It’s been in the negative double digit temperatures for most of the year so far, but we’re already making plans for summer!

With a low of -29° January has been a bit chilly! Fortunately a few warm days here and there have allowed us to get out and have some fun skiing and sledding. The weather has been somewhat of a roller coaster this winter, occasionally warming up above average temperatures, and sometimes doing the opposite.

As a new year surprise our chickens started laying eggs again in the middle of the month! Typically they have quit laying for the entire winter and don’t start again until spring. Maybe it’s a sign they are happy with their new home and having light for more than just a few hours each day. Speaking of light, it’s about a month past the solstice and our days are getting noticeably longer – it’s quite delightful to enjoy sunsets in the evening, rather than in the afternoon. ​

Pete did have to take a break from making cabinets to put together a Murphy Bed so my Mother-In-Law would have a place to sleep when she came to visit for a few days. Fortunately, her flight was delayed by 24 hours, giving us just enough time to finish it up before she arrived! Haha, sometimes things just work out that way. The Murphy Bed was our first time doing any sort of built-in furniture and we’re very happy with how it turned out. Though, it’s probably near the limit of the size of thing we can make in our current limited space. ​

Wild North Design has been busy with custom orders in January as I head into my 7th year of business. I love seeing the progress! Thank you to everyone who has supported and challenged me over the years. I've also been working on building inventory for upcoming shows this year. Stay tuned for more details on the in-person shows! Below are some custom pieces completed this month. 

 Wow! What a wonderful year it has been. At the end of a very cold December we look back on our blessings this year.  

As we have every year, we were able to make many great memories yet again this year. We went on a boat ride in Resurrection Bay (out of Seward), ate countless delicious meals, explored Hatcher Pass, climbed Bodenburg Butte, went out to the Matanuska and Knik Glaciers, and completed various projects around the property. We also drove down to Ninilchik for a music festival and more good food! We spotted lots of wildlife; a black bear sow and her babies, loads of moose (meese?), bald eagles, puffins, fox, sea otters, dalls porpoise, and sea lions among other local fawn and flora.

In May, we had fixed and beefed up our outdoor kitchen from the previous winter’s snow damage. We now have year round storage for the garden equipment. The outdoor kitchen is amazing to process fish (none this year) and other meat, and also harvest the large quantities of produce. It's great having a big outdoor space that can be easily hosed down without worrying about making a big mess. Thank you to the family that came up in May to help with the reconstruction!

The shop is a nice finishing highlight of 2023. It was a big project, but Pete was able to get water connected to the shop, and that was perhaps the hardest part of the shop project this year. On a higher note, the bathroom is SO nice! We have enjoyed expanding our bathroom necessities out there. Of course there still needs to be a door put on the closet, and small miscellaneous fixtures put in, and plans for wainscoting, but it still has the comforts of a modern finished bathroom. The office in the shop has also been enjoyable too. January we will finish out a Murphy bed so guests can comfortably stay in the shop. We have a guest coming in a few weeks so we have an upcoming deadline to meet!  

This year Wild North Design participated in about 5 shows. Down from 2022, but keeping up with website sales and custom orders, prepping for in-person shows keeps me quite busy! In 2024 I plan to continue the limited in-person shows, as they are quite a lot of work and I'd rather put that effort into making inventory and designing new products. In the upcoming year, I am excited to try out lots of new ideas on the new design program for the CNC. Stay tuned!

As we close out the year reflecting on the beautiful year, I also can’t help but remember those we have lost and those we have gained. There was health hardships and other exterior strains we experienced during the year but we ended with healthy and full hearts. We are very optimistic about the upcoming year. Cheers to you and your families. Wishing you health, happiness, and growth in 2024!

The wild weather this month has shown us nearly an entire winter’s worth of excitement in just the past four weeks! Heavy snow loads on trees and high winds have nearly knocked down enough trees in the backyard to give us mountain views. You have to look between the remaining standing spruce to see the peaks of the Chugach Mountains across the bay. 

November started off with lots of snow; Anchorage receiving the most snow in over 70 years for November. Then, around the middle of the month, high winds (70mph) coming through the Matanuska Valley combined with fresh snow to produce a blizzard which lasted for 4 or 5 days. The heavy snow and high winds caused lots of trees to come down, some of them landing on power lines which knocked out power to several thousand homes. Our area totaled nearly 50 hours without power this month. Fortunately, we’re able to get along just fine without the power company thanks to our generators and other off-grid gear. The blizzard subsided around the 20th of the month. Then, from Thanksgiving through the end of the month, a week of warm, above freezing temperatures and even a couple days of rain knocked down the snow depth, cleared off the roads, and washed all the snow off the roofs. So now, we feel like we either just got a super-condensed winter and spring will be rolling in just in time for Christmas, OR we only got a sneak peak preview of what the next 3 months have in store. Neither would surprise us, but either way, we’re prepared!

For our Thanksgiving holiday, we cooked a delicious feast including a whole turkey (wrapped in some homemade bacon!), stuffing, potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. But hands down the best part was the pumpkin pie we made from our homegrown organic pumpkins and the crust made with clean lard we rendered after processing our pigs. Obviously, this is waaayy too much food for two people and a toddler, so we spent the remainder of the month concocting soups, sandwiches, casseroles and other dishes from the leftovers. Hopefully by Christmas we’ve gotten some more of our pork cured and can do the whole feast again, but with homemade ham!

We’ve certainly discovered the vegetables we’ve been growing in the garden over the summer make the best ingredients for our holiday feasts! This gives us the motivation to put in the serious effort it takes to grow a big productive garden around here. Living near the arctic circle means it takes a lot more preparation and know-how in order to get a reliable harvest. With some summers being quite mild, and therefore pretty easy to grow outdoors, other summers can be cold, wet, and cloudy the majority of the season. Never really knowing which we will get, we will just always expect the latter and be pleasantly surprised when we get the former. Some of the main things we’re going to focus on for the 2024 growing season is setting up a space inside our heated shop for starting seedlings early on, and we’re also going to try different methods for raising the soil temperature around the plants. Hopefully these things yield measurable improvements which we can build upon in future seasons.

The inhospitable weather this month forced us to spend some time inside. This wasn’t all bad because Wild North Design had a big holiday show the Saturday after Thanksgiving to prepare for. The show went great and it was so wonderful to see all the people out and getting into the holiday spirit! We love all the custom order requests we get when talking with people at these shows; it’s a great feeling to be shipping our Alaska themed crafts as gifts all over the world!

We’re also excited to have started working on finishing out our office space inside our shop building. Last night (last day of the month) we poured a big batch of self-leveling cement underlayment to flatten out the floor. We certainly realized it’s cheaper and easier just to make the concrete slab level and flat when it’s initially poured, rather than fixing it afterwards. However, we were inexperienced and undermanned and that time and even though it didn’t look THAT bad, it definitely could have been better! Oh well, mistakes like not getting the building slab perfectly flat are all just part of the learning experience. I always remember it’s not that masters never make mistakes, just that they are experts at fixing them! So now we know how to repair a sloppily poured slab; another feather in our hat! Next, we’re going to install a vinyl plank flooring on top of the flattened cement. Then, we’re excited to get started on some CNC projects where we’ll design and make some custom cabinets and also a fold-up Murphy bed. This will let us organize some of our clutter, making the office a nice relaxing work space which can also be used for guests to stay when they’re visiting.  

It’s been a roller coaster of a month, so check back next month to see how December goes! We are excited to put our beautiful new workspace to use this winter. When things settle down after the holidays, we’ll really be able to dig in and spend some time working on and trying out new designs. We want to start utilizing our CNC machine more to start doing some larger and also more intricate pieces. We’ve got lots of ideas for combining laser cut parts, epoxy coatings, deep CNC engravings, and even LED lights! Stay tuned to see what we come up with, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you’ve got a special idea you’d like us to help make a reality! Thanks for reading, and take care out there!

