Bells of the North Homestead

Ambitious goals

2020-04-19T01:07:00.002-04:00

Long ago, when we were living in Maryland we had the goal to reduce our grocery store consumption. We set ourselves a limit of only shopping local and minimal shopping at the grocery store. Here's the link to that challenge. Tough Decisions
Now due to worldwide events, we are revisiting that idea however instead we're challenging ourselves to grow as much as we can ourselves. This means fruits, vegetables, proteins and herbs.

Thanks to my husband who gave me a go-pro for Christmas I will now be filming quite a bit of what happens on our property so now you can follow us as we face challenges, celebrate successes, and work to produce over 80% of our food.

Friday we received our honeybees and we hived them Saturday, 18April.
This weekend we will also be tapping birch trees which will be used for birch syrup and birch wine. I'll be putting up videos shortly as we accomplish all of this and more.

Now that being said, Blogger has been relatively hard to work with when it comes to earning any sort of money. I am a corporate travel agent full time that has been furloughed so I will slowly be changing over to my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content.

Today is the day. We work to build up our victory garden. Follow us to victory.

Negative 36 with chickens in our garage

2020-01-05T18:10:00.001-05:00

The past couple of weeks have been interesting to say the least. Our temperatures here in Interior Alaska have gone from positive temperatures in the teens to lows of -40. While the house is hanging in there, of course, no surprise there. This place was built to last, we have lost a couple of animals and now as of today, the 5th of January, we are housing three chickens in our garage. Unfortunately two of these girls had the bad luck to start molting late Autumn. Little Ms. Toriel started molting first in late November. Chloe came right behind her in mid December. By the morning of Christmas Eve it became apparent, we had to house poor little Toriel in the garage as first and foremost she had very little feathers on her poor body. She's also lower in the pecking order which means others are picking on her and she is not allowed to share their heat. As my husband brought her in to show me it was apparent, she was on deaths doorstep. Her eyes were frozen shut, her foot looked as if it was frozen. I feared she would lose it possibly.
We placed her in our makeshift brooder, with fresh hay as a bed and a bowl of water and food, just in case she did wake up or come back to the world of the living and find herself hungry.
Lo and behold, the night of Christmas eve, I went to go check on her and there she was, standing up a and looking at me with now one eye open and had a befuddled look on her face as if to say "why am I here, and where exactly is here?"
Within the next few days she rapidly became more energetic and was able to eat, drink and poo. All good signs and even better, I ran my hand down her bare skin and thankfully, found quills there. She's growing her feathers out. Now this is all good however we definitely do not want to keep even one chicken in the garage for a long period of time but the situation was what it was. I was glad she was recovering.
A week later with more sustained temperatures in the negative teens and negative -20's suddenly Chloe looked to be in the same dire straights as poor Toriel. So inside she went, into the same makeshift brooder box. Toriel seemed to be happy now as she was obviously starting to show signs that she was lonely. That is until Chloe came to.
Chloe has been mercilessly pecking Toriel any chance she gets. Whether its to remind her who's boss, who's allowed the water, who's allowed the food, or even who is allowed to be petted at this time.
Not even a day later, another of our young ladies, Piper, was showing signs of not being able to make it through the harsh temperatures. Her's was a peculiar situation. We believe she hurt her foot a month or so ago. She's also the lowest on the pecking order as she is the only young lady that had yet to lay eggs, and the others reminded her non stop that she was not allowed to nest with them.
This worried us in Autumn but we hoped it would end once she began laying.
Unfortunately not.
So my husband brought poor Piper in, placed her near Chloe and Toriel in hopes she would "thaw out some" being next to their body heat. Even then, it was apparent that both Toriel and Chloe were not really interested in spending time next to the youngster. By the evening Piper had passed away. I was relatively sad on that one. She was a cute chicken, she loved following behind my feet like a faithful dog, and I kept predicting that one of these days she would get hurt doing that. I'm willing to bet that might have happened but it's hard to say.
RIP Poor little Piper. You were a cutie.

Our most recent addition to what my husband has now coined "the sanctuary" is Pot Pie. Oddly enough, she IS NOT molting however she is pretty low on the pecking order. We have noticed she's not allowed to hang out with the other ladies on the roost where it is warmer. Instead she has been repeatedly stuck on the bottom.
When my husband brought this poor baby in, she was just about dead. Lethargic, unwilling to move, barely breathing. I checked on her throughout the day thinking "oh no, this will be the next one to die". By the end of the day she was still alive and her breathing had become more regular.
I will say through all of this, chickens were completely new to me. Prior to us owning chickens the closest I had been to a chicken was when I visited a friends house to buy eggs. Now I've become more familiar with them and I'm able to spot what is normal and what is not. I'm just sad we've lost some chickens in the process of learning this.

As of today, Pot Pie, Chloe and Toriel are stuck together in a small makeshift brooder box that is meant more for baby chicks than it is a bunch of adult hens. I know that soon they will be getting frustrated and not exactly liking their situation which I fear might cause them to pick on each other more. Currently we anxiously watch the temperatures in hopes that the cold streak will break, and that we'll move back into positive temperatures. I'm not certain if this is really ever going to happen soon as we're now in the time of the year when we expect -20s, -30s, -40s and even -50s.
If we could even move one or two of them back some of that frustration might be alleviated, but that is a big might.
Chickens are incredibly social animals. They have a strong pecking order, very strong personalities that are easy to spot when you start watching them. Its pretty bad luck that we had two of the lower end hens and one higher up hen succumb to molting and cold. Oh well, the situation is what it is.
Such is life on a homestead with animals. Life and death constantly surround you and you never can really tell which it will be on any given day.

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!

Current Earthley Sale January 1-6

2020-01-02T13:29:00.000-05:00

Current Sale
Jan 1-6
20% off 10 products.
Code: swap20
Top 10 Swaps Sale
https://www.earthley.com/top-10-swaps-sale/ref/tamtbell/

Top 10 Swap Products:
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Rosemary-Lavender Shampoo bar instead of liquid
Silky Smooth Leave-In Conditioner spray instead of conditioner
Mineral Deodorant instead of conventional deo
Pain Potion instead of Tylenol
Charcoal bar instead of cleanser
Digest-Support instead of heartburn meds
Nourish Me, Her, Him instead of multi-vitamins

First time customers get a 10% discount on their orders (outside of other sales) with the code: "newtoearthley."
Free Shipping for orders over $50

Who are we and why are we here?

2019-08-15T18:55:00.002-04:00

I write this today not for those who already know who I am, but for those instead who are new to our page. Now I have to admit, the page used to go by the name How Does Our Garden Grow because when I first started it in Maryland, that was how it fit us more. How IS our garden growing?
When we first moved to Maryland, we had so many things happen to us financially that, truly, we were really bad off. We had dry goods in our pantry, but nothing fresh in the fridge, and only a small amount of canned goods. We had no homemade canned goods at all.
Imagine being in a situation where all you have is flour, Bisquick, sugar, cornmeal, some dried beans, and a container of rice. Yes, you can make a meal out of that, but it gets boring super quick. To make matters worse, we couldn't afford to buy much due to issues with the condo we still owned in Alaska along with car troubles and a financial gaff by the military which left us with two and a half months of no pay due (yes that means we skipped two and a half months of paycheck while still having to pay for gas for my husband to get to work, and daycare, and food, etc etc etc). Thankfully I was working which did help some, and in a moment I still believe was due to divine intervention, we signed up for a CSA (community shared agriculture) with Brads Produce which was a local farm down the road from Aberdeen Proving Ground. This helped us a bit through the lean months when we had almost nothing fresh to eat.
Still, we knew something had to be done in our budget and we had yet to have heard of Dave Ramsey yet (I wish I knew about him sooner!). So I drew up the numbers and boy did it look bleak. I came to the conclusion that the only dollar amount in our budget that would move any would be the food.
Now, previous to Maryland, I had gardened some but I was no where near an expert at it. I could grow a vine of cucumbers, maybe some flowers, a tomato plant or even better yet, herbs! I was really good at herbs but you can't survive on just herbs alone. So I vowed that I would get better at growing a garden so that I could support our family in that way.

We moved into a townhouse in Maryland that was owned by the military and operated by a contractor for the military. This house was surrounded by a yard that grew green and black stinky moss but that was about it. At first anyways.
The first year, when we needed it most was almost an utter failure. I knew nothing about soil, other than it consisted of dirt, clay, sand and NPK was something important I should look at but I had no clue what NPK or any of the other bit was. We did manage to grow a couple of things, but we did not manage to grow near enough to feed two adults and one small child.

So in my spare time, I began to research, and in that researching I found something very helpful. I started to record what I would find here. At this blog all the way back in February 2011. Without knowing it, I was onto something that Thomas Jefferson himself found of value. That it is important to record your successes and failures because through that you learn what did or did not work. In fact his garden book, which I now own and lovingly peruse through every so often, is filled with the words "failed", "failed nearly" and "killed by bug".

So, over time, I began experimenting, and when it was not the growing season, well then I read, watched videos, read some more and looked up whatever I could look up on the internet. By summer of 2011 I had already a noticeable difference. Thankfully, I had taken pictures which truly showed me how much I had succeeded in my mission to learn how to grow my own food.

I've never been one for video much, however I do walk around, still to this day, with my cell phone in hand to record the progress of the garden.

So my first most important advice to a new gardener? RECORD what you are doing! If you like video well then go for it, if you're okay with just writing it down in a notebook, fine. If you can't read your own writing (ME) then type it out. When you record what you are doing from year to year you can study what you did wrong after the fact.

By Autumn 2013, it was just about time for us to start deconstructing our garden. My husband was retiring from the armed services, and we were moving BACK to Alaska. We were sad to take apart our garden that had grown into a lush garden of Eden but in order to move out of the military housing the yard had to look just like what it looked like before.

Tearing down all the raised beds and taking out all the leftover plants.

That mission was going to be a bit difficult because we had raised the fertility of the backyard so much that now grass grew easily, the soil was no longer heavy, wet and stinky (it was mostly clay when we moved in) and instead hosted all manner of insects and was dark and rich like chocolate cake. Still we deconstructed all the raised beds; took everything apart and planted grass seed. I still hope that whoever lives there now enjoys the grape vines and a stray plant that might pop up every so often. In November 2013, we were on our way to Interior Alaska; North to the Future. Many asked us why would we move all the way up to the North? Why Alaska. We cannot explain it in any other way than this "for the twenty years we have moved around with the military, never once did we find a place like Alaska that truly felt like home to both of us. It was the one place we have lived that truly felt like it was meant to be for us. Also, all three of us hate heat. The moment the temperature raises above 75 degrees, we're all miserable".

We first moved back to our own condo that we still owned. It was in town so it was close to everything, including my new (old) job with the travel agency that I had been with for so long. Three months later, my husband landed a job with a local cargo and passenger carrier here in Fairbanks. We began working on our garden but being here in Alaska presented all new challenges. I was still devoted to growing as much as I could myself in order to lessen our grocery shopping trips during the summer months at least, and possibly a bit during the winter.

We managed to score quite a bit of used concrete blocks that we used as our building material. My idea here was that the concrete during the summer months would heat up which would then provide a bit of residual heat when things started to cool down some. The idea worked. We had huge harvests from this yard during the summer months. Our biggest negative in that house was how hot the house would get during the summer months AND we have no central AC here in Alaska so it became a challenge for us to stay cool. The garden loved it though!

Yes, that is CORN! We did get a few ears

We all knew that this house was not our ultimate stopping point though. This was just a stop along the way. We knew we wanted a house outside of town. A single family home, away from traffic noises, away from people all around us. We had spent enough time in bigger cities that we no longer desired this life. AT ALL.

We knew we would like to raise bees. We knew we would like to have some chickens. We knew we wanted our garden and we knew we did not want to live with neighbors so close that we could look outside our dining room window and see what they were having for breakfast.

So we began to plan. How to get further outside of Fairbanks? We were still stuck with the condo and by the looks of the real estate market and how poorly the HOA had been managed previously, it appeared we would be stuck with it for many years to come.

We did try for one house outside of town in a small rural neighborhood in North Pole however that house needed a LOT of work which would require capital that we simply didn't have. We gave up on that property within about a month of fighting for it and decided to take it as a sign that it just wasn't meant to be. Instead we began listening to Dave Ramsey, we began eating beans and rice along with homegrown greens almost EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. We became gazelle intense. We watched every expense, we tracked everything.

