Thanksgiving in Alaska

We enjoyed another quiet Thanksgiving at home this year.

Grayson harvested a grouse for the frying pan the day before Thanksgiving.  He's spent some time on his own hunting the state land near the house, but the grouse had eluded him until this week.

Seasoned and pan-fried, it was a tasty pre-Thanksgiving dinner.

After Thanksgiving, we put up the tree.

The boys are our tree-decorators, hanging ornaments and dressing up Dino for the picture.

Dino sporting his reindeer antlers.

Our final repairs from the 2018 earthquake were completed this month.  It took 2 years, but we finally got the house back into pre-earthquake condition.  The drywall repair and re-painting was the last job.  It's nice to have the numerous cracks in the drywall gone.  In two years we've replaced all the foundation piers and beams which required the house to be lifted on hydraulic jacks, repaired cracks in the foundation, rebuilt a deck and replaced another set of deck supports, repaired/painted the exterior siding, replaced damaged windows, re-hung the damaged chandeliers and light fixtures, replaced and repaired damaged drywall and painted the interior, replaced some plumbing and the damaged hot water heater, re-landscaped the grounds to repair the fissures and landslide damage on the bluff, and refinished the floors.  We still have some countertop and carpet damage to work on, but for now we're finally finished with the big repairs.

With the rugs removed to refinish the wood floor, you can really see the effect of the sun over the years.  This wood floor is just 13 years old, but the sun has faded the exposed portions quite a bit.  We refinished, but didn't re-stain the floor, but still was able to get most of the earthquake damage sanded out of the floor.

Before the cold weather hit, I added some guards and markers for the Norway spruce saplings, partly to help protect them from snow loads, and partly to encourage the moose to walk around them this winter (instead of walking on them).

The pumpkins we harvested have been put to good use. Jolene made some delicious pumpkin pies these last two months.

Before the snow fell this Fall, we had some cold weather that turned the hay flats frosty.

Halloween came and went.  We had fewer trick-or-treaters this year, probably due to the pandemic (so there was more leftover candy for us!).

Our coldest temp so far at the house, -4 F.  December usually brings us some temps in the -20s, so we're not looking forward to that.

Before we were banned from eating-in at restaurants, we made a quick stop at Olive Garden, where Landon and Grayson focused on the desserts.

Grayson's hair got out of hand for a while, and while at the barber shop he tried to make the barber stop at this point of his haircut, calling it his Patrick Mahomes look (but I asked the barber to go back and get the rest of it).

Our family has experienced a lot of tough losses this year.  First my sister, Buffy, then my two uncles Robert and Charlie, and then my Aunt Fern. Here we are facetiming through the phone for Fern's funeral. On the phone you can see Gramps speaking at the graveside service standing by the coffin. It's been a tough year in a lot of different ways, but we are always thankful for God's grace and love in our lives.  Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Campfire, Apple Picking and Pumpkin Pies

We finally fired up our smokeless fire pit (it only took us all Summer to do it - it's been a busy year). Two thumbs up, it really is smokeless.  It smokes a little at startup, and a little as it burns out at the end, but in between you can sit close to it and not be chased away by smoke.  It's a Breeo, made by Amish/Mennonite craftsmen in Pennsylvania.

Termination dust arrived more than a month ago, but lately it has started creeping down from the mountain tops.

The green tomatoes from our outside plants (which we picked and brought in to ripen) have been selectively ripening.  Between the two little indoor greenhouses we were able to get enough to make some salsa this week.

After making enough for this week, we canned the rest.  It made 12 jars. We should have one more chance to make salsa as the last of the tomatoes ripen.  We've enjoyed having good tomatoes this year, which is hard to do in Alaska. We used up all our tomatoes from the big greenhouse as they ripened through the Summer, so it was nice to have the green tomatoes from the outside beds as a way to keep tomatoes available into Fall.

Our pumpkins have been waiting in the garage for us to turn them into pumpkin pies.

The boys helped pull out the seeds and guts.

Cooked and ready to puree. 

The pumpkins made enough puree for 11 pies.  We set 2 bags aside in the fridge to make pies this week, and froze the rest for Thanksgiving/Christmas.

I buttered/salted and roasted the pumpkin seeds, but.....45 minutes in the oven was WAY too long, and unfortunately these seeds were too burnt to be edible. Grayson was disappointed - he wanted to try roasted pumpkin seeds.

With our new eagle pair nesting farther from the house, we now have some hawks that have moved in and spend time around the house.  This is a juvenile Northern Goshawk.

And we've had a Stellar's Jay begin to visit the back deck.  He won't feed out of my hand (yet), but he will hover over my shoulder until I throw a bread cumb.

And he likes to steal any eggshells we put outside while waiting to take them up to the compost bin.

A cold spell is around the corner, so it was time to pick the crabapples from Landon's apple tree.

We will freeze these to make some crabapple pies later this winter.

Starting up the fire pit.

They really just wanted to get back to their video games, but they stayed long enough for a picture.

S'mores while sitting around the fire.

The garden is now buttoned up for Winter.

Our great neighbors donated the leaves raked from their yard for the compost.  We used them to insulate the composting piles, and added them to several other composting dirt piles we had around the garden.  The leaves also insulated the top of our in-ground beds.

Leaves and straw as insulation for some of the perennials over Winter.

