Highbush Cranberry Harvest and Alaskan Recipe

My adult version of Halloween Trick or Treating is to gather highbush cranberries when they are red and ripe in the autumn.  In cool weather (40s F), I amble around the hundreds of plants on our property, delicately raking the glistening red fruit through my fingers and depositing them in a bag slung over my arm.

 

Mature, fruit bearing plants range from waist high to 15 feet here, with an airy arrangement of opposite maple-like leaves on slim, upward curving branches. (see photos below)  Both in spring and fall, they are very pretty.  This time of year, the foliage varies in color as far as the eye can see - green, yellow, orange, red, and burgundy - depending on whether their locations are sunny or shady.  I pick a gallon at a time of the reddest fruit, letting the orange ones imbibe their full complement of sunny goodness for a few more days.  

Most bushes prefer to grow in dappled shade under or near birch trees.  But the “blue ribbon” producers thrive in a sunny thicket in front of the lake where no birches grow.  I puzzled over this anomaly for a while until I remembered all of the waterlogged birch trunks we had hauled out of the lake back in 2007 and 2008, to ensure safe passage for docking float planes.  Based on the birches leaning precipitously over the water elsewhere on the lake, I presume that the root balls of those erstwhile trees probably drowned in saturated shore side soil, and tipped into the water.  In the meantime, they created an ecosystem conducive to my beloved cranberries.

As I wander about, kicking yellow birch leaves, I can feel that the cooling land is getting firmer under foot.  I breathe in the musty scent of the woods, and listen to the rasping sound of drying and brittle leaves as they rub against each other.  I pop a few of the tart, juicy fruits into my mouth and feel them squirt out their load of vitamin C.  To me, this is the iconic taste of fall.  What a pleasure these daily excursions are.  They stimulate all five of my senses.  

After each day's harvest, I rinse the berries and sort out any debris before popping them in a bag to store in the freezer until I have enough to go through the process of assembling, using, dismantling, and cleaning my manual food mill.  Unlike bog cranberries, these have a flat seed to extract, so I set up two bowls - one to receive the juice (for people), and the other to collect the seeds and pulp (as a winter treat for the chickens).  Most of the juice I sweeten with our newly harvested honey and drink thick, like a nectar, hot or cold.  Some I set aside unsweetened, to add a wonderful flavor to barbecue sauces, vinaigrettes, and fruity desserts. 

As a child, my exposure to cranberries was limited to canned jelly on Thanksgiving.  Now I nurture the plants for the spring and fall beauty as well as their tasty, vitamin rich addition to my larder.

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Recipe for Barbecue Sauce:

2 cups fresh, unsweetened cranberry juice

2 cups beer

2 cups molasses

2 cups vinegar

1 small can tomato paste

1/2 cup black coffee

Dried orange rind, about 1/4 of a fruit

Herbs and spices to taste.  We like it hot, so add a lot of hot dry peppers and garlic.  I also like a "dark" flavor so I add cloves and cinnamon.  

Simmer and cook down a bit to thicken.  Flavors combine best if consumed the next day or many hours after cooking and resting.

Our Interview on www.thesurvivalpodcast.com

Linked here is our 1 hour interview with Jack Spirko, of The Survival Podcast.

 http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/lbear-hunting-for-meat

Jack has produced a daily podcast on topics of interest to the prepper community since at least 2008.  Bryan listened to them when we still lived in Houston, TX.

He has a delightful personality as a radio host.

In this interview, we talk about harvesting black bear for food, as well as other topics such as beekeeping and foraging.

If you enjoy this program, you might like to explore his two websites:  www.thesurvivalpodcast.com and www.survivalpodcast.net.

Thanks for listening.

June at an off-grid Alaska Cabin: bear burgers recipe

The short summers of Alaska are busy for everyone.  Here, too.  In June alone, between (and during) visits by and to friends and family, we had several visits by moose cows and calves, harvested a destructive black bear (10.5 quarts of bear broth alone – bear burgers for dinner tonight), and gathered, dried, blanched, froze, canned, fermented, pickled meat and veggies (as appropriate), and limed 60 eggs toward the 100 I want to have when the hens molt (and produce no eggs) for 6-8 weeks in the fall.  

