walk to the pond so mostly they will have pooped before they get there. In the duck run and duck house the main measure is to use sufficient amounts of litter (mainly straw) to bind the poop. Litter is added through the winter period and composted in the spring.

Other aspects

• Geese
  • For the safety of the ducks it is recommended to have geese. We are planning to add 2 geese to the duck flock next spring (2025).
• Cats
  • If the Duck house creates a rodent problem we’ll have to consider a cat. However keeping cats free is problematic for wildlife so we are not very keen on the idea. Our neighbour’s cat visits our site occasionally but it might not have a big effect on rodents here.
• Dogs
  • We have 2 dogs which probably are even more effective against rodents than cats. However keeping the ducks safe from the dogs is also a challenge. We need to observe how they get accustomed to each other.

I : Implement

Ducks

The first step of the implementation was to figure out where to get ducks. I asked in the Village WhatsApp group and immediately got 2 answers that ducks were available. We visited Marika H. on 12.8. to see the ducks.

On 23.8. we agreed that 4 young ladies from the flock in the picture will move to our place and Marika will arrange a male, that is not related, from a friend of hers. Now we just needed to make the Duck House ready for them. Marika brought the 4 ducks on 4.9. but in the meantime they had proved to all be males. Marika connected us to Jaana who has 5-6 young females available for sale. However they have been in a big pond for a while and are not very tame, so she has to catch them first.

Eventually we got the 5 female ducks on 22.9. and 2 more on 2.10. We still wanted to get 3 more to balance the number of females to males (It is preferable to have 2-4 females per male). The alternative would be to slaughter 2 males but that does not seem an attractive idea right now. Thereby the flock is getting bigger than we planned (looks like the Holmgren principle “Use small and slow solutions” is not realised). This could be a benefit in terms of controlling the snails and slugs effectively in 2025. Possibly we will then decrease the flock size towards autumn 2025.

The 2 first flocks of ducks are both mid-sized mixed breed ducks. I looked at definitions and photos of different duck breeds to see what they might be. The black-and-white males look very much like the Swedish Blue and the females resemble the Swedish Blekinge Duck. The later is supposed to be very rare in Sweden so not probable. In any case they look very different from each other.

I found more ducks announced on tori.fi and on 17.10. drove over to Lammi (2h from us) to get 2 young females and 1 adult female from Johanna. The 2 young ones are Cayuga – maybe 6 weeks old – and the adult female is a Swedish Blue born last year. All should be pure-bred, however without any documentation. The Swedish Blue – who we named “Svea” is blueish grey. On the way home I was wondering if our black-and-whites have anything to do with Swedish Blue, but after rechecking the “Svensk Blå Anka” description on wikipedia and Svenska Lanthönsklubben, I concluded that they still fit the description even though they look very different from the new female. Variation is big but anyway the males are not pure-bred so I am just guessing what they might be.

The Cayuga are pitch-black so there is no way to distinguish them from one another.

Duck House

On 12.8.2024 we ordered the Duo Varastopuucee that would become the Duck House. It arrived the following week and we built it up with the help of my brother Tapani and son Jaakko. It is made of 45 mm “logs”. All the material was in the package in the correct dimensions so it was relatively easy to set up. We painted it with ‘Roslaakin Mahonki’.

I installed an extra floor of film plywood with 2 cm laths with the idea on incasing the lifespan of the wooden floor.

All feeding and drinking (water) happens in the Duck Run to minimise moisture and pooping inside the Duck House.

Fencing

In the first stage when the male ducks arrived they had access from the duck run into the vineyard (I picked the grapes first). I placed an order for 100 metres of “AKO PoultryNet Prem” which can be electrified with a solar panel (I didn’t buy that part yet).

I set up the 100 cm high poultry net so that it surrounds the vegetable garden, duck house, vineyard and the clean water pond. The area is quite large and so far the ducks are quite shy to venture far from the duck house without someone herding them. Except that the females love the pond. It is possible to electrify the poultry net later but there is no point to do it now as it wouldn’t function in the winter anyway.

The wire net fence around the vineyard to have too big mesh and the females just go through it when they want to get to the pond. I’ll need to fix that with adding a smaller mesh size net to the lower part of the fence.

