Portage River Farm

In early April of 2009, I walked out into our back yard and pounded some stakes into the ground at the edge of our woods. I was marking where I planned to build a super-deluxe chicken coop. Driving those stakes was the first thing that we had done since moving onto our new farm that would permanently alter the landscape and begin the process of turning it back into a working farm. After more than 75 years of growing wild, the land would slowly be transformed to produce food once again.

At the time that this all began, I had no idea that growing commercially was in our future. My mind was full of dreams of self-sufficiency and the chicken coop was simply intended to provide eggs and meat for our family. Of course, if you were to see it today, you would wonder at it's size and the expense that it took to construct it for such a humble purpose. That's exactly what a number of my farmer friends appeared to think when they first heard of my overblown plans. The most common chicken coop design in these parts is a sheet-metal garden shed. Those who have known me for a while are aware that I don't do anything small or by half-measure.

The coop project absorbed much of my time and energy during that first summer. It grew in fits and starts as the days went by. With my attempts to protect my handiwork and the birds within from the elements it became quite an eyesore with its flapping blue tarps, white Tyvek and chicken wire. With plenty of help from visiting friends, the building gradually took shape and was eventually wrapped in attractive red and white sheet metal.

This past spring, as the still incomplete project moved into its second year, the thing that made its unfinished state most noticeable was the roof. In the fall, I had rolled out tar paper to protect the plywood roof beneath with the assumption that the sheet metal roof would soon follow. That was not to be and the winter winds eventually ripped it all off and threw great strips into the woods beyond. With the spring thaw our poor long-suffering hens did their best to stay dry as they dodged drips from the rain-soaked ceiling.

All of this provided handy material for the good-natured ribbing that my neighbor Tim passed out whenever our respective chores brought us within earshot of each other across the property line. What's worse, his property is neat and tidy with not one half-completed project in sight. Having no foothold for a clever comeback, I was reduced to defensive excuses about how many things I had going on. Somehow I just never was able to find a way to bring that project up the priority list.

Then my longtime buddy and favorite handyman Fred stopped by for a visit. He took a look around to see how he could make himself useful and said, "Hey, why don't we put a roof on that coop?". I jumped at the offer and we started right into it. We gathered up ladders, tools and extension cords and got down to business.

The building is quite tall, built on a slight slope and raised a few feet off of the ground on concrete piers. That means that even the lower edge is between 11 and 14 feet off of the ground. We worked our way around the edge installing white fascia covers. Having that complete, we climbed on top and began screwing down the heavy black sheet metal for the roof itself.

The work progressed quickly as we talked and joked to pass the time. The grade of the roof is quite steep and walking on it was tricky. We took turns gingerly creeping down toward the bottom edge laden with tools to place the screws into the lower portions of the sheet. No matter how hard we tried, we were constantly dropping screws, hammers and other tools. These quickly zipped down the slick metal surface and disappeared over the edge with our hopes that they miss any hapless chickens below.

Despite the hazards, the project moved along toward completion. Now and again we would straighten our stiff backs to look back over our progress and comment on how nice it looked. Although we only had a couple of sheets to go, we decided to take a break and head in the house for a drink.

As we relaxed inside for a bit, life returned to normal in the coop yard. Chickens are very curious by nature and will investigate anything left in their reach. As soon as we were gone, the birds rushed over to walk all over and peck at the last remaining sheets that we had left on the ground. Chickens are also messy. As they explored the strange new material, they scratched in the dirt nearby and chased each other on and off of the metal and relieved themselves a time or two for good measure.

When we returned from the house we urged our tired muscles into the task of placing the last few sheets. We noticed that a light rain shower had passed over our work site while we had been away. Since our break had gone a little longer than intended, most of the water had already evaporated as the sun heated up the black surface and only a couple of droplets remained. Thinking no more of it, we climbed the ladders for the last time to finish our work.

As it happens, it was my turn to do the dangerous bit of carefully walking down the roof surface to install the screws in the sheet while Fred held it in place. After getting a few screws in place to hold my weight, I stepped onto the new sheet as I had been doing all day to fasten down the far side. That is when everything went awry.

In my perception, the next few moments crawled by in slow motion. Once events began there was little I could do to change course. Although I could swear that the surface of the newly attached sheet looked clean and dry, the moment that I transferred my weight to the foot I had placed there, I knew that it had been a mistake. The foot whipped out from under me and I began a slow-motion flail for the security of the roof as gravity reached up from the ground like a gigantic invisible claw to drag me helplessly out into space.

