Breakfast on the Farm in Shepherd (and it's FREE!)

Breakfast on the Farm is a family-oriented program that welcomes neighbors and area residents to enjoy a complimentary pancake breakfast along with a self-guided tour of a family-owned farm that includes visits to various educational stations and opportunities to ask questions of local farmers. The July 24 breakfast and farm tour takes place rain or shine from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (breakfast served from 9 a.m. to noon) at the Joe and Beth Bryant family farm near Shepherd.

The self-guided tour of the Bryants’ beef and cash crop farm will feature a variety of educational stations and interactive activities including a baby farm animal petting area and a maple syrup-making demonstration where people can see firsthand how maple tree sap is cooked into real maple syrup. Attendees of all ages will be eager to stand alongside and climb aboard modern-day farm equipment as well as to pet and feed baby farm animals, take a tractor and wagon ride, and touch and smell the feeds that animals eat.

There is no cost to attend the event or take the tour, but tickets are required for the free breakfast. Free tickets can be obtained from the following locations: Family, Farm and Home, Alma; Siler’s Market, Breckenridge; Johnston Elevator, Clare; Napa Auto Parts, Ithaca; Midland County MSU Extension Office, Tractor Supply Co. and West Midland Family Center, Midland; Animal Health Associates, Chamber of Commerce, First Bank, the Isabella County MSU Extension Office, Papa’s Pumpkin Patch, the Soil Conservation District and Tractor Supply Co., Mt. Pleasant; First Bank, Remus; Baders, Rosebush and St. Louis; First Bank and Shepherd IGA, Shepherd; Wincell Cellular Corporation and Winn Telephone Co., Winn; and all locations of Brown Milling, Inc.

The Isabella County Breakfast on the Farm is organized by the Isabella County MSU Extension Office and the Isabella County Michigan Farm Bureau.

To get more information about Breakfast on the Farm or to reserve tickets, contact Jayme Martin at 989-772-0911, ext. 302 or marti879@msu.edu.

A Sweet Idea

As winter comes to a close and everything starts to thaw, maple syrup season arrives at Chippewa Nature Center. At the end of February we start tapping sugar maple trees to get ready for school programs and weekend events. In March, groups of school kids learn how to identify maples and head into the Beech-Maple Woods armed with tools of the trade – measuring calipers, brace and bit, hook and spile, bucket and lid. Slowly but surely, more and more taps get put out during the month and the “plink-plink” sound of dripping sap can be heard through the sugarbush.

Tapping trees at Chippewa Nature Center is quite different than at almost all other maple syrup operations. In a commercial setting, producers aim to gather the maximum quantity of sap possible throughout the short season, therefore placing all their taps right away. Our process, however, is aimed squarely at education. It’s more important to us that each school group has a chance to identify and tap a maple tree so kids can experience something they just might remember for a lifetime!

Sap starts flowing when daytime temperatures rise above freezing and nights are cold. Michigan forester Mel Koelling writes on the Michigan Maple Syrup Association website, “Sap flow in maple tree… occurs when a rapid warming trend in early to mid-morning follows a cool (below freezing) night. Thus, the amount of sap produced varies from day to day. Normally, a single tap-hole produces from a quart to a gallon of sap per flow period (from a few hours to a day or more), with a seasonal accumulation of 10 to 12 gallons per tap-hole likely.”

With tapping throughout the season at CNC, it’s rare that we end up with 12 gallons of sap from an individual tap hole. The sap we do collect is gathered and taken to the Sugarhouse, where it takes about 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup. In spite of our gradual tapping process, we did gather enough sap in 2009 to draw off 15 batches of syrup from our wood-fired evaporator, totaling nearly 41 gallons of pure maple syrup. That’s about 1,640 gallons of sap that was emptied from buckets on trees and hauled to the Sugarhouse!

You're all invited to join us each weekend in March to see CNC’s maple syrup operation in full swing. As we’re still in the process of renovating the Visitor Center we don’t have space to hold a pancake meal and will not have a Maple Syrup Day festival this year. Instead, we’ll offer special programs every Saturday throughout the entire month. The Sugarhouse will also be open from 1:30-4:30pm every Saturday and Sunday in March

Check out our calendar for full descriptions of programs throughout the maple syrup season. You won’t want to miss the following “sweet” programs: Maple Music Matinee (3/6), The Nature of Maple Syrup (3/13), Celebrating Spring in the Sugarbush (3/20), Sunset at the Sugarhouse (3/23 & 3/25), Maple Traditions (3/27) For more information about making maple syrup at home visit the Resources Section of our website or give us a call at 989.631.0830.