Budget

Element	Price €
The Duck House ‘Duo Varastopuucee’	4035 €
Timber for the Duck Run
Duck house extra film plywood floor	439 €
Iron mink net for the duck run	418 €
Poultry net 100 m	400 €
We had other fencing material and poles came from the forest
Roofing material for duck run (we had some from previous projects)	100 €
rubber pans and containers for water and feed (they tolerate freezing)	101 €
Feed (September 2024)	47 €
male ducks	0
7 female ducks à 30 €	210 €
Swedish Blue + 2 Cayugas	125 €

Building the duck house and run and the fencing cost 5400 € (timber not included yet) so it means 385 € per duck for 14 ducks. Obviously it would have been much cheaper for someone who has an existing barn or other suitable building.

M : Maintain

For maintaining the system the ducks whole lifecycle and the annual cycle needs to be considered. We have just started with the ducks so there is still a lot to do and learn.

We started with young adult ducks born the same year (1 male and the Swedish Blue born in 2023) so at the easiest phase. What follows is

The Annual Cycle

When	What
1st autumn and winter until March 2025	The ducks have a good shelter, space to forage as long as it is possible and access to ponds. Feeding and water require attendance twice a day morning and evening. In the evening the ducks need to be herded to the Duck house from wherever they are. We will observe how the ducks cope with the winter. Lighting should be maintained at 10 hours per day so as not to trigger laying eggs too early (require 13 hours daylight). 13 hours daylight is naturally reached on 28th March where we are.
March – until end of May	Bird flu restrictions – limited foraging in the vineyard and vegetable garden (should be covered with nets). Laying eggs has started so feeding can be based on laying hen feed. Ducks usually lay their eggs before 9 am so they shouldn’t be let out before that. Pick the eggs.
Early May	would be a good time to start brooding
June – September	Start foraging and eat the snails and slugs. Access to ponds, need feed only in order to get ducks inside for the nights. Manage where the ducks forage with fences. Manage the electric fences. Get baby geese. Ducklings are growing. Harvest and dry hay in end of June.
September – October	Increase feeding as foraging gives less food. Extra males should find a new home or be butchered. Sell extra females. Find new males for next spring (?).

As the table shows there are phases in keeping ducks that I am not including in detail in this design but we should know the basics in order to anticipate what will happen and be necessary to manage.

Feed

In the first winter and spring we will heavily depend on feed we need to buy. It will all be organic. The feed for the young ducks was discussed above. In March when the females will start laying eggs and should get more protein and Calcium we can switch 100% to laying hen feed or use grain + pulses with necessary additions of vitamins and minerals. The challenge will be that the males should continue with a lower protein and Calcium level. From 1st June the ducks will forage during daytime and we’ll need feed only for getting them back to the duck house for the nights.

A project for 2025 is to increase self-sufficiency in winter feed. I foresee a few options for this:

1. Grow potatoes. Dave Holderread (2) refers to a grower who feeds cooked potatoes to a flock of ducks about 2L of potatoes per 10 ducks per day. So in a winter we would need about 480L of cooked potatoes for 10 ducks which should be about 360 kg of potatoes which means approximately 100m² of potatoes.
2. Growing grain is also an option. To avoid the need to dry the grain it could be fermented in big barrels. 2 x 200L barrels or appr 300 kg grain would cover over 50% of the grain demand. That would require 1000 m² of field.
3. Pulses should be grown to add protein. 100 kg of peas would require 300 m² field.
4. Hay would have some nutritional value while mainly substituting straw (geese need hay). The areas where nothing else is grown can be harvested for hay.

These can be experimented with in 2025 even if we don’t yet reach 100% self sufficiency in feed. 1400 m² of cultivated area is quite a lot in our current situation in terms of finding the space and managing it. In 2024 we invested in a 2-wheel tractor that technically makes it possible. However when our food self-sufficiency is far from 100% we need to consider priorities. It can also make sense to focus on food production and buy feed. On the other hand for me having animals that mostly rely on external feed does not seem sustainable.

Foraging

Due to bird flu restrictions foraging can start on 1st of June. We can arrange netting over a restricted area before that. Before June I will arrange the poultry net to be electrified to protect the ducks from fox.

Already with the short experience we have I foresee some challenges with foraging especially thinking of our aim to fight the snails and slugs. So far it seems that the ducks don’t voluntarily go very far from the duck house if we are not herding them. The second challenge seems to be that once they are in the pond they stay there. Presumably the small clean water pond can not feed them for very long and they will have to get on the field to find food but the big pond would probably sustain them for a long period. Hopefully they will develop more confidence to venture out of the pond (some signs of that already). Possibly having a pair of geese would also help.