By this time both of my legs were out from under me and I hit the roof surface with a bang. Fred's face became animated with alarm as he reached out from above in a vain attempt to save me from my fate. Actually, it is good for him that I was a couple of feet out of reach or he too would have found himself helpless in the clutches of the gravity monster.

The clarity of moments such as this and the speed at which your mind hunts desperately for salvation is amazing. I twisted toward the roof surface and made a few scrabbling attempts to find purchase only to rip my palms on the heads of a few screws as I began the long slide downward. Finally realizing that there was no other solution for it, I twisted in the other direction to face the peril before me as I slid helplessly downward and over the edge.

Time began to thaw and take on speed once again as I ramped off of the roof and flew through the air beyond. The ground rushed up at me with grim resolve to deliver the final blow for my carelessness. Unlike the long moments of my dance with possible rescue upon the sheet metal above, I was now helpless to do anything other than brace for impact and hope for the best.

I came to earth in an upright posture with the ball of my left foot absorbing much of the shock. I fell forward to the ground and lay there face down for a moment while Fred raced down the ladder to my aid. Not too long ago, I was in a serious head-on collision that totaled my car and left me with cracked ribs, a cracked sternum, a cracked nose and a dislocated jaw. In both that instance and this, my brain urged me to get back on my feet and insist that I was fine when in truth I was too shocked to conduct an accurate inventory of my parts.

As I walked it off and laughed at myself, I could tell that all was not well with my foot. In response to concerns from Fred and my family that I should probably go to the doctor, I insisted that I would be fine. I said that I would go to the doctor if it didn't stop hurting in three days time. Of course, in three more days it felt sufficiently better that I revised my pledge for the doctors visit to give myself more time to heal. In the end, I never went.

Later that day after Fred had gone home and I was fuming to myself in the living room. My foot was hurting but I just couldn't stand to waste precious weekend hours because of an injury. I asked Freya to bring me crutches and I made my hobbling way out to the field where I had long overdue tilling to do.

We have a 1970's vintage Troy-bilt Horse tiller that weighs a ton but it gets the job done. Once I had it going I found that I could leave the crutches behind and keep up with the machine as it made slow progress across the field by mostly standing on my good foot. I wasn't able to wear a shoe on the injured foot so I was grateful for the soft earth that the tiller left for me.

I worked out there for quite a while before I noticed that Janet and the children were standing in the driveway looking at me with expressions of disbelief. I shut down the tiller and insisted that I was fine and could still get things done. In attempting to convince them, I likened holding on to the tiller handles to using a walker. My son Aidan knowing how much the tiller jumps around, responded by saying, "Yeah, if your walker was powered by a jackhammer!".

It took fully three months until I could say that the tenderness had finally gone away. Unfortunately it has also become apparent that I did indeed break one of the fine bones in there, from the feel of it I would say that it was the third metatarsal. To this day, when I arise each morning it is very apparent that the break did not heal correctly. It takes several minutes of hobbling around until things stretch out enough for me to hide my new limp.

This all may sound foolhardy and I assure you that it is. What began as a resigned belief that there was nothing that the doctor could do turned into a dread supposition that the only thing that could be done would be to rebreak the badly healed bone in order to align it properly. In hindsight I should have handled it differently, but at this point I'd rather just limp.

In any case, the end of the story is that we finished that darned roof and I'm as proud of it as can be. I think it's a beauty of a coop and I paid for it dearly. Recalling my father's admonition to climb right back on the horse when I'd been bucked off, I scaled the ladder to the roof and only Fred's kind insistence that he could finish the last sheet on his own prevented me from hobbling back up there.

In the end the chickens are drier, the neighbors are happier and I'm just a little bit wiser. Maybe next time I'll use some safety ropes or at least give in when those around me say that perhaps I should let somebody "take a look at that" instead of being so stubborn.

Janet and I emerged from our car onto the sunny residential street on the west side of Ann Arbor. It was Good Friday morning and a rare weekday off for me. Instead of sleeping in or starting up one of my many farm projects, we had set aside this time to try something new. We crossed the street together and made our way along the sidewalk. A little unsure of what was in store for us, we talked pleasantly about nothing in particular as a way to distract us from our nerves.

