Woman Trapped By Snow Magic

I grew up on a sleepy street in a small town in southeastern Ohio. Our neighborhood had a motley collection of kids who were just a bit younger than me. We spent a great deal of time together and were always up to some kind of caper. Our imaginations ran wild with pretend games of all sorts and to us it seemed that anything was possible.

One wintry Sunday afternoon we hatched a scheme to force the schools to be closed on the following day. The weekend had seen a decent snow fall but the dreaded snow plows had long since cleared the roads. Some little genius among us reasoned that we should be able to reverse the work of the snowplow and render the roads impassible again.

After a brief huddle, we scattered in all directions to retrieve the necessary implements from our homes. Before long we had amassed a collection of shovels, buckets, hand trowels, sleds and a wheel barrow. We dove into our work with grim determination and the thrilling sense of doing something that would simply amaze and dismay the entire town when they awoke to find that everyone was going to get the day off!

We worked against the clock. We knew that the afternoon was getting long and soon our neighborhood would echo with the voices of our mothers leaning out of back doors and calling for us to come home for dinner. We shoveled and carried, pulled and dumped. Back and forth we went into the middle of the street as a small pile of snow grew there. Before we knew it, the time had expired. We shouted in response to our mother's calls that we would be there in "just a minute". We swore each other to secrecy and briefly made plans to meet up and play tomorrow during what was sure to be a Snow Day.

Of course we were sadly disappointed when our parents urged us to get up the next morning. Somehow, against all odds, the snow plow man had been alerted to our scheme and had come during the night to clear our street. In defiance of our brilliant plan, the Superintendent declared that the schools would indeed be open.

This past Sunday evening I was taking a break from the care of seedlings in the basement to watch some of the Olympic events on television. It was approaching the children's bedtime and I knew that I would have to tear myself away from the broadcast in order to tuck them in and read to them. It was then that I noticed excited whispering and the sounds of drawers being opened and closed in the kitchen. I rose to my feet and headed out of the room to investigate.

Entering the kitchen, I spied Freya and Aidan with spoons in their hands and wide grins on their faces. They were clearly up to something and I soon found that Freya was the ring leader. To my inquiries they responded that they were doing snow magic to cause school to be cancelled the next day.

They certainly weren't dressed to go outside and there wasn't a shovel or bucket in sight. I told them about our failed attempts at the same feat when I was a child and then I learned how much more sophisticated their approach was. Their technique involved three actions. They collected ice cubes from the kitchen and flushed them down the toilet. Next they each took a spoon, licked it and then placed it upside down under their pillows. Lastly, they put on their pajamas but wore them to bed inside out!

Unlike our much more direct approach, theirs seems to have worked! Upon waking the next morning I discovered that a massive snow had fallen during the night and that school had indeed been cancelled! They celebrated and congratulated themselves while I prepared myself for a long and difficult drive to work. There wasn't time enough to get my tractor out to clear the way, so I got out the best I could and headed off through the blizzard.

The snow kept falling throughout the morning. After a few hours I heard from Janet that it had accumulated so much that she could not get her small car out. She and the children were snowed in for the day and the kids were having a ball playing outdoors.

I spent the evening on the tractor shoving huge piles of snow out of the way. I mused to myself about our long-ago childhood efforts to cover the road. I can't imagine that we even created a pile big enough to have been noticed by anyone and yet we believed so fervently that it would work. It was nice to remember a time when great feats seemed so easily attained. I smiled to myself and thought how glad I am to know that my own children have been able to share in that point of view as well.

At Long Last, The First Firing!

At the end of another long week at the office, I pointed my van west along the freeway while my mind wandered over my many choices for farm chores to fill my evening. From deep within one of my many pockets, a furious bumble bee buzzing told me that a call was coming in. Unhooking my seat belt, I began a race to find the phone before the caller gave up, patting pockets and urgently contorting within my many winter layers.

The call turned out to be from a couple of our new CSA members who had been watching the weather. They told me that the forecast predicted a thaw and generously volunteered to come over to our farm with their four-wheeler to help us haul the sap in. Jeri and Liz live just a few miles down the road and are helpful and friendly at every turn. We only met them a matter of weeks ago but our friendship has been growing rapidly due to our shared interest in backyard sugaring.

On Saturday morning, I busied myself with a few chores until at last the low hum of the four-wheeler could be heard coming up the driveway. Attracted by the noise, the children emerged from the house to join us as we rigged up our sleds and a cooler to serve as a sap hauling reservoir. Having that accomplished all five of us trooped out through the snowy fields toward the Sugarbush.

This turned out to be the first of two days that we would spend collecting and hauling sap from the woods. On Saturday the temperatures were low enough that the sap was frozen in large chunks in the sap sacks. This made the collection a little more difficult because the sacks had to be disassembled from their holders to permit dumping of the ice into the cooler. By Sunday the air had warmed sufficiently that the sap remained liquid. This greatly simplified things since we could simply tip the sacks over to pour out the contents.

