By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Ryan Casey, consultant for Team Bee, helps us set up the hives.

To sweeten our One-Block Diet with honey, we’re taking up beekeeping. Honeybees, or rather the mysterious disappearance of honeybees (often called Colony Collapse Disorder), have been in the news recently. Bees are under serious threat these days, so it is nice that we can (hopefully) help bees and also harvest the sweet golden goodness that these buzzy little insects make.

We just received all our beekeeping equipment. We now have things like smokers, brood boxes, supers, and queen excluders. I was a little daunted by the list of gear; it seemed so complicated. But once our consultant, Ryan Casey — our former test garden coordinator and an experienced beekeeper — explained everything, it seemed quite simple. Of course, this is all sans bees. We don’t have them yet. A beekeeper in Grass Valley is raising some for us and we’ll go collect them in May.

In the mean time, we’re all learning as much as we can about bees. We watched a terrific movie by Nova, called Tales from the Hive. The photography is stunning, and you’ll find you may think differently about bees after watching it. We found the DVD at a local library, but it’s available to buy on Amazon.

Team Leader, Kimberley Burch (the Queen Bee!) has been doing a lot of research and has been sending the rest of Team Bee websites to check out.

The following two sites are for local Bay Area Beekeepers organizations. They have lots of information and links to many great sites about bees. 

http://www.beeguild.org
http://www.sanmateobee.org (This is the site of the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo County. These kind folks are advising us.)

I also read a q&a on the American Bee Journal website, and it made raising bees seemed daunting again. Seems like there are all kinds of critters — not just bears — who like bees: mites, moths, raccoons, even skunks!

Poor bees. They seem so fragile. No wonder they sting; it’s the only protection they’ve got.

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

When Team Vinegar huffed its way to the Sonoma mountaintop home of renowned cookbook author Paula Wolfert in February and procured pieces of her precious, 40-year-old mother, we had every intention of being good caretakers of that weird but precious stuff. We meant to feed it with fresh red wine regularly, closely monitor the temperature, and sniff it now and then to make sure it wasn't starting to smell like furniture polish (the death knell, according to Paula).

Reader, we are guilty of neglect.

Hey, we have busy busy lives! Shoot, we've only fed it — by my haphazard records — four times since it came to live with us. Correction: Me. The jars sit in my office, in two cardboard boxes. I have to keep telling visitors that the strange smell isn't my feet, it's the vinegar.

Vinegar is supposed to be fed, according to Paula, every 1 1/2 weeks. Yikes. We last fed it on April 1. Here are some photos from that time.

Where are the mothers?

Now, if a developing vinegar is properly fed, the mother will appear on the surface as a thickish, solid layer. She is made up of pure cellulose and acetobacter — a nifty bacteria that converts alcohol into vinegar. By the way, the mother is completely harmless, if kind of slimy. When we're ready to use the vinegar, we'll just strain her out.

But I digress. As you can see from our 1-gallon mason jars above, no mother is to be seen. Failure! So many things could have killed this mother--too much wine poured in at one time (thereby "swamping" it), long periods of starvation, we just don't know.

Then we pulled out our other two jars. These are humongous 3-gallon things we found back in our dusty storeroom. They are very wide, and maybe that is why — as you can see below — the mother has formed a healthy pink presence:

A well-established mother.

At least two mothers have survived out of four, against the odds. But sometimes the dead spring back to life (at least when it comes to vinegar). We'll see...we'll be feeding them soon (the guilt is becoming too much to bear).

Attention readers: If you’ve ever made salt, please let us know how you did it! Read on...

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

From the first moment of planning our one-block feast, we knew we had to have salt to season the food. Luckily, Sunset is about 11 miles from a network of giant salt-evaporation ponds owned by Cargill. So newly formed Team Salt set off one chilly morning to explore our local salt and then see about bringing some back for the feast.

What we saw—and walked over—looked like the surface of another planet: giant lakes of syrupy reddish brine and snowy fields of salt, cut by rivers of the same weird-looking brine. (Salt-loving algae in the brine create this color. At a less salty stage, the ponds are orangish from zillions of brine shrimp, which love that exact salinity. Brine shrimp are otherwise known as sea monkeys. Remember them? From when you were a kid?)

