Veggies and geese

Veggies for the week:


An all-Alaska salad! Rosie Creek Farm's lettuce, tomatoes, onions, roast beets, and sweet pepper, and my neighbors' carrots.

Linden sez, "Enough with the flashy-thingy!"

More of the geese are taking off:

Buh-bye, geese!

After we had a single morning of frost (and none since), the geese took of en masse. Here is one small group:


KC said, "Geese are basically tourists. Show up in the summer, be loud, be obnoxious, and flee to warmer parts as soon as frost sets in."

:)

I have a front yard!

We got our first frost this morning:


And... my friends, today I have a front yard. Check it out:


Too bad I didn't take any "before" photos. But here are some from prior years, so you know what I dealt with here:


The fireweed pulls out tidily, one by one:


But the rest I hack with a machete!

Twenty-four! Twenty-four bags of biomass! Ah, ah, ah! Vahnderful!

Also, also: two more tree stumps have been liberated!

Autumn and Linden are very impressed. They always examine and pee on my yard work:


I'm also making acceptable progress on the firewood. Not the best, but I'm good for this winter:


I don't think I had realized quite how aggressively fecund the subarctic was until I moved here!

Veggies for the week

It's starting to look a lot like Fall:

Berries! Berries! So many berries! Holy OMG ZOMG !!!

There are so many blueberries this year that it warranted a front page Minor News article.

I have never seen so. Many. Berries. All of the most popular local picking spots, which generally get picked clean early, are still producing tons, as if every picker is the first picker!

Last weekend, M, K, M3, and three dogs and I backpacked into the closest White Mountains BLM cabin, and spend the weekend hanging out and picking moooooore berries. I already had 1.5 gallons, so only picked another three quarts. M, too, was nearing her limit of sanity and only brought one quart container. K and M3 brought four gallon containers and filled them all in just a few hours!

So... many... berries. It was really difficult to walk the 7 miles to the cabin without stopping and snarfing them down. We kept telling ourselves, "Nooo.... No.... ignore those! We need to drop the bags first!" but we kept raking out handfuls and snarfing them down like bears.

Linden sez, "I wanna be in the photo!"


So. Many. Blueberries.


Crowberries and cranberries will be ready next! Good thing we get a break of a few weeks before they ripen!


Lunch time!


Linden sniffing and snorffing the changing air. Fall is coming.


M3 through the eyes of the WOLF!


Berries berries berries holy crap somanyberries:


Linden sez, "Nap time!"


K and M3 agree:


We have a lovely view to the rest of the granite White Mountains:


We went to bed early (9 p.m.) and woke up early (6:30). Good mawnin! We are fuzzy and cuddly!


And we are foot-to-foot with K, M3, and Buzz!


Buzz cuddles with his mama:


Buzz is a real, honest-to-goodness, no-foolin' puppy and even drives Linden nuts. He races around in circles while my two genteel elderly ladies hide in the bushes.

Best. Breakfast. Evar. Oatmeal to berry ratio by volume: 1:1


Dowgies wait patiently for us to pack:


Goodbye, Lee's Cabin! Thank you for another lovely weekend!

Veggies for the week

Farmer Mike informed me that the way they make the eggplants is that they graft them onto tomato bases. Very cool, what?

Edited to add: You must watch this. I insist.

We be jammin'!

Three quarts of slightly early (i.e. sour) berries make three quarts of jam. The 1:1 ratio is great for planning!

It's been a berry good year for berries.

I have tackled my lettuce...

Mmmmmm melty cheesy roast moose sammich!





And that's it for my lettuce! I have conquered it!

Tanana Valley State Fair report

After receiving numerous photos and reports of behbehgoatage having occurred at the Fair , I finally went.

First I had to catch my friend C play music with his band, since it was time-specific. These cute little kids were dancing around the lawn in front of them.




Then... BAYBEE GOATS!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!







All the kiddies wanted to meet the behbehgoats. Their breeder was a very nice young man:




GOAT SCHNOZZ!!!



She chatted with me for a bit.

"Hey! I'm a goat! Wanna hang out? I promise I won't yell."


"So, how was your day?"

Piggie!


Piggie schnozz!


The crowd in the rare sunshine! This is my first year seeing NotRain at the fair!


A cucumber that looks like a dragon!


Gourds and things:


The winning cabbage this year was only a modest 54.15 pounds. I wonder why, with our record heat?