July and August at a Remote Alaska Homestead

July is probably the best month to visit South Central Alaska.  Most of the mosquitoes are gone, weather is great (usually sunny, 60-80 during the day), flowers are growing in abundance.  Sunlight tops 20 hours, so I sleep with an eye mask.  

 

This year, though, our summer was unusually rainy (which benefited the berries but brought slugs to the gardens) and yellow jackets were unusually abundant.  We found hives under the front porch, in the greenhouse, and even in boots hung upside down outside the guest cabin.  In August, they attacked our bee hives, and we think may have moved into one hive abandoned by a colony that swarmed (departed),  leaving too small a group to defend itself from the aggressive predators.  Bryan duct taped the entrance and ventilation holes to suffocate the wasps.  Fortunately, because the two hives were so large and productive, he harvested the honey in several tranches in July and August, thus depriving the wasps of many gallons of that golden nectar.   

Every single day, after the dew dried, I harvested food or medicinal plants (gardened or foraged) and preserved them for future use by canning, drying, or in oil or vinegar.  Over their respective seasons, I gathered a bumper crop of berries (first haskaps and strawberries, then currants and saskatoons, followed by raspberries and cranberries).  In fact, I have designated this year “The Year of the Berry” after we topped six GALLONS of raspberries, plus all of the others.  I need more recipes!  The two most interesting ones I made were raspberry chipotle jam and cranberry ketchup.  

The calendula harvest was huge this year, too, so I harvested and dried many cups of the bright yellow leaves to infuse in oil for skin care and to include in flower arrangements with other annuals (I love salvia) and perennials (like anise hyssop).  

Because of the unseasonable rain, slugs (gross) chewed some of the brassica and potato leaves to lace, so I harvested the former leaves early, to can many quarts of both the greens and the broth remaining after blanching.  (Note:  the gardens with nasturtiums growing beneath the vegetables were FAR less affected than those without.)  

One fun culinary experiment was to make pestos with 8 different types of pesto from various wild and domestic greens, like lamb's quarter, chickweed, horseradish, nasturtium.  The winners?  Mustard and mint (in separate concoctions).  Later, in August, I gathered about 60 lbs of red, purple and brown potatoes, a shopping bag full of red and green tomatoes.

In between the raindrops I spent summer afternoons repainting or restaining decks, buildings, sleds, trailers, and the wooden handles of tools so they will remain attractive, protected, and useful for many years.    Log cabins can be so evocative and attractive, but they require some tender loving care.  It is always so sad to me to see log buildings moldy and rotting from lack of paint or stain, leaning on sunken foundations from frost heave or rotting log supports.  

Mid-afternoon, before my bath in our wood fired hot tub, I gathered wild and domesticated  ingredients for that evening's salad:  wild lamb's quarter or dandelions, or gardened lettuces, sorrel, nasturtiums, chives, mint, and various veggies.  Edible flowers, too, like nasturtiums, violets, mustard, radish, and borage.  Very pretty dishes!

Meanwhile, my husband spent many hours in the woods cutting down spruce and birch trees for firewood and construction projects.  By the end of August, he had filled the roofed wood corral, which he had expanded in June to about 11x 24 feet.

Late afternoon, Bryan and I always met at the dock for our daily kayaking happy hour.  I dropped a handful of that day's berries into our homemade beer and wine as a summer treat. We paddle around with binoculars for close ups of the various ducks and swans that visit, and with baggies to collect blueberries, sweet gale and other plants along shore.   Most of our dinners were enjoyed on the front porch, overlooking the lake, or, on windy days, on the back porch with a view of the woods and the chickens' antics. 

This year, like last, we have not seen a single bear.  That's a shame.  We find their meat tasty, and we have finished off the last mason jar of bear meat from two years ago (although I still have some bear lard).   In addition, our rabbits had fewer and smaller litters this year, so our meat expenditures are much higher than in prior years.  On the other hand, two friends gave us seven cockerels and four hens, increasing our flock to 16.  As each cockerel reached sexual maturity and started bothering the hens, we moved him along to his ultimate destiny – dinner – so I named them for the intended meal.  By the end of August, only Taco and Curry remained.  We decided to retain one rooster and hope that the body heat of  the 9 hens and him will enhance the warmth of their 4x6 coop this winter.