It takes five years for San Francisco Bay water, guided into the ponds, to crystallize into salt.

Team Salt, crunching across brand-new salt.

To one side rose a mountain of salt with a tiny-looking funnel on top, pouring on fresh salt. That end still had a tinge of pink. The other end, having dried for months, was pure white. (Rain sheets off the crust that forms on the outside.)

In the main building, we listened to Cargill’s PR person, Pat Ludis, as she described some of the 14,000 uses for salt—yes, that’s 3 zeros behind the 14! Apart from all its food uses, salt pulls dye into clothing, cures leather, de-ices roads, removes wine stains, is a coolant in nuclear power plants, and goes into the manufacture of brass, glass, chlorine, and paper. It helped mummify bodies in ancient Egypt and was salary for soldiers in ancient Rome. (The Romans called it “salarium,” or “salt allowance.”)

Then we got to poke through various forms of Cargill salt—everything from a powder as fine as talcum (for cheesemaking) to tablets portioned out for canning (soup, vegetables, chili, etc.) to 50-pound licks for livestock.

At Cargill, a table full of salts.

My favorite display: a model of a kosher salt crystal (below right), a hollow pyramid with ridges. An ordinary table salt crystal (below left) is cube-shaped.

Kosher salt's shape makes it very good at sticking to and pulling moisture out of foods. It’s called “kosher” salt because religious Jews have long used it to kosher (draw blood out of) meat.

We each left Cargill with a pretty pink lump of crystallized salt and a box of Diamond Crystal, the fluffiest, crunchiest kosher salt around.

Our search not over

However, we realized we had to keep searching for local salt. The tour was fascinating and the people couldn’t have been nicer or more articulate. But Cargill isn’t a local salt supplier, for us or anyone else. As one of the largest commodity food suppliers in the world, with 80 different companies under its umbrella, its orientation is anything but local.

So we’re still seeking local salt. We’re thinking we might try making it ourselves…but we sure don’t have five years to spare.

Got any tips? We'd love to hear them.

Overheard about the coop: "That place is worse than junior high!"

News of our henpecked hen has been spreading through the office, and everyone is distressed about our coop dynamic.

Here are ways we're planning to make things better:
- Give Honey a place to hide
- Pick her up and pet her a lot. (Admittedly, this last suggestion is from a colleague who watches a lot of The Dog Whisperer, who reasons that small dogs are such terrors because they're always being held up higher; thus the higher we keep ol' Honey the higher the other chickens will hold her in esteem.)
- ??? (Readers? Help?!)

On the other hand, this seems to be about the mildest case of pecking order horrors. I've read multiple stories of chicks introduced to adult flocks; it never ends well. One hen will peck the chick's head till she bleeds; then all hell breaks loose. Once chickens have drawn blood, their evil reptilian side comes out and they almost always peck the chick to death. The shocking part: This happens even if the hen who laid the chick is a member of the flock!

Nature is red in tooth and claw, indeed. Be glad your mama wasn't a chicken.

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Our girl Honey is spending a lot of time in the nesting box.

It was getting to the point where every time you opened it up, she'd be in there, fluffing her feathers and acting a little pouty. We chalked this up to broodiness, the state when hens get it into their heads that they want to sit on and hatch a clutch of eggs.

And we all thought it was adorable. Our little Honey! She was the last to lay, but here she is, getting motherly. So jolly and cute.

On Saturday, I got annoyed with Honey's "broodiness" and pulled her out of the box and put her back in the regular coop. (You're supposed to discourage broodiness in pullets and any other chicken who's not going to eventually raise chicks.)

Instantly, it became clear to me why she's spending all her time in the nesting box. Carmelita is terrorizing her. Within seconds of my plopping her down in the coop, Carmelita was pecking Honey's comb till it bled.

I felt so bad about all this that I spent the next 30 minutes running interference so Honey could get something to eat and drink. (She seemed hungry and thirsty.)

