Happiness is a slice of warm bread

School began yesterday.  The kids grumbled, but were surprisingly ready long before it was time to drive to the bus stop.  It was bittersweet for me.  Another first day of school.  Another year of not teaching.  After almost 20 years in various classrooms,  I still feel like I should be in the classroom, greeting my new group of high school students, writing my first month of lessons during the mandatory in-services (LOL), and frantically searching for the binder that holds my notes on Beowulf.  But for the second year, I am simply standing at the bus stop watching my children turn into teenagers, knowing that for the oldest her days at the bus stop are rapidly coming to an end.

As they drive away, my attention turns to more immediate demands.  The denizens of my accidental farm are hungry.  The grey hen pecks my hand, a reminder that I am late with their breakfast, and Pinky Tuscadaro and Spike, the two pigs, stand by their trough, grunting at me through the fence.  Even the goats get into the act, jumping around the pen, screeching, "maaaawh."  Fifteen minutes later, water buckets are cleaned and filled, and all are busily eating.

I look at the sky, gray, overcast.  Fall in Alaska means rain. And more rain. Its a bread baking-kind of day.

I must confess that I make really good bread.  Not quite as good as my mom's, whose baking bread's aroma summoned my brothers and I to the kitchen, where we waited, knives and butter in hand, until she pulled the golden loaves out of the oven. We sliced into the still-hot loaf, blissfully ignoring her half-hearted warnings that we would get stomach aches from eating bread while it was too hot.  At the Kenai Peninsula State Fair last weekend, that honey-wheat bread recipe won a blue ribbon for the second year in a row.  When the bread won first place at the fair last year,  I mailed her the blue ribbon. 

I set about making four loaves of honey-wheat bread and two loaves of raisin bread.  From the first step of the process, raising the yeast, there is a touch of anxiety.  In the back of my mind, I wonder if I am going to kill the yeast with water that is too hot or too cold.  Like Goldilocks, the water temperature must be just right. When I first began making bread, I rushed through the kneading process.  Mix the flour into the yeast, slap the dough around the counter, and off in the corner to rise.  Now, I have learned, or am learning, the value of patience as the dough is pressed, rolled, and stretched until my hands ache and the dough is satiny smooth under my fingertips. 

The dough goes into a large pottery bowl and set aside on the counter.  I cover it with a clean dishtowel, thinking once again that I really should make a pretty patchwork cover just for the bread.  Maybe one of these rainy afternoons I will do just that.  Three hours after I begin, the loaves emerge from the oven, hot, soft, and light brown, just waiting for the pat of butter to melt across its slices. A bowl of homemade minestrone soup, salad greens from the garden, and dinner is served.

Snow and the morning commute

            When I lived in New Jersey, my morning routine went something like this: coffee, shower, dress (professional attire), wake, feed, and dress children. Then into the minivan, off to daycare and to the high school by 7:10 a.m. Traffic at that hour was minimal and my route to work involved as few stop signs and traffic lights as possible.
            Living here, my morning commute has taken on several new modes of transportation. A mile ride on the snowmachine to the truck parked next to the highway. Of course this usually involves about a half hour of trying to pull-start the snowmachine in subzero temperatures (interject lots of unmentionable words and phrases) prior to the machine actually starting.
           For the past two weeks, my commute has involved cross country skiing. Our side road has literally become impassable. The snow berms rise four feet on either side of this narrow tunnel. My neighbor tried to plow but, despite a one-ton truck with chains, he got stuck and had to pull his truck out with a bulldozer. There is simply no place left to push the snow.
          So, we are skiing to the end of our street where I have parked our truck. It's not far, about a half-mile. But it is dark. We are sharing the road with half-starved moose.  A cow and her calf lie under a spruce tree just off the road. They watch us pass with disinterest and then resume their conservation of energy.  Despite our best efforts, the cow and her calf come up to our house to eat hay off the deck.  We have banged pots and pans, yelled and waved our arms, and even fired shots to scare them off.  The cow simply walks a few steps away and waits for me to return to the house so she can make sure her calf gets to eat.  I feel bad, so I bring a bale of hay down the road, away from the house so they can eat. The snow is so deep it has covered the alders and brush that is their normal food.
          I like to think that the moose and her calf know we mean no harm, but the reality is, she is probably too starved to really care.  But we speak softly as we pass her, letting her know that we are not a threat, and all of us are just waiting for spring.

Endless days mean thawing bones

The sun rose at 3:45 a.m. this morning. It won't set until after 11 p.m. tonight, and I want to soak every single moment up until the ice in my veins thaws.  For this beach girl, the move to Alaska has been the hardest during the summer months.  On our first visit to Alaska, we had two weeks of glorious sun and warm weather. Naively, I thought that was how every Alaskan summer was.  The first summer was beautiful, warm, and everything I had expected.  The next summer, I spent four days camping in the rain when the temps never made it above 45 degrees. Last summer, it rained for two months. In September, it rained even harder. Our road washed out, the creek rose and flooded, and then the temperatures dropped and everything froze.
The winter seemed to hang on forever! When I saw snow flakes on Mother's Day, I almost cried. It didn't seem like the grass was ever going to be green or the thermometer ever hit 50 degrees. I looked at pictures from the same time last year - a Mother's Day trail ride with lush green grass and me in a tee-shirt, and wondered why the hell I ever moved to Alaska.

The last three weeks have reminded me.

The clearest of blue skies and warm breezes, and that glorious sun at 10 p.m. that makes me want to get out and go!  I sip my coffee on the back deck every morning and just listen to the rustle of the trees and the buzz of the mosquitos.  I can hear the soft clucking of my chickens and Riley tossing a water bucket in the horse pasture.  It's a soothing start to the day, and I am so thankful to have these moments to save in my memory for those dark mornings when its 20 below zero.

