The autumnal equinox passed us by just before midnight on Sunday and our day length is roughly equal this week. With the rapid decline of light this month and now waking and going to sleep in the dark, it feels like much more darkness than light to me. The first day of fall is the 23rd and has 12 hours 10 minutes and 28 seconds of daylight hours. Golden leaves have been falling from the birch, aspen, poplar, and willow all week in the wind and rain. The rain, so desired all summer, has been great for the thirsty ground but is wreaking personal havoc on my end of the season garden chores. All the soil work that was so easy when it was dry is harder, heavier, and more time consuming with the wet. I have soil and compost to screen for seed starting soil, compost to spread for the garlic bed, and more baby trees to weed out of the garden beds. While endless hours of labor await me in the garden, this past week found me occupied elsewhere so now I am trying to catch up before the weather turns, before it freezes. Time is running out!

I was able to burn a brush pile in the rain and get rid of some noxious weeds and root maggot root balls. Having a fire felt good, cleaning up the yard for winter.

I still have cabbage in the garden as well as potatoes, kale, and lettuce. There are also fodder beets, pea plants, and squash plants to be pulled, mulched, and composted. The kids have been informed that this next week will be a busy one for all of us. I even offered to let them stay home from school so they could help me all day long instead of just in the evenings but they politely declined and got ready for school on time. (Bummer!)

Monday morning was a cool 30 degrees and a thick fog rolled in over the lake as the sky began to lighten. I love these cold foggy mornings because they remind me of childhood summer weeks spent on the coast of Maine on our sailboat. Foggy days meant either spending a day at anchor playing battleship or crazy 8s and watching the spruce covered granite islands appear and disappear in the mist. Or taking turns blowing the fog horn every 30 seconds while my parents navigated the rocky coastline to our next harbor and we listened for moaning whistle buoys and watched the radar screen for other boats. I sometimes miss the Atlantic ocean and the granite coast of Maine and mornings like these are a gift of remembrance. A real pea souper…that will most likely burn off by midmorning. A beaver swam by the dock, snapping me out of memory, and reminding me that I am in Alaska on a lake and not, in fact, 4,500 miles to the east on the ocean. The fog is lifted mid morning and large flocks of ducks were visible on the lake.

I field dug flat and curly parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme and potted them up to bring inside for fresh herbs.

The rest of the herbs are in the process of being cut and dried inside. It smells so good in the house this time of year with all the produce coming in.

I harvested the last of the carrots today. They still need to be cleaned and packed in moss.

The greenhouse is still perking along. While it has been a bit time consuming, it worked well in the long run to burn scrap wood all September. I am down to my last pile, a stack of willow sticks, once a teepee tree fort, that pack tightly into the stove and produce excellent heat. When that pile is gone, it will be time to think about shutting it down. But for now, the cherry tomatoes are still overwhelming us with more fruit than we can eat fresh. We made sungold cherry tomato pizza sauce last week just by cooking it down and then pressing through a colander to remove seeds and skins. The sauce was bright orange, sweet, and excellent on thin crust bacon, sweet pepper, and mozzarella pizza. I will be harvesting the escamillo and carmen sweet peppers this week to make canned salsa and freeze for cooking later. These corno di toro sweet peppers have done so well in 15 gallon pots in the greenhouse, far better than any other sweet pepper I have ever grown. I highly recommend them for productivity and flavor.

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And finally, the snow apples are nearly ready to eat. Snow apples are a treasured treat for my kids. They are hard for us to grow outside because root maggots adore them just as much as we do. And on a summer like this past one, they grow pithy, spicy, and bitter in the heat. But fall grown white japanese turnips (otherwise known as snow apples) are crisp and sweet, reminiscent of the texture of a freshly picked apple but with a tangy light turnip flavor. Our fall crop is almost ready in the greenhouse. We can hardly wait! I watered them with some comfrey fertilizer last week and estimate about two more weeks until harvest time. Fortunately they do not mind the cold and will keep growing slowly until it freezes in the greenhouse, making them our last crop of the year.

It has been a successful season at Wood Frog Farm. Enough produce was sold to pay for my annual seed costs and fertilizer inputs. Produce has been eaten fresh, put up for winter, and shared with the community. Life is good!

Till next week…

It rained Sunday night, not hard, but steady for a while and the mountains Monday morning had the first termination dust of the season. Now our view is evergreen, gold, red, and white. The night time temperatures are starting to get pretty chilly but though I have a nightly fire in the greenhouse, it has not quite been cold enough in the house to really need a fire. We tried last night and it was so hot inside we had all the windows open. Not yet time!

The fall break four day weekend provided the kids and I with four glorious mornings where we did not get up before 7am, had some recreation time on the lake, made time for board games, and continued the garden harvest. In addition, 12 salmon were transferred from fillets in the freezer to jars on the pantry shelves for winter casseroles, dips, salads, and sandwiches.

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The last of the broccoli and cauliflower is now in the freezer after trimming, blanching, and freezing on trays before bagging in gallon ziplocks. The celery has all been harvested and is waiting to be processed.

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Sunday afternoon we had a work party with friends and family in the garden to dig carrots to donate to Kenny Lake School to sell as a fundraiser. Two 100 foot rows of carrots were dug, topped, and sorted with 3 adults and 4 kids to bring in over two hundred and twenty pounds of Danvers 126 carrots.

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I bought the seed packet from High Mowing Organic Seeds and they describe Danvers 126 as:

“Reliable, stocky variety with broad shoulders and deep orange color. Bright orange conical roots with rugged tops strong enough to withstand a good yank. Displayed superior disease resistance in our trials and thrives in heavy soils. A great variety for canning, freezing, juicing and storing; had the highest Brix reading of any of our varieties even after months of storage. Resists splitting.”

 A pretty apt description. They are not as sweet as the Scarlet Nantes I sold earlier this season but have hearty carrot flavor. The carrots did not get thinned this year so we had the fun of finding some unique carroty shapes. (Evidently the carrot thinning fairy forgot to stop by in time last June.) They also grew larger than expected with this hot year of intense Alaska sun creating some very big specimens that retained their flavor and are perfect for hearty moose stew, canning, or juicing. I am pretty impressed. They might not be your uniform store bought carrots but surely strong, hearty, nutritious Strelna, Alaska carrots are better!

We will be selling all these donated carrots though the Kenny Lake School to raise money for the Kenny Lake School Association (PTO) scholarship (50%) and Nutrition Program (50%). If you are interested in purchasing our carrots (which will be at the school) please call Kenny Lake School at 907-822-3870 to be put on the list and arrange for pick up.

We also butchered a donated moose hind quarter for the weekly lunch program while we were up at the school this week. A moose was given to the Chitina community from a local guide service. Meat was divvied up among those not able to go out and hunt for themselves. Since I did some distributing of the meat, I was given part of the neck for our family and I was able to put 12 pounds of burger in the freezer. Moose meat is a welcome addition to the chicken and salmon we have been consuming. We have not had red meat in weeks and really enjoyed our moose burgers last night. Yum!

20 pounds of roma tomatoes have been turned into pizza sauce for our weekend homemade pizza nights.

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And though more remains to be done, I am trying to focus on all that has been accomplished. We have fed ourselves, sold enough produce to cover the annual seed costs, and shared with our community. It truly has been a successful season.

Till next week.