So the question is: What to do? I've read about putting hiding places into the coop — a panel of screen door is often recommended. That way, Honey could see what was going on in the coop, but wouldn't be vulnerable to attack. Of course, I imagine if you live on a farm, you might have part of a screen door lying around. Us? Not so much.

I feel terrible. This has been going on for weeks, and we thought she was just hanging out in the nesting box for fun. But now I feel like she's a prisoner in her own coop. Honey's a really sweet chicken; unlike her more cranky sisters, she never bites, and doesn't mind being held. How could I have been oblivious to her peril?

In other news, I bought some black oil sunflower seeds yesterday. Hopefully adding a handful of these to the girls' feed every day will keep them from doing so much feather-plucking. (Apparently the sunflower seeds provide an amino acid that you can also get from ... feathers.)

SALT.

Who knew that salt could be so impressive?

That's just the start of it. More soon on the first expedition of Team Salt—the key to seasoning our One-Block Feast. — Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

When it comes down to it, our chickens are made of meat.

They cluck, they peck, they're covered in feathers, but underneath it all, they are bones and fat and skin and muscle — dark and light meat. Suitable for soaking in buttermilk, breading, then frying.

It's an inescapable fact of chicken-raising. We have these chickens with names, chickens who are pets and who we raised from tiny babies, but all of us who care for these chicken are meat-eaters. Chicken-eaters, even.

I've been thinking about this lately, especially because of this comment we got on the blog a few weeks ago. (Reader Emily, I haven't been ignoring you.) Here's what she said:

My understanding is that you are not planning to harvest the chickens for meat, only their eggs. I can understand why, but I ask that you reconsider. If we are going to include meat in our diets, there is no better source that I know of for personal, animal and ecological health than happy chickens raised in our backyards. I think it would be a great gift to your readers if you share with us how to handle the difficult business of bringing home raised chickens to the dinner table.

When we got our chickens, we knew that we were not going to kill and eat them. This is primarily because we're urbanized, soft-hearted, lily-livered wimps. I, for one, had never even touched a chicken before we visited Jody Main's chickens last summer.

Our favorite chicken reference book (The Chicken Book by Page Smith and Charles Daniel) is even sterner on the subject:

Never make chickens into pets. ... Chickens are not pets; they are chickens; they are producers; they exist to lay eggs and be eaten. Never name a chicken. To do so is merely cute  — and silly — and an abuse of names. That does not mean that you must not enjoy, admire, and love chickens individually and collectively; it just means that you must not sentimentalize and falsify your relationship to chickens. This, for the most part, is why I feel keeping chickens should involve killing chickens as well. Somebody or some machine has to kill chickens, so why shouldn't you, especially if you are going to eat them?

I'm not volunteering to swing the hatchet or anything, but I do understand the hypocrisy of our position. I was a vegetarian for a decade. And not the fish-eating, occasional-poultry kind. I didn't eat anything with nerves or eyes. So what changed my mind? Partly, this Michael Pollan article in the New York Times magazine from 2002.

Partly the fact that I got a dog. I'm annoyingly crazy about her, but despite my devotion, she is absolutely not a person. Not a person at all. When she dies, it won't be like a person dying. (Although, trust me, I'm going to have to take a few days off from work, dear bosses.)

It occurred to me that I didn't know anything about cows, pigs, chickens, or fish. Nothing. I wasn't going to eat them, but I didn't know anything about them. And people who did know them — farmers and ranchers and such — didn't have any qualms about it. They raised them to be eaten. And I was some urban kid from Dallas who was taking the moral high ground by not.

Thus began my non-vegetarian transformation. (I also got my ears pierced. My brother joked that I should be on The Swan.)

So now — here we are, with these chickens. Their fate is not in question, but I do think about it. Could I kill one? I read the Backyard Chickens forum "Meat Birds ETC" board with some regularity. It leads me to links like this one. (Warning: If you click around, it will teach how to pull the heads off your chickens to kill them. Not for the squeamish.)