Strawberries are all insulated with straw.

Our fish carcass waste from this season's salmon catch was added to the three potato beds. Not sure how we will rotate these beds next year, some will stay potatoes probably, and others will rotate into something else.

I'm taking a chance by not fencing in our small orchard this year.  Trying a spray deterrent (called Plantskydd) to keep the moose from eating these trees. Might regret it, but I figure it's worth a try.

....and October brings our last opportunity to put the Christmas lights up. If we wait any later, there will be snow and ice everywhere, so I put the lights up last week. Outdoor spigots are insulated, heating elements are installed in the gutters, studded tires are on the cars, and the yard has been mowed for the last time...ready for Winter!

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,

or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;

or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,

or let the fish in the sea inform you.

Which of all these does not know

that the hand of the Lord has done this?

In his hand is the life of every creature

and the breath of all mankind."

                                - Job 12:7-10

Final Harvest

 

354 lbs of potatoes harvested, from just 15 lbs of seed potatoes planted.  That's nearly 24:1 in productivity, which is our highest yield yet.  Conditions were good for potatoes this year, a wet and cool summer, but I think adding the fish carcasses as fertilizer last Fall made a big impact on this year's crop. (The ones in the buggy are the ones we accidentally stabbed with the pitch fork - so we keep those separate and eat them first).

Fall has definitely arrived. The leaves have turned, and the days are cooler.

Potatoes are one of our last crops to harvest each year. We planted these Yukon Gold potatoes earlier than normal, first week of May.  They are a 90 day variety, but I let them go over 140 days before harvesting, and it seemed to pay off.

The boys are my harvesters.

Good sized potatoes.  Not too big, and not too many small ones.  Very healthy spuds with no sign of scab or other disease.  We didn't wash them, so they kept some dirt on them, and put them right in the bins we are storing them in, to minimize handling as their skin hardens over the coming weeks.

Landon, finishing off the lower potato plot. Each of our three plots produced enough potatoes to fill a 27 gallon tub, each weighing nearly 120 lbs.  That's nearly 24 lbs of potatoes harvested for every 1 lb of seed potato planted.  We usually harvest around a 10:1 ratio, so this was an exceptional year for potatoes.  We are storing them layered in the tubs with newspaper separating each layer, and will keep them covered in the garage since we don't have a root cellar.  In the past, we tried to keep them in our crawl space, but it stays too warm, and I'll think they'll do better in our garage, which is much cooler.

We also harvested the last of our carrots.  For carrots, we space out our plantings and harvests, so this was our third time to harvest carrots this year.  We totaled about 60 lbs of carrots for the year.  Root vegetables like potatoes, carrots and beets do well in Alaska's cool summers.  We had a below average year for beets, still had enough to eat and for canning, but the moose ate the beet greens off the top, and the beets stopped growing after that.  We plan to fence in the garden next year, so the moose will have to look elsewhere for their free lunch.  

These are tomatoes from our outside plants.  All our greenhouse tomatoes ripened on the vine (and are still ripening in the big greenhouse), but we also planted about 5 plants in the outside beds because we ran out of room in the greenhouse.  These 5 outside plants produced all these tomatoes, but were still green when the frosts started - so we picked them and brought them inside to let them finish ripening in our two little indoor greenhouses. Some are damaged from the earlier frosty mornings, but most seem to be ok, and will hopefully ripen up indoors over time. We've really enjoyed having our own tomatoes this year, making the gazebo-greenhouse a worth-while investment so far.

This is most of our canning for the year, minus the carrots which hadn't been pickled yet when this pic was taken.  We ate most of our garden produce as it was harvested, a little at a time, and only canned leftovers that we couldn't eat at the time.  Mostly pickles, carrots, and beets. Not a lot left over to can, but this was also our first year canning so we didn't go too overboard (this year). 

And here's this weekend's carrots, prepared four different ways - pickled carrots (in the jars), a bowl of honey glazed carrots and a bowl of lemon garlic carrots (to be eaten with meals this next week), and the leftover finger-sized raw carrots which will become raw snacks over the next few weeks. (The cookies up top are unrelated to the carrots, but just as tasty!).

Tonight's dinner, grilled caribou backstrap (filet cut), mashed potatoes, roasted potato slices, lemon garlic carrots and tomatoes - a plate full of things we hunted and grew this year.

Grayson saved one sunflower head to capture the seeds.  He'll roast these in the shell before eating.

The raised beds only have lettuce and celery left, everything else was harvested (or in the case of the cabbage - eaten by the moose). The in-ground beds still have kale, onions, lettuce and Swiss chard, and of course asparagus (but we won't harvest any of the asparagus for another two years). The garden is definitely winding down, and we're slowly cleaning up each bed for the winter.

Nearly time to put up Christmas lights?

We ate all the full-sized apples from our Norland, but Landon's apple tree still has all of its crabapples, just now turning ripe.

Grayson's school postponed National Junior Honor Society induction from last year to this year, due to COVID, and the swearing in was online via Zoom this week, so here Grayson waits in our kitchen to be 'sworn in'.

The swearing in ceremony.

Landon on one of his professional dress days, and Grayson dressed up for a NJHS meeting, taken just before Landon drives them to school.  Landon is a senior this year, and Grayson will be starting High School next year. Growing up.