We found ourselves in a small side-room of the house that was crowded with people who were waiting to be seated. The walls of the room were plastered from floor to ceiling with name tags and bits of masking tape with names written on them. We were instructed to see if we could find our names so we could reuse them. Janet managed to find one for herself and I made a fresh one from masking tape.

The large and nicely appointed kitchen was well-ordered chaos. Volunteers were washing dishes and chopping vegetables while a couple of cooks turned out plate after plate of delicious looking fare. Jeff was positioned to one side of the counter and was clearly keeping it all working smoothly. He and Lisa were amid a crowd of volunteers with orders coming in, plates going out, problems being dealt with and still the charismatic pair found time to greet an unending stream of acquaintances who couldn't resist saying hello.

Hoop houses are similar in appearance to greenhouses. They are metal framed buildings covered in clear plastic and can be used to grow food year-round without heating...even in Michigan! The efforts of Jeff, Lisa and their many volunteers are beginning to rebuild the local growing capacity in the Ann Arbor area with the aim of reducing the need for gas-guzzling importation of food from warmer climes.

You may have noted that my blog fell silent quite a few months ago. Back in the spring, the work on the farm suddenly picked up in intensity as the weather warmed up. At the same time, things started changing at work due to improvements in the economy. My company survived the downturn by reducing its workforce and having those who remained double up on job responsibilities. As business began picking up, we became swamped with work that overflowed into evenings and weekends.

Up until that point, my blogging was done during my lunch hour. With the increased workload, I have been forced to work through most of my lunches in an effort to get enough work done in a given day that I wouldn't have to stay late. The work on the farm also became so overwhelming that there was little time left for sleep, let alone blogging.

I can't really say that things have let up very much although it is true that we have grown in our capabililities to keep up with the farm work via the sink or swim method. All the while, I have had a growing sense of dissapointment that I have not had a chance to share the stories and experiences of the summer on the farm.

This week I am working in central Mexico, in a city called Queretaro. As such, I have found myself on a forced vacation from my usual evening farm work. Therefore this seems like the perfect time to get some writing done and share some of what we have been experiencing. I have a number of posts in the works and they will appear here shortly. Then hopefully when I get home again next week I will feel all caught up and motivated to squeeze some blogging time in somewhere to keep you all up to date.

I am happy to report that as of last week I have fired myself from one of my daily duties. The grounds of the dismissal were that I was tardy and inconsistent in my job performance. My responsibilities have since been eliminated by workplace automation. The job of which I speak is that of "Chicken Butler".

I knew that sooner or later I was going to lose more chickens if I didn't find a better solution. Turning to the Internet, I ran across discussions of automating chicken coop doors. I saw a number of different schemes before settling on what appeared to be the most reliable and cost effective. The concept centers on a purchased drive unit that was originally designed for opening and closing draperies. It is basically a motorized spool with adjustable limit switches.

We all contributed final touches to the contraption by connecting the power, threading the string through the hole in the guillotine-style door and setting up the timers to operate the doors at the proper times. When all was ready we stood back to survey the results. Since we didn't want to wait for darkness to fall, I triggered the motor remotely by unplugging and reconnecting the extension cords. As the little motor whirred to life and the door began to rise, we broke into wide grins and exchanged back-slaps of mutual congratulations at our achievement.

My wife Janet has been interested in fiber arts of one form or another as long as I have known her. She does cross-stitch and she also knits. Her specialty has mostly been knitting socks and hats. Lately she has taken an interest in weaving.

Before I knew it, I was drawn in hook, line and sinker. I asked her how much she was willing to spend on it and then I secretly put in a bid for considerably more. We impatiently watched the hours crawl past until the end of the auction and were delighted to learn that we had won. The price ended up being considerably less than either of us had been willing to spend.

A stamp on the back of the loom indicates that it was built in Michigan in 1938 by an obscure and short-lived "Fredrikson pattern shop". I've been unable to find much of anything about them and would not be surprised if this is the only surviving loom of their manufacture. To my engineer/woodworker's eye it is extremely well-designed. We were able to dismantle it for transport without any tools as the entire thing is cleverly held together with simple wedges.

Janet and I spent a few nights reading up on the finer points of loom design. We concluded that our new loom is a "counterbalance" design and is extremely similar to one sold by a Swedish loom company called Glimakra. After sketching out my ideas for the missing pieces, I headed out to the lumber store to pick up some maple boards for raw materials.