In any case we might need to use fencing to keep the ducks working where we want them.

Breeding

In order to renew and develop the flock it is necessary that the ducks breed. Dave Holderread (2) emphasises how important it is to start with good quality stock. We started with the ducks that were available. Both the males and females (apart from the 3 pure-bred females) are mixed breed but clearly from different stocks. In the spring they will mate and we’ll see if any of the females is a brooder and natural mother. That would certainly be one selection criteria. On the other hand females shouldn’t be too broody. Breeding involves selection of the individuals that should brood and finding suitable good quality males in the future. This could also happen through buying eggs from pure-bred stock. Criteria for breeding needs to be considered in more detail as we learn more about ducks.

Selling eggs

With a fast check on the internet, duck eggs seem to sell at over 1 €/egg; 1,20 € seems to be a normal price (organic chicken eggs in the supermarket cost 0,35 €/egg). If calculating 200 eggs per duck per year we should collect 1400 eggs with a value of 1680 €. Of course we will eat and share a part of them but in any case it seems we can easily cover feed costs with selling eggs. However this is far from the 10000 € business concept (see Design 5: Mushrooms).

Slaughter

Female ducks will lay eggs for several years and extra females can be sold. We paid 30-45 €/female but nothing for the males. Inevitably there will be extra males some of which can be given away but eventually we will need to learn to slaughter them and prepare for food. It doesn’t actually make sense to give resources away just because slaughtering doesn’t seem nice. If necessary we can also use meet for feeding the dogs which would decrease the amount of meet we buy for them. But duck meat should taste quite good.

I have never slaughtered an animal so there will be a learning curve there. I will connect with fellow villagers who are in the same situation and have an interest to learn. ‘Ellun kanat ja munat’ arranges online and offline courses about slaughtering cocks which I plan to participate in at some point.

E : Evaluate

Below I will evaluate the design against the stated vision and goals and permaculture ethics. I will also reflect regarding food self-sufficiency and the food system.

The Goals

The immediate goal of this design – stated in the Brief – was to start with ducks at Iso-orvokkiniitty in autumn 2024. That has been done.

The purpose was to integrate ducks into Iso-orvokkiniitty in a way that solves the snails&slugs problem, provides other benefits in the form of eggs and meat and considers Animal Care ethics. These can only partly be evaluated at this stage. We can already see that the ducks eat snails and Spanish slugs, although they are not very excited about the biggest ones. Eggs will not doubt come starting next spring and meat when we need to decrease the number of males next autumn.

In the evaluation step I set goals for getting there as:

• to have 5-15 ducks
• build a shelter for 15 ducks, a separate space for storing feed and straw and a duck run (predator proof cage with roof) of similar size should be attached to it.
• acquire hardy cross-bred ducks
• connect the duck house to the clean water pond
• ensure safety against predators

Looking at the situation in end of October 2024 we can conclude that:

• We have 14 ducks (4 males, 10 females).
  • 4 males resemble Swedish blue, and 7 females resemble Blekinge ankka – anyway they are all cross-bred, 1 female is pure Swedish blue and 2 females are pure Cayuga. All are mid-sized ducks and should be hardy enough for our conditions.
  • The number of ducks will be evaluated after a full year.
• We have built a duck house with 6 m² space for ducks and an adjacent storage place for feed and straw. In principle that should suffice for 24 ducks although feel that would be too cramped.
• We have built a 8 m² duck run from mink net (including underneath) with a roof. For most of the time the ducks have access to 14 m² duck house and run when they are closed in. In the coldest weather we will consider if they need to be closed in the duck house (with door closed) for the nights.
• The ducks have access to the clean water pond in the fenced area but it has proved practical to also keep them in the Garden pond where they are directly in our sight (and our dogs’ sight) from our living room. So far they roam less than 10 meters from the pond and any disturbance puts them back in the pond.
• We put the ducks in the duck run at twilight and let them out in the morning. The duck house and run are predator proof. The foraging area is fenced with a net fence but I haven’t electrified it yet. The Garden pond has the unexpected benefit that our dogs guard it from inside. So far nothing more dangerous than a cat has been close to the ducks but the dogs make sure we notice it. If we are not at home the ducks stay in the duck house and run. The vineyard will be covered with a net and be their main foraging area after the ponds freeze.