By January 2016 we had decided to try again to see if we could not find a home elsewhere. Remember, we had been living since we were 18/19 years old with neighbors right on top of us, or at least to the side of us. We were done with living among a bunch of people. We were done with loud music, done with others having parties and done with neighbors having arguments.

So we met with our realtor, looked at some homes, almost settled on one and just as we were about to put a bid in, we discovered there was already a bid on it.

In the last minute, I discovered a house that had just been placed again on the market. We made the appointment with our realtor, did the walk through, and put down our bid.

Lo and behold, three other potential buyers, bid against us and they all overbid us. The owner of the home however was very adamant. Whoever did exactly as she asked in the buying process would be awarded the house and it turned out, we were the only ones who fulfilled all her requests. So within a week, we found out, the house was ours. Our realtor still to this day says he had never seen anything like this house sale.

Upon moving in this house, we have slowly but surely gotten to know and love every bit of this house. This house is no longer a house to us, but truly is our home.

We love taking walks through the garden, we love spending time among our trees, our plants, our animals that we keep. We love that so much of what we eat now comes from our garden. We still have plans for the future for the house but we have slowed down some on what we hope to accomplish. After all, many of our projects are not cheap. We are on the electrical grid but would love to invest in a generator that will come on during power outages. We are on well water that we have to filter redundantly in order to remove the sulfur smell from it. We have our own septic tank that gets pumped once a year.

Our heat is through a water boiler that is fueled with heating oil that becomes more expensive every year. We also supplement with wood however unfortunately, the borough is attempting to crack down on that one as they do not want individuals using wood because they say it pollutes the environment.

Doing laundry and cooking dinner in the middle of winter. Yes all using one source of fuel that we cut ourselves rather than using the electricity from the oven and the electricity from the clothes dryer.

The Interior of Alaska and North Pole experiences much cooler temperatures than up in the hills in Fairbanks. This adds a challenge to our growing of fruits and vegetables. This means for every tree or perennial we add to the garden, we add it with the hope that it will survive the harsh winters we experience and come back productive the next summer. Each break up (Spring) we walk the garden and look to see "did the peonies all come back up?" "Did the crab apple trees survive?" "Is our beginner asparagus patch coming back?"

Early May in our backyard. So much shade to contend with

We are always mindful of what zone the plant says it can be grown in. If it is okay for zone 1? Great. Zone 2. Good but not completely certain. Zone 3? Forget it. It most likely won't make it. We look at the names of the plants. If we see the name "Siberian" or "Russian" then it is almost certain a sure bet that it will survive up here.

Garlic bed. This was not a bad harvest, however they were very small. Most likely needed more sun

Each year we try something new, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

We hope by next year to have our back yard cleared out some more of the trees there and have our greenhouse built. This will be our very next large build. This will allow us to grow the heat lovers such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and melons. This winter we will be reviewing plans for this so that come summer we can begin work on it.

Our first true larger build was our woodshed. We have NEVER built something so big with our own two hands. We were both felt this was a great accomplishment! Here is the link for that build. It took us almost one full summer to build it.

We do our best to always move in a direction that allows us to be self sustainable as much as possible. We strive to reduce our use of the grocery store when possible, and ultimately try to be prepared for whatever life throws at us.

In our twenty five years of marriage and thirty years together we have learned over and over, that life can throw you incredible curve balls so it is only prudent to prepare for those because they happen when you least expect it.

Proverbs 27:12 (KJV)
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Proverbs 21:20
The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down.

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!

Stories from the Homestead

2019-08-10T16:01:00.003-04:00

This morning our family finished breakfast, were engaged in cleaning up and putting things away. I decided I'd really like a cup of cappuccino before I got moving on making some salsa with some reduced tomatoes from Fred Meyers yesterday. Suddenly I heard a large bird, I mean really large hit the front window. I exclaimed loudly "what the heck was that?" Of course my husband Edward just answered "huh? What? I didn't hear anything" So I went out to look. Thank God I did. Poor Pot Pie, our newest addition who is one of the few that DOES NOT have her wings clipped was hanging out in a pot of dirt at the window. The poor girl was looking in with desperation, not realizing I was standing on the porch. I shrieked "Pot Pie sweety, what are you doing here?" At which point I grabbed her, began walking to the yard where the chickens and rabbits are when I then screeched with a chicken held to my chest "DOG!!!!"
Oh no. A dog was in the yard. And he was chasing the chickens. As I approached the yard I noticed the carnage, all the feathers everywhere. The poor girls scared out of their minds. Orange feathers, black feathers, gray feathers, off white feathers. Were there any of our girls left besides the one that I was holding? Pot pie has never been overly fond of me since coming to our home 3 weeks ago and I understand why but now she's clinging to my chest, knowing I'll help protect her from the dog.
With the teamwork of three, we did manage to push the dog out into a part of the yard where he wouldn't have as much access to the girls, however he did escape, sadly. We wanted to see who this dog belonged to.
I began surveying the damage. One girl hiding her head under a shovel, her poor bum feathers torn off some. I placed Pot pie back in the coop. I knew she was okay. There was a pile of chickens near the gate that we all come through when feeding them. I could see Lara, Sonya, and finally Chloe in a dog pile (or would that be chicken pile?). Poor Chloe was so frightened she was stiff.....but alive. Sigh of relief. So was Sonya. I was especially proud of Lara as she seemed to be using her body as a defense for the smaller two chickens. So that made four. Next the poor girl with the missing bum feathers. Is it Toriel or Liza? Blue bracelet, that means its Toriel. At first I thought her neck might be broken but she was hiding under the shovel. Lo and behold, as I moved the shovel and called her name she began to come back over to me. Thankful that she was alive, I picked her up, gave her a look over and placed her gently with her "sisters" in the coop. Okay that's five. So where are the other four? Another look in the coop made me realize I completely missed the other three hiding in there. Good girls. And Tess, she's learned from previous threats. Hide inside the coop if you want to live.
Okay so this means our baby, Piper, is missing. Now she's the only girl able to fit through the areas in the chain link. Since we didn't find her in the yard, this means she's outside the fenced yard. She's taken refuge somewhere else, especially since she isn't fully welcome with the other girls yet.
We began scouring for her, calling her name. She follows me normally like a little lost puppy when I do my chores back there so I know she'll most likely come to me when I call. Lo and behold I spotted her amongst all the foliage around the pond. She was hiding near the deck. Clever girl.
My son Nick took the initiative to crawl under the deck which scared her a bit more over to me, then I grabbed her from the other side of the deck. Sigh. All nine chickens, alive and okay. Some are missing bum feathers but otherwise none are dead.
Since raising livestock like our rabbits and chickens this has been a constant concern. Not so much for the rabbits as we built hutches that we knew would protect them from most threats here in the interior (bear, wolf, fox, hawk, bald eagle, dog, cat) but the chickens don't get that as much. We try to allow them to free range as much as possible so we always have this in the back of our minds, that we might lose another one, again, due to violence or illness. Its always sad when it happens as we get to know our ladies, their likes and dislikes, their personalities or how intelligent each one is, etc etc.

So now the ladies are locked up for now, in the coop. I'm sad to have to do that but I don't trust it now that the dog has figured out that there are chickens there. It was a smaller dog too so he/she dug its way under the fence to get to them. Frustrating.
The most I can do for now is have supervised outings possibly.

So on the upside of this crazy hour, I found some bears tooth (Hericium americanum) mushroom that has inoculated a birch tree. Nice! I've advised Edward to please leave that tree alone as much as possible. I want to see if we can keep getting mushrooms from it. These are edible mushrooms that supposedly taste a bit like crab or lobster. Going to try some tonight and see how it turns out.

Okay so that all being said, time for me to end this for now. I have fresh salsa, zucchini pickles and kohlrabi slaw to make and then can, greens to pressure can, and then I'll have to go out and help the guys with the cutting, splitting and stacking of firewood. Autumn is just around the corner.

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!

Progress on an Alaskan Homestead

2018-11-17T22:50:00.000-05:00

I can’t believe the year is almost over with. Its Mid-November, the ground is fully covered with snow (finally), and we’re just about done for the season.

This year seemed to be more about protein farming than our garden really; when I sit and ponder it. Slowly but surely our property is becoming more and more productive. In July I posted that it seemed as if our meat rabbit production was not doing as well but suddenly come September that all changed. We had two surprise litters and we had a friend drop off some of her grow outs as she was getting out of rabbits for a while. This pushed our meat harvested massively up. That definitely helps counter the cost of raising the rabbits. While I love my breeder rabbits (Bones, Pepper, Dorothy, Cadbury, Butterfinger, Granny Cookie) they are not simply pets. As any protein farmer knows, these are also my livestock. I get to know each and every one. Their likes and dislikes, who enjoys what kind of food and who tends to be more ornery or more cuddly and lovable. Within the next couple of weeks we will be deboning a good portion of the rabbits harvested which will then go into several different types of sausage. Last year we made an apple sage and also an Andouille rabbit sausage that was tasty but rather dry. This year we will be using more pork fat to increase the fat and moisture levels some to rectify that. I now have about 70 tanned rabbit furs that I am working with on a blanket for my son. I have promised him he could have a blanket as well as maybe a pillow with rabbit fur. Any extra tidbits of fur will be used to line hand knitted mittens and hats which, I think, will look really stylish up here in the Interior of Alaska.

Our egg layers are doing great! We have had some sad moments this past autumn. Ellie, which was Tess’s best friend, passed away from the same virus as Kara at the end of August.

In mid-October two of our others died, due to a dog attack. Our flock has been attacked by the neighbor’s dogs repeatedly so now we constantly trim feathers to ensure they cannot get outside of the fenced area that keeps them safe from the dogs. Unfortunately the owners of the dogs are still allowing their dog’s free range which irritates us and the ladies to no end. With all that said, we’ve gotten a total of 148 eggs so far since we Tess started laying this summer. Tess is definitely the most reliable out of the bunch and she is also certain that she needs to be a house chicken. I advise her quite frequently this is not the case however she still follows behind me like a loyal puppy, always begging me for yet another treat. As of yesterday we are getting 7 eggs a day so now my project will be using up as many eggs a day as I can, or selling them. Whichever one comes first. I have looked at freezing the extra eggs, which is not my favorite idea as I am rapidly running out of freezer space unless I drag out my coolers and start using those outdoors again (something we do each year here in Fairbanks/North Pole). I am also going to try dehydrating eggs but I have heard some not so great reviews on this idea. I have read that sometimes dehydrating eggs and then grinding them into a powder makes them gritty once reconstituted. My last idea might be to preserve the egg yolks in a salt/sugar combination. I have seen this on social media and it looks amazing. The preserved eggs can then be grated and sprinkled on top of pasta, rice or toast to add an umami taste to the dish. As my son so succinctly said it to me recently “Mom now is the time to start trying out all those recipes that use up egg yolks that you were afraid to try before”. Yes I guess he’s right. I guess I’ll be writing on the egg use up project and the rabbit sausage project here really soon!

This upcoming year, believe it or not, we have no huge projects other than clearing trees. We hope to prepare for a greenhouse within the next two years but in order to do that we have to remove some trees. I feel that the break in between projects will be good as we will be able to concentrate on the garden now and getting it up to being fully productive. The soil is better, but as I’ve said in the past, it’s still nowhere where it needs to be. The past two years have been in a word, crazy. It has been insanely busy, with too little rest as we kept up with a very busy schedule. Between the wood shed build, the rabbit hutches, then increasing the amount of rabbit hutches, then building the chicken coop and run. Add in all the other garden projects, our budding orchard and we have had very little time to just sit back and watch the garden and analyze the progress or lack thereof.

I intend to try a couple of new plants in the garden. Amaranth, Sea Buckthorn berry and potentially Quinoa. I have heard grains like Amaranth or Quinoa are a hit or miss here (with more misses than hits). Unfortunately, due to our very short growing season here many can grow Amaranth or Quinoa however getting it to fully mature to seed production, which of course is used as the grain, is challenging. From what I have found from many sites visited, Quinoa actually does do better here however than Amaranth as Amaranth loves the heat, Quinoa does not. Both Amaranth and Quinoa technically are not a grain, however their seeds can be used as a non gluten grain replacement. I can definitely vouch for the fact that they are both delicious.

I have heard recently from a friend that varieties of Siberian Sea Buckthorn berry grows very well here. There are amazing health benefits of Sea Buckthorn berry as reported by the NIH (National Institute of Health). Per WebMD, Sea Buckthorn berry can be used for slowing the decline of thinking skills with age, treating stomach and intestinal diseases, treating night blindness and dry eye and it is very high in Vitamin C and also contains vitamins A, E as well as beta-carotene. I take a small amount of Sea Buckthorn berry oil each day internally and I even use it in small amounts topically. If you use it topically, be careful however as it will turn your skin a funny shade of orange. I have noticed a big difference in overall skin tone and texture since I have been using it.