On both days, the work of gathering and emptying the sacks went quickly. We talked and joked as we moved along. Now and then one of us would shout and proudly hold up an especially full sack for all to see as if we were contestants in a fishing derby. By the end of each trip, the cooler was full and heavy with sap.

As if triumphant hunters, we emerged from the woods following the four-wheeler with our prize in tow. Carefully picking our way over the bumpy field that I had plowed in the fall, our little parade headed for the sugar shack where the gleaming new evaporator waited. Bringing up the rear, our jovial imp of an eight-year old son lent a merry air to our progress with a harmonica that he had secreted in his pocket.

Jeri and Liz were unable to stay for the evaporating part of the weekend. They departed with our thanks and we began our preparations. We poured the sap into the preheating reservoir at the back of the evaporator and Sean did the honor of opening the spout to begin filling the pan. Once sufficient sap had accumulated to prevent scorching, I put flame to the kindling. Within a few moments we scurried outside to watch the first whisps of smoke escaping from the stack.

It seemed to take a very short time for the first tendrils of steam to begin rising from the pan. Next came that rumbling and hissing sound from the middle of the pan as the flame licked the underside and drove the sap toward a boil. Finally the boiling began as the boys and I huddled excitedly around the pan to watch.

I tended the evaporator for two long evenings, concluding this run at 2:30am this morning. Despite the long hours, the novelty never wore off. I thoroughly enjoyed fussing over the appliance as it did its work. I occasionally adjusted the valve that allowed a trickle of sap to enter the pan to replace what had boiled away. I poked about the firebox and kept it full of wood and red hot. I skimmed and discarded the foam that accumulated on the surface of the boiling sap.

I haven’t managed to rig up the vent fan into the ceiling of the shed just yet, so the only way to allow the steam out of the building was to leave the double doors open wide. Late in the night I sat there tending the firebox and gazing absentmindedly out into the night. A spotlight on the roof of the shed highlighted the aerial dance of clouds of steam billowing skyward mixing with a blizzard of snowflakes swirling down.

When the supply of fresh sap was nearly gone I refrained from adding any more wood to the fire. I let the unit cool down and left the sap in the pan. We had probably processed about 30 gallons over those two days, but the resulting syrup wasn’t thick enough to be drawn off. Before turning in for the night, I tasted a tiny sample of the liquid and was rewarded with that familiar sweet and rich taste. Despite the work that is involved in collecting, hauling and evaporating the sap, I am eagerly looking forward to the next warm day so we can begin again.

Ready For The Sap

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.

Some Assembly Required!

I have been wishing for a real maple evaporator for a couple of years now. My cobbled-together rig made from an old woodstove left much to be desired, including the fact that it was incredibly slow and ugly. Family and friends have complimented the flavor for our maple syrup but most had never seen how it was made. Thanks to my arranging to get access to a much larger sugarbush and the starting up of our CSA, I finally had justification to purchase a small but honest-to-goodness evaporator built by a real evaporator company!

The maple sugaring supply store in our area has three gleaming stainless steel beauties in their showroom. Each time that I have visited, I have lingered over them admiringly. The largest ones are absolutely huge and encrusted with lots of complicated looking controls and gadgets. After paying my respects to the most impressive units, I always conclude with a visit to the little Half-Pint "hobby" evaporator in the corner that is far less glamorous but more appropriate for my little operation and budget.

On the happy day that I went to pick mine up, I removed all of the seats from our van and headed off to the store. Day-dreaming to myself along the way, I imagined the scene as they wheeled the pretty little appliance up to my van and helped me load it in. The reality was much different. When I backed up to the loading dock, the workers had stacked a large assortment of cardboard boxes, stove pipes and over 100 firebricks for me to load up.

As the numerous boxes foretold, the process of assembling the evaporator and preparing it for its first firing was pretty involved. Sean and I were able to get the basic sheet metal stove together in one evening. After that, things progressed far more slowly due to the unexpected task of building up the interior of the unit with firebricks and mortar.

I knew that I was in trouble when I read in the instructions from the manufacturer that a total of three tubs of mortar would be required. The local dealer had only provided me with one and seemed to think that it was enough. That resulted in me skimping on the joints and trying to stretch the insufficient mortar to complete the job. At about the three-quarters complete mark I finally gave up and headed to the hardware store for more mortar. Regrettably, I couldn't find anybody who had high heat refractory mortar in stock. In the end I had to ask Janet to make the trip back to the evaporator store to get more mortar.

The biggest moment of satisfaction thus far came when we placed the stainless steel boiling pan and prewarmer on top of the completed arch. There is still more work to be done because the stove pipe hadn't been run out through the roof. For that, I've been getting some great assistance from my chimney sweeping friend who has been generous with his time and skills.

By the end of today, we should be pretty much ready to go. I still need to attach a vent fan to the existing roof vent for removal of the steam. Eventually we hope to relocate the whole rig into a new building that will house our commercial kitchen. In the mean time, we have certainly made a giant step forward. Now we just have to wait for the weather to warm up enough that we can begin to collect those sweet drops and give the new evaporator a test run.