This time of year, we enjoy many Cobb salad entrees for dinner, with whatever greens I gather that day, plus meat, cheese, and hard boiled eggs provided by the hens and ducks.  Sorrel remains a citrus-y favorite green (raw only).  The spicy leaves of horseradish, nasturtium, and mustard flavor burgers, bratwurst, and potato salad.  A sauce/dip/chutney of fresh mint leaves with jalapeno is a tasty condiment.  Rhubarb enlivens oatmeal, muffins, and desserts now and through much of the winter, too.   

Yes, mosquitoes are BAD in Alaska in June.  We battled a 4 week onslaught both indoors and out.  Inside, we slept under mosquito nets, and wielded tennis racquet – like bug zappers with the finesse of Wimbledon athletes.  We live a very organic life EXCEPT this time of year, when we light chemical coils outside the front and back doors and spray ourselves with DEET.   

 

But June is not all work and insects.  We enjoy nearly daily afternoon kayaks around the lake and frequent, stunning flights with views of several, snow capped mountain ranges and the river valleys in between.  The air smells sweet, and sweetly varying, as a succession of plants come into flower at various heights, from ground cover to bushes to trees (ash).  I sniff my way around the property each afternoon, appreciating each short burst of beauty, both olfactory and visual.  

Weather-wise, June 2021 has been unusual, primarily for precipitation.  The first week we witnessed a rather dramatic hailstorm from our covered front porch.  As hailstones bounced onto the deck, I popped some into my wine.  Fortunately this year, like last June's hailstorm, too, no damage occurred to any of our plants.   For the rest of the month, we saw many more days of rain than usual.  This pattern, following the hot (low 80s) temps in May meant that some plants bolted early from the heat and others were visited by aphids and slugs.  Not a great combo if you want to eat what you grow!  I nipped out the flowers of the bolters, sprayed garlic solution on the aphids, densely sprinkled diatomaceous earth around and on the plants visited by slugs, and started harvesting leaves and stalks earlier than usual for canning.  So far, my efforts seem to be helping.  The heat and rain likely mean a second fabulous year for harvesting several gallons of our five types of berries.  Yum.

A noticeable difference this year is the lack of pollinators.  For 7-8 years, we have raised honeybees.  This year, rain and other issues prevented our picking up the four small, nuclear colonies with our bee vendor.  When we realized this, he was able to loan or rent them to local orchards.  By the time we could retrieve them, the number of bees in each colony made the prospect of flying them out in our little plane a rather dicey proposition (!!!)  So we will harvest the honey at his  place in August.  Without the bees here,  I notice that the only insects in my gardens this month are mosquitoes and an occasional bumblebee.  I hand pollinated the plants in my greenhouse, but I fear a low harvest.  

 

I never thought of myself as fond of any insects, but I want those gentle bees back here!

Bear Burger Recipe

* Shoot, skin, and butcher a black bear (This will take many hours)

* Soak meat in a thin brine overnight.  Pluck off residual hairs.

* Chop meat into chunks, like stew meat - about 2 x 2 inches.

*Feed through a meat grinder, alternating with fat (pork or bear) of the proportion you prefer for burgers (85%/15% etc). 

*Grind a second time. (the grinding is fast, but set up, grinding, and clean up takes about an hour)

* Either chill immediately or combine immediately with other flavorings, such as herbs, diced onions, grated cheese.  Shape into burger shapes or hot dog shapes. 

* When firm but not frozen, toss on the grill. 

* Serve on home made buns with condiments of choice, just like hamburgers.

For some reason,  I do not find bear burgers to be the "gut busters" that  similar sized beef burgers can be.

May in Southcentral Alaska - snow, bears, birds, and flowers

 May is the month of greatest transitions here.  Just as the weasel's fur  changes from white to brown, so does the landscape shed its snowy raiment for muddy expanses that quickly green up and then flower.  Temperatures rose from a low of +6F to +78 (which is too hot for me).  Surely heat records for May.  