We will also be expanding our orchard some next year. Hopefully we will be adding more honeyberries, more currants, strawberries and hopefully some Siberian Plums. When the snow melts and the ground thaws we will also have fencing to put up to help guard against the depredations of the moose that love to come visit our buffet garden.

When written down, it does not seem like a lot but I know we will end up being very busy, as usual this next summer. I am sure also that come mid January we will discover even more things that we feel should be done and so of course, will be added to list.

That is us though, always busy, always moving, always striving towards a more self sustainable lifestyle.

America's Test Kitchen simplifies salt-cured egg yolks. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2018, from https://www.splendidtable.org/story/americas-test-kitchen-simplifies-salt-cured-egg-yolks

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5438513/

Sea Buckthorn: Uses, Side Effects, Interactions, Dosage, and Warning. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2018, from https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-765/sea-buckthorn

Cafe Mocha Hot Process Soap

2018-08-11T22:29:00.000-04:00

Brew coffee triple strength several hours prior to creating batch of soap. This will be used for the lye. I like to add cloves into the brewed coffee as it adds a bit of a complex smell later.

SoapCalc ©

Recipe Name:

New Print Recipe

Total oil weight	3 lb
Water as percent of oil weight	38.00 %
Super Fat/Discount	5 %
Lye Concentration	27.883 %
Water : Lye Ratio	2.5864:1

Sat : Unsat Ratio	60 : 40
Iodine	41
INS	176
Fragrance Ratio	0.5
Fragrance Weight	1.50 oz

	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
Water	1.140	18.24	517.09
Lye - NaOH	0.441	7.05	199.92
Oils	3.000	48.00	1,360.78
Fragrance	0.094	1.50	42.53
Soap weight before CP cure or HP cook	4.675	74.79	2,120.32

#	√	Oil/Fat	%	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
1		Coconut Oil, 76 deg	35.00	1.050	16.80	476.27
2		Tallow Beef	40.00	1.200	19.20	544.31
3		Shea Butter	5.00	0.150	2.40	68.04
4		Olive Oil	20.00	0.600	9.60	272.16
		Totals	100.00	3.000	48.00	1,360.78

Soap Bar Quality	Range	Your Recipe
Hardness	29 - 54	56
Cleansing	12 - 22	27
Conditioning	44 - 69	39
Bubbly	14 - 46	27
Creamy	16 - 48	30
Iodine	41 - 70	41
INS	136 - 165	176

Lauric	18
Myristic	9
Palmitic	17
Stearic	12
Ricinoleic	0
Oleic	33
Linoleic	5
Linolenic	1

Additives	Notes

Finished product!

Avocado Spearmint Hot Process Soap WITH FINISHED PRODUCT PICTURES

2018-08-06T21:00:00.000-04:00

SoapCalc ©

Recipe Name:

New Print Recipe

Total oil weight	2 lb
Water as percent of oil weight	38.00 %
Super Fat/Discount	5 %
Lye Concentration	27.285 %
Water : Lye Ratio	2.6651:1

Sat : Unsat Ratio	39 : 61
Iodine	56
INS	156
Fragrance Ratio	0.5
Fragrance Weight	1.00 oz

	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
Water	0.760	12.16	344.73
Lye - NaOH	0.285	4.56	129.35
Oils	2.000	32.00	907.18
Fragrance	0.063	1.00	28.35
Soap weight before CP cure or HP cook	3.108	49.72	1,409.61

#	√	Oil/Fat	%	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
1		Avocado Oil	20.00	0.400	6.40	181.44
2		Coconut Oil, 92 deg	35.00	0.700	11.20	317.51
3		Castor Oil	20.00	0.400	6.40	181.44
4		Olive Oil	20.00	0.400	6.40	181.44
5		Avocado butter	5.00	0.100	1.60	45.36
		Totals	100.00	2.000	32.00	907.18

Soap Bar Quality	Range	Your Recipe
Hardness	29 - 54	37
Cleansing	12 - 22	23
Conditioning	44 - 69	57
Bubbly	14 - 46	41
Creamy	16 - 48	32
Iodine	41 - 70	56
INS	136 - 165	156

Lauric	17
Myristic	7
Palmitic	11
Stearic	3
Ricinoleic	18
Oleic	32
Linoleic	7
Linolenic	0

Additives

Notes

I'm loving this finished product!!! We added a bit of dark green liquid soap color as well as some sparkly green mica meant for soap making. Also I used the darker shade on the bottom which actually seemed to take on a blue hue. Odd. The top color almost achieved what I was looking for. Simply, a color of fresh guacamole. Close. Unfortunately I didn't have enough color to really make it happen and adding cold leftover whey with the powdered lye made it a bit more difficult as the chemical reaction caused the liquid whey to go from white to bright orange. That was a pretty fun scientific experiment to try out.

I added frozen whey this time for two reasons.

I had extra left over from mozzarella cheese making.
I wanted to see what kind of soap bar it would make? Would it be more nourishing to the skin? I haven't found a whole lot of results talking about that so we'll see in about 5 or 6 weeks when the soap has had time to cure.

Our next batch will possibly be one of our two favorites. Oatmeal, milk and honey or cafe mocha. I'll be sure to post those recipes as well as the finished pictures.

Avocado Spearmint Hot Process Soap ~~~Stay tuned for final picture!

2018-08-05T21:40:00.003-04:00

SoapCalc ©

Recipe Name:

New Print Recipe

Total oil weight	2 lb
Water as percent of oil weight	38.00 %
Super Fat/Discount	5 %
Lye Concentration	27.285 %
Water : Lye Ratio	2.6651:1

Sat : Unsat Ratio	39 : 61
Iodine	56
INS	156
Fragrance Ratio	0.5
Fragrance Weight	1.00 oz

	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
Water	0.760	12.16	344.73
Lye - NaOH	0.285	4.56	129.35
Oils	2.000	32.00	907.18
Fragrance	0.063	1.00	28.35
Soap weight before CP cure or HP cook	3.108	49.72	1,409.61

#	√	Oil/Fat	%	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
1		Avocado Oil	20.00	0.400	6.40	181.44
2		Coconut Oil, 92 deg	35.00	0.700	11.20	317.51
3		Castor Oil	20.00	0.400	6.40	181.44
4		Olive Oil	20.00	0.400	6.40	181.44
5		Avocado butter	5.00	0.100	1.60	45.36
		Totals	100.00	2.000	32.00	907.18

Soap Bar Quality	Range	Your Recipe
Hardness	29 - 54	37
Cleansing	12 - 22	23
Conditioning	44 - 69	57
Bubbly	14 - 46	41
Creamy	16 - 48	32
Iodine	41 - 70	56
INS	136 - 165	156

Lauric	17
Myristic	7
Palmitic	11
Stearic	3
Ricinoleic	18
Oleic	32
Linoleic	7
Linolenic	0

Additives

Notes

Winter is coming

2018-07-25T08:00:00.001-04:00

Six more weeks till Winter. Or so the story goes told by Alaskan Natives and sourdoughs alike. When the fireweed has bloomed all the way to the top, we have six more weeks till the snow flies.

So far this break up and then into summer, we’ve had some successes….and some failures. That’s pretty typical though.

The garden is doing well but could be doing better thanks to the late start because of our vacation in the lower 48. That is a killer here since our growing season is so short.

We got to harvest a large bunch of garlic scapes earlier this week. Yes indeed, garlic scapes. SUCCESS! The garlic survived the winter! We’ll have garlic later this summer to harvest.

We’re about 2 days away from harvesting our first zucchini and summer squash of the season. Our kale and broccoli rabe this year barely sprouted due to the fact that we got a late start on it. We should have direct sowed the seeds in May, however in May we were racing against the clock to build the chicken coop instead. So we have 4 kale plants that we purchased that barely keep us in kale. It sickens me to buy plants that I know I can start from seed. Almost that entire area has been taken over by chickweed. The rabbits and chickens are loving that failure.

Thankfully our other leafy greens are producing sufficiently. Our Swiss chard is doing well and we should be harvesting within the next two weeks. The broccoli; cabbage and cauliflower are doing okay, much better than they did in the past but we’re still nowhere near perfection. There is more work to do with both soil quality and we have to rebuild the makeshift greenhouses that go over the raised beds in the autumn. Those were destroyed this past winter.

Our kohlrabi is doing well, and our winter squash is performing very well! Most of the plants are loaded down with large amounts of female flowers and obviously due to all the pollinators in the area we’re seeing more and more fertilized flowers falling off. I’m really looking forward to seeing a lot of winter squash coming out of our garden this year. I have to regain my title once again of “The squash lady” that I had when I lived in Northern Maryland.

Our horseradish did come back this year but its performing weakly. I believe that is thanks to the soil and the aphids. The soil I badly need to test, in fact I have a kit in our house. I’ve been delayed as of recently however in that testing both due to the building project of our chicken coop and run along with our family visiting from the lower 48. Like I said in my last article, Preparing for 2018, our soil is better but still has a way to go.

Thanks to the chickens and their depredations our established asparagus bed is all but gone and has now been converted to their dust bath area. RIP asparagus. As a result of this we purchased more established asparagus and have planted them further in the backyard. I have no clue really if they will or will not overwinter there but it will be neat to see if they do. We do have trees to take down in that area as later on the greenhouse will go in that general area so we will have to exercise caution when taking down the trees. We also have two sad rhubarb in that area that, I believe, that were planted there by the previous owner. I have to move those over to the area where our other rhubarb are at. We have been making changes over time to our garden plans as we notice more and more about the sunlight and growing patterns, always a smart thing to do.

My herb beds are doing rather well. I even had some Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) over winter successfully. I’ve advised my husband, Edward, I have to leave that be for at least possibly another season to see if I can keep it going. I can only harvest the root there and I’d like the plant to spread out some and produce more for future use. I now also have Yarrow (Achillea millefolium); Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis); Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra); Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica); Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium); Borage (Borago Officinalis); Comfrey (Symphytum) and I’m having mediocre success with St Johns Wort (Hypericum perforatum) and Toothache plant (Acmella oleracea). Next year I will keep trying to increase our medicinal herb bed and see if I can help some of them overwinter.

Our culinary herb bed has been subject to repeated attacks by the neighborhood cat who enjoys the catnip when we’re not around. I have to remember not to put catnip anywhere near that bed in the future. I have lost almost every single culinary herb in that corner of the raised bed.

This has been a slightly damp, cooler summer thus far and our bees are showing it. This year we chose Carnolian bees instead of the more calm tempered Italians. We went with three hives instead of two. From almost the beginning of the beekeeping season we were plagued with problems. Hive 1 either lost their queen or killed it so we had to requeen that one. Next, Hive 2 either lost or killed their queen and so once again we had to requeen. This slows down production immensely as there is no queen actively laying eggs in the hive. It takes approximately 20 to 21 days for a newly laid egg to hatch into an active worker bee. A worker bee born in the spring or summer months usually will live approximately six to seven weeks. This all means that without a queen a hive will die pretty fast.

Hive 1 unfortunately had one other challenge for them. Due to their weak numbers (remember no queen there for about a week and then it took the workers another week approximately to free the next queen from her queen cage) they got repeatedly hit by Bald Faced Hornets. These are black and white behemoths that will attack the hive over and over, looking not for honey but for protein. Sadly enough, we came back from vacation at the end of May and found that Hive 1 had been completely emptied out. Not a single carcass, not a single egg, pupa or bee was found. Only a bit of capped honey. It was a sad day in our house as we combined Hive 1 frames over to Hive 3.

Thankfully, on our very last hive check, Hive 2 is showing good strong numbers in their brood, a lot of good laying patterns by their queen, and a lot of pollen has been collected. At first we were both saddened and confused though by the discovery that there was very little nectar (aka HONEY) stored away until I remembered reading that Carnolians have a habit of developing more brood first, then they collect more nectar.

Hive 3 is looking amazing! Huge numbers of new brood laid in very good, organized laying patterns, good amounts of new honeycomb; a large amount of workers, not too many drones. But once again, rather light on the nectar. I’m hoping this week of temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s will do the bees good and get them out of their hives and get them foraging.

We love having the bees for the pollination aspect but since honeybees are not cheap to get shipped up to Fairbanks, Alaska (2018 $170 a package) we sell some of our honey to recoup the cost of the shipments.

