This time of year it is hard to remember to take a break and just be. There is so much to do that you can discover that weeks have passed by in the blink of an eye. We finally had some hot weather and the kids have been swimming. In fact, there was a mermaid sighting in the lake this week.

After a very windy beginning of July when I looked up from chores to discover the lake was still, Conner and I seized the opportunity to go for a quick outing.

Every so often we experience dead calm on the lake and the reflections are magnificent. The lake was extraordinarily clear as well and I spotted 5 rainbow trout over 12 inches long and a small school of small ones only a few inches long darting in and out of sunken branches. The bright sunlight and clear water combined to make some fascinating images of logs disappearing into the depths.

Conner wants a submarine to explore the rest of the lake now. I think I am content staying on the surface.

In the garden, 2020 continues with her challenges. It has been a cold spring and with a fair amount of rain showers. I had flea beetle and cutworm pressure early on. And while the garden crops languished in their less than ideal weather, the native and imported weeds flourished. I have been waging a war on weeds lately. Having torn this garden space from virgin Boreal Forest, the clearing has done what all forests do after a catastrophic event. That is, it has attempted to heal itself by first becoming a meadow. Bare soil is hardly natural, at least for long. But bare soil is what I need as I transition this space into a permanent bed system and establish the plants that I want to benefit my family. And so, as weed seeds blow in from cottonwoods and willow, the native willow herb and shepherd purse and non native dandelion and plantain push up and begin to flower and I have been scurrying around removing those about to go to seed. Some can go right into the compost pile. Some go to the chickens. Those are the weeds without rhizomes or a developed seed head. Some weeds go to the horse pen where the horses snuffle through the pile eating the yummy bits and stomp the rest to oblivion. But the persistent horsetail, from the family Equisetaceae, is a menace to the gardener. While it is an amazing plant with an incredible history and unbelievable ability to survive, it takes an enormous amount of time to weed out. And it grows right back. I love it in the woods. And I have made my peace with it living in the perennial garden. But I can not grow and maintain the vegetable garden if it takes me an entire day to weed one 36 inch bed a mere 20 linear feet.

• 

• 

I broke down this week and ordered a silage tarp. A silage tarp is a tool that has been increasing in popularity with market gardeners to prepare new ground, break down and kill covercrops, and create a stale seed bed. It is a thick layer of plastic, white on one side and black on the other, that blocks out any light while maintaining a moist and warm environment underneath. Seeds will germinate and then starve for light. Even persistent weeds can be killed or severely weakened by a season under the tarp. I have resisted using this technique for a few reasons.

1. I am not the biggest fan of plastic and use it as sparingly as possible (greenhouse/tunnel coverings only) in the garden especially in contact with the soil. (Even though I could get earlier warm weather crops by planting through plastic, I just do not like to do it.)

2. It is not cheap to ship a huge chunk of heavy plastic up to Alaska. In fact the shipping price was MORE than the price of the tarp. Sigh.

But I did it anyway. As a one woman weeder (believe me, I have tried every technique known to Moms to get the kids weeding and it never works out), I need this garden to be more efficient. I am not even up to half of the potential in this garden and weed pressure is the number one reason. I will let you know how it goes.

Running a week or two (or three) behind this year, regardless, the garden is starting to produce. The lettuces are beautiful. And I hilled the potatoes with straw. Hopefully the voles who have been absent from the garden so far (thanks to owls and hawks) do not find the excellent habitat I created.

• 

• 

The greenhouse is perking along. It is extra slow as it can not get planted until all the garden starts are out. But it will not be long before we are swimming in cucumbers.

The swallows, warblers, robins, and sparrows have fledged and everyday there are small birds hopping around the yard chirping and flying in bursts as they find their wings. (I have been keeping the cat in as much as possible.) I think this might be my favorite part of summer when I see birds every time I look up.

The garlic has begun putting out scapes which means harvest is only a few weeks away.

And the ducks have moved down to the duck pen at the garden. No more moving them out for the day and into the house for the night.

No more daily duck bedding to clean from the stock tank in the house! (No stock tank in the house!) I planted a green manure mix in this fenced area this spring so the ducks have a forest of greenery to explore and eat.