September and October had us scrambling to button up a laundry list of projects before the inevitable snowfall.

Cleaning out the gardens was a big task over the past two months. With our eyes on the weather forecast, we picked the little green pumpkins out of our pumpkin patch and most of our other vegetables before the hard freeze set in. Unfortunately, because of the cool wet summer the pumpkins and squash didn't grow very big. We brought a handful of them inside in September and by Halloween, they were orange! Next year we plan to start a lot of our full-season plants, such as the pumpkins, indoors around the middle or end of April so they can get a jump start and hopefully grow bigger. ​

With the extended fall weather, Pete was able to beef up the high tunnel by reinforcing the roof and adding walls on the ends, enclosing the whole space. He also moved our 500 gallon water storage tank into the tunnel which he will use to experiment with a hydroponic growing system next summer. This buttoned up the greenhouse will allow us to start growing earlier next spring and well into fall with not much extra work. Hopefully it handles the snow! A neighbor gave us a large blower fan we can install next summer if it gets too warm inside, since it is now completely enclosed. The weather this summer showed us that having enclosed spaces for extending the growing season in Alaska is key! ​However, after losing lots of harvested vegetables we were storing in a greenhouse due to a hard freeze one week, we're also discovering that a climate controlled place for storing the produce is also pretty important; both for keeping things cool when the sun is shining and also keeping it from freezing when temperatures drop. It is a big investment, but if we're going to be growing lots of food, that may have to be a project on our list in the next year or two. 

Pete has continued working on the bathroom inside the shop. He's installed the flooring, closet shelves, toilet, vanity and door. The bathroom is slowly coming together! Next, we'll focus on finishing the office. Having a clean floor with a rug and some permanent shelving/storage will allow us to organize the space and give us a clean, cozy place to work and do the occasional epoxy pour. ​

This fall I've been staying busy with Wild North Design finishing out custom orders and having fun making inventory for my Thanksgiving and Christmas shows. A corrupted hard drive on the computer which runs our CNC machine has thrown a wrench into our production plans, but a replacement should be here in a couple days and we'll hopefully be up and running again soon. The warm new workshop has been such a great environment to work in on these cold evenings. I've even been creating some personal items like potato storage crates, laundry shelf, and some Halloween decor! See all my creations on Facebook and Instagram or on these monthly blog posts. Christmas orders are filling up fast, so please place your order soon to have it arrive by Christmas. I will be announcing the official Christmas order cutoff in November on social media. ​

We hope your autumn was enjoyable as we wind down into winter. Snow is expected any day here. The animals are either sleeping in our freezer or buttoned up in their cozy digs. The garden is cleaned out, water hoses have been drained, and everything organized so the snow plow doesn't run into any surprises. The moose are starting to come back out, so just as the Midwesterners bid goodbye by saying "watch for deer", in Alaska we say "watch for moose!". Thank you for reading, Happy Halloween and have a wonderful Thanksgiving! ​

There have also been challenges in raising our poultry livestock. The breed of broiler chickens we’ve been raising, Cornish Cross, have given us trouble the past couple years. Upon doing some research, we’ve found they are not recommended for raising at high altitudes because they grow very fast (which is great!) but their lungs do not grow in proportion to the rest of their bodies. So at high altitudes they are not able to oxygenate enough blood and it causes issues with their hearts. We are basically at sea-level, so we did not think that would apply to us, but we have found that cold temperatures like what we’ve been seeing at night for most of this summer can also cause the same problem. One solution would be to raise them in one of our greenhouses, but that would mean not being able to grow crops in there at the same time. Maybe some day we will have an extra greenhouse where we could rotate the chickens through, but our plan for next year is to just try a different breed which grows slower. It will mean taking care of them for 12 weeks instead of only 8, but if we have a better success rate it will probably be worth it. We did not have any issues with them at all in 2021, but that was a much warmer summer than this year and goes to show how much the climate can vary here from year to year. Just like the garden, we need to figure out how to succeed no matter what type of summer we get. I’m excited to try a new breed next year. ​

The pigs, on the other hand, are very hearty and much more resilient to the cool temperatures. They have been doing great and seem to love the new home we’ve built them this summer. Though they have managed to break out of their pen a couple of times. The portable solar powered electric fence we use is great because we are able to keep them rotated onto fresh pasture all season, but part of what makes it portable is also what allows them to escape on occasion. The posts for the fence only have 4” metal tines on the bottom which make it quick and easy for one person to set up and take down, but on soft ground it doesn’t take much for the pigs to root around at the bottom of the post and knock it over. We fixed this easily enough by ordering some large 14” plastic stakes which use to pin the fence to the ground at and between the posts. We’ve also found it useful to train the pigs to come to our voice when we call so that when they do escape they come back on their own accord. We do this by calling them every day and dropping some treats like fruits or vegetables in their feed trough. This is great because even if they’ve gotten out, once they hear us calling they want to run back to their pen to see what sort of goodies are waiting for them. They are quite smart, kind of like dogs, and can be trained in a similar manner. We are raising a heritage breed called a Tamworth and they are much more energetic than most commercial breeds. Therefore, they do not like to be confined to a small space and the portable electric fence lets them spend all day running around and digging up fresh ground. We’ve also noticed they eat much less of the feed we provide them when they are able to eat the fresh grass, leaves and roots they dig up.  ​

Wild North Design has been staying busy as well working on a steady stream of custom orders and also gearing up for fall and the holiday season. We’ve started exploring a new software for designing programs for our CNC machine which will allow us to do large and much more detailed engravings and other designs. We’re excited to dig into this new software and start learning and experimenting now that the summer projects are winding down and we’ll have more time in front of a comptuer. ​

We hope your summer was fruitful and enjoy the nice "wind-down" of summer as we change into cozy fall.

As is typical, the month of July has been near non-stop hustle and bustle!

The long list of projects we had made up over the long winter has been dwindling with great satisfaction. It’s hard to appreciate all the progress we’ve made when it seems the work is never finished, but come this winter we’ll undoubtedly recognize the increased efficiency with which our little homestead now operates. Even though it has been a wet summer, we still have managed to make progress while still enjoying the Alaskan summer. ​

Now at the end of the month, just after the summer solstice, the sun rises around 4a.m. and sets just before midnight. The extra long days combined with over 2” of rainfall this month has had all the vegetation growing like mad, and the mosquitoes too! This has certainly been a different June compared to the previous years we’ve been here. We had been expecting another hot and dry first half of summer, with regular rains not coming until late in July. Instead, it’s been overcast on many days which has done a great job of keeping the intense sun at bay. It’s been great not having to roast in the dry heat, but trying to do any work when there are mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds swarming all around is almost worse. ​

With more daylight than we know what to do with, this month has had us busy, busy, busy...

 Over Mother’s Day weekend, Wild North Design set up at a massive crafter’s market at the Alaska State Fairgrounds. This was our second year participating in this particular show and it is definitely one of our favorites! Everyone is so happy to be out enjoying the great weather and seeing all of the beautiful artwork, this show always has some awesome vibes. Not to mention it’s great to get feedback on all of the designs and pieces we’ve been working on over the winter while also seeing what everyone else has been up to. So. Many. Neat. Vendors! Including food trucks!

 Meanwhile, back on the homestead, we have been busy planting, building, and occasionally re-building. Pete and his dad re-built the collapsed lean-to behind the first greenhouse, making sure it is spec’d for Alaska this time. This version is actually nicer with a higher ceiling and an enclosed space for storage.  

