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.

March: Five Months 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!

February at an Alaska Homestead: Snow, Fire, Mail

February was certainly a three ring circus, weather-wise.  It began with several days of high wind that made it hard to sleep at night.  Our log cabin creaked and sighed like an old wooden ship at sea.   The weather was far more destructive throughout the notoriously windy east side of the Matanuska Susitna Valley, though.  There, the wind ripped antennae and siding off a friend’s home in Wasilla, as well as causing roof damage and power outages throughout the area.   Imagine a power outage.  In Alaska.  In February.

 

Well, we experienced a small hint of that issue.  To heat our home through the winter, the wood stove is stoked 24/7.  This year, for the first time, we burned spruce inside instead of birch.  The latter has higher BTUs and burns cleaner, but the former is plentiful because of all the beetle-killed trees on the property.  We had postponed using it because we had read that the resinous wood can clog a chimney faster with creosote.  “Nah,” our Fairbanks friends told us.  “That’s all we burn here!” Maybe so, but one chilly, dark night in late February, our chimney stopped drawing (smoke) at all.  Finito.  Nada.  Since my husband sweeps the outside 95% of the chimney every month, we knew that the blockage was in the interior pipe, but there was nothing fruitful we could do while the firebox was hot.  

 

We let the fire go out overnight, sleeping in lots of clothes under several blankets.  We awakened to an interior temperature of 51 F.  Not too bad.  Then, Bryan dismantled the interior pipe.  Sure enough, with serving spoons, buckets, and a shop vacuum, we withdrew several pounds of ash and chunky creosote.  So much for spruce vs. birch.  (Photo:  So far this winter, we have burned all the logs that used to cover the left side of the building.)

Because of our location, we get a lot of snow over the course of the winter.   Mid-month, two multi-day snow storms deposited FIVE FEET of ADDITIONAL snow.  My husband scurried, as fast as his snowshoes and an extendable snow rake would let him, to shovel off some of that snow weight from the shallower roofs here that do not slough it off easily.  Recommendation to others:  a  45 degree metal roof is worth the extra construction cost because becomes virtually labor free.  A 33 (or shallower) degree roof in a snowy area requires frequent, annual attention.  Either way, over the course of the winter, both generate high berms around the buildings. (In the photo here, the low side of the outhouse roof is 7 feet high. Note the snow "labyrinth" path from the back porch to the outhouse.)

Thank goodness Bryan is attentive to snow load.  A friend’s metal airplane hangar COLLAPSED onto TWO airplanes, pancaking them.  The photos were devastating.  Every year we hear of residential and commercial buildings that succumb to the hazard of flat/low angle roofs and lots of snow. 

 

At the very end of the month, temperatures surged to the high 30’s, with a bit of rain crusting the snow.  On a sunny day, we enjoyed our first BBQ of the year on the front porch.  The sun felt gloriously warm. We even heard flies awakened from their dormant state, hovering near the warm, log walls.

 

February yielded three highlights, too.  One was seeing lots of little seedlings sprout under grow lights that I start this month. This thrills me every time, especially since it is not guaranteed; older seeds age out of production.  I also tried something new (gardening is all about experimentation).  To warm the soil to an attractive germination temperature, I set the seed pots on cookie sheets over the pilot lights on my gas stove.  This raised the temperature of the trays to 70 – 75, resulting in faster germination. 

 

Another treat of February was longer days.  In January, the low sun disappeared behind our western windows at 3:10 – 3:30 pm. But by late February the sun finally rose high enough in the sky to sail above the mountains, providing sunsets starting at 6 pm.  The morning sun also “moved” further east, giving us blue light at 7:30 am.  Yea! These warmer temperatures and longer hours of sunshine also render our power system’s battery bank more effective and efficient.  March 1 and 2 we did not need to run the generator at all to provide us with electricity. 

The third highlight was the delivery of mail and some supplies by hardy snowmachiners from a Mennonite community near Wasilla.  Each year, we buy frozen chickens and construction services from these wonderful people.  This year, one man said that he had some friends visiting from the Lower 48 and wondered if he could visit us as a snowmachine destination.  Of course!  It took them two tries to arrive over unmarked terrain through woods, bogs, and waterways.  The first time, instead of a 2.5 hour one way trek, they bogged down (several times) in overflow and soft snow up to their waists and had to return home (an 8 hour effort).  A few days later, these intrepid guys succeeded.  They arrived, cheery and hungry.  I now appreciate the ditty about the post office delivering “through rain and sleet and snow…”.  These guys lived that! Thank you!