We have both successes and failures, once again, with the livestock. The rabbits are doing well, we sold one Doe, Twinkies early in spring since we really would like to bring in other breeding stock from another line that is not related to either Bones or Pepper. Dorothy, our oldest Doe had a bad day while we were working on the chicken coop in April. We always knew she was a temperamental, high stress rabbit however we never figured she would kill an entire litter of kits. This she did by simply going on strike and obviously had decided to not feed a single one of her kits. Once again a sad day. Snickerdoodles recently has also had troubles giving birth successfully to more than one or two. She currently has one son with her who is a chubby little guy who I have given the nickname of “Sumo Rabbit”. We hope it’s not an issue that will continue, and that it’s resolved soon. By her next litter, her fate will be determined.

So far this year we have only a few rabbits to harvest, which is frustrating to say the least. This is one of the few ways we supplement our meat supply in our home rather than paying the high prices in the grocery store.

Kara

As for our chickens; in Mid-April we acquired Tess and Ellie. Early June we acquired Claire; Ada; Kitana and Chloe and in late June we purchased a full grown pullet; Kara. Fortunately the six youngest ones are all doing well and seem to be thriving. Kara on the other hand seemed more and more miserable as time went on. By the 4^th of July she began becoming lethargic; passing very loose stools; and overall just seemed completely unhappy. I reached out to the chicken boards at Backyardchickens.com and received a variety of answers that ranged from coccidiosis to egg bound. We tried treating her for all and anything however Kara passed away on the 8^th of July. Of what we do not know other than she was healthy in the beginning; albeit withdrawn. I was seriously tempted to do a necropsy on her however since I am a brand new chicken owner with little experience I "chickened out". Now I regret that as it could have been a learning moment for me.

I’m sure farmers and homesteaders know this well, when you are raising livestock there are constant highs and lows. New life to celebrate and deaths to mourn. It is a constant roller coaster and it is never predictable.

Beyond the challenges of the garden and livestock we now have to speed up on other projects. This past weekend we finally got around to emptying our very stinky pond into the yard and refilled it. I'm sure our goldfish are grateful. By next year I hope to plan a drive down near Valdez where I can finally pick up some Alaskan lily pads that I know grow in several ponds along the way. This will help me with the algae issue. Two weeks ago I passed by these ponds and was incredibly tempted to stop, put on my muck boots and wade into said ponds but alas, family was in the car and I knew we had to keep moving.

Now that our building projects are just about done for the season we have wood to cut, split and stack and unfortunately we are now getting hit with a heat wave. We have at least 3 to 4 cords of wood to cut, split and stack before October. Before the wet autumn weather hits we also need to repair the roof of the woodshed. A large tree branch fell on the polycarbonate roof. That in itself would not have poked a hole through the roof but approximately 3 feet worth of packed snow was also resting on said branch. Combined with our extreme cold temperatures, I'm not surprised the roof broke. We chose this type of material for the roof because during the summer time we get passive solar heating our wood therefore making a kiln sort of shed that produces a massive amount of heat that dries our wood more quickly. The negative is it does become more fragile during the winter months. (here's the article talking about that project last year!)

One of our other projects that is almost near completion is our front yard area. When we first moved into our new home, we met with a solar power professional. They advised that it would be a good idea to cut at least 20 feet of the trees that were closest to our home, both for the solar panels that later would be installed on the roof as well as a firebreak. Last year we hired BlackHawk works to do this which left us with, as my son calls it "a nuclear wasteland". We had tree stumps here and there that were originally hidden by snow when BlackHawk came out to clear the land, and on top of that, the entire area was overgrown with weeds and fledgling trees. In early June we ordered 10 cubic feet of topsoil and began the arduous task of spreading said soil. Thanks to Edward's supervisor lending us his 4 wheel, it made the task go just a tiny bit faster. But it still took us over a month to finish this. As of today our front yard looks like this.

It is nowhere near finished, but we get closer to the end goal, day by day. The end goal being as self sufficient as possible and as my husband just advised me, have our summers back, free of projects. I'm not certain we'll ever hit that but we most certainly will try.

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!

Preparing for 2018

2018-03-05T20:44:00.000-05:00

As usual come winter here in North Pole, Alaska we turn inwards and spend time relaxing; learning new skills; reading books; and just as of this past Autumn I started attending college for my certification in Herbal Retail Management with the American College of Healthcare Sciences in Portland, Oregon. So while we're not working non stop outside, we still stay relatively busy, all within close proximity to the lit wood stove.

Drying our laundry and cooking dinner on the wood stove while keeping us warm

As we get closer to what can be considered Break up or what is called Spring in the lower 48, we begin to set up our plans for the next growing season or summer.

For some time now, actually before we started raising meat rabbits we wanted to have laying hens. To us it just seemed to be the easier option. Rabbits, in the beginning, actually were not even on our radar! To us the eggs seemed much more desirable then the meat we would get from the rabbits. Now that all being said, the rabbits have been rather good to have on the property as now we have a non stop source of fresh rabbit manure, perfect for applying on the gardens and around our fruit bearing trees as well as a good source of protein that was humanely raised and furs that I can use for blankets; hats and mittens.
I hope later to be able to bag up the composted manure to sell but that won't happen just as of yet due to the still inferior status of our garden soil. The soil, by the first snow fall in 2017 was much better than what it was in the spring of 2016 but we've still got work to do to increase its fertility. I'm hoping within the next year we will not be at a crisis level of soil quality and now we will just be working each year to simply manage it by incorporating fresh compost and rabbit, horse and chicken manure. This will ensure we get better production out of our garden. Now if we could just keep the moose away! That will be a project for a following year however.
So for the chicken coop! We hope for no more than five ladies and our coop will be relatively small since it would be going in our fenced in yard on the side of our house. Our fenced in yard has been a blessing in disguise as over the past couple of months we've realized we have neighbors with dogs next door. Now, while I do not mind dogs, in fact I like dogs, but I do not like what they can potentially do to livestock. So the fencing around our "livestock area" has proven to be helpful.
We will have a couple of challenges in building this next project. First, we have areas of uneven ground out in the fenced in area along with several Tamarack and birch trees. We might be contacting a local company, BlackHawk Works, that previously took down our other trees near our house and power lines. The trees are so close to both the house and the chain link fence that we have decided it is too dangerous for us to to do it ourselves. There is, unfortunately, not as much that we can do about the uneven land out there unless we wanted to haul in extra top soil. It would not be worth it in our opinion. Next, before we even allow laying hens full use of the fenced in yard, we will need to fence off with chicken wire or some other fencing material our asparagus patch. We have a budding patch that we have purposely placed near the house so that the asparagus can use the heat of the house to over winter. So far this has worked well as last year we had several spears of miniature asparagus pop up. We do not want the chickens to go after this so we will have to guard it well.

We have recently found plans for a chicken coop that seems like it would work well. We really like the overall layout of this coop. I just will not be painting ours so flamboyantly. This one has the option of an entire fenced in area that can protect them even overhead. That is a big positive for us since we have owls; hawks and numerous other winged predators that can easily swoop in and grab a chicken for its dinner. Our plan is to stop by Lowes in Fairbanks here and there and see if they have any reduced wood. If they do we will be able to get started on this and by the time we hit late May, early June it will be ready to house some new occupants. Now here's to hoping we will be able to find some young hens that someone here locally is willing to part with for a relatively small price.

Come mid to late June we will be adding more fruit bearing trees or bushes to our budding orchard. Currently we have on our property:

Alpine Currants
Chokecherries
Red Raspberries
Gooseberries
Honeyberries
Crabapples
Grafted apples

We hope to add more currants; honeyberries and gooseberries as well as find some saskatoon bushes that we can add to our property. While we have talked about wanting blueberries on our property, I'm just not certain how well they will do due to the amount of shade we have. Those might have to wait for a day when we have less trees around our property. These all help me to make jams and jellies that I use for gifts; bartering; for our own use or simply to sell.

So next issue. Trees. And snow. Later this season we began to get snow fall after snow fall. This has caused a large amount of trees of all varieties to either completely fall down or almost fall down, some of which are almost completely lying on top of our raised beds. Not good at all!

So we will have to remove these along with the ones in our bee area before the growing season starts. I think this will be our biggest challenge yet as there is easily 2 to 4 feet of packed snow out in our back yard currently. Our bees arrive in about a month and a half so before they arrive we have to remove those trees as we simply cannot do it after they're in their hives. We also hope to remove more trees behind our compost bins. This is possibly where our new greenhouse will go when we start to build it. Originally we wanted to build that this year but it simply will not happen yet. Our woodshed build taught us last year that we have to slow down and balance it with work and other household duties. My husband and I both kept feeling like we possibly bit off more than we could chew! (I provided the link here if you're curious about that one!)

So unfortunately this year we will use the time to clear out space, and hopefully get Black|Hawk Works in to remove any leftover stumps so we can prepare the area for building in 2019 break up. One positive aspect to us removing the trees will also be increased sunlight. Since we have so much shade it does slow down our garden and while I love the trees and the cool shade they provide on a hot July day, I don't like what they do to the garden and the bee hives. Some of them must come down.

Like last year I now find myself watching the calendar and praying the snow melts and soon.

Break up and then even more, Summer is always a race for us up here in the Interior of Alaska. A race to get as much done as possible in the 4 to 5 months worth of relatively good weather before we get snow again.

This is the day that never ends and it goes on and on my friends......

2017-09-04T01:22:00.001-04:00

Today was rabbit day.  23.5 lbs of rabbit harvested today.  We have now moved all the babies that were in the temporary grow outs into the nicer grow outs to give them better accommodations.  Our team of three (Edward, Nick and I) did great today!  Nick did two of his own, almost completely by himself.  It was a bit rocky starting off but before you know it we started picking up speed.  

And it was honeybee day.  

1 gallon, 2 pints of honey harvested.  

Between the chicken we purchased as a chicken share from a friend, the rabbits, the berries I've picked this summer and all the other miscellaneous frozen bits I have stored away, our freezer is a bit full.  Oh and never before have I had such a run on mason jars.  Note to self, buy more mason jars.  And soon.  

I still very badly need to make a batch of Apple Walnut bread.  The apples that we picked are fermenting in the corner.  Hhmm, maybe I should see if Edward wants to make hard cider with them?  It's a thought!  

The house is almost closed up completely for winter.  Windows tightly shut, screens taken out.  We're doing the mad dash now, almost every day.  Last week we managed to get the storm door on the front door.  We're hoping this helps with retaining heat in our foyer.  That is always the coldest room in the house.  If anything, at least it ensures that the cat will never be able to just waltz right out of the house like she often does when she notices a door open.  

Firewood still needs to be split and stacked, the apple trees need to be planted.  The gold fish need to be moved from the pond outside to the fish tank inside.  The rabbit manure needs to be moved out to the manure area we have set up. That has to be moved before we hit winter when it becomes almost impossible to move frozen manure.  

I still need to make jellies, jams, catsup, and syrup.  It's never ending it seems.

The cat sits behind me as I type, gently loving on my hair behind me and it feels good.  It makes me forget the pain in my feet.  

I still have chicken broth cooking from the carcass of the chicken we had for dinner tonight.  

Tonight was almost completely a local meal.  Local chicken from a farmer down the road some, potatoes from our garden, gravy made with the broth from the roasted chicken and cream from a cow that is only 3 miles away from us.  The only exception was the spaghetti squash.  I baked that with butter, local apples from the orchard and our honey.  The taste reminded me of donuts.  I do not know why.  We didn't grow the spaghetti squash and we don't know if it's from an Alaskan farm or not.  Still not bad for a locavore, which we try to be.  

The house smells like a wonderful mix of smells tonight, from the chicken for dinner, the broth now cooking and the apple/blueberry/vanilla fruit leather cooking on low in the crockpot.  It smells like home I guess.  A combo of smells that all bring nostalgic feelings to the surface.  

I've checked the forecast and no snow predicted yet however the house is becoming cooler.  Its becoming harder to just sit in a room with short sleeves on.  We have yet to turn on the heaters.  Not in resistance against the cold chill of winter, but instead due to frugality.  Why turn on the heat when we can just put on a sweater and slippers to ward off the cold. 

It's getting dark earlier and earlier now.  I look from the chair in our sitting room where I sit across to the dining room window and through the blinds I can see its almost fully dark, it's 908pm.  

Tomorrow thankfully is a holiday, Labor Day, and yet we still have more to do that is not around our property.  Duty calls elsewhere which distracts us from the projects that still need to be completed here.  

