Protecting The Watershed

Two nights ago, I attended a meeting of the Huron River Watershed Council. They were holding a special meeting to kick off an effort to educate and mobilize individuals in our area to work at a grass-roots level to improve and protect the health of Portage Creek.





The waterway that flows through our valley is called "Portage Creek" for much of its length. The lower portion of the creek flows through the nearby town of Hell, Michigan, where it picks up the name "Hell Creek". The very lowest portion of the waterway, nearest to us, has also been called "Portage River". It empties into Portage Lake a few miles further downstream and then into the Huron River. From there it flows into Lake Erie, over Niagara Falls and ultimately through the St. Lawrence Seaway, past Montreal and Quebec, into the North Atlantic near Newfoundland.





The Huron Watershed Council is a non-profit organization that has been instrumental in promoting environmental awareness and local action to protect the health of the river. They have been working in each of the tributary watersheds and are now working on the last, that of Portage Creek. They have been collecting data on insect species, water conductivity, seasonal water levels and bottom silt sampling at two points in the creek for the past decade.


The Portage Creek watershed is very healthy for a number of reasons. It is very rural and a fair percentage of the land is state-owned nature preserve and recreational area. There are some problems in the upper reaches of the watershed from more intensive agriculture and there is one lake in the system that has a mercury problem that is slated for cleanup.

Our farm is at the extreme lower end of the watershed. Although the river passes only 200 yards to the south of us, our land actually drains through a large wetland that starts in our backyard, flows parallel to the river for more than a mile and empties directly into Portage Lake.

The meeting was well attended and informative. I met lots of nice people from the area and we discussed measures that we hope to take to make sure that the present health of our creek is preserved and improved. We plan to look into the master development plans of our local communities, work to educate landowners on the importance of maintaining buffer strips of vegetation to filter out sediment and approach the county road commission with concerns about siltation from erosion where our dirt roads cross the creek. I look forward to working with this group in the future and getting my kids involved as well.

(The photo is a bend in the mostly snow and ice-covered creek about 1/4 mile upstream of our farm.)

What A Mess!

I discovered this evening that the portageriverfarm.com website had a whole bunch of mistakes in it that made it just about impossible to navigate! I'll spare you the boring details except to say that I was unaware that most of the buttons at the bottom of the pages didn't return you to the main menu as intended, but instead dumped you to an old outdated copy of the website.

I'm sorry if those errors led to any confusion or frustration! As far as I know, all of the linkages are now fixed and functioning correctly. If it all seemed really jumbled up before, please go poke around again. I've only been creating websites for a few weeks now and unfortunately it shows!

Wildlife Page

Be sure to take a peek at the new "Wildlife" page that I created this evening. You can reach it from the home page by clicking on the "Tour the Farm" link.

Seed Catalogs!

A few weeks ago, I spent an evening on the web ordering seed catalogs. They are finally starting to pour in and I have a nice little stack started. I know, I know. I should use the online versions or download the catalogs to my computer. I will be better next year, I promise!

There is just nothing better to chase away mid-winter blues than to curl up with seed catalogs and begin to dream of spring planting. There are so many strange and exotic varieties to choose from. Of course, because of my organic certification ambitions, I will need to set aside all of the catalogs that offer chemically treated or genetically modified seeds.

I have to admit a long-held bias against hybrid varieties and a nostalgia for heirlooms. I look to my Appalachian grandparents as examples of truly skilled gardeners. To this day I can remember the smell of the room over their garage that was used for the winter storage of their seed stock from the previous year. It contained baskets of dried pods, shelled seed corn, seed potatoes and trays of dried pumpkin and tomato seeds. From the rafters they hung "leather breeches", dried bean pods strung on string.

I can also remember the taste of those vegetables at suppertime, especially the corn and green beans. Grandpa and grandma were the descendants of pioneer stock who had lived in those steep valleys from the time of the founding of the Northwest Territories. Many of the varieties that they grew in their huge garden were handed down from their ancestors and preserved through all of those years as particular favorites of the family. Today, I wonder if those varieties have become extinct as the older generations died out or whether they live on in some neighbor's garden, faithfully renewed and preserved with each season.

Realistically, I don't feel that I have the skill to begin with that level of discipline. I'll just have to file the seed saving idea away for now as an aspiration for the future.

Sugarin' Supplies!

Today was one that I have been anticipating for some time. The boys and I drove to Mason, MI, to a business called Sugarbush Supply Company. It was housed in a building nestled in the back of an attractive old farm next to a barnyard full of cows.

