Backyard Chickens & Bees

Bins of apple scions at the fruit propagation fair. This past weekend, my neighbor Charles and I went to the Home Orchard Society’s fruit propagation fair. It was held at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds in Canby, Oregon. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, being that I’m fairly new to the orcharding scene, and was [...]

Last year, my parents put me in touch with one of the neighbors who rent out a property across the street from their house. The neighbor’s house has a nice, fully-grown apple tree in the front yard that, as far as I know, is an incredibly tasty Gravenstein. That fall I picked about 250 lbs [...]

In early January I pressed some pears with my neighbor Matt and his brother. I ended up with 5 gallons, and decided to try an experiment of making perry with natural fermentation. Before I get into what I mean by natural fermentation—after all, all fermentation is, in a strict sense, natural—I’ll go through what I [...]

So the cider that we made recently has fermented out to a nice dry drink! Last time I checked it, it was around 6.9% ABV and very dry, so I transferred it into the kegs. I ended up with about 12.5 gallons of that batch (single varietal Gravenstein). Of course, that wasn’t enough, so in [...]

So, a few weekends ago I went to my parent’s house and picked apples off a nice Gravenstein tree at their neighbor’s place. The tree is on a rental property, and has not been cared for or used for anything apple-centric in a long while (or so it seems). So we picked apples, and I [...]