WATER:

On Mother's Day (May 8) we were able to drop the kayak into a slim slip of open water and bob about close to shore.  By May 11, we crashed through rotting ice floes,to huge expanses of  water which  a diverse community  of ducks and geese discovered immediately.  Yea!  Welcome back, feathered friends!  No otters this year though. Right on schedule, the lake was fully liquid on May 15, so we scheduled an air taxi to pick up Bryan on the 17th so he could retrieve his float plane in Willow.  

LAND:  

The land starts out a muddy mess, traversed with the sinuous swales that voles carved below the snow.  We gather up branchy debris that fell during winter storms and use it to “courderoy” low wet spots that spell “mosquito nursery” to anyone in the region. Initially, these branches provide a bit of a surface to walk over the water and mud.  Eventually, they will break down and perhaps raise the surface a bit at a time.  Two big, rotting birch trees snapped during a wind storm and slopped over the sap line.  We will cut them into firewood this summer.   Meanwhile, I collected 20 gallons of sap from 6 trees elsewhere over a few days.  A tasty and vitamin rich spring tonic.

I LOVE wandering about the newly opened brownscape to “visit” wild plants that bounce up out of the snow.  To me, they are like snowbird neighbors who have returned after a winter away.  Because of several  years culling thick swathes of devil's club, sweet grass, and wild raspberries, I enjoy  a sunny meadow with a prickly rose “garden, ” orchards of high bush cranberry bushes, and an expanding  ground cover of white starflowers and dwarf dogwood which delights me.   Wild currants tumble gracefully over spruce stumps and under birch trees.  These plants are the first to flower, with small, modest mauve and white flowers that perfume the surrounding air. Opportunistic dandelions are pretty, too, and nutritious.  Bumblebees dote on the butter yellow flowers of the domestic haskap (honeyberry) bushes which line the south side of our cabin.

 

GARDENS: 

Each autumn, I mulch the raised bed gardens with a soft bed of birch leaves. In May,  intrepid perennial plants like rhubarb, chives, feverfew, strawberry, and sorrel are the first to pop through, followed, sigh, by the weed chickweed.  

To try to retard that weed in my gardens and greenhouse, I SERIOUSLY FURTHER mulched three gardens, totalling 156 square feet, with the mucky chicken bedding I described in the April blog.   I also lay garden fabric on the ground, next to the raised bed in my green house and topped it with spruce rounds as stepping stones to retard the rampant growth of weeds in there.  I can already see the advantage because of the ferns growing green and lush beneath the fabric – but unable to grow upward or spread spores... except where they find the edges and openings.  Of the three ground covers, the birch leaves were the most effective at retarding chickweed.  Point noted.

WILD and DOMESTIC ANIMAL HUSBANDRY:

I feel sorry for my hens cooped up all winter.  They don't like the snow and cold.  So it was such a pleasure to see them venture bravely across the snow toward the cabin, under which there is so much dry, dusty, welcoming dirt.    Interestingly to me, it was the “lowest three gals” on the pecking order that ventured out first.  I wonder if this is analagous to humans.  Were the  lower orders of societies  the brave sailors, pilgrims, and “miner '49ers”  who took off first for points unknown?  Out and about on brown and green land, the hens function as  shallow rototillers, scratching up the dead grass looking for seeds and grubs.  We have added two ducks and five more hens to our menagerie, much to our amusement.

We always see moose cows and calves in late May/early June, but never a bear that early in the year... until now.  One night about 10 pm I saw a HUGE cow and her dainty calf walking past the cabin.  They headed toward a woodsy spot near the lake and then BOLTED out of the trees back toward us.  Clearly, they were running away something frightening.  Sure enough,  two brown bears chased them up hill.  They evaded their predators, because we saw them a week later (this evening).    

I also surprised a cow and twins around 11 am when I popped outside to stir the hot tub water.  The mom stopped, assessed the danger and then trotted up hill, 50 feet past me.   

There is never a dull day in May.  Much to do.  Much to see. 