The showroom of Sugarbush Supply had three or four gleamingly beautiful evaporators, including the one that I would dearly love to buy, the "Half Pint". They also had displays of fancy bottles, sugarin' guidebooks and many shelves filled with fittings and devices for the professional sugar trade.

I had my shopping list all worked out ahead of time. My first version of the list had called for the nice traditional stainless buckets and the full works. Unfortunately it had added up to nearly $500. After a couple of sessions of looking for less expensive options, I am the proud owner of 18 taps worth of genuine maple sugarin' equipment to the total of $165.

I went with smaller diameter taps that are more healthful for the trees and gave up on the nice stainless pails in favor of much more economical "sap sacs". I'll post pictures of them in use in a month or so. They are basically big, blue plastic bags that hang from the taps. Not as romantic as being able to hear that "plink, plink, plink" sound of the sap falling but you've got to start somewhere!

Next I'll have to rig an evaporator. I hope to slap one together using an old woodstove that I have used in the past to heat my woodshop. I'll let you know how that comes together when I get to it.

Drinking From A Firehose!

Yesterday morning, the boys and I got up early and drove to Battle Creek to attend the Michigan Family Farms Conference. It was hosted by an organization called Michigan Food & Farm Systems. It was pretty well attended despite the cold and snow.

I attended three classes. The first was on effective selling at Farmer's Markets. The second was all about the Organic Certification program of the USDA. The last was all about soil science and the use of cover crops to improve soil and reduce weeds, pests and plant diseases. I absorbed as much as I could and feel it was definitely worth the trip and the cost. It helped me to figure out a few first steps that I need to take.

More than anything, it made me aware of just how little I know about all of this. I learned that organic farming isn't really about finding clever ways to do without certain pesticides. It's about an entire system of stewardship and improvement of the health of the soil and the overall farm. It seems to me that it is probably a method of farming that would be more familiar to old-time farmers who really knew all of the tricks to boosting their yields long before we had the convenience of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

I learned that there is a great deal to understanding how to assess the health of the soil and figuring out a plan of action to build it back up. My sister (who has had a long successful career in agricultural education in Florida) had mentioned crop rotation and the use of cover crops. It just went over my head. Now I'm starting to understand a little.

The main hallway was lined with booths from organizations and agencies that were all basically there to help. They have all sorts of programs and were all talking excitedly about the 2008 farm bill. I mostly was trying to understand what they do. I had an especially nice talk with a professor from Michigan State University who had tons of resources to offer from within the University. I picked up a whole bag of literature to puzzle my way through.

It was a little like having a whole bunch of people lined up saying "we're here to help, you just have to ask". To which I would have to say, "I have no idea what I'm doing! I don't know where to begin! I'm not sure what I need or how I'll ever get to the point of comprehending all of the programs and certifications available."

I did make one connection with a really nice guy who has a farm near us. About ten years ago he quit his job as a machinist (that makes three ex-machinists that I have met in the past week!) and started farming on their 30-something acre property. They now have a successful business raising cattle, sheep and selling hay. Probably the largest part of their income is from their 400 beehives. That's some serious beekeeping! I can't imagine how much time it takes to keep up with that many. They have a really nice line of honey products and sell beekeeping supplies as well.

Now that I'm back home and a teeny bit wiser, I plan to continue my work on the market survey of area farms. I also want to put more information on the website on the property and my fledgling plans for it. Stay tuned and feel free to offer advice. Just don't be surprised if I don't understand what you are talking about!

Comparison Pics For My Florida Relatives

Another Neighbor To Appreciate

Ok, I know I promised to lay off of comments about the snow. I have an excuse because another neighbor came along and introduced himself today.

As you can guess, we received another dumping of snow. We barely managed to get Janet's car out to the road without it bogging down from the pile of snow it was accumulating as we raced along. Once we reached the county road I climbed out with my trusty shovel and wished her a safe drive and a good day at work. Then I began shoveling away in the hopes that I could have it passable by the time she returned.

After five hours I had managed to reach the halfway mark. That is when an old pickup with a snowplow pulled into the driveway. I stepped to the side of the road and did my best to straighten my back out from its usual stooped-over shoveling attitude as he came toward me. By the time he pulled even with me and rolled his window down I had already rehearsed my planned explanation that I couldn't afford to pay him to plow the drive (I was assuming that he was looking for new snowplowing customers).