I can hardly wait!

All Potting Soils Are Not Created Equal

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.

At this time last year I was just getting started planting seeds in trays under lights in our basement. By the time spring rolled around, my little indoor garden had expanded to 16 flats on a couple of tables. This year is a completely different story. My planting plans call for more than 350 flats! Realizing that I was going to go broke buying the little bags of organic potting soil in the stores, I started researching alternatives.

It didn't take long for me to run across some excellent articles on making your own seeding mix. After reading up on the details, I picked a recipe that looked easy to do and began calling around to find out how much the materials were going to cost. I was imagining that I would buy bags of sphagnum moss, peat and vermiculite and just mix up batches in a 55-gallon drum. It seemed that I would save a bundle!

Unfortunately the folly of my thinking was soon clear. The pricing for the materials to make up batches of potting soil at home were adding up to rival the high prices charged for the bagged material at the store! There is obviously an economy of scale at work here and the only economical way to go would be to buy truckloads of each material and mix it up with heavy equipment. That would still have resulted in me spending a fortune and ending up with far more potting soil than I needed.

It was then that I recalled seeing a booth at the Michigan Family Farms Conference by a local family that runs a composting business. I looked up their number and gave them a call. The fellow who answered the phone, Justin, was knowledgeable and excited to talk to me. As it turns out, his family produces a wide range of products that start with rich composted dairy manure. To this they add a number of organic ingredients to produce custom blends for every application.

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.

On top of great performance, the potting soil is a fraction of the cost of the national brand. I also am very happy to be supporting a local family operation. The struggling Michigan economy certainly needs every dollar that can be retained in the state. I also have to assume that even though we will have to drive several hours each spring to stock up on potting soil, the carbon footprint still has to be considerably smaller than the truckloads of potting mix that are hauled all of the way across the country.

As you can see, our red, yellow and bunching onions are getting a very nice start. This weekend they will be joined by trays of celeriac and leeks. In another month we will have flats of green growing things crammed into every conceivable space awaiting the day when we can take them outside and finally start them growing in warm sunshine. As for me, I'm looking forward to taking a trip up to visit this new supplier and strengthen my connection to my local sustainable agricultural community.

Snow Drifts and Cold Starts

Winter here in Michigan really wasn't measuring up to its reputation...until this week. January and the first week of February were so devoid of snow that I was beginning to think we were just going to ease into early spring without it. Two mornings ago, Freya and I emerged from the house in the pre-dawn hours beneath a sky sifting tons of tiny flakes. At work that day, I kept glancing out of the windows at the ceaseless curtain of white while co-workers talked excitedly about the predicted accumulation.

I arrived at our farm that evening to find the driveway under ten inches of snow with more falling. I knew that I would have to put off any snow removal activities until later because an old friend and member of our CSA was stopping by to help me with the smokestack for our maple syrup evaporator. Fred is an all-round handy guy, but his expertise as a professional chimney-sweep is very handy for just this sort of project.

As we worked, our conversation turned to discussing my tractor and my use of it for plowing the driveway. Fred asked if I employed a block heater to help get it started in the cold weather. I recounted my conversation with the tractor dealer who scoffed at the idea of a block heater but never did get around to telling me how to cold start the thing. Eventually I made an attempt at starting it up but quit due to fear of wearing the battery down. I ended up turning to YouTube videos of people cold-starting their tractors (it's amazing what you can find on there!) to see how it was done.

Some of the farmers in the videos sprayed Ether into the air intake. I went out and bought a can of it but have never tried it because the air intake on my Massey Ferguson 255 is buried inside the battery compartment and requires removing the grill to reach it. My only experience with ether involved a particularly foolish episode in my teenage years. I won't go into the details but let's just say it resulted in a VERY large fireball!

After having read accounts of farmers bending rods and shattering rings with ether, I put the can aside. Instead I simply crossed my fingers and held the starter in as the cranking got weaker and weaker. Luckily it kicked over and started before the battery was completely dead. That was back in December on the occasion of our last decent snowfall.

Now I sat in the seat of the tractor and counted the weeks since the tractor had been started. Even though I had replaced the battery in the late Fall, I knew that it was still likely to have lost some of its charge in all of those idle weeks. I opened the tractor tent flaps, set the tractor to neutral and pressed the starter. Rur..rur....rur......ruur.........ruuur...........ruuuur.... The battery just didn't have enough juice to get there.

Luckily I happened to be in the sort of mood that let me take this problem in stride rather than getting upset. I headed out to the hardware store, picked up a battery charger and snaked extension cords out through the snow. Once it was charging, I headed to bed with plans to get up early in the morning so I could get the plowing done before heading off to work.

At 5am I checked that the battery was fully charged, climbed onto the seat, pressed the button and got absolutely nothing in return. It was as if the starter button had been disconnected. I checked the battery again and then stood there trying to figure out what was happening. I tried shorting across the starter with a screwdriver only to find that there was no voltage reaching the starter motor at all. Beginning to suspect a wiring problem, I used a pair of jumper cables to connect the starter directly to the battery. The cables couldn't handle the large current draw, but I got enough of a response to confirm that on top of everything else, the tractor's starter cable had gone bad.

