Solstice Celebrations

As I've sat up late the past few nights and watched the glorious sun shining across the valley and above the hills to the west of us, I've been recalling my attempts to share the magic of this time of year with those of you who have never experienced a Fairbanks summer. I hesitate to even begin this year, because I'm just not sure how well it can be done. But, here it goes.

I have been going to bed between eleven and midnight, and the sun is usually still a glowing red fireball over the far hills. The air is warm and moist. Most the windows in our house have been open non-stop for the past several days. We've had a few nights that were still eighty when we went to bed, and that is rare. The only pests are mosquitoes, and they've been bad this year - but are not always so. The sun rises crazy early -without googling it, I'd say sometime before or close to four a.m. The birch trees are all bright to dark green. Today the air is exceptionally sweet and moist because it rained today. The air here is never very muggy, and it always has a fresh crisp quality to it that I craved when I moved away, and every time we fly somewhere in the warmer months, I always love stepping off the plane and smelling our fresh air - I've never smelled air so refreshing and clean anywhere else.

The interior of Alaska gets the hottest and also some of the coldest temperatures in the state. Our summers tend to start in May (not this summer), with seventies and lots of sun. June tends to be our hottest (70's-90's) sunniest month with exciting thunderstorms and fleeting showers. July is rich lush green and cools down towards the end. Our August is late summer and September is early fall.

Solstice is celebrated big time here with midnight baseball games, the Midnight Sun Run, down town festivities, camping, potlucks and parties. There is no time at night that it is dark, so many businesses extend their hours late into the night and people are out taking advantage of the warmth and the light. There is certainly a sense of urgency to make the most of every minute of our short summers. Town is crazy right now with tourists and locals alike in their campers, towing boats and water toys.

We have had the most glorious weather over the past two weeks, seventies to nineties with lots of sun. Every morning has just be gorgeous, and if you are like me, it is practically impossible to stay inside to even make breakfast and do the morning dishes, let alone do laundry or sweep. Today was our first rainy day of the summer, and that would be because in mid May we were still getting snow and had a few feet of it still on the ground. I was relieved to see the clouds and rain this morning, mostly because I had to stay inside and make some food for the weekend and for a potluck we are attending tomorrow. I busted out in the kitchen today and it felt good, because we've been living off lots of sandwiches and the quickest meals I can think of - as I haven't been up for hanging out indoors even by dinner time.

This week we had friends over and the kids played in the kid pool in the garden. We've been eating watermelon, cherries and homemade popsicles just about daily. This week we went to Chena Lake for a day. It is about a half hour drive from town. I went out swimming a few times and the water was perfect. I'm hoping to make it out there again in the next week or two, and not wait until next summer. We have learned to seek out our own picnic and swim spot away from the crowds. The very next day we were invited to go to the Tanana river to play with friends in the sand and water, and we went with it because that is what you do when it is a sunny ninety degree day in June

Tomorrow we are going to a Pentathlon (for 10 - 13 year olds with events for younger children as well), followed by a Greek potluck, put on by our Children of the Boreal Home-school Potluck and the greater Fairbanks Waldorf community.  It is going to be an all afternoon and into the evening event. I baked two trays of baklava today with our own honey. I'm also taking goat feta and chevre with herbs and olive oil.

On Sunday we have been invited to a Solstice Raku kiln firing and potluck put on by a friend of ours. There will be pots there to glaze and fire. Then we are celebrating three birthdays in our family, with a big family dinner - (I'm separating cream and making ice-cream Sunday morning.) So, that is how we roll for Solstice weekend, jam packed family, friend and food fun. Home body that I am already looking forward to spending Monday and Tuesday with the kids in the garden and with the animals and not going anywhere or having anyone over.

Happy summer solstice to you wherever you are. May your days be sunny and hot!

