Bells of the North Homestead

I've been a gardener since in my early twenties.  Yes, I was a novice but we have to start somewhere right? I started by killing mint and basil.  I did try to grow them, but they constantly died. A couple of years later, I figured out what I was doing wrong, what the heck was the small spidery pest that was attacking (and killing) my bonsai, why was my mint taking over the yard, what were the green small bugs eating my cilantro, and WHY was my cilantro always developing seeds so fast?   I got a bit better at planting herbs in the tiny spaces I had in all the houses we occupied, and upgraded to vegetables and even cherry trees (that the moose thoroughly enjoyed even though I did not). When we moved to Maryland all that experience was kicked into high gear as my family got hit by many unfortunate personal economic events. When you only suddenly have money for your house, your car, the repairs for the car and some of your bills and desperation hits in, well then you'll d...

We've had a pretty earth shattering winter.  The past two years, since moving back here to Fairbanks, Alaska our goal has been to expand our garden.  To finally have some land to do with what we would like. Two years ago we looked at a fixer upper, but alas, it was not meant to be.  After much struggling to make it work, to purchase that house, it fell through.  We went into the winter of 2014 dejected and sad.  We knew we had to change some things about our life financially so we buckled down and put quite a bit to the side, paid off some bills so that hopefully, next time we fell in love with a house we could actually buy SAID house. In January of 2016 we knew we had made some pretty good progress on our financial goals, we knew we had made some progress cleaning up some of the damages from our previous renters on our current home in Fairbanks, so we decided, tentatively, to take a look at a couple of houses during the weekend of the Martin Luther King holid...

Its officially week three into our safe planting time and we’re now harvesting baby kale greens, rapini (or also called Broccoli Rabe which is pronounced raab),  some lettuce, arugula, micro greens and oddly enough, mustard greens which were from last year.  They obviously reseeded themselves.   As of today I harvested our first two radishes, and wow, surprise, no sign of root maggots! Little victories! Our tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and watermelon are looking better than they ever did last year which gives me some hope that we’ll actually harvest something more than greens and potatoes this year.  As of today we have about five unripe tomatoes on the plants, most of which are all on the tomatoes in our greenhouse.  We have harvested our first bell pepper recently which came from one of the few plants we purchased from one of the many greenhouses here. I purchased two weekends ago  two white eggplants which I’m seriously hoping we see so...

So now here we are, in the middle of our second spring back in Fairbanks, Alaska after a reasonably mild winter.  In late March we started our seeds, mostly tomatoes, a mixture of beans and a few herbs.  This, I knew going into it, would be challenging since we would be going on a weeklong vacation in May.  Trying to keep little seedlings going for a week without any attention what so ever would be tough.  Lo and behold our own dumb mistake took care of that worry. One mid April night when my husband and I were both exhausted from work we forgot the seedlings over night in our new light weight greenhouse.  The next morning we peeked in and every single one was dead, the mid 20’s temperatures killed them all.  Our greenhouse now in early June.  A lot of tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, hot peppers and believe it or not, ORANGE & LEMON TREES! The weekend of the 25 th of April we did manage to directly sow a lot of seeds.  All kale, ...

I was pleasantly surprised to receive an Oregon Scientific Weather collection model number BAR218HG to provide a review about and just try out for myself.  While I don’t consider myself too much of a techno geek I do find new electronic toys rather cool to play with!  What arrived in our box was: •One indoor temperature/humidity/barometric pressure set display unit •One outdoor temperature/humidity sensor — the system allows for up to five outdoor sensors •Quick Start Guide •Full User Manual •Warranty information Upon opening the box and adding the batteries I got busy with The Quick Start Guide.  Most of the setup went pretty smoothly, setting the date and time, pairing the base to the remote sensor, setting the altitude, sea level pressure and what not.  However, I did have a minor hiccup when attempting to pair it to my cell phone and that I believe was mostly user error. Not any flaw in the thermometer.  Since we already had somet...

Life in Alaska moves infinitely slower than it does where we came from on the East coast but our gardening season is much much faster.  So much so that it stunned me how quickly it ended.  By the middle of September we were getting close to the type of temperatures that would kill the cold loving brassicas so we knew, the time has come to harvest what was left. Gardening here is so much more different than it was in Maryland.  I knew what it was like to grow tomatoes here, I knew that aphids here are tough little monsters when compared to their Maryland cousins, I knew some of the troubles with growing cucumbers and herbs and yet, I learned it again through this year. Tomatoes: This summer was a super wet and cool one which frustrated many of the gardeners and farmers I spoke with.  Locally grown tomatoes were scarcer than hen's teeth and what were found locally grown were ridiculously expensive.  Our plants (9 of them) provided beautiful foliage, they gr...

I'm always looking for something new to learn, whether it be spinning my own yarn, canning a new recipe, or making soap so when I came across a really good deal at my local grocery store I just couldn't help it.  I had to try something that I had only read about previously.  Rendering animal fats into solids. If I were to render pig fat the end result would be lard; while if I render beef suet (fat) the end result is tallow.  While shopping at our local grocery store I inquired in the meat department if they sold beef fat.  The butcher excitedly jumped up and said "Sure Ma'am, how much would you like! We've got lots!"  Not knowing how much it would take to create how much I just stammered to the gentleman working the butcher shop area "Uhhh, 2 or 3 pounds, I guess?".  He jumped away to fulfill my order, he almost seemed excited to give away these scraps that sooner or later I would turn into something wonderful. As I waited another store patron ask...