We purchased our farm in the Fall of 2008 amid turmoil in the housing market. In fact, the steep downturn in housing prices was the only way we would ever have been able to afford it. Little did we know how severe the economic catastrophe would ultimately become. We saw an opportunity and decided to take the chance. It was a wild and frightening ride but we appear to have made it across the chasm mostly unharmed.

Per the instructions on the website, I bought a very large blue tarp, some long framing nails and a stack of 2x4 pine lumber. I climbed up on the roof one late evening and had it wrapped up in a few hours. This was undoubtedly the first time any of the neighbors saw me and despite my pride in a job well done, I can't imagine that their first impression of us was a very good one. I shrugged my shoulders and assured my embarrassed wife that it was only for a few months until spring.

Winter came and the snow piled deep. In the dark of the year, the economic gloom reluctantly released its grip. The outlook for my employer and the general economy is finally looking as if the worst is over. A few weeks ago Janet called me to say that she had seen a billboard along the highway by a major roofer in our area advertising cheap winter rates.

A few days later the trucks drove up our driveway and disgorged a crew of friendly and hard-working gentlemen. They swarmed over our house while I was away at work. They removed my blue plastic work of art and peeled away what little remained of the original roofing. Their compliments about the job I had done in protecting the roof and their marveling that no plywood sheeting even required replacement puffed me up with pride as I momentarily forgot the sting of paying for somebody to do the job for me.

While I was off at work at my engineering job this week, one of our CSA members was hard at work here at the farm putting the final stages on our new maple equipment. Fred took on the project, all the way from taking measurements and ordering the piping to cutting the hole in the roof and installing the stack. It was a wonderful feeling to know that this task was being taken care of and it saved me a ton of time for other things.

As you can see from the photos, he did a great job. All that was left for me to do was to install the gasket material to the top of the firebox, clean out the boiling pan and set everything into place. With those things done, we entered the weekend ready for a couple of warm days to get the sap flowing and excitedly looking forward to building the first fire in our new arch.

Last year I was only growing food for our family. While it was all organically produced, the relatively small quantities of materials needed to start things indoors: lights, transplant flats and seed starting mix didn't warrant much more effort than running out to the local hardware store. Now that we have started a CSA, the much larger scale of our operation has me looking carefully at everything we are using to keep costs in line. That led me to turn my attention to potting soil.

Unfortunately they are located a couple of hours away from our farm but Justin offered to meet us on the weekend when he was passing through a nearby town and bring us a few bags to try. I have now planted about thirty flats and I am very impressed. The soil is deep and rich, but the nicest thing about it is that it wets very easily and holds moisture far better than what I had been using. In comparison, the national brand might as well be made of ground up cork! I find that I have to water those trays every day since they dry out quickly and most of the water just drains out of the bottom.

Hindsight is so clear, but three weeks ago it sure looked like we were in for a week-long heat wave. The forecast called for unseasonably warm weather in the upper thirties. Worried that we were going to miss out on the first major maple sap flow of the season, I resolved to go ahead and get the taps in the trees. I suppose my jumping of the gun was fueled by my excitement to try out our shiny new evaporator as well!

On Sunday afternoon, the boys and I pulled out a couple of the wooden sleds that I had mailed home during one of my working stints in Germany. We loaded them up with tools and supplies and headed for the woods. There was enough snow on the ground to help the sleds glide along without being so much that it was tiresome to walk through. The boys pulled the sleds and chattered excitedly. It was nice to be out in the woods together rather than cooped up in the house.

We threw ourselves into the work and fell into a good rhythm quickly. I scanned the forest for the green ribbons that indicated which trees we had picked to tap and chose a route by which we could visit them all. I stopped at each tree, measured its circumference, logged the data and decided how many taps each would get. With Aidan's assistance, I drilled the holes and placed the tabs before moving to the next tree.

Sean followed along behind with his sled and completed the operation. At each tree he assembled the blue sap sacks to their holders and placed them on each of the taps. He also wrote the log book number of each tree on the bags to help us with our record keeping. His was the more laborious of the jobs. I was careful to keep my pace slow enough that we could talk back and forth as we worked and I could lend him a hand now and again.


Things went pretty smoothly except that the sleds kept tipping over. The heavy boxes on the tall sleds made them top-heavy such that any little branch in our path would topple them over again and again. After a while I finally tied the two sleds into a double-wide arrangement and put an end to the constant need to right our burdens and collect our tools from the snow.

