Backyard Chickens & Bees

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 only expecting a small crowd of hard-core tree geeks. Well… not so much. There were quite a few people there, and the number of scions available was amazing! There must have been a few hundred varieties of apple scions—all free for the taking, so long as you only took two of any one type—and an equally impressive number of pear scions. I didn’t know that there were so many pear varietals! For the apples, there were a lot of cider-specific types mixed in to the assortment, and the pears had a few perry-specific types. I shied away from the pears, since I hear that they can be very temperamental and, seeing as how I’ve never grafted—nor do I have room for more trees—I figured I should stick to the apples that are easier.

Anyway, the scions are just shoots that had grown on established trees over the previous year, and after pruning were sent off to be propagated. Fruit trees are funny like that: you can take a cutting off of a tree you like, and splice it onto any other similar species of tree (e.g., apple onto apple), and it’ll grow and produce the fruit that you want, regardless of the fruit! Of course, that’s why we have millions of tons of Red Delicious apples produced every year. On the other hand, it’s also why there are lots of  tasty heirloom apples and pears that originated centuries ago and are still available.

Read more →

Charles, ready to go to work on pruning the Gravenstein apple tree.

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 off the tree and ended up with 12–13 gallons of some very dry, very delicious hard cider (most of which is gone already). My neighbor Charles went the next day and picked another 150 lbs. The story, at that point, ended with my parent’s neighbor saying that the tree was unkempt and needed to go, but my neighbor (Charles) and I proposed to take care of it if the owner keep it intact and let us harvest the fruit. Well, the taxman cometh. Fortunately, it’s a happy tale of Charles, my parents, and me going over and pruning the tree so that it’s in much better shape than it has been in for many years.

The tree has been sitting there, outside my parent’s kitchen window, all winter, just mocking them, knowing that we needed to work on it. But the weather here in Portland has been less than cooperative, as always/usual, and has not really permitted me a chance to get out and do any real yard work on my own yard, let alone on another person’s house! This past weekend has been nice, sunny, relatively warm, and I was in town and available for work. So Charles and I went over and, with a lot of help from my parents for cleanup and running out for more yard debris bags, took on the task of pruning the tree to where it will be manageable for the next several years. Due to the amount of neglect that the tree has seen for a long while, there were many branches that needed taking out in order to thin the growth and remove all the redundant branches that were seeming to be counter-productive. Anyway, long story short, we spent about one hour cutting down the branches and then another two hours cleaning it all up and packing the wood away into bags for pick-up by the city. I’m still a bit sore from it all…

After pruning, the tree looked a lot healthier and willing to bear more tasty apples.

In the end, the tree could have still used a lot more work, but that’ll have to wait for another day, after I get some actual training on the best way to prune. Apparently, there are whole different schools of thought on what you want to do for pruning, based on what the fruit will be used for. From Andrew Lea’s Cider Portal:

“Pruning of bush cider trees is rather different from that of dessert apples. There is no need to go for the ‘open goblet’ shape, pruning of laterals etc. – in fact, pruning should be fairly minimal. Fruit size and finish is not tremendously important, and hard pruning of most cider varieties tends to stimulate excessive growth and can encourage biennial bearing. Current commercial practice favours a ‘hedgerow wall’ which is really designed for convenience during spraying and mechanical harvesting of the fruit. For the smaller grower, the objective should still be to maintain a good central leader with fruitful side branches as near horizontal as possible, although not all cultivars will respond equally readily to this ideal.”

As cider production is a very important industry in the UK, there are many sites, such as the Cider Portal just mentioned, that have extensive ramblings on the subject of pruning for cider apples. Certainly, there is no lack of good information! But, of course, hands-on experience is always the best.  I will be taking Peter Mitchell’s cider-making class offered through WSU-Mt. Vernon this coming summer. The Saturday before the week-long course is a day class on orchard management that will emphasize apple and pear production for cider, including tips on pruning. I expect that this will be an excellent opportunity to pick up some details both from orchardist Gary Moulton and from the folks at Red Barn Cider.

And if that’s not enough, this being Portland, there are also always a multitude of other classes and seminars that offer tips and training for tree pruning, such as through the Portland Fruit Tree Project or Portland Nursery.

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 have done for the previous batches of cider, then describe this batch, and with luck will be able to provide some insight into the differences between the methods once this batch is ready to drink. Of course, that might be in about a year, as these things go.

Perry, finally fermenting with naturally-occurring yeasts after three weeks.

