Our First Try at Homemade Salmon Caviar

Typically, when I catch a hen salmon, which is always carrying a couple skeins (sacs) of salmon eggs, I just keep the skeins of eggs with the carcass after I filet it and use it to fertilize the garden.  But this weekend I decided to try curing some homemade caviar.


The sockeye are running in the creek near the house, so the race is on (again).


No one wanted to go with me today, so I just brought back a one-person limit of 3 reds.  All three about average size for this creek, and good color.  Here's one of the fish's filets.


So we're packing away some salmon, but we haven't been going through it as fast as previous years, and these fish were added to a chest freezer still nearly full of last year's salmon - meaning I can take my time fishing this season, and only go when I feel like it....no need for 0430 wake-ups this year.


I did a couple of things different this time.  First, I kept the 6 skeins of eggs (two per fish, all three fish were hens today), and cured them. You can see the bowl of brine I used to cure the eggs.  You can also see some scraps of salmon meat in the plastic bowl - that was the second thing I did different - I used an ice cream scoop to strip all the little scraps of meet left on the carcass after the filets were removed, for later use.


After soaking in the brine, then removing the membranes, then soaking again, we now have a bowl-full of salmon caviar to try out.


Here is our first dish using the caviar - toast with butter (or cream cheese) topped with caviar, garnished with our first cucumber harvested from the garden. Evidently, the goal is to be reminded of the sea as you smell and taste the caviar...I'd say we achieved that affect, as it's very salty, but still has a salmon flavor.  The cucumbers work well to chase the salty aftertaste away.


So, the carcasses that I bury in the garden for fertilizer got a little smaller.  No skeins of eggs left, and the body scraped of any leftover edible scraps. Here's what's left. Some folks boil the heads and use them, but for now we still put the heads in the garden with the rest of the carcass.


In the past I've dug a deep hole to put them in (which didn't break them down much), or froze them until Fall and tilled them into the garden beds (which worked great last year - they all broke down before planting this Spring), but with ~40 fish each season going in the freezer, it takes up too much room to store the carcasses there.  So this year I'm just going to layer them each week as I catch them, into the pile of garden soil I have left over, and hope that I cover it deep enough to keep the animals away.


Today's first three fish buried under about 8 inches of dirt.  We'll see how this works out.


The scraps I scraped out with the ice cream scoop, they are fried up here to make salmon patties.




The smell of salmon patties is one of those familiar smells that take me back to when I was a kid.


Jolene's greenhouse tomatoes are all different sizes now, and we're hoping for some sunny days to get the greenhouse hot enough to ripen the large ones. I know tomatoes in the Lower 48 are all nice and ripened now, but in Alaska, it's a big deal to get your tomatoes to ripen before the cold sets back in. So we're excited to watch them grow and (hopefully) ripen up for us this year.


Our potatoes all fell over in our rainstorms and windstorms, then the stalks took a 90 degree turn and grew back to waist height again.  These are the beds I put the fish in last year, so I may have too much nitrogen in the soil, making the potatoes grow tall.  Hopefully they are putting on spuds as well. Aug 5th will be their 90th day, so I expect they'll start dying back in the next couple of weeks.


Lots of small rain showers this year, and lots of rainbows.


Between the 2018 earthquake, and some natural erosion, our driveway entrance was in need of repair.  So we had a paver come out, pull up the damaged asphalt and repave that section.


Unfortunately, there really hasn't been too many days of pure sun without rain, so they ended up paving it in the rain - I'm hoping the rain wasn't heavy enough to degrade the quality of the asphalt they laid.




Compacted and finished.  I had planned to re-seal the driveway this year, but with new pavement on one section, I'll wait til next year to seal it all at the same time.


End of day, a moment to relax between rain showers, and enjoy a salmon patty.

Take care, and God Bless!

Prickly Visitor

We had a visit from a very prickly guest here at the house. He only raised his quills at us once or twice.


But most of the time he didn't seem too concerned, as he munched on fireweed blossoms.


He stopped to stare at us every now and then.


But then went back to eating.

Some interesting facts about porcupines:

- They are the second largest rodent in North America, behind the beaver.

- A group of porcupines is called a 'prickle'. (how convenient)

- They can't shoot their quills, you have to be close enough to touch them to get stuck.

- The tips of their quills have an antibiotic coating, to protect themselves from infection when they accidentally stick themselves or each other.

- They have about 30,000 quills each.

- Baby porcupines are born with their quills (but don't worry, porcupine mama, the baby's quills are soft at birth, and harden over the next few days).

We harvested some of our broccoli this week.  So far we've harvested beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and various types of onions. We 'hilled' the potatoes for the last time of the year, this time with just straw to cover up some of the spuds that were breaking out from the ground.  It's been a warm week so far, but the rain is forecast to move in tomorrow.

