Monday, October 1, 2012

The End

It's just starting to sink in that I spent the summer in Alaska.
I think it took spending the afternoon wandering downtown Anchorage to fully realize what an journey it's been. I got dropped off at the bus station, and walked around for an hour, looking in shops and people watching before heading to the Visitor Information Center. In there, two old ladies told me that I could go across the street to the Federal Building and watch free movies about Alaska. I went there and nerded out about public lands-- my favorite thing to do! I spent a couple hours there then kept wandering.
The unique thing about my afternoon in an unfamiliar city was that every single person I interacted with was insanely friendly, helpful, courteous, affable (full disclosure: I thesaurused 'nice')... I was amazed. Southern hospitality? Nope, I'm pretty sure they meant Western.
I was reminded as I was walking of The Kindness Project. The kindness I encountered while doing everyday things like going to a museum, coffee shop, riding a city bus, talking with security guards, and walking into crafty shops lifted my spirits and made me walk around with a smile on my face, and probably helped me be kinder to other who I interacted with. Every person I talked with was so curious about what brought me to Anchorage, and if I was going to move to Alaska or spend the winter here, or what I had been doing before I got to, or how I ended up working on a farm for the summer. I ended up sharing with nine people on separate occasions in 4 hours about how I spend an incredible summer on a farm outside of Fairbanks. I feel so full from today, both in belly and heart. Cheesy enough for ya?

It's been real, Alaska. Until next time. Alaskamp, out!

Saturday, September 22, 2012

My farm birthday!

This blog post would be more appropriate in my other blog (read on to see why), but this will do!
My birthday started out as an ordinary harvest Monday- bunching celery, washing potatoes, packing the truck, etc. Group lunch, same as always. 
I headed back to the kitchen, and then Elsa came up to me saying that Sus needed me to come to the office to tell me something about market. After seeing all my fellow apprentices not-so-sneakily walk across the field, I knew something was up. But I was still so surprised when the back door of the office magically opened and I stepped inside to an empty room with THIS cake on the table:


Everyone sang happy birthday, and then we demolished the cake (FOR LUNCH!!!). 
Angel food cake and marshmellowy icing, made by Elsa!

Then a had a fun day at the downtown market, selling lots o veggies. When I got back to the farm later,  I didn't go to my cabin right away. I went there right before we went out to the local bar, and this is what I found!


Streamers made out of moose poop and fallen leaves
Paper snowflakes
Hanging flowers
Carved turnip faces

It was a wonderful surprise, and it makes it hard to leave my lil' cabin.

To top off my birthday, the northern lights were out for about half an hour that night-- a record for us. I still barely believe they really exist, which makes it more impossible to describe. But guys, HOLY SHIT they are SO BEAUTIFUL! Like fall on the ground beautiful. And not fall as in- leaves that are all on the ground right now and not on the trees.
Anyway, I had a grrrrreat birthday with my farm family!

And to take advantage of the currently (dare I say it?) fast internet, some of my favorite flowers:

Yarrow!

Rudbeckia

Scabiosa



















Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Jumping on the headband wagon


 This group of apprentices is a crafty bunch. Knitting, woodcarving, sketching, sewing, felting, spinning, dyeing. Since we spend so much time living on top of each other, once one of us picks up something, the rest usually follow pretty soon. Right now I'm finally knitting myself a headband. All of the other apprentices gals have had one for a couple months, but I was late on the headband wagon.


My favorite craft is felting.
This may or may not be because it is by far the easiest learning curve. It just involves rolling some fleece and poking it with a barbed needle. Pretty much instant gratification-- I made a rotund pumpkin in about twenty minutes. Next I'm working on little elf/pixie people. They are adorable, let me tell you. It's amazing how much detail you can put on using just one tool.

Our kitchen table is covered in various projects. Right now across from me, Nellie is starting a knitting project with the yarn she dyed herself, and Chris is working on knitting his hat. A wooden whale is on my right, Stephanie's crocheted bikini is on the table next to Nellie's fingerless gloves, a greasy rag from oiling finished wooden spoon is at the far end, and the centerpiece is the foam block for felting.
Craft-o-mania!!!


Monday, August 20, 2012

Animal Chores

This weekend I handed the animal chore torch over lw6ESmic'웽d}m8pZ¥ to write about the animal rotation tasks, and you can decide which tasks I probably won't miss.
The animal rotation lasts for three weeks. So every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, I was up  at 8, bucket in hand and sometimes with boots on my feet (gasp!).