 

Since we never want to waste a trip out here, we asked if they would bring some pent-up mail and supplies.  Thanks to them, I opened delayed Christmas cards, 10 lbs of green coffee beans that I will roast at home, and wine kit boxes which I put into fermentation mode the next day.  (It is so interesting to lift the lids and see the swirling movement of billions of active little yeasties gobbling up the sugars in the pinot grigio and cabernet sauvignon grape concentrates).  This may not be Napa Valley quality, but it is delicious in the boonies at Latitude 61.

 

In general, mid-January to mid-February may not be the most appealing month of the year.  But maybe experiencing it is important to appreciate the rest of the year.

Gorgeous Hoarfrost, then Minus 19 F in Alaska

Hoar frost on a spruce

Each season here brings distinctive beauties and challenges.  Winter is no exception.  Down to about zero degrees F, I enjoy walks along the lake and in the woods, noticing things: the few highbush cranberries that cling tenaciously to their slim threads; wind blowing snow south along the lake, building dunes and digging swales; the sound of changing textures of snow as we walk; the blue shadows of trees; animal tracks of both herbivores and their hunters; the scent of wood smoke emanating from our chimneys.

My favorite winter view is of white snow coating black branches, and my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE winter image is of hoar frost on everything, from vegetation to metal and wood.   To me, this winter formation is nothing short of stunning.

Hoar frost is not like ice.  It is amazingly delicate ice needles that encircle branches (and other surfaces).  It is particularly beautiful because it is so fragile and transitory.  It forms only in cold, still weather when moist air, like ice fog, moves in and coats surfaces.  Warm sun, strong wind, heavy snow or sleet destroys it.  This December, conditions were such that we enjoyed an unprecedented  winter wonderland of hoar frost for 10 days.   What a gorgeous Christmas present!

Below 0 F, I am not as enthused about outdoor chores or outings by snowshoe  or snowmachine.  Even higher temperatures with high winds are tough.  Plenty of Alaskans are hardier than I, including my husband.  We do have appropriate clothes to layer on, but my eyes tear up somewhere below -15 F, which is not a good thing, and my face stings, especially when wind blows tiny crystals of snow that hit like grains of sand.  One recent day, the temperature was +7 F but the strong winds delivered a wind chill of -20 to -30 F, according to www.weather.com hazard alerts.  The wind slipped through any crack or crevice in the log walls of our cabin, dropping night time temperatures to the low 50s, despite a robust fire. Bryan slept with a cap on, like Ebenezer Scrooge.  We both wore bed socks.

Covered trees at lake edge.

Today, our two outdoor thermometers read minus 19 F and minus 25 F, but  no wind (so it is warmer and cozier inside).  To go outside, I layer up in quilted overalls over pants and under a parka, with my warmest mittens and hat, to quickly feed the hens, gather food from the food shed, empty the indoor commode, and ignite the wood fired outdoor hot tub with hot ashes from the wood stove inside.  On windless day, even at these temperatures, we do enjoy a piping hot soak, although my hair freezes into a Medusa-like helmet very quickly.  The short walk along the back deck is as quick as it can be, and I dare not touch a wet hand to the metal door handle on return.

Yes, our winters are long and dark.  The sun lies low in the Latitude 61 sky this time of year, and arcs around a meager third of it, from SE to SW.  Except during snow storms, for several weeks on either side of the winter solstice, we have enough ambient light to do morning chores at 9, but we do not see an orange sunrise until 10.  In the afternoons, the sun dips below our western mountains between 3 and 3:30 pm followed by a lovely hour of pink and purple.    

Attuned to the sky’s schedule, we eat breakfast at 9 and dinner at 3:30, with a snack later.

I initially worried whether the long dark season would bother me (the possibility of Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD).  Even my husband found the long, gray winters at his upstate New York college depressing.  However, neither of us is bothered by that here.  Is it the sunnier and dryer winter weather?  Or the fun and necessary projects we save up to do during the winter months? Winter is a time to linger in bed, read thick novels, take on-line classes, work on hobbies and indoor projects, and of course, to make snow ice cream.

A few of my on-line activities:

Beautiful day!

*   Mini-Med School: I always enjoy two months of fascinating and well prepared lectures for lay people, offered by my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. https://minimed.wustl.edu/ (250+ students from 26 states/countries participate in sessions scheduled in early and late winter).  Hats off to the fantastic coordinator, Dr. Cynthia Wychelman!