Other secondary goals evolved during the design process. Partly those can not be evaluated yet and partly they still need implementation. Most of them were already evident in the Elements-functions analysis:

• Implemented but not evaluated
  • Evaluate the poop loop
  • Ducks in the ponds: evaluate positive and negative effects
• Not implemented yet
  • Collect rain water from the roofs of Duck House and Run for the ducks (or irrigation)
  • Feed eggs (and meat) to our dogs
  • Include 2 geese in the flock
  • Biochar for binding nutrients
  • Observe interaction with wild waterfowl and the ecosystem in general
  • Electrify the net fencing to keep fox out
  • Use moveable fencing to manage where ducks should forage
  • Herd ducks to neighbours yard
  • Set up warning signs about ducks on the road
  • Harvest hay
  • Can we sell all the eggs in our bioregion?
  • Learn how to butcher ducks
  • Understand brooding and breeding
  • Grow crops for feed
  • Compost the litter
  • How to preserve eggs

The Ethics

The permaculture ethics were mostly statements justifying the decision to take ducks. So the decision had been made and the design is about how to do it. Nevertheless some parts of the ethics did guide the design. In Earth Care I write: “The ducks system should bind sufficient amounts of carbon and increase biodiversity to offset the negative effects.” I am following that mainly in the “poop loop” where I attempt to minimise loss of nutrients and to build soil, and secondly in trying to increase our self sufficiency in feed and in buying only organic feed. The incoming nutrient stream is somewhat acceptable if it ends up building soil. The stories on the internet telling about ducks that poop all the time and all over the place probably made the situation look more alarming than it actually is. With the short experience so far it seems perfectly possible to manage the poop loop in a good way.

So far it does not seem like the ducks would cause a huge workload after the duck house and fencing are in place. Compared to 2 dogs 10-14 ducks seems to be comparable. Also they are entertaining and herding them is fun. They bring an interesting animal element to Iso-orvokkiniitty that dogs don’t – i.e. they are more integrated in the environment and landscape. They might end up integrating the dogs better too.

The ethics are so engrained in us that the design would have reflected permaculture ethics in any case. With our long organic farming background we would have thought about the poop loop, self sufficiency in feed and animal welfare issues anyway. It is good to remember that similar ethical principles were originally behind organic farming as well even though they seemingly have been forgotten by many. Even fair share was an organic farming principle even though it never was written into the organic farming regulations.

It is in the nature of keeping domesticated animals to benefit from them and in most cases eventually killing them, unless they are kept purely as pets. Even pets are mostly eventually killed for animal welfare reasons. If this is right or wrong is anybody’s moral choice. Personally I tend to think that if we want to develop systems that mimic natural systems we need to recognise that “to live is to die” – there can not be life without death. By claiming that humans should not kill other living beings for their benefit, we seem to lift humans out of the sphere of nature and natural systems, to disintegrate ourselves from the rest of the world. Of course with this we cannot justify industrial animal husbandry. Maybe we should look at a more animist way of connecting with animals where we connect to each animal individually and when the time for slaughter comes ask for forgiveness. A Finnish word for hunting and fishing is “pyytää” – asking for permission – which reflects an old animist relationship to fish and game. This animist relation was broken in agrarian systems because you couldn’t ask permission from animals that you were exploiting to a degree that they were clearly suffering. I believe it is still possible to develop an animist and more respectful relationship to your animals while still benefitting from them. On the other hand domesticated animals need us for their existence.

Self-sufficiency and the food system

According to FAO, “The concept of food self-sufficiency is generally taken to mean the extent to which a country can satisfy its food needs from its own domestic production” (FAO, 1999). Already this definition shows – in that it is way too narrow – that the discussion about food self-sufficiency, food security and food autonomy – to use just a few possible words – is too big for me to deep-dive into it in this design. I would like to discuss this deeper in my Food System Design.

Here I would just like to briefly discuss how the ducks relate to

1. food self-sufficiency in terms of how much of our food are we producing ourselves,
2. our reliance on external inputs in producing what we produce,
3. how we connect to our local bioregion’s food system
4. how we connect (or disconnect) to the industrial food system.

