Portage River Farm

We are very excited about starting our CSA farm this coming spring and are trying to get the word out to folks who might be interested in participating. We have decided to hold a Farm Open House and CSA Formation Meeting on Saturday, November 21st. You can read more of the details here. We want to hold the meeting now so I can figure out how many members to plan for and get a jump on preparing for ordering seeds and sowing seedlings in January.

We want to start small and grow slowly, but we also want to find enough people interested in joining us to make it economically worth the effort. I emailed the announcement to some of my coworkers who have purchased eggs and vegetables from us in the past and am now fretting over how to get enough people involved. Janet is also planning to distribute the information to her network of friends and I've got my fingers crossed that some of them will decide to come. I have heard back from one coworker who indicated strong interest which calmed my fears a little.

By scheduling an open house, I have now created a deadline for myself to get a bunch of things done around here! Most evenings this week have been spent at the sewing machine making a Halloween costume for our son Aidan. He headed off to school this morning in a flowing green wizard's robe and pointy hat. Now that it is done, I need to really focus in finishing up my projects and making things look presentable for our guests. It's going to be a busy weekend!

One focus for this past weekend was finishing up the exterior of the chicken coop in preparation for installation of the sheet metal siding. The last item to be completed was the installation of a front door. This door opens into the central utility room between the two coops.

Among the things that we brought with us from our old house when we moved onto the farm was our old front door. The reason we did such an odd thing is that the door is a solid oak raised-panel door that I made using my woodworking tools in our garage. After putting all of that work into it, I wasn't willing to part with it. It spent most of the last year leaning up against the living room wall waiting for me to find time to install it.

Having finally installed the oak door in its rightful place, the door that came on the farmhouse was now free to be recycled into the chicken coop project. Once I had it mounted, I decided that it needed an awning roof to protect it from the rain.

The biggest trouble now is the fact that the new door has confused a couple of the roosters. Although they have been going in and out of the new chicken door (in the photograph on the end of the building) for some reason they have decided that they would rather wait for somebody to come along and open the big fancy front door.

Last night I was surprised to find them out after dark sitting on the ground in front of the door. The coyotes have recently become extremely noisy during their nightly hunts in the woods to the south of our farm. Had they noticed those roosters, they certainly would have made an easy and tasty meal. Luckily their farmer (aka "chicken doorman") came along in time to let them in!

I had thought that it would take a few more years before I would be ready to announce this, but we have decided to take the plunge and open our farm as a commercial operation beginning in January 2010. We had been discussing the idea of turning the farm into a "CSA" for some time now and I have done a fair amount of research. On a recent weekend retreat, a bunch of Janet's friends tipped the scales by saying that they were all willing to sign up as our first customers and things have been falling into place ever since.

"CSA" stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It is a relative newcomer on the American agriculture scene since being imported from Europe to two east coast farms in the mid-1980's. This system of operation involves a partnership between customers and farmers wherein the land's produce is sold in advance to CSA members or shareholders. In return for prepaying for their share at the beginning of the year, each customer is entitled to a weekly share of produce.

What I find particularly appealing about the CSA concept is the need to produce a wide variety of different foodstuffs. A typical operation will plant over 100 varieties of vegetables and fruit to ensure that each week's food share will contain at least 7 or 8 different items. It also requires careful planning to provide a steady stream of produce from early spring to late fall. This type of farming seems to me to be merely an expansion of what I have already done this year and is far more appealing to me than producing a single crop such as soybeans or feed corn.

When thinking of taking on this commitment in the past, I had been intimidated by the fear of a crop failure leaving me in a position of disappointing customers who have already pre-paid. After quite a bit of reading, I now understand that the risk of such problems isn't merely on the back of the farmer but is instead shared by the whole community. From the start everyone will be aware of the vagaries of extreme weather and crop losses and share in the risks and benefits together.

Another of the benefits to the customer of this approach is the sense of being more intimately involved in the production of their food. Philosophically, the farm becomes the community farm and they can be directly involved to the degree that they wish by participating in community decision-making and on-farm volunteer activities. As well, the CSA provides social events such as harvest celebrations and social gatherings to the benefit of farmer and consumer alike.

