Beryozova Shkola Graduation

The social event of the year, the Beryozova school graduation, took place last Tuesday. I wouldn't miss this for anything. We have poems. We have songs. We have speeches. As a sample, we have the proud kindergarten graduates (complete with mortarboards) reciting poetry:
Possibly they were singing Russian songs; I took pictures but no notes. This year, the high school graduated three girls; they chose pink and black as class colors; mirrored in the reciters (or singers) above. Here are our lovely high school grads:
They were serenaded by the lower grades:

Added value was provided by a puppet show:
These are very bright kids, and they work hard. They collected an incredible assortment of certificates and awards:
The tricolor ribbons are from the "Olympiada" or Olympics, a statewide competition for Russian-language children. The village cleaned up!

This school would not be what it is without its Principal, Margaret.
Margaret is at left in blue, standing with all the graduates: Kindergarten, eighth grade, and high school. At various times, Margaret got to the school on skis, four-wheelers, four-wheel-drive, and walking. It is relatively recently that we have an (almost) all-season road.

Finally, the graduates made their speeches, and were presented with their diplomas.

After this, there was food, Russian food prepared by the proud and hard-working mothers of the village.

The Beryozova school may be small, but it can hold its own -- indeed, is way ahead of -- any factory school that I have seen in Alaska, and most other places to boot. Long may it flourish.

The Tomato Transplant Operation

The snow is gone, except for a few random patches that don't get much sun, such as the former glacier where the snow slides off the roof. So thoughts turn to agriculture. My windowsill is full of greens. But we have a major project: get the tomatos (or tomatoes, whatever the proper plural is. Strunk & White recommends adding -s and so I shall).

Whatever the grammar, we must get the tomatos out of their flats and into transplant pots. You can buy peat pots, of course. This is 180 degrees away from my George Dyson philosophy (never buy anything you can make, and never make anything you can find), so I make my own. I used to employ newspaper for the purpose. Unfortunately newpapers are now all largely colored, and the colored inks are poisonous. Fortunately, a kind friend always gives me, for Christmas, the New York Times daily crossword puzzle desk pad; best crossword in the nation. But that leaves me with a large number of pad leaves. Aha! Make pots out of them.
At left, the cardboard tube I use as a former. Wind the puzzle around the tube, press in the ends, tape it for safety, and voila! a pot. A finished pot immediately to the left of the tube. The flat (plastic tray, otherwise castoff from some food product) immediately to the left of the tube. Transplants at the center. Microshovel (see below) inside flat.

You can buy pot formers from (among others) Lehman's Non-Electric Catalog, but why bother? Get a cardboard tube (paper towel roll, for instance).

Using a micro-shovel made from a piece of sheet metal castoff, carefully extract the plant from the flat, microshovel in some dirt, tamp it down with a chopstick, and you're done. Water it! This will start the decomposition of the paper. It will also rehydrate the plant and minimize shock. When it's time to plant, shove pot, plant and all right into the ground. I usually open up the bottom when I do this; less work for the plant.

Modern Industry will gladly sell you pots, tools, and seeds. I do buy the seeds. If you freeze seeds, you can use your leftovers next year; even if you don't you can reuse them for at least one year. Some of those tomatos are '08 vintage. I have not yet learned the art of letting X go to seed and then collecting X seeds. If you use hybrids, then you will not get away with gathering your own seeds. Hybrids, by definition, do not breed true.

Some people say they cannot have a garden because it is too expensive. I don't understand that attitude. Most of the things you need are in your kitchen garbage can! There is a blog out there called "Free Man's Garden" by a gentleman called Eleuthero. Unfortunately the blog has not been updated since 2007 or so. The photos have vanished. But Mr Eleuthero makes me look like a spendthrift. You can google it if you like; but without the photos it loses much of its value.

The ground is still wet. There is also frost 20 cm down. Can't work it. But today I spread manure (bought, unfortunately; but it's cheap) and compost (homemade) over the garden. Also the winter's ashes. Alaska soil is very acid; the ashes counteract that to some extent. I will also lime it.

Patched up the greenhouse -- thanks to some careful winterizing, it came through the winter almost intact. Now to wait. All gardeners and farmers must wait on the weather. Unless, of course, you own a heated greenhouse. Midas I am not; I too wait on the weather. It's a good time to clear brush, another post; but there is next winter's wood to get in. More things to do than there is time to do them!

New Construction in the Village

Walking down the road the other day, I saw a new construction project in the Village.
You can see that the kids have built a wickiup or teepee or survival shelter or...
and a very healthy activity, too. Totally unsupervised, and much better than sitting around watching television.

Mystery aircraft identified

After a bit of research, yesterday's Mr Waco has been identified. It is really a Stinson Gullwing Reliant. More info here.

This aircraft is 1930s (could be a wartime version, though). The key is the gull wing.

Birdwatching, Alaska small plane style

Two days ago, I saw the first robin of the season, up on a spruce tree and chattering away. But the birds I'm posting about have engines and need airstrips!

Alaska has more small planes per capita than any other state. Here in Mat-Su county, there is a small plane for every 160 residents or so, a staggering number.
The reasons are obvious: few roads, lots and lots of state -- a million square Km or so, twice as large as Venezuela, for instance. There are lots of interesting lakes, cabins, "and etcetera" about, but the only way to reach these spots is by plane (or a grueling overland trek) so lots of people have planes.