The jovial gentlemen behind the wheel extended a hand and introduced himself as my neighbor from the other side of Toma Road. He greeted me to the neighborhood, told me about his family and his former career as a machinist. I told him a bit about myself and the family and took a few jabs at myself for moving to the country without proper preparation to deal with the tons of snow that mother nature has been tormenting me with.

He said, "I don't know that I would say that. We don't usually have these kinds of winters!" After a little more small talk he mentioned that he needed to get back to his house but would plow the rest of my drive for me on his way out. I expressed my gratitude to which he replied that he was only being neighborly and said "besides, you never know when I may need some help myself."

With that said, he shifted the old truck into gear and gave me the rest of the day off! I plan to make good use of the day, call up some friends and invite them to bring their kids and join my boys and I in attending a magic show this afternoon in a nearby town.

The picture is only about two-third of the driveway. That tiny spec at the end of it is our farmhouse!

Pokin' Around And Takin' Notes

In the past week I have begun gathering information on what other farming families in this region are doing. There are probably better resources for this, but I have been using the web. I got a listing of all of the farms, orchards and farm markets in the lower peninsula and have been browsing their sites one by one.

I have to say that I have really enjoyed this exercise and have learned quite a bit. The websites range from very professional business sites that are little more than sales brochures to quirky, chaotic and personal glimpses into the lives and philosophies of the families. The best sites have left me charmed, feeling that I actually had a brief visit, kicked the tractor tires, patted the horses and peered behind the barn. There are a couple of families that I am going to have to find an excuse to meet and at least one that I plan to approach to discuss a potential business arrangement.

True to my own tendencies, I have created a number of files for compiling the information that I ran across on these sites. I have recorded all of the particular varieties of each vegetable and fruit that they mention growing. I also have been adding lots of items to my listing of potential products that I could produce and have noted all of the prices that I saw advertised for them.

It will take me a while longer to get through this task and even longer to actually turn the effort into some useful decisions on which of the thousand directions that I would like to go are wise choices.

Temporarily Distracted By Genealogy

My farming craze has been set aside for a few days to pursue another one of my hobbies. Somewhere around the age of 15 I was bitten by a genealogy bug and it has never really let up. In the 30 years since, I have amassed a ridiculous amount of information and my database of known relatives has topped 40,000 individuals! It is a never-ending hobby and even after all of this time, I feel that I have only scratched the surface.

I have never been very good at conveying all of this information to the rest of my relatives. The reason for that is mostly that it is just way too much information and it is very hard to get it to a point that I am satisfied that it is polished enough for others to see.

This website gives me an opportunity to solve that problem. I am taking a few days to upload the data to a website accessible from the Links page of http://www.portageriverfarm.com/. I realize that this is stunningly boring information to anyone who isn't a relative so feel free to doze off for a few more days and then we'll get back to trying to figure out this whole farming thang!

Thank Goodness For Good Neighbors!

Snow is getting to be a tired topic. If fact, I'm ready for spring to start right now....please! This one last note about the snow and then I'll send this blog off in some other direction.

The snowstorm came through today and dumped an additional foot of the cursed stuff on us. I was nearly reduced to tears of frustration to see the impassible wreck it made of the driveway. Freya and I started shoveling at the road in the hopes of at least making room enough for Janet to pull off of the county road when she came home.

I was grumbling to myself in the dark and attempting to find my shoveling rhythm while my every muscle and joint screamed in protest. I noted with no small measure of envy that my neighbor across the road was out clearing his drive with a powerful snow blower. As I stood there, Freya grabbed the shovel and was making an impressive amount of headway.

Next thing I knew I was looking into the headlights of a pickup that had pulled up in the road at the end of the drive. Out jumped a very friendly gentleman who proved to be the neighbor across the road from us. He had seen us at the end of the drive and came over to introduce himself and to marvel at our attempt to clear such a long and deeply buried driveway by hand. After our brief and friendly conversation he headed back to his house.

Freya and I had been arguing over our one shovel and she was doing her best to persuade me to go into the house and let her shovel for a while. Seeing that a second shovel would be a good idea, I trudged my way to my van with the intention of heading into town to the hardware store.

Looking back, I suddenly realized that Freya had company at the end of the drive. Jim, the neighbor, had returned with his snow blower and was busy sending a geyser of white arcing to the side of the road. He ended up lending it to me for the evening and in no time I was making a victory lap and heading across the road to return the blower and express my heartfelt gratitude.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

It is 10am on Saturday morning and the snow-covered spruces look beautiful from where I sit in our dining room. The snow started falling again yesterday afternoon. By the time I got home we had about 5 inches on the driveway and a winter storm warning for this weekend on the radio.

