It Takes a Village | Port Protection

For today, our goal out here is to make a duck barn so that we could have fresh eggs for the winter time. The people of Port Protection may pride themselves on being self-sufficient. I was looking for the other piece of rebar, but you only needed the one more, right? You already got it cut. But in a village where eggs and produce must come by plan or boat, the creation of a farm would be a game-changer for everyone.

Just get a good line on one end there, then we'll nip those off and cut them to size. So, to make this dream a reality, the porters have called on a few friends. I came up here to help out, learn, and in exchange, I will probably get some duck eggs in the future. I'll feel real good tonight after I get home knowing that I did a little favor for those guys, and it's kind of like payback; they did a lot of favors for me too.

Hans and I had kind of a hard winter health-wise; we both had surgery in December. If we did not have the support of the community that we're in, this would have just had to go by the wayside for another year.

"Hi Gary!"

"Hey Hans! Hey, thanks for coming up and hanging out with us, buddy."

"Oh yeah, I like to get my hands dirty, you know; time's got to keep them calloused."

Well, I can't say that. I think that a lot of the people that are coming to help have their eye on future eggs. I always like the ducks—quack, quack!

We roll it out. The biggest challenge in bringing ducks out into an environment where everything on the food chain wants to eat them is trying to protect them and keep them alive long enough to produce some eggs.

Well, we're stapling down this here wire so that no mink or critters can sneak in while we're not looking. The weasels and the mink all work their way up; they can chew through stuff, and so the wire is definitely going to be a detractor for them.

We're kind of making a Fort Knox of the duck paddock world, and it's really difficult because it's not easy to come up with a lot of money or materials to do these kinds of projects. We can't afford big mistakes.