Good morning.
This morning, the temperature is 46° and sometime after 6 am, it has started dumping rain. The time of year with cool mornings with even more cool nights with the days barely reaching 72° has arrived! I know.. it’s inevitable, but I still wish we could’ve had warm days for just a couple more weeks. Maybe, those of us loving warmth would never be satisfied and so our summer was long enough? We’ve had cool rainy days since the last time I wrote. Yesterday we had some afternoon sunshine. Maybe because of the cloud cover, we did not get the predicted frost. We are thankful for that since we are still frantically putting up our winter supply of vegetables.
The mornings are cool, and the days hardly reach 70°, sunshine or not. We had heavy frosts on Saturday and Sunday nights. Fortunately, we’d gotten everything we needed from the garden before it frosted. We can always use more things, but we had put up our winter supply of vegetables. And, of course, there are some things that aren’t badly affected by the frost that we’re still working on – kale, beets, carrots, potatoes.
May has called garden nights each night this week for the peas, beets, raspberries, greens, and more. The canning girls made a mega batch of “Karin’s cabbage” and a pile of pickled beets to can. Karin’s cabbage is a recipe that we learned from Karin Stoeber, our German friend. It’s similar to kraut but not. The shredded cabbage is blanched before adding vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper. It is soooooooooo good. May has been doing an awesome job with the garden! Never been better even though Alaska has been rather drier than usual. She gets up early in the am and has her irrigation system set up to synchronize with the generator so when it comes on the water starts as well. Ingenious! Now we are down to cabbage, carrots, Kale and other hardier things. Folks from Delta have been coming to glean from the garden since we cannot process everything and it’s better than letting it go to waste!
Last night while the ladies put up the celery, the men went out and did some jobs that need to be finished up around the farm. I’m not sure what they were since I forgot to ask. Jarred has been working on the new bathrooms for the tab and also some of the guys have been working on a heating water line from the generator to the boiler and to the auto shop (using generator power to help heat the tab and the auto shop). Those might’ve been included in the jobs. We’ve suddenly realized that summer isn’t going to last for forever and since the hunting fever has hit… well, we have to get some winterizing done.
Pat has been fixing the big boiler that heats the Tab...he’s such a good maintenance man! Also has fixed May’s new stove pipe and new stove. May is pretty pleased with the setup she has now. lowly her little cabin in the woods is getting cozier.
As you see the fire was pretty close to WH Farms. I suppose the fire at Whitestone is winding down with all this rain. From the pictures on fb, I see that they are still feeding them. PatLou was out on that fire which for some reason they called the Mississipi Fire. It was started by the Military base at Greely when they were doing fire practice...duh! They deny this of course, but the whole thing grew into a monster and threatened to burn Whitestone down...yikes. Pat’s crew is a Hotshot crew so they don’t stay long, he is now in Montana fighting fires for 30 days. Beth is alone with the girls so Gri and Rob are gonna visit for a few days. Wenda will drive them to Palmer while she visits her relatives.
This is a local photo showing what the Whitestone fire looked like from the other side of the river...
Whitestone fed the firefighters for the duration and cashed in big with over 1,000 meals, course leave it to WH to pull that off! There was a regular fire camp right in their backyard. Pity Pat was so busy he was not able to stop by the farm to say hi. This photo was taken by a local photographer in Delta and shows what the Whitestone fire looked like from the other side of the Tanana....pretty scary!
Caribou season is now; moose season is right around the corner. Tommy and his girls have been out and done some early hunting.
All the Williams family except Wendy shot a caribou the other day (that means Lindsey too!). A couple of days later, the Geyer family went out, and Sam shot a caribou. The guys are getting pretty wound up about moose season – setting up camps, clearing trails after last falls great wind storm, packing packs, etc. The first crews will go out on Saturday so that they can begin their hunting first thing on the morning of September 1.
We have had a bunch of people visiting this summer/fall so far...too many to enumerate.Lots of comings and goings. People coming back and then leaving for their jobs, etc. Joe Casey is one who appears and disappears periodically when he gets off work with SHELL on the ships...he seems to enjoy it…it's nice to see his face from time to time.
Libby Geyer is still here and getting ready for nursing school in the fall with UAF.
Lizzie J comes and goes and getting ready for UAF and her Journalism courses in the fall.
Ali Squires left for her final stage in her Emergency, RN degree at UAF. Ali is an amazing person and she is to be admired for her will and determination in getting this degree against all odds. Pray for her when you think of it!
Erica has been visiting for a bit and it was great having her and little Caleb. He is a cutie pie.
Dillon Arsenault is here for a couple of months. He came up to work with Jarred some and spend time at the farm. We’re enjoying his company.
John Cheever came back for a few days visit – from Saturday through Tuesday.
Sis Janet Meyers is back as well – Monday through Thursday morning when she will go to Partridge Creek, Canada, with Seth, Amaris, and May. The kids are going to Partridge since Amaris’ brother is spending the summer there. The left early am today Thursday as I am writing this. Don’t envy them the long car ride into Canada on bad roads!! May was invited by Clair Buerge some time ago when they came to visit the farm in the summer. Sis. Janet added herself on to the trip at the last minute.
I heard that Craig Mason’s house logs are in the kiln which means soon, he can put the walls on the house he is building. It has been a foundation for a couple of years now.
Ann and Micah are in Fairbanks for their second week of intense therapy for Micah. Al’s doctor checkup last week said he is doing very well.
John and Julie Basalyga have been dividing their time between here and Whitestone. John has preached the past two Sundays. I missed the first Sunday service, but this last Sunday he preached on faith and how faith really means trust and obedience to God.
We are preparing for school although we won’t start until the end of September. Kathry N and John Clark are due back in a few weeks. Gri and May will be visiting Ani and the group in Jefferson for December break. Other people are going places but not sure who or where.
Rob is finished with his reading therapy and his riding lessons. He has done very well with both and his instructors are happy. School is right around the corner for him as well although he never really stops since he does most of his math/phonics online with his mum.
Good friends and caseworkers from the TCC came to the farm to visit and catch up with us and Rob. Amber and Amanda. They loved the fresh farm food and took Kathy’s Heart Healthy Bread back with them! Thanks for catching up with us!
Soon it will be tater harvest! yaaaiiiii. Before that HUNTING. May is going up to EFork with Pat, Rich J and Seth J. She’s happy! Rob wants to go but he will have to wait until he can prove he can do it!...
More on the farming side, Tony and his boys, are busy trying to bring in the hay and other larger crops. The slow start has put everybody behind and hay is scarce. Farmers in Delta are not going to have enough to feed their cattle so they may have to buy from Canada this winter.
Gri has been invited to a women’s retreat at the end of September for 2 days in a wilderness lodge B&B...lovely place, good food, fellowship and a hot tub, plus a motivational speaker. Some friends she met when she took the Apple Workshop at the Tok School earlier this summer. Should be fun. Not sure who else is going with her, besides the women’s group from Tok.
Check out their awesome website. Long time Tok residents and Christian friends, Jon and Jill Rusiniak, owners and operators of
http://www.logcabinwildernesslodge.com/
I better get. More news later. Have a great remainder of your week.
BLESS YOU ALL! Gri (& Sarah J)
