an early harvest for alaska, as the days are just starting to really warm up. my skin is sunburned, but i still wear my striped long johns and pioneer peak is still covered in snow. today’s was deer tongue lettuce and red russian kale. a small csa delivery but the most delicious. spring kale. a treat. we cooked a shopping bags worth up in some braggs, tons of garlic and olive oil, a feast. im thinking about kale cake now and all the uses for rhubarb! there is rhubarb growing up though all the cracks, its christmas-y strands soon covered in a custard, and resting in a pie dish. its rhubarb curry now, rhubarb crisp, rhubarb sauce on everything. with 20 hours of sunlight a day, everything bolts so quickly, seeds predicting future seasons of chewy stalks. almost everything has been planted out, the 50mph winds make it hard for the delicate squash stems. the second type of mosquitos of the spring are much smaller and harder to catch than the first. buzzing now, lady bugs too.
we sprayed the beets and potatoes, sweet peas and beans with the sticky black-strap sweetener, my nose filled while i transplant root vegetables to beds with a view of omnipresent mountains. I think of the bread we made a few nights ago, rising and punched, cracks on the top to be layered with butter shaken in a mason jar. everything tastes better of glass you know.
for the gardener…
molasses has nitrogen fixing microbes.…
One of these nitrogen-fixing microbes is Azotobacter, a microbe that can fix nitrogen straight from the air without living on the root of a legume as long as it has a source of energy such as sugar or molasses. Both are rich in carbohydrates, a good source of energy. In lab tests, Dr. Louis M. Thompson discovered that if given sugar weekly, the Azotobacter could fix from the air the equivalent of a thousand pounds of nitrogen per acre in ten weeks.
i now work part time at the local musk ox farm. these primitive creatures live in negative eighty degree weather and have spiralled nostrils. they were once extinct in alaska. now there are 3,000 living near the brooks range in the north country, tundra is by definition desert. nothing grows and you sink into it when you walk.
check out the website http://www.muskoxfarm.org/
my hands are covered in a perpetual dirt, the grime of the fingernails ends up on my pillow. the farm is called spring creek farm and it is about one acre. with 2 hoop houses and a greenhouse. tiny greens are sprouting inside, spinach and rare lettuces, some chard and spinach too! after living in brooklyn for 8 months where all i ever wanted was to have the opportunity to get dirty, here i am with mud encrusted carharts and quickly callusing hands. much due to the farm equipment. this week i have been using the cultivator, a tricky machine. much like a roto-tiller, we use this old girl to aerate the soil and dig up the clods(matted roots and weeds). she sounds like a lawn mower and looks like a tricyle. after cultivation, the soil is ready to be amended. blood meal, wood ash, clam shells. the scent of blood and the sea absorbs into my skin. the repetition is brilliant. things want to grow. i planted 480 onions yesterday, 4 inches by 4 inches. then chasing around the drip irrigation system to see where we have geysers. sneaky spurts of water like the blow-hole of a whale. oh i heard this story about beluga whales: in the far north of alaska the bays freeze in the winter, and only a few areas remain unfrozen where belugas can come and breathe. polar bears know about this and wait by the holes for the whales to come up for air. the bears attack and are often dragged deep under the sea until they need to come up to breathe. all of the whales in the area are severely scratched up on the sides of their heads.…some die..they know what awaits them, but must breathe.….
