We just got back from a fun but exhausting halibut fishing weekend. Our yearly hunting/gathering begins every Memorial Day weekend when my wife’s extended family, and about half of the congregation, travels 5 hours south and spends the weekend camping on the beach and fishing for halibut. We fish from 12ft zodiacs, which can be fairly thrilling when the waves are up. Although all of the fish were small this year, we did well and came home with a good portion of halibut meat. The weather was good, and my oldest son went out on the boat for the first time. He was pretty impressed, though he’s still too young to put up a halibut.

Tonight: beer-battered halibut!

All the halibut we caught this weekend were small, but still good eating!

These are the boats we fish from. We usually put four people in a boat. With eight halibut, there's not a lot of room when we come back!

The sunset at 11:30pm. I love Alaska.

Next up: dipnetting for salmon in a couple of weeks!

School got out last Friday, and I haven’t stopped moving since. Summers here in Alaska are way too short — and there’s far too much daylight — to slow down. I rented a big excavator this weekend to improve our yard and parking on our outrageously steep mountainside lot.

Before.

After.

It’s tough to see, but we ended up terracing the whole yard into four large terraces. We finally have flat space to someday put in a garden, build a chicken coop, and build a greenhouse!

A couple of the terraces

Lowest and second-lowest terrace

As if that weren’t enough, I put in my garden over the past two days…I may have gone a little overboard. I planted far more cabbage and broccoli than I ever have. I also planted more corn and pumpkins than last year, and tilled a large area to plant 60lbs of potatoes and some acorn squash.

The bees are doing well: I checked up on them a couple weeks ago (and again on Sunday) and the queen is laying eggs, which is a huge relief. The first flowers (dandelions) have blossomed, so the bees are busy gathering what nectar and pollen they can.

Notice the bee with the bright yellow balls of pollen on his back legs. They feed the pollen to the young.

Ashlee and the boys are fascinated by the bees. It sounds as if Ashlee is interested in being the family beekeeper next year. Elias wants to help too!

Because the adventures never end in Alaska, we’re in the process of packing up for our yearly halibut fishing trip: three days of camping on the beach and a year’s supply of delicious bottomfish!

I LOVE SUMMER!

Last Wednesday, I went to check on my bees. Confidently, I put on my makeshift beekeeping suit: my rain jacket, snow pants, hiking boots, leather gloves, and a cheap mosquito head net. Like a dutiful beekeeer,  I brought over 25lbs of sugar, lovingly filled up their feeder, and watched my 14,000 cute, fuzzy children wander around in the hive.

But I couldn’t help help myself.

I wanted discover if I could see any bee eggs in the comb to make sure the queen was laying, even though I had just introduced the bees four days earlier.

I opened the top cover to reveal a swarming mass of honey bees, clearly bother by my intrusion. The entire colony buzzed at me angrily and dozens of them began to shoot themselves at me, landing on my headnet, hands, and arms.

I tried to get one of the frames out of the hive to check for eggs. Using my pry bar, I began to lift the frame out of the hive. As I attempted to lift it out, it broke with a sickening crunch, and a comb full of bees fell angrily to the bottom of the hive. Because the spacing is so tight in bee hives, I had to remove another frame full of bees before I could reach the broken frame. Gingerly, I brushed the bees off of the first frame, hoping I had not accidentally killed the queen.

Then I felt it: the soft tickling of insect feet on my skin. All of a sudden my confidence turned to cold truth.

Beekeeping books say that as a beekeeper, one is supposed to move slowly and methodically when working around bees. All such zen-like thoughts completely left me as I felt bee feet moving up my back. They had got in. Milliseconds later I felt the sting. And I did what any other rational person would do: I dropped everything and ran. Fast. Brutally punching myself in the back where I had been stung. I ran across the yard — a grown, bearded man in snowpants fleeing in terror from bugs. My sense of imperviousness (to say nothing of my sense of pride) had been shattered…

I think I’ll go back tonight, ask them for forgiveness, and offer them some sugar water.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the last year of my life. The past 12 months have brought a lot of exciting changes to my family and I, and something about the long daylight hours and the feel of spring is making me reflective.

This time last year, we were just moving into the house. We spent three long years building. My hand has touched every piece of wood, every wire, every nail that holds this house together. And although it seemed like an impossibly long project, I’ll never forget the feeling of sleeping in our house the first night. In our home. That we built.

It was about this time last year that I graduated from grad school. After a long and very intense year that took me away from my family and away from my passions, I remember the feeling of relief and accomplishment that I had made it through, and that I had met some extraordinary friends along the way.

Finally, it was about this time last year that we found out that Ashlee was expecting our third child…talk about a big surprise! I remember, before we found out she was pregnant,  feeling that our family had finally come to a place of stability: I was going to be starting a career, the boys were no longer toddlers, and we were finally in our house. Everything was coming to a culmination at once.

Aurora Grace

Well, I guess we’re a family that needs adventure, because our third little adventure came into this world this past January. She’s amazing. I’m incredibly excited (and terrified) to have a daughter. She fits perfectly into our little family, and is such a sweet, sweet little baby. More than that, it’s amazing to see my wife with her. Ashlee’s calling in life is to be a mother, and there is nothing more pure and good and real in this whole world than the sight of my wife singing softly to my daughter. The other day, I watched them for an hour from the other room. The sunshine was falling over Ashlee’s shoulders and dark brown hair as she sat on the bed folding laundry. Aurora lay on one side of her and her laptop on the other.  She kept playing “Tiny Dancer” on her computer, singing it softly to Aurora. I’ll never forget the way she smiled as she sang, love shining in both their eyes.

It’s been a really good year.

I received my package of bees yesterday and put them in the hive. I have to say, the experience of dumping 4lbs of bees out of a box in front of me was…unsettling. But they’re cute little buggers, and it was pretty cold yesterday, making them pretty lathargic. More updates to come over the summer!

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4 lbs of honey bees

Cute little fellas...

The hive and tools ready to go

A spray bottle with sugar water is used to keep the bees happy. They lick the sugar water off of each other.

I removed a few frames before I dumped in the bees, then replaced the frames

A homemade top feeder. (Empty almonds container from Costco)

I used a hot finishing nail to poke small holes into the lid.

A queen cage. You must remove the cork, and add a bit of marshmallow to the entrance of the cage. By the time the bees eat through the marshmallow and release the queen, she'll be accepted as the queen of the hive.

After dumping the bees into the hive

The top cover. The topfeeder gets placed on that hole, and is surrounded by a second box and the outer cover.

The remaining bees heading in