Our Dog Learns to Haul Firewood

Learning to haul firewood

On October 25, we awoke to a silent, frozen lake.  No water lapping at the shore, no ducks tempting our dog.  Ten noisy flocks of geese (50 -100 birds each) flapped southward on that day alone.  They knew it was high time to head out.  How far do they fly in a day? Where do they find water -perhaps rivers - which freeze later?   Given our weather, I was astonished to see a float plane fly north several days later when I outside was in the wood fired hot tub, and wondered, “Where the heck is he going?” NORTH????  It had to be a river.   

The day after the lake froze, our chocolate lab, Buddy, ventured down to the dock and tentatively punctured the thin ice with his paw, to explore it.  Perhaps he saw his reflection, like Narcissus.  He bent down to sniff the transparent surface and then lapped up some water from the hole.  He repeated this a few feet to the right, as though to confirm his initial experience. 

Two days later, he trotted out 30 foot ellipses on the thickening ice. I was a bit nervous that he might break through, but he was fine.  His toenails sounded EXACTLY like a woman in high heels traversing a marble floor!  All of a sudden, he spied a coyote along shore.  He tried to run but slipped and slid like the three stooges, during which time the animal ran off into the woods. During these initial days when the ice thickens, it makes eerie booms, shots, and groans. The dog is nonplussed by these sounds.

On shore, he trots, leaps and runs through the snow.  Early November storms raised the snow depth to 19 inches (chest high for him, knee high for me) and then deeper and deeper.  He plows through, digging with his whole head thrust into the snow, after which he shakes his head clear and sneezes.  On our walks among our buildings, Bryan and I point out tracks of hare and voles (meadow mice) which he explores, squeezing under decks and outbuildings when he smells a critter or two, who remain safely out of reach. 

Excitedly approaching Bryan

Given his enjoyment of the cold, his need for exercise, and his enthusiasm for “helping” us, I trained him to haul sled loads of logs about 60 feet from the wood corral to the back porch.  First I had to get him familiar with a chest harness, which, of course, he wanted to chew.  Then, I had to figure out the length of the sled rope so that when he turned around in curiosity, he wouldn’t get tangled up and flip the sled.  Finally, I had to add enough log weight that the sled would not bang into his back legs when he stopped.  As you may imagine, this required several practice sessions and lots of peanuts and praise.  On our fifth try, we had a kinda-sorta success, and on our third day, he successfully hauled (with more enthusiasm and less confusion) three sled loads of 8 or 9 logs each while I hauled a larger sled ahead of him.  A week later now, he gets excited when we start to load a sled with logs for him. We discovered that he was just as willing to haul without the harness, by simply picking up the rope in his mouth and pulling backwards.  After he chewed through the rope several times, we threaded a long wire through two holes in the sled, and attached a smaller rope to that, which the dog puts in his mouth.  This worked well.  Twice this week, he even hauled a generator downhill with Bryan, from the power shed to the cabin, a 400 ft distance.  This enthusiasm will come in handy for these rather tedious winter tasks, especially as we age (ahead of him). 

When we cut trees in the woods in March, Buddy will help too.  After Bryan limbs and bucks the tree into logs, Buddy and I will transport loads in the same plastic sleds he hauls now.  I will load two sleds with logs and our 6 legs will move them from where the tree fell to our 11 foot sled/ snowmachine on a hard packed trail nearby.  I bet he will love to run behind me as I navigate home to drop thick logs by the wood corral and thin ones by the hot tub.  I look forward to more inter-species teamwork.   

 His outdoor enthusiasm motivates me to enjoy more aspects of the long winter season, too.

How Long Will My Alaskan Harvest Feed Us?

For anyone who lives far from a supermarket (whether that is several hours by car or weeks by ferry, plane, or snowmobile/snowmachine), surely there are few things more comforting than a full larder.  The satisfaction is increased, for me, by seeing rows and rows of glass mason jars full of food that I have grown or foraged, and then dried or pressure canned to enjoy for months or even years in the future.

Potatoes in cold hole

Tucked in the food shed and the Arctic entry are 40 jars (quarts and pints) of brassica leaves (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower) and turnips, plus the broth resulting from blanching (a quick plunge in boiling water, followed by cold water, for better preservation).  I will open about a quart per week for side dishes or additions to soups, rice, and stews.  The tightest heads, about 15, are stored in the refrigerator for crisp salads.  I have concluded that I enjoy this texture better than (sorry) wimpy lettuce. With this bounteous harvest of reliable veggies, I am learning lots of new recipes from Indian and Korean sources, as well as other renditions closer to home.  British Bubble and Squeak is a new favorite, in both name and flavor/texture.

