Despite Two Feet of Snow, Spring has Sprung

Although our land is still blanketed by 2 feet of snow and the lake remains frozen, spring has sprung this week.  How do I know?

One clue is the first of many flocks of migrating geese and one, lone sandhill crane (where is its mate?) announcing their annual return to The Great Land.  Welcome back!  I have missed you!

Birch Sapping in Spring

A second is that twice a day, my husband and I stomp through softening snow to collect sap from the birch trees we tapped on April 20.  We drink this bracingly cold liquid as a vitamin rich spring tonic, and use it instead of water to make wine, beer, coffee, and anything else.  After ten days of clear flow, the sap turns milky, ending the tree’s gift to humans.  The rest belongs to the tree.  This change signals the imminent budding of the leaves.  So, one night, a few days later, I go to sleep in a black and white world and awaken to soft, technicolor green. 

Where the snow is thinnest or has melted and refrozen as ice, as at the base of a tree or building, I am always awed by the tenacity of a green bit of fern or dandelion or myosotis (forget-me-nots) already formed and ready for the heat and light of the sun.  Wild currants pop out of the snow already in bud.  Last year the haskaps flowered when their lower trunks were still encased in snow.  These plants, too, know when spring has arrived, and they are prepared to make the most of our short summer season.

I love such seasonal changes.  They teach me to take nothing for granted.  The flying bird will disappear, the sap run will end.  The green plants and deciduous trees will leaf out in May and then shrivel or flutter, yellow, brown, and red to the ground five months later.

It is my privilege to pay attention.  To notice.  To appreciate.   Nature does not need this appreciation.  It does not need me.  But perhaps that is exactly why I say thank you and endeavor to reciprocate for her many gifts of food, home remedies, shelter, and beauty.

Every day, I take a “walk about” to pay careful attention to the plants on our property and in the woods.   JX Mason (on this site) has described this sort of activity as a walking meditation. I had never thought of it that way, but I do now.  I am focused and calm.  Maybe my heart rate or blood pressure slows – I do not know.  But the daily practice is important to me.  My spirits rise and I feel a sense of expansion in myself. 

As the snow recedes, I hop out of bed thinking about the plants.  In the spring, I prune dead or damaged branches, and cull plants girdled under the snow by hungry voles and hares.  Later, in a sort of reciprocity, I watch for short, two week periods of optimal harvest conditions for tasty and nutritious leaves, berries, roots, and shoots that I am lucky to gather and enjoy.  Shall I eat this lambs quarter raw or cooked today, or in a pesto? Shall I dry or pressure can these other leaves for winter food?   Among the edible plants, our first spring salads are of dandelion leaves, fireweed shoots, and fiddleheads (ferns).  Next I harvest the flavorful young leaves of berry bushes, birch, and alder for tea and flavored vinegars – fresh leaves now and dried for later.  In early/mid May, I harvest bright green spruce and larch tips and snip them into salads, cakes and muffins to which they confer a delightful citrusy flavor.  Other plants share their beneficence later in the summer.

Leaves to rake in the Fall

Late in the summer, I gather seeds of edible, medicinal or beautiful plants that I wish to spread to new areas – the delicacy of columbine, the hardiness of daisies, the scent of iris and yarrow, and rake birch leaves onto tarps that I dump onto raised bed gardens and around fruit bushes and trees as a winter blanket.  Under the weight of the snow, the leaves break down and leaven the soil the next year. 

I do not have a TV or radio or alarm clock.  I have plants and animals that tell me what time of year it is and to get outside and DO SOMETHING joyful and meaningful and healthful.  So I do.   

I hope that you can and do, too.

The Beauty of Winter Trees

Natural settings can speak to people, make them feel at home.  One of my sisters has  been attracted to oceans, another to the desert.  For me, it is forest settings that have always beckoned.

 Every morning, I feel a sense of peace and gratitude as I look out my window at the mature Boreal Forest in which I live.  I regard the trees as my friends, mentors, caregivers, and benefactors.  Alive, they protect me from sun, wind, and cold; they yield nutrients and medicine, as well as beauty. Dead, they continue their beneficence, transformed into my cabin, decks, docks, furniture and fire wood.   

