Summer comes on in a rush and passes quickly in the Far North. Just a month ago there were still patches of snow in shadowed pockets on Ester Dome, the big hill overlooking our place here north of Fairbanks and the rivers were bank full with spring runoff. There’s a moment there when we feel that we can rest easy, taking comfort in knowing that the whole of summer awaits and the long days will never end. There’s plenty of time to get it all done before it turns cold and the sun turns away from Alaska again. Sunday was the Summer Solstice, longest day of the year, official beginning of summer. Up here we all know that’s not true, it’s the beginning of the end of Summer, the days only grow shorter and shorter from here on in.
I had a perfect Mothers Day this year!
Fairbanks is quiet this summer. People aren’t travelling. All major summer gatherings and events have been cancelled. The tourist shops and venues are shuttered or running on reduced hours. We had been operating an AirBnb next door to our place for the last several summers, it was a nice little bit of extra cash for us. It stayed booked nearly solid from May to September. The writing was on the wall back in March that tourism was going to be dead this summer so we just found a local to live in there for the summer months instead. Ashley was going to start offering a short tour and conversation about our lifestyle this summer as well but we figured there was no point trying to launch something like that during the summer of the coronavirus. We keep a display at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks at the Little Willow store, according to our friend who runs it traffic is way down, mostly a few locals just browsing, not the types to be interested in souvenirs. And now that people have started going back out and mixing and mingling again around Alaska we are seeing an increase in Covid cases again, many of them through community spread. This is sure to spark fear among people. We can probably expect a return to more reclusive behavior soon as a result. These are strange times we’re living through, between the pandemic, social unrest and an extremely contentious Presidential election on the horizon we are more grateful than ever to have our wilderness home to retreat to this winter. We’re debating how we should occupy ourselves this winter. Normally there’s no question, you just go trapping but there’s no money in it right now. Not that making money is the only reason we trap and certainly not the only reason we go out. We just love being out in the woods and feel at home there. Trapping is something we do to keep us active and outside, it drives us to go and it pays for the expenses of living in the bush. But when fur isn’t selling, we have to start thinking of other ways to make income. We’re thinking of scaling back on trapping this winter to focus on writing. That’s kind of comical isn’t it? What kind of idea does a trapper come up with when he can’t make money off of fur? Write a book, of course! Great idea – easy money!
Happy Birthday Blaze! They are posed inside of a living willow fort Sydney and I are building
Every year we have our big garden to tend to and put in the dehydrators for the winter veg supply. This summers garden is so far panning out to be the best one we’ve had so far. Not a lot of pests, nice rain to sunshine ratio, all of out starts were planted on time and an orderly fashion so our garden is ahead of most. Early in the spring when I went through the seed packets I noticed that there were a few I was very low on like my favorite variety of broccoli, Apollo, which forms a nice main head and has copious amounts of off shoots after that for the rest of the summer which we blanch and either dry or pack and put in the freezer for the following spring when we get back from the trapline. When I went to call up my favorite seed company I got a recording that explained that they were experiencing an extremely high volume of seed orders this year and not taking calls. I was directed to order off of their website. When I started scanning for my favorite seeds I soon realized that they were nearly out of most all seeds! All of a sudden this spring people have started thinking like living like we do in a more self sufficient manner and since the supply market has never seen this demand before we suddenly have had competition in all of the supply chains we are used to having at our disposal. Seeds, long term storage foods, bulk grains and cereals, dried milk, dried egg products have all been wiped off inventories due to covid. I’m glad people are starting to think like this but it’s been pretty annoying to have a lot of trouble getting prepared for another winter with all of the new competition for these types of products. Every year Tyler and I raise about 25-30 meat birds. We raise these chickens for two purposes, for eating and for the great addition to our garden compost. After we butcher them we put them in the freezer and eat them the following spring and summer after we get back from the trapline. We don’t bring any meat with us to the trapline…no freezer and also too darn heavy to travel with. This season people just went nuts over buying chickens here in Fairbanks and after 12 years of buying the birds whenever the notion accurred to me I had to special order them in order to avoid waiting in line for them the mornings they became available at the feed company for hours! People were standing in line for literally hours every time some darn Cornish cross chickens became available in town here. It has been a really annoying experience to suddenly compete with people for things Tyler and I have always done. To us, who plan on not getting to a shopping center for sometimes up to 8 months, the whole toilet paper thing was just retarded. One giant costco bag is enough for us for an entire winter. I would love to see just how much of this some of the greatest hoarders of toilet paper bought. A lifetime supply?
Tyler cleans all of the skulls for the trapline himself and bleaches them with hydrogen peroxide and sunshine. It was really annoying not to be able to even find hydrogen peroxide to purchase and if we do find some on store shelves there is a limit on the product. We want to buy lots of it because we have a lot of skulls and bones to soak but we look like total hoarders ourselves just for wanting the amount we need for our unusual business. I went with the kids to Fred Meyers the other day and they had some in stock at a limit of 2 per customer. I put six in the cart and when I was reprimanded at the checkout I told them that Sydney Blaze and I each counted as separate customers. They let me have my 6 haha. I looked like some weirdo hydrogen peroxide hoarder but oh fricken well. When I was in line at the post office the other day shipping off a few orders and some photos of the kids to family there was a man in front of me that had an unsealed envelope and when he went to lick it shut he was asked to go outside of the building to do his licking, so weird! This is some weird stuff we are all dealing with.
Just had a bunch of rain and you can see one of our 3 250 gallon water tanks is full of fresh rainwater for doing my laundry, dishes, watering animals, etc
We had considered going into the trapline late this coming fall so we could potentially spend at least thanksgiving with family for a change but now that we are living in pandemic world that idea is off the table and we are headed back out to await the outcome as soon as we can get there in September.
What the garden looks like today!
Blaze started walking last week and he is so proud of himself and now seems to have a little more respect and interest from his big sister. We are doing our best to have our fun this summer despite all of the closures. Sydney has been fretting over the turtle that lives in the children’s section of the public library, she really wants to get in there to make sure he’s doing well, I’ve assured her that the librarians are taking good care of our pal Winston. Meanwhile,e we order our books online and pick them up at the bookmobile once a week. The beach is open so I got to bring them swimming and I am grateful for that. Next on our list this week is to catch Sydney a fish with her new pole.
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