First off you give the goats and sheep half a bale of hay, divided accordingly into the three feeders. Lots of 'MAAAAAAA'ing ensues. Make sure they have water.
Next: Give the chickens food in their feeder and give them water because chances are they are usually out of it. Sometimes throw food in corner for younger chickens because they get the short end of the stick when it comes to food time. The older chickens can be vicious!
Then give some food and water to the ducks and hang around to watch how cute they are when they drink water (once they get over how scary it is to see the same person they see five times a day come into their cage again).
Then carry a bucket of water down to the potato field to deal with the meat chickens. First I have to move the chicken tractor so they can have a new patch of grass to demolish and poop on. The thoughts that go through my head during this time:
"I hate you. I hate you I hate you so much"
"Move! You are so stupid! You need to not get stuck under the pole!"
"Oh my god. You are so disgusting. You pooped in the water dispenser."
But. I do really appreciate them for providing some of the tastiest chicken I have ever had. For special occasions we eat last year's meat chickens. The farm crew next year will eat the chickens from this year.
Here are the meat(head) chickens. 
~9 am: Milking! Modock is our one milking goat, and she is very patient. This is good because milking is a very quick learning curve. The first time milking takes FOREVER and the milk comes out in little spurts, but after that it just gets easier and easier. Now we're getting about two quarts every morning from her, which is a lot less than we got at the beginning of the season, but still enough to keep us having fresh goat milk most every day.
More 'MAAAAAAAAA'ing happens.

Throughout the day the chores involves getting enough greens for the animals. This could be anything from fireweed to dandelions to cauliflower leaves. The best is cauliflower and cabbage leaves because they are huge and take very little time to gather, so seeing huge buckets of harvested cauliflower was very exciting these past few weeks. Seeing huge buckets of cauliflower leaves produces MUCHO 'MAAAAAAAAA'ing.
Here they are eating cabbage leaves. The goats on the right usually end up pushing everyone else outta the way.


Some days the animals go out to pasture. This is a win-win situation, because you don't have to get buckets of greens for them, and they get to frolic in some grassy area and eat all of the things. Sometime I can get them to come in by whistling, but usually I have to go around the back of them and walk them up. Once a couple start running up towards the pen, the rest will follow. This applies to when they go to area they shouldn't be in also. Like when they got into the seed field by ripping through the heavy metal gate during a field trip. They ate some turnips, which to be fair needed thinning anyways.

Around 4 pm I check the hen house and pick out all the eggs. Usually we get between 12-15 per day.


Last stop of the day is the meat chickens again. Water and food and annoyance at their poop.
Animal chores! The end.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Apprentice Life

We've spent the past three months living in extremely close quarters with 6 other people. It's a struggle at times (mostly just to keep the kitchen clean), but we magically all get along... better than you would expect from a random group of twenty-somethings who wanted to work and learn on a farm in Alaska for the summer!

To describe certain feelings and experiences, we've come up with a few expressions that we use multiple times a day.
The first one: Hangry. Hungry + Angry
Sometimes we'll get grumpy and snappy and in a funk, and then we realize that it is really just our hanger speaking. Usually shows around 11 am or 5 pm. It can get bad. Luckily there are now rows of juicy sugar snap peas to apPEAse us when hanger strikes.


Then my favorite: MLIF. My Life Is Farm
We throw this word out probably too much now, but it's so perfect.
The farm kids are playing with legos mixed with dry moose poop. MLIF.
My hat fell down the outhouse... MLIF!
Can't make it to the kitchen without stopping to eat peas for five minutes... MLIF
Boot zippers are stuck because there is poop jammed in them. MLIF!
Eat as many peas as possible during the week so that we don't have to harvest as many on harvest days... MLIF.

Throwing poop at your friends and coworkers is the norm (compost heap making!), shoes only happen when the cracks in your feet get too bad, dinner can be found 20 steps from the kitchen, there are always shavings from wood carving on the floor, second lunch happens most days, and hot chocolate is the hottest commodity.
It's hard to believe that we only have 7 weeks left here... time flies! But at least there's more thyme in the garden!

Monday, July 23, 2012

Remember Helen and James?

Well, sad news, but they are no longer with us.
.
.
.
Ok ok that was mean. They are totally not dinner. We could never. 
But they did get sold to a neighbor, and we didn't get a chance to say goodbye! We were heartbroken, but at least there was still Tristan (Gigantor) and a lot of cute cats to snuggle with.
But then! Lo and behold, who came walking up our driveway today looking groomed and plump but the two bummer lambs themselves! They came to gorge themselves on grass be pet by large amounts of children for the open house.
mmm mmm mmm green things!