It means we have to work later in the night on the weekday nights, to hopefully complete what needs to be completed.  

And then of course, college starts for me on Wednesday.  That's going to tighten things up, definitely.  

I'm taking two classes this semester and I'm a bit worried that I won't have the time I need to work on assignments and what not.  Thankfully, I am enrolled in a program that I've always been pretty good at.  I'm hoping that helps me zoom through my classes with good grades.  

Later the phrase "somethings gotta give" keeps playing over and over in my head, like a broken record.  I just don't know what will end up giving.   

It's raining leaves in North Pole Alaska. Our birch trees are losing their leaves.

We DID IT! The wood shed is built!

2017-08-30T16:34:00.000-04:00

A year ago we began to walk our property to figure out what we wanted to do with all of this land. We've never had so much land to work with, being a military family who has most of our lives lived in military quarters.
Once we had dreamed a bit, we started taking apart our "dream" list and started looking at what was a necessity vs what was just something we wanted.
Our woodshed was one of those "necessary" items. We knew we both did not like the wood sitting in the ground. The bottom layer of wood always ends up rotting and the pile dries slowly under the tarps we use to cover it. Wood that has not dried or "seasoned" sufficiently does not produce as much heat and it produces more smoke. Wood that has not been seasoned also produces more creosote which is harmful to our chimneys as it can encourage house fires when it builds up too much. The Fairbanks/North Pole area is also being watched currently by the EPA as the level of particulates in the air has been reportedly too high during the winter months which is mostly due to car exhaust, power plants, coal burners and of course, wood stoves. This in itself makes us want to be more cautious with our wood storage now as we do not want to have to pay a penalty just to heat ourselves on the -20 or -30 degree days!

Now going forward, my carpentry and handyman skills are rather basic. I'm great at hanging up pictures, drapes, and blinds. Before last year I had never actually made much other than a wine glass holder in shop class in 7th grade.

Last year my husband and I first got into raising meat rabbits so we made from scratch, a basic rabbit hutch. We both had no clue really about what we were doing, but we were using scrap wood from around our property that would've either rotted or been thrown away so it was a good practice run.

This past spring, knowing the wood shed build would be coming up this summer, we decided to make more elaborate rabbit hutches. This allowed us to practice our carpentry skills some more as well as expand our rabbitry.

By mid April we were looking at all sort of ideas. We never came across any actual professional drawn wood shed plans but we began to foment an idea of what we wanted, what we liked and what we didn't like.
We knew we didn't like the firewood on the ground, so a platform was a must. We also knew we wanted to use up some of the supplies we already had, like the concrete blocks from our old raised beds in Fairbanks. This would allow us to cut costs some as we knew this would potentially be an expensive project.
From this point on, we began almost weekly trips to Lowe's as our woodshed began to come together.
As anyone knows who has built a larger structure, you always have challenges as your project proceeds. For us it was just a couple of simple issues. My husband had a deeper understanding of carpentry and building vocabulary, and for myself, I am a visual person. I have to see the completed version in order to understand what I'm building. Several times in the video we made you can see me sitting or standing and discussing what was the next step all while trying to get an understanding of what a "plank", "joist" and a "chalk line"was. .
This sometimes caused my husband, Edward, to get frustrated as I tried to get an idea of what the finished project looked like so then I could suggest creative solutions to issues we were having as we progressed.
We decided to go with faux lattice on the sides simply because it would survive longer most likely than wooden walls. Plus price was a big motivator. Lumber up here in Interior Alaska is expensive, the lattice was cheaper.
The roof material we decided to use was clear fiberglass polycarbonate sheets for two reasons. First, since my husband and I were the only two adults on this project we needed a material that was relatively light that we could easily lift up to the rafters. Second, we liked the idea of passive solar and since the woodshed is in an area that gets the afternoon sunshine, this would assist the wood in drying faster. This seemed like a win in our book.

We started this project in mid July, when we were reaching highs in the 80's. Since Interior Alaska rarely gets that high, it felt miserable to us, but thanks to Popsicles, sweet iced tea and lightweight clothes to work in we started to make progress.
Thank goodness too because suddenly our temperatures moved from the 80's to the 60's. In mid August; about the time that we were putting the rafters and the roof up, it was actually getting chilly outside at night. This served to push us even faster as we knew that winter was very close. Many times while I stood on the ladder well above the structure I would look at the trees surrounding our property and I swear those leaves changed color every single day. I almost wished I would have snapped a photo each day just so I could capture the rapid progression of color from deep green, to pale green, and then to yellow and finally gold.
On the evening of August the 18th we began to finally stack our cut firewood into the woodshed with the North Pole High School team's football game being announced within our hearing distance. We would all laughingly cheer the team on when we heard they made a touchdown. Who knew we'd be completing our final stage of our build with the cheering going on nearby.

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In Interior Alaska, we know here that summer is a race. The race pretty much starts when the snow is melted and gone, the soil is workable and the mud has dried. This is usually around late May, early June. From this point we have about three months to get in whatever needs to be done outside. This means gardens need to be planted; bee colonies set up and fed, firewood cut; buildings built; livestock raised and then butchered; produce from the garden harvested and then preserved and hopefully, maybe we'll even get to enjoy our beautiful Alaskan summer somewhat. This year the only thing we did NOT get to do was enjoy the summer, much to all of our disappointment. The only light to the end of our tunnel this year as we watched beautiful day after beautiful day pass us by was knowing that at the end of summer, we would have all of our projects completed and then maybe next year we could more easily plan in a fun camping trip or excursion.

As of today, August 30th 2017, it is now 55 degrees out with a high expected of 65. I am constantly watching the forecast now. Watching for the expected lows to see when will be the first day we see snow in the forecast. So far, no mention of snow, just the typical rain that we customarily see this time of year.
It is this weather that makes me so badly want to get the wood stove going but the temperatures are just not quite low enough yet. Soon. Roaring fires in the wood stove with now dry wood, all while cooking dinner on top of the wood stove, while we sit nearby. Warm and comfortable.

Here's what has been going on at the homestead, week of 24Jul17

2017-07-31T16:11:00.001-04:00

Cutting & Splitting wood and a tour of the garden in North Pole Alaska

2017-07-09T23:15:00.001-04:00

I do apologize! Some of my descriptions got cut off! My son is going to start editing my videos from now on so let me (and him) know how well he does!

Oh and by the way, it was the ASPARAGUS that came back this year!

Caring for our small water garden

2017-04-07T23:46:00.000-04:00

Never before have I been responsible for caring for a outdoor water garden. I mean, really, in Military housing, such a thing would be considered to be an extreme luxury so when we moved into our new home and I found myself the owner of a lovely, 1500 gallon pond, complete with a water fall, I found myself a little overwhelmed. What do I do with such a thing?
At one point we thought about raising trout in the pond, but we felt already so overwhelmed by the garden and the amount of work we now had that we threw our hands up and said "get to it later".
Turns out immediately after break up, we discovered we had some work that was very much required. We knew from the years we have been keeping indoor fish that agitating the water is always good. It's always good to ensure your water isn't stagnate, so we plugged in our lovely waterfall and found our pond stunk. Badly stunk. It stunk enough that we all even hesitated to walk near it.
So one weekend, mid May, when the water had fully thawed and we had a couple of spare hours we began to first empty said pond. This took several hours to get it almost completely emptied to the point where we could climb in with our muck boots and then begin to shovel out the nasty, decomposed leaves at the bottom of the pond. It was definitely a Mike Rowe, Dirty Jobs worthy job.
It took me several days to remove the stink that was stuck in my sinuses and so far out of all the chores around our property this is the one that I think I dislike the most. Thankfully we don't have to do it more than once or twice a year!

After we cleaned out the rotting debris sitting at the bottom of the pond, we refilled it.

I added one more tiny solar pump to it which broke almost immediately. Once again a reminder, you get what you pay for and yes the solar pump was cheap. This year we do plan to buy another pump to agitate the water a bit more but we know we'll have to spend more than the $15 I spent earlier.
I know I still want a solar operated pump however I'm going to have to get something that has a stronger flow rate.

Last year we still knew, something had to change in the pond, we were hoping to change the ecosystem in the water, and me not knowing what else to do, I bought twenty goldfish with my son at Petco. Thankfully, they're cheap so I figured if they help the situation then great, if not, well then no great loss. By late Autumn when we were preparing for winter we moved out ...four fish to the new fish tank that we purchased second hand. Yes, only four survived, sadly enough. Whether the others were eaten, died due to weakness or illness, I won't know. But I will know this year!
My first step this spring is to purchase some ph testing strips for our pond. I will have to test the water once it's completely thawed to see what exactly my next course of action will be. Now, I'm no where near as knowledgeable about ponds as I am about vegetable and fruit gardening so in my research I've learned that a pond has a ph just like soil does! It too can be too acidic or too alkaline.
Now that being said, the ph of the water will change from morning to night as the algae present in the water will either suck up all the present carbon dioxide in the water, there by making the water more acidic or the algae over night will exhale the carbon dioxide back into the water, which then makes the water more alkaline. It's best when checking your water to actually check in the morning and evening to get the most accurate reading.
One way to help control this ebb and flow of acidity and alkalinity in the water is to ensure you have a good pump with even a water fall feature. This ensures a nice oxygenating flow in the water and helps to homogenize the pond. Thankfully we have this!

So next, adding plants. A healthy pond needs plant life. Plants help restrain algae growth by limiting excess sunlight. Algae is okay, but you don't want it in excess as it can take over your pond. This happened to us last summer. Now also this summer we will have the honeybees and they will be thirsty so we want to make sure we have a water feature that does not start a war between the bees and the fish. Without some plant life for the bees to land on, the bees could either drown or possibly be eaten by a fish. Meanwhile a couple of vengeful bees could possibly decide to start trying to sting our fish. That's not something we'd like to watch so we badly need water plants present.
So then next, what types of plants to get that will do well in our rather chilly pond? Last year, while grasping at straws, I purchased some Hornwort, which promised to be oxygenating and while yes, I noticed a slight difference, not as much stink, we then had a massive bloom in algae. This was not due to the hornwort however, it instead was due to the sunlight that stays over the pond almost the entire day during the summer months. What we actually need are plants that cover at least a 1/3 of the surface of the pond.
I would love to get some water lilies but since we are in such a cold climate, the lilies will most likely never bloom. Water lilies need an average water temperature of 80 to bloom which I don't think we'll ever see in our humble little, decorative pond.
Still I might get some and pot them just to see how they do. After all, I'm needing them more for the shade than the flowers.

As I sit here and write this, and read, read, and read some more on pond care, lo and behold I found I can actually grow edible plants, in my pond! For my family and I to eat! How exciting!
So, here is the list I plan to now try to grow in our pond!
Watercress. This one I've seen in the grocery stores! In fact I bought a "live plant" that was meant just to be harvested and then thrown away but instead I planted it, of course, just to see if if would live and, of course, it did! Never in a million years would I have thought to put it in the pond instead of the raised bed! And yet I've read about it growing in lakes and streams before.

Chinese Water Chestnut. I think I've eaten these before but now, everything that I read says "no I have not. That most Americans have never tried them before" Hhhmm, intriguing. And they are for sale on Ebay. Should I order some? (yes, actually I did. When they are received, into the fish tank they will go to hopefully provide us with loads of water chestnuts through the summer (or even possibly Autumn) months.
From what I have read at numerous sources, I need to plant the corms couple of inches deep in mucky soil or right at the edge of our pond. We don't have an edge that would work for this so ours will be planted in pots throughout the pond instead. Supposedly, once planted the plants spread vigorously. We harvest when the tops start to yellow and die back. From what I read, the only challenge is the fact that when harvesting I have to be very careful, the roots and corms are very easy to damage and the root will not recover from being damaged.

Now, I must admit, I'm going to hold back. I found a list on Wikihow but I'm not going to go with each and every plant listed because I want to see if these grow first before I try others.
This way I slowly get used to each plant and the challenges associated with each of them. I always suggest this idea to newer gardeners. Start with a couple of plants, go slowly. Get to know the characteristics of the plant you are working with. If you kill it, that's fine. Just start again next year with the knowledge gained from the previous year. Write it all down, keep track of your successes and failures, you can learn a lot from your plants, your soil, your local environment if you just keep track of your garden in some form of a written journal.

Hopefully, in the next two to three months, after the pond has thawed and the ice is gone, I can start to try this all out! For now, my poor goldfish are stuck in their secondhand aquarium. I'm sure they're more than ready for pond life again!