June pictures; Kids and Geese, gardens and first foraging

 I have little time or energy for writing tonight - but I managed to get some pictures uploaded from the past few days. We are enjoying our second week of eighties and non - stop sunshine. The gardens are off to a good start - with some of the young starts obviously a little stressed with the intense heat and sun - which is how our early summers tend to go. With the fabulous weather we have been outside non stop, mostly watering and still planting - although that is pretty much finished. We tilled a new garden plot - a former goat pen of five years. We pretty much planted into straight compost/ aged goat/geese/duck bedding.The kids and I have been home all day mostly every day, and have been able to let the chickens roam free, as well as the geese who follow us everywhere. We've also been getting the goats out for walks. I wished I'd brought the camera with us tonight, watching the does and doelings graze among the greens and run and jump, while the geese shuffle this way and that. Enjoy the pictures. We are hauling at least two hundred gallons of water daily and most of that is going on the gardens - craziness I know. I'm not hoping for rain - but that is what it might take for me to get a day inside cleaning and writing.

Homestead Update

Well, I know I'm overdue for a post, but I wasn't planning on posting tonight, but I saw your comment Ginger, so this is for you :) 

As those you who are local know, we've had the craziest spring ever - with winter weather and snow up until a couple weeks ago and then we've had seventies and eighties all this past week - just craziness. So, I'm getting the garden in later than ever. I spent all last week hauling wheelbarrows of compost up a soggy muddy driveway and up into the garden. One afternoon I managed to slip in the mud and the wheelbarrow full of compost I was pushing up hill fell back onto me, bruising my arm and neck- badly enough that I had a pretty stiff and swollen neck for a couple days. Then, the following day I was checking on the bees, wearing a tank top and skirt and I got stung by an angry guard bee on my already bruised and swollen neck. Needless to say, I didn't drive any where for a couple days, and I'm now suiting up.

As you can imagine, I've been in much of a panic where the garden is concerned. Thankfully my mother-in-law came up for a few days and has been spending her day with the kids and I've been able to plant from morning till night. As of today I was down to flowers, medicinal herbs and perennial re-arranging. However, we are putting in a new garden this year in the old buck pen that we have been clearing out. Some friends dropped off a tiller tonight and D is going to till about a thirty by thirty patch of ground that has had ducks, chickens, geese and bucks on it for the last five years- so we are talking fertile ground. I was going to put heavy feeders here, but then decided to put my heat lovers in the top garden. I'll be planting brassicas, beets, carrots and potatoes in the new garden.

In Goat news, Xanadu kidded. I don't have the heart to go into the details - but her first kid was upside down with it's neck back and I ended up calling the vet (crying) for the first time since my first kidding season. (Yep - I have the worst kidding luck ever.) We lost the first doeling - two for two this year - I've been feeling pretty down about that. On the upside, the second doeling was in the correct position and is healthy, strong, beautiful and sweet. Giving us two doelings this kidding season.

  Here is Denali

Wild Roots Denali :)

Avery and I planted her garden yesterday. She planted three corn plants, three sunflowers (two of which are red), six snapdragons, three cherry brandy rudbeckia, one cabbage, one broccoli and three strawberries. We have yet to plant some red zinnias, which I started from seed but the aphids got - so now I need to buy some - cause I promised my girl red zinnias.

We currently have fourteen Cornish Cross in the house - and as you might be asking why not fifteeen, as D told the lady at the feed store, "my wife said fifteen was too many." There are also eight Welsummers keeping them company - all of which are ready to head outside. There are twenty some laying chicks in a protected outdoor pen. Daisy and Dilly are in a chicken tractor, but they are fast outgrowing it - so D is making me a special Goose tractor - which I'll share with you when it is finished. So far these are the most personable geese we've had. They follow us all around the property. For a while I was able to crouch down an call them within arm reach, but now they've learned that I'm going to pick them up and put them away - so they've gotten harder to catch.

Happy Greenup! Happy Planting! Happy Summer!

Spring Pictures

 My mother's day goslings; Daisy and Dilly. I am so excited to have geese again. These two are buffs.

 Crazy kids, this was about a week ago, the snow is leaving but not fast enough.

 Thirty some layers, our own mutts, ten Welsummer pullets, eight Ameraucanas and six black sexlinks.

 Separating cream. I got close to a pint out of a gallon and a quart of milk. Made the best batch of sour cream yet using just Flora Danica culture. Super stiff and tasted just like sour cream.

 Homemade transitional spelt bread made with the delayed fermentation technique and honey pastured butter - our own honey - not our own pasture butter - not yet anyway.

 Sourdough half spelt half white pancakes - super tasty, light and not too tangy for the kids.

