June at a Remote Alaskan Home

June is a month of twenty hours of daylight, wildflowers, and mosquitoes.

This year, the skeeters are particularly bad - maybe because of our unseasonably rainy May.  We sleep under a bug net every summer, but this year,  I even read during the afternoon under the bug net!  The insects circle me whenever I stand still to garden or sit in the hot tub, or try to eat on the front porch.  My homemade insect repellent (vinegar with herbs) has been ineffective.  We live a pretty organic life, but this month, we are burning chemical coils anywhere we linger for pleasure or projects and spray ourselves with DEET.  Indoors, we wield battery powered tennis racquet-like bug zappers which are satisfyingly effective, but the burnt hair scent is pretty gross as we sizzle dozens of them that invade every time we open a door.  Fortunately, their period of supremacy lasts only 3 weeks or so, and is waning as I write.

In June and July, our latitude enjoys about 20 hours of daylight, so we are very active during long days.  To sleep well I wear an eye mask and outfitted our bedroom with black out draperies.  Temperatures are great - high 40s(F) at night and 60-mid-70s during the days. 

Because of the short growing season and maximum sunlight, everything grows super fast in June... whether you want it to or not.  It is like watching time lapse photography.  I love seeing the succession of wildflowers bloom, on the ground, and above, in bushes and trees.  Dwarf dogwood carpets the ground on either side of our paths.  Shy starflower peeks out from beneath shaded woodland plants.  Eye-level, the white flowers of elder and cranberry nod in a breeze.  The tallest flowers appear on ash trees that have evaded the reach of moose. I have been encouraging the growth of wild prickly roses, too, in a meadow and in between cranberry bushes.  They bloom briefly in June, followed by bright orange/red rosehips, which look like firm berries.  I harvest some elderflower for teas and wine and rose petals for salad and tea.   

All of our domestic berry plants flower in June.  The currants, haskaps (honeyberries) and saskatoons are the first to form fruit at the end of the month.  Strawberries (which I grow both in a raised bed, with mint, and as a ground cover near the lake) and raspberries follow in July.  With the extra rain we had this year, I anticipate a bumper crop, which I will can for enjoyment throughout the winter in all sorts of preparations.  Of the various melomels (honey + fruit mead) I have attempted, raspberries produce the most consistently delicious result.

Naturally, June is a busy time in the yard.  Because we free range our hens, we concoct various ways to keep them out of the garden beds and away from the haskap berries they favor.  Right now, the haskaps and apple trees are surrounded by fencing that looks like Alcatraz for plants.   This year, I wove a small wattle fence out of alder shoots around a 4 x 4 garden which required about 80 long shoots for 8 inches of fence height. 

Every summer, my vegetable gardens are hit or miss.  Some seeds are old, some plants succumb to aphids or other critters, others are wonderfully productive.  And there are always surprises. This year, several potato plants are spontaneously growing from tiny potatoes that evaded my harvesting last year and three sunflowers grew in my greenhouse from seeds dropped last fall.   Each year, I try a few new plants, among them, okra and tomatillos in the greenhouse and brussels sprouts and garlic outside. We will see how they fare.   I am particularly enthusiastic about growing tasty perennials - less work and expense.  Rhubarb and asparagus are robust and thyme overwintered this year.  My new favorite perennials are horseradish and sorrel (a leafy green with a citrusy taste).  We have added sorrel to many recent salads.  Last night, I served a sorrel pesto with goat cheese for an appetizer.   Tonight: a dip of horseradish leaf and three onions I grow here: scallions, chives, and leeks.    Perhaps because of the rain, my brassicas are being chewed to lace by little gray sluggy things.  Since that food is supposed to be FOR US, I quickly harvested a lot of it.   I really like mustard leaf pesto, I have discovered.  Other leaves I blanched and froze and then canned the broth for use in cooking this winter. 