Right now, um, no, I'm not going to kill our girls. For one thing, it's so unnecessary. There's lots of food available on the San Francisco Peninsula at any of our dozens of nearby grocery stores. There's no need, no tension, no reason.

When the revolution comes, and we actually have to subsist on what we can grow? Chickens, you're on notice.

By Sara Schneider, Sunset wine editor

The numbers are in. Our immensely helpful consultant, Michael Martella, took our wine samples up to Thomas Fogarty Winery to analyze for pH (which is in indirect proportion to acidity) and TA (total acidity). Here’s what he reported.

Our Syrah
    pH: 3.8 (a little high; Martella thinks it will still come down)
    TA: .64
Our Chardonnay
    pH: 3.2 (low, which means our acidity is high, which is an excellent thing)
    TA: .68 (great)

His evaluation: “I think you’re still on track. It’s going to be very good wine.” Phew!

And advice: Let the Syrah go another couple of weeks, then send him more samples. But the Chardonnay is “done,” meaning that both fermentations are complete. Douse it with meta bisulfite (in, as he does, a ratio of 1 pound per 1,000 gallons of wine! For us, that translates to about 2 teaspoons per carboy and would give us about 60 parts per million in the end—a good goal for sulfites). And start stirring the lees, to soften up the wine and add some complexity. We have two choices: Buy a ridiculously expensive machine that stirs the lees magnetically from the outside, or turn the carboys on their sides and roll them once a week or so.

The choice might have been a no-brainer, but nothing’s as easy as it sounds. We couldn’t roll the carboys with the ferm locks still in place; we had to put in some solid corks and secure them with duct tape, to avoid spilling wine all over Sunset’s courtyard. The rolling itself went without incident, even if the layers of lees were so compact that we had to manhandle the carboys vigorously. But untaping the corks was a little bit of an adventure—Erika Ehmsen (copy chief) almost lost an eye when one came shooting out. We learned to finesse it, though, and now have a weekly regimen.

By Rick LaFrentz, Beerless leader

Photos by Kimberley Burch

“John Barleycorn must die.”

These are lyrics from a song I would listen to in my wayward youth. It was about a group of men who set out to disrupt the planting of the evil barley seed.

Barley is such a vital commodity in our everyday life and an absolute necessity in the process of brewing, why would one want to prohibit its planting?

The barley that we planted several months ago for our homemade beer is, at last, setting seed. Break out the cigars.

We chose a fairly new variety of barley called Lacey that has 6 rows of seeds growing on the seed head. Barley either grows in 2 or 6 rows. From my research on the subject, the 2 row seed heads are the most preferred by the brewing industry because they contain less protein, which will cloud the appearance of beer, but Lacey was developed for its plight in the brewing process.

We also had planted white wheat (shown left). I had planted the seeds rather thick not knowing what the germination rate would be and to our delight almost all of the seeds had germinated. We thinned a few rows at a time to avoid over crowding and allow for less competition but to our surprise the rows that had not been thinned actually grew taller and had deeper lush green colored foliage.

It’s an enigma.

This is the time of year when hop rhizomes arrive at your local brewing outlet. Hops are another vital ingredient in the brewing process.

We chose 3 different varieties, out of dozens, that we feel would grow without difficulty in our climate. Cascade, which is a very popular variety with the micro brewing community, gives a citrus-floral character. Another hop we chose is Centennial, which is very similar to cascade, but is more intense and will add bitterness to the beer. The third variety is Nugget, which again will add bitterness, but has an herbal spicy note. (Finding yourself captivated by hops varieties? Wikipedia has a nice roundup.)

During the growing season, hops have a tendency to attract spider mites and mildew so I guess we can count on these exquisite little inconveniences to add complexity to the final product.

Which hops and to what extent they will be used in our brew will be decided by committee.

Our next step in the home brewing process will be to wait until the barley seeds have dried and then try to malt the seeds to produce a product that we will be able to ferment. Wish us luck.

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Nobody loves our chickens as much as our Jim McCann. Sunset art director, leader of Team Chicken, he is probably the person who spends the most time in the coop. He brings them an afternoon apple every day, he holds them and pets them, and he is the most vigilant of us about keeping them fed and watered.