Janet and I are very excited about this idea and are looking forward to setting it all in motion. We are planning a farm open-house and organization meeting for the CSA sometime in the next month (contact us if you are interested in attending through www.portageriverfarm.com). We hope to encourage many of our current customers and friends to come see the farm and learn about the CSA. Our intention is to start out small and build things up over time but the only way to get started is to roll up our sleeves, take our courage in both hands and...get started!

 

 

 

One of the unexpected challenges of our new life on the farm has been the need to radically modify our cooking. Janet and I have always taken pride in the food we have provided for our family. We have always put an emphasis on things "prepared from scratch" and have accumulated a large cookbook of favorite recipes.

What I didn't realize ahead of time is that our family recipes were mostly based on the "from scratch" items coming from the supermarket. As the fresh produce piled up this summer, it quickly became apparent that we needed a whole new set of recipes! We are now in the process of starting all over again to find appealing ways to incorporate an abundance of fresh produce into our diets.

Along the same lines, I have also been struck by the sheer number of chicken recipes that we have used in the past that only utilized the breast meat. These recipes are either going to have to be modified or replaced with ways to use the whole bird. It took the experience of raising our own meat to make me realize how wasteful recipes that use only the choice portions of the animals can be.

Now that we have loaded up our pantry with hundreds of mason jars full of preserved food, we also have to find a way to use those. Prior to this, we simply picked recipes for the week and stopped by the store to pick up whatever we needed as if it were an infinite pantry. Although we will never completely eliminate our dependence on the grocery store, we look forward to relearning the skills of meal planning to gradually reduce it.

Black beans are another example. From the picture you can see the beautiful little harvest of black beans that we grew in our garden. We already had a favorite recipe for Mexican black bean soup in our cookbook, but it called for the use of canned beans from the store. As another step in our education, we had to learn to divide the weight of canned beans from the recipe by a factor of 2.5 in order to know how many of our home-grown dried beans to use.

As we sit down to enjoy our meals, we feel a sense of pride and satisfaction at the increasing frequency of ingredients that we have grown. I think it will be quite a while until we can resist pointing out those items to our children. They invariably pick up the conversation and start dreaming with us of the day when we can have meals entirely produced on our own land.

When faced with a task that I am dreading or one that has become tiresome, I use a couple of strategies to keep myself from giving up. One of them is to just keep trudging onward. I just put my head down, focus on the things directly in front of me and just keep moving one step at a time.

The chicken coop construction project has become one of those kind of tasks. It has certainly taken more time and effort than I imagined when I started. It is finally getting to the point that it is taking shape and it is easy to imagine how nice it will be when finished. I just wish it were done already!

The list of things that I have yet to do is long indeed. Instead of becoming overwhelmed, I'm just focusing in the next step and ignoring the rest. As such, I took a couple of days off this week and completed two small mouthfuls of the great big pie. The first was the construction of chicken doors for the birds to get in and out of the coop. I built one on each end.

I had originally planned on building eight doors, but my neighbor thankfully reminded me of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) principle and I reduced the number to one per coop. The reason for the large number of doors in my first plan was because I intend to "pasture" the chickens by dividing their outdoor space into separate yards and controlling their access to give the ground time to recover. Now I am on to a simpler plan which will involve them exiting the coop into a "lane" similar to those used for cattle and I will set up a series of simple outdoor gates into the pastures. More on this later.

The second task that I completed was the closing and paneling of the soffits. It proved to be difficult because of the need to work over my head for much of the time. Now that it is finally done, the upper edge of the walls are now ready for installation of the metal siding. This will greatly cut down the cold air flow from outside and further reduce the noise of the roosters crowing in the early morning hours.

All of this struggle that I am going through to keep myself moving forward on the coop project reminds me of how I deal with the same problem when making a piece of complicated furniture (woodworking is another of my hobbies). It is very easy to give up on a project when faced with an intimidating task or just after I've discovered a mistake.

A philosophical approach that has really become key to allow me to keep moving forward is to adopt the attitude that making a table, or building a coop is a "past time" rather than a "task" to be completed. By focusing on the activity as something to enjoy rather than only looking at the final goal of the finished product, I find that I am much less likely to lose spirit and give up.