Other shelves are loaded with 60 jars of rhubarb, raspberries and cranberry and currant juice.  We drink the juice throughout the year, and mix them and the berries into sweet and savory sauces, like BBQ sauce, vinagrettes, fruit salads, chutneys, and desserts.  These plants yield enough for more than a year’s consumption, plus extras for gifts.

Of herbs, cilantro and nasturtiums always do well.  We consume the seeds as well as the leaves. Dill, fennel, chives, rosehips, and garlic all produced less than last year and will not last through the winter.  But I dried quarts of fireweed, sweet gale, yarrow, and berry leaves, as well as a year’s worth of mint, for teas, remedies and cooking.    

One section of the food shed

In the freezer, I squeezed in several gallon bags of blanched veggies, predominantly cauliflower, carrots (mostly for winter carrot cake) and celery, as well as wild lamb`s quarter, mint, and chives.

            Indoors, I have glassed about 150 eggs (about 4.5 gallons) in a pickling lime solution, which will store at room temperature for upwards of 9 months, as I have discovered from several years of doing so.  I rely on glassed eggs in late autumn through winter, when the hens molt (shed their feathers), and, in response to low light levels and temperature, lay fewer eggs.  If/when we run low, toward the end of winter, we do have powdered eggs, which I relegate to baked goods.  I also have 3 gallons of tomatoes plucked from the greenhouse, ripening in covered bowls with a banana for extra ethylene (for ripening).

In the cold hole are 50 potatoes – half of last year`s harvest.  Still, if I cook 2-3 potatoes per week,  this number will last us through March, when we get resupplied by snowmachine haulers.

In the oddly hot spring and rainy late summer, some fruits and veggies produced enough to enjoy fresh during the summer, but not enough to store long term.  This includes several squash varieties, including cucumber.  I have never yet nurtured a decent pepper harvest, though they are my favorite vegetable.  The weather was particularly ill-suited to spinach, peas, and beans.  Haskap bushes flowered very early in the sun (while standing in snow), resulting in few berries.  Not even the birds were interested.  Only 3 apples from one young tree.   Still no cherries.

Kitchen shelves. Spruce log walls.

We feared a low honey harvest (since the insects do not like to fly in rain), but they produced a very respectable 15 gallons of golden nectar from 4 hives.  Thankfully, none of them swarmed or absconded during the heat wave of 80+ degree temps in early June (because their population was still low at that date).  I am not averse to sugar, but as beekeepers, we have bought none for years and use honey in all recipes that require sweetening, including baked goods and a quart per 6 gallons of homemade beer (so that libation is technically a braggot). This year`s harvest will last more than a year.

Sadly, we took no bear or moose this year, so our meat expenses are the same as anyone else`s. With inflation - Yikes!  However, with the bones and fat of every ham or chicken I buy, I make tasty broth for flavoring rice, beans, soups, and other dishes, and snacks for the carnivorous hens.  The pike in our lake have cannibalized each other so we caught none of edible size this summer.   We took a break from raising meat rabbits for two years and consumed our last quart as rabbit mole over pasta last month.  

Today is October 11.  Snow fell on the  4,600 ft mountains near us last week, and this morning we see Termination Dust on the  closest mountain of 2600 ft .  The temperature dipped to 35, leaving frost on the brown, crispy ferns and green grass.  Ten noisy flocks of geese winged their way south throughout the day.  So yesterday was likely the last salad I could gather directly from the gardens, as many leaves wilt in the cold, although  celery, cabbage, and the leaves of root vegetables (radish, carrots) are sturdy enough to linger after a few frosts. 

The hardy, late season greens that fed us included mustard, nasturtium, and lettuce leaves, topped with blue borage flowers (taste like cucumber) and orange nasturtium flowers (taste like horseradish).  I added the sole cucumber that grew, plus several of the smallest tomatoes.  I served it with a honey mustard dressing with currant juice, topped with croutons from a bread I made earlier in the week and little hard boiled eggs from our smallest hen.  A pretty and tasty dish.  

Hardy mint remains harvestable… for a few days.  I gathered a huge pile and will blanch it this afternoon so that we can enjoy a favorite condiment – a hot Indian chutney – through some of the winter months.

I will miss many of these fresh flavors during the winter, but our seasonal distinctions encourage me to savor every last bite in autumn.  Then, I look forward to cozy soups and stews for winter, such as vegetarian African peanut soup (with sweet potatoes or winter squash), split pea soup with ham (secret ingredient: dried orange rind), potato soup with all the ingredients one associates with loaded baked potatoes, and whatever creative concoctions bubble up on future chilly days.