I got a good James cuddle in, and got to hear Helen's strange bleat again, and life was good!

Those eyelashes!

P.S. Life on the farm is pretty crazy right now. What with balancing field trips, harvesting, cultivating, visits to neighbor farms, figuring out what the heck to do after this apprenticeship, eating baked goods provided by Domestic D-Rod, and being rained on a bunch, we've had no time to update this here blog. Blog post about our trip to Denali coming up soon, I promise!

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Chickweed.



Tastes like raw corn on the cob.
Good in salads.
Grows fast.
Small white flowers.
Bright green.
Devil Plant!!!!

Yup, chickweed is our arch nemesis here at the farm. This plant looks innocent at first glance- weak stem and no pokey bits, pleasant color, not poisonous. But we learned fast that this is not a weed to ignore. It encroaches on any free ground space. It can take over a bed in no time at all, and winds its way around the pea stalks and tangles in with the baby carrots, leaving little space and light for them to grow. Waaaaah!

I'm choosing to write about chickweed because I was thinking about what I would tell people what I was doing on the farm all day. It's changed from what I did at the beginning, which was mostly pulling weeds and shoveling compost. Now the answer is: cultivation! Not to be confused with weeding, apparently. Cultivation is selectively picking out the weeds out of the beds. We use tools like the scuffle hoe, co-linear hoe, wire weeder, flame-thrower and our hands to help us. And we spend hours each days getting chickweed (and other weeds) out of the beds and into the duck or chicken pens. I eat a lot of it too.

Just thought our dear readers should know... if at any point from 9:15 am our time to 4 pm on a weekday you are wondering what we are up to, chances are we are pulling chickweed out of the garden! Now you know what it looks like! Or maybe we are doing our watering chores. This week I'm on upper field drip, and D-Rod is on lower drip. But that's another story for another day!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Domestic D-Rod (Or how cooking is the most fun thing ever)




Google image search provided me with this for "Cursed Clive”
I don’t know whats going on, but everyone looks
super concerned about it

You stand everyone in a circle.  One person starts, saying their name and an adjective that starts with the same letter (or sound) as their name (IE Stinky Steve, Pillaging Pete, Curse-ed Clive) (Also double as good pirate names). You proceed left or right, and each subsequent player says first the names and adjectives of each proceeding player, finishing with their own name and adjective.  At the end you challenge as many players as you can to say everyone’s name and adjective.  For bonus challenges you may rearrange the order or try making people say just names without adjectives.  Theoretically by the end everyone knows everyone else’s name, and knows that they hate whomever made them play another dumb name game.

If you’ve ever been at a summer camp you’ll be familiar with this game.  I don’t know if it is a fixture of any other establishments, for all I know the senate is full of Boisterous Bobs and Diligently-fulfilling-all my-campaign-promises Daves, but  identification activites are a MUST for camp counselors.
Point of Story, the apprentices at Calypso were played this game informally.  (we did not stand in a circle, we were really just making up adjectives for each other that started with the same letter as our names).  Everyone had a pretty funny one, but the one that has stuck the most was mine: Domestic D-Rod.  In addition to learning about farming, education, and not having kids soon, I have learned that I love to make food.  I’m going to post about making bread one of these days (my passion for baking is on the rise), but today you’re hearing about sorbet!



Rhubarb.  GIT YOU SOME!
Rhubarb sorbet is REALLY EASY TO MAKE provided you have (get this) rhubarb and an ice cream maker.  I recently learned that you can get an attachment for your kitchen aid that is an ice cream maker and it cranks it out so you don’t have to!  So but anyway, the rhubarb sorbet recipe I used is (this isn’t going to surprise any of you) the first one that comes up when you google “rhubarb sorbet”.  Also (this, too, will surprise no one) I didn’t follow it.

These are the ingredients for the sorbet recipe which I didn’t follow, but for argument’s sake I’ve included them.  I’ll include my final recipe at the end.

  • 3 1/2 cups of chopped fresh rhubarb (4-5 stalks)
  • 2 1/2 cups of water
  • 1 2/3 cups of sugar
  • 1/4 teaspoon of salt
  • 2 teaspoons of orange zest
  • 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh ginger
  • 2 tablespoons of corn syrup



It’s hard to tell in this picture, but that is a HUGE Rhubarb leaf
My cellphone was included for scale.