So now it's time to step away from the computer and go back to my coop building "hobby" and try to enjoy the next activity for today...the installation of the front door.

The beauty of Fall time is far too fleeting. For the past few weeks, the leaves have put on an increasingly dazzling display as each species took its turn to flare up in brilliant hues before fading and falling in favor of the next. The winds and rainy days that follow are now making quick work of hurrying the leaves on their plummeting journey leaving only black and grey skeletons warning of the bitter season just ahead.

The sights and smells of the season bring an odd mix of nostalgia, euphoria and melancholy. The passage of time is never more acutely felt than when the scents of decaying leaves and ripe hickory nuts drift past on the cool afternoon breeze. My memory stirs to recall misty scenes of Autumns past, of phases of my life now over, of people long gone.

There is something so distinct about the light of a sunny Fall afternoon. The color of a clear blue sky, the golds and reds of the leaves, the faded greens and yellows of a field of goldenrod. In particular I am always pleased by the multicolored display of the maple trees still green at the core, with bright yellow leaves crowned with crimson at the very top. Those bright trees always bring the voice of my grandmother back to me as she would exclaim, "My! Those leaves look good enough to eat!"

Whether working outdoors, driving to work or merely passing a window, I always try to pause to take in the sight of the leaves. I find myself wishing that it would slow down and linger a while instead of being over so soon. As I near our farm on the way home from my workday, I alter my usual course to drive slowly up Toma road. I periodically stop to snap pictures or stand at the bridge across Portage River to admire the view.

I suppose it is the season's ephemeral nature that most inspires my admiration. As I pick up my pace to complete belated summer chores, my mind savors these last pleasant days. It feels that the best that this life has to offer can be but briefly held in breezy, fragrant Autumn.

Friday evening was the Fall Festival at Aidan's new school. He and I had a nice time playing games, eating donuts, listening to a local Celtic band made up of kids, taking a hayride, touring a local fire truck and police car. He was especially pleased with the cupcakes that he won in the cake walk and couldn't wait to get home to sample them. Janet and the other children were away for the weekend so we drove home to a dark and empty house.


Our farm is located far from any large residential areas and can be very dark at night, so dark that the University of Michigan has an observatory on a hill just southeast of us. On clear evenings the stars come out by the billions. Before sending everyone off to bed, we often gather the whole family on the deck to lie back in the chairs to marvel at the beauty hanging above. We always remark on the massive Milky Way, the big and little dippers, the Pole Star. We have watched meteor showers and wondered at the strangeness of satellites drifting silently past.


We pulled up our bumpy driveway and came to a stop in front of the house. I exited the car and started walking toward the front door. Aidan hurried to catch up with me to calm his uneasiness about the darkness around us. As I reached out to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder I glanced upward to take advantage of this brief opportunity to see the night sky.


Immediately my eyes were drawn to something unusual to the northwest. I stopped walking and involuntarily said, "what is that?" Aidan gripped a hand-full of my jacket and followed my gaze upward and repeated my question with an edge of alarm in his voice. A massive vertical column of white light shone down from the sky. It looked a bit like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds or perhaps as if someone were shining a huge spotlight straight up into the night, except that the sides of the column were perfectly parallel rather than spreading as light tends to do.


A quick scan of the rest of the sky told me the identity of the mysterious apparition and I quickly reassured Aidan that we were looking at the Northern Lights. The column turned out to be one of many that dotted the night sky above us. Most were on the horizon where they joined to form vertical curtains of ghostly white light. His apprehension immediately turned to wonder and we walked around the house exclaiming how beautiful they were and wishing that the rest of the family were there to share it with us.


I had only seen the Northern Lights once before. We used to own a sail boat and spent our summers exploring the Great Lakes. One night in late fall found me out in the middle of Lake Huron as I sailed south to move the boat to its winter berth. The lake is so massive that it takes more than a day to cross and is far too deep for anchoring, leaving little choice but to sail on through the night. I remember observing a pale curtain of greenish light that spanned the northern horizon and seemed to follow me for nearly the entire night. Since it was my first time observing them, it took me a number of hours of staring at them before my mind finally sorted out what I was seeing.