I drove off to work through snow that was now deep enough that it was higher than the front of the minivan. I snowplowed my way through but knew that there was no way that Janet's compact car would make it. Since school had been cancelled for the day, they simply stayed home and snowed-in until I could get home that evening.

I picked up a new battery cable at an auto parts store on my way home. The wind had been blowing all day and the snow on the driveway had drifted to a couple of feet deep in places. I barely got through. After dinner, Janet and I headed back out to the tractor. She held the light for me while I performed the minor surgical procedure of replacing the battery to starter cable. I climbed back up into the seat and the engine started with ease. It seems that the weakened electrical cable may have been the primary problem all along.

Janet gave me a smiling thumbs-up and headed back to the house. I donned my headlamp (I still haven't managed to repair the tractor lights) and drove off into the snowy darkness. The buildup of snow was impressive but no match for "Massie" when she's running well. I cleared the drive in no time and mounded up huge piles of snow with the loader. Upon parking her back in her tent, I headed into the house for an evening of planting onion seeds in flats and dreaming of warmer days to come.

Tapping (Way Too Early) Day

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.

Mother Nature Catches Us Unprepared....Again!

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.

This year has been a completely different picture. Somehow I was expected a winter like the last and was looking forward to having lots of time to relax, develop plans for the coming year and spend extra time with my family. Instead, the winter seems to be going by in a flash!

Many projects from the Fall stretched well into December and some are still waiting for more attention. Far from having lots of time to relax, every spare minute has been spent on my computer formulating plans for our first CSA season and worrying that I wouldn't get the seeds ordered in time to get them started indoors. Most of those orders have still not gone out!

Due to the purchase of our tractor, the clearing of the driveway has become a breeze. What took me as much as 11 hours of sweating, miserable shoveling now is completed in 20 minutes! In addition, there have only been two snows thus far that were big enough to justify starting it up.

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.

My answer had come from my experience tracking the temperatures in the early spring last year. It may be easier to read on the Sugarbush page of our website.

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.

The problem is that I was sure we had a couple more weeks before the temperatures would climb high enough to start tapping. I have been spending my time hurriedly finishing up the planting plan so I could get the rest of the seeds on order. As a result, I had delayed our preparations for Sugaring and now we have been caught by Mother Nature with our coveralls down!

There are two major items that now have been moved to the top of the priority list. The new evaporator that we bought is still in boxes and needs to be installed immediately. As well, we have no practical way to haul the sap out of the woods so I need to purchase a four-wheeled drive ATV over the next few days.

Today is the only day in the next week when I will have enough time to set the taps. Therefore, the boys and I are now preparing to load up a couple of sleighs with taps, equipment, hanging bags, thermos of hot chocolate and snacks. Then we will head off into the woods for a long day of measuring trees, installing taps and collection bags and creating tapping logs.

I'm going to do my best to slow down and enjoy the day. If all goes well we might even get back home in time to start assembling the evaporator. In any case, it's clear that whatever time the winter had offered for rest is now over!

Master Gardener Class

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.

Wrestling With Ambition

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.

Barn Envy

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.

Bumps In The Road

I have known about this flaw in myself for a long time and have mentioned it before, but I still can't seem to do anything about it. I guess it is a symptom of having too many projects on my plate from which to choose, but it is annoying just the same. The problem is simple to understand and probably common, but the solution evades me.

The problem is that I tend to leave projects uncompleted for long periods of time because I choose to shift my attention to something else. With few exceptions, the point at which I switch to something new is when I make a frustrating mistake or come up against a seemingly daunting obstacle. I generally do manage to get back to things and finish them up after a long period of time has passed, usually finding that the intimidating task wasn't so tough after all.

Running power to the chicken coop is a prime example. Way back in April, the project began with the task of cutting two trenches through the back yard to provide the coop with power and water. I spent much of the summer building the coop at the far end of the trenches, but the power and water were never connected due to obstacles at the near ends.

In the case of the electricity, the obstacle was a six foot wide concrete sidewalk. I needed to tunnel under it to be able to connect the underground cable to the wiring of our shed. I had never tunneled under anything like that before so that is where the project stopped. The wire lay there in the ditch, neglected for eight months while I found other things to do with my time.

I must have told myself hundreds of times that I just needed to get that task done as I walked past the wire on my way to work on the coop or garden. It wasn't until the bitterly cold weather of early December hit and I started worrying about the chickens keeping warm enough that the uncompleted wiring project finally rose to the top of my list.

In the end it was a very simple task. I stopped by the hardware store and picked up length of PVC pipe and an end cap. I placed the end cap on the leading end, stepped into the ditch and hammered the pipe through the soil beneath the walk until it emerged on the other side. I cut the end of the pipe off to remove the cap and fed the wire through without a hitch.