The normal operating procedure for making cider is to pasteurize the juice after pressing, pitch some pectic enzyme in, let it sit for 24 hours, and then inoculate with yeast. Very simple, yes? I have an electric brewing set-up in my basement for making beer, so the kettle is very handy to heat the juice up to around 145 °F while circulating the juice to ensure that there is no stratification. This seems to go well, and I can hit the temperature pretty much spot-on, thanks to having a PID controller for the electrical heater element. I don’t actually go up to the full pasteurization temperature, as recommended by the FDA for apple juice (which, for a relatively long dwell time, is around 160 °F), as I am trying to avoid causing any “baked apple” off-flavors that can come about from the high temperature, and don’t want to set the pectins and have problems with haze and such. By pasteurizing the juice, I kill off all of the bacteria and yeasts that are present in the apples or pears (well, to a 5-log or so reduction, so really I kill off about 99.999% of the bacteria and yeast), rendering the juice more or less sterile. By doing this, I have complete control over the yeast that I use to inoculate and ferment out the sugars. Typically, I will pitch a Champagne or ale yeast (either Lalvin EC-1118, which is a Saccharomyces bayanus champagne yeast, or Fermentis S-04, which is an English ale yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae)), and have had great results with both for fermenting the juice out to completion. Well, for apples anyways. My last batch of perry from last year, which used the Fermentis S-04, did not fully ferment out, most likely due to unfermentable sugars present in the pears (e.g., sorbitol). Still, it was very tasty, and the ale yeast leaves a pleasant pear aroma.

Pressing pears in early January with my neighbor.

Nonetheless, while the pasteurized perry with the ale yeast was very good, I still wanted to experiment with a batch of “wild” fermentation, and having a carboy full of 5 gallons gave me that chance. Now, as opposed to the controlled fermentation of my previous perry and apple ciders, a “wild” or natural fermentation is one where there is no pasteurization, no inoculation of a controlled yeast, and no knowing what the final product will yield! There are a few schools of thought on this that differ namely in the application of sulfur dioxide to control bacterial infections and some potentially nasty flavors that they can produce. Cleanliness is a virtue here, and not having complete control over that (with a shared press, etc), I opted for the use of sulfites, just to be on the “safe” side. Anyway, the procedure for this batch was to first check the pH (I don’t have the kit for actual titration and testing of total acidity, so pH is all we get for now), adjust it from a pH of 4.0 to 3.5 with the addition of 2 oz of malic acid, add 75 ppm SO2, and put an airlock on it. I also checked the specific gravity, which was 1.054. The use of 75 ppm SO2 was based on a table that gives approximate dosages to partially kill off unwanted bacteria, but will not fully kill off the yeasts needed to ferment. Since my pH was right on the border between two ranges, I averaged the two dosages and used 75 ppm. The SO2 was added as a 5% stock solution of potassium metabisulfite. The pear juice then sat in the basement at 55 °F. After a week or so, I noticed that some mold had started to form on the top. I was a bit dismayed, but, with much difficulty, left it alone. It’s an experiment, after all. I was rewarded after two more weeks with a full-speed-ahead fermentation, which is where it’s at now. From here on, it’s just a matter of time to see when it stops fermenting, whether it clears at all (I used no pectic enzymes in this, nor did I add any yeast nutrient), and how funky it’ll taste. The mold growth seems to have abated, and while some is still present, it is being overpowered by the real fermentation. Once fermentation has settled a bit, I’ll rack the perry into a new carboy to get it away from the mold growth, and then probably age it for 6-9 months. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a reason to celebrate around then…

A nice write-up on the microbiology—including what wild yeasts are present, as there are many varieties that occur naturally in pears (and which are similar to those wild yeasts in apples, with the Kloeckera apiculata being the most prevalent)—and perry in general, is here. An important point to make, here at the end, is that fermented juices from pears and apples have essentially no known pathogens. The fermentation has been shown in studies to reduce the concentration of the nasty bugs like E. coli O157:H7, salmonella, and patulin to undetectable levels. So if something goes bad and the end result tastes like it’ll kill you, it won’t… but you might wish it had.

Woke up this morning at 5:30 am to the alarm clock and hearing the chickens chattering away outside. We got up and looked out (it was still pitch black, of course, so we had a flashlight on) and saw a big, fat raccoon sitting in front of the door to the chicken coop! Tapping on the window got him up and moving, but he didn’t really leave until Veronica went out and chased him away. Not five minutes later, we saw a big, fat possum walking across the yard! It actually gave the coop a wide berth, and headed straight for the neighbors compost pile. Both varmints were at least as big as a large cat, and probably would’ve loved to have a nice, tasty chicken snack. Fortunately, we seem to have plugged all the holes in the coop and pen, denying the raccoons and possums any means of getting in to attack the birds. Whew!