Rhubarb is a really really cool plant, it looks sort of like celery, but the bottom (and sometimes the whole length) of the stalk is pink or red.  It doesn’t taste like celery.  It’s very sour, and has a sort of savory taste if you eat it raw, it sort of reminds me of meat a little bit.  It does not taste like meat if you cook it.  It grows in dense clusters of stalks, which have one big leaf on the end of each of them.  The flowering stalks are round, hollow, and have smaller normal stalks branching off of them part way up.  It is sour because it contains Oxalic Acid.  The leaves contain a higher concentration of this acid and, as a result, can make you sick.   So don’t eat them.


It’s THEIR fault mine wasn’t all Fuchsia-y
So to make about a quart (one large yogurt container full) you’ll need 3½ cups of chopped rhubarb.  The recipe I looked at claims that this is about 5 stalks and they’re full of it.  Rhubarb does not come in uniform thickness, nor are they all the same length, therefore trying to specify stalk number is a futile effort.  By all this I mean I didn’t count how many stalks I used, I doubled the recipe but also defiantly used more than ten.  Also, the stalks I used were green and pink, because they do that, and so the end result isn’t as pink as the one in the picture on the website (I’ll give you a minute to google it right now.  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.  There you go, it’s less pink than that).  If you want to make it as pink as that stuff, use only the red parts of the rhubarb (IE waste a bunch of it).
This is a really pretty picture I took of chopped rhubarb.
No but seriously, ginger is a Big. Freaking. Deal.
I had ginger, and no orange zest, so I heavy loaded ginger in my first batch, and it was really really good.  That said, I’m a total ginger junkie, so if you don’t L-O-V-E love (you’re supposed to say each letter out loud, followed by the whole word, like El Oh Vee Eee Love) ginger, you don’t have to add nearly so much.  You could also add some other stuff to it if you wanted, like lemon juice, or some other fruit, or pretty much whatever you want.  I’d recommend against Goldfish or Kale, but hey, whatever sheers your sheep, man.  Also, don’t try to zest clementines.  I don’t have a funny picture to go along with this, but that mess does not zest! 
There is salt in me, do you know why?

Next you put your rhubarb and your ginger or whatever in a pot with 2½ cups of water, and your sugar.  The recipe calls for 1 and 2/3 cups of sugar but I did a bit less than that because I didn’t want to cut the rhubarb’s tartness too much.  You also put some salt in.  I didn’t measure this.  Does anyone know why the crap everything you ever cook calls for salt?   Like, cookies call for salt.  I think there is a great salt conspiracy, where producers of salt are trying to keep their product relevant and are paying everyone to say “yo throw some salt in that puppy” on every damn recipe.  I think it might actually matter with this one, since it does change the boiling point of water, but still, screw you, salt!  Anyhow, you bring your rhubarb water sugar and (sigh) salt mixture to a boil, then let it simmer until the rhubarb falls apart easily.

Sorry for freaking out earlier, I’m cool now, man.  Really.
At this point you’re supposed to let the mixture cool for ten minutes.  Nothing indicates why you do this, nor is there any criteria for what constitutes “cool enough”, so I pretty much just did whatever on this.  Anyways after your cooked rhubarb mess has chilled out sufficiently, you blend that mess!

That is one fiiiiiine strainer you go there!
You’re supposed to blend it in small batches, I guess in case you’re using a blender for GI Joe’s or something, since you can definitely fit a quart of liquid in a normal blender.  Anyhow, after that you strain out the pulp using a fine mesh strainer.  This part is funny, because the first time I did it I pushed most of the pulpy stuff through the strainer, and the sorbet turned out perfectly.  The second time I removed most of the pulpy stuff, and the result was a glorified slushy.  Feel free to experiment with this, I certainly intend to.  Maybe you don’t need to strain it at all.  Then you’re supposed to add corn syrup.  I added some honey, I don’t think it matters.  Either way, you want to chill the puree after for a few hours until it too has calmed down.  Err... cooled off.

This is my favorite part of the recipe.  Now you “follow the instructions on your ice cream maker”.  So... make it ice cream.  After it finishes, you still need to put it in the freezer, but the end result, at least for me, was AWESOME.  That said, I outsourced the ice cream maker part, since one of the people who works here has an electric ice cream maker.  This is what I got back.
So. Good.

 We served it at our fundraising brunch this past sunday over rhubarb crumble.  Be jealous.
 