Ducks effect on Food self-sufficiency

• Indirect effect of enhancing our ability to produce vegetables etc by controlling the snails and slugs. The effect is positive but difficult to measure. This was the main motivation for getting ducks and doing this design in the first place.
• Direct effect of producing eggs and meat. 10-15 ducks should produce annually 1500-2000 eggs (85-110 g/egg = 140-200 kg) per year and maybe 10 kg of meat. Funnily enough we practically don’t eat eggs or meat at home at the moment so the ducks would have to replace something else that we currently eat. Logically it should be animal products we currently by from the supermarket, mainly cheese and yoghurt.
• Pure-bred laying ducks need 2,4-3,8 kg of feed per 1 kg eggs (or meat) but mixed land-race ducks probably more. On the other hand some of this can be offset by foraging. If my estimate of 500 kg of feed per 10 ducks is correct and they would produce 170 kg eggs we would be in a ratio of roughly 3 (not calculating foraging). Obviously the ratio would be better if the ducks lay more eggs than the conservative estimate above. Time will show the real productivity – and increasing productivity should be a breeding target.
• Clearly we will produce much more eggs than we can consume ourselves. That makes sense from the perspective of bioregional self-sufficiency.

External inputs

• Buying 500 kg of feed sounds like a lot. On the other hand it can be mostly unprocessed grain and could be bought directly from a neighbouring organic farmer.
• Initially we have bought both commercial organic feed and organic grain.

Connecting to the local bioregion

• Initially we bought organic grain 50 minutes drive from here. I will check if we can get it closer. The challenge is that farmers who normally sell to industry are reluctant to sell small volumes to consumers.
  • In November I bought 110 kg of organic wheat and oats directly from an organic farmer in our village. I can buy from them 100 kg at a time as needed.
• Selling the eggs will connect us to the bioregion. We want to develop it into an exchange.

Disconnecting from the industrial food system

• To counter the fact that we buy grain / feed, we should decrease our consumption of processed food, especially dairy, from the supermarkets. According to the K-Market app 20% of my purchase goes towards dairy and that covers 49% of CO2 emissions and cheese alone represents 27% (calculated from my food purchases in the K-Group – which is not the only place where we go shopping).
• So it will be critical what the eggs replace in our consumption.

Conclusions

In order to maximise the positive effect of the ducks to our food self-sufficiency, food autonomy and bioregionality we should:

• decrease external inputs by growing feed ourselves as much as reasonably possible,
• have the duck eggs and meat replace our most harmful consumption from the supermarkets (cheese),
• connect to and develop the local bioregion as much as possible.

These are valuable components thinking of our food system design. It will be more meaningful to discuss these perspectives further after we have experience and can evaluate the duck system based on observations.

Integrations

Integrations to other designs at Iso-orvokkiniitty were listed under the Brief. Mostly evaluating the integrations will need more time and observation. At the moment I believe that the integration with the Ponds is beneficial also to the ponds but probably access needs to be to some extent limited. If the duck’s pressure on the Big pond is on the correct level it should benefit from the ducks eating algae and other unwanted water plants. The ecosystems in terms of insects will no doubt change but the insect populations will not be decimated with the planned duck density and if access to the Big pond is partly limited.

An important integration will be with our cultivations which we will start designing in more detail and experiment in 2025. How can we best benefit from the ducks and how can we cover at least a part of their winter feed need from our cultivations?

Also integrating with the local bioregion’s food system will be an interesting point of development.

My targets as a designer

Energy (Design 2), Honeybees (Design 3) and Forest Garden (Design 4 in my Diploma portfolio) where based on projects that had already been started before I begun writing the design. So there was an element of retrofitting in them. The Ponds (Design 1) was more genuinely designed from the start even though writing the design started after implementation had started. This design (Design 6: Ducks) was designed and partly written before implementation. It gives a different dynamic to the process as you can actually fall back on the design and check what was planned. On the other hand the designer and the customer is still the same person which allows for a certain flexibility in designing and implementing side by side and taking immediate feedback into account in the design. I certainly enjoyed the process and also felt that I already master the design process pretty well so I could concentrate on the design itself instead of the structure of the design.

The design is still pretty long (over 12000 words) even though I tried to avoid going into theoretical ponderings of the subject matter. It would have been even longer if I couldn’t fall back on previously done site analysis. In the future I should try to design something much more simple.

