We escaped August with no frost, only 2 nights in the 30s. A boon for the garden. We actually have a decent crop this year and have harvested nearly all the sugar snap peas, turnips and rutabagas. Mrs. Animal went to work pickling about a third, I blanched some of the rutabagas, and the rest we have in dry storage. I am going to wait to harvest the potatoes until just before the first possible frost, which is nowhere to be seen on the near-term forecast. Other major remaining harvests will be carrots, beets, cabbage, kale and some late surging zucchinis. We are very happy with the progress this year and are well on our way to our goal of 80% own food production by 2026. This year we ended up using only ~70-75% of possible garden space due to things like crop failures and slow growth. Slightly lower if you include our experimental/marginal plants that didn’t produce but took up space (ie muskmelon, brussel sprouts, zuchinni, squash). This bolsters my mood for future years. After harvest, I will be placing biochar and our humanure on the beds (first round finally ready after one year sitting) and will call it a wrap for winter.
I have mostly finished up my work in my food forest for the year. I dug the swales out deeper, so they should be able to hold more snow melt and promote drier ground during late spring/early summer. I planted hundreds of blueberry and raspberry seeds from berries that I gathered from multiple spots locally. I picked from all different microclimates so I’m hopeful that I am well diversified with each berry. All positive on all the trees, the black walnuts took off more than I figured and I will be moving them so they don’t kill the rest of the trees/shrubs/berries.
Leveled up in some mechanical skills last month. I helped Mrs. Animal change the spark plugs on her car. Then I did the same on my own. I also replaced my brake pads and bled the lines, all things I hadn’t done before. I am now confident that I could replace the rotor as well. Mrs. Animal’s car is beyond the point of repair, so she is looking to sell it and we will finally move to a 1 car household. The auto market is very tight up here and used cars are still fetching a premium, so she will hopefully be able to come away with a decent amount.
Hardly any hunting last month. Most of the caribou are far from the road so I stayed home instead of going out on slim chances. DW had work for a few days in Denali last month so I tagged along and spent my time hiking and hunting down there while she was working. One day I went up and explored a ridgeline that usually has sheep. I saw lots of sign initially but couldn’t find any, despite glassing 4 major drainages. I eventually came across a band of a dozen ewes with maybe one ram. It didn’t look legal from the glasses but was hard to tell from so far away (~1 mi). I had a late start that day and they were much further than I had time for so I contented myself to watching them for a while before following the ridgeline back. Before I dropped down back into the valley, I took one last look to see what the sheep were doing. But where they had been, there was nothing but rock to be found. That was odd, so I dropped my pack, took out the binos again and started scanning, figuring either a wolf came by or they scurried behind some rocks. I scanned the slope until I came across 3 large bumbling grizzlies, a sow and 2 yearling cubs, moving along the slope no more than a few hundred yards from where I had last seen the sheep. I watched them ramble around the rocks for a while before they dropped out of sight on the ridge beyond.
The sheep were on the lower slope of the mountain on the left side of this photo between the ridge in the center and the one off it's right side.
We continued our tradition of blueberry camp this year, heading up near the Arctic to pick blueberries and do some set net fishing on the Yukon River. Unfortunately, the Yukon salmon populations have more or less completely crashed the past 2 years due to years of overfishing/poor management, but there are still healthy populations of year-round species like pike, whitefish, grayling, arctic char and burbot. The water was higher than I anticipated, resulting in poor fishing, but we were still able to catch a large pike and a whitefish. Blueberries have been scant all throughout Interior Alaska this year. The place we go to is one of the (if not the) best places on the road system. The picking was far better than everywhere else, but still very slow and we left with only about a gallon of berries.
@Mountainfrugal, @Jin+Guice and I had a thought-provoking discussion on the idea of outsourcing when it came to services. On materials we agreed that the process was fairly straightforward, ideally engage in non-consumer tendencies, but if one is going to use complex things like a phone or iPad, it would be foolish to always DIY your own model. Using services, the equation becomes a little trickier. On an absolute basis, is it possible to justify eating out? What about things like skill workshops? We settled on the heuristic that a higher WL approaches outsourcing contextually and as a possible means of advancement for one’s web/skills/community. Outsourcing for a high WL individual is used infrequently and focuses on things that have more than one function and can serve as a springboard into more advanced skills, social connections or other intangible assets. Whereas the lower WL individual will outsource frequently, without much filtering and often without any advancement of one’s longer-term web goals.
This discussion made me think of how companies approach mergers/acquisitions and manage their balance sheet is more or less the same thinking (at least from my understanding). Typically, successful companies make sure they have a strong foundation of organic growth (skills) and a solid balance sheet (net worth) before trying to find companies to acquire for inorganic growth. Generally, companies operating from a strong position hope to use inorganic growth as a multiplier effect to improve their long-term aspects and ideally increase the company’s position in the market going forward. Companies that have a poor balance sheet , tumultuous operations, or pursue growth for the sake of growth (no skill/debt/inefficient to do tasks below hourly wage) but pursue acquisitions (eating out frequently, outsourcing services, consumer vacations, Uber rides everywhere) can work under ideal circumstances but often will overstretch the company. Overstretching can be a result of not focusing on core business (skills) and expanding too fast (living beyond your means) and under any stress or adversity (job loss, injury, unexpected bills/payments), the whole business (web) breaks and can come crashing down.
Along similar lines, I am coming to the conclusion that there is hardly a reason to buy material goods anymore. There is so much stuff that is just offered for free. We recently have been giving a pair of dressers and a custom-made porch swing by friends that were looking to be rid of them. A few months ago, I set up a notification so that I get an email every time something is posted in the Craigslist free section. Usually about 2-3 things a day. This way I am able to act quickly if there is something we could use and almost always I am the first to respond. I have seen all kinds of decent to high quality free furniture including most recently, a white oak piano and a handmade cherry wood bassinet with dovetails, that we obtained for baby animal. There are also the usual posts of free firewood as well as multiple sets of posts over the past couple months offering chickens and goats. But the ultimate was one a few weeks ago that offered three 800 lb black angus cows. Yes, for free! So it would appear that you could largely feed and heat yourself by the current offerings on the free market. Then there are the waste transfer stations which often have free clothes, books, and all other kinds of things that people throw away. It’s not California waste riches, but it’s not terrible either. It is amazing that you could live off the waste stream.
PFD Year-Month 8
Monthly Total-456.52
44% above goal
YTD 3393.5