June is also a busy month for foraging.  I let tasty lamb's quarter grow wild in my gardens because I like the nutty flavor of the leaves.  Cleavers, mint, yarrow, leaves of the berry bushes, dandelion, plantain all dry on my outdoor drying racks if it is warm and dry or in a cold oven if the weather is damp.  Over the course of a year, they find their way into food, home remedies, and shampoo.  The aggressive mosquitoes abbreviated my forays so I am a bit behind.

CONSTRUCTION:     Summer, of course, is the time to tackle various construction projects that we have envisioned all winter.  This month, we built a 8 x 11 extension to the roof and walls of our wood corral.  We made every mistake in the book but figured out how to correct them, and remain married, too.  For some reason, the new doorway is our hens' new favorite spot for dust baths. I love seeing the five of them splayed out in shallow depressions they have dug, turning and tossing dust into their feathers and then standing to shake themselves clean.  “A day at the spa.” We also restain or repaint various buildings every few summers, and add or replace steps or banisters or shelves.  We are also, now, the proud owners of a two hole outhouse!  The second seat is not for... uh... socializing, but because, after 12 years, the pit is getting full of... sewage... under the first seat.  By cutting a second hole and wrenching out the dead root ball that blocked that side, we gain another year or two of use before we have to dig a pit elsewhere and construct a new outhouse over it.  Since our current space is part of a larger building (the back 2/3 is the food shed or pantry), we will repurpose the 4 x 8 space for storage.  

By the end of the month, the wild grasses can be five feet high - just in time to obscure the approach of bears, which we tend to see in July and August.  So when all my seedlings are doing well in the gardens, I become a whirling dervish with the weedwhacker.  I cut to ankle or shin height so I can see what plants “want” to grow in that spot, if the grass weren't so high.  In this way, I have nurtured hedges of raspberry, loose thickets of cranberry, and dense ground cover of dwarf dogwood.  More remote acres await a single cutting in late June before the seed heads form and spread a gazillion seeds.   I have finally made my peace with devil's club.  That perniciously spiky, prickly plant has well regarded medicinal value and rather attractive white flowers  followed by red berries.  If I keep it cut low, instead of cutting it out, its broad leaves retard the fast growing canary grass and other plants that I value more, like cranberry, rose, and star flower, seem to thrive in their presence.

All these tasks may sound like a lot of work, and they are, but they serve as an alternative to going to the gym or the supermarket or paying a carpenter.  For us, the trade off is an appealing one, in a lovely setting, resulting in a welcome sense of accomplishment and great appreciation for a leisurely afternoon kayak, bath, and dinner, with whatever salad greens I have gathered that day.

May at an Alaska Homestead

May is a month of dramatic transitions, from a silent, white landscape and frozen lake to the first flowers,  birdsong, and visits by gangling moose calves. Below is a summary of our activities every May.

Early in the month, the only hint of spring is the earthy brown “doughnuts” around the base of trees.  Walking through the warming snow is challenging.  The snow paths are often hard and icy in the morning, so we wear ice cleats for traction.  By mid-day, the snow is soft and sloppy, requiring snow shoes to avoid sinking deeply with each step.  Imagine wearing long snow shoes to enter an outhouse, or food shed.  Inconvenient!!!  As a result, I often try, too soon, to do without snowshoes. Alas, I sank up to my groin at the burn barrel and had to crawl out onto the surface, like a crab.

Despite all the snow, spring officially commences, in my view,  when we tap the birch trees.  Sap flow indicates that these deciduous trees recognize  spring even if we can't see it yet.  This date has varied over the years from April 2 to May 17, but is usually around May 1.  The sapping season lasts for ten days, ending when the first leaves appear. 

Some years, we collect enough sap (at least 100 gallons) to make syrup (a 1:100 ratio).  This year, however, the snow was so deep that it buried our sap lines, so we simply positioned buckets at the base of the two closest trees and collected about 10 gallons.  With half of this nutritious spring tonic, I made coffee, rice, pancakes - anything that otherwise requires water.  With the other half, I made a batch of wine.  Birch sap is only 2% sugar and lacks the mouthfeel of fruit based wines.  I add honey and dried elder flowers for flavor.  The result is thin and dry.  Not great, but a spring tradition. 