About half-way through we broke out the thermos that we had prepared and sat down in the snow for a much-needed hot chocolate break. The woods were beautiful and our spirits were high. We joked and laughed together as we all enjoyed the time together and the adventure of the day.

Eight-year-old Aidan is a master of making ordinary sticks into fantastic playthings. After our break was over, Sean and I resumed the work as Aidan stalked us from behind the trees with stick rifles, stick rocket-launchers, stick light-sabers and stick bow and arrows. Now and then he would emerge from cover to charge toward us with a war whoop and a snarl. After collapsing into giggles over our pantomimed terror, he would bound off to take cover in the woods and begin the game all over again.

It was a pleasant day even if it was a bit early in the season. We emerged from the woods just as the light was fading in the sky. With a sense of satisfaction of another task behind us, we trudged back toward the warmth of the house and the looming prospect of another week of work and school.

I am astounded at the difference in the perceived length of winter between this year and last year. Last year we had just moved onto the farm and had little to do but sit indoors dreaming of all of the things we would do once the weather warmed up. Of course, there was lots of snow shoveling to do and we were poorly equipped to handle it. I spent the entire winter removing deep snow from our 1,000 foot driveway with a plastic bladed snow shovel. Given all of that, the winter seemed to drag on and on.

The inspiration for this post is the arrival of our first major indication that the Spring season is upon us. A few days ago we had a day where the temperature climbed above freezing. That prompted a call from a friend of mine wondering if the time had arrived for us to tap the maple trees. I assured him that it was normal to get a few solitary days of warm weather interspersed with cold snaps before things warmed up in earnest.

Janet and I attended the Michigan Family Farms Conference on the west side of the state yesterday. As we were driving home, I was noting that the temperature had continued to be warm. I resolved to get our 2010 temperature chart started before going to bed last night. To my surprise, the chart shows that the warm temperatures are being projected to remain for at least the next week! I'm sure that a cold snap is still in our future but I have concluded that unless we get the taps in the trees today, we are going to miss out on first flow.

In the interest of honing my gardening skills and increasing my involvement in the local gardening community, I signed up for the Master Gardener Program offered by the Extension Office. After paying the program fees, being interviewed by the Extension Agent, providing three character references and having a police background check, I was accepted into the program. The program involves 48 hours of classroom time plus 40 hours of field work.

The date of the first class finally arrived to find me excited to get started. Unfortunately, that was also the day that we got our first major snow storm of the season. From my office at work, I checked the weather forecast and watched the flakes stack up outside the window. My commute from my office in Livonia to the classroom site would normally take about 45 minutes, but I decided to leave early to allow for slower traffic.

Little did I know what an incredible snarl the traffic would turn out to be. As soon as I turned onto the freeway, I could see that it was crammed to capacity and making extremely slow progress. I watched with mounting frustration as the estimated time of arrival on my GPS ticked the minutes away past the start time of class. At one point, I exited the freeway in the forlorn hope that I could find a quicker way through side-streets and back roads. Unfortunately those routes proved even more backed up than the freeway! I merged back into the freeway traffic and tried my best to relax and tell myself that it just couldn't be helped.

After nearly a three-hour struggle, I arrived at the Extension office about 30 minutes late. I found the packed classroom and took a seat along the wall. To my relief, they were just concluding the introduction to the course and I hadn't missed any of the lectures. The Extension Agent who was teaching the class knows me from previous courses and said she was confident that I would show up eventually.

The first class covered plant physiology and classification as well as an overview of major epidemic pest infestations and devastating disease outbreaks in the region. I found the topics fascinating and picked up many new facts that I did not know. We were also provided with a huge textbook roughly five inches thick. I'm looking forward to reading my way through the assignment in the next day or two.

Among my classmates were two of our CSA members. It was nice to see them and it's good to know that we will have so many well educated members to help and advise us. I also made acquaintance with another woman who is establishing her own CSA in the region and was eager for us to work together sharing ideas and helpful resource contacts. Her enthusiasm for her project was a good match for my own. We stood out in the parking lot talking excitedly until snow-covered and cold. We decided to continue our chat the following week.

It feels good to be getting to know so many people with similar interests in our region. The feeling of excitement among this growing network of farmers is infectious. Everyone I have met has been helpful and supportive, with effusive information sharing and offers of assistance in one way or another. The impression that we are all part of something new and exciting, a movement that is growing by the day does wonders to shore up my own energy for the massive amount of work we have ahead of us in our first CSA season.

