The End of fall

A few weeks ago, we had torrential rain. We were flooded. We had to pump out the basement.

Fluffy is standing in on Basargin road, wearing my Extra-Tuff boots (tm), also known as Sitka Slippers. Marvellous things, highly recommended. Especially if you live in the Panhandle (Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan, ... ). But I did not think you needed Willow Waders! Surprise. It's Alaska. The weather is, well, highly variable.

Our driveway was a little better. But not much. Actually this is "Basargin Loop" which is not a loop. Maybe it was a loop on the plans of the Village. My driveway goes off it. But since I have to get out of this loop, it might as well be my driveway. Technically it's a "private road". The Beneficient State of Alaska does not plow here. The weather allowed enough time for the tout ensemble to freeze up. Fortunately. And at long last.

On Sunday, actually Saturday night, it started to snow. Or maybe rain. Or both. One of those borderline situations. So my daughter was out here and John and Fluffy in Anchorage, and my daughter had to go to work on Monday. Hmm. By noon there was 10 cm snow. Not enough to block getting out, but enough to worry about. So we piled into her car -- Princess, a super Volvo --and drove to Anchorage. Princess is superb. I wish I had a Volvo. But not a Princess. What I want is a Valp. But due to our over-regulated existence, I can not get one legally in the USA. A pox on all governments. When we passed Big Lake it was raining and not snowing. That night it snowed and snowed. Next morning John and Fluffy went out and decided that Anchorage was impassable. I think the Glenn Highway must have been disasterville. So we stayed over.

Tuesday we started back. The roads were passable. We drove John's car Brutus, a Ford Explorer 4WD. It has really good ground clearance. I might not have made it in Vicky the Vitara. When we got here we had quite a sight.

As far as I can tell we are still 10 cm on the snowpole. This shot is south of the house. I took it today, so my ski tracks show. I can ski again! Oh joy. But the house was literally freezing (0C). so the first thing I did was to light off the heat. My oil stove dates from the flood -- brought over by the pilgrims. I love it. No moving parts. No electricity needed. No thermostat, either. If you are too cold, turn it up. Or build a fire in the stove. So by evening it was 11C in the house; much better than 0C.

Today John and Fluffy blew out the driveway.

The snow splitter is doing its job. It provides, as a bonus, a lovely place to put your skis on. It was wonderful to ski again. I love to ski. My hands froze, of course. I did not go far but I propose to take things easy at first. I would much rather ski than walk. But you can't overdo it. Not at my age, anyway.

 It is supposed to precipitate today. But this is Alaska. What the weather will do is out of human control. We will see what happens tonight.

One month to go on the garden

The garden is growing. Not surprising, plants do that. What is surprising is that in spite of the very late start we are doing as well as we are. Here we are, August 1. August is named after a long-forgotten Roman Emperor. I digress. Let's have a look at the garden.

 Here we see the cabbages front and left. To the right, the turnips. I like turnips. John calls them "potatoes with an attitude problem." All right. I still like them. Mashed, with butter substitute. I cannot take butter any more, unfortunately. The turnips are ready and I pull them at need. Behind the cabbage is broccoli and we have little tiny brocccoli. Beyond them the cauliflower. No signs of cauling or whatever it is cauliflower does. Now looking southward we have more stuff.
 

On the left chard and beets. I checked the beets today and they are starting their beeting. Love beets, especially in borscht, which my daughter makes so very well.
Then the late potatoes. Then some summer squash. It is doing well. Then herbs. On the right, beans. Will they bean? I don't know. And some junior collards, a desperate last-minute planting. Don't know if they will get there.

In the first picture you see our greenhouse. I have some tomatoes in it, some Japanese cucumbers, some eggplant (an experiment) and some zucchini. The zuchhini threaten the world, like Godzilla. Got to do a post on that. Meanwhile, we are eating fresh lettuce daily; nothing better, all red-leaf but it was, as I have said before, a difficult spring. And the potatoes are doing just fine, thank you. Root vegs do very well in Alaska. I may have some mystery vegs somewhere here too.

For such a late start, I am satisfied. At least two weeks late. Nothing I could do about it. Us mini-farmers, and even Big Ag with their million-dollar machines, cannot modify the weather.

So we weed, and we water. And we mow the "lawn" which unfortunately today cut my hose into pieces. I really have to bury the hose, but then, what to do about the winter? Maybe some pipe; run the hose through it. Bury the pipe.  Got to think about this. How to drain it in winter? Food for thought. Meanwhile we are growing food. Nothing is more satisfying.

A turnip grows in Willow

I always start my tomatoes somewhere around march. So I dutifully stuck the tomato seeds into the pot, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best. But after a while I noticed that the biggest plants in the pot (I use big yogurt containers, repurposed) did not look at all like tomatoes. I called them "Freds" after a Muppet's Christmas Special of long ago. Too obscure a connection to explain. "Classical Reference," as S.M. Stirling's Change novels say. Anyway, I had no idea of what had happened. In retrospect, I must have picked up a few strange seeds with my fingertips. So I stuck the Freds into the greenhouse along with the tomatoes. And behold, today I pulled up some turnips, because that is what the Freds turned out to be.

Surprise! Ready mid-july, even with the late planting. Well, the turnip has just gone up in my estimation. We had some of these turnips with dinner. Delicious. Of all the pleasures in life, eating food you have grown yourself has to be at the top.

As I bonus, my tomatoes have some room to grow now. Freds are fearful leafy veggies. They will choke out your tomatoes.