Mom, Dad, if you really loved me you’d come visit me in Alaska and let me make this for you.
 OKAY.  So in fine
31/2 cups rhubarb, chopped
1 2/3 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups water
ginger to taste
like, some salt but not a whole lot, and maybe none who knows
whatever the heck else you want to put in it but not Goldfish
maybe some honey

Put rhubarb water sugar and ginger and salt and not goldfish into a pot.  Bring said pot to a boil, turn down heat and let it simmer.  Once rhubarb falls apart easily, take off of heat and let cool for a little while, or maybe don’t.  Puree sugary gingery rhubarb compote.  Strain it, or possibly don’t strain it, or aggressively push it through strainer with a ladle.  Maybe add some honey.  Cool that in the fridge over night.  Put in your ice cream maker and then do whatever you do with those to make ice cream (proceed to crank it, or push “On” or whatever).  Freeze the resulting sorbet, or just eat it.  In fact, at pretty much any point in this recipe you can just eat what you have, it’s all pretty good.








Monday, June 18, 2012


This is an excerpt from this weeks Harvest Note, which goes out with every CSA share.  The Farm Apprentices write the note each week and it includes updates on whats going on at Calypso, what to do with stuff in your CSA share, some pictures and stuff.  I'm responsible for this article.  It reads a little more formally than my blog usually does (which is probably a good thing).  The stuff in bold isn't in the article that got sent out, but was included here for your benefit!

Growing Up Farm
Growing up is hard for all parties involved in it, as every hallmark movie, coming of age story, and Harry Potter book will tell you.  Kids struggle to find their place in the world, seeking independence as their sense of self grows.  At the same time parents struggle to keep their own sanity while attempting to remember when soccer practice starts (or how to communicate with Harry after being murdered with the Killing Curse.  Parenting is different from family to family).  One might think that this sort of angst around growing older is unique to humans. 
It isn’t.
Why are you in our cage? -Ducks
We received a paddling of ducks last week, that are only a few months old (incidentally, did you know that the word for a group of ducks is a "paddling"?  Google did!)  While already large, they still behave like tiny ducklings, following one another in circles around their enclosure and waddling-scared from anyone who tries to befriend them (I'm particularly proud of the phrase "waddling scared", I encourage you to try doing this around your living room, maybe after a few glasses of wine)
WHAT AM I!? -James
The ducks aren't the only confused youngsters at Calypso though.  James and Hellen, our two “bummer” lambs (we had to bottle feed them, as their mothers rejected them) are not quite sure what they are.  “Am I a Lamb or a Person?”, their insistent ‘baaaaing’ seems to say, though more likely it translates to “bring me that bottle right NOW!”.  While shoving them back in the pen every time we open the gate isn’t the most fun for us or for them, we hope they learn it’s for their own good and appreciate it when they grow up.
Our new chicks are growing up fast, and four of them were introduced to our flock of chickens this past week.  Neither party seems sure about the other, but chickens are not the brightest crayons in the box, as it were, and will probably forget to be confused pretty quickly.


Other babies on the farm include various baby birds in nests, bird boxes, and in one memorable case on the floor of the washing station.  After our first harvest, we went to wash salad mix, and were confronted by a peeping baby robin.  As we tried to put him back in his nest his siblings began to frantically peep and squawk as well, and one of them decided to jump ship.  At this point, from the wild blue yonder came two screaming bolts of avian fury given form.  Mamma and Papa Robin began to attack us with every ounce of parently rage they could muster, and eventually we just left them the heck alone.  Score: Birds 1 Farm team 0


Sunday, June 10, 2012

Highlights

So much happens at the farm on a daily basis... 
how to accurately update our dear readers (and by that I mean our parents)?? 
Oh yes-- a highlight reel!

First up for this week: More lambs! Mainda had two adorable boy lambs- James and Alfy. James is our new bummer lamb. Even though he was born first, Mainda did not want anything to do with him. We all think he's perfect though, and confuse him by having him suckle our fingers instead of his bottle.








This is a horn beetle that landed on me during field prep. Beautiful dark purple with white specks (some of the specks are parasites!), this picture was taken during this beetle's last living moments. It hopped into the air and fluttered away and we all watched it with smiles in our hearts.... then two seconds later a bird swooped in and ATE IT. NATURE!


We were snuggled in the brand new kitchen, listening to D-rod reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone in the appropriate accents, when all of a sudden someone looked out of the window.. A QUADRUPLE rainbow. I kid you not. The sky was super pink. The picture does not do it justice, but it does show a mosquito flying by the lens, which is sadly true to life. 