April, Record Breaking Temperatures

Weatherwise, April was a whipsaw month of dramatic changes. Temperature records were set all over the state for LOWS around April 7 and for HIGHS just two weeks later.  Anchorage smashed a record set way back in 1917.  Here, we bottomed out at 6 degrees F, BEFORE wind chill, which was substantial, and topped out at 64.  By mid-month, we relied only on a modest morning fire to warm the house above 59 degrees. No fire = spring cleaning, so we washed every curtain and rug free of 6 months of soot and ash accumulation.

Snow: 

As you may imagine, the snow started melting FAST.  We shed 5.5 feet in about 10 days.  Even with the dissipation of that volume, our yard is still 90% white.  Brown doughnuts of open ground have appeared around trees and dark buildings, expandìng and blending.  Hardscape is starting to appear, such as the rocks around our firepit and log benches.  We discover that the snow weight shredded a 4x4 post tethered to several electric and barbed wires encircling the beeyard.  (We should have loosened the wires).  On the other hand, one of the 2 x 4 cross beams of the raspberry trellis broke, too, and we DID loosen those wires.  Frost heave and snow.  What ya gonna do? 

Chickens: 

My delightful hens have endured another winter.  They don't like cold, wind, or snow, but they do like sun (so I wish we had positioned their coop better).  In mid-April, they started venturing rather tentatively out across the snow to our cabin.  I don't like it when they poop on my back porch, but I LOVE seeing and hearing them, and I am sure they love the snowless expanse under and around the edges of our cabin.  In a happy trade, the 8 ladies gave us 7 eggs one day.  I hope that these fluffy carnivores are eradicating fly larvae, because those creatures are annoying the barbeques we have started to enjoy again in the sun of the front porch. 

This was the first winter that we kept so many birds through the winter (we actually started with 10, but a marten killed two of them.  As a result, we underestimated the amount of hay we would need.  In the initial warm months of winter, I turned the dirty bedding every day.  But the muck freezes in deep cold, so later I use a deep litter method, which is to simply add a flake of new material every few days.  Well, by the beginning of April, we had depleted the bale, the coop smelled of ammonia which is unhealthy for the birds, and it was too cold for them to go outside.  So Bryan mucked out the stinky mess and I hauled 14 small sled loads uphill to dump into our big snowmachine sled.   It was interesting to see the methane rich material steaming from its internal heat in below freezing temperatures.  When the coop was cleared out, we transported the noisome pile to the vicinity of the biggest raised bed gardens in the back of the property.   Then, I layered thick cardboard over the chickens' floor and tossed in woody debris from our wood corral and cold ash.  This was not ideal, but it sufficed for the short interim until they could spend most of their days outdoors. 

Plants: 

I love what I consider to be scavenger hunts throughout the year.  In April, I cross the snow to the open ground and seek the earliest leaves and buds, some of which appear directly through the snow, too.  By the end of the month, I am wearing a short sleeved T shirt, but with tall boots and gloves as I cross through rotting snow, sometimes postholing up to my knees.  

Wild currant and elderberrry buds are full and fleshy.  The initially magenta leaves of dwarf dogwood appear along the lake shore.  Among domesticated plants, I favor perennials, and have planted lots of tulips in groups of 5-7 in front of a memorial bench with stone cairns for loved ones and dear friends.  Not only are the tulip leaves rising directly through the thinning snow, but, to my surprise, several of the cairns remain intact, rather than tumbled, despite all the winter snow.    

During this transitional time of year, we scurry about, trading out winter supplies for summer ones.   The marine cooler that stored food on the porch all winter is cleaned out.  The freezers in the food shed and the on-demand water heater are turned back on.  Boots and skis and parkas and snowmachines go into the bunny hutch/garage building, trading places with summer wear, mosquito netting, and sunscreen.  

As of the end of April, we see no open water on the lake yet, but it is no longer safe to walk on the thinning surface.  As the snow melts there, the lake takes on a variety of hues – some black/brown from suspension of dead leaves and branches, some lovely shades of ice blue, sea green, and sand.  We have pulled the blue tandem kayak out from beneath the cabin and dusted it off, ready for the first day we can paddle among the ice floes, perhaps with a visiting river otter.