Trees at noon in December

This time of year, I watch the long blue shadows of birch and spruce trees slither across the snow and I am dazzled by the brightness of hoarfrost that coats every surface of the trees.  An occasional owl hoots or raven caws, but otherwise, our winter woods are silent and magnificent.

Almost every afternoon in February and March, my husband and I drive a snowmachine (snowmobile) and sled into the woods along trails we groomed several days before and left to harden.  Our goal is to cull 11 cords of standing dead spruce trees each year for firewood to heat our home and the outdoor soaking tub.  

Sadly, our part of Alaska was infested by spruce beetles about eight years ago.  These tiny insects killed most of the mature white and black spruce throughout millions of acres.  It was very sad to cut down the three stately 85 foot trees near our cabin, but it is even worse to view the skeletal remains.  Dead trees are hazardous, too, both for fire and falling, so every year since the infestation, we pick an area, first on our property, and subsequently, on the state land that surrounds us, to cull dozens of dead trees.  They are put to good use. 

Hoar frost on the trees

Aside from the practical aspect of gathering firewood, this seasonal project generates joy, as well.  Although the beetles devastated mature trees, they did not kill the saplings.  Trees below about 10 feet tall survived the onslaught.  Every time we fell a thicket of dead ones, we find spindly young conifers below them.  Next summer, they will enjoy more sun and space to grow straight and tall and healthy.  In subsequent years, other plants colonize the clearings, too, predominantly prickly rose, elderberry, and highbush cranberry.  Hares, martens, and weasels burrow under the dead branches that clutter the forest floor.

In March, as the snow begins to soften and rot, springy alders and highbush cranberries pop up from their heavy blanket of snow, waving for a moment before they assume a vertical position for summer.  

When the snow starts to recede in April, brown doughnuts of soaked earth encircle the warming trees.  My husband and I tap several birch trees for ten days before the leaves emerge, drinking the bracingly cold sap straight, as well as using it in any recipe that requires water, such as coffee, rice, and homemade wine and beer.  The clear liquid is a nutritious spring tonic, chock full of vitamin C and minerals, such as iron, zinc, calcium, and potassium.  It tastes slightly sweet and vaguely woody.  Eau de paper bag.    

When the soil dries up, I wander through our property, carrying flagging tape and pruners.  I clip the broken branches of saplings and cut out trunks girdled beneath the snow line by hungry hares and voles.  With delight I flag tiny seedlings so that I will not trample or weed whack them when the fast growing wild grasses obscure them.   In subsequent years I marvel as these tiny growths add branches and height, in many cases growing out of the stumps of dead trees.

My woods are a vibrant community of the elderly and the young, the sick and the healthy.  I wander in wonder and awe.   

Ways to Save Eggs for Months

Egg laying is partially predicated on the season.  Our hens, of various breeds, are always most prolific layers in the summer months.  In the autumn, when they molt (shed their feathers and grow new ones) they do not lay at all for 6 to 8 weeks.  During the cold winter months in Alaska, they shiver in the chilly coop, laying maybe half as often as in the summer.  It is only in March, when we have 12 hours of daylight, that they venture out into the snow and start to lay regularly again.

Therefore, I learned various ways to save eggs to eat during the molt and all winter.

Note:  In the USA, people who buy eggs at a supermarket are purchasing eggs that are washed, which removes the bloom, which is a clear thin coating that the hen naturally produces as she lays to protect the egg from bacteria and dirt.  This is why, in this country, eggs are stored in the refrigerator.  

 In the many other countries that do not wash the shells first, shopkeepers store eggs on room temperature shelves, and millions of shoppers store them at home this way, too, up to about 21 days, depending on ambient temperature.   

Since we do not wash our hens’ eggs either, I store them in a large metal bowl on a kitchen counter for up to three weeks.  If I am surfeited with eggs, I store them long term in the various ways listed below.

The following are my experiences and opinions.  Someone else's could be different.  

HOW TO TEST EGGS FOR FRESHNESS

Put any questionable eggs in a deep, flat bottomed pot and cover them with water.  If any float, air has gotten inside the shell and you do not want to eat them.  If they rise slightly off the bottom and turn sideways, I cook them sooner than the eggs that do not rise or tip at all.