 Pete was also able to get the frame completed for the high tunnel, our third greenhouse. Now that weight restrictions have been lifted for our roads, we will get a truckload of topsoil delivered to spread out as the planting base in the tunnel before covering it with the greenhouse plastic. We are super excited to have this new enclosed growing space and plan to have it filled with delicious vegetables by this fall. Last year we planted things like beans and squash outside in July which did not produce anything at all due to the cold nighttime temperatures we start seeing in mid-August. We expect this new tunnel to give us at least another month or two of production on both ends of the growing season.

 We did learn a lesson about not trying to jump the gun when planting things outside here. A late frost on May 21 caused us to lose about half of the pumpkins and squash and about 75% of the green beans we planted outside in the second half of May. The long sunny days were just too tempting to not have plants out soaking it up, but then we were reminded that the arctic circle is only a few hundred miles to the north and the right breeze can bring that icy chill back really quick. With our big new grow tunnel expected to be finished shortly, we’ve already got several more seed trays started which will find their new home in there.  Overall, it wasn't a total loss! The benefits to planting extra.  

In another first, we’ve got our entire winter’s supply of firewood already split and stacked before June! Not to mention, I split it all! I’m not much for swinging an ax, but our hydraulic wood splitter makes it a job that I can easily do. ​

Here in Alaska, season change seems to happen in the blink of an eye!

 Spring has finally arrived after another long winter. Temperatures are now hitting 50° at the end of April, which has melted a significant amount of snow that winter left behind. I’ve even noticed little buds on some willows! For a while were thinking we would never see summer—it seemed impossible for the cloudy, overcast days to melt the 8' snow banks lining the yard. However, a few bright sunny days has really put a dent in them. 

This year's "mud season" has been the most manageable yet here on the homestead. The annual driveway pond only lasted for about a week this year, but I still might twist Pete’s arm to get him to bring in some more gravel and fill the low spots once the weight restrictions on the roads have been lifted. I’ve noticed the moose are also relieved that the massive amounts of snow are shrinking. They can move around more and find food and water easily. Thank goodness they are staying off the roads! There were many moose fatalities this year because of the high snow berms along the roads.  ​

 At the beginning of the month, we explored the Butte near Palmer, AK and then took a walk along the banks of the Matanuska River. The Butte is an easy hike in the summer, but not so much in early April. There are lots of stairs on the shady side and the snow has sure piled up! The ice on the stairs was so thick that we decided to find something safer to do instead. I think we will conquer the Butte in the summer when conditions are easier for a toddler to navigate. The sunny side was extremely muddy. In fact, the state closed the sunny side trail days later because it needed to dry out otherwise risk extensive trail damage. Later that day we hiked down to the Matanuska River bank. The sun had melted more of the snow there which made it a more enjoyable adventure.  

 These warm days have encouraged the hens to lay consistently again. Their tasty eggs are the BEST! I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of fresh eggs. In May I will clean out their coop and get it freshened up for summer. We have plans this year to build them a new coop. One with electricity and more insulation. Our 1 year old rooster is also signing his praises of the warm weather all day long. If he keeps this up, he might not be around long enough to see the end of summer! He doesn’t know that the all-day crowing is what caused the last rooster to disappear for good!

 The warm weather has us eager to get our hands dirty in the garden. Pete planted 1,000 onions and it appears they all have sprouted! We will move most of them into greenhouse #2 once they are old enough to handle the cooler night time temps, away from their cozy heating pads in greenhouse #1. Last fall Pete potted up some cuttings from wild currants, raspberries, and strawberries and after a couple heavy waterings they are all starting to wake up. This summer we will transplant them out into the open ground.  

- This month I have been busy making new designs and inventory for the busy months ahead. Wedding season is starting up again and I will be a vendor at a large market in early May. If you find yourself in the Mat-Su Valley during Mother’s Day weekend, stop by the Vintage Market at the Alaska State Fairgrounds to check out Alaskan-made goodies! This includes tons of great food trucks. I love seeing the crowds that come out to enjoy spring activities. If you can’t make it to the Market, you can still show your support by checking out our online store or just sending us a nice message! :D 

Also, a special shout out to our dog, Bear, on his 10th birthday! He was our first dog with an old soul. We love him so much! We celebrated with some outdoor exercise and healthy snacks. #BearDontCare

 Hope your summer plans are all falling into place like ours. Looking forward to waking up to warm sunshine and busy days!

With daylight stretching past bedtime, the snow is melting double time!

Nearly every day of March has seen temperatures above freezing, allowing the snow base to gradually disintegrate. There are spots in the driveway where we can even see the ground again! Fortunately, all the truckloads of rock and gravel we have had hauled in over the past few years are starting to add up, meaning “mud season” isn’t nearly as muddy as it had been the first couple years we were here. We used to have ruts in the mud so deep that we had to put full size tree trunks in to fill the deep ruts so our vehicles didn't get stuck.

Building up the driveway and improving the drainage around the property are projects that don’t really provide much in the way of instant gratification, but more like long term satisfaction. Similar to the saying “you don’t know what you don’t know”, we find it’s hard to appreciate the problems you don’t have. This whole homesteading adventure has helped us appreciate just how convenient our modern world is. We know it’s possible to just take out a large loan to buy a modern home connected to all the utilities and as long as the bills get paid every month, there’s no need to even consider where all the energy comes from, how it gets there, or how much is used. In fact, we’ve actually done that in the past. However, now that we’ve had the experience of hauling all of our own water and fuel and even generating our own electricity, we now have not only a detailed understanding of how much we consume, but how to be as efficient as possible with what we do consume. Ironically, the biggest inefficiency we’ve identified is actually having to haul the fuel ourselves, both with the time it takes and the limited capacity we have. Our goal is to be able to afford all the conveniences of the modern energy infrastructure while not having to spend endless hours commuting and working far away from what we are building. Generating a comfortable income from the property we are building feels like “the way”.

Thanks to the consistently beautiful weather this month, our hens have started regularly producing eggs again. A little late for “the great egg shortage” but hey, we’re even more grateful to have them now. In a couple more weeks we’ll probably do the biannual coop cleaning, where we’ll take all the straw bedding and manure they’ve produced over the winter and use it to start a new compost heap. Last season we kept our compost well fed, adding to it and turning the heap every couple of weeks. It’s amazing how much a big pile of biomass will condense as it’s broken down by the decaying nature of nature. This spring we’ll spread out the compost we made last year over the garden beds and start on a new batch.  

Speaking of chickens, we also placed our order of meat birds and they’re set to arrive in the middle of June once we are well out of frost danger. We scaled back our order this year compared to last year, ordering only 30 instead of 50 again. This is due to all the problems we had last year with what we suspect was the bird flu. It’s hard to know what it will be like in a few months, but based on some headlines, it sounds like bird flu is supposed to be a problem again this year. In fact, due to the limited supply and high demand, we weren’t even able to order any more egg laying hens and the birds we were able to order are going to come in a week later than we usually receive them. We would like to raise lots of broiler chickens and offer them for sale as a farm product, but since we’re anticipating more problems with them this season, we’re going to hold off and focus our resources elsewhere. Hopefully all 30 birds make it to harvest and we end up with a few extra in case any neighbors would like them. We figure 20-25 birds is about a year supply of chicken for our small family, so we’d like to end up with at least that. This has so far been the only downside to raising the chickens in the pasture where they are on fresh grass every day, is that we aren’t able to really isolate them from things such as the bird flu.