Homemade soaked half spelt half white tortillas. Best batch yet. At some point I'll share some recipes. 

And that's what we've been up to; goslings, chicks, mud and culinary adventures. Missing some goat pictures... Xanadu is due to kid Sunday - looking forward to an easy kidding.

Keeping busy during never ending winter days

 We have been having the craziest weather ever here in the Interior of Alaska as well as the rest of the state from what I hear. Usually our snow is gone by now and we are approaching "Green Up;" the day that you look at the hills and they are spring green. Instead our temperatures haves been between twenty and a little above freezing for the last several weeks. Not only that but we've been getting snow almost daily for the last week. It has been very pretty; large white feathery flakes drifting down. If this were last spring I would be really down right now. Miraculously I'm doing alright, biding my time, knowing it can't last. I told the kids we are just skipping spring. Summer is going to come crazy fast.

I never thought we'd have to do so much work to hive bees. I shoveled a lot of snow to get these girls set up. Partially because I moved them from their previous home in the greenhouse, to a location at the top of our garden, going for out of the way but an early sun spot.We've been keeping busy between caring for our new doeling Dahlia, several flats of starts indoors, new chicks in the hallway and we've checked on the bees once now.

I turned in our fourth quarter work samples to the homeschooling office today, and that felt good to be done with "my homework" for the school year. I plan to continue lessons up through mid summer so we can take off for late summer and a harvest break.

I've been having fun in the kitchen lately. I don't know about you guys but I tend to get excited about changing our eating habits and I go through phases of this or that, but then I fall back into old habits. Six years ago I had gotten the books Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz Elix. Both of these books had me sprouting and fermenting our foods and trying to eliminate most processed foods out of our diet. Lately I've been noticing that we've been adding back in too many processed foods, namely white flour tortillas and Anne's mac and cheese have become staples for my kids lunches. I've also been making bread weekly that is more than half whole wheat and often has other grains as well, but it isn't sprouted or fermented.

I started reading some articles by Weston Price which led me back to reading through my almost forgotten cook books. As a result I'm trying to sprout or ferment most of our grain products again, with the hopes that our bodies will be able to digest, process and gain more nutrition from the grains we are eating. I've been playing around with some of my current recipes, granola bars, corn bread and tweaking them so that instead of making them on the fly I start soaking the grains or flour a day ahead of time. I also got a sourdough starter from a friend and today I made banana sourdough muffins - which the kids loved. Today I started soaking some flour to make homemade flour tortillas for tomorrow. I'm hoping to get in the routine of soaking and planning ahead before summer is in full swing. I'll share my recipes when they are fine tuned.

Feeding Chicks From Your Pantry

 We had our first chicks hatch a couple days ago. I usually give in to the urge to set eggs or purchase chicks earlier in the season, but as we still have a few feet of snow on the ground and are having record setting cold weather, it has been a good year for a late start.

I was researching feeding chickens whole grain recipes before we ever brought our first chicks home. At the time I did not know anyone who fed whole grains, even the local organic farms nearby fed their chickens regular non organic crumbles or pellets, as at that time our feed stores were not even carrying organic feed. While some years I've broken down and started chicks out on organic chick starter, most years I've taken our whole grain layer feed, ground it coarsely and added a few other ingredients to it; a little extra fish meal for added protein along with a little of this and that from the pantry.

Here are some posts I've written in the past about mixing chicken food:
Mixing Chicken Feed

Chicken Feed Pictures

Early days of mixing Chicken Feed

Feed Costs

Here are some whole grain chicken recipes I found online that looked good:

Greener Pastures chicken feed 

Mary's Whole Grain chicken feed recipe

Garden Betty's whole grain feed recipe


My feeding regime for both the goats and chickens is ever evolving. For example, I've been feeding my layers cracked corn, mostly because I felt like they probably needed the extra fat for the winters. And while, I'd done some research on corn several years ago and knew that there were concerns about it being a GMO feed, I continued feeding it, not knowing what to replace it with, or not feeling like I could afford to change it out for say, black oil sunflower seeds which are three to four times the cost. Organic corn is also four or more times the cost as the cracked corn I can pick up at Walmart. That being said, I recently came across some of the studies on genetically modified corn, and as a result have finally decided to eliminate genetically modified crops from both our diet as well as that of our animals, and will once again be changing our chicken feed recipe.