The pond at Mid summer

Snow, snow, go away

2017-03-28T00:39:00.000-04:00

T-minus 19 days till April 15th. 19 days till our honeybees arrive. 22 days till April 18th, the day we get about 20 to 25 trees removed from the front of our property by BlackHawk Works, a local company that has expertise in taking down trees in tricky locations. The tree removal will help us with our future potential project; solar panels which will allow our house to be a bit more self sufficient as well as get rid of the moss on our roof and reduce the fire danger.

Whenever, the daytime temperatures start staying above 50 the birch sap will be flowing and we will then be collecting the sap to be boiled down into syrup. See this article about that.

Meanwhile, at just about the same time we will be hiving our brand new Italian honeybees, direct from California. As long as our daytime temperatures stay above 50. If you're curious about our new beekeeping undertaking, see this article.

Within the next weekend or two we also have a large, brand new rabbit hutch to build which will look like a Cadillac when compared to our current rabbit hutch. Our original hutch was built with wood that we scavenged from all the wood piles left behind from the previous owners. This allowed our start up costs to stay down very, very low. Meat up here in Interior Alaska is not inexpensive. Our goal in raising meat rabbits is to produce on our own property a protein source that costs next to nothing.

Our daily lives are about to get much busier. Now only if the snow would melt.
If you follow the Interior Alaska Beekeeping groups, the groups that enjoy Birch syrup, and the Interior Alaska gardeners, you will get a sense that we are all getting antsy. We want the snow gone, and soon.

First snowfall of the season

We are all watching the forecast closely. Don't get me wrong, we in the Interior of Alaska like the snow, some of us even love it! We love our winter time sports! But, this winter has been a bit harsher than our typical winters. A lot more snow, a lot more cold. Sourdoughs have been predicting it for the past couple of Autumns, we have been due a good, hard winter. And it seems like they were finally right. We've had several periods of negative 30's, 40's and 50's. We've had massive snow falls, that while were not record breakers, managed to dump quite a bit on the Tanana Valley area.

And now we have the huge piles of snow everywhere. I know once the snow starts to thaw we will have large, soupy messes...everywhere.

In our backyard, part of our firewood pile is covered under a tarp which is then covered by two to three feet worth of snow.

Our cinder blocks that we used on our raised beds in Fairbanks are covered by snow as well. We have to dig some of those out to be used as a base of our hives before our honey bees arrive.

Yes, we too are antsy. We watch the thermostat daily and whisper "warm up, please, warm up"

We have a lot of building projects this summer. The brand new rabbit hutches, the brand new wood shed which will keep our firewood out of the snow, which will allow it to dry more efficiently. More raised beds which will allow us more growing space for vegetables. We have more trees to clear which will net us easily a couple more cords of wood to put aside for the cold winter months.
And then add the beekeeping.
We have a very short summer to get a lot of work done. I can't wait to see the progress we make this summer! Can we achieve our goals? Can we start to produce enough during our long summer days to put away for the winter months?
Time will only tell, but it'll be enjoyable to see the results!

Using up the leftover fruit; more Alaska edibles

2017-03-04T22:21:00.002-05:00

Between the rose hips we have in our freezer from a year past, the wild blueberries that were just gifted to us from a wonderful friend, and a bag of rhubarb that was gifted to us from yet another wonderful friend, we have a lot of fruit and vegetables to use up, especially before that birch sap goes into the freezer next month!

For more on that click on my blog Foraging from Nature; Birch Syrup
So this weekend we intend on turning all these bags into the following: Rhubarb Ginger Jam and Blueberry Lime Jam.

Please keep in mind, these are all recipes I get from online, they are not mine. I have posted a link to the original website with each recipe. Also a side note, I didn't get to the rose hip jam even though I have a picture of it in the bag. Obviously that will be a task for another weekend!

Rhubarb Ginger Jam
It will make about 3 lbs

INGREDIENTS
2lbs trimmed rhubarb, chopped
2lbs sugar
Juice of 2 small lemons
1.75 tbsp fresh ginger
3.5 oz crystallized ginger, chopped

Preparation time 10 mins Cooking time 1 hr
Total time 1 hr 10 mins

Mix the chopped rhubarb, sugar and lemon juice in a large bowl and leave
overnight.
Bash the fresh ginger to break the root up a bit and tie in a muslin bag. Put
the rhubarb mixture and the ginger muslin bag in a heavy pan and boil
rapidly for 15 minutes.
Remove the fresh ginger bag, add the preserved ginger and boil again
until the rhubarb is clear.
Test for a set by taking a small spoon and place in freezer on a plate. When you are ready to test for set take now cold spoon and get a small amount on spoon. Place back in freezer for a minute or two to let cool. If it does not slide off the spoon easily then it's ready to be placed in jars. Skim the
surface of the jam with a slotted spoon then place in sterilized jars.
Process in hot water bath for 15 minutes.

Blueberry Lime Jam

YIELD

6 half pints

Ingredients

4 1⁄2 cups blueberries

1 package dry pectin

5 cups sugar

1 tablespoon lime zest

1⁄3 cup lime juice

Directions

Crush blueberries one layer at a time.

Combine crushed blueberries and pectin in a large sauce pot.

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently.

Add sugar, stirring until dissolved.

Stir in grated lime peel and lime juice.

Return to a rolling boil.

Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly.

remove from heat.

Skim foam if necessary.

Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch head space.

Adjust two-piece caps.

Process 15 minutes in a boiling water canner.

Yield: about 6 half-pints.

Now, I have one secret in each of these jams. I didn't use store bought pectin. Instead I harvested it, from my own yard!
This style of pectin does best when used in jams rather than jellies because it's not clear like store bought pectin. Instead its rather pink in color and turns any jelly foggy.
For more on this little secret, click here. I have how to pick it and process it.
My son even made a couple of easy dollars last year harvesting it from our yard!

Knowing that I have this source of naturally occurring pectin in my own backyard makes me feel so much better! I have a habit of sometimes needing to use a lot of extra pectin to get my jellies or jams to set so it's nice to know this grows in my own backyard!

Here's a video also on how to tell if your jam or jelly will set once in the jar. Time and again I've found it so frustrating to work so hard on a jelly or jam only for it to not set and it just turns into syrup instead.

These all really turned out great! I have to give some of them back to the friends that gave me the fruit and vegetables in the first place! Ever since I started canning, I love giving these away as gifts from time to time or I use them for trade. After all, it's almost impossible to find Rhubarb ginger jam or Blueberry lime jam in a typical grocery store!

Hopefully this summer, we will be able to get even more fruits and vegetables that I can process. It's always such a relief to go into winter with a full larder.

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!

Foraging from nature; Bunchberries

2017-03-04T21:52:00.000-05:00

Cornus canadensis.
Cornus canadensis is a slow-growing herbaceous subshrub growing 10–20 cm tall, generally forming a carpet-like mat. The above-ground shoots rise from slender creeping rhizomes that are placed 2.5–7.5 cm deep in the soil, and form clonal colonies under trees. The vertically produced above-ground stems are slender and unbranched. The leaves are oppositely arranged on the stem, but are clustered with six leaves that often seem to be in a whorl because the internodes are compressed. The leafy green leaves are produced near the terminal node and consist of two types: 2 larger and 4 smaller leaves. The smaller leaves develop from the axillary buds of the larger leaves. The shiny dark green leaves have 2 to 3 mm long petioles and leaf blades that are obovate. The blades have entire margins and are 3.5 to 4.8 cm long and 1.5 to 2.5 cm wide, with 2 or 3 veins and cuneate shaped bases and abruptly acuminate apexes. In the fall, the leaves have red tinted veins and turn completely red.

That's the name of this little plant that lays low on the forest floor. In Spring or Early Summer here in Northern Alaska the plants bloom with little white flowers.

By mid August the flowers have given way to little red berries.

This past August, someone who was visiting the Fairbanks and North Pole area put out an ad on a local Facebook group. She was looking for bunchberries to bring back down to the lower 48. Since I knew we had tons of these in our yard I jumped right on this. My son ended up making an easy $8 and I got to learn about yet another useful item in our yard.
As I researched about these tiny, seemingly unremarkable berries, I found that while they don't taste like much, they can be used in jams or jellies as pectin to help thicken the jam or jelly and help it set.
Now, I do have to admit, jams and jellies are not my forte. I simply make them because fruits are easy to come by, my son likes jelly with his peanut butter and I don't want to resign ourselves to buying the junk that is called jelly or jam at the grocery store. Plus many times I can use jams and jellies to barter with others for meat or fish, especially if we haven't had time to go fishing or hunting ourselves.

So, last year, after we had harvested several pounds for the lady from the lower 48, I went out with a bowl and picked a good amount for ourselves. I brought them in, washed them and then threw them into my Excalibur dehydrator. About a day later they were fully dehydrated and crispy so then I used a food processor and turned them into a dry powder.
Into the mason jar they went and stayed. Until March 4th, 2017 when I made rhubarb ginger jam and blueberry lime jam.
They did an awesome job thickening the jams, so much so that I didn't even have to use store bought pectin.
As anyone knows who processes their own jellies or jams, pectin is not cheap so knowing I have my own pectin, here on my own property is like finding gold. I know this year, this will be yet another thing I intend to harvest, from my own property in an effort to avoid the grocery store and of course, to save a little money!

Foraging from nature; Birch Syrup

2017-03-02T04:00:00.000-05:00

We have been blessed on our property with a large amount of silver birch trees so this Spring time we intend to use some of them.
Some will be used in making birch beer for my husband, which I'll write about later, and some will go into making birch syrup. In the coming years I might make birch wine as well for use in cooking but for now I've got more than enough other projects to work on and I really do not want to bite off more than I can chew.
We've actually had birch syrup before but it is most definitely an acquired taste. It is not quite as sweet, and it is much darker than maple syrup is.
Making birch syrup is much more labor intensive then maple syrup is. Maple syrup typically takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Birch on the other hand takes 100 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of birch syrup.
This means we will be cooking down our sap for quite a while.

Our first step, will be within the next month, to walk our property to assess which birch trees will be used. This will have it's own unique challenge, thanks to the massive amount of snow we have received this winter.

We will be looking for trees that have at least an 8 inch diameter at breast height (1.3 m or 4.5 ft off the ground) and for a tree free of scars and one with a good looking crown.
We have to also make sure there are no fungi present on the tree. Fungi feed off the tree and we want trees that are healthy, not ones that are in the process of being decomposed. We also cannot use any trees that have been exposed to pesticides nor other toxic substances.

Lichen growing on a birch tree on our property

Lichen growing on the birch trees is completely okay since this is not actually harming the tree like fungi does.
Come Mid April, when the ground is warming up and the sap is starting to rise after the trees long winter sleep we will be tapping anywhere between one to three trees. We're not going to do more than three simply because we do not have the ability to process that amount of sap, that quickly. After all, my husband and I both work full time outside the home so we are limited on the time we have to get our homesteading chores done.
This should provide, if all goes right, about a two to three gallons of sap each day. The goal at that point is either to freeze the sap that we collect in the gallon jugs we have stored aside and then every couple of days, get the woodstove going, nice and hot, and simmer, simmer, simmer and simmer some more, the sap down until we have just the syrup left.
I have contemplated using our stove to cook this down some but I just hate to think of the energy cost of this. Keep in mind, our electricity cost up here is pretty high, hence the blog article I wrote a while ago while living in our house in Fairbanks. Cutting our electricity bill.
Instead I intend on using our wood stove and a pan with a wide base that we currently fill with water and place on stop of the stove to add humidity to our house during our cold, dry winters here.
We intend on using our 5/16th drill bit which I learned was the suggested size for birch trees and we will slowly drill the hole in each tree. Then we will pound in the now fully sterilized spiles with hoses which will be connected to the also now sterilized 1 gallon jugs which we will use to collect the sap.

I can imagine my son will not be overly thrilled with this new chore around the property; he's already not fond of shoveling rabbit manure nor bringing in firewood.
Time will be of the essence here; the trees will only produce sap from the time the temperature starts to warm up till the trees gain their leaves, about 14 to 21 days, give or take.
The sap is very perishable, it must be kept at a temperature of 41 degrees or below or it will ferment or go bad. So if we cannot simmer it down then we must freeze it. Not exactly easy come mid to late April when daytime temperatures are starting to reach the mid 40's or 50's. Thankfully we have not harvested any rabbits as of late and we've eaten a lot of our vegetables from the garden that I froze last year so our chest freezer has been emptied some.
Once the leaves appear on the trees, our birch sap season will end since the flavor will then turn undesirable at that point.