Aidan and I finally tore ourselves away from the display and we went inside to resume our nightly bedtime routine. After putting him to bed, I returned again and again to check on the lights. The show lasted for about four more hours until the sky finally cleared of all but stars around 2AM. I made many attempts to figure out how to capture the lights on my digital camera with very limited success. Hopefully you will be able to make out the faint vertical smudges of light above the trees that do little justice to the silent beauty of this eerie phenomena.

By the weather forecast, Saturday afternoon looked as if it would be the last relatively warm and clear day for some time to come. The state of the beehive had been nagging on my mind for a while so I decided to get right to the task of harvesting the honey and reconfiguring the hive for winter. As soon as Sean heard of my plans, he asked if he could help me. I was very welcoming of his participation because he has always been a bit squeamish around the hive and I felt it was a good opportunity for him to increase his confidence.

We have had a good historic partnership with the bees. They have been very docile and industrious and we have mostly left them to their business. We have never had an issue with anyone getting stung and I have never had the slightest fear of working around the hive. I regularly demonstrate their non-aggressive nature to visitors to our farm by passing my hands through the little cloud they form in front of the hive as they hurry back and forth to the nearby fields of flowers. I also will open the hive now and again to peek inside without any protective equipment at all.

Back at the house, Sean and I suited up in our make-shift bee-suits and headed out to the hive. I cracked it open and began to break it into sections to assess the health of the bees and to see how much honey they had accumulated. From what I could see they looked strong and heathly. Sean assisted by handing me tools and by manning the smoker which is used to keep the bees calm during our invasion. Aidan also stopped by to observe the proceedings from a short distance away.

It didn't take long for us to notice that the bees were being unusually aggressive. As I worked further into the hive the air around us filled with more and more angry bees attempting to defend their home. Before long Sean became unnerved by the number of bees that were swarming around his head. I assured him that they would not hurt him in the bee suit and gently chastised him that he needed to stay calm and not overreact to the threat.

Despite my reassurances and my efforts to calm the bees, their furious defense continued unabated. Sean and Aidan decided that it was too much and headed back to the house as I did my best to finish up the task. Poking around in the beehive is normally a pleasant and interesting experience but the rising aggression of the bees soon had me looking forward to finishing my work, closing the hive back up and getting away from it.

As I began the process of stacking the hive back up I was suddenly surprised to feel something brush against my cheek. My middle-aged eyes are losing the ability to focus on things at close range but I was convinced that a bee had penetrated my suit. It was flying around inside my veil and preparing to sting me in the face! It was at this point that all of my years of beekeeping experience and my oh-so-grownup self control abandoned me utterly.

I admit it. I panicked! I can't imagine what I was thinking. I just went into autopilot. As if out of reflex, my gloved hands came up and pulled the veil off of my head to shake the bee out without a single thought to the cloud of angry bees that orbited me just outside the protective suit!

As if with one mind, the angry bees recognized the unexpected opportunity to wreak their revenge. Dozens of them dove at my unprotected head in search of the perfect spot to sting. By then I had recovered my faculties but there was little I could do but flee. I quickly walked away from the hive and made my way across the hayfield while I attempted to keep the vengeful mob at bay by waving my hands around my face.

Despite my efforts to get away from them, they continued attacking my head even after I had traveled more than 80 yards! In my attempts to defend myself I had dropped my glasses somewhere in the field. I was also leaving a trail of clothes and equipment behind as I shed layer after layer to rid myself of the bees that had become trapped inside with me.

The worst of the experience came from the fact that I have very long hair. It was tied back as always but in running my hands over my head, I was entangling more and more bees in the strands. By the time I had finally moved far enough away that the defenders had retreated, I had at least a half-dozen bees entangled and buzzing furiously just behind my ears! I kept trying to smash them with my fingers but the buzzing continued until I finally made my way into the house and picked them out one by one while standing beneath the hot shower.