As far as feeding chicks; they eat much less than growing meat birds or layers, and I like to make sure they get off to a great start, so I'm willing to feed them higher dollar grains like quinoa, millet, amaranth, etc, and other things in my pantry like red lentils and organic popcorn (just pantry supplies that I have an abundance of - but would quickly depleted if I fed to the adult chickens).

Instead of heading to the feed store to buy a bag of overly priced organic chick starter that does not resemble anything edible, I brought in a few ingredients from the barn and topped them off with what I had handy in the pantry. In the barn I keep local whole oats, local whole barley and local wheat berries, alfalfa pellets, black oil sunflower seeds, animal grade kelp and Alaska salmon fish meal. I brought in a tub with roughly 4 cups oats. 4 cups barley, 2 cups BOSS, 1 cup alfalfa pellets and 1 cup wheat. I also added a handful of each from my goat herb stash, comfrey, nettles and red raspberry leaf. From the pantry I added 1 cup Split peas, 1 cup red lentils (as that is what I had), 1 cup organic popcorn (again - what I had), and a half cup quinoa. Noah did the honors and roughly ground all this in our backup spice (coffee) grinder. When the grains were ground, we added about a quarter cup kelp and half cup fish meal to this mixture and stirred it in. Have I done the math? Nope, just eye balling. I know that the chicks have higher protein needs than the layers, so I keep this in mind. Diversity in grains and diet is also a plus. I do, do the math every now and then and I'll share the results in another post. If I remember correctly layer rations should be around 16- 18% protein, and chick starter should be closer to 20-22% - ish.

This might sound like a lot of work but it wasn't. I gathered the ingredients from the barn on my morning chore routine. It took a few minutes to gaze over my pantry and uncap gallon jars and pour out this and that. Noah spent about ten minutes grinding grains for me and then we filled up the chick feeder. When I look over the recipe, one thing stands out; I forgot salt. But it isn't that big of a deal. I can go back and add it, and even if I didn't, they'd be fine for a while. I do have fine chick grit for these chicks, although I haven't bothered put it in their brooder yet.

Other things I feed chicks: I don't bother buying expensive vitamin chick supplements or electrolytes. Instead I always fill the chick water with a clove of garlic (for parasites), as well as a couple teaspoons of our raw honey (vitamins and electrolytes). I also often put a couple drops of echinacea tincture (immune booster) and cayenne tincture (B vitamins and heart and circulatory booster). We feed the chicks hard boiled or scrambled eggs every day or two. I usually start setting out raw milk and greens for the chicks after they are a few days or a week old.

Other ingredients you may have in your pantry that your chicks will enjoy; beans,lentils or peas (coarsely ground), any sort of grain (wheat, buckwheat, kasha, kamut, oats, barley, rye, spelt) whether it is in the form of whole, crushed, cracked, rolled, bran, germ, sprouted etc., corn coarsely ground, seeds; poppy, sesame, pumpkin, sunflower etc, grind the big ones... What else? I'm sure you guys can think of some things. I was cleaning out my pantry and found some outdated garbanzo bean flour and brown rice flour. I know from experience that the chickens don't care for finely ground flour, so I'm thinking I'm going to have to make some sort of gruel to get the birds to eat it, but instead of just throwing it out I thought I'd try and feed it off. While perhaps not the healthiest, I have been known to feed my layers stale chips, crackers, cold cereal or whole grain pasta that was too healthy for us.

Last I checked my whole grain mostly local chicken feed for the layers was costing around eighteen dollars a fifty pound bag. My random chick feed recipe is certainly more, but also much less than a bag of chick starter - organic or not. We have fed goslings and ducklings very similarly - even though you cannot feed waterfowl formulated chicken feed without giving your waterfowl too much protein. More posts on feeding the chickens coming, along with our new feed recipe for layers and our meat birds, and how much each are costing. If you are in the habit of feeding your layers, meat birds or chicks, crumbles or pellets, I encourage you to switch (gradually) over to whole grains. It is cheaper on your pocket book and healthier for your birds.

May Day

The Snowiest May Day ever - But we still had a wonderful day!