Silent Night

The dogs began barking.  I tried to ignore them and the blinking red digits on the clock. 2:15 a.m. by pulling the blankets back over my head. It didn't work. The four of them were just getting warmed up. I groaned. That meant either moose or horse. A cow moose and her calf had walked past the house earlier in the evening, so they may be wandering back down the road. Or, I sighed as I got out of bed, one of the horses had decided to come up to the house for a midnight snack. Sure enough, Hot Shot was standing in front of the porch steps. We keep the grain locked in the mud room but a bale of hay was still on the deck. I pulled on my boots and a coat and went outside.  I threw the hay into the pen where the other two horses waited, Red stamping his feet impatiently as I struggled through the snow.  I led Hot Shot back through the downed section of fence and he went over to his hay pile. I rigged downed fence pole as best I could.  Last winter's heavy snows played havoc with our fence posts, and this year, an entire 75 foot section of fence is down. The horses don't wander outside of the pen, although Hot Shot will come up to the porch for the occasional midnight snack.
       I looked around.  It was one of those nights where you want to sit outside for hours just listening to the silence. The full moon glowed silver, reflecting on the new snow.  Everything glowed like the snow had millions of tiny lights. There was no wind. I just stood there in the driveway, looking out of the muskegg. The sky looked like the planetarium at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
         Even out here, in the middle of nowhere, silence is often hard to come by.  But last night, the silence enveloped me. It was peaceful. Beautiful. And for a few minutes, I remembered what had attracted me to the beauty of Alaska. Peace comes at strange moments. Like at 2 in the morning when the horses decide they want a snack.

Gardening in Alaska

Fire Season

According to the calendar, it is spring in Alaska. I'm still skeptical. It doesn't feel like spring. Spring means WARM weather. Planting flowers and vegetables in the garden. Shorts. Tee-shirts. Sandals. Not sweatshirts and boots. Ice on the pond in the morning. This state needs a refresher on what the seasons really mean.
Spring here also means fire season. And we have already had a close call. On Monday night, my husband called - there was a fire on Tall Tree, which runs parallel to our road separated by about a half mile of muskegg. I didn't see any smoke until I walked out to the front of my house. Thick plumes of grey-white smoke, a grass/tree fire, were already visible at the end of our street. It looked close so I walked down there to get a better idea of the distance. Standing on a gravel pile, I could see flames already shooting up beetle-kill pine trees and hear the voices of the firefighters already on the scene.
 I knew exactly where the fire was - last fall, our dog, Maggie, had spent the night tangled up in that area while my daughter, husband, and I spent hours fruitlessly searching in the dark with flashlights and guns. We could hear her whimpering as well as the howls of the coyotes, but as the coyotes' yips grew closer, her whimpers stopped and we were forced to give up the search until morning. Despite our worst fears, Maggie somehow freed herself from leash and collar and bounded out of the woods as we resumed our search at daybreak.
Looking at the fire, I called a neighbor to let her know. She arrived a few minutes later and we climbed onto an absent neighbor's second-floor deck for a better vantage point. A forestry helicopter arrived, and circled the area, before setting down to attach a bucket for water drops. As more neighbors arrived, so did the stories of other fires and evacuations. The East End Road fire. The Homestead fire. The Caribou Hills fire. All of which started like this one, small. but jumped into massive blazes within a few short hours. All of us began making plans to round up animals and necessary belongings to move them to safety should the need arise.  I figured that I could put two of the horses in the trailer and take them across the road while one of my daughters rode the third. The pigs worried me as I contemplated catching and crating three rapidly growing, fast, and strong pigs. My neighbor was concerned about moving her hens, geese, and ducks, all of whom are highly susceptible to toxic smoke from a wildfire.
As we watched, the helicopter dumped bucket after bucket of water onto the fire. When we couldn't see anymore flames, and the smoke began to diminish, my daughter and her friend ran down the trail to see what was happening and report back. As I followed, I was struck by the irony of sending two teenagers to check the fire line location of a brushfire. When I reached them, they were happily chatting with several firefighters and the fire was all but out.
About an hour later, the Department of Forestry, with four-wheelers on their trucks, drove down our road to access the area and clean up the fire. They finally left after midnight.
There is still a ban on open burning on this end of the peninsula but some people never listen or learn. With thousands of acres of dried brush and beetle-kill spruce, the Kenai Peninsula is a tinder-box just waiting for a match. The fire hazard will diminish as the new grass grows and we continue to have rain, but it still is a real and present danger. I have my priority list - kids, animals, food for both, camping equipment, and certain items of sentimental/practical value. During the Homestead fire, I had everything packed within 20 minutes and animals ready to go if we had to leave. Of course, now I have more animals, but still figure on the 20 minute time frame.
It's one that I really hope I never have to put to the test.

Coffee and Sunshine

The sunlight is killing me.
The very thing I prayed for all winter, during those dark, cold, snowy, miserable days, is now contributing to my demise. I can see the headlines now - "Long Days Kill Woman". Or "Be Careful What You Wish For"...
Back in December, the sun rose mid-morning and set mid-afternoon. I tried to get all of my housework done by the time the sun came up, feeling smug and accomplished, despite knowing that the sun didn't rise until 10 a.m. and I had been up since 6. But hey, its winter. I need all the gloating I can get.
The days leading up to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, are pretty dark up here. Especially where I live. Winter inhales deeply, sucking the light from the sky, draping an icy curtain of black velvet around anyone who dares to step outside.
Now, I am walking the dogs at 6 a.m. in full sunlight and trying to convince myself that its ok to go to bed when the sun is still shining at 10:30p.m. I don't know how much more I can take.