This is our first real meal in the new kitchen. Moose, lamb, biscuit, fresh rhubarb chutney, chickpeas, and a weed salad (bluebells, dandelions, chick weed).


Raking beds barefoot in the pouring rain. And when the rain stopped and the sun came out, I ran through the fields and taste-tested all of the salad greens. First harvest on Monday!


The end of another busy week on the farm. Now we're off the to Fairbanks folk festival!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Da Rulez

- Walk, don't run
- Don't touch the fences... they're electric
- All the chocolate on the farm belongs to Tom
- Touch the animals when your leaders say it's ok
- Cheese is good on everything
- You must always bring every hot sauce variety to lunch, as well as the Braggs
- Respect the people who live on the farm
- Ask your chaperone to take you to the outhouse if you need to go
- Put the tools away when you leave
- Show no mercy to the chickweed
- Don't step on the beds!fte4 (this was an addition by Otter the Cat)
- Cuddle James at every opportunity
- One bowl policy
- It's ok to slap your friends if there are mosquitoes on them
- Touch the plants with just one finger

** Note- There are no rules on Calypso because we are volunteers. These are suggestions.

D-Rod, following Da Rulez.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

There are some bees!

This title is in reference to a downright unhelpful note that D-rod left me when I missed a staff meeting. The note, given to me 2 days after the meeting, said: "There are some bees. I don't know where." We joke about this note LOTS.

But. Here at the farm we know where the bees are... on the porch of the Resource Center in 3 hives! Collectively we have 8 pounds of bees (of the Russian variety) in the hives.
Inside each hive there is a queen with a yellow spot to label her. 
The hives get checked by Tom about every two weeks to make sure that the bees have enough space and aren't forming queen cells. If a new queen hatches (it take 16 days for that to happen), half of the hive will swarm and leave to find a new home, which beekeepers don't want.

Anyway, today I got to help check the hives. We wore white shirts because color will agitate the bees, and we used the smoker to calm the hive. We took out each frame and checked to see where the queen was, and pinched off a forming queen cell when we found it.

A worker bee with orange pollen on its legs-- it's from dandelions.
 I collected a bunch of dead workers and drones to show the next field trip so the kids can get pumped on bees.


We've been sitting next to the hives at lunch and snacking on the pollen-- I recommend it!

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Birding Life List (or Why I should Blog before 11:00)

Today I started my Life List.  Seasoned birders (thats people who like to go outside and look at birds, not people who enjoy rosemary on their chicken) will be familiar with the term, but for the normal part of humanity, it's exactly what it sounds like.  It's a list of all the birds you've ever seen ever.  I've chosen to start from today and if I get sick of not having some cool stuff on there I'll add things I know I've seen (Green Heron, Cerulean Warbler, Monkey-Crested Disco Hawk, etc.)

When I googled "monkey crested disco hawk" it provided me with this helpful picture of a cat about to disobey the warning label on the side of his prescription catnip.
I come by birding honestly.  My parents like birding more than most people (in that they like birding more than most other people like birding, and that they like birding more than they like most people).  For further clarification please see the "Things My Parents are Religious About" chart below.

THINGS MY PARENTS ARE RELIGIOUS ABOUT
  1. Fishing/Dances that Were the Height of Fashion and Society While the Pyramids Were Under Construction, Respectively
  2. Aaron Sorkin's "The West Wing"
  3. Birds
  4. The Outer Banks
  5. Unitarian Universalism


So but seriously, I come by birding honestly.  In fact, on my mom's side of the family not knowing the difference between a Pintail and a Bufflehead is grounds for immediate expulsion (Sorry, Lina).  One of my cousins named for a delicious root spice (I'll leave you guys to guess which one!) frequently scares her very-calm-and-level-headed boyfriend nearly to death by attempting to identify the birds soaring through the air above the car she is in the process of operating.  If that all weren't enough, birding plays a major role (maaaajor role!) at the summer camp for which my first child will be named (not for a long time, see post 1).  Hurricane Burgundy Center for Wildlife Studies Rodriguez will probably disown me, but before he she it they do, they will have a copy of Sibley's and a pair of 8X24 binos thrust into their new born fingers. 

What we need to take away from this, sports fans, is that I really like birding for reasonable reasons, and for those reasons I decided to start writing down all the birds I see.