I used the VOEDIMET framework which I have developed in previous designs. I am really happy how it combines the important aspects of other frameworks. To me it makes the design process more clear and easier to follow in a logical manner. The letters in the abbreviation are checkpoints for the designer to be sure he/she is covering everything. Having omitted the BR in OBREMIT could result in a weakness in terms of looking at those. Borders and Resources need to be looked at and they belong under the Observe&Analyse step. In this design I am covering them very briefly in “Limiting factors” and “Existing elements”. While short, both are important for how the design evolved. Probably I would have elaborated on them in more words if BR had been in the abbreviation. VOBREDIMET already exists as a framework abbreviation. So I propose a small tweak to VOEDIMET.

VOEDIMET:

• V : Vision based on permaculture ethical principles
• O : Observe & Analyse (including Borders and Resources)
• E : Evaluate & Goals
• D : Design using permaculture design principles
• I : Implement
• M : Maintain
• E : Evaluate
• T : Tweak

Animals

Animals introduce an interesting layer to a design and activity. In my Bees design I ventured much deeper into the ethics of keeping animals than in this Ducks design. Essentially I concluded that my aim in keeping bees is to support wild honeybee populations or re-wild bees. So even the managed bees in boxes are a part of the rewilding project even though I also allow for harvesting some honey if there is a surplus. The Bees design was based on several years of connecting with honeybees and developing a connectedness that almost is animist. My thesis is that honeybees is not a domesticated animal – it is a wild species humans have learned to manipulate and exploit in boxes for the sake of maximising honey production.

For me ducks are different in several ways:

• I am just starting to connect with ducks, and when I started writing this design I had never kept ducks or poultry.
• Ducks stem from mallards but are clearly domesticated to the degree that re-wilding is not an option. Still on a scale of domestication they are probably less domesticated than many other animals humans keep.
• Killing is a part of keeping ducks while in natural beekeeping you don’t generally kill bees purposefully (in standard beekeeping you need to kill queens). Of course, killing an animal you are taking care of adds a different layer of ethical questions.
• There is the question of feed.

While writing the design there was a brief exchange with someone in permaculture about the subject of keeping domestic animals and killing them. In his view killing sentient being can not be ethical and apparently in no case acceptable. This is a topic that many philosophers have written books about so I can’t deal with it in full here. A Finnish author Riikka Kaihovaara has written 2 books [Villi ihminen (The wild human)(2019) and Vieras eläin (The alien animal)(2022)(the books haven’t been translated and the titles were translated by myself and could be different)] that touch on this subject and reference several thinkers before her. From her I picked the idea that what is important is life, not death. She points out that modern animal rights rhetoric talks about the similarity of human and animals (if we shouldn’t kill humans why do we kill animals?) but forgets the similarities when it comes to killing and eating other species which after all is a corner stone of practically all ecosystems. She also points out that for many people it is difficult to eat animals who we have given names to (who we know personally), but in her mind those might be the only animals we should be eating. To be clear, she definitely is not for industrial animal husbandry.

Which brings me to the other topic that came up in the above mentioned exchange about all animal keeping being connected to the industrial animal production system, destruction of Amazon etc. This is something that strikes me in small-scale animal keeping where people don’t seem to worry about where the feed they are buying is coming from. The question is very relevant especially in conditions where winters are long like in the Nordic countries. This is something I am addressing in this design without being totally fundamentalist about it. I do think the design should and does decrease our connection with the industrial food system and contributes to an autonomous bioregional food system.

Any domesticated animal will use multiple times more feed (in kg) than it produces eggs, milk and meat. In the case of ducks that might be 1 to 4 but easily higher in practise. So it is justified to ask why are we feeding 4-5 kg to an animal in order to get 1 kg back? If we want to build a highly self-sufficient system, how are we going to produce that feed? In a country like Finland, even if we keep ruminants that eat roughage that is not food for us, we need to invest in growing and harvesting the winter feed. I think these questions need to be addressed and I have partly done that. These questions also need to be evaluated after we have more experience in how our Ducks system works and how we can develop it into the direction of a more closed loop.

Design tools

Ethics to state vision, Zones, Sectors, Elements and functions analysis, Input-output, Poop-loop, McHarg, PMI, Holmgren design principles, Adobe Illustrator, illustrations, Tables, Lists, Photos, Obsidian

I have used the Functions-elements analysis in 3 earlier designs and the Input-output analysis also in 3 earlier designs. In 2 designs I have used both of them in different steps of the design and from those it is clear that they are in some sense overlapping. Therefore in this design I decided to combine both in the same table using the tool in “Observe & Interact”. First I made a mind-map to figure out what elements and functions to include. The analysis helped me to understand what are all the aspects that I should take into account. Many of them point to the complexity of the system and act as place-holders for things that should be implemented later.