LONG TERM EGG STORAGE

GLASSING

I do not know why the term, “glassing” is used for this technique, which involves submerging raw eggs (in their shells) in a lime solution and setting the crock or food grade bucket somewhere, undisturbed, at room temperature.  I have successfully cooked with eggs that I glassed and stored at room temperature for nine months. I have read in Mother Earth News, that people have stored them for two years.  The most I have stored for 9 months is 125, in two food grade 5 gallon buckets with lids. 

To make the solution, I measured out a proportion of 8:1  water to pickling lime, and then heated the water enough that the lime dissolves, stirring thoroughly.  After it cools to room temperature, I pour it into a food grade bucket and gently place unwashed, fresh eggs into the water, making sure that no egg shells rise above the solution.  Over time, the solution will sink to the bottom, so it is important to gently stir up that bottom layer, to recoat the shells.  I do this once a month.   

One year, I neither heated the water nor stirred once a month.  Big mistake!  The eggs on the bottom layer were practically cemented to each other in the lime, but the eggs above the bottom layer rotted.  What a noxious job it was to pull those out and toss away 60 eggs!  Plus, I hate wasting food.

When cooking with the eggs that have been glassed for several months, I rinse them first, and then crack them into a transitional bowl to check.  I find that both the yolks and whites are runnier than fresh eggs, so they are better suited to scrambling, custards, or baking than for fried eggs.

IMPORTANT:  This treatment works only for farm fresh, unwashed eggs that still have the protective “bloom” on the shell.

FREEZING

1)      FAVORED:  Raw beaten eggs can be poured into muffin tins or ice cube trays, frozen, and then popped out to be stored in plastic bags or other containers.  It is helpful to measure the amount of one eggy ice cube for future recipes.  I found that a muffin tin holds about an egg and a half, and my ice cube trays held less than one egg.  These individual units thaw quickly.  When scrambled, the texture of these frozen, raw eggs is the same as unfrozen, raw eggs.  I rarely separate eggs and yolks for recipes, but you can do so and freeze the beaten raw yolks separately from the raw whites.  Either way, freezing raw eggs in measured portions is a very convenient and reliable method.

2)      NOT FAVORED:  Hard boiled eggs can be frozen in or out of the shell.  Shelled eggs will crack when the interior expands in the cold.  Either way, the texture of the white will be rubbery but the yolk will feel normal..  I freeze whole eggs as a winter treat for my dog or hens, but I would not serve them to people.   

3)      VARIABLE RESULTS:  Raw, eggy recipes, like quiche, pancake batter, etc. can be made in advance, packaged well, and frozen, to be thawed overnight for cooking the next morning. I have done so short term with a number of brunch dishes for large gatherings.  NOTES:  a) Like anything in a freezer, if it is not wrapped well and if it is frozen long term, it will develop ice crystals, making the recipe more watery. (b) Many raw vegetables do not freeze well, but cooked vegetables do.

   

PICKLING

My husband and I are not fans of pickled eggs, but many people like them.  To me the texture is rubbery and the vinegar/egg combo is unappealing.  However, my father-in-law told me that “back in the day” pickled eggs were a staple snack food, often free, on the bar at pubs.

 

SAVING EGG SHELLS

 I utilize all the egg shells, too.

1)      If you want to reduce the bitterness of a batch of coffee, drop a half egg shell in your percolator or coffee maker.

2)      To give my dog extra calcium, I grind up dried egg shells and sprinkle it on his food.

3)      I crush hundreds of egg shells each year and distribute the material in my gardens.  The shells have several benefits:  calcium, of course, and the texture lightens heavy soil, and the sharp edges are supposed to deter slugs and other soft bodied pests, although the amount of egg shells in my gardens has never deterred slugs in rainy summers.

In conclusion, we love raising hens for fresh eggs and all the other benefits that hens bring to our homestead.  As with any summer bounty, like zucchini, it is useful to figure out how to save eggs for later in the year and how to utilize the shells. Waste not, want not! Don’t take July’s production for granted.  Planning ahead for low productivity later in the year will be well rewarded.

Winter Preps to Raise Food in Alaska + Recipe - Bubbles and Squeak

(My book, Log Cabin Reflections, is available on Amazon.  Each chapter includes pictures of our off-grid, off-road life in remote Alaska.)

Buddy preparing to haul

We live in USDA Zone 3b, which means that not only is our growing season short, but also winter temperatures can plummet to -35 F.  Still, we do have a number of hardy perennials plants (like berries, rhubarb, and horseradish) but obviously fewer perennials than warmer climates enjoy.

