ISLAND Featured in Edible Grande Traverse

Holly Wren Spaulding, former writer in residence at the ISLAND Hill House, wrote a lovely article about ISLAND for the summer issue of Edible Grande Traverse.

Check it out: The Good Earth

ISLAND was given the 2011 Local Hero Award, Non-Profit Organization Category for "outstanding contribution to the local foods movement in the Edible Grande Traverse community."

We're honored.

—Amanda

Chicks

Six chicks have hatched at the Kik house this week. They are fluffy and adorable. They chirp. Loudly.

Chicks more often arrive in the mail, annoying the local postal staff with their loud cheeps and chirps until they are picked up by their excited new owners.

They are brought home and placed under a heat lamp in a ventilated but not drafty place, safe from predators, and lovingly fed and watered. Each day, their vents are inspected for pasting up—poop can cake up on their hind ends, which can be fatal. Chicks stay in the brooder like this for several weeks before they are ready for the chicken yard.

Adding chicks to an existing flock can be tricky. They need to figure out a new pecking order, and smaller chickens are usually at the bottom of this order. It can be pretty brutal.

But there is an alternative to this system—let the hens go broody. When you let hens hatch their own eggs, all you have to do is enjoy and watch the mamas tend to their fluffy little chicks. The hens raise the chicks and they are incorporated into the flock. Mama hens know what to do.

For this reason, We've been working to perpetuate our flock by broody hens instead of mail order. It has been challenging, because we've had predators cull our flock regularly (the chicken house bloodbath and the possum with the big scary teeth is a stor for another day). We have still ordered chicks each year from a hatchery, but we're hoping that this will be the last year for that.

There are reasons not to let let hens go broody. They can be "disruptive." They steal other hens' eggs to sit on, so you run low on eggs for the daily three egg omelets to which you've become accustomed. Many breeds have had the broodiness bred out of them for this reason.

This is our third year with chickens, and we're still learning. But we haven't yet gotten over the thrill of watching a chick peck its way out of an egg while mama hen fusses to make sure the young are safe.

Amanda

The fox that visits the hen house every few days

Cob Oven at Dhaseleer Event Barn

Cob oven workshop at the Dhaseleer Events Barn

Part I: Timber framing the base of the oven, led by Mark Maier from Tiller's International

Part II: Forming the cob oven

Part III: Firing the oven and making pizza!

Meet the kids

Tonetta is a mama of twin billies!

Milking Posey and Tonetta twice a week has been an exceptional learning experience for us. We are both looking forward to keeping goats once we move onto the ISLAND property, but neither of us have much hands-on experience with them. Thanks to our friend and goat-keeper, we are able to milk, brush, feed, fill in and fall for these surprisingly charming creatures.

Underwriter opportunities

The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design (ISLAND) invites you to underwrite the following programs:

ISLAND and Grass River Natural Area present Your Green Home: An Introduction to Ecological Design on March 6. We have gathered the top local experts in the field of ecological design to provide overviews of energy conservation, building materials (like straw bale, post and beam, cordwood, and cob), design for passive solar, super insulated homes and other related technologies and design strategies. This panel will cover the benefits of each building method and answer questions so that you will know what will work best for your home, whether you are remodeling or building from the ground up. After lunch (provided) there will be an opportunity for hands-on design.

Skill Swap, hosted in partnership with Wagbo Peace Center on May 10, is an opportunity to teach and learn the skills that build individual and community self-reliance. We gather folks with a knack in the garden, garage, kitchen or studio to share their talent with the community.
In exchange for your contribution, your business will be publicly thanked and listed in all related web and print materials related to the event, including logos and web links. There is a projected 100 people attending these event; they will be asked to pay registration fee of $10-$35. As with all ISLAND events, Your Green Home and Skill Swap will attract people who care about building strong and vibrant communities.

The cost for this opportunity is $200 for Skill Swap II, and $150 for Your Green Home. Underwrite the pair for $300. If you are interested in sponsoring this event or have any questions, please contact Brad Kik, co-director of ISLAND, at brad@ARTmeetsEARTH.org or (231) 480-4515.

Thank you for your support of our community in Northwest Lower Michigan!

Please make checks payable to: ISLAND.
Mail to:
ISLAND
5870 Cottage Drive, Bellaire, MI 49615

Skill Swap II: Call for Teachers

Calling all Teachers! The second annual skill swap call for teachers is now open! Have a skill you can teach? Download our application or fill it out online.

Growing shiitakes? Spinning wool? Brewing beer? Oxy-acetylene welding? The second annual skill swap is an opportunity to teach and learn the skills that build individual and community self-reliance. We need folks with a knack in the garden, garage, kitchen or studio to share their talent with the community.

Got a skill to teach? Ask yourself these 4 questions:
1. Is it hands-on?
teach things that can actively be done, not just theory or philosophy.

2. Is it narrowly focused?
each class is just 90 minutes long, so provide a solid intro or teach a specific aspect.

3. Does it relate to self-sufficiency?
providing for ourselves or our neighbors is what counts here.

4. Can you teach it off-site?
we’ll have a kitchen and indoor/outdoor classrooms, but no specialized equipment.

Interested? We’d love to have you!

Visit our website for an online application!

Cheese in 2008

Cheese is one of my goals for 2008--making cheese that is consistent in quality. And yummy.

Brad designed and crafted a cheese press for me, and on the first day of the year, I preformed my first cheese-pressing experiment. (Plans for the press will be available on our website soon.)

There are many soft cheeses (chevre, queso blanco, cottage cheese, paneer) that do not need a press. These are delicious and easy to make, but they don't last long before blooming blue, green or red molds. To keep and eat more local foods through the off-season, I am interested in creating cheeses that are aged and kept for longer periods. For this, I need to delve into the world of hard cheese.

Because Tonetta is visiting another local farm for breeding and Posey's production is down for the winter (these are the goats that we milk), I used cow milk from Shetler's, a local dairy that does not over-process their product.

My first try at hard cheese is with Monterrey jack.

The curds were placed in the cheesecloth-lined press for 30 minutes with 2.5 pounds of pressure, and then about 16 hours with 5 pounds. The wheel came out of the press looking an awful lot like cheese--a good sign, though it is no guarantee of a good final product.

After drying the cheese for five days, I waxed it carefully, labeled it properly, and set it amongst the wine in the mini-fridge with a small dish of water to keep the conditions humid for proper ripening.

I will report back with my first taste test in 1-4 months.