I added the Poop-loop on the list of tools because it was an important part of analysing the system. I admit that it is not yet a real tool but it could be developed into one. Overall this design includes a lot of systems thinking that could have been developed further than I did. While writing the design I was also reading Daniella H. Meadows “Thinking in Systems” (3) but I did not feel ready to use the tools introduced in the book yet. Maybe in a later design.

Zoning and McHarg’s exclusion were key tools in placing the Duck House and Run in the correct spot. Proof of that is that final placement was different than the 2 places we originally thought of. (Next to the Garden pond which is too tight and can’t be fenced together with the Vegetable garden because of the road in between and west side of Vegetable garden which is too far from the Well and doesn’t benefit from the Vineyard). In hindsight one more exclusion should have been used: the Duck house should not be right next to a pond but rather at a reasonable distance from it. We had luck with this one.

PMI was used in deciding how to build the Duck House. It shows a typical situation where there are several alternatives that would all work, but you need to choose which one to implement. Maybe the prefabricated building we chose to buy and set up was the least “permaculturist” choice – after all it was the most connected to the prevailing economical model. But in our actual situation it was the most practical and fast solution.

I used the Holmgren design principles as a checklist in the Design step. Doing that is always partly stating the obvious but it does also give new insight or focus into some points that could otherwise be missed. Looking at it now I especially like the idea of turning the snails and slugs from an unwanted problem into an input for getting a yield, thereby transforming the marginal and unpleasant into a resource. I could even have said that the design integrates the snails and slugs into Iso-orvokkiniitty in a positive way whereby I could even worry about their population getting too small. Now we need to find a balance through the feedback loops.

To further evaluate the design I decided to use Mollison’s design principles:

Mollison’s principle	In this design
Relative Location	I decided the placement of the Duck house based on relative location to ponds, the well, the fenced garden and vineyard etc, using McHarg’s exclusion method.
Each element performs many functions	The Ducks have the primary function of controlling snails and slugs and secondary function of producing food. The ducks create a beneficial function for the snails and slugs and secondary functions that did not exist before to the ponds, field, garden areas etc (foraging). The Duck House and Run provide shelter and safety to the ducks but also function as storage, water collection (roof), compost material accumulation, walls for climbing plants etc.
Each important function is supported by many elements	The most important functions for the ducks are food, water, shelter and safety. Yes, but we might need to figure out how to support their feeling of safety when foraging.
Efficient energy planning: zone, sector & slope	Yes, but not a huge part of this design. The most important sector was visibility from our house.
Using biological resources	Yes
Cycling of energy, nutrients, resources	Poop loop
Small-scale intensive systems; inc. plant & time stacking	Ducks are a Small-scale intensive system. Time stacking is a key feature with ducks foraging different parts of the garden at times when they don’t do harm there.
Accelerating succession & evolution	Maybe a natural solution to snails and slugs would have appeared over time but we couldn’t wait so we accelerated it with ducks.
Diversity, including guilds	Ducks introduce diversity to the system.
Edge effect	Snails and slugs are on the edge.
Attitudinal principles: everything works both ways	In the design snails and slugs become a resource.
Attitudinal principles: Permaculture is information and imagination intensive	I agree! That’s why my designs become so long 😉
Work with nature rather than against	Increase the diversity of the system in order to balance it. Ducks adding a new layer in the Iso-orvokkiniitty food-web.
The problem is the solution	Snails and slugs was why we got Ducks.
Make the least change for the greatest possible effect	Not sure. Taking ducks wasn’t a very small step for us but totally doable.
The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited (or only by the imagination & information of the designer)	We can turn something that was destroying our yield into a yield.
Everything gardens (or modifies its environment	Even snails and slugs…

I think also Mollison’s design principles were guiding us and therefore using them as a check-list above shows that almost all of them have been taken into account. While complying the above – sitting on our living room coach – I realised that it is important to see the ducks (visibility sector). Also I was thinking about their need for safety (safety function) and realised that we need to think about how to support their feeling of safety in order for them forage more widely on our site.

