Thank you all for the good wishes. I truly appreciate your support.
The results from the hugelkultr beds have been very lackluster. Everything is alive and growing, but at a very, very slow pace. For instance, we will be able to harvest 1(!) head of lettuce from some few dozen planted and about 3% of the cabbages that we planted. I think the idea is sound but was poorly executed by us (though I think mainly me…). For one I don’t think there is enough soil on the mounds, so the roots are shallow and nothing can really grow as a result. We also probably need to do some amending with lime, as I think it is slightly acidic. Both things that can be modified and we’ll shoot for a better outcome next year. On the positive side, the potato beds are doing great! I read a couple of Ruth Stout’s books about no maintenance gardening and put them to practice with the potato beds. I planted then covered the beds completely with hay. I have not watered or weeded since then. I think we will get somewhere around 400 lbs.
I went fishing again with a friend down to the Copper River. We had great success and netted 25 sockeye salmon a piece. Towards the middle of last month, I joined my fiancée and one of her friends on a trip down to the Kenai Peninsula for some more fishing. We got another 31 fish for ourselves and now have some full freezers. We may go again on the Yukon in a couple weeks for whitefish and pike. But as of now I am happy with what we have been able to catch.
Fiancee's dog standing watch over the tide change
Some reds (sockeye)
We camped on the beach while we were fishing
We ended up going to Mexico again for about a week. We joined my dad, grandma, and some of my siblings on their vacation. It was a bit impromptu and a different style than we would travel independently but nonetheless a very enjoyable experience. It was a great opportunity to practice my Spanish and I noticed a massive difference from when I had visited last winter, 6 months prior. I’m still taking lessons about 3x/week and continuing to consciously/unconsciously improve. My fiancée has started telling people I’m better than her now. It’s not true, but at this rate it perhaps it will be by the end of the year. It has been a fun experience and a great insight into learning other cultures/ways of thinking. I’ve noticed it’s also served as a nudge to others and there are now 2-3 other people I know of that have started taking lessons as a result. How cool.
The pigs are steadily growing and sourcing food from the food bank has continued to be a great success. Still getting the bulk of the food for the pigs there as well as plenty of goodies for ourselves (3 wild salmon, 12 lbs of precooked bacon, and berries/bananas/sourdough bread galore). We will likely kill one at the end of this month and then the remaining 2 sometime in mid to late September. A rough estimate right now is that we’ll get about 175 lbs of meat for our share at a conservative estimate of about $2.75 (including all costs). Not a bad hedge. I don’t think we will do pigs next year though. Like dogs or any other animals, they are somewhat of an anchor and another thing to consider when making plans. If we do it again we will likely just do it on our own.
My mom and her husband came up and we had a great time hiking around. We spent some time in Wrangell St Elias NP as well as Denali NP. They really enjoyed hiking around and spending some more time with my fiancée. My stepdad also gave a ton of construction advice on the house (his industry of work) and helped me put up (more like me helping him..) beams and posts to support the roof above the deck.
The house as it stands now
A hike in Wrangell-St Elias NP with some very interesting old volcanic geology
A hike in Wrangell St Elias NP
Not much new on the house front outside of that. We were able to get a 325 gallon water tank and are going to setup a rainwater collection system at some point before winter. The only other thing that I’d like to finish before winter is permanently installing the stairs. I’ll also add more soil to the garden mounds late fall after harvest (ha ha). The remaining detail work inside the work will be done over the winter at our leisure. We have been considering building an insulated addition on the house to serve as somewhat of an above ground root cellar but I don’t think it’ll happen this year. We don’t really have an expected harvest large enough to require that and I think we can make due with the space we already have.
Trail in Denali NP
We did the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic. As detailed earlier in this journal, I had done it 5 years ago solo and it had left me ecstatic. Due to a combination mainly of a lack of available time (for recovery) and an unwillingness to do it again alone I had missed it each year since. However, my fiancée wished to try it out and we set off last week. It was a different experience this time. One of the main reasons she decided to come is that I promised her we would sleep each night, which left me feeling very rested and with hardly any pain (more or less true for her too). Having someone else also reduced almost any mental stress and the travel was fairly enjoyable. However, reality was a bit tougher than expectations for her and the whole experience (bugs, constant wet feet, uneven ground, brush, long days etc) proved to be a little much at the moment mentally and we ended up scratching and leaving early. We were able to make about 90 miles out of a total of 150. All is well now and she is hoping to do it again, just in a different location. She’s feeling down about not being tough enough but I’m very proud of her about pushing through and making it as far as we did. There were only 18 people at the start and she was one of them, that’s not nothing. Our relationship did not suffer at all from this experience and she has stated since that she wants to marry me even more now. As I write this, I have a bit of nostalgia for the mountains and not being able to finish but the mountains will be there and it is good to have things remaining more than positive on the home front. Here’s a little video I made if anyone’s interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teR3u6DTYDM I’ll also likely write up a report on my blog sometime this week.
Floating down a creek during the race
Our last campsite and a very poorly pitched tent
One of my sisters is coming to visit this month and we’ll likely go spend some time in the Arctic, hiking around, picking blueberries and maybe doing some floating. The weather here is still outstanding (80+F and sunny as I write this) which is record breaking and abnormal for the time period. Bad in the long term I reckon, but pleasing at the moment. I’ll be doing a couple caribou hunting trips likely this month and then potential a trip to look for bears at the end of the month. My fiancee’s entire immediate family is potentially coming to visit in September and then beyond that who knows. It’d be nice to do a backpacking/packrafting trip and some of my friends are interested in going moose hunting. Summer is always crazy up here, so action packed, people full of life with the sun up for so many hours. By October all will calm down again and life will become more leisurely with plenty of time for books, long walks/skis and the night sky(!). I’m kinda looking forward to it.
Lots of pictures...at least @Seppia will like this post
. Thanks for reading and here’s hoping everyone remains healthy and enjoys the tail of summer.