I referred to the suits that we wear as "make-shift" because only the head-gear and gloves are made for this purpose. The suits themselves are actually painter's overalls made from thin plastic from the hardware store. The fatal flaw in this instance is that there are gaps in the defenses that can be exploited by the bees if they crawl down under the collar of the suit and then up under the headgear. That being said, I have used this arrangement and even less for years without encountering any issues.

As for why the bees were so aggressive, I can't say for sure. The best time to work in beehives is during warm clear days when most of the bees are out foraging. For that reason the cool weather may have been a factor. It may also be that these particular bees that I had purchased from Georgia during last spring are simply more aggressive than I am used to.

Once I had rid my hair of the last bee, I suited back up to complete the task at hand. I closed the hive up and collected two full supers of honeycomb loaded to the brim with fresh honey. The bees eventually calmed down and returned to their docile ways.

I counted my stings and was surprised to have only received three. Of course, had I remained calm, I would have kept that number to one at the most. In the end I am left with a renewed sense of respect for our tiny winged livestock and a clear sense that I need to upgrade our equipment before the time comes to begin working the hive again next spring.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then not planning ahead is the mother of necessity. About a week ago we had a very hard frost that killed just about everything in the garden. What remains are the cold weather crops, the winter squash, and the root vegetables. As the nights have become progressively cooler it has begun to worry me that I have no good way to store our winter vegetables!

Most root vegetables need temperatures in the range of 32-40 degrees F. Our home has an unheated garage that could be used for storage, but it is far too cold in our Michigan winters that routinely reach 10 degrees below zero. We also have a basement but it is far too warm. With an eye to the ever cooler weather forecast, I have been casting around trying to figure out what to do before everything freezes and is wasted.

In my long-range plan for the farm, I had been assuming we would dig a proper root cellar outside the back door. This is obviously too much of a task for me to begin now if I am to have any hope of completing it in time. Given how miserable the winters can get here, I also have my doubts how much we would actually venture out there and shovel the several feet of snow away from the door to retrieve something. It seems more likely that we would eagerly stock it full in the fall and then mostly waste everything inside due to lack of use.


That has led me to begin thinking about building a root cellar inside our unfinished basement and cooling it with air from outside during the winter. We have been planning to make a project of finishing the basement over the next few years and even have drawn up plans. In those plans there is a 7'x12' storage room that seem perfectly suited to the job.


I searched the Internet and came across a great article from the December 2004 Mother Earth News by Steve Maxwell that seems to be exactly what I had in mind. As you can see from the illustration, it involves building a little room in a corner of the basement, insulating it from the warmth of the house and using an exterior window as a source of cool air.


After seeing this, I am on the verge of launching into yet another project. Nevermind the fact that I have so many others half-finished! Unless Janet grabs me tonight and shakes some sense into me, I think I'm going to pull together a materials shopping list and set off on yet another ambitious project that must be completed before the snow flies. You can either wish me good luck or wish me more common sense, that choice is up to you.

As the days have begun to cool, my mind has turned toward the upcoming sugaring season with increasing regularly. Of primary concern is the fact of I have not had time to cut any firewood for use in boiling down the sap when it starts to flow in late January. We still have a nice pile of wood from that kindly given to us last spring by our neighbor, Tim, but it is a far cry from the amount that will be needed.


Toward the end of last year's run, Tim had spoken to us of his interest in offering the use of maple trees on his land. I enthusiastically agreed and said we could work out some kind of a deal to compensate him. We resolved to take some time this summer to scout his property for trees. Many months have passed since that conversation and we have both been too busy to get around to the task. As the leaves on our maples have begun to turn and fall to the ground I had begun to worry that we wouldn't get it done before the trees were bare and much more difficult to identify.


Yesterday morning as Sean and I were installing coop windows, my cell phone jumped to life in my pocket. It turned out to be Tim calling to suggest that it would be a good day to scout those woods for maples and I heartily agreed. We set a time to begin in the afternoon.


Having been distracted from our coop construction work by the thought of maple sugaring, Sean and I decided that we should spend the early afternoon surveying our own property. We wanted to check the growth of each of the trees that we tapped last year, just in case any had grown big enough to accept an additional tap. The guidelines for the number of taps per tree has limits based on the size of each tree to protect its health. We also wanted to check the rest of our woods to see if we could find any other trees that we had missed in our late-fall survey last year.