T : Tweak

I am writing this 6 weeks after the first ducks arrived at Iso-orvokkiniitty. So it is a bit early to speak about Tweaks yet. Of course there has been tweaks while writing the design but those have already been integrated in the design. Actual tweaks to this design should come next year after much more experience and observations. However I can now list a few main observations that require or make possible some tweaks:

• When reading about ducks everyone seemed to emphasise that ducks are extremely messy and pooping all over the place. So I was expecting a much worse mess than it actually is. Animal husbandry is messy but as an agronomist I knew that and have experienced it so it’s not a huge surprise. You can’t compare to dogs or cats… Anyway I am now sure the poop and the poop loop can be managed.
• The ducks are quite shy to explore unknown terrain and very safety driven. Maybe with time they will get braver but it seems they will need some herding or guiding with fences and maybe shelters in foraging grounds. They certainly feel safe in the ponds. Geese might help.
• The ducks love the ponds. When in the pond they don’t go much further than the edges. So again if we want them to eat snails and slugs we will probably need to guide them and prevent them from being in the ponds all the time.

Reflection

I enjoyed making this design. It didn’t have any element of retrofitting. Even though we had thought about chicken over the years they were never seriously considered (because of lack of warm shelter) and there were no animals in our plans up till now (except dogs and bees). The need for having ducks followed from the snails and slugs situation exploding last summer and we made the decision to have ducks quite fast. So the design was really started because of a concrete need and from scratch. Restricting the design to how to get the ducks here instead of everything about ducks, also enabled me to design and implement in a relatively short time (less than 2 months).

The brief was clear and simple and I used Permaculture Ethics to guide the design. I’m happy about using VOEDIMET. I think it is a clear framework that reflects and supports well how I go through the design process. I used Holmgren’s design principles for starting the design and Mollison’s principles in Evaluation. I think it makes sense to use all of them as a checklist. Using only the obvious ones for the design in hand isn’t very helpful. To me it is the unobvious ones that can generate new thoughts or ideas. For the most part the design principles are integrated in my thinking anyway.

Goals

I sent this design for assessment on 21.10.2024 and it came back as “nearly ready”. The main worry was about unclarity about goals. In this version (12.11.2024) I am trying to address that. As such it is something I have tried to clarify with the VOEDIMET framework but hadn’t written it through clearly enough. How I see it is like this:

• In the Brief I state the aim of the design (integrate ducks into Iso-orvokkiniitty in a way that solves the snails&slugs problem, provides other benefits in the form of eggs and meat and considers Animal Care ethics) and the immediate goal (start with ducks at Iso-orvokkiniitty in autumn 2024).
• In “Vision based on permaculture ethical principles” I go through my vision in general and end up with The Vision specifically for this Ducks design.
• In “Evaluate and Goals” in the beginning I state which questions need to answered in the evaluation step. In the end of “Evaluate and Goals” I collect the goals that were derived from the evaluation.
• The purpose of “Design using permaculture design principles”, “Implement” and “Maintain” is to fulfil those goals.
• In “Evaluate” I evaluate the design against the stated vision and goals and permaculture ethics. Specifically I evaluate the goals that were set in the end of “Evaluate and Goals”.

I feel that now the question of Goals runs logically through the whole design.

Connection to my diploma pathway

As mentioned earlier the Ducks design came “out of the blue”. In my “Design 00” in April I had no idea about it. However it worked well as a tiny part of the Bioregion design and Producing Food at Iso-orvokkiniitty design, which would both be huge and not fitting in the time frame of getting the Diploma Portfolio done by the end of 2024. It also worked well in my sequence of experimenting with design frameworks which led me to develop the VOEDIMET framework. In terms of Design Categories (the Holmgren flower) this design covered Land Tenure & Community Governance,Tools and Technology and Built Environment, which I have covered in earlier designs. However I feel that as a design about domesticated animals it did cover a new domain even though animals have already been covered in the Caring for Bees design. Going forward I think this design points to the Producing Food at Iso-orvokkiniitty and Bioregion designs but in my mind those are too big for now. I can work on them later – designing will not stop with finishing the Diploma Portfolio.

References:

(1): Sharon Skurnik. 2017. Puujärven peruskartoitus 2015 (Basic Survey of Lake Puujärvi 2015)

(2): Dave Holderread. 2011. Storey’s Guide to Raising Ducks, 2nd Edition: Breeds, Care, Health. 336 p. Storey Publishing LLC.

(3) Donella H. Meadows. 2008. Thinking in Systems. 218 p. Chelsea Green Publishing.