March: Chainsaw and Snowmachine Fun in Rural Alaska

March is my favorite winter month.  Why wouldn’t it be?  We have the longest daylight of the season  - 12 hours (when it is sunny and not snowing) PLUS the long, languorous sunrises and sunsets for which northern latitudes are justly famous. 

 

Snow machine with freight sled for logging

This sun sparkles on the 6 or so feet of snow on the ground, eroding parabola shaped shields around trees as the sun arcs from south to west.

 

On sunny, windless afternoons, even in the high 30s to 40s F, we enjoy a drink and sometimes a meal on the front porch, warmed by the sun (wearing jackets and hats).  Intrepid little insects emerge from… wherever… to heat themselves and mate on the sun warmed log walls.

 

My favorite task this month is culling trees in the forest for firewood. My roles remind me of go karts and county fair competitions.

 

Each autumn, when the bugs are gone, the ground is firm, and the birch leaves have dropped so we have a clearer view of the woods, we bushwhack a trail along a concentric circle of standing dead spruce trees.  In the winter, we snowshoe and then snowmachine a hard packed path there, so we can get close to the trees with a snowmachine and large freight sled, plus two little plastic sleds that carry the tools to the work site and cart away the log rounds from the tree to the large sled.  On cool March mornings (and this year, even into mid-April), we head out with chainsaws, kevlar chaps, ear protection and snowshoes to fell some trees.   Bryan assesses the direction that each target tree wants to fall, based on orientation and heavy/light limbs. After that, he limbs the tree and bucks the wood into rounds. 

 

Then, the fun part starts for me.  I play bocce ball with the logs by tossing them toward a target near the small sleds. I judge my prowess by how many subsequent logs hit the first one.  Some of the really skinny trees with no lateral branches, I throw like a javelin.  Then I lumber over to the pile in my snowshoes (if the snow is soft) or regular boots, if the snow is hard, load up the sled(s), unstrap my snowshoes to straddle the snow machine and deliver the logs to their destinations.

 

Spruce logs awaiting splitting

I feel like a kid on the go kart tracks my boys loved as kids when I careen around the trails through the woods and around our hilly property. The thin top trunk logs of black spruce go next to the wood fired hot tub. Thick ones that will need to be split next summer with an electric log splitter I pile up under the larch trees near the wood corral.  Rotted trunks with a neat central hole I ream out with a crowbar for future planters. Bryan usually quits after two tanks of chain saw gas, while I serve as log loader and delivery gal.  It is great that this is so fun, because we are incentivized to gather 11 cords for winter.  A friend with a 5 bedroom house needs 40 cords each year!

 

This year we are also harvesting 10 to 12 foot long trunks of the slimmer trees (or the tops of them) to use as posts and poles for construction projects.  These I drag behind me towed by a looped ratchet strap.  Some will support an electric fence encircling the bee yard.  Others will support perennial climbing vines (clematis) that I plan to plant on either side of south facing doorways. So pretty!

 

This year, nights were still below freezing until mid-April, so we were able to gather firewood for a longer period.  This is good for two reasons.  One, standing dead spruce are highly combustible fire hazards.  Two, they will rot upright over time and be less useful in the future for fuel or construction.

 

Wood corral as of March 29

In mid-April, we finally wrapped up this project by cleaning up some of the flammable debris on the ground.  I towed many sled loads of the pine cone rich tops of the trees to the wood corral, where we chop them up as tinder.  Dead branches fueled several days of bonfires in a snow filled meadow.  (Don’t you love a bonfire in winter?) These locations serve as our version of terra preta, or maybe biochar.  A few years hence, dozens of little birch seedlings with sprout in this year’s burn spot, just as they have in others.

Bush Alaska: October - March without Re-supply

 

A frequent question people ask me is:  “What do you miss most about a city?”  I miss live theater, authentic ethnic food, museums, and certain seasonal events.  But this time of year what I miss most is... access to fresh, raw, crunchy vegetables.  Yup, something as prosaic as that! 

 

We are officially “crunchless” now that I have cut up my last onion.  It has been 5 months since we last flew to town (and a supermarket).  My mouth is watering for a bite of crisp celery or crunchy cabbage.  I even want to hear the sound!  The only greens we have now are the sprouts I grow all winter and the few leaves of plants I start under grow lights in late February.

 

Missing celery reinforces my big Life Lesson of living here, which is to take nothing for granted and to appreciate the grace notes of life:  a fresh vegetable, a warm fire, the pristine whiteness of (yet another!) snow.  

 

Textural preference aside,  we have plenty of food, both what we raise and what we buy (on a meticulous 275 line spreadsheet).

 

Among  produce that I raise/forage, my food shed, even this late in the winter, is full LOTS of berries, rhubarb, dried dill, and lovage (the leaves tastes like celery, but alas, no crunch) and homemade condiments, like horseradish, zucchini relish,  and chutneys.    We still have plenty of potatoes from the dozen plants last summer and lots of dried mint, rosehips, lemon balm, chaga, and  the leaves of fireweed and berry bushes for tea. 

 

But other vegetables and herbs that I labored to grow, harvest, blanch/freeze, pressure can or dry are long gone.  Last summer's home grown oregano, thyme, parsley, cilantro and basil are already depleted as are sorrel, tomatoes and brassicas.   I had hoped for a robust harvest to last all winter,  but two damp summers in a row made my gardens very attractive to lots of hungry slugs that chowed down on all of the broccoli and cauliflower leaves and then moved into the crevices of the heads.  Gross.  Compost?  Yes.  Side dish?  No. I understand that in some languages of cold weather cultures, the name for the months  of March/April are akin to "the month of hunger."  Isn't that sobering?

 

Among produce that we buy, citrus and bananas freeze well, so we have that tasty flavor throughout the winter, both the juice and the rinds, which I dry in a cold oven and save.  (I love orange rind in split pea soup, for instance). Bananas freeze well, too, both in and out of the skin.  I make a chocolate banana pudding with the frozen pulp.

 

My clever friend, Betty, reminded me that one can sprout green onions by putting the root end of any (store bought, too) onion in a shallow bowl of water.  She NEVER buys scallions.  Darn.  I forgot that.   This approach is true for many store bought vegetables with an intact root end, like celery.   Next winter, I will remember this. 

 

To supplement dwindling supplies of veggies, we stock dehydrated and freeze dried vegetables.  The reconstituted texture is not great, but they add color and nutrients to rice and stews. Dried mushrooms are particularly tasty.   The flavor varies by brand, so I encourage interested shoppers to try a small quantity before buying a case.  Betty's home dehydrated vegetables (and fruits) are much more flavorful than others that I have purchased. 

 

To all of you who have convenient access to a supermarket, you may be more alert to food inflationary prices than I am, but you can also bask in  the delights of spontaneous purchase and consumption.  What a treat!  Please bite into something juicy and crunchy today and enjoy it on my behalf!