Our new shop building has been getting lots of use. It’s been great being able to do our epoxy pours in a clean, undisturbed space and also running the CNC machine and our other tools in warmth and under bright lights. We’ve still got a few projects to do on the building, such as flattening out a couple of high spots in the concrete, finishing the bathroom, and getting the interior doors and trim installed, but compared to working in the old garage tent it feels like we’ve got ourselves a workshop palace now.

The warm sunny days have got us really excited to get all our seeds started for this growing season. However, since neither of our greenhouses are exactly air tight at the moment, we still don’t have a place for seedlings that is protected from the sub-freezing nighttime temperatures. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks Pete can get the lean-to rebuilt on our first greenhouse and that will let him get the roof sealed up so we can get some seed trays started in there. We learned so much about growing last year we’re excited to get going again and see what lessons this season has in store for us!

 That’s about it for March. Thanks for reading, Everyone and take care!

 Our firewood supply is getting skinny, so warm temperatures must be just around the corner!

 With fresh snow continuing to fall and nighttime temperatures dipping into the negative double digits, it’s hard to believe spring time is ever going to find it’s way here. Many locals who are seasoned in long winters, including the moose, are getting antsy with the persistent snowfall. It's SO deep! However, in just a couple of weeks we should start seeing daytime temps climb well above freezing. Bring on the mid-March meltdown!  

 It’s not all dark and gloomy around here though! The end of February brought a large solar storm which produced some incredible aurora. This was one of the brightest since we’ve moved here; showing almost every color of the rainbow, it was quite spectacular. The Northern Lights came out around 9:30PM and lasted all night long until about 5AM. This allowed many locals to take in the energizing light show who normally go to bed early. Also, we’ve lately been gaining almost 6 minutes of daylight each day. It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s an extra hour of daylight every 11 days! By the end of March we’ll be receiving over 13 hours of daylight, over 16 hours by the end of April, and it will peak at about 19.5 hours in the middle of June. With all this snow cover, it makes me question the mosquito population come May and June. The ground will take longer to thaw causing the snowmelt to hang around longer allowing lots of breeding grounds for the blood-sucking pests. 

Spring time will bring a welcome change of pace to the homestead. While we currently have waist deep snow anywhere off the maintained path, there are lots of projects just waiting for us to reach them (I’m looking at you, collapsed greenhouse lean-to!). We also need to get all of the garden seeds planned out and sprouted. In addition, we need to decide what and how much livestock we want to raise this summer. Growing a large garden and raising livestock is not particularly difficult, however it does demand a lot of attention. This means we really aren’t able to venture too far from home for any length of time during the summer months. This is sort of a hidden cost which we are now mindful of as we plan our summer endeavors.  

One of Pete’s favorite sayings when it comes to building is “fast, cheap, and quality; you can only choose two”. We typically opt for high quality and low cost, meaning things seem to take a long time. This doesn’t mean we intend for all of our future projects to also move at a snail’s pace, because who's got time for that? We are looking at these first projects sort of as our practice rounds. Now, when it comes time to hire out and let the professionals work, we will feel more confident in our quality investments.  

Once we get everything moved in and set up, we’re hoping to start working on some really cool designs! We’ll have lots of space to start doing some much larger epoxy resin pieces. We also plan on doing a lot more work with our CNC router and  eventually upgrading to a bigger laser machine as well. Up until now, we’ve been doing most of our work inside our tiny cabin which has really limited the quantity and size of what we can do.

 Well, that’s about all for this month. Hope everyone is fairing well in the thick of winter. Spring will be here before we know it! Thanks for reading and take care, everyone!

Above average temperatures in January have had us feeling like summer should be coming any day now.

Even though December brought us the single biggest snowfall in the past 30 years, January ended up being pleasantly mild.  It even warmed up to above freezing in the last week! The melting snow and warm temperatures has got us pretty excited to start working on our summer projects, the list of which seems to be growing by the day. From here, it looks like we’ve already got enough projects to fill the entire summer; let’s hope nothing else comes up!

We’ve been using these slower winter months to plan out as much as we can for the summer, since the warm summer months are so precious as far as getting things done, we like not having to take the time to make plans and decisions. It’s much nicer to already have made all the decisions and laid all the plans and all we have to do is work, work, work and check things off the list. One of the major items we’ve been planning is our summer livestock and farm/garden crops. Taking all the knowledge and experience we gained last year and applying it to the upcoming one; making sure not to repeat the same mistakes and expanding on the things that worked well. Some of the many projects include building one or two more greenhouses and fixing the existing ones, moving the pig pen to a new area of the yard, getting more chickens (both egg layers and meat birds), and fixing the fences.  

One major milestone we reached this month was getting the in-floor heat system turned on in the shop we built this fall. Pete got all the plumbing put together, pressure tested the system, and filled it with a glycol mixture then flipped it on. It took about two days for the slab to come up to temperature; going from near 0°F to 60°F where we have the thermostat set. The new, warm, brightly lit space is sooooo nice! Though it’s not quite ready to move all the tools in just yet, since we want to get all the messy drywall and painting work out of the way now so we don’t have to do it later and work around all the tools and equipment.

Well that's about all for this month. Thanks for reading, everyone!

 December has made a show-stopping arrival here on the homestead.  

 After the snowstorms, we received a wind storm for about 24 hours. Wind gusts up to 75mph knocked down trees on power lines all over the MatSu Valley. Afterwards, there was debris everywhere just like the larger windstorm in January this year. Our area was without power for about 13 hours. It was quite miserable outside with all of the fresh snow blowing off the ground in the high winds, so we stayed inside and played games and puzzles to pass the time. I don't mind when the power goes out here. We are equipped to switch to temporary off-grid living and I find reassurance in that. The wind had knocked down a large spruce tree onto a nearby power line on our road which caused one of the outages that day. Pete was quick to snag the tree that the electric company safely fell. It had a beautiful 20' log which will be great for milling....once we find where the sawmill is buried. ​

 Pete continues to process bacon inside the shop in small batches. Each batch gets tastier! We’ve enjoyed all kinds of pork since we harvested the Bacon Brothers in October. Our pig supplier advised early December is when the Bacon Brothers would reach optimal maturity for harvest—I am actually thankful we harvested them almost 2 months early because I can’t imagine trying to raise the pigs in 3+ feet of snow! At one point during the windstorm I was crawling on my hands and knees past the pig pen to get to the chickens for their daily feeding!  

 This month Wild North Design closes out it’s most successful year. I finished out some custom Christmas orders and did a pop-up show at the JBER military base in Anchorage. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your support this year! I had so much fun pushing boundaries for myself and trying new techniques with the lasers and epoxy resin. I am excited for what the new year will bring for Wild North! Stay tuned for new products on the website and local pop-ups.  

Pete made a video recapping the 2022 growing season and how things have progressed with learning how to market garden. Check it out here:

 Things are chugging right along as winter grinds into gear.

 Overall, this November has been much more mild than last year with temperatures generally staying in the 20°F range. Even though we slipped into the negative double digits at the end of the month, we have used only a fraction of the firewood we did last November when it seemed like half the month was below 0°F. Projects have slowed down significantly as everything gets covered in a blanket of snow. Winter is an important time for us because it gives us a couple of months to recoup from the busy summer and plan ahead for the following year. ​

 Our chickens have been loving the not-so-cold temperatures combined with their new water heater. Though, we still don’t have an ideal setup for them since we are still using the water cups which have to hang off the edge of the heater, allowing them to freeze when it gets really cold. The coop also has a lot of air drafts which I’m sure they don’t like when they are up on their roosts at night. Overall, they stay cozy and are used to the cold Alaskan winters. We moved the rabbit hutch into their coop so the rabbit and chickens can socialize a bit and stay warm together.

