Portage River Farm

I've never been a picky eater....except for blue cheese....and organ meats....and black licorice...and just about anything from the ocean. OK, so maybe I'm a bit of a picky eater! In any case, I have never been a fan of sauerkraut.

As a kid I would turn my nose up at the stuff and always minimized my consumption of it to the smallest "no thank you" portion that I could get away with. Even though I tend to be someone who enjoys traditions, I never wanted any part of the whole eating sauerkraut on New Years' Day thing.

When Janet recently announced that she was going to make sauerkraut from the last of our cabbage, I did my best to conceal my lack of enthusiasm for the idea. I even spent an afternoon attempting to make a wooden lid for the crock that would fit inside on top of the cabbage. That didn't work out so well because of the conical shape of the interior made it a poor fit.

I watched as Janet rinsed, chopped, salted and placed the leaves into the five gallon crock. When she was done I said, "That's it? Just leaves and a little salt?" She assured me that nothing else was required. I didn't question her authority on the matter further because she was raised by her German immigrant mother who certainly knows all about sauerkraut.

The success of the pickling process depends on the exclusion of oxygen. After my failed attempt with the wooden stopper I tried a second idea that I saw in a book somewhere. I placed a large plastic bag in the crock on top of the cabbage and filled it with water. This idea seemed to work very well, it sealed very tightly to the sidewalls of the crock and provided weight to press the cabbage down.

The flaw in the idea wasn't apparent until a few days later when I checked the bag and found that all of the water was gone! My choice of bags wasn't the best and it ended up developing a leak and flooding the cabbage. With considerable effort, I lifted the full crock to the sink and drained the water back out again.

Janet wisely took the whole effort over from me then. She placed two dinner plates into a plastic bag and pressed them down on top of the cabbage. We moved the crock to a quiet corner and let it alone for about six weeks.

When the day came to open the crock and try the sauerkraut, I was dubious to say the least. I was expecting to find a moldy disgusting mess under those plates. When she lifted them out and we peered inside, I was amazed to see that the cabbage had been magically transformed into pale pickled strands that looked for all the world just like sauerkraut!

Janet rinsed some of the the sauerkraut and placed it in a pan. She warmed it up a bit and added a little red wine vinegar and a touch of sugar to taste. The children and I sat at the table wrinkling our noses as it was served out but became instant believers the moment we tasted it. To my surprise, it was delicious and we all asked for extra helpings!

I guess I have to admit that her skill in the kitchen has decreased my picky eating habit by one more item. We canned what we didn't eat right away and it is now now resting in the basement larder for whenever the mood strikes us. Despite my misgivings, I now find myself looking forward for the first time to resurrecting that New Year's Day tradition in our household. I know already what one of my resolutions will be.....to plant more cabbage!

It started badly and went downhill from there.

(continued from "Three Strikes" above)

It has been a busy week preparing for the upcoming CSA meeting and an overabundance of assignments at work. The pile of tasks before me seem to grow faster than I can complete them and the days are falling off of the calendar like so many leaves in the wind. On Thursday afternoon I was racing with the clock to complete yet another assignment for my boss when an unexpected email found its way to my desktop.

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!

The day is approaching when I am going to have to cull the extra roosters in our flock. In doing so, I will slaughter five roosters and leave the best two to be the breeding stock for next year's flock expansion. The trick is determining which of the roosters exhibit the qualities that we want to keep.

The poultry raising guides that I have read for our breed of chicken make recommendations on this selecion process. The best roosters to keep will have a certain color, body shape, comb configuration and temperment. Sean and I have been eyeing the flock and believe there are two obvious choices. There are two roosters who stand out above the rest. The first we plan to use as a replacement for Marco Pollo. He will take his place as patriarch of the northern flock as "Marco Pollo II" once Marco I meets his fate. (Marco I is the agressive bird that I mentioned previously who also happens to be inferior genetically according to the standards.)

The second rooster that we are thinking of keeping is another fine specimen. He will take his place as the rooster of the southern coop and will be dubbed "Gallus Rex I" or Rex for short. There is just one thing about Rex that gives us a slight concern about his eligibility to ascend to the throne. Rex is a dancing chicken.

Rex's stylish displays do not happen every day but there's nothing like it when he decides to kick up his heels. He dances by spinning in a tight circle in one direcion, and then reversing his movement to retrace his steps backward. If you watch the video below, you will first be tempted to believe that I reversed the video for the latter half. In fact, the video has not been touched in any way.