*   Wilderness Emergency Care: I have recently embarked on an on-line class offered by www.soloschools.com in NH, to be followed this summer by a weekend of hands-on training by an affiliate here in Alaska. 

*   Herbalism:  I continue learning about edible and medicinal plants from www.theherbalacademy.com of MA.  This school offers the most visually arresting, beautiful on-line courses I have ever enjoyed, with quickly responsive teachers.  

*   Weather spotting:  This year, I have also volunteered to be a “weather spotter” for this part of Alaska, since NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric something) has so few data points in the remote area where we live.  Some poor, bottom-of-the-totem pole employee actually called me at home on the Sunday after Christmas to ask for our experience during a storm!  How is that for weather service!     https://www.weather.gov/pdt/spotterTraining

Backyard trail

My view is that boredom is a personal failure.  If I feel any creeping up, it means that I need to find something practical, enlightening, kind, or challenging to do.  

RECIPE:  Snow ice cream

After most new snow fall, I take a huge metal bowl outside and scoop up some fresh, clean snow.  Inside, I mix it with a can of sweetened condensed milk and flavor it, as desired, with unsweetened cocoa, or vanilla, or berries I canned from last summer.  The result is like an ice milk in texture.  The proportions vary depending on whether the snow is dry and light or dense and wet.  But in general, one can of condensed milk mixes with 8 - 12 cups of snow.  This would be especially fun to do with children, I would think.

Winter Animal Tracks + Recipe Saskatoon Pancakes

One of my favorite things to do in winter is to observe and follow animal tracks I find on walks around our property or along woodland trails. No bears sign of course - they are hibernating. Nor do we see moose until mid-winter. I imagine that those huge animals prefer to linger close to the open water of creeks and rivers until they freeze over. After that, they lumber through the deep snow to our vicinity and yank pitifully at birch and cranberry branches for a few calories, and then curl up out of the cold, northern wind. (If there is reincarnation, I do not want to be reborn as a 1600 lb herbivore in the arctic!!!) 

 

The tracks we see most often are the dog-like footprints of coyotes, the big cushioned feet of hares, the narrow tread of martens and slimmer still of weasels (to which they are related). The latter is distinguished by an accompanying tail swipe between the legs. By the length of the stride, we can tell if the animals are strolling or running. Rarely do I see the tracks of voles (small meadow mice) because they burrow under the snow all winter, leaving telltale swales in the spring mud. However, this month, our snow is so shallow (maybe 2-3 inches) that I see their little foot impressions, complete with perfectly defined tiny toes. Their tracks run back and forth across short, exposed distances between tree stumps and the fluffy, insulating tents of dead fern fronds. I also see the tracks of their predators overlaying their own, presumably some hours later. Fast and quiet martens and weasels like the caverns beneath tree trunks, too.

 

Sometimes we catch a peripheral glimpse of a speedy and lithe white weasel or a black marten. These wily predators can sniff or hear the creatures beneath the snow. I have watched a marten run across a field, stop, approach slowly, and then leap into the air to dive into some sub-nivean nest for dinner. With one in his sharp teeth, he trots off for a quiet meal. I also see ravens fly, dive, and then fly off with something dark in their beak. The bottom of the food chain is a vulnerable place to be. 

Moose last winter

 

Only once have I seen a blood trail. If I interpreted the ground signs correctly, an eagle swooped down to grab a hare just before it dived under a tree. The talons drew blood of some volume that pooled at the base of the tree, and then spotted the snow in a linear pattern as the bird lifted off. We found no body in the vicinity. All of this “dog eat dog” world transpires during the summer, too, of course, but it is hidden in the verdant, fast growing landscape. It is winter when I ruminate over clear reminders of the vulnerability of life – for us and other creatures - water, food, warmth, and safety. 

 

Recipe: Saskatoon Pancakes 

1/2 cup each of corn meal, oatmeal, white or wheat flour. 

1 cup sour dough starter or buttermilk or milk "soured" with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice. 

Add water to adjust texture for thick or thin pancakes. 

1 cup of saskatoon berries (fresh in summer or frozen in winter) or blueberries 

4 teaspoons baking powder 

3 Tablespoons melted bacon grease, butter or oil

 3 Tablespoons sugar or honey

1 egg

Combine. Cook on a medium high, greased griddle. Extra oil or bacon grease will yield lacy, crispy edges. We serve this with homemade rhubarb syrup or honey, but any syrup or molasses is tasty.