The syrup we gain from this will certainly not be enough to last a full year, much less even a couple of months. But with time we might get better at this and be able to produce enough to last us for at least 6 months. I might potentially save some of the finished product of birch syrup and then combine it with chokecherry syrup from our chokecherry tree. I'll have to see later how I feel on that. I have tried chokecherry birch syrup before and I almost prefer the taste of this on my pancakes over plain birch syrup.
I do have to admit though, I am still an East coast girl even though I was born on the west coast. I still love my fresh and pure maple syrup that we order once to twice a year from Patterson Farms. Thankfully, since we've been loyal customers of theirs from 2011 to now, they give us a good deal on the shipping and handling to North Pole, Alaska but it's still not cheap buying several gallons of the sweet stuff from the east coast.
The end goal, of course, always is, to get us less dependent on outside sources, more self reliant, more dependent on what our property and the area around us can provide.
It's better for our wallet, better for the environment and better for our family.
Here in Northern Alaska, it's a challenge to be sure, but the benefits are worth it in my opinion.

Planning out our 2017 Alaskan garden

2017-02-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

I've often told newer gardeners that the best thing to do is watch your yard, really watch it for a full season to get a good idea of where the sun is at any given time of the day, where the water collects and lays stagnant most often, which areas are drier, and so on.

So, following my own advice, last year that is precisely what I did. Now I found recently that when presented with a large amount of area to deal with you need to break it into manageable pieces, quadrants or areas. So I've broken this down to the garden area, the side area, our pond area, our rabbit area and our bee area.

Our morning sun comes over our house and hits the lilac tree, the raspberries and the raised beds on the left so this year I'll be putting more of the plants that don't do as well with afternoon sun over on the left. Meanwhile, the plants that love the heat (summer squash, tomatoes, hot peppers) will all be pushed over to the right side where the sun shines from 3p to 6pm.

If you read my last post, you'll know we're adding honeybees to our mix (not drawing below since they will be in a quiet corner of our garden far away from the more actively used areas). We are also adding a bit more raised beds as well as some extra perennials and fruit bearing bushes and trees.

Peony needs to be planted, 3 new beds need to be built and we need to clear out some trees before the beehives are added nearby.

While in my Master Gardener class an instructor suggested using paper to draw all the permanent fixtures on, and then with tracing paper add any new additions to the garden to see what you think. Me personally, I prefer using MS Paint as I can achieve some of the same great results.

The Peony towards the back near the compost bin is my newest idea for the main reason that I would love to have some sweet smelling flowers near that area. Our lilac blooms in late May early June which will mean the Peony will follow shortly thereafter which will ensure me a lovely aroma around a not so lovely smelling area for at least a couple of months. The challenge here will most definitely be the fact that the soil here is very dense and compact. I will have to dig a nice sized hole and then mix a good amount of compost and manure in to give it the very best chance.
Next, the herb garden on the right. Last year I discovered that I ran out of space FAST in the left raised bed for my herbs. I enjoy growing both medicinal and culinary herbs and they do take up some room so we'll be adding another two cinder block tall raised bed and add compost and topsoil to that.
The two other raised beds in front will be pretty low into the ground but will be slightly more elevated than the grass. These, like the herb gardens will be built most likely using the cinder blocks that we saved from our small space garden in Fairbanks.
In these I plan to plant a small area of horseradish (which I hope to keep in that small area. Horseradish can become invasive sometimes so I will have to watch it closely) as well as some winter squash and possibly even some sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes) I'm not certain what variety of squash yet I'm going to try there, possibly something smaller like acorn squash.
In the right newly built raised bed we plan to plant garlic which might be a challenge. There are trees right along this area so it might or might not get enough sunlight. We will have to try it out and see if we're successful. If not something else that is perennial will go here since this bed will not be as elevated which will allow whatever is planted there to potentially overwinter a little more easily. I have a feeling that regardless of the turnout here it will not be enough garlic to keep us going all throughout the winter so we'll most likely have to come up with other areas that we can plant more.
Next is our side area.

Early Spring in the yard

This area doesn't need as much planting, it just needs clearing! We have a lot of trees and the goal is to remove a lot of them while still maintaining the privacy they provide.
We have planted several rhubarb in one area and we hope they will continue to expand. I use rhubarb in multiple canning projects, so it'll always find a use. Next we purchased a couple of peony's from Chatanika Peonies, a local grower out here. I really miss my huge peony bush from my Fairbanks house. Every year since being back I make Peony jelly It's delicious and boy do I miss it!
Last year one of the biggest additions we added in this area was two, 2nd year crabapples. I hope the moose continue to ignore them, at least until such time as the trees are large enough to deal with their depredations. Later I might graft other crabapples to fast growing apples and place those here as well but first we have to clear this area out some more. As time goes on we will have to guard against frequent moose visits. That will require tall fencing in the areas we plan to guard.

Below is what we have now and what is planned for this year.

Trees need to be cleared, a border around the rhubarb patch needs to be built and I intend to plant flowers that honeybees love. This I'm sure will not just attract bees but other pollinators as well.

This year we plan to grow lettuce and other greens in the raised bed in this area. Last year this area got morning sunlight but no afternoon sunlight. This renders it useless for any plant that loves heat or full afternoon sun.

Thankfully we don't have as much to do in the pond area. The previous owners did such a great job landscaping this area that we can almost ignore this area other than I do want to plant some more ostrich ferns and I need to move the gooseberries that I mistakenly planted near the pond last year. Other than clearing more trees and planting this area is done.

The pond, early in the season

Our rabbits this year will be getting newly built hutches (built by us) since the last hutch was built with scraps and two individuals who knew little to nothing of what we were doing. Now that we've been doing this for almost a year we know what we want or what we would possibly like. This is still a work in progress however so we might change to something similar to this idea over the next month or two.

The goal is to get it changed before summer. In the same area as our rabbits we have also planted asparagus which would be a challenge if the rabbits accidentally ever got out. I guess our rabbits would be eating well (not that they don't already since they get spoiled massively by all of us) but we'd be missing our fresh from the garden asparagus that year. Last year we did notice that we had asparagus spears growing in late summer in the area so we're hoping it overwinters and comes back this spring. Asparagus actually takes several years to grow before it will actually produce enough to eat so of course we won't see much coming from this until at least next year or the year following that, possibly. That's if it survives our harsh Alaskan winters.

We have approximately two to three more months before the snow has completely melted and we can start plants like hardy red russian kale, broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage. In the meantime we continue to collect seeds and over and over look over the snowy landscape that is currently our yard. We have a lot of annual flowers to plant, a lot of perennials to plant, of lot of vegetable starts to buy and of course, rabbits to work with and of course, most of all, a couple thousand bees to work with.
It's going to be a lot of work with hopefully, a lot of accomplishments, lessons learned and a lot of food coming directly from our backyard. One could never ask for more!

Somethings a'buzz in our backyard Honeybees in Alaska

2017-02-14T16:11:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, when we lived in Maryland actually, in military housing, I badly wanted honeybees. I felt like it would be the perfect addition to my backyard garden. And of course, that was a no go since military housing said "No you may not have domesticated honey bees in your backyard". So I shelved that idea until we had a house with some land. Land that we could spread out on some, do what we want with and so on.
Well now we do have land. 1.7 acres of it. We have a garden that is bigger than any I've ever had the pleasure to work in, we raise meat rabbits and now, it looks like we might be finally getting the honeybees I longed for so long ago.
You know that saying "be careful what you wish for because you might just get it?" Well that applies here.
Out of all my experiences with gardening and with rabbits, never once did I feel truly overwhelmed by my own lack of knowledge. Not until now.
Since Christmas morning when I opened up my first ever brood box I have been constantly in a state of amazement of how wonderfully scientific, methodical, precise, fastidious and amazing honeybees are.

Never did I know that honeybees had a hierarchy in their hive. I never knew that the entire colony consisted of females except for those lonely little drones who only have one purpose in life. I never knew that honeybees were so amazingly hygenic.
Each time I learn a new fact I'm struck by the realization of how much more I have to learn.
Thankfully I have both my husband and son at my side as we all wade through all the facts, details and lessons that a new beekeeper is bombarded with.

Last year our garden performed below par. The soil was horrible, very low in organic material, low in nitrogen, in phosphorous, and in potash. The spreading moss was indicative of the high acidity in the soil. No good for growing kale or spinach.
Since we had just moved in last March there was not much to do about it, other than potentially use store bought fertilizer which I detest doing. Yes, I have done it before but I tend to prefer the slower method of improving my soil which means composting and adding liberal amounts of manure. I've said it before and I'll say it again now, you don't grow healthy plants. You produce healthy soil and the soil will do all the work for you. Now it seems we'll have one other helper; honeybees.
Not only did I notice the extreme lack of some of the most important macro-nutrients in our soil but I also noticed that we had a distinct lack of pollinating insects. Whether this is because we have neighbors that spray incessantly to remove the "state bird" aka mosquito from their yards or simply because there are no beekeepers nearby; I do not know. All I know was we only had a couple of butterflies and sporadic shows of European bumble bees. Wasps we had plenty of, unfortunately. As any gardener knows, without the pollinating insects you might as well throw in the towel unless you plan to take the most tedious route; pollinating by hand.

Almost as soon as I got over the shock on Christmas morning about my new hive, I joined several beekeeping groups. One thing led to another and I found myself with invitations to beekeeping groups here in Alaska and in the interior of Alaska as well. This then alerted me to all the upcoming classes, important dates and what not. Several weeks ago we attended our first class, which was free at the UAF Fairbanks co-op extension office. The class was taught by a local farmer and owner out here, it was four hours and best of all, it was free.
This gave my husband, my son and I a very basic idea about beekeeping, but it was no where near enough as it made us realize how little we truly knew about beekeeping in general.
So next we signed up for another class. This one was two days long, several hours each day and much more intensive but this one also cost where the other was free. We came away from it with our knowledge increased even more and an even deeper grasp of the supplies needed for this Spring, Summer and Autumn as well as knowledge about beekeeping in general. Dawn Cogan runs this workshop each year here in the interior and it is well worth the money spent!
So far we have purchased three deep brood boxes, and three medium supers. We hope to increase this a bit more in the coming months, but these are not cheap so we have to buy a little at a time.

Deep Brood box

Medium Super

We also have approximately 70 hive foundations, those are mixed between deep and medium sized and unfortunately some of those are also unwaxed. Not great since we want to give our ladies any extra gain we can. Unwaxed means the ladies have to work that much harder to get the ball rolling on developing the hive and even further, producing their sweet treat, HONEY.

We have also purchased frame grips, frame holders, a beekeeping brush, numerous hive tools, three hats with veils and three pairs of beekeeping goatskin gloves. Our plan is to purchase actual suits later on but due to all the other expenses of setting up this year we decided to go with cheaper tyvek suits. Our new bee colonies, once we purchase them, will be $185 for each one.
All told we've spent approximately $1000 to set up. No, unlike our bunnies, this is not a cheap hobby.

We have very, very short summers here and honeybees do NOT overwinter well here simply because honeybees will not typically defecate in their own hive and due to cold temperatures they will often not venture out for a cleansing flight so instead they "hold it" until it becomes a serious problem. This either can cause an unsanitary condition in the hive which leads to diseases like Nosema, or come spring they can develop dysentery which is a tad bit different for them than it is for humans. Due to the fact that they have been eating all winter, come spring they load up on all the fresh water only to die due to the fact that now they are over bloated and are not able to void their bowels.
This is a rather simplistic explanation. Keep in mind, I am a novice beekeeper (I haven't even gotten my bees yet).

Our bees arrive in mid April, and as they arrive I hope they bring temperatures above 50 degrees with them. We will need to hive them within the next several days after in order to ensure they don't get overly stressed.
Now of course, we want the honey. Who wouldn't after all? However, our main goal at this point is to increase the population of the pollinators in our garden which then will of course increase production in said garden.

We shall see. I hope to report back within a few months with tales of positive news.

An argument for soil testing

2016-08-12T14:15:00.002-04:00

I've been a gardener since in my early twenties. Yes, I was a novice but we have to start somewhere right? I started by killing mint and basil. I did try to grow them, but they constantly died.
A couple of years later, I figured out what I was doing wrong, what the heck was the small spidery pest that was attacking (and killing) my bonsai, why was my mint taking over the yard, what were the green small bugs eating my cilantro, and WHY was my cilantro always developing seeds so fast? I got a bit better at planting herbs in the tiny spaces I had in all the houses we occupied, and upgraded to vegetables and even cherry trees (that the moose thoroughly enjoyed even though I did not).
When we moved to Maryland all that experience was kicked into high gear as my family got hit by many unfortunate personal economic events.
When you only suddenly have money for your house, your car, the repairs for the car and some of your bills and desperation hits in, well then you'll do anything to fix it. For me it was to grow a garden and grow it big in a small space.