• 

• 

This is also the time of year that volunteers show up. Sadly, I do not mean hoards of strong young people clamoring to weed with me for free but plants that seeded themselves last year and pop up in unexpected places. Chamomile, calendula, and catnip all seeded happily in the back of the garden last year where they were neglected. (I blame the 10 year old unashamedly for this. All those plants were her entrepreneurial idea with which she did not follow through.) Chamomile and catnip have been forever relegated to the perennial garden where self seeding is not a problem. And the calendula was planted this year right next to the garden gate so I can keep the flowers harvested daily. But unexpectedly a thyme plant survived the winter so I left it and a few catnip to grow where they came up.

• 

• 

Violas have popped up in the lawn, around the peonies, and in the flower pots.

The zucchini are just starting in the low tunnel.

And honeyberrys are turning purple though something keeps eating them before they get ripe.

We are on the cusp of harvest season. I will be weeding like crazy until harvest chores take over!

Back in the early 2000s, I had the bumper sticker “Alaska Girls Kick Ass” on my little toyota truck, the second truck I had purchased in two years since moving up to Alaska. Later I also had a sweatshirt declaring the same thing. I wore that article of clothing until it fell apart. I never replaced them and during the time the clothing wore out and the truck was replaced with a vehicle that had a backseat, I became an older woman and a Mom, no longer a girl. But I have a girl, a third generation Alaskan, and boy does she kick ass!

Sylvia has had an interesting spring. She is ten this year and planned to spend a month in New England with her grandparents playing in the Atlantic and going to summer camp. That of course was all cancelled due to Covid-19. Sylvia diligently completed her distance learning in April and May. Her reward for all the hard academic work? A spring and summer at home with lots and lots of homestead chores. She is a pretty good sport about it though.

We try to break up the projects and chores with some fun and a few weeks ago we rode the 5 horses that are home for the summer down to our property at Strelna Creek to eat the grass there. Sylvia rode Dixie, who happens to be our biggest horse. At first she was hesitant about the ride. Our horses are pack and trail horses, not reliable old nags. They are good horses but we often bring home the ones who are young, new to us, or need extra work before the guiding season and realistically all horses can be dangerous just from their sheer size. We had a marvelous ride though and Sylvia really enjoyed it.

• 

• 

That is, Sylvia was having a great time until Dixie stepped on her foot when we were picketing the horses before heading home. She yelped in pain and sank to the ground only to pop back up again because she was still under Dixie. Tim and Conner and I secured the horses on their picket ropes and by then she had taken off her boot to find a very bloody sock. Yikes! Back home we discovered that though no bones were broken, Dixie’s shoe had severed Sylvia’s toenail at the nail bed. She was heartbroken at the idea of not being able to walk, swim, or bike without pain. Her summer was “ruined”!

• 

• 

• 

But as I mentioned above, Alaska girls do truly kick ass. Sylvia hobbled around (in soft slippers) with no complaints. In just a few days she was riding her bike (in slippers.) And jumping on the trampoline, barefoot. After she lost the nail completely, she was able to start wearing shoes again and is nearly back to normal activity levels. What a kid!

This week we took Sylvia to the Copper river to go dip netting. We had a rare day where subsistence dip netting was open but personal use fishing was closed so the river was pretty quiet. We took a couple of 4 wheelers down to Hayley Creek where I have not been since before the kids were born and where Sylvia has never been before. Funny how that can happen in your backyard!

It was a beautiful day without the customary gale that usually sweeps up the Copper River. There was just enough wind to keep the mosquitos off of us.

• 

• 

And Sylvia dipped up her first two salmon.

Tim got 4, I got 4 and Sylvia got two. It was not a record haul but respectable for an afternoon out.

And now to process the fish. Some went into the freezer and some into the brine to smoke with alder chips later today.

The salmon roe is drying on the garden fence for some future trout fishing.

Who can tell what the summer holds for this young kick ass Alaskan? The sun is shining and it might even be warm out today (even if there is fresh snow on the mountains to the north).

I am lucky to have such a great daughter to work with on the homestead, craft with in the slow times, and fish with during the salmon season. Life is not perfect, but this week, it is pretty good.