The "Where's the Blog" chorus has reached a crescendo. The old “no time” excuse is even beginning to sound lame to me. Since I’ll be gone from my computer for a month I realize it’s now or never. I thought I would just do a blog of pictures. Didn't work. Guess I'm a word person. So this will be the fast and furious unedited version so I can get back to the harvest.
That’s my new topic, Harvesting the Bounty. Although the bounty harvesting goes on all year, in August it is at its peak. The Alaska State Fair opened this week and the talk is all about the giant vegetables. Thousand-pound pumpkins. Hundred-pound cabbages. Carrots, kohlrabi, onions, zucchini all bigger than you really want them to be but pointing to the essential word for Alaska. Huge, vast, oversized, enormous; any variation of the word big applied to anything and everything Alaskan.
Waters teem with fish. Really teem. More silvers in one river that some actually died from lack of enough oxygen. Not just fish but the best fish in the world all there for the taking. And take them we do. Copper River Sockeye. Fresh from the water they bring $60 bucks a plate in trendy Seattle restaurants. Not one or two or a few for a nice fish fry but the limit. Always the goal is the LIMIT.
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| O'Brian Creek at first light waiting for the boat |
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| On our rocky outcropping, Dan takes time out to mend the net |
Dipping from the beach
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| Dipping from my cozy perch. |
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| The river rushing through the canyon |
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| Our quiet eddy |
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| Preparing for the freezer |
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| A good one |
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| Another one |
This year twenty seven. All wrapped and fast frozen and waiting in the freezer. We will feast the year through. And deep water halibut. Not forty, but then they're big. That word again. So it’s not unusual to have a hundred pounds or two also sitting in the freezer. Next to the moose and caribou.
Like we do the fish Alaskans do game in a big way. The tundra crawls with thousands of caribou just there for the taking. The sweetest game meat you've ever tasted. Not exactly herds of moose but then, yup, they’re big.
And wild berries. Blueberries, crow berries, salmon berries, gallons just for the picking and then the freezing or the jellies and the jams.
You’d think harvesting all the wild bounty would be enough to keep Alaskans busy but “grow your own” has taken hold and just about everyone grows something. We pretty much grow it all. Lets start with the fruits.
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| Cherries |
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| Cherries |
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| Currants |
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| Plums |
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| plums |
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| Gooseberries |
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| Goose berries |
Apples
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| Baby pumpkins |
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| Honey berries hide in the leaves. You can see some right in the middle. |
Honey berries are the earliest and this year were so early I actually got to pick them before the robin family found them. Instead the robins got the sasskatoons which I’m happy to let them have as I have too many berries to process as it is. Honeyberries, called haskap by the Japanese, are somewhat like blueberries, make great pie and jam.
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Honey berries cleaned and ready to process
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| Jars washed and ready |
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| Bubbling in the pot. |
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| First batch |
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Boiling water bath
Then followed strawberries and rhubarb, delicious pie but there’s only so much pie one should eat so the rest found there way into strawberry rhubarb compote. Soooo delicious over ice-cream. |
Cherries were quick and easy. Will and Jessica picked them and pitted them. All the cherries went right into a cherry cobbler. Extra yummy.
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| Using the picker |
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| The cherries are ready |
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| Easy cherry cobbler |
with whipped cream. Yum.
Now I’m up to plums. William and Jessica picked a bunch. Ours are the Manchurian variety and a bit of an anomaly because they don’t fit the Big label. But they pack a wallop of flavor. We keep a bunch for munching but the rest go into spiced plum jam, my agenda for today which is why I am in such a rush to get through this blog.
I’m not going to get to the currants and the gooseberries so friends have already begun to help in that department by picking what’s ripe and taking it home. They always bring back some of what they make.
Apples are a whole other category. We began the harvest because so many are ripening early but the whole apple story is a blog in itself which I promise to get to in October.
And while this is going on there is also the vegetables. Eating lots of summer squash and zucchini. Cauliflower is done, in the freezer. Cabbage got done yesterday - sour kraut.
Broccoli also in the freezer. Chard and kale still to do. Hope to pickle beets tomorrow. Onions drying in the shed. Also herbs. Potatoes and brusstle sprouts still growing. Whew.
And then there's this. Honey. We used to do our own honey but Dan was never happy wearing the bee suit. Somehow the bees always got him anyway. Now the Honey Lady does it and we share in the bounty.
Before I came to Alaska I never grew anything but flowers. I still grow flowers (next blog) but the whole farm thing has taken me over and when I’m out there planting and hoeing and watering and picking and ooohing and aaahing I sometimes wonder who is this transplanted Brooklyn girl. Of course it’s all Dan’s fault. He starts the seeds and plants the trees. But it’s also Alaska's. Here in the Valley it seems to be that if you are not fishing and hunting and growing your own in a big way you’re not part of the conversation.