Another spring ritual is to drag the tandem kayak out from under the cabin and paddle in the shifting open leads between ice floes for a few days until the ice disappears.  For the past few years, we have been joined by one or two otters.   We see them only in fall and spring when the lake has this brief, transitional mix of ice and water.  The morning after the lake breaks, these visitors disappear.  I love to see the first reflections of the snowy mountains in the water.  So pretty.  After that, we enjoy a happy hour kayak every afternoon, with homemade wine and beer and store bought un-shelled peanuts. 

May also welcomes the return of migrating birds.  We hear and see huge V's of nomadic geese heading north.  As soon as the ice starts to break, we are visited by pairs of swans and, depending on the species, pairs and groups of ducks.  This spring, we saw a pair of sandpipers walking along an ice floe.  What wrong turn did they take????  Maybe he (?) was colorblind and didn't ask directions?   When the snow melts in our meadows and the bog at the end of the lake, we see pairs of sandhill cranes looking for something tasty to nibble. 

One annual task that we do only in April or May when there is about a foot of snow on the ground is a bonfire of huge piles of rotted logs and twisted piles of alder branches that we pile up in the meadow the prior year.  The snow is a prudent fire protection.   I choose to vary locations each year, because the previous year's fire location becomes home to a stunning patch of pink fireweed as well as tiny birch seedlings.  Perhaps this is  our modest version of terra preta - an ancient practice of burning soil to enrich it as well as emancipating seeds that benefit from fire.

As the snow recedes, wild berry plants bounce up - cranberry, elderberry, and currants - which are the first to flower.  I prune broken branches and clear limbs that have rained down upon the plants during winter storms.  My form of “landscaping” amounts to observing which plants “want” to live here or there and encouraging those, such as currants that grow up and spill over the stumps of birch and spruce trees, fields of fireweed, woodsy paths lined with cranberry and rose bushes. 

In late May, I can finally plant the hundreds of seedlings I started indoors under grow lights.  When day time temperatures top 50,  I start transitioning them outside for increasing numbers of hours  to “harden them off” - which is getting them used to the wind, sun, and temperature variations outdoors.  The greenhouse soil warms up much faster than the outdoor gardens, of course, but since night time temperatures can still drop below 32 degrees in May, I monitor the forecast carefully to determine when it is safe to move the plants.  On that day, usually around May 20, I feel like a mom sending her children off to their first day of school.  I have coddled the seedlings indoors; now it is time to see how they do without me all the time.

Speaking of plants... what pollen do our honeybees and wild pollinators find before any flowers appear?  In mid-late May,  brown and green “dust” of pollen coats outdoor furniture, from the catkins on birch, alder, and sweet gale.  These are the first ingredients for the honey we will harvest in August (and yes, the honey does taste and look different over the course of a summer).

Toward the end of May, a cow moose always has twin calves in the woods behind our property.  It is such a treat to see those slim, leggy youngsters trotting after her, nursing whenever she stands still to chow down.  Her favorite plants are birch, ash, and cranberry.  We are particularly cautious when walking around at this time as a LARGE defensive cow can be aggressive if startled or if she perceives a threat to herself or her progeny.

When temperatures warm up at the end of the month, we witness a rather weird three day visit by tiny gnats.  In the lee of the wind - often right next to our back door, they form an undulating, six foot column that is some sort of whirling mating ritual.  They also coat every white surface, like the propane tanks and window sills.  Suddenly, after those three days, they disappear.

May in Alaska is certainly not the lovely month of flowers that southerly climates enjoy.  But it is one of dramatic changes for us:  from white to brown to green, from silence to songs of birds, insects, and lapping water, and a shift from the fragrance of wood fires to the sweet scents of grass and flowers.