Bells of the North Homestead

Six more weeks till Winter. Or so the story goes told by Alaskan Natives and sourdoughs alike.   When the fireweed has bloomed all the way to the top, we have six more weeks till the snow flies.   So far this break up and then into summer, we’ve had some successes….and some failures.    That’s pretty typical though.   The garden is doing well but could be doing better thanks to the late start because of our vacation in the lower 48.   That is a killer here since our growing season is so short.    We got to harvest a large bunch of garlic scapes earlier this week.   Yes indeed, garlic scapes.   SUCCESS! The garlic survived the winter! We’ll have garlic later this summer to harvest.   We’re about 2 days away from harvesting our first zucchini and summer squash of the season.   Our kale and broccoli rabe this year barely sprouted due to the fact that we got a late start on it.   We should have ...

As usual come winter here in North Pole, Alaska we turn inwards and spend time relaxing; learning new skills; reading books; and just as of this past Autumn I started attending college for my certification in Herbal Retail Management with the American College of Healthcare Sciences in Portland, Oregon.  So while we're not working non stop outside, we still stay relatively busy, all within close proximity to the lit wood stove.  Drying our laundry and cooking dinner on the wood stove while keeping us warm As we get closer to what can be considered Break up or what is called Spring in the lower 48, we begin to set up our plans for the next growing season or summer.  For some time now, actually before we started raising meat rabbits we wanted to have laying hens.  To us it just seemed to be the easier option.  Rabbits, in the beginning, actually were not even on our radar!  To us the eggs seemed much more desirable then the meat we would get from t...

Today was rabbit day. 23.5 lbs of rabbit harvested today. We have now moved all the babies that were in the temporary grow outs into the nicer grow outs to give them better accommodations. Our team of three (Edward, Nick and I) did great today! Nick did two of his own, almost completely by himself. It was a bit rocky starting off but before you know it we started picking up speed. And it was honeybee day. 1 gallon, 2 pints of honey harvested. Between the chicken we purchased as a chicken share from a friend, the rabbits, the berries I've picked this summer and all the other miscellaneous frozen bits I have stored away, our freezer is a bit full. Oh and never before have I had such a run on mason jars. Note to self, buy more mason jars. And soon. I still very badly need to make a batch of Apple Walnut bread. The apples that we picked are fermenting in the corner. Hhmm, maybe I should see if Edward wants to make hard cider with them? It's a thought! ...

A year ago we began to walk our property to figure out what we wanted to do with all of this land.  We've never had so much land to work with, being a military family who has most of our lives lived in military quarters. Once we had dreamed a bit, we started taking apart our "dream" list and started looking at what was a necessity vs what was just something we wanted. Our woodshed was one of those "necessary" items.  We knew we both did not like the wood sitting in the ground.  The bottom layer of wood always ends up rotting and the pile dries slowly under the tarps we use to cover it.  Wood that has not dried or "seasoned" sufficiently does not produce as much heat and it produces more smoke.  Wood that has not been seasoned also produces more creosote which is harmful to our chimneys as it can encourage house fires when it builds up too much.  The Fairbanks/North Pole area is also being watched currently by the EPA as the level of particulates in t...

I do apologize! Some of my descriptions got cut off! My son is going to start editing my videos from now on so let me (and him) know how well he does! Oh and by the way, it was the ASPARAGUS that came back this year!

Never before have I been responsible for caring for a outdoor water garden.  I mean, really, in Military housing, such a thing would be considered to be an extreme luxury so when we moved into our new home and I found myself the owner of a lovely, 1500 gallon pond, complete with a water fall, I found myself a little overwhelmed.  What do I do with such a thing? At one point we thought about raising trout in the pond, but we felt already so overwhelmed by the garden and the amount of work we now had that we threw our hands up and said "get to it later". Turns out immediately after break up, we discovered we had some work that was very much required.  We knew from the years we have been keeping indoor fish that agitating the water is always good.  It's always good to ensure your water isn't stagnate, so we plugged in our lovely waterfall and found our pond stunk.  Badly stunk.  It stunk enough that we all even hesitated to walk near it. So one weekend, mid...