I figured that I had better start bailing or I would never keep up. After tucking Aidan into bed, I grabbed my trusty little plastic shovel and headed out into the snowy night. Four hours later I had managed to clear the entire drive from the front door to the county road. I stood there in my sweaty clothes and looked at it as if it were a fine work of art.

Feeling a great sense of accomplishment and anticipating how impressed Janet would be at my efforts, I drifted off to sleep. This morning I awoke to the realization that it had been snowing much of the time that I rested. Peering out the window, it was quite difficult to see that I had done anything at all!

I devoted another two hours to the great white struggle again this morning. For that effort I created about 400 feet of cleared pavement. Looking out now, I can see the flakes relentlessly sifting down, silently obliterating my work of art yet again.

I'm reminded of a short story that I read in high school about the "menacing green tide". It created an image of civilization as a leaky boat that we all struggle to keep afloat by bailing against a sea of vegetation that ever threatens to engulf us. It talked about how we all endlessly mow, chop, weed and spray to keep the wild green world at bay but it mindlessly surges ever inward to cover, crack and bury our houses, roads and belongings. The story saw it as a war that we will ultimately lose.

I didn't much like that story nor the point of view. I have always been a nature lover and consider myself an environmentalist. I think of the wild places as fragile and threatened by us, not the other way around. Yet, for a few moments there while I was struggling to find the strength to lift my shovel and head back out the door, I felt that I was a little closer to seeing the author's point of view. I would be interested to know his circumstances and wouldn't be surprised if he had spent years trying to mow a huge lawn with an old-fashioned reel mower or perhaps had a farm in the south that was constantly threatened by kudzu vines.

On a separate topic, I discovered another minor setback. The radon mitigation system that I had proudly reported as complete and functional isn't quite. I noticed when I powered the fan up for the first time that it seemed to be creating more air flow than I had expected. Looking down into my sump well through the acrylic I could see ripples on the water indicating that the air was really rushing through the system. I had expected much less flow because the system is supposed to be closed and pulling a vacuum against the soil around the foundation to draw the gases in.

I installed a vacuum gage to the main pipe yesterday and discovered that it was only reading 0.8" of vacuum. That led me to believe that the system wasn't closed, that it was drawing in atmospheric air somewhere. A hunt around the basement yielded a floor drain that was sucking a huge volume of air into it. This is of course something a professional installer would have looked for before even starting the project. Now I am going to have to order and install a special drain fitting with a check valve to plug the leak.

The only thing that troubles me is that I placed a plastic bag over the drain to see the affect on the vacuum reading. Unfortunately it only raised another 0.1" which means there are other openings in the system somewhere. Since we have just moved in our entire basement is full of boxes and furniture. I guess it will have to wait until I can uncover more of the floor and figure out what else is going on.

Extraction versus Value Added Operation

I had a long, painful conversation with the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) Food Safety Inspection people yesterday. By the end of the conversation, I feel that I was finally starting to understand the underlying principle in all of this.

In a nutshell...they consider farming, as in picking a fruit from a tree, collecting a basket of vegetables, or draining sap from a tree, to be the extraction of a raw material. As long as it is simply collected and brought to market they have little regulatory concern.

Any kind of value added operation to those raw materials, such as creating an apple pie, filtering honey, or boiling down maple sap, they consider to be a food processing operation and subject to full weight of their food safety regulations and licensing requirements.

It took me a while but now I've got it. I was just never aware of the massive regulatory difference between a bunch of grapes and grape jelly. Of course it makes sense and I'm glad that they are so vigilant in protecting public health. It just puts a major financial burden upon anyone who wishes to cross the gap from extractor to processor by doing something like making blackberry jelly and offering it for sale.

My understanding from growing up around the lumber industry is that value added is where the real money is made. The guy who cuts down the tree and sells the log doesn't make nearly as much off of the resource as the factory that turns the log into fancy hardwood bedroom suites. At the same time, the guy cutting the tree down has little in the way of investment or overhead when compared to the factory.

All of that leads me to the conclusion that I need to decide what it is that I intend to do here. With little investment I can go out and plant rows of tomatoes, pack the harvest in my car and go sit in the farmer's market in a row with all of the other farmers and their identical baskets of tomatoes. As for my beekeeping hobby, I would have to eat honey until it comes out my ears, give honey to all of my friends until it comes out of their ears and then dump the rest on the ground. The MDA considers the act of passing the honey through a strainer to remove the bits of wax as processing. Without investing in a licensed commercial kitchen I could not sell it.

