Today was a great day for winter scenery. I am a fan of Maxfield Parrish so I always enjoy seeing the strong color contrasts provided by clear winter days. The opening picture was taken at noon. On the way to the mailbox, I had to walk under a birch tree. As I did so, the […]
This year, New Year’s Eve was celebrated with both manmade and natural fireworks. The aurora was unusually active and it was a clear night. I noticed it when I went out to do the evening chicken chores and informed Melissa and the offspring upon my return. They grabbed warm clothing and headed outside for a
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Here in Fairbanks, the winter weather conditions are often just right for a phenomenon my uncle refers to as “lazy snow.” When one snowflake lands on another, some of the kinetic energy involved in the collision is converted to heat. If it is warm enough outside, that tiny amount of heat is sufficient to melt
Today was the shortest day of the year. In Fairbanks, sunrise was at 10:50 A.M. and sunset was at 2:46 P.M., giving us 3 hours and 56 minutes of daylight. Since the Sun moves in a low arc across the southern sky, there is a decent amount of twilight on either end. Today’s photo was
After Church, there was a moose in the garden near the raspberry arbors, eating some of the willow tree. This one was not very big. I suspect this is its first winter on its own. In the winter, moose come into town from the surrounding areas to look for food. We often find moose tracks
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Between yesterday and last night we received over a foot of snow. The trash cans in the picture already had snow on them, so the height of the piles is more than a foot. Fortunately, this snow was fine-grained and not difficult to shovel. After I cleared the necessary paths, I got out the snow
Currently, we do not produce produce for sale, but we have dreams of doing so. To that end, I signed up to take the class. In Alaska, the Office of the State Veterinarian and the Department of Environmental Conservation work with the Food and Drug Administration to manage the sale of food products. We
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The forecast was for snow and we still had not taken down the mesh tent at the farm site. So, I drove out in the morning to take care of it before a heavy snow fall collapsed it. It wasn’t too difficult except that some water had frozen in the connections of a few pieces.
Today, we had our first significant frost. There may have been a little in the last few days, but today’s frost was undeniable. Chokecherries get noticeably sweeter as the days get cooler. The trees convert starch into sugar to use in cellular respiration. So, it is best to harvest the chokecherries after the first frost.
Harvesting Chokecherries Read More »
We use wood shavings from a local sawmill to cover the floor in the chicken coop. Our trailer has a 4’x8’ bed with 3.5’ walls and rear gate. The sawmill sells the shavings by volume. So, to make things easy, I marked the walls with stripes at 1’ and 2’ heights. Now, when I fill