I know that I will look back at this post a few years from now and laugh at myself. I am currently engaged in a wrestling match with my enthusiasm for our new CSA and am struggling to balance practicality and business sense with the overwhelming desire to do it all!

For the past month I have been spending every spare moment pulling together the planting/harvest plan for our little farm. We have had wonderful success in attracting and signing up a great group of people to participate and now we just have to deliver the goods, on time and in the proper quantities. Figuring out just how to do that is proving to be much more complex than I had imagined.

It all began with a survey to see what our membership would like us to grow. In my typical overly exuberant fashion, I put together a series of seed catalogue files containing well over 600 varieties of plants from which to choose. Amazingly, a large selection of the membership actually took the time to pick through all of it and provide me with feedback. With the help of that information, I winnowed the selection down to 90 vegetable selections that are currently on my not-so-short list of things that I would like to grow.

My next step was to lay out a schedule of starting, transplanting, harvesting and distributing each vegetable. Using the information from my survey, I developed a weekly plan for the entire year. I started with the most popular vegetables, maximizing the time they would be available and then working my way down the list filling in the schedule with progressively smaller amounts of the remainders. At this stage, I have a plan that shows us providing up to twenty items per week at the peak season.

This is several times the number of varieties that most CSAs grow for their customers. My understanding is that seven or eight items is more the standard. I know that I need to pare it down considerably but I just don't want to. We normally grow a large variety of things just for our family. Last year we grew 53.

According to my time-table, this task was supposed to be completed by January 1st. To buy myself a little more time, I went ahead and ordered the seed for those things that needed to be started indoors in January. Now I just need to get the rest of the plan out of the way so I can move on to preparing for the maple sugaring season that is looming just around the corner.

I am aware that there are numerous risks of growing too much. Besides the obvious risk of having production costs exceed income, there are also concerns with annoying members by overloading them with more than they can use. We have come up with a plan to deal with this and are arranging to sell/donate anything extra outside of the CSA. There is also the risk of creating unrealistic expectations which you can't practically support in future years. I know all of that but I still am just so excited about the whole adventure that it is hard to be practical.

I'm sure I will get this thing whittled down to something reasonable ...eventually. It is just much more fun to add things than it is to take them away. Whatever shape the final plan takes, I'm anticipating being far wiser at this time next year after spending a year trying to make my crazy plans work out.

In my opinion, barns are the steam engines of the architectural world. They fascinate me. I don't know exactly what the draw is, but I feel it everyday. They evoke a sense of nostalgia for sure, but it is much more than that.

I grew up in the country and around barns. My father had a sprawling one-story horse barn. My grandfather had an old barn for his cattle with a loft for loose hay. Our neighbors had a more modern steel barn loaded with hay bales that were perfect for making forts and secret hideouts.

On my drives to and from our farm, there are beautiful barns in every direction. I never tire of gazing at them and wishing I could take a closer look. I size them up, note their features, and dream of building the perfect barn of my own.

Unfortunately the farm we purchased last year did not come with a barn. I have enjoyed hours of reading and thinking about the perfect barn for our purposes but I know it will be a number of years before I can afford to build one.

One of the features of my barn plan will be a space to shelter our equipment from the weather. Our tractor and implements have been sitting outside for the six months that we have owned them. I know that many farmers leave them outside year round, but my engineer's sense is that they would stay in better condition if they could be dry and out of the sun most of the time.

The onset of snow and bitterly cold weather finally forced me to consider some temporary shelters. The day after Thanksgiving, the local farm supply store had a sale that included steep discounts on their "Garage-In-A-Box" shelters. They are heavy-duty tents with steel frames intended primarily as shelters for automobiles. They were perfect for my needs and the price was right. After verifying that my tractor would fit inside, I happily purchased two and loaded them into my van.

The primary project of the past two weeks has been constructing these shelters and moving our equipment inside. Aidan and I had a memorable day setting up the first one in the rain. The frame of the second one was assembled on a cold night beneath brilliant stars with the help of my new friend Andrea who is one of our CSA members. Yesterday, Sean and I completed the job by attaching the cover to the second shelter and filling it up with implements.

I'm not sure how long those tents will last, but it is reassuring to know that all of my equipment is protected and out of the weather. Our next task will be to transfer the contents of our shed out into these tents so we can begin converting the shed into a "sugar shack" for the quickly approaching maple season.