Moist Month

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.  

Mushrooms love these types of cool, rainy days. Bright red Amanitas can be spotted almost everywhere, along with countless other varieties of fungi. I wish I was better at identifying mushrooms as I’m sure at least a couple of them must be edible (right?). Instead of picking them, we settle for just taking pictures.  

We did make sure to collect a big bowl of fireweed petals right before they went to seed, which I used to make a delicious batch of fireweed syrup. We will definitely be making more again next summer, it turned out wonderful! Also, since our whole family LOVES blueberries, we went berry picking in Hatcher Pass. Blueberries are like salmon, in that you have to be in the right place at the right time, otherwise you can put in a lot of effort with little reward. Fortunately, we are getting better at both finding blueberries and salmon! 

Sunny days this August were few and far between. Captured one of the Knik Arm in early August.

Despite the damp conditions, we have still been making progress on our homestead projects! The biggest of which being our new workshop. After spending a couple weeks doing all of the prep work, such as laying the plumbing, building the forms, and making sure everything was level and square, Pete and I poured the slab for our workshop. This was the first time we had poured a large amount of cement and we learned a lot. Ideally, we would have had at least two more people helping us out – it turns out placing a truck load of cement is a lot of work! Fortunately, the two of us managed to get it all done. We timed it perfectly with what seemed like the only sunny and hottest day of August! 

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!

The cement truck squeezed into position and the pour began!

Cement is poured, so next we screeded it. This gave it a smoother surface. We also tapped the sides and screeded some more.

First wall was easy to put together because it doesn't require any door frames or window frames.

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.  

We’re learning that there’s quite a difference between farming and gardening. Mainly, farming involves growing way more food than your family could possibly consume in a timely manner. Since we really hadn’t had any experience in dealing with that kind of volume, we did our best to harvest it, wash it, and give it to as many people as we could. It would have been nice to be able to make some money from it, but the experience and positive feedback we received from it this summer made it worth it. We did make sure to can a big batch of carrots and freeze a lot of our peppers, but lots of it just ended up getting fed to the animals, which is okay. In times like these it feels good to at least be “food rich”!

First time canning carrots. AND in my tiny kitchen no less! Our family will get to enjoy these carrots throughout the winter.

Fireweed syrup.

Strawberry fluff pie with date crust.

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 Bacon Brothers caught snuggling in their shade spot.

Who's next? LOL The broilers were quite relaxed on harvest day which is a good thing. We remembered to thank each one as we harvested the broilers, or "Tobys" as I sometimes refer to them.

The "wild card" chick we received from our summer order grew up with the broilers. At harvest time, we moved him (or her?) with the 5 egg layers. He is fast on his feet like his new roommates and is fitting in quite well! We believe he's a rooster which is why we rehomed King Hawaii last month. Putting two roosters in a coop with only 5 small ladies might not be a good idea.

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!

The field peas Pete planted in various parts of the farmstead have bloomed! They are dainty purple blooms. The pigs like to munch on the field peas as a treat.

These are notorious for blooming at the beginning of August. I am not sure what they are, but they are small & have pokey stems like a nettle.

A large beautiful sunflower grew and bloomed in the compost bin. We were unsure of what the heck this plant was and were excited to finally see it fully bloom into a sunflower.

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!

An August Wild North creation: "Alaskan grown" sign made with cedar.

A custom piece heading to Germany as a gift.

Rez and I enjoying a sunset at 10PM.

These days we are more relaxed on the jobsites! When Pete built the cabin in 2019, projects & downtime were a little more hurried. It sure is nice to not to feel the pressure of winter so much!

Beautiful butterfly momentarily warming itself in the sun on the air compressor.

Our family spent a rainy morning at the local Musk Ox farm. What a neat place!

Watermelon berries in Hatcher pass. We didn't pick many of these because they are normally a little tart on the palate.

All in all, we harvested about a pint of wild Alaskan blueberries. We didn't spend too much time & travel more than an hour from home so we had a small harvest. They grow like crazy further north of our area.

Wild lowbush blueberries in Hatcher Pass.