Therefore I will now begin a big rethink of my plans with the centerpiece being the eventual investment in a proper food processing facility. Once I have it I will be able to do whatever I want. Until then you might not want to come around unless you really like honey!

Cold Dose Of Reality Briefly Dampens Enthusiasm

I've been spending my spare moments getting excited about a couple of things I am planning for the early spring. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have a large amount (for me!) of honey to harvest. I also am very aware that February is just around the corner and that means it will be time to tap the maples in the back woods!

I have been obsessing over the idea of trying my hand at sugaring again. I tapped a couple of box elders during college and managed to make a few cups of passable syrup. I have been reading books on maple syrup production from the library and frequenting websites on the same topic. I have been having a ball trying to figure out an inexpensive way to set myself up with taps and buckets and rigging an evaporator of some kind.

As soon as the snow cleared enough that I could comfortably walk back into the wood without snowshoes (that's no exaggeration!), I went out and measured my small collection of maples. After some more obsessing over my sources, I concluded that I could set 18 taps. This is a laughably tiny sugarbush when compared to the professionals but it is what is available to me.

Thinking of having honey and maple syrup to sell made me start thinking that I might be able to set up a table at the local farmer's markets. To those small harvests we could add garden produce and some of Janet's jellies and preserves. I started planning some visits to the local wintermarkets to do some reconnaissance on what was being offered.

This is where the cold dose of reality comes in. I was reading about the farmer's markets and I ran across a Michigan Department of Agriculture website that explained the regulations for farmers who want to produce food for sale. To spare you the details, I am far from ready to pass inspection!

Ohio has a law that allows foods such as jellies or maple syrup to be labeled as "Home Produced" and sold. Michigan, as it turns out, is very strict about their food safety laws. They do not allow any food items other than unprocessed fruit and vegetables to be sold unless they have been produced in a "licensed commercial kitchen."

The very first requirement for this licensing process is that you can not use a kitchen that is also used to prepare meals for the family. It has to be in a separate room and meet a long list of health and safety codes.

The gentleman at the beekeeping supply store had mentioned something about "the new food safety regulations that were just about impossible for most backyard beekeepers to meet". At the time it went over my head. Now the realization landed squarely and stopped my farming fantasies in their tracks.

After a few hours of feeling low, I started reading through the requirements to see just how much it would take to meet them. It would add some unexpected costs but wasn't completely out of the question. This evening I gingerly broached the subject with Janet, explaining the dilemma and my thoughts of how to solve it.

To my great relief, she was supportive and even threw in some good ideas to make it more affordable. Bless her! Now the farming fantasy express is back up to full steam and moving forward again! It will take a while to make it happen, but at least it can be done.

DIY Radon Mitigation System

Shortly after purchasing our new property, the home inspectors reported back with the results of the radon test. It seems that somewhere in the bedrock beneath my house there lurks a uranium deposit that is emitting radon gas. This gas is bubbling up through the soil and accumulating in my basement where it can lead to lung cancer. They said that it scored 11.4 and said that it was preferable to have it below 2. This is apparently a common problem around here.

That launched me into learning all that I could about radon mitigation. From there I decided that the best course was the method called "soil depressurization". The ideal is to hook a vacuum pump to the drain tiles that are buried around the foundation of the house in the hope that the bubbles of radon gas rising beneath the house will get sucked into the system and get blown out of the other end of the pipe on my roof.

I shopped around and ordered a special fan for the system on the Internet. The rest of the materials were purchased locally at hardware stores. As you can hopefully see in the picture, I sealed the drain sump in my basement floor by covering it with a sheet of 1/4" thick acrylic which I bolted and caulked to the floor. The vacuum system and the sump pump were mounted through the plastic using rubber gaskets.

That being done, all I had to do was run the pipe outside and install the fan. Most people simply go through the nearest wall to the outside, mount the fan there and run the pipe up the side of the house to the roof. Unfortunately, I decided to follow a more difficult course because I didn't like where the fan and exterior pipe would have been positioned next to our back deck. Instead, I ran the pipe up through the basement ceiling, into a pantry closet on the ground floor and then up into the attic.

I am happy to report that the project is finally complete and operating. I have felt terrible that the kids were being exposed to radon and will sleep much better now. In a week or so I'll test the air in the basement. A coworker of mine told me today that his house had the same problem and was rated at 13.5. He hired a contractor to install a system similar to mine and the test afterwards showed that the rating was reduced to 0.7! I'm crossing my fingers for good results!