Genesis 2:8

There's a scripture in Genesis that I had paid little attention to in the past, but lately it has come to mean much more to me.  (More on that later on in this post.)  But first, some pictures of our week.  Here, Jolene holds a leaf she has cut off one of our rhubarb plants.  She uses the stems she cuts off to make some amazing rhubarb cobbler.  I'm not really sure if the leaves are meant to get this big, but one of our rhubarb plants just won't stop growing, so if you're local, and need some rhubarb, you know where to find it!


I've been at my current duty station now for over 3 years, and I've had some great Americans work for me in my plans and policy shop.  Here, I'm seeing off  Army Lt Col Eaton, as he heads to battalion command.  Due to COVID, his farewell was just us in the RV campground (but that's a fairly Alaskan way to hold a farewell).


I've always understood the significance of growing and harvesting, partly because I come from a long line of farmers, but even more so because of the account of Creation. I've always paid attention to the majestic account of God bringing the universe into being,  But in a recent study of Genesis, one verse of chapter two jumped out at me in a way that it hadn't before:

"The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed." Genesis 2:8

"....God planted a garden...".  In most of the account of Creation, God created by commanding things into being.  (God said, "Let there be light", and there was light.).  In six days, He created light, created the heavens, created the sea, dry land and vegetation, separated the light from the darkness, created the sun, moon and stars, created the birds and aquatic life, created the animals, and then created man.  But after forming man, we're told that God did something a little different, He planted a garden. He didn't command a garden to exist, but rather the Creator of the universe, the Almighty, who controls the entire universe with His spoken word, took the time to plant a garden, in which he placed man.

There are mysteries about Creation that will always captivate my mind, but the visual picture of God planting a garden for man will be one aspect of Creation that I will always gain comfort from. It is a popular saying today that gardening is the most effective form of therapy, and I suppose it should be no surprise that the One in whose image we are created, when it came time to bring the Garden of Eden into existence, after spending the better part of six days commanding things into existence, He chose to plant it himself.  For that I am thankful. And for the opportunity to spend some of the time He has given us here on earth, to also plant and tend to a garden of our own, I am also thankful.


We were donated some raspberry bushes, different types from different friends.  We planted some of them along the bluff trail near where we had put the compost bin....


....staked them to give them a chance to stabilize....


...and planted the remainder behind the greenhouse.  It is late in the year for transplanting, so we are giving them some extra care each day in hopes of providing the best chance for them to survive the transplanting.


Some other updates before showing some garden pictures.  Here is the compost pile at its current height, slowly breaking down.


~155 degrees, just a day after I last turned the pile, so it is still actively breaking down.  I will start a second pile soon, using the green waste from harvesting the garden, and will let that one cook (hopefully) over winter with the lid closed.  (We've had no more visits from the bear, which is good, because the pile is now too large to close the lid.  Though I suppose I could use the bear's help to turn the pile for me once in a while).


It seems to be anyone's guess how bad our mosquito problem will be on any given year, but a summer after a heavy-snow winter seems to bring out the highest numbers.  We had a good amount of snow last winter, and true to form, the mosquitoes are terrible this year.  So we invested in a propane trap. This basket supposedly holds ~30,000 mosquitoes max, and after the first seven days it was about half full.


So I'm guessing this catch is about ~10-15,000 mosquitoes. Probably not enough to dent the population around the house, or break the breeding cycle, but still I say "good riddance".


Our potatoes have put on some height.  Jury is still out on whether that will mean more spuds or not....


....but they stand above my waist.....


...and are now blooming.


The raised beds are producing well.  Here you can see the near bed full of Brussels sprouts, celery, broccoli, onions and some extra tomatoes that wouldn't fit in the greenhouse.


This middle bed is cabbage, beats, carrots and broccoli.


Broccoli.


Last bed is more cabbage and beets.




Inside the greenhouse.  We need a 'welcome to the jungle' sign.  I guess we should have went bigger on the greenhouse.


Cucumbers are fewer and growing slower than we had hoped, but there are some.


Plenty of tomatoes, but a long ways from being ripe.


Bell peppers.


More peppers.


The pumpkin patch is doing well.


Most of the female blooms are producing fruit, but we had a handful that didn't get pollinated, and are wondering if that might have been due to some aphid problems we had last week.


The in-ground beds are going well.  These are kale, beets, spinach and lettuce.


The kale and beets seem to grow well side-by-side.


The spinach bolted early, but we are still eating as much as we can from them.


The asparagus FINALLY started to come up.  It took quite a while.  The seeds seemed to have germinated well.  Several crowns are still not showing, but maybe they will show soon.


Jolene added some pots to the front flower bed.


Jolene's hanging flowers have turned out well.




Out on the deck.






All our mature spruce are putting out quite a few cones this year. I call them all black spruce, but I suspect we have some Sitka and white spruce trees mixed in.


I think this one might be a white spruce.


And speaking of spruce, our little Norways are doing well in the front yard.  Jury is still out on our side-yard transplants, but these lining our front yard are putting on some new growth already and seem to be doing well.

Til next time.