To maximize food growth in summer, I start almost all annual (and desired perennial) plants in the winter, some outside, and some in.

Winter sowing:  This practice is so easy and low maintenance that it almost does not sound feasible, but it does indeed results in healthy plants.  It works best for seeds that need cold stratification (a period of several cold weeks before warming up) and for those that like to sprout in cool spring weather.  To winter sow, I save plastic vinegar and distilled water jugs, slice them around the middle except for a hinge near the handle, fill with about 4 inches of soil, water it with a soil nutrient/root stimulater, sow the seeds and then leave the jugs outside, tied to a banister post so they will not blow away in a heavy wind.  In the spring, when the air warms up, I water the soil lightly and the seeds sprout!  

This method works beautifully for cabbage, onions, garlic, and spinach.  For flowers, it has worked well for valerian, delphinium, lupines.  For some reason, I did not have success with poppies or yarrow.

An alternative that can be done in warm weather, is to store damp seeds in a baggy in the refrigerator for several weeks.  I have done this, too, but the sprouts were so delicate that they did not transplant well for me. 

 

Testing germination:  Seeds age out.  If stored in a cool, dry, dark location, most can be expected to last for 3 years, but beyond that is a gift not to be presumed.  People living in humid and hot environments may find that their seeds age out faster than mine.

Cabin on a sunny winter morning

Last winter, I was determined to get rid of dead seeds, so as not expect that a packet was viable.  I separated and test germinated the oldest packages (2016 - 2019).  To do so, I dampened a paper napkin cut in half, rolled ten seeds into it and inserted this bolus shaped napkin in a small baggy which I labelled with seed name and the average range of germination timing.  Ten seeds makes it easy to extrapolate to the percentage of viable seeds in the packet.  All six varieties of peppers were dead as were the cucumbers and onions.  Beans rotted in the damp.  Some of the seeds of two varieties of rhubarb germinated, as did corn, beets, radishes, one of the tomato packages and one of the tomatillo packages, and to my surprise, watermelon.  I gave all the dead seeds to the chickens as a winter snack. 

From now on, I will do this every winter, to ensure that I have seeds on hand that will produce a good crop.  Those that are dead I can reorder in time for a snowmachine delivery for March-April starts indoors.    

Germinating in a cold oven: I set almost all of my little seed pots in a cold gas oven.  The pilot light keeps the interior a more consistent, toasty temperature than my wood heated home offers, in the mid '70s, which is a germination temperature enjoyed by most seeds.  In side by side comparisons, the seeds that start in the oven sprout several days ahead of their comrades outside the oven. This location is also good for seeds that require darkness to sprout, like cilantro.

Mini-greenhouse:  In a corner of my cabin, I have a 4 shelf mini-greenhouse (6ft h x 3ft w x 2ft d) covered with a plastic sheath with two zippers on the front.  Each shelf has two grow lights.  This environment stays warmer and more humid than the southern windows, where I used to start seeds.  I always sow slow germinating plants, like oregano, in February, as well as fast growing greens that we can enjoy as small, fresh salads or sandwich toppings by early March.  As with the winter sowing, I always add a root stimulator to the soil or water.  One caution is that the plastic can make the environment humid enough to encourage the growth of gray, fluffy mold on the surface of the soil.  To mitigate that, I roll the plastic front “door” up over the top of the structure during daylight hours and close it up at night. 

Challenges:

1.    This year, I dug up the annual herbs before the gardens froze and brought them inside, hoping that they would overwinter in the mini-greenhouse.  However, I found that even with the grow lights on for about 8 hours they did not thrive.  They prefer 12+ hours of light.  The result was not worth the effort, so I dried the remaining leaves, put the pots outside and will seed them again in February.

2.  A mistake that I often make is to start plants too early because I am so eager.  This results in leggy plants that are weak when transplanted outside.  One year, my potato plants lay sideways on the ground!

     Every gardener has his or her hacks and a history of hits and misses.  These are a few that work for me so that I can utilize the cold and lazy months of winter to get a head start on a fast and furious summer of food production.

 RRECIPE:  Bubbles and Squeak

Bubbles and Squeak – what an evocative name for left overs!  This side dish or entrée is mentioned in British texts as far back as the 1700s.  It is a tasty way to use up a combination of leftover mashed potatoes, vegetables, and bits of meat. (Note:  if you like this recipe, check out Irish Colcannon, which is similar, but adds milk.)          

