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Great Ocean Ducks rebounds after crippling restaurant closures

As the coronavirus crisis threatens everything, the Duckman GREG CLARKE and the good wife draw strength from Australia’s farmers.

Illustration: Simon Schneider.
Illustration: Simon Schneider.

THIS column has been running for some 10 years. The original brief was to sprinkle a little humour (or attempt to) while describing our efforts to become farmers.

I have spent a chunk of these crazy, crazy months looking for anything with a remote connection to a smile but like much of our business it seems to have galloped away. Excuse me while I revisit where we have come from as a way to keep looking:

Jodi, the good wife, and I quit Melbourne to bring up our girls, Madi and Milla, in the country and it was the good wife, originally a suit-wearing real estate agent, who hit upon the idea to farm ducks and sell them direct to chefs and their restaurants.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, plenty as it turns out and some you have been good enough to email or tell me how stories of our travails have, occasionally, made you laugh (OK, so it was one person: eight years ago, May 26, 2012. And, yes, you’re right; an email from mum but she signed off as Gayle instead of Faye, which means it wasn’t really her).

While drought plagued a chunk of the country, when the dairy industry was ravaged, and bushfires went berserk, our business ticked on. We had weekly duck orders from some of the most acclaimed chefs in Australia.

Our ducks forage in paddocks, eat grass and feed on grains soaked in water and fruit. It’s a labour-intensive business, our ducks are expensive, but the chefs and restaurateurs supported us. At least when they were in business.

After coronavirus restrictions forced restaurants to close in late March, we went from weekly orders of more than 200 ducks to zero in the time it took for the good wife, who until recently suffered from a debilitating shopping addiction, to say “I wish I hadn’t bought those shoes online”.

As people were fighting for their lives in hospitals we, somewhat trivially, were fighting for our business survival. Even in the last weeks of daylight saving there was way too much darkness. Almost all the chefs and hospitality staff we worked closely with were out of work.

The tears, the crazy emotions that came from wondering how we might provide for Madi and Milla will stay with me for years but so will this thought: COVID-19 may be unprecedented but farmers who fight on are not. The local dairy farmers, the beef, sheep, vegetable and grape growers tormented by bushfire and drought but who have continued producing food; they shone light on the path we needed to find.

We found a way to pay staff their leave and entitlements while trying to adapt to our new world. My sister, Bron, came from Melbourne to help manage the farm while Jodi and I travelled to the abattoir in Melbourne to pack processed birds for a freezer. We packed a good deal of hope with each duck that went into those boxes.

Perhaps, in time, they will be sold.

Not all our hope was boxed. For the first time we began selling ducks direct to the public. Social media proved almost a miracle platform. We posted on Instagram that anyone who bought four ducks would receive a copy of our duck cookbook for free. So grateful were we for custom we ended up giving books to people who bought just one duck. We also had humbling support from a clutch of quality butcher shops in Melbourne. Their weekly orders may yet see us through the tumult if we radically reconfigure our business.

In March our predicament seemed to change by the hour but there was always once certainty. The good wife would be keeping her promise of never shopping for a piece of unneeded clothing for the rest of her life for at least a few more months.

Greg Clarke and his wife, Jodi, farm ducks at Port Campbell.

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Original URL: https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/agribusiness/farm-magazine/great-ocean-ducks-rebounds-after-crippling-restaurant-closures/news-story/cb9536507d92c38f931b66af65d1c9aa