And the other day I went to the Willow airstrip, to see what I could see.
The Willow airstrip facilities are spread out over at least 1Km, far too much for a panoramic shot. But this bay is typical. There was also a sprightly old gentleman:

No hangar queen, this one; while I was there it was fired up and off it went to get gas. I'm no expert on older stuff; it might be a Waco or Lockheed ca. 1930-1950.
Beautiful plane. Big radial engine with a wonderful low-pitched growly tone, unlike the tenor buzz of most of these putt-putts, as my father used to call them.
Anyway, as Mr Waco (or Lockheed, or whatever -- I will call him Mr Waco for the purposes of this post) went for gas, I followed him, on foot to be sure, and came to another bay.
Still some snow about! Anyway, Mr Waco is getting gas, and there are lots more planes. Here, for instance, is a real bush plane:

This a Piper Super Cub with enormous tires, called "Mickey Mouse tires" after the shoes worn by the eponymous cartoon character. If you fly into rough airstrips, these are mandatory; they prevent ground loops. Also note the pod under the plane; it allows this two-seater to carry some cargo. Many native villages get essential supplies from these little birds (can't land a jet at Ikikik, or Eek for short).

Eventually Mr Waco finished gassing up and returned to his parking place. I had hoped he would go shoot a few touch-and-gos, but no such luck.
Gorgeous plane. Anyway, I started thinking. How many airstrips are there (besides Willow, which has facilities such as tiedowns, hangars, mechanics, gas, and a few other things? Well, I can think of five within a 15 Km radius offhand. These are private airstrips. Here is a view of Windsox strip:

This is a Piper Cub, I believe; it is parked in the owner's back yard, which leads on to the strip. At far left, faithful Fido is guarding the plane; he barked like mad as I took the shot, but his tail was wagging furiously. Just doing his duty -- "you seem OK, but I must warn my owners! You might be the evil plane-wrecker! Woof!"

So I drove down to one of the ritzy neighborhoods, on Michigan Ave. and got a few more. This is one community where people commute to work -- by airplane.

As you can see, the strips are not clear yet; the plane furthest from the camera has skis on and could probably get out, but the rest will have to wait a week or so.

I tried a few other strips, but they were covered in snow, so further pictures will have to wait, like the airstrips.

Then in summer there are float planes. These can get into the remote lakes. Again we will have to wait -- the lakes are still iced up.

And I can now walk in my yard. Mostly. Time to start getting the wood in for next winter. This is the time to do it, not fall when it's wet. That way it has all summer
to dry out.

Blogger's perils

One of the perils of blogging is that most of this week I have been making presents; Christmas (never too early to start) or birthdays (idem). Well, you say, what's wrong with that? Show us what you did! But alas, all of the recipients of these things are reading this blog, which would ruin the surprise. See?

But fortunately, I had a visit from Averkiy today. And what did he want? A knife of his own, of course. I think he's old enough to have a small one (Bowie knives are out of my means, and beyond indoor forging!) Fortunately, he wanted a carving knife, so the Chalupy knife-forge operation swung into action. We used an old hacksaw blade (I collect them) and annealed, shaped, hardened, ground, and tempered his knife. Here is Averkiy grinding the teeth off his ex-hacksaw blade:

The Dremel-type tool is ideal for children; not as intimidating (nor as powerful!) as the powered grinders I have, but fast enough so they don't get bored. We got it handled, and partly sharpened (it cuts quite well even in its current state) and Averkiy went home happy. Here he is, a year before now, with his very own stick horse.
It must have been Sunday, because he's in traditional dress. I don't suppose jeans are traditional (I am given to understand that in modern Russian, we call them Dzhinzy) but you can't ask for the moon! So Averkiy has learned something. With a knife, you can make a stick horse (need something to bore holes with). Don't have a knife? We can make one! But JRC says he has to learn to sharpen knives. Lesson number three coming up. I must thank Nicola Wood, on Bodger's Forum, for the idea of stick figures. Great for kids.

A homemade rounder plane

Dowel-making, that is, taking a piece of wood and making it into a cylinder, is an age-old woodworking concern. Solutions to this problem range from the lathe to the dowel plate. A lathe, of course, is probably the best solution. If you want neat, precise, and accurate cylinders, why the lathe is your friend. But you have to (a) have a lathe (b) set up the piece for turning, and (c) turn the thing. Sometimes you want something simpler than that.

Several alternatives are possible. One is the dowel plate. This is a piece of metal with one or more holes bored through it. You take a piece of wood, hack it to the right size, and pound it through the plate. To get away with this, the plate has to be quite thick, 6mm or more; you have to counterbore the hole to leave a thin edge that actually shaves the dowel. Unless you have a drill press, making a clean hole in metal by hand is a formidable proposition. I have a dowel plate made this way.

Another time-honored method is the rounder plane, or stail engine. Here's my stail engine, newly made a week ago:
It is a piece of birch, about 20 cm long (it could be shorter) with a 1/2" (13mm) hole drilled through it. Tangent to the hole, it is cut away at 45 deg. (on the left) and 30 deg. (right). A blade, taken from a broken block plane, has slots cut into it and is screwed onto the block. To use it, cut your piece of wood so it goes into the hole. Turn the wood (or the plne itself), using the rounder plane/stail engine as a big pencil sharpener. It cuts a reasonably clean dowel; the sharper the blade the better.

With Mr. Stail, I finally got handles on my set of swiss-pattern files:
Well, there's one left; I ran out of branch stock! With this thing, you don't need to run to the hardware store to buy dowels. But you do have to keep a stock of branches to shave down.

Spring is coming, if slowly. That's when I cruise the roads, looking for branches that were cut down by the snowplow crews. Lots of free wood there.