We had a great time walking around in the woods and checking the trees. Before long we had located quite a few trees including a couple of very large ones that we had never noticed before. We excitedly measured each one, marked them with survey tape and calculated the additional taps we would be able to bring into production. All told, we were able to find seven new trees and we will be able to grow our operation from last year's 15 taps to a total of 28.


We neared the edge of where the property line divides the woods just as Tim joined us in the search. We spent a couple of hours crossing back and forth together through his beautiful parcel, peering into the foliage, measuring and marking trunks and chatting as we went. By the end we were exhausted and amazed at the sheer number of maples we had found.


The final count of our combined sugarbush is enough trees to support a whopping 72 taps! That is such a huge increase over the 15 taps that worked me to death last winter and they are spread over a much wider area. We were very happy with the results and the agreement that we worked out to form a sort of partnership in the venture. I am especially happy because my firewood woes were solved at the same time because his portion of the bargain is to provide all of the firewood that I need to process the sap from both properties!


Now I am going to have to start thinking about some technology improvements to make this large of an enterprise manageable. Tim made the suggestion that I should invest in an ATV for hauling the sap back to the boiler each day and I'm inclined to agree. I suppose a horse would be more traditional but would probably add more complication and cost than I am ready for.


I also need to think seriously about our equipment and facilities for evaporating, filtering and bottling the syrup. Given the expense and the time involved, I'm sure the scaling up of this operation will need to take place in steps over the next few years. Just the same, it's very exciting to think of the potential that we have at hand. Stay tuned to see how it goes!

These pictures are actually from a month ago during the height of our cucumber harvest. I had forgotten to post about the all-important pickle making that we do each year. We are big fans of pickles and eat large quantities of them every year. Our larder is now loaded up with dill and sweet pickles, as well as homemade sweet pickle relish!

There is little doubt that Fall is in the air. October came in wet, windy and cold. We are feeling the pressure to get the outdoor projects finished up before our time runs out and we are driven inside for the winter.

Sean and I decided to devote this weekend to getting as far as we could on the coop building project. I know I have been blogging about the construction of this "chicken palace" for many months, but it honestly has been a massive project. If we had been able to work on it continuously, it would have been finished long ago. Unfortunately it always has to be balanced with so many other priorities.

Saturday morning found me dreading the day because the forecast had said "cold and rainy" and it appeared to be turning out that way. Sean and I headed out and were surprised to find the day pleasant for working, even with the occasional sprinkles.

We mounted window sills and frames that I had made last week in the openings. Then we unpacked and installed the windows that I had purchased from a reuse center. By the end of the day we had them half installed and the chickens were greeted by the sunrise for the first time this morning.

In the past week or so I noticed an odd trend in our egg production. I had been anticipating a gradual increase in volume but instead we started seeing a decrease. I had seen some evidence of a couple of new hens beginning to lay but now it seemed that they were producing less and less. At first, I thought this could be due to the increasingly cold weather and the shortening days but the literature claims that our Orpington's should actually continue laying right through the winter.

When I saw that yesterday's haul was only two eggs I decided to poke around a little bit. It didn't take me long to figure out what was going on. In the unfinished southern half of the chicken coop I have a number of doors and windows leaning up against the wall awaiting their day to finally get installed. I poked my head behind one of the doors to find a handsome clutch of eleven eggs as shown in the picture.

I'm not sure why a number of the hens have decided to lay here instead of the nice nest boxes that I built. My guess is that it has something to do with the improved privacy that this quiet corner provides. In any case, until we finish up this second half of the coop we will just have to add this location to our daily round of hide and seek to find the eggs.

Since we didn't know how long these eggs have been sitting there, I concluded that we couldn't keep them. Early this morning Freya and I let the birds out just before departing to drive to her school and me to work. We enjoyed a brief game of spotlight egg fast pitch as we took turns shining the flashlight at a tree out in the woods while the other attempted to smack the spot with the eggs. She won the contest handily with a slightly low but direct hit on the tree. Hopefully we won't have to waste any more eggs in that way but it was kind of fun just the same!