Garden report

From a completely dry and overheated June, we have gone to a rainy and cold July. The weather is of course crazy under the best of circumstances, but this is unprecedented. The rain did not seem to hurt the garden outside.

 The outdoors garden is coming right along. The cabbages in particular, nearest to the camera, are doing very nicely. Cabbages do very well in this state; people routinely grow 40 Kg cabbages. I doubt that we will do so well! Of course, the monsters are freaks, grown entirely to win prizes at the state fair. That is not our objective. Meanwhile, a shot of the greenhouse.

Foreground two tomatoes bought at the remnant sale at Fred's Grocery store, when things looked desperate in the heat. They are doing rather well. Background, one of this year's experiment, eggplant. It is not usually grown in Alaska, most certainly not outdoors. One zucchini that survived the heat wave is next, and some new (seeded) ones poking up. Desperation measure, to seed zucchs, but no alternative.

On the left of the picture you can find cucumbers, peppers, and some strange root vegetables that crept, unobserved, into my tomato plantings. Godzilla strikes again. Much work yet to be done, but at least we are up and running. It is race with time.  We are at least two weeks late, couldn't help that, so what comes out remains to be seen.

We are planted!

It has been a hectic ten days. The weird weather, of course. Well, that's the PDO; we summer farmers must adapt, since we surely cannot change the weather. So we got the garden planted!

Of course the transplants went into shock mode. They wilt.

The worst part of all this is that the temperatures have been above 32C (90+F) since before Sunday last when I finished. My transplants have been struggling. I water every day. But in the greenhouse the Zucchini have been cooked. Other transplants are stuggling too. Too bad, they were splendid. Couldn't hack the heat (although we are told that zucchini is a greenhouse crop). I have a feeling that all our lore is out of date. For the next 30-odd years we will have very different weather.

On the other hand I put in some peppers and they have stood up better than most. Good grief. They probably love the heat. Still too early to tell. Meanwhile I water every day and keep fingers crossed. I can see why the ancients sacrificed to diverse gods. Weather is out of your control. Maybe the gods, or godesses, will do something better. Ops, Roman godess of the harvest, sounds like a good candidate (from her name we get opulence). Perhaps I should build an altar. But there is stilll a lot to do! Ops may have to wait for her altar.

More garden antics

It has been a frantic week. We are so late on the garden. So I have been spading and then spading some more. Agriculture is a labor-intensive activity. Today John and Fluffy went to the "sanderia"  i.e a place where we can get sand. Free. I am adding sand to my garden, which is mostly silt kindly deposited by the Susitna glacier quite some time ago. It is very poor soil. So I add sand. This helps the clumping tendency of silt. I add manure, and of course lime (usually; but do not lime the potatoes!). John also kindly covered the greenhouse. This year I am going backward. I usually do the transplants, then seeding, then greenhouse. This year I am doing it backwards.

This afternoon the greenhouse beds are ready to go.

 Our greenhouse is totally homemade, of course. I have mentioned it before. It is prepared for planting and tomorrow (I hope) I plant. Tomatoes, Zucchini, and the rest. I think I've got some cucumbers. All these are greenhouse crops in Alaska.
 

The outside beds have been spaded (oh, the labor... and the weeds). Today I did about half the manuring, tomorrow lime and go. I hesitate to say this but maybe this weekend we can plant.  There are two new rows to be added but that can wait. We are so late. There was no choice in the matter. It was a fiendish spring and we had to wait on it. Agriculture is a chancy business.

One of these days I must do a post on the perils of compost making in Alaska. Not quite like the lower 48.

Garden at last!

As I have said before it has been incredibly wet. Our driveway is still iffy in spots. The garden was a morass. Usually Memorial day weekend is planting time, but not this year. You never realize how weather-dependent agriculture is until you do it yourself.

But Monday I went out there and tested. It was OK.  Really a bit too wet, but that has its upside: the weeds come up quite easily. The first crop was already there: the dandelions. Actually they are very good for you. The leaves can be added to salads when they are young; they give the salads a real boost. After that, you have to cook the leaves; they are bitter but vitamin-rich. The roots make a coffee substitute, but I haven't tried that one yet.

So I took the spading fork and went to work. The objective is to remove the  weeds and break up all the clumps. One could, of course, use a tiller. But tillers are rather violent creatures and I prefer to do this by hand, although it is backbreaking labor.

I have four rows. I have done two and a half. They still need to have manure spread on them. Maybe some sand to increase the "tilth" because our basic soil is 100% silt from the Susitna glacier. Maybe some other organic matter will be added. Then there's the small business of planting. We are two full weeks behind time. No remedy. We will have to trust for the best. It has been an unusual spring. I don't try to keep up with the Joneses, but nobody in the village has planted either. And they have been here much longer than I have.

Well, at least today the sun shone for a while. I have my fingers crossed.

The ground, the ground!

It seems spring has arrived. It was rather coy. It dumped a foot of snow in March, so we had an unusal amount of it around. But "breakup" as they call it in Alaska, seems to have arrived. I know it is breakup when I can see my driveway.

We should not be surprised, but I at least always am. Look! I can see some of the driveway! Behold! I can see the path to the door! We have not beheld this sight since December. The ground is bare. In places. It does seem to be melting. Nights still go below freezing. But we are getting there. Breakup is a frustrating season. Too much snow and slush to bike. Snow quality awful, can't ski. Can't garden. Snow on ground, and it is frozen anyway. Grr. So I have to walk. Trouble is I have taken all walks at least a thousand times. Nothing new here!

Well, there is always clockmaking. It will not be long before I inflict it on you again, so enjoy the respite.