 Pete has been getting things done in the shop when temperatures are reasonable. Having some drywall up on the ceiling and lights installed has made a big difference to the overall feel inside, giving us glimpses of the finished product. During the pig processing and general internal construction of the shop, Pete was working by natural light coming through the door and one shop light on an extension cord. Next, we’ll get insulation above the ceiling and in the walls, after that we’ll be able to install the radiant floor heating components and turn it on. Then we’ll have a heated space to work in! That will be a big milestone as it’s been a goal of ours pretty much since we moved here.

 The Saturday following Thanksgiving Wild North attended the Colony High School Christmas Bazaar in Palmer. This was a huge show with vendors spread across nearly the whole high school building. Holiday shoppers could choose from hundreds of Alaskan made goodies, art, decor, clothing & etc in the High School gym, cafeteria, and every hallway. It was great to see such a large crowd come out to support. The students who organize this event every year as a fundraiser did a phenomenal job. I hope to be a vendor again next year!

 As winter sets in, we are looking forward to the upcoming holidays. Once into the new year, we’ll start gaining daylight hours back! We currently have about 6 hours between sunrise and sunset, and that will continue to shorten until the end of December. These dark months can seem to drag on and on, but it reminds us not to take simple things like sunshine for granted! I am optimistic that December and hopefully January the daytime temperatures should stay above 10 degrees--I have family cross country skiing on my mind! 

 Take care, everyone, and stay warm! Happy Holidays! Wishing you safe travels if you plan on travelling this season. Thanks for reading!

The wood stove has been in use nearly this whole month – it must be winter!

Summer, winter, and fall - September had it all! --Archangel Trail in Hatcher Pass

 September has shown us three seasons in one month. The first days closed out the final days of summer with the last of the wildflowers blooming, fireweed going to seed, and loons heading back south. Just like last month, it was wet. Chilly rainy days took up most of the month while the birch trees turned their famous shade of golden yellow. Wild berries began to ripen in the tundra which I took full advantage of. We went up to Hatcher Pass twice this month hiking and berry picking. The fallscape in the mountains is incredibly peaceful. 

 This month we cleaned out the gardens and greenhouse #2. We dug up the last of the onions and are letting them dry out a bit. The last of the jalapeno plants have been pulled too. Pete pickled a few jars of jalapenos. Personally, I’m not a fan of spicy foods so he will enjoy adding heat to some of his winter meals. In the warmer greenhouse #1 we have my herbs growing beautifully. Just one small pot each of thyme, sage, oregano, and chives. Oddly enough, grocery stores in our area have been sold out of thyme the last month or two so it’s convenient to head out to the greenhouse. The pumpkins unfortunately were planted too late in the season and didn’t get too much bigger than three leaves. Next year we will be sure to start the pumpkins earlier!  

 Speaking of the new shop, Pete’s mom and brother flew up to help with finishing the construction of the shop. It was great to have a hand getting the building dried in and also some help with the other winter-prep. They both graciously lent their vacation time to us in June when the larger group of family & friends came up for the first annual Alaska Week. It’s always so nice to spend time with family. Surprisingly, the rainy weather lifted briefly while Pete and his brother worked outside and got the steel roof put on. In October we will start by installing electrical and the interior walls. Running water lines is a goal of ours too, but if the ground freezes too quickly, it’ll have to wait until May. Fingers crossed! It’s so exciting to see this shop come together!

 Wild North Design has slowed down significantly on in-person shows/pop-ups, but I continue to keep busy with custom orders and filling inventory. I have on the schedule a weekend craft fair at JBER army/air force base in October, a Holiday Bazaar in November at Colony High School, and an independent pop-up at JBER in December. The new shop has me itching to start woodworking in my new environment!  

 Thank you for reading! Happy Fall!

What a rainy month! With over 6 inches of rain in the past few weeks, we have certainly made up for the hot and dry weather we had during the first half of the summer.  

Being our first slab, it is far from perfect. “Good enough for who it’s for” has become somewhat of a motto around here. We have figured out that when we’re doing big projects like this for the first time, things are pretty much guaranteed to not work out 100% perfect and it really doesn’t pay to get hung up on little details. Instead, we focus on getting through the experience and take note of what we need to improve on for next time. We’ve taken the view that these projects are also an investment in building our skills and knowledge, as experience is the best teacher. Overall, it went well and we are on to the next phase! Yesterday Pete picked up all the lumber for framing the building and got one of the walls nailed together – we’ll stand it up as soon as it quits raining haha. It’s hard to describe how excited we are to get this shop up and usable. After the past years of making all of our Wild North products in the uninsulated garage tent or on our kitchen table, a nice warm workshop sounds better than a tropical beach in the middle of a cold, dark Alaskan winter!

Over in the garden, we have harvested most of the summer crops and also planted some new ones for a fall harvest. Though we have significantly improved upon last year's garden, we are still doing lots of experimenting and taking notes on what, where, and when to plant for next year. This summer we were able to grow over 50lbs of carrots, 30lbs of sweet peppers, 15lbs of lettuce, and lots of other things! Along with learning how to grow the crops, we’re also learning about how to efficiently process them and store them so we’re prepared to start selling next summer’s crops at the markets. We had hoped to attend some farmers markets this summer, but there was too many variables we hadn’t planned for and our timing wasn't right.  

On the livestock side of things, we harvested all of our broiler chickens, filling our deep freeze to the brim! Our new plucking machine made the whole job a breeze. Well, sort of – it still took nearly an entire day to process all the birds, but it was a significant improvement over last year and we know next year it will go even smoother. Our biggest hang up was our rustic outdoor propane cook top which after 2-3 hours of troubleshooting, we gave up and switched to our much smaller camping cook top grill to heat up the large caldron of water. I also invested in a nice knife recommended by other small chicken farms for the processing which made it really slick for us to portion out the parts of the chicken meat. Now we don't have to cook a full chicken anytime I put chicken on the dinner menu. It's the little things!

The pigs have been staying happy as well. How could they not enjoy the job of eating and getting fat? They spend their days chasing each other around, rooting through the sod, eating whatever scraps we have after crop harvests, and making sure to get a few naps in. Sounds like Hog Heaven! We plan on harvesting them in either October or November, so we’ll have our work cut out for us once we start getting into freezing temperatures later in September as they’ll need non-frozen water brought out to them and thick beds of straw to sleep in. However, we’re betting the bacon will be worth it!

If you haven't already, check out the video Pete made of building the pig pen and getting our pigs!

As summer grinds to a halt, the leaves have begun to turn and the cool autumn air breezes in. We have not lit the wood stove since early May, but that could be changing any day now. We are excited to see what difference the addition of siding on the cabin makes in keeping the cabin warm. We hadn’t expected it to make much of a difference, but we have noticed just baking something in the oven will warm things up quite a bit more than before. Maybe we will be able to let the wood stove burn out and still keep toasty in the early morning hours! Thanks for reading!

Summer is running by faster than a sockeye in July!

July is also the peak of the epic yearly salmon run which produces some world class fishing. We are very fortunate to have a creek not too far from our home which hosts a strong run of sockeye salmon. The state of Alaska monitors the salmon runs very closely using sonar devices in the creeks and rivers, and after they count enough fish to know that the salmon population will be safely sustained, they allow us to use large nets to catch several of them at a time. This is a great way for Alaskan residents to put LOTS of delicious fresh salmon in their freezers in a short amount of time. ​

 What. A. Month. It really feels like we crammed our entire summer into this one month. We have accomplished so much on the homestead with a little help from our friends and family—even Mother Nature did her part! Where to begin describing this shotgun of a month?  