I’ve noticed that the raccoons have been coming around for a while, as evidenced by them pulling what few bits of lily they could reach out of my fish pond and constantly knocking over the little garden gnome that stands on top of the copper tube grate that protects the fish. In contrast to last year when they had a few nasty dinner parties, they haven’t been able to ransack the pond and attack the fish, nor have they found any additional holes to enter the coop and eat the chickens. I’m feeling pretty good about that right now, but I’m sure I’ll be out this weekend double- and triple-checking all the mesh and openings for the coop to make sure we make it through the winter with all 12 chickens! Might need to get a BB gun or the like to help with dissuading the raccoons…

We just had our first frost and (tiny bit of) snow here in Portland, and fortunately we were more or less ready for it! At least, ready as far as the bees and chickens are concerned. Well, OK, as far as the bees are concerned. But the chickens are easy to work with so I think I can avoid a full-scale strike. I’m expecting that it’ll be a long, wet, cold, cold, and cold winter this year, given that La Niña is in effect, bringing lots of wet weather (this is particularly true for years following El Niño). That being the case, those critters that live outside year round need a bit of extra attention to make sure that they can make it through the winter and come out strong in the spring!
Read more →

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 mid-October, we went out to Kiyokawa Family Orchards and picked up another 310 lbs of mixed apples from their juice bin. This was added to about 40 lbs of apples from a wild tree I raided near work (not crab, per se, but not a specific variety that I know of), yielding about 350 lbs total. The apples from the orchard included a wide range of dessert and baking apples, such as Granny Smiths, Golden Delicious, Newtown Pippins, maybe some Stayman Winesap, possibly some Mutsus, and maybe a few others. I’m not entirely sure of the blend, so it’ll probably be super-tasty and completely unrepeatable! Ah well. We spent about 6 hours cutting, grinding, and pressing (I was graciously helped by my lovely wife and her sister) and then the juice was pasteurized to 155 °F and allowed to cool overnight. All told, there was 24 gallons that went into the fermenters. The pH came in at 3.4, and the original gravity was 1.050.
Read more →

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 ended up with about 225 lbs of nice, ripe, tasty Gravensteins. My wife was out of town at the time, but I wanted to get started on pressing and making the apples into a nice sparkling cider, and the biggest hurdle was getting the apples ground into the pomace that could be pressed for juice. I didn’t want to do that by myself with the manual grinder… so I built a new grinder out of an electric garbage disposal. This is that story…
Read more →

Well, since it’s well past harvest time for the bees, I thought I’d put together an update and take stock of what’s gone on this year, bee-wise. Let’s make a list of things to cover, and we’ll see how many of them I get through in one post (warning: it has been a while since I’ve written, so there’s a fair amount of info herein).
Read more →

Damn. Where to begin? Bees. I like them a lot and have been working them this spring to ensure that we get a good honey harvest this year. The existing hives made it through the last winter, which wasn’t really that impressive, considering how mild it was here in the Pacific NW. Nonetheless, I was a bit concerned at some point in February since their numbers were getting lower and lower, and no signs of new brood. So I did what any obsessive beekeeper would do and ordered another two packages of bees to add to the apiary. Shortly after I put in the order, my neighbors beehive decided to swarm (he wasn’t quick enough to catch them), so I checked on mine again and saw that they were starting to build up faster and faster. So I changed the bee order to a single new package and waited on it to show up. A month of waiting is a long time…

This past week has been a flurry of activity with the arrival of the new bees, and the subsequent swarming of the back hive. I now have four bee colonies in my yard, which seems a nice situation. I definitely learned a lot after the swarming, so let’s review…

Read more →

I went with my neighbors to get new chicks today to replenish the ones that have been lost over the past year to raccoons, the inability to get along with the new flock, or the butcher knife (for the two roosters). Last year we got 11 chicks to go along with the two that were already established in the coop (Emily and George). Over the course of the year, we have dealt with roosters, raccoons, and having to give away Emily and George because they were attacking the younger ladies and had a taste for blood. At the end of it all, we had six hens remaining: one Light Brahma, one Rhode Island Red, and four Barred Plymouth Rocks. They’re all good producers, laying almost an egg a day each, even in the winter (granted, this was a very mild winter here in the Pacific Northwest). But, we wanted to increase the flock count and our overall egg quota, so we ended up going back to the Urban Farm Store and bought 12 new chicks! Pictures first, then I’ll write about what breeds we got (a wide variety, again!)…
Read more →