Melt 6 oz butter in a large, flat pan.

Sautee ½ cup chopped or diced onion and garlic to taste, about 3 minutes.

Add 2 cups of mashed potatoes.  Thoroughly saturate with the melted butter.

Add 1 cup chopped, raw, green vegetables and mix in well with the potato.  Cabbage is traditional, but any leafy green or diced broccoli will work nicely.  Mix in any cooked, chopped meat, if desired, like ham or sausage.

At this point, decide whether you want the final product to be loose or individual patties.

If the former, warm through and serve, as a hash.

If the latter, shape the food into patties and chill for an hour or more, then fry in additional oil, pressing down on the patties to crisp up the cooking surface, and then flip, press, cook, and then serve. 

Bubbles and Squeak is tasty either way.  The only difference is texture and presentation.

Spring: Lake Breakup in Alaska: From Snowmachine to Kayak in 2 weeks

The end of winter 2023 was S-L-O-W.  We finally put away our snowmachines on April 28.  But after that, the transition from ice to water on the lake took a mere two weeks.

When migrating geese and cranes flew overhead in late April/early May, our dog loped toward them, along the hard packed snowmachine tracks that traversed the lake ice, only to be surprised when he sank several inches as he veered off into the soft and rotting snow on either side of the path. We saw the snow change color as both it and the underlying lake ice melted.  In some light conditions, the streaks of color looked almost Caribbean: sea green, light blue, and sand colors, until the ice got super thin and looked black.

Within a meager two weeks, KAYAK SEASON arrived.  Yea!  Despite plenty of snow on the ground, on May 13, we three kayaked among the ice floes.  To my dismay, Buddy jumped off the bow onto a soft ice floe and sank into frigid water.  We hauled him into the kayak, all 65 pounds of him, and returned home to warm him up with blankets and food.  Two days later though, the lake was ice free on May 15, as usual.  Such a reliably punctual date over many decades.  We kayaked along the periphery of the lake while Buddy ran along shore through snowmelt and soggy bogs, throwing off sprays of water.  He sniffed all the various scents on air, water, and soil, and looked absolutely delighted.  Until mid-Oct, we kayak every day that lacks high winds or heavy rain, accompanied by homemade wine (for me) and homemade beer (for Bryan) and peanuts for all three of us. Each week something else blooms, changes color, and scents the air.

In breakup, we start to see and hear many more neighboring creatures than we did in the depths of winter.  One day in late May, we saw our first moose of the year – a large, blonde one across the lake.  The next day, Buddy startled a river otter or beaver out of the brush which leapt into the lake.  (I caught a mere glimpse of the round, brown head from the corner of my eye, so I am not sure of the species.) 

As a Labrador mix, our dog is attuned to birds.  Fortunately, all water fowl have skills and abilities that exceed his.   Like Wiley Coyote, who never caught Roadrunner, Buddy is eager to chase the ducks but never, ever catches one.  When from shore he spies a pair swimming, he wriggles his butt, circles his tail, makes a distinctive whine, and jumps into the cold water, swimming toward them.  The ducks take his measure, let him approach to a specific distance, and then fly safely to the far shore.  By contrast, loons dive with their strong feet and reappear 100 or so feet away.  Buddy looks left and right, slows down, and then resignedly paddles to the nearest shore.  Foiled again. After a few days of this, the ducks wisely decided to lay nests in the grass and shrubs along the twin lakes behind us, where their progeny can incubate and hatch, unmolested.  But adults still visit here, feeding on larvae and perhaps baby pike and pike eggs.  

 

Before 2015, I used to LOVE seeing loons raise and train 8 - 12 soft, fluffy fledglings on our lake.   The little ones learned to dive and fly in Keystone Cops commotion.  I don’t know why the loons stopped laying eggs here at that time.  Since then (7 years before our dog joined us in 2022), we see visiting pairs of loons and many species of migrating fowl but no resident families.  It was around that year that spruce beetles devastated the region’s forests, so perhaps other elements of the eco-system attractive to loons changed then, too.

Whatever the reasons may be, each year the changes from winter to spring are fast and dramatic both on the lake and on land. (See blog about land changes in next article).