 The first week and a half of June is when about a dozen of Pete’s family members and some of their friends came up from the lower 48 to help with the giant laundry list of tasks on the homestead. Of course, we made sure to take a couple days off to show them some of our beautiful state with a glacier hike and some ocean fishing in Homer. In the middle of the month, our daughter and I went down to our home-state of South Dakota for a bit of a family reunion in the Black Hills. It was so nice to spend time with family and show our daughter some of my memorable vacation spots from when I was a kid. While we were gone, life on the farmstead expanded exponentially with our 50 meat chickens and 2 pigs arriving, not to mention all of the garden produce which we began to harvest. I squeezed in Wild North Design projects where I could, but going into this month, I knew WND had to be put on the back burner so we could focus our productivity elsewhere.  

 I think the addition of the two meat pigs, we’ll call them the Bacon Brothers, was the most exciting event overall that happened on the farmstead this month. Though, if you ask me, the most satisfying accomplishment was completing the siding and soffits on the cabin! With only two days notice, Pete built a 10’x12’ shelter for the pigs that was made from salvaged metal roofing and extra logs. The pigs came from a new family farm in Willow. We are looking forward to eating some homegrown pork this winter after the Bacon Brothers are harvested in December. How to harvest these bad boys is still in debate. I prefer to take them to a butcher/processor, but Pete is leaning towards processing them himself. We have resources to do both, we will just have to see how busy we are when that time rolls around. We expect it will take at least two or three days to fully process both pigs by ourselves.

 We received our 50 chicks (broiler chickens) from the same Iowa farm as last year. When the chicks arrived in mid-June they were only 3 days old. I’m still baffled that these little creatures can spend their most delicate first days in a box whizzing through shipping terminals and riding on airplanes, but they seem to handle it just fine. As of this June, we still have about 4 birds left in the freezer from the 25 we harvested last August. This gives us sort of a benchmark we are able to use for how many chickens we consume in one year as a family. We plan to sell at least half of this year’s birds after they are harvested. We are excited to make them available and see how much interest there is in local, pasture raised poultry. The feedback we get will help us in deciding whether to order even more birds for next year, or dial it back and just raise enough for ourselves.  

 After processing the birds between two days last year, we learned a few things we can improve on for this year’s harvest. The first improvement we have made to our chicken operation this year is separating them out into multiple enclosures which can easily be moved onto fresh grass each day. So far, these new mobile enclosures have been a success! The chicks are very comfortable in this new set up after they moved out of the Eggcono Lodge at two weeks old (after their feathers started to come in, called fledging). There was a noticeable change in temperament after only a couple hours in their new enclosures. Instead of being in one large group, stepping on each other and fighting for access to the feeders, they now spend their days “hunting” bugs and stretching out in the grass, with the occasional meager attempts at flight. Another benefit to the outdoor mobile chicken runs is how they work the ground; nibbling down the grass and turning it, and the bugs they find, into manure. Last year, we left them on one patch of grass the whole time and continually added straw for clean bedding. That method left us with lots of straw and manure to use in the compost, but there wasn’t much incentive for them to move around much and it didn’t take long for them to eat all the grass in that area. This summer, it is easy to see where the chickens were last year; just look for the ultra tall, vibrant green grass! Our strategy for this season is to spread out that benefit for the soil over as much of the field as possible.  

 Our second big improvement to our poultry operation is a machine for plucking the feathers at harvest. We plucked those chickens by hand our first year and quickly recognized that this process was the longest, most tedious step in the entire process. We can fit two chickens in the machine at a time and they should be completely plucked clean in under a minute. Compare that to the 20+ minutes we spent plucking a single chicken last year, and, well, I’m very excited to try out this new time-saving tool!   

 And a third new addition to help with the harvest is an open air lean-to behind one of the greenhouses. This new covered area will serve as an ‘outdoor kitchen’ which will allow us to efficiently process meat and garden items. Of course, it’s vital to keep clean and separate workstations for processing meats and vegetables. We plan to add a sink and more counter space this summer to aid in the processing. The lean-to will also be a perfect covered storage for the garden tools and supplies, keeping them closer to the field and also freeing up space in the garage. We have been putting the makeshift kitchen to good use for cleaning some of the early vegetable harvest.

 Speaking of vegetables, the garden beds & greenhouses have been very productive. It has been amazing seeing how fast things grow under the nearly 24 hours of light. This month, Pete harvested one of his first plantings of beets, yielding nearly 20lbs from the 50 seedlings he transplanted about a month ago. Many of the beets will go to the pigs and chickens this year, but we will save some for ourselves for beet juice and general food items. This gives us a chance to observe our harvest process and the impact it has on shelf life. For instance, we are curious about the impact of cutting off the greens before storage. Vegetables lose most of their moisture through their leaves after harvesting, but it is more appealing to sell fresh beets with the greens still attached. Not to mention, the greens on beets are also edible. So we are doing a lot of experimenting this season to find the best ways to harvest, store, and ultimately sell the produce.

 While Pete’s family was here helping, his mom, a fabulous green thumb, helped transplant many of the seedlings Pete had started in the nursery greenhouse in May. She transplanted 50 pepper plants, another 150 red and golden beets, and 50 nasturtiums. She also direct-seeded a second bed of about 750 carrots. After their first few weeks of transplanting, all the vegetable plants are doing great! The lettuce has been growing much faster than expected inside Greenhouse #2. We are finding we can go from seed to harvest in about 4 weeks using the greenhouse, and we can easily get a second harvest within one week of the first cutting. All this lettuce coming so fast kind of caught us off guard, since we have yet to get our salad greens processing station set up. We’re realizing that washing, drying, and packing salad greens takes a separate, more specialized setup than for the fruits and root vegetables. More planting and growing is planned throughout the summer as we get our processes dialed in. We are excited to see how things grow into the unpredictable Alaskan fall season.  

 After a year of chasing away dogs and ravens from the compost piles, Pete has stepped up our composting operation and built dedicated bins for making compost in the garden. Although most of our kitchen scraps go straight to the pigs and chickens during summer months, we still find plenty of organic material to contribute to the compost. It’s amazing how warm the compost gets – nature in action rapidly breaking it all down into plant food. Pete regularly waters and re-mixes the compost in the bin to ensure proper decomposition. At our previous home, we had experimented with making compost tea which is like a plant superfood. The runoff from the compost serves at the base for the tea. Hopefully we can start making compost tea again in the future!  

 One of my favorite accomplishments this month was the siding & soffit on the house with a railing on the deck. No more Tyvec house wrap! Our house looks more like a finished home now, and less of a construction site, which does wonders on my mind. The friends and family that came up worked very hard on these projects and I am so grateful for their efforts. I won’t bore you with the designing and color choices that was all 100% my decision, but I will say that it’s harder than it looks! We didn’t quite have enough time to finish the painting of the trim because we had to wait for the rest of the paint to dry. Though the days had been very hot and dry, the night time temps were still dipping into the mid 40°s with nearly 100% humidity. This caused it to take about 2 weeks for the entire house to dry completely. We kept testing the sides with our fingers before the crew left hoping we could squeeze in the finishing touches on the cabin. The siding now has everyone’s fingerprints and the occasional mosquito and some sawdust permanently imprinted on the side —I love it! The railing on the deck was a ‘bonus project’ meaning it wasn’t on the list, but it was quickly designed and installed while the crew was here. The railing is a lovely design is exactly what I had in mind. It’s practical and durable, withstanding a toddler & Mother Nature. Speaking of our toddler, another bonus project was a timber swing set, which looks great! We will stain the deck to match as soon as we have a day where we aren’t running in and out of the house—maybe in the fall during hunting season?