We are hoping that Rex's fanciful ways are not evidence of some pathology. You would be tempted to think that he had a serious brain defect of some sort except that he behaves perfectly ordinarily when he isn't dancing. He will go for many days acting like every other rooster in the yard, then break into a fit of dancing for a few minutes, and then go back to his ordinary pecking and strutting as if nothing happened.

I have searched the internet and my literature for some chicken disease that would cause spinning but have thus far come up with nothing that would indicate that the dancing is a problem. I would hate to cull an otherwise handsome bird if this behavior is normal. I would also hate to cull all of the rest of the roosters only to find that there is something wrong with him. Will we end up frustratedly watching him pursue his dancing obsession instead of fathering new chics? While I ponder this question Rex continues to kick up his heels and spin his way through his first pleasant summer.

As I've mention in earlier posts, the harvest season has been going very well this year. We have been especially happy with the cauliflower and broccoli which have yielded large and very sweet heads.


Our earlier troubles with cabbage moths had been handily fixed with a single application of an organic gardening biologic control (see earlier post for details). They still nibbled on some of the leaves now and again, but the amount of damage done never again rose to the level that I felt a need to do something about it.

Our daughter Freya (in center of photo) happened to have a couple of her school friends over for a visit and we put them to work. I snapped this picture as they were delivering some produce to the kitchen for processing. A small amount of these were steamed for dinner. The rest we blanched, vacuum packed and stored away in the freezer for use this winter.

The weather has certainly been odd this year. The spring was the rainiest that anyone could remember. Then along came July and it was incredibly dry. Knowing that I was supposed to make sure the garden received at least 1" of water per week, I spent a fair amount of that month setting up and moving our one sprinkler around. It didn't take long until I was telling myself, "There must be a better way".

I headed off to the hardware store and bought more sprinklers, some more garden hose, some valving and a watering timer. Now what was once a chore is as easy as can be.

I placed fence posts at various points in the garden and topped each with a sprinkler. I ran hoses between them and hooked it all up to the water supply. Unfortunately the output of our well pump isn't quite enough volume for all of them to run at the same time so I added some valves to break them into two groups. Now I just set the timer and stand back while the sprinklers do all of the work.

It would be fair to say that my garden plans will require some adjustment for next year. Some items such as peas have been too few. Other things such as zucchini, collards and yellow summer squash are yielding in such huge quantities that it is laughable.

We have been harvesting the garden literally by the wheel barrow full for the past month. We have tried to find time to can some of it for winter use, have been having fresh vegetables at nearly every meal and chopping up some to feed to the chickens. Inevitably, some of it has been heaped in piles between the rows and left to rot in the sun.

In my defense, I only ordered one small packet of seeds per variety. The problem was that I doggedly planted every single seed in every packet no matter how impractical that might be. Now that we have this first year under our belt, I will be able to make some adjustments to the plans to better match our ability to consume what is grown. All of this may be reversed someday if we ever manage to start producing for sale at the local farmer's markets but right now we are just too busy getting the kids back into the school routine.

In the quiet time between the last harvest and maple tapping season, I have a long list of website improvements and similar projects to tackle. Among them will be the final assessment of our garden's successes and failures. I also look forward to adjusting some of the varieties that we grew that didn't turn out so well.

But for the moment the sun is still warm and things are still growing. I think I may take the kids aside this evening and work out a special strategy to help with the problem. I'm starting to think that Janet and I could intentionally distract any visitor who comes to our house just long enough for the children to pack every cubic inch of their vehicle with squash!

Of all of our children, Sean seems to have taken to the chickens the most. During idle moments he can often be found visiting the henhouse. He likes to scoop up a hen or rooster, cradle it under his arm and sit or walk around the chicken yard petting it. I have to admit that I understand the appeal and do the same myself now and again. They are soft, friendly and very entertaining birds.

During a recent weekend afternoon, I was working in the garden when Sean passed by on his way to the coop for a visit. Shortly thereafter he came running out into the yard yelling excitedly that he had just found our first egg! He brought it to me and the family gathered around as we admired the little treasure. It was a small egg and brown in color. The boys are shown holding it in the picture below.

Since that day we have had a steady increase in the size and frequency of eggs arriving as more and more hens have gotten into the act. We now can count on three eggs every day. We have used them in baking and eaten them for breakfast. They range in size from medium to large and have a better flavor than store-bought eggs. Thus far our consumption has kept up with the supply and we are happy to know that we may never have to buy eggs at the grocery again.