I made the first part of this post really long because the part where I list all the birds on my life list is gonna be pretty short.
  1. Dark Eyed Junco (saw and heard)
  2. Yellow Rumped Warbler (saw and heard and came to hate, more on that later)
  3. Common Raven (saw and head)
  4. Hermit Thrush (saw and heard)
  5. Violet Green Swallow (saw and heard)
  6. Grey Jay (saw and heard)
  7. Peregrine Falcon (saw and heard)
  8. Varied Thrush (heard)
  9. Red Squirrel (saw and heard, is on list on purpose, is not a bird.  I learned this, to my dismay, after chasing an exciting noise though the trees for some time)


Today we went to Angel Rocks which are some big rocks and are probably called that for a reason but I don't know what it is. I'm going to google it I'll be right back.  Okay google wasn't that fourth coming, by which I mean none of the pages said "Angel Rocks is a rock formation in Chena River State Recreation Area which was named for the totally sweet snow angels some park rangers made there this one time" or anything else like that in their little description, so I'm going to assume the answer is lost in the mists of time, or maybe the trunk of my Corola.  Anyhow it's a really REALLY REALLY cool place, and is beautiful, and has eight birds and  a squirrel in it.  It also has one thousand dogs in it, and their six owners, who work together as an effective bird-terrifying team.  But I digress (you only JUST noticed, D-Rod?)

I'm going to level with you guys, I'm super tired, but had "FREAKING BLOG ALREADY" on my to-do list for today.  I don't want to bother annie for her camera for all the pictures I took, so I'm going to do round two with Angel Rocks Post tomorrow.  Maybe.





Thursday, May 24, 2012

Multiple Use for Scoops of Yogurt

MUSY! A nerdy public lands reference, did you catch that?

But really, I was reflecting this evening on how many ways we use 32 oz yogurt containers around the farm.

1. To eat yogurt from
2. Leftover food storage
3. To pour water in the sauna
4. Calculate how many pounds of soil amendments to add
5. Store moose poop in (or maybe that is just me..)

YOGURT!

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Greening Up

Spring is really here, and we're seeing lots of changes on the farm. 
Lots of late-afternoon transplanting parties, direct seeding into the ground, a new outhouse, excessive amounts of dandelions, I can wear shorts...

The most noticeable change by far though is the GREEN that is creeping up the hillsides. It's a process called 'greening up'. We've been hearing about it for the past two weeks, but in the last few days we've actually been seeing it. Looking to the south was spectacular before due to the view of the Alaska Range. Nowadays we get the scenic range with a brilliant burst of green below it. 
This also means... two weeks til salad!! Green stuff! Oh how we have missed it.


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Wood Frog!


This is a wood frog! The only herp (that is, an amphibian or a reptile) in interior Alaska. 
So I was super dee duper excited when Nellie found this guy in the field. We brought her to the ponds so she can lay some eggies in the near future. A month ago I was looking at amphibian egg masses in Maine, and now Alaska is catching up. I found another one in the field yesterday while broad-forking. 

Facts about these guys: 
They freeze in the winter! Like they just crawl into the ground and then freeze! Holy moley!
Their scientific name is Rana sylvatica, as in silviculture. Wood frog... forestry... cool huh?
You can tell that it's a wood frog by the bandit-like mask on its eyes.
They breed in vernal pools!

Thursday, May 10, 2012

A Day In The Life

Yesterday D-rod helped lead a field trip of 4th/5th graders through the boreal forest in the back of the farm. He made the mistake of telling a group of boys that his name was David Rodriguez but if they say 'David' then no one will know what they're talking about. He was thus followed around by 10 year olds chanting "David David David David David!"

Next D-rod ate a delicious lunch in preparation for the preparation of the seed field. Here is the seed field in all its bed prep glory!
(Actually D-rod isn't in this picture because he was pooping)
While prepping beds, D-rod got a faceful of poop. Because I kicked it at him. Spoops?
Later in the day D-rod decided it would be a good idea to TP the fields. There he is all the way on the left. Everyone was watching..
A typical day on the farm!

My Super Awesome Big Sister


Everything really important I learned from my sister

I’ve been following my sister around since before I can remember.  I always wanted to do the things she did, though sometimes she just wanted to ship me to Budapest.  Everything from managing our parents to getting through high school, in my eyes she boldly lead the way, and I got to follow the path she blazed.  She showed me that college isn’t always a straightforward process, and that the world is full of other opportunities to learn how to be who you want to be.  She encouraged me to take time off from school, to figure out what I wanted, and she's been a force of help and encouragement in all the steps since. She’s a much more logical person than I am, and I don’t know where I would be without her calming influence and ability to make the complex clear.  She showed me that being strong sometimes means asking for help.  For years she’s been trying to teach me to think for myself, and I’m finally getting a hang of it. She’s one of the smartest, bravest people I know, and I am who and where I am today because of her.  She taught me to chase my passions, that life is a grand adventure, and she taught me that now is always the right time to sing. 