 Another one of what I call “Missy Projects” was also checked off the list this month: a garbage bin. Every month or two we have to make a trip to the local dump to get rid of trash. This newly constructed bin will give us a spot to store garbage before we truck it away. We are planning on making a rocket stove type burn barrel to burn most of our trash, but there are strict burn bans for much of the summer around here, which we are happy to comply with. With a big burn barrel setup, we can get rid of most of our trash on site, at least in the winter months, which will cut back on our trips to the dump. Not the most glamorous topic, and not something I had really thought about before moving here. Goes to show I took for granted the convenient weekly garbage and recycling service in the lower 48! We do have a camera watching over the garbage bin, in case it lures in any critters. Bears have been less and less of an issue around here in recent years (likely due to poaching), but we still remain mindful of the wildlife around us even if we don’t see it very often.
*Sidenote about the burn bans: it's been another hot and dry summer, third one in a row. So far at the end of June, over a million acres have been burned from wildfires this year alone in Alaska. It's mostly tundra acreage, but we still need to be cautious. We have experienced lots of hazy and smoke filled skies in the mornings lately. The fires are almost all started from random lightning strikes which is a natural phenomenon of nature burning old growth. 

 After a change of pace for a month, we are getting back to our usual routine. Wild North Design will be back to doing markets at the JBER Army/Air Force base this summer and looking to get my foot in the door at other summer Alaskan markets. One of the pieces I was able to complete this month was a custom sign for a local business and boy, am I impressed with myself! This was the most complex resin piece I have done so far. I’ll use the rest of the summer months to build inventory and work on new designs for the upcoming holiday markets this fall. Stay tuned on social media to see what we come up with!

 As June comes to a close, July quickly takes its place. July brings the salmon run which is like a floating holiday for Alaskans. When the salmon are running, we drop what we’re doing and head towards water! It’s a fun time of year and a great excuse to put projects aside for a few days and get some fresh salmon in the freezer. We’re also looking forward to finding some new blueberry patches for the August harvest while Pete will be experimenting with new crops for a fall harvest. I’m no meteorologist, but I predict July will be hot and sunny, and occasionally cool and rainy. Check back next month to see if I’m right :D

 Thanks for reading, Everyone!

Things are heating up on the homestead! Literally… it’s been getting really hot.  

With full sun almost every day this month and the relative humidity occasionally dropping below 20%, we have gone from a winter wonderland to nearly a desert in a matter of a couple months. As this is our third summer here, we’re getting more accustomed to this unique climate. Having grown up with high humidity in the summers, it takes some preparation and willingness to take breaks in order to work outside all day here without succumbing to dehydration. We’ve learned the proper clothing to wear and the appropriate amount of time between breaks to work through the day (rather than the day work through you!). Both of the dogs roam freely and find shady spots to relax in while we work outside. Day temperatures reach on average 70-75 degrees while at night we drop in the 40s. We had our last frost just after the middle of May. The 10 day forecast in June shows highs in the 70s and even an 80 degree day in the mix with no precipitation. I imagine we are fixin’ to have yet another hot and dry summer.

Despite these conditions, things are springing to life and the vegetation is jumping up all around us. This is most certainly thanks to the near endless sunlight we have been receiving for most of this month. Beautiful blossoms adorn the young apple trees, rose bushes are beginning to show their flowers too, and wild berries of all sorts are beginning to form in clusters. Not only that, but our first farm crops are doing great as well! Thanks to the two new greenhouses, we have beets which are nearly ready for harvest. Looking back, we had hardly put any seeds into the ground at this time last year. Being able to see our progress leaping forward like this is what keeps the wind in our sails. Because, if we’ve made this much progress in the past year, what amazing things will we be able to accomplish in another one? Homesteading, farmsteading, whatever you want to call it, is a slow process that produces success when you foster patience with an open mind.

We have also been busy, busy, busy cleaning up and preparing for a large group of family coming to visit soon. It will be quite the change of pace having a dozen extra people around. Of course, we have so many projects on our list we don’t plan on letting any of them just sit around and twiddle thumbs while they’re here :D On the top of the list is putting siding on the cabin! I have a feeling it will really change the vibe of the homestead with the cabin finally looking “finished”. No more “Alaskan siding”, more commonly known as Tyvec house wrap.  

In addition to all the usual homestead hustle and bustle, Wild North Design has really been taking off! We’ve been hard at work replenishing inventories after nearly selling out at the Alaska Chicks Vintage Market a couple of weeks ago. On top of that, I also have endless ideas which we’ve been developing into new designs and, of course, fulfilling custom orders. When my 7 watt laser broke it’s lens 2 weeks before the big Market, I didn’t know it then, but fixing the lens and scrambling to find a replacement was a blessing in disguise. The replacement 40 watt laser arrived almost faster than the lens did which Pete fixed in a jiffy. With both lasers running and combining each one’s features, I’m able to push my creativity farther than I imagined. Being able to develop my ideas is one of my favorite roles on the homestead.

Though we have been putting in long days pretty much every day this month, we know summer is just beginning! We still have fishing season(s) in front of us and wild berry harvests and at least one or two road trips. Stay tuned for more progress next month!

 April has arrived—and gone—which is a month that gets us feeling like we are at the starting line waiting for the gun to fire (in our case, Mother Nature to signal) so we can take off and get to work on all of the projects we have laid out over the winter months.

As you may have read on past blogs, this the time of year in Alaska is called ‘breakup season’ or simply ‘mud season’. Spring looks different up here compared to in the Midwest United States where we came from. Some people even claim spring doesn’t exist here, and I can see why; the return of 24 hour sunlight makes it feel like summer rather quickly.  

 Mud season has traditionally been a struggle for us when it came to homestead life. The lack of development on the property meant dealing with tons of mud for the three weeks or so that it takes to dry out. We had to wear our rubber boots anytime we would go outside or our shoes would get covered, or worse – eaten, by the mud. Last fall, Pete laid down some landscape fabric over the worst 100 feet of the driveway then covered it with gravel and cut a drainage ditch on one side. Seeing the difference during the snow melt between this year and last is very rewarding. During last year’s break up season, Pete got his big truck stuck in the driveway multiple times and the undercarriage of my vehicle would scrape the ground because of how deep the mud ruts were. To solve this problem last year, Pete laid down actual trees (trimmed, of course) in the ruts so if we did slip in them again, we wouldn’t bottom out! This year when the snow melted, the driveway thawed quickly and allowed the snow to drain into the ground. Some puddles formed where the rock had settled but have since drained and now, at the end of the month, everything is pretty much dried up. We never had to give it extra gas and plow through the mud pit of a driveway or pull out any stuck vehicles. In hindsight, we have learned that this project should have been at the top of our list in 2019/2020.  Oh well, better late than never!

One of our other side-projects has been learning to grow mushrooms. I say ‘learning to grow’ and not ‘growing’ because, um well, we are still learning and haven’t actually gotten any of them to grow yet. It’s not so much that it’s difficult to grow mushrooms, as that it’s very easy to grow mold (which then kills the mushrooms). Most recently, we forgot to add the calcium phosphate to the grain spawn, which is like, one of a spores favorite things to eat. So we have gone through the process a few times and we are still getting things dialed in, but we’re learning from every failure and we’re confident we’ll get it figure out soon! Unfortunately, we have used up all of our spores in these attempts and so we just placed an order for more reishi, lion’s mane, and shiitake – stay tuned to see how (if) it goes!