Aidan and I finished up the project by running the wire through the ground to the shed wall, up out of the ground through a protective conduit, through the wall and finally connected it up. We hooked up a heat lamp from the rafters of the coop to shine down on the roosting area. We turn it on when the weather falls well below freezing in the hopes that it will make the birds a little more comfortable and help prevent them from getting frostbite on their combs and wattles.



The water line? It's still waiting to be connected. The intimidating task at that end is the fact that I plan to splice into the main water supply line from our wellhead to our house. I have been mowing around the unsightly ditch and pipe all summer. At this point it is clear that we will be carrying water to the coop well into next spring before I will finally break down to finish it.

I do know of one solution to prevent these delays. I am far less likely to abandon a project when I am working together with someone else. The recent triumph of getting the siding put on the coop when a friend came to visit is a good illustration. I guess I may just have to schedule an annual volunteer work day for the CSA members to come push me to clean up all of my loose ends!

Longing For The Light!

Somewhere back there in the distant past it was first explained to me. Some adult in my life took the time to patiently relate the mystery of the seasonal shortening and lengthening of daylight. I can imagine myself wide-eyed and innocent as my consciousness struggled to take in the complex astronomical concepts that caused my outdoor playtime to be cut short as a consequence of living on an orbiting, spinning and tilting world.

Eventually my turn came around to be the adult in this age-old exchange. I have struggled to find a clear way to help my children understand why they were made to go to bed in the summer when it was still light or go to school in the winter when it was still dark. Unfortunately for them, their father is one who has always preferred the long and complex answer to the simple one. Eventually I get down to the method that always works, the demonstration with the flashlight and the wobbling basketball.

As with all of us, I am well schooled and long experienced with the facts of the changing seasons. That is why it seems odd that it took half a lifetime to finally feel the full force of planetary happenstance. For most of my adult life, I have led an suburban existence where indoor living and artificial lighting have reduced the changes in daylight to a mere curiosity as I occasionally glanced toward a window. Now that my life has changed to a much more rural, much more outdoor existence, I find the shortening of the day has an oppressive impact on my productivity.

I am aware that these feelings are exacerbated by the fact that I am attempting a dual existence of holding down a full time job away from the farm during the weekday and struggling to squeeze my beloved farming into evenings and weekends. I'm sure that the full time farmer feels the impact of the shortened day as a limitation of how much he can accomplish. For me, this season means that I never see my farm by the light of day except during the weekend.

As such, I find myself struggling mightily to keep up the pace on my projects. I keep a headlamp in my coat pocket all of the time and most evenings will find me out in the darkness trying to work by its dim beam. I have even resorted to mowing my entire two-acre lawn in the dark by attaching a flashlight to the handlebars of my push mower!

As much as anything, I am looking forward to the coming holiday season because our wobbling basketball world will finally reach the point where the night will give way to increasing daylight once again. Until then, I guess I should be spending a little more of my time on those nagging indoor chores or perhaps even slowing down just a little. I would like to think that my life will progressively adjust to one more harmonious with the weather and seasons, but that just may have to wait until that happy day when I can retire and take up farming full time.

As Pleased As Punch!

The morning of our Farm Open House found the children and I scurrying about preparing for visitors. Janet had gotten called in to work on short notice and my well-planned preparations took a tailspin as I found myself shorthanded. After a brief panic, I made a list, marshaled the children together and passed out tasks to be done.

The day was bright and relatively warm. That realization came as a relief because our little house would likely be swamped if a large crowd appeared and needed refuge from the cold. I made another round to check how the children were getting along with their tasks. Freya tidied the interior while Sean organized the construction materials from the never ending coop project into neat piles. To Aidan fell the unenviable task of checking the yard for any messes left behind by the dogs.

After a quick change of clothes, I fired up the tractor and drove it to the little rise overlooking the entrance to our driveway. A few days before, I had purchased a big "Welcome" flag which I now fastened so it would hang from the bucket of the front-end loader. I raised the bucket as high as it would go while the boys gave me approving thumbs-up signs from the driveway.

Our property is not well marked. OK, it really isn't marked at all! We had made a little poster board sign and were nailing it to a pole when the first car slowed and turned into our driveway. By the time I had completed the task and had walked back to the house, three more cars appeared and made their way to parking spots. The children and I strolled out to welcome our guests as yet more cars arrived.

It was an exciting time. Some of the people who emerged were old friends of ours while others were completely new. We hugged some, shook hands with many, made introductions again and again while trying hard to remember every one's names. Eventually Janet arrived and the rounds of hugs and greetings began again as we put out snacks and got everyone seated in the living room.

I had been preparing a little slide show and talking points for the past couple of weeks. Showing my stripes as a nerdy engineer-historian-activist-farmer, I launched into my talk that covered the history of agriculture from before World War II, through the Green Revolution, the founding of the CSA movement and an overview of Organic Farming practices. Finally I got around to our little farm and our plans for the CSA.