My sister also taught me my favorite joke:

“Why did the plane crash?” “Because the pilot was a loaf of bread”

Today my big sister turned a million years old.  Actually she just turned twenty six (though I know she's really still eight) but she's the kind of grown-up I think I can stomach turning into.  I'm grateful for her every day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINA!

We have the best adventures!



Monday, May 7, 2012

Actual Farmy things (Starring DIRT)

Author's note: It's late and I'm tired and I'm not going to edit this.  If there are any glaring formatting or grammatical errors, please email me and I'll fix them.

These are undoubtedly involved in the selection process.
So Annie already covered yesterday evening, but I will add that it was the coolest party I’ve ever been too (sorry AEPi).  I’m coming home in October because I have important places to be, but I might be flying right back up here and never leaving again.  I’m enchanted with Alaska!

Today I got to play with dirt.   It’s still too cold to plant most stuff outside here so we get the seeds started in the creatively named seed house.  The process of choosing which plants to plant, how many to plant, and when to start them revolve around an ancient ceremony shrouded in mystery, by which I mean it’s clear to me that it’s complicated, and I’m still learning about it.


This is the end Result
I love the fact that everything that we grow is contained in one little box.  This is strictly speaking not the case; it’s several boxes, but it’s still like magic to me.  Planting seeds feels more like trying to bring plants back to life from the dead, seeds are dry and insubstantial and they turn into FOOD!  But before we coax them back into existence, we need something to put them in.  Enter dirt blocking.


Several boxes.






Instead of using plastic trays to start the seeds, we use potting soil blocks.  We have dozens and dozens of empty wooden trays, and big bales of dry potting soil.  First the soil needs to be dampened (read as: needs to have a lot of freaking water poured on it).  It starts in a consistency not dissimilar to that of NesQuick powder, and has some of the same habits.  It likes to form clods and not soak up water, at least at first, and is a light brown color, not too much like the rich black stuff your pansies come in.  After much water dumpage and copious raking, shoveling, and mixing with hands, it starts to look more like a thing you want to put your plants in.

This is how a pile of dirt looks with a shovel in it.
We use the dirt blocker (I made that name up, I don’t know what they’re called) to make…(wait for it)…. blocks of dirt.   The soil has to be wet enough that you can grab a handful and squeeze water out of it easily (if it’s too dry the blocks fall apart, if it’s too wet they sort of melt).  The dirt blocker itself is not very complicated, you mush it down into the box of potting soil, make sure your soil is really well packed in, then move it over to a tray, squeeze the handle on top, and out pop six (or twenty with the little one) perfect soil blocks.  Each tray can hold four loads from the dirt blocker, so you can have either twenty-four or eighty seeds per tray.  The type of plant determines whether you need to use the large blocks or the small ones.  Smaller seeds like kohlrabi  or cauliflower can go into the smaller blocks, big stuff like squash require big ones.  Seeding the trays is simple, but time consuming.  You put seeds in each block, depending on the germination rate of the plants you're seeding you might put just one seed per block, or you might put several.  It’s better to get a plant in every block, so redundancy might seem like the obvious choice, but when more than one seed in a block germinates you end up having to cut one back.
Happy plants that just got fed!
This bad girl blocks the dirt!
I got to spend several hours making perfect soil block trays, and seeding many of them.  We’re going to be seeding a lot over the next month (including 40 trays of bunch onions EVERY WEEK) which is good because I like it.  It’s very Zen, and I can do it while I listen to my books on tape, or to the hermit thrushes. 

After blocking and seeding for a while I got to fulfill a life dream and walk around with a backpack full of water that smelled like poop and spray it on stuff.  I’m not kidding, we feed our plants a mixture of soil amendments (bone meal, blood meal, some other stuff) called OMEGA 666 which sounds like a great name for a metal band, it’s delivered via a mister (like for mist, not Mr. Maloney) you carry on your back, and Susan my boss says it "smells like poopie".  It isn't that bad really, after a minute you don't notice.  I did spend a minute pretending to be a Ghost-Buster, that thing is freaking sweet.

DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS
Feedin' dem plants



You start corn in a toilet paper tube so it has space to put down a big ol taproot!