With this warmer weather, the chickens are spending more time in their outdoor run. Rooster Hawaii sings his praises alllll day long. And it has been nice not having to change out their frozen water twice a day. The 6 ladies have been laying very consistently, pretty much every day. So much that we are sharing the bounty with lots of neighbors! We incorporate eggs into our cooking almost every day. They are SO rich and flavorful. We do supplement their diets with our kitchen scraps, which they consider delicious treats. When we approach the outdoor run, all 7 chickens get very excited and eat the food like velociraptors. Just today they went nuts over the lettuce I gave them, flicking it 5 feet in the air! Crazy birds. Speaking of crazy birds, we put in an order for 50 broiler chicks to arrive mid June. Unfortunately, our favorite egg laying breed (Silver Spangled Hamburgs) was unavailable to ship until September so we will stick with our current flock and egg production for now. We personally prefer this breed because they are a smaller bird, fast & agile (helps against predators), and consume less feed. The Silver Spangled Hamburgs have also proven to abide by their own politics with living in a flock and lay delicious eggs without trying to 'nest' on them. We can always adopt some local egg layers which are usually available on social networks if we want to expand the flock before winter with mature hens.  

During the month of April, in a span of two weeks, the planer motor burned out and the laser cracked it’s lens which caused Wild North Design’s production to come to a screeching halt. Not to mention, the computer we use to run the machines decided to quit charging shortly after both of the other items were fixed. Fortunately, Pete was able to get the parts to rebuild the planer motor and snapped on the new laser lens as soon as it came in the mail. …..annnnd then we found a new laser that we wanted to try as an upgrade! It was a pleasant surprise when it showed up quickly, was completely undamaged, and worked right out of the box. We upgraded from a 7 watt diode laser to a 40 watt liquid-cooled CO2 laser. Although the 40 watt machine only has the ability to cut a maximum of 12’’ x 8’’ area, we are getting creative and absolutely love how fast we can cut parts out of all sorts of materials now. The 7 watt is still a great “in between” tool to use if the piece is too delicate for the CNC router and is too big to fit in the 40 watt machine.  

 Reflecting back on this month, it looked like a roller coaster, but while working through the day-to-day, it was very enjoyable. I was able to grow my skills and knowledge in an enjoyable manner—and when your work life looks like that, it feels like it’s not work at all! It’s a very rewarding feeling that I hope everyone gets to experience, especially small business owners. With the success of the markets last month at the Army/Air Force Base (JBER), I was excited to attend a couple of closer to home markets this month in Wasilla as well. I plan to attend more, but most things on the WND schedule will have to remain on hold until after the AK Chicks Vintage Home Market at the Alaska State Fairgrounds in two weeks. See you there! ;D

We have decided to add a full set of stairs inside the cabin with storage shelves underneath. We have long recognized the need for better food and appliance storage so we came up with this design. This will also help our toddler easily access the loft on her own. We have started the stair stringers with the CNC and four steps have been cut, but since the CNC's computer temporarily crashed, this project is on a short hold.

 We hope spring has brought you reprieve from winter and some moments to remember as you prepare for the always popular season of summer! I especially loved the tulips popping up and more greenery taking shape in everyone’s photos shared on social media. --This thing called the Internet has been wondrous since established here on the homestead 2 months ago! Stay tuned during the upcoming months to see our garden grow and continued adventures in Alaska! Thank you for reading.

Spring is in the air! Though only reaching daytime high temperatures in the mid 40°s, with the sun climbing higher and higher in the sky and the remaining snow blanket reflecting and intensifying it, we’ve actually had a couple days of T-shirt weather. It’s obviously a good time for getting the first sunburn of the year as well.

As the snow slowly melts each day and turns to water which eventually soaks into the ground, our new and improved driveway is holding up like a champ. We do still have our annual mid-driveway pond, however, this year there is rock and gravel at the bottom, rather than a bottomless mud pit. We are proud to say no vehicles have gotten stuck in the driveway (yet)! ​

Other homestead developments include getting connected to the internet! This has been probably one step below electricity, when it comes to life changing events! Until now, we had been using a mobile hot spot, which would have worked fine if we had cell reception at our place. Unable to upload anything from home, pretty much every blog and video we have posted until now has required us to hop in the car with the laptop, power inverter, and hot spot device and drive a few miles to the nearest cell tower were we could get a good enough signal to upload. Not anymore though – now I am sipping coffee, sitting barefoot by the wood stove posting this to the world. Amazing! ​

This year on February 2nd, Groundhog's Day, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, indicating 6 more weeks of winter. However, with only a 60% track record, we don't put too much weight behind that little critter.

Pete and I have started to experiment and create more with epoxy for Wild North Design. Pete has done multiple resin pours while I’m obsessed with ‘painting’ with epoxy. I enjoy creating my own colors and painting on laser cut wood to create the 3D effect of the epoxy. The website has many new products utilizing this method. I can create and customize just about any sign with this technique. Pete has been mastering the pours. Using the beautiful Alaskan birch he milled and planed, he’s cured the pieces then uses the CNC router to cut precise table tops, salmon, and trees. He plans to add some color changing LEDs to the pieces for an extra pop. I will make sure to share the final pieces on the Wild North website!

This month Pete also built a work bench for the garage/shop. I needed the existing bench (actually, a plastic folding table) for my Wild North Design product shows. It was time to build an upgrade anyway. We had to move the deep freeze to make way for the larger than expected table. But would you expect anything less from an Alaskan Pete? Haha! Pete has also continued to work on plans for a shop build this summer. Getting one more building in as practice before taking on the house build boosts our confidence. We continue to lay out summer plans with the shop build and making sure we stay in line with developing our small farm. It makes us nervous taking on multiple large projects while peppering in cabin projects, miscellaneous homestead projects, and raising our daughter. It’s like standing at the base of Denali and looking up knowing you have to climb it in just a few short months. We will have setbacks and successes, and in the end, I know that when winter comes again and we reflect on summer, I will be proud of what we have accomplished whether or not we made it to the tippy top of Denali. I said it in 2019 when we first arrived here and I’ll say it again, we need hard hats for the Dogs so they can lend a paw or 4 so they can help with the workload too!

Thank you for reading and supporting us! We hope your winter has been as lovely as ours!

 This month has been a whirlwind, quite literally.

The first five days of the year kicked off with a five day long wind storm. Day and night, for nearly a week, we had 50-60MPH sustained winds, gusting up to 120MPH. With all of that, it’s a miracle we didn’t have anything important leave the ground, or come down to it. We didn’t even lose power during the ordeal, which must mean the smaller wind events earlier in the season thinned out the weak trees near the lines. We truly do feel fortunate to have made it through without any issues (other than the chimney blowing off the garage), as many people in the area suffered major property damage. There were commercial buildings not far from us which had roofs and walls torn off, signs blown apart, and trees knocked down.  

However, chaos usually brings change, and afterwards, what had been an unseasonably cold winter turned into the opposite. A warm front came in the following week and, mixed with a few days of rain and temperatures near 40°F, the snow cover thinned down dramatically. For the past two years January and February have been the coldest months of the winter, but that would have been November and December this year. So, after three winters here we’re still scratching our heads wondering what is “normal”. We are discovering that it’s actually more normal around here just to expect anything and everything and roll with it!

The mild temperatures have also allowed us to spend time dialing in product designs and testing out new ideas. Speaking of which, one of our favorites is our new wood Side-by-Side ATV toy! We’ve also been experimenting with using epoxy resin to enhance some new wood pieces. I love the way it makes text and other elements pop! Check out the examples on some of our new Valentine-themed signs.​

We were happy to be able to finally show off some of our products in person at our first Alaskan craft show! It has been a couple of years since Wild North Design did an in person show, and it was good to get out in our new community and interact with some of the other makers. Alaska is home to some incredible artists and makers, so there’s no shortage of inspiration. We also find that inspirational art is usually made by people who are just as inspiring. ​

With the winter solstice behind us, bright days are on the horizon!