And what does Carmelita do in return? Bites him.

Hard. Drew blood.

Do these chickens have no sense of decency? Jim is so tender-hearted that he issued a proclamation that we shouldn't lift our chickens up and take their eggs while they're still in the nesting box, because he's afraid it will upset them. (Secretly: I'm still taking their eggs from under them; I think that's a time-honored part of chicken-human interaction.) But still ...! He's the one who was most distressed when we were worried that Carmelita was a rooster. (Which would have likely meant the stew pot.)

Nothing like a little blood-sport to change a man's opinion. After she gave him a chomp, even Jim was considering Carmelita coq au vin.

We don't have any photo or video documentation of the event, sadly, but I think it probably went a little like this. (It's a video.) And despite the potential danger in a chicken bite, Jim seems thus far undiseased. Only his heart is broken.

And it's not just biting humans. Carmelita seems to be our group's little Robespierre, leading her own reign of terror. (I know, Julius Caesar to the French Revolution — I'm mixing historical metaphors.) But she's managed to peck out nearly all of the sideburn and muff feathers on Ophelia and Alana, and she pecks poor Honey so much that her comb is starting to look stunted.

Although we've had much wringing of hands about this, it all seems well within the bounds of normal chicken behavior. The pecking order is brutal, man.

We're trying to calm her behavior using a combination of techniques:

• Bold and fearless movements  — we're not going to cower, even if she does try to peck us
• Saying "No" firmly (apparently birds are auditory creatures?)
• Responding to aggression with firm and gentle ruffling of feathers.

We'll let you know how it goes.

***
In better chicken news, I have the perfect way to use a half-dozen fresh chicken eggs: a souffle. I'd never made one till this weekend, and let me tell you, it was superb. Easy! Delicious! As satisfying a cooking experience as I've ever had. I made this Classic Cheese Souffle using sharp provolone, and I added a crushed clove of garlic and a tablespoon of chopped rosemary to the bechamel.

I didn't even have a proper souffle pan (I just used a 1.75-quart oven-safe glass casserole) and made a foil collar to prevent overflow. Worked like a charm.

Serve it with bread, a salad, and a glass of Riesling, and you've whipped up the perfect Saturday night dinner.

By Amy Machnak, Sunset food writer

Finally our olive oil is ready to be bottled after sitting in darkness to let the sediment settle.

It took us a while to get started, but once we did we had quite the assembly line. Team Olive set up a spot behind the offices to transfer our olive oil from 20-gallon plastic jugs to individual 250-ml bottles. As we were getting started, we kept having to run into the kitchen to get another tool (we hadn’t quite thought things through). After we finally got all the required supplies and our line working smoothly, almost 2 hours had passed and we were barely 1 jug done with 3 more to go. We hadn’t really expected it to take us so long to pour from one container to the other, but it did. We eventually had to call it quits as the sun went down.

When we reconvened to finish our task, we made sure we had our equipment. Since having the right gear makes the process much faster, we have compiled a quick list for you before you start bottling yourself.

Supplies:
aprons, one per person
power drill fitted with a small bit (for making a ventilation hole in plastic jugs)
olive bottles and corks
funnel
towels or rags
mallet or small hammer
tarps to spread under area or over valuables
large drip pans (turkey roasting pan will do)
permanent marker for labeling
bucket of hot soapy water

Here’s how we did it:
We found it easier for one person to fill the bottles at each spigot (we had 2 going simultaneously) and for a third person to push/hammer in the corks. A fourth person wiped off the oil that inevitably dripped down the bottles’ sides with warm water and a rag, then put them into the boxes that the bottles came in.

Our labeled boxes of bottled oil are currently sitting in organized rows in our temperature controlled work shed. Before the weather warms, we’ll move them to the wine cellar to keep them cool and dark (heat and light are two enemies of oil). At some point, we’ll need to devise the best way to adhere (aka melt) the gold plastic seals over the top of each bottle.

Does anyone have a quality hair dryer we could borrow?