October at a Remote Alaska Homestead

 October is the start of freeze up.  This year, during the first half of October, snow started to cling to the apex of Mt. Susitna (about 4400 feet).  On the 16th, it appeared at the top of Little Su, too (about 3300 feet).  Most of the deciduous trees and bushes dropped their leaves (except for the yellow needles of tamaracks and the fat green maple-like leaves of the large domesticated currant bushes).  We raked up tarps full of birch leaves to mulch the raised bed gardens as well as two trellises of domesticated raspberry bushes.  We also re-wrapped the lowest 1-2 feet of young berry plants to protect them from under-snow girdling by hungry voles and hares.   Having lost several prior apple and cherry trees to such predation, I hope we can finally outsmart those little rodents.  

 During the first half of the unusually warm month, we were still able to gather fresh salads of sorrel, mustard, and nasturtium greens every day.  Tomatoes continued to grow in the greenhouse, even though I stopped watering in September.  A wonderful treat was our first small harvest of horseradish.  We divided the plants, cut the skinny horizontal roots for the kitchen and replanted the stronger, thicker tap roots for next year's growth. The ones I harvested for our use were so thin that I just used my thumb nail to scrape off the hairs and thin skin, then pulverized the roots with mayonnaise and yogurt for a tangy sauce.  It was so delicious that it lasted a mere 2 weeks!  I look forward to much more sauce in years to come, since the plant flourishes in our Alaska climate, and since our jalapenos seem to taste milder than those we grew in Texas.

September at a Remote Alaska Homestead

September is our month for beautiful autumn colors, rain, trail blazing, and molting chickens.

Our views are particularly attractive this time of year.  From my bed upstairs, I see the yellow birch trees below purple mountains reflected in perfect symmetry in the still lake. Through the north windows, I spy patches of sparkling water  hidden all summer by the leaves of trees.  From the kitchen window, I look uphill where  the understory plants, like highbush cranberry and devil's club, and the ground huggers like dwarf dogwood turn brilliant shades of yellow, red and purple.  The scents of autumn the musty fruity fragrance of cranberry bushes and on dry days, the tannic scent of dead birch and other leaves.  

 

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.   

Are We Dependent, Self-sufficient, or Self-Sustaining?

 article posted on www.survivalblog.com

 

One of our goals each year is to decrease our dependency on others by increasing our skills and resources.  In the city, it was convenient to pay for services and products.  Living remotely, we learn to do many things ourselves or do without.  I evaluate aspects of our life on a continuum from dependent to independent:

*Dependent on others
*Self-reliant
*Self-sufficient
*Self-sustaining

Given recent news reports of coronavirus and the economy, tornadoes, wildfires, and power outages, perhaps readers are applying this sort of rubric to their situations, too.

a) DEPENDENT -  I judge us as dependent on items and skills/services  we have to BUY ONCE A YEAR or more often.  These include ANY rapidly depleted products made of petroleum (fuel, plastic) metal, glass, and paper (toilet paper!!!).  We are also dependent for  foods we enjoy but cannot grow, like tropical spices, coffee, citrus.  Finally, we rely on skilled service providers occasionally, too, for skilled construction, machine repair, taxidermy.

b) SELF-RELIANT - This simply means things we do ourselves, whether it is baking bread or cutting down a tree. 

c) SELF-SUFFICIENT - I define this as having the skills and products or resources on hand that will LAST 1 to 8 or 9 YEARS, before requiring replacement/renewal. These include our wind turbine, stored food (both homemade and purchased), annual foods that I grow from seed, most electric and gas tools, chickens, honeybees. (Hens lay for 3 years before aging out, and some years our honeybees overwinter but others they all die). A low cost of living is helpful to self-sufficiency, too.

d) SELF-SUSTAINING - This is the “gold standard” of independence.  It encompasses products and resources on hand that can conceivably last FOREVER, or at least a DECADE without outside servicing or replenishment.  Examples for us include our well and lake, accessible timber for fuel and construction, perennial fruit, herbs, and vegetables (both wild and planted/domesticated for  food and home remedies), solar panels, many hand tools and some long lasting gas and electric tools.  I also include black bear meat and the rabbits that we raise for their meat, fertilizer, and fur, since a buck and two does produce as many rabbits as we want, at a frequency and time of year that we can choose (by when we mate them).  Sadly, the lake is not a self--sustaining food source.  Voracious pike eliminated the prior tasty fish and are now eating each other to such an extent that the fish are vastly depleted in both number and size. To access other fish in nearby creeks, we need to maintain trails through the woods, which we have neglected. 

DECREASING DEPENDENCE:  Over the years, it has been something of a game for me to shave off a number of products we used to buy.  In many cases, this saves money.  In others, it increases our sense of competency. For example, I finally taught myself to sew and I find it more satisfying than I expected.  Previously,  I learned how to forage for wild foods for nutrition and medicine, and to make many staples such as hygiene and house cleaning products, condiments, and bread from relatively few, cheap, and versatile staples like salt, vinegar, yeast, or hydrogen peroxide.   My husband has become a more skillful carpenter.   

One “game” I like to play is to figure out how to repurpose something that previously was used only in one season or became trash.  Six foot x 22” metal grids variously function as bean trellises, rabbit hutches, and fur/potato drying racks.  The greenhouse houses our rabbits in the winter.  Plastic sleds haul wood in winter and hay, mulch, weeds in summer.  Tin cans become whimsical yard art.  Torn flannel sheets become comfortable pajama bottoms.  Kitchen garbage feeds the animals and gardens.  In such ways, we make fewer purchases, multiply the value of resources we already have, generate less trash, and preserve money, gasoline, space, and time.

In conclusion, we are certainly much more self-reliant than we ever were when living in a city, where services and products were so convenient to buy.  Except during hurricanes and floods, I did not think much about supply chains and accessibility.  Now, I certainly do.  We have sacrificed convenience in favor of increasing competence and a quiet sort of satisfaction.

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.