Larderhoarding in the Home

Odds are you are more of a “larderhoarder,” like a Red Squirrel, than a “scatterhoarder,” like the Gray and Fox Squirrels. I say that assuming you store food in only a few locations, probably a refrigerator and nearby cabinets. That concentration is easy to protect, so you would take action against a stranger found pilfering your supplies. Similarly, Red Squirrels cache pine cones in just a few logs or tree cavities, and woe to another squirrel that approaches!

Gray and Fox Squirrels have a different system. Imagine storing soup in the yard, bread under the deck, and milk in the crawl space? Such scatterhoarding is impossible to defend. You might fight off a stranger in the yard, but by then the crawl space is emptied by someone else. Gray and Fox Squirrels bury acorns and nuts individually, but don’t defend them. They simply use their memory and fine sense of smell to search out between 85 – 99 percent of these buried treasures!

Thankfully for all of us human larderhoarders out there, storage has become vastly more energy efficient in recent years. To find out how much energy your fridge uses, check out this nifty database from Home Energy Magazine. If you have a refrigerator that was manufactured before 1993, it might be time to upgrade to an Energy Star model. Then you won't have to feel guilty at all when you visit your horde for that midnight snack!

Connecting to Nature by Preserving the Home Harvest

As summer draws to a close and the cool days of autumn approach, I love to walk through the 1870 Homestead Farm to gain a better understanding of previous generations who lived so close to the land by growing and preserving much of their own food. It was an absolute necessity for them to preserve the food they grew by canning, drying, pickling, salting and cold storage to see them through the lean times of winter. While today’s supermarkets provide virtually any fruit or vegetable regardless of season, I invite you to purchase some locally grown produce from the Farmer’s Market and try two simple food preservation methods; freezing and drying. It’s simple, nutritious, economical and it can connect you and your family to nature through the harvest. As a child, my sisters and I spent many hours cutting up green beans, picking cucumbers, tomatoes and apples, husking sweet corn, digging potatoes and scrubbing carrots with my parents in order to enjoy through the year. Like most kids doing chores, I did my share of grumbling to try and escape the drudgery of the task at hand. I now look back on those experiences from twenty-five years ago as an important part of developing my interest in our rural heritage and the skills associated with living close to the land. Freezing is the modern way to preserve food and it’s probably the simplest way to get started enjoying the harvest year round. If care is taken to properly prepare and package the food the flavor is quite good. I recommend starting with pea pods, corn, cherries and blueberries. To prepare the pea pods start by removing the tip of the washed pea, peal the “strings” of both sides and remove the stem end. Blanch them in boiling water for no more than 2-3 minutes and then immediately cool in ice water for 5 minutes. Place the blanched and cooled peas on trays in a freezer and when frozen solid, store in plastic bags or containers, leaving 1" headroom in rigid containers. You can add the frozen peas to recipes just before serving because they only need a few minutes of cooking. Corn is just as easy! Heat the washed, husked cobs in boiling water for 4 minutes, cool immediately, drain and cut the corn from the cob. Pack the corn into plastic bags, seal and freeze. To freeze cherries and blueberries, wash, sort and drain them. Pit the cherries using a cherry pitter or a sharp kitchen knife. Place on a cookie sheet and freeze until firm. Pack into rigid containers, leaving 1" headroom, and keep frozen. You can use the fruit for cooking or in cereals and oatmeal. Another simple method of preserving food is by drying. If you’re just starting out there’s no need to buy a dehydrator; you can oven-dry vegetables by setting your oven to its lowest temperature, (no more than 150degrees F). Place them on a tray with a screen and leave the oven door slightly ajar to let the moisture escape. I’ve made delicious dried tomatoes by slicing them 1" thick and drying them for 6-12 hours or until leathery throughout. If dried until brittle you can store them in a cool dry place. I like mine a little softer so I pack them in a glass jar with olive oil and garlic and put them in the refrigerator. They’re excellent on pizza. The preservation methods described only scratch the surface of keeping the harvest. If you get serious about it you’ll want to start canning produce, a great way to put up dozens of quarts of vegetables. There are many excellent books available to give you all the details on canning, as well as great recipes for sauerkraut, delicious tomato sauces, dried apples, pickled cucumbers and much more. My favorites book is Keeping the Harvest: Preserving Your Fruits, Vegetables & Herbs by Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead. The benefits of preserving the home harvest or locally grown produce are many. You ensure a quality product because it’s picked and preserved at the peak of freshness and nutrition, you help out the local economy and you connect to the seasonal cycles of nature through the food you eat everyday. Dennis Pilaske, Director of Interpretation