Everything seemed to be going very well. People made lots of comments and asked questions to elicit more details about us and our intentions. When things finally wound down, we moved everyone outside for a tour of the farm. Once we were outside, I was amazed at the number of people who were present. Many had not come inside at all because the house had been too full and were patiently waiting for a second round of the presentation.

I led everyone around as best I could and showed them the features of our little farm and where we planned to do various things. They lined up along the fencing to the chicken enclosure as I gave a little talk about our chickens, answered questions about the coop and held a hen out for them to pet. We toured the edge of the field that had been plowed for spring planting, showed them our beehive and the bonfire circle where we plan to hold parties.

I invited those who had not heard the talk to join me in the house as the rest of our guests made their way back to their cars. We had planned for the Open House to end at 4, but I found myself still answering questions to a fairly large crowd as the clock edged toward 6pm. Once the last of them had departed, we were tired but elated at how well the day had gone.

The real surprise came when we checked the sign-up sheets that were on the dining room table. Nearly everyone who had come signed up on the spot. Two families had even paid their memberships two months early! With few exceptions, the remaining people had left saying that they just needed to talk it over with their families and would call us back. That is exactly what they did. Before three more days had passed, we had sold all twenty shares that we planned to offer for 2010.

The group of people that have joined are amazing and I couldn't be happier. They come from many walks of life and bring a wide range of strengths and levels of experience to the effort. They have already begun to pull together behind the idea of forming a community around this farming adventure. More than half have signed up to be more actively involved in planning and working together with us on the farm. All of that involvement from such a great group of reliable friends and impressive new ones, has given us the confidence to increase the number of shares that we will plant for this first year. As of today we still have a couple of openings left.

I am excited and not at all intimidated by the year ahead of us. It feels very much like a group effort and everyone is charged up to build something great together. That enthusiasm fuels my drive to do my very best. It may sound corny, but it makes me feel like my life has taken an important turn for the better.

The Magic Crock

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!

Three Strikes

It started badly and went downhill from there.

Strike one... I turned into the driveway and began picking my way among the potholes. It was exactly one year ago on a sunny day in early November. We had just closed the deal to purchase this small farm and I could barely contain my excitement.

As the farmhouse came into view, I saw a black pickup parked in front and my reverie was suddenly interrupted by a wave of anxiety. The land purchase that was a high point of my life also marked the low point for the previous owner. Having fallen on rough times, the farm was now being surrendered to the bank and in turn to me. I hadn't anticipated running into him as he removed the last of his belongings and I worried that the encounter might be unpleasant.

I parked the car and walked toward the house all the while rehearsing a pleasant greeting in my head. As I walked, my peripheral vision caught movement from an unexpected direction and I turned my head to see a man racing toward me on a four-wheeler. He roared up the rise and parked the vehicle directly in my path.

The man was clearly upset and I was pretty unnerved myself. After several minutes of heated and confused conversation, I managed to figure out that this was not the previous owner but instead was the next door neighbor. He was upset because rumors had been running rampant about the new owners of this farm. He had been led to believe that it had been sold to a hunt club that was going to let the house fall into ruin and fill his weekends with the constant sound of gunfire.

I did my best to assure him that the rumors were as far from truth as could be. I told him that we were an ordinary family with young children who hoped to turn the property back into a working farm. My explanations seemed to be slaking his intensity at least a little when the previous owner finally approached us from the house. With a curt goodbye, the neighbor fired up his vehicle and retreated back toward his own house.

I recovered from the confusion of the past few minutes and managed to deliver my rehearsed salutation. The previous owner turned out to be very friendly and actually grateful that we had come along to purchase the property when we did. His changing fortunes had gotten him into a bind with the bank that was only remedied when they managed to locate a buyer.

Strike two... It was a beautiful afternoon only a few days after our first unfortunate encounter. The entire family had come with me to begin working on our new property and everyone was assigned a task. The children had begged to be able to bring our young Labrador retriever along and seeing no harm in it, Janet and I agreed. Having nothing else to do with him, we tied him to one of the benches at the bonfire circle and I began mowing the overgrown yard nearby. We were all so excited to dig into our new project that we barely noticed that Finnegan was barking for attention the entire afternoon.

As the afternoon wore into evening, I continued the massive project of mowing the very large lawn. At one point our daughter Freya approached to inform me that the neighbor was back and had asked to speak to me. I found him standing near the property line and walked up to see what was on his mind.

He was again quite agitated. He informed me that he had spent a very frustrating afternoon attempting to deer hunt in the woods next to his house. He had sat there in his tree stand listening to the incessant barking of our dog and he was convinced that the noise had spooked all of the deer from the area. I apologized for our lack of consideration and he replied with a statement that I should be careful or somebody might just shoot that dog of ours.

Strike three... A few days after the dog incident, I noticed that the same neighbor had placed "No Trespassing" signs on a series and trees and poles between our two houses. The problem was that the signs appeared to me to be quite far on my side of the line as if he believed that a section of our property belonged to him. I brought it to his attention and he told me that the previous owners of both properties had indicated that the property line ran where he had posted the signs.