Our old garden in Northern Maryland

When we moved into our new house in North Pole, Alaska and the snow had melted I could tell the soil in our raised beds was pretty acidic. We had a bad moss problem in them,
However, whether it was because life was just really that chaotic then or I was just too trusting, I didn't test the soil in our raised beds. I told myself and my husband that "a master gardener owned this house, she knew what she was doing, I don't need to test the soil, it'll be plenty fertile"
WRONG.

By late May it became very obvious that our soil was seriously deficient in nitrogen, possibly a bit in phosphorous. It was also extremely apparent that our soil was seriously acidic. Enough to compete with our garden in Maryland! Our moss (which we did not plant) thrived while our broccoli rabe died.

So finally beginning of August I broke down and finally purchased a soil testing kit from Amazon.com

And yes. Our soil was very, very acidic. And yes, it was completed depleted of nitrogen which explained why our greens failed to thrive and why plants looked so yellow, and why the only thing that would grow was the moss.
Too acidic, lacking too much nitrogen, lacking too much organic material. All in all, not good. Just keep in mind, if you're a bit nervous or just don't want to test your soil yourself your local Cooperative Extension office should be able to do it for you.

So, now the game plan is to raise our nitrogen levels, lower the acidity, add much more organic material and add in some phosphorous.

First, I have made a deal with one of the local coffee shops here that I frequent way too often. I will stop by several times during the work week to pick up used coffee grounds. These will help to increase nitrogen in our soil however there is a negative in this. Coffee grounds are slightly acidic, Not what we need, more acidity. So I'll have to use the coffee grounds in my compost and mix liberally with wood ash, lime or ground limestone. Sometimes lime can be a bit too alkaline but at this point, my soil is so acidic I'm not overly concerned by it.

I also have been making friends with horses. Or at least their owners. Horses produce, of course, a large amount of manure which is excellent for use in the garden.

This will help add organic material, add nitrogen and lower the overall PH to a more average level. We have a separate bin just for manure that later will be mixed into our compost pile of vegetable scraps, leaves, and grass clippings. The grass clipping of course will also add nitrogen back into our depleted soil.

We also now are the proud owners of three rabbits that will make up our breeding stock for meat rabbits. Two are Californians, a buck and a doe and then we also have one New Zealand cross doe. As many gardeners know, rabbits make one of the most perfect manures. It's really sad you don't see more rabbit productions here in the US just because their manure is just so perfect for a garden. Not too high in nitrogen like chicken manure is. Chicken manure is extremely hot, while cow, sheep and horse are not quite as bad. Rabbit manure is actually considered a cold manure so it can be added directly into a garden. A plus if you're want to use this now rather than waiting 5-7 months for your horse, cow or sheep manure to compost!

These amendments that we will be adding this Autumn will hopefully change our soil to a more alkaline, nitrogen rich soil. But still we have the phosphorous deficiency to deal with.

To combat this we can use rock phosphate that we can buy from any greenhouse or big box store like Lowes. The manure we are using will also help combat this and we're starting to try one other alternative "natural" method. Human urine from the men in my family. They're not always on call but we do have a collection vessel for both of them to use which we then just simply dump into the garden. This has been by far the most UNfavorite way by one of my men however the younger one of them thinks "it's super cool to go outside and pee on the yard"

These are all very natural, mostly organic ways to increased the fertility and organic material in our soil and I'm sure by the next year and definitely by the following year we will see a massive improvement! I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Growing a garden is not about growing a plant that will produce fruits or vegetables. It's about producing healthy soil. If you have healthy soil, it'll do the work for you!

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!

New House, New Garden

2016-06-08T15:53:00.002-04:00

We've had a pretty earth shattering winter. The past two years, since moving back here to Fairbanks, Alaska our goal has been to expand our garden. To finally have some land to do with what we would like.
Two years ago we looked at a fixer upper, but alas, it was not meant to be. After much struggling to make it work, to purchase that house, it fell through. We went into the winter of 2014 dejected and sad. We knew we had to change some things about our life financially so we buckled down and put quite a bit to the side, paid off some bills so that hopefully, next time we fell in love with a house we could actually buy SAID house.
In January of 2016 we knew we had made some pretty good progress on our financial goals, we knew we had made some progress cleaning up some of the damages from our previous renters on our current home in Fairbanks, so we decided, tentatively, to take a look at a couple of houses during the weekend of the Martin Luther King holiday.
Our goal was to purchase anything outside of the town of Fairbanks that had at least 1900 square feet, no bigger than 2500 square feet, it had to have a wood stove or space for one to be installed, at least a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom and it absolutely had to have a sizable amount of acreage.

On January the 25th, we scheduled a walk through with our realtor on a rather nice sized home in North Pole, Alaska. 2400 square feet; 4 bedroom; 2 1/2 bathroom; 2 car garage; 1.7 acres.
To this day I cannot tell you what exactly drew us to this particular house. The kitchen was a bit smaller than I would have liked; the master bathroom did not have a tub, only a shower and it only had one vanity. That was a big point that I constantly was pointing out while my husband window shopped online on sites like Realtor.com.
Still we were drawn to this house. The owners had photos of what the yard looked like in summer and it was amazing. Our realtor even pointed out all the space we could have to work on our garden at which I sheepishly pointed out that I had just been accepted to University of Alaska Fairbanks Master Gardener Program.

Yet it was not really that, that pulled us to this house. What exactly pulled us to this house, we cannot put our finger on.
On the last Tuesday of January we placed our bid on the house. By Tuesday evening, we discovered someone else had bid against us. By Wednesday morning, yet another bid came in.
Wednesday afternoon we were told by our realtor that the seller had asked for all the bidders to pre-qualify through local mortgage companies here along with numerous other tedious tasks. We raced like chickens that had just lost their heads to comply with all of the sellers wishes.
Thursday morning as I left to go to work my husband told me "Well today is the day, we find out about the house" which I grumpily replied "That house could burn down for all I care". That was the state of mind I was in at this point of the process. I really could almost care less if we got it, thanks to the whole bit that we had to go through.
That Thursday at about 1215 pm we got word, even though we were the lowest bidder; we had the least going for us; the seller chose us.
The clock began ticking a furious pace at that point. We had to race to prepare our current house in Fairbanks for renters.

Painting the rental property

We were going to hire a painter, but because the painter we had already interviewed was out of town we took on the job ourselves of painting the interior of the house ourselves.

We had carpets to clean, rooms to clean up and now the tedious task of packing ourselves.
Beginning of March, when snow still covered the ground, we made the move from Fairbanks to North Pole.

We still really couldn't see the layout of our new yard, everything was covered in several inches of snow, but we had more than enough to keep us busy on the inside of the house. There were curtains and pictures to hang, rooms to organize and most of all, a house to get to know.

The mess of moving in.

Now we are four months later and our yard work demands have increased, significantly. Each weekend day is packed from approximately 9am to 6pm. Any time off is valuable.
We are working very hard to put aside at least four cords of wood for our wood stove. The house we purchased has six raised beds, along with a decorative pond with a waterfall (pretty much unheard of here in North Pole, Alaska!).
We had seeds to plant, plants that we purchased to plant and on top of that we now have all those concrete blocks from our previous house in Fairbanks that we plan to use to build a few raised beds along with a potential root cellar. The concern still remains that I cannot produce a whole lot of protein on our land with our garden so the option of either chickens for eggs or meat rabbits are being discussed. The goal always remains to reduce our dependency on the grocery store.
By looking at the state now of our raised beds housing our kale, broccoli rabe, butternut squash and Swiss chard, it appears we're deficient in nitrogen. The poor plants look so yellowed out and on top of this is the constant threat of moose visitations to almost all of our plants. Yes, this yard does not have any fencing at all.
So now we will have to devise our own fences around the raised beds. Until those fences get built it will only be a matter of time before a hungry moose makes a visit to our garden and potentially eats every single one of our plants.
Our spinach is showing great signs of growth, our kohlrabi is looking promising, our snow peas are going nuts, and even our onions and carrots seem to be progressing well. Now thanks to the classes at UAF I have learned how to preserve those onions and carrots that does not involve canning.

Meanwhile, as we hurry each weekend to accomplish as much as possible, we know that we have a very short summer in which to get things accomplished here. There are plants to grow, produce to can, freeze or dry. Wood to cut, split and stack, and my son has even taken on a job to make briquettes for our wood stove using shredded paper and leaves from the yard. We all have a job to do and a very short time to get it done in.

Challenges and successes in a northern Alaskan garden

2015-06-21T16:22:00.001-04:00

Its officially week three into our safe planting time and we’re now harvesting baby kale greens, rapini (or also called Broccoli Rabe which is pronounced raab), some lettuce, arugula, micro greens and oddly enough, mustard greens which were from last year. They obviously reseeded themselves.

As of today I harvested our first two radishes, and wow, surprise, no sign of root maggots! Little victories!

Our tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and watermelon are looking better than they ever did last year which gives me some hope that we’ll actually harvest something more than greens and potatoes this year. As of today we have about five unripe tomatoes on the plants, most of which are all on the tomatoes in our greenhouse. We have harvested our first bell pepper recently which came from one of the few plants we purchased from one of the many greenhouses here.

I purchased two weekends ago two white eggplants which I’m seriously hoping we see something out of. My husband pestered me when I purchased these that they’ll never produce. Here’s to hoping he’s wrong and we end up eating ratatouille and eggplant parmesan come late July.

Our strawberries are growing, albeit slowly, and I anxiously wait for their small red fruits. I know I’ll never get enough for jam or pie but it would be nice if we could get some to snack on. Thanks to a few Facebook friends along with my husband’s job we now have raspberries growing all along the exterior of our fence. Last year we got enough to get a bowl or two filled. I have the oddest feeling that while right now we watch them anxiously and whisper to them “grow grow”, later we’ll be yelling at them to stop growing and to stop sending out runners that start up raspberry bushes in the middle of the yard. Regardless, I’m still looking forward to all you can eat raspberry buffet in my back yard.

This year we veered far away from space hogs and heavy feeders like corn and we’re going more with what we’ve had success with in the past. Last year we had an awesome amount of zucchini squash so once again we’ve planted that along with summer squash. I am really hoping we get even more this year out of those squash plants since I have had my eye on a vegetable spiralizer at Amazon for the past year. Who knew you could make noodles out of vegetables! Here is a list of recipes we used last year when we were swimming in zucchini.

· Zucchini fettuccine with rosemary butternut creme sauce
· Easy bacon shrimp zucchini noodle scampi
· Broccoli rabe pasta with spicy italian sausage zucchini noodles
· Summer squash pad thai
· Lemon garlic zucchini noodles with roasted tomatoes

At the time we had to, by hand; sculpt each and every zucchini into a noodle type of shape. Now this year we’ll have this spiralizer that we can use to speed up production when we’re making dinner in the evening!

We’ve moved our snow peas to a part of the fence that won’t cause them to shade all the other plants and we’ve also planted less of them. Snow peas don’t do so well with freezing so if we do not have a surplus of snow peas in the freezer this year I won't have my feelings hurt.

We have also added to the yard this year blueberry bushes which I seriously hope manage to survive the winter. I read after the fact that these variety of blueberries can only survive up to -20 which is no good for us as our winters typically can get down to -40. My husband picked the first blueberry today though and he reported that it was delicious.

Visitor in our garden. We're trying to make friends with him/her

We did have a nice surprise recently. Last year we planted a mixture of trees that I purchased from a University of Alaska Fairbanks fundraiser. All of them approximately three weeks later were mowed over by the lawn crew our home owners association hired. The only survivor, it seemed was the small Amur Maple tree which is still extremely small. We now have it protected by a metal pole stuck near it with a small flag to notify anyone who is trying to mow that to please avoid this tree. It's there on purpose. Just this past week we noticed that three of our high bush cranberry bushes are regrowing from the little stubs that were left behind. Amazing, we thought they were done for.

So, with this all said, I have to get back to work. Our peony bloomed and it's now time to go make some peony jelly! I love the color of the finished product from these beautiful peonies!

This is the recipe I like to use for my peony jelly.

Peony jelly

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead. All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content. Hope to see you soon!