My plan is to build our breeding flock up to include 16 hens and 2 roosters. Based on the fact that each Orpington hen is supposed to lay about 265 eggs each year, that should mean we will eventually be hauling a dozen eggs out of the coop each day! We plan to hatch some of them to provide meat birds for the table and replacements for aging birds in the breeding flock. The rest we will either sell or eat.

I have to say that I am very impressed by the productive little hens. Walking back to the house with the day's hand full of eggs, I find myself thinking that it seems miraculous that their bodies can create such an amazing thing let alone withstand doing it day after day.

Even before we have slaughtered our first bird I feel humbled by the relationship that humanity has forged with these once wild creatures. In return for feed, water and protective shelter, it seems that they will cheerfully provide us an endless supply of protein to sustain us as well as entertaining company. I can only imagine the work that the little hens go through each day. Even considering all of the work that has been going into building a safe and pleasant coop for them, it still seems to me that we've got the better part of the deal!

Last weekend found Sean and I hard at work once again on the chicken coop. It is admittedly a huge project but it seems we would have had it completed by now had other priorities not jumped up constantly to cause us to put our efforts elsewhere. The impetus for this burst of activity was complaints from the neighbors about our roosters loudly crowing in the early hours of the morning.

Up until this point, the roof of the coop was merely tarps stretched over the roof trusses to keep the rain out. Unfortunately, this arrangement does little to dampen the racket raised by our alpha rooster, Marco, when he is in full cry. In the interest of being good neighbors, we set aside a day to see what we could do to enclose the coop more completely.

Working together, we sheeted in the roof with plywood and then tacked down roofing felt to protect it from the rain. At first I only used staples to hold it in place. After a few windy days of seeing it partially blow off and attempting to secure it with staples again, I finally resorted to screwing thin boards along the lower edges to prevent further movement. I have placed an order for sheet metal to cover the roof and hopefully the current arrangement will hold until that is installed.

We also completed the task of sheeting in the exterior walls on the back and southern wing of the coop (the right-hand side in the photo). Having that complete, we tacked housewrap around the entire building to keep it dry until we are ready to install siding. We also tacked sheets of plywood over the window openings on the inside to further contain the noise.

The coop now remains completely dry and is very dimly lit within even at the height of the day. The combination of the substantial muffling that the newly enclosed coop provides and the fact that it remains dark in the interior until quite late in the morning has led to rave reviews from our neighbors.

One of the next steps will be the installation of the windows and remaining doors. This will once again permit light into the coop. Hopefully the interior windows plus the storm windows will be sufficient to keep the crowing volume low even when Marco can once again see the sunrise and feels compelled to do what comes naturally.

I also have to add that it is wonderful to work on projects like this with the children. They are interesting and pleasant company as we carry on a continuous banter about whatever comes to mind. I am also happy to be teaching them skills that may come in handy some day on projects of their own and instilling in them a sense of pride at the completion of a job well done.

Janet has always loved decorating our home with flowers. Upon purchasing our farm last fall, we began to discuss the best spot for the flower garden. Before long we settled on the patch of grass in the center of the circle drive directly in front of the house.

The plan didn't move beyond that stage until Mother's Day. We used that occasion as the impetus to get things moving forward. The children and I took Janet out to the nursery where we purchased a wide assortment of wildflower mixes and individual seed packets.

I also borrowed my father-in-law's rototiller to tear up the sod and prepare the ground for seeding. Unfortunately the project hit a major snag when I managed to break the tiller by snapping an old welded repair that had become rusty and brittle. I removed the part and Dave had it rewelded at a local shop. Borrowing equipment is always risky but he has been very forgiving and helpful.

When the tiller was finally back in working order, I broke up the very hard packed soil and removed a fair number of rocks. Aidan and I mixed all of the seeds in a bucket with some potting soil and then broadcast them as evenly as we could. After a few weeks of watering, the first seedlings were well on their way.

We were concerned that a flower garden created in this way would just end up looking like a big patch of weeds. Fortunately the blooms have been increasingly plentiful and it is finally beginning to fill in and look nice. We are trying not to overdo the harvesting of flowers so that enough will go to seed to provide for next year's crop. Regardless of how many manage to emerge after the long winter, I'm sure we will have to supplement it with a fresh batch of store-bought seeds next spring as well.

Now that the flower garden is blooming, the interior of our house is full of colorful bouquets. Every few days, Janet has been picking a combination of wildflowers and our garden flowers and placing them everywhere. I even found a water glass with some sitting on my desk in the basement.

A few nights ago, I reluctantly tore myself away from a project in the house to complete my nightly chore of shutting the chickens in their coop. I headed to the mud room to don my boots as Freya announced that she wanted to come along as well.