Now to be fair, he had actually placed those signs prior to our first meeting when he feared that the farm was being turned into a hunt club. I decided that the best way to settle it was to hire a survey crew to mark exactly where the dividing line ran. A few weeks later the survey crew confirmed my assertion and my neighbor reluctantly adjusted to the idea that a couple of his acres were actually mine.

The last thing that I wanted was neighbor trouble. We were so excited about our new home and had looked forward to building good relationships with our neighbors. Unfortunately at each turn it seemed that we were just getting further into trouble.

Read the next post below for the rest of the story...

Gift Exchange

(continued from "Three Strikes" above)

Through November and December of last year my family hauled load after load of our belongings to our new farm. It was with great relief that we finally completed the task and could retreat from the cold to spend our time cleaning and painting the interior. On the brief occasions that we did happen to be outdoors at the same time, my neighbor and I mostly ignored each other. Time passed and the cold wind blew.

Our brief hibernation ended as the children and I emerged in late January to begin tapping the maples and boiling the sap down into syrup. I spent most of February and March carrying sap from the woods and sitting out behind the house tending the evaporator fire late into the night. I can't recall who it was that broke the ice first, but soon my neighbor was taking a minor interest in our sugaring activities.

One evening in late February my cell phone rang as I was sitting by the fire. My neighbor was calling to make an offer to give me a large pile of firewood that he had accumulated and couldn't use. Before long he had loaded up the trailer of his four wheeler began delivering load after load to our back yard.

This generous and friendly gesture changed everything! Before long, I was knocking on his door to deliver a bottle of our syrup and the reciprocal gift exchange continues to this day. I delivered a tin of cookies, he has returned the tin with strawberries inside. We have given him watermelon and green beans. He has brought us cucumbers and zucchini.

As the summer months have faded into fall our once tense coexistence has steadily grown into a friendship. We regularly loan each other tools and equipment. He has joined in my coop construction effort when heavy lifting was required. He has offered helpful advice and I have done my best to design the coop to reduce the crowing noise in the early morning hours.

It is now common for us to call each other when something interesting happens. In the early spring we called him to come see the snapping turtles that were crawling from our pond to lay eggs in the garden. In late summer he invited Aidan and I to join him in the woods where he showed us salamander eggs that he had found beneath a log.

I can't tell you what a relief it is that this has sorted itself out for the better. He and I are now looking forward to our joint adventure coming up this early spring when we plan to expand our maple operation to include his woods as well as mine. I am amazed at how far a little habitual generosity can go to overcome even the worst relations and build the foundation of a lasting friendship. I heartily recommend that everyone get in the habit of bundling up a little something, taking the kids and delivering it with a smile to your neighbors.

Big Help From An Old Friend

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.

The email was from Scott, a friend from my home town. He had just begun a stretch of days off and decided that it was high time that he paid us a visit. I hadn't seen him in at least six years so I checked with Janet and then replied that he would be very welcome. I took Friday off and he drove up from Ohio that morning.

Scott and I go way back, in fact all of the way to our first meeting in preschool daycare. Much to the delight of my children, he can still tell stories from my past such as how I caused a whole tray of chicken noodle soup to be spilled on the carpet at Mrs. Cooper's daycare. We have been friends through thick and thin although we have often been out of contact for years at a time.

Scott has a way of showing up when I'm in the middle of some big project and lending me a massive hand. We worked on each other's Eagle Scout projects, he helped me build a wood strip canoe, he has helped me out of jams and provided much needed muscle again and again. This visit was to be no exception as we stood in the yard catching up and looking over my never-ending chicken coop project.

I had bought siding for the coop months ago. Unfortunately that purchase proved to be premature as I had so many additional items to complete before I could finally begin hanging the sheet metal. In the meantime, the siding has sat in the grass getting rain soaked and always worrying me that it would rust before I ever had a chance to use it.

Friday and Saturday we applied ourselves to the task like men possessed. We visited and laughed as we worked and told stories of all of the things we had been doing in the past few years. It was wonderful to have the help and his company and we accomplished so much more than I had hoped.

On Saturday evening, the sun was sinking low in the sky as we hung the final sheet. We were exhausted and had been pushing ourselves for the past few hours even though either one of us would have happily given up if it had not been for the other saying "we're so close to being done, let's try to get another one hung up". The worst part of the job had been the meticulous cutting and fitting of each sheet around all of those doors and windows.

Just as we were finishing up the children relayed the message that dinner was on the table. Freya had harvested Brussels sprouts from the garden and Janet had made a delicious chicken pot pie. We sat around the dinner table telling stories and jokes and I noticed how easily my children enjoyed interacting with my old friend. We polished off the meal with homemade canned apple cake with ice cream and some of Janet's elderberry sauce.

A wonderful and helpful visit from a dear friend just when I needed the boost. Given the size of some of the tasks we have in front of us in the next few years I think we're going to have to encourage him to visit a little more often!

First Rooster "Processed"

This past Saturday morning I was pleasantly surprised to have our daughter, Freya, come up to me and suggested that this weekend would be a good time to butcher the roosters and that she would like to help. I had decided a while ago that I would like to try my hand at processing our own birds. At first this notion was greeted with a low-grade horror and disbelief from members of the family. It's quite one thing to raise the birds and have them hauled off to a slaughterhouse only to return as neatly packaged chickens as if from the grocery store. It is quite another to have it done right here at home with no opportunity for us to deceive ourselves that the bird on the plate wasn't actually one of those that we had been feeding and petting out in the coop.


Having had a while for the concept to sink in, the family eventually got used to the idea that I wanted to slaughter them myself. The common phrase became, "Just don't do it while I'm around!" For these reasons it was surprising to me when our daughter decided that she wanted to participate directly. We had a busy day ahead of us so we decided to undertake the task on Sunday.


After lunch on Sunday we started gathering the supplies that we would need. I reviewed some chicken butchering instructions on the web and we set up a table out back with everything we would need. I constructed a "killing cone" out of sheet metal and attached it to a stake that I placed in a discrete location among our pine trees out of sight of both our house and our neighbor's. We put some water on the stove to be used for scalding and I headed out to select a rooster.






Our surplus roosters have been making a real nuisance of themselves for a while. Of course they are only doing what comes naturally, but their behavior has made it increasingly clear that we needed to cull the flock down to the proper male to female ratio. Our breed of chickens is normally happy with a proportion of 1 rooster for every 8 hens. Since our current population is 7 roosters for 13 hens this has led to lots of fighting, chasing and commotion as the roosters have competed for too few females.


The biggest problem of late has been the fact that the roosters are harassing the hens mercilessly. The roosters tend to hang around the exit of the hen house squabbling amongst themselves and waiting for a female to come along. Whenever a hen emerges from the building she is immediately pursued by all of the roosters and very roughly bred by most of them until she can escape back to the relative safety of the coop. Not having any hands, the roosters tend to grasp the feathers of the hen's head in their beaks to keep her still during the procedure. This generally results in feathers being yanked out and all of our hens are partially bald from the excessive and unwanted advances of so many males. During my daily visits to the coop, the sight of the long-suffering little hens reminds me that I need to do something to give them some relief.

I retrieved a rooster and we found that I had to make some adjustments to the killing cone due to the large size of the birds. When it was finally ready, I tried to persuade Freya that she probably shouldn't watch the actual killing. I had never done this before and was worried that it would be excessively unpleasant and upsetting, especially due to my inexperience. She insisted on watching and told me that I shouldn't "sell her short" by assuming that she couldn't handle it.


I went ahead with the deed and it went surprisingly smoothly and with very little distress for the bird or us. The killing cone did its job by holding the rooster securely and preventing any of the legendary commotion of "a chicken with it's head chopped off". The method that I used was to simply place the rooster upside-down in the cone with it's neck sticking out of the bottom. After one quick cut it was all over quickly.


We carried the bird back to the processing table and checked the temperature of the scalding bath. Aidan arrived at that point and seemed to handle the sight of the dead rooster more with curiosity than anything else. I noted to myself that all of this was much easier to handle emotionally as soon as the rooster was dead. I put Aidan to work by having him watch the timer for me as I scalded the bird to loosen the feathers for plucking. After that was completed, we immersed it in ice water to quickly cool it back down again.


I was concerned about how difficult the plucking would be having heard a number of people indicate that it was laborious. Freya and I sat down at the table and began plucking only to find that it was quite easy to do. It was somehow amazing to see that the bird emerging from beneath the feathers already looked just like one from the grocery store. I had originally planned to make a homemade chicken plucking device to assist in the job, but for this first bird it just seemed quicker and easier to pluck it by hand. Most likely that little project will wait until some point in the future when I have more birds to handle.


By the time the rooster was completely plucked, I admit that I was getting a little tired of the task. The rest of the process of cleaning the bird and preparing it for the freezer proved to be pretty simple. In seemingly no time, the children and I were admiring the final result and Freya said that she couldn't wait to show Janet how well we did.


I did learn one lesson that is apparent from the picture. Due to my inexperience, I removed too much of the skin from the upper breast as I was removing the rooster's crop. It's a minor defect and one I'm not likely to repeat now that I know better. I felt proud of myself for figuring out how to do my own butchering and especially proud of Freya for being so strong and helpful in the face of an unpleasant task.

A day later I find myself reflecting on the contributions of the chickens much in the same way that I did when I carried the first egg away from the coop. I feel greatly impressed by the very significant contribution to our table and livelihood that these birds are able to make. It is humbling somehow to realize that eventually every one of those birds and potentially thousands of their progeny will meet the same fate as the first, but not without first providing us with many thousands of eggs along the way.

While their contributions are less than voluntary, I feel they are worthy of considerable respect just the same. Looking at it that way, all of the resources and effort we have expended to build them a comfortable and healthy place to live seem much less like folly and much more like something that they heartily deserve in return for all that they provide to us.

Getting The Word Out

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!