A fairly scenic place for a garden…

I’ve been wanting a greenhouse for a couple of years now, and this spring we finally made it happen. Warm weather crops like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and the like are nearly impossible to grow here in Alaska without a greenhouse. While I’ve been able to successfully grow tomatoes, sweet corn, acorn squash and pumpkins here in Alaska without a greenhouse, it has required raised beds, hoop houses, and some serious luck.

With a greenhouse, we should be able to grow much healthier, productive plants.  New veggies mean new challenges, which always makes for an interesting growing season.

The greenhouse is 16×10 feet, with seven foot walls. The peak of the roof is probably 10′ high. I built the floor for the greenhouse last fall just before the snow began to fall. The floor is built on 4×6 skids, supported with “linkin-log” style 2x6s underneath to keep it level. We have a pretty good slope to our yard, so while one side is ground level, the other side of the greenhouse is 4′ off the ground.

I threw a tarp over the floor this winter, then shoveled off the snow in March in order to build the walls and roof. My father-in-law had old fiberglass greenhouse panels that had been sitting in his yard for nearly 30 years. Although they were completely buried in leaf litter, they still had some life in them, and saved me over $1000 dollars in supplies. An acquaintance was getting rid of a very nice glass french door a couple years ago, which provided a beautiful (and free) entrance.

I ran out of old fiberglass panels before I got to the last side of the greenhouse, but because that side is north-east facing, with the mountainside behind it, I just covered that side with plywood that I’ll paint this summer. We shouldn’t lose much light, as the sun never shines from that side.

I haven’t built benches yet, but that project may wait until next year. For now, 5-gallon buckets on the floor should work just fine.

The plan this year is to grow 30-35 plants in the greenhouse. We’ll have a good variety of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The boys want me to grow sweet corn and pumpkins, so we may try those in containers as well. The greenhouse has already been up to 74F this week, with ambient temperatures only in the 40s, so it won’t be long!

All the best as you get ready for growing season!

Today I came home from a hike and decided to give the chickens fresh water. As I was walking down to the chicken coop, I noticed three of the chickens outside in the sun. I was a little surprised, considering there is still a lot of snow on the ground, but I had shoveled a path for my little ladies a few weeks back, and I figured they were simply enjoying a warm and sunny spring day. I smiled as I passed them and said, “Enjoying the sun today, huh ladies?”

I opened up the chicken coop door wide.

What happened next, though it only took a total of two seconds, is as clear as day. I opened the chicken coop to see white feathers on the ground. That seemed unusual and just as I comprehended that something must have entered the coop and killed a chicken, I saw it: a red tailed hawk standing on the chicken roost three feet away. We saw each at about the same time and the hawk, frightened and clearly unable to find his way back out of the coop, flew into the window  2 feet from my head with a crash and dropped to the ground, then flew back up onto the perch.

Screw you, hawk…screw you.

Before I even had time to shout my favorite four-letter word, I had the slammed the door. Staring at the closed door, I took a moment to confirm what I had just seen. There was a giant hawk stuck in my chicken coop.

Now the thinking began: how was I going to get this raptor out of the coop? He certainly couldn’t find his own way out but the idea of hitting a hawk with a broomstick until I shooed him out of the coop somehow sounded like a giant cluster-f**k. There was no telling when he’d eventually figure out how to get out, and in the meantime, the rest of the chickens were sitting in the snow, looking very paranoid about life.

Finally it dawned on me: if I opened the coop door wide, as well as the outside door to the coop/shed, there would be a seemingly large path for him to fly out. First, I took some pictures. I opened the door just enough to sneak my camera through, lest he think it a good idea to attack me. After showing the boys the hawk, I sent them and their mother up to the house while I opened both doors at the same time. Just as before, the hawk tried to fly through the window, and crumpled to the ground. This time, however, the hawk saw the opening and flew out as fast as his giant-killer-raptor-wings-of-death could carry him.

Thankfully, he only killed one chicken, and hopefully learned his lesson.

Rest in peace, Blizzard the Chicken. You laid tasty eggs.

My brother and I had a terrific hunt last fall where we were both lucky enough to harvest a caribou. Because we harvested big bulls, and it was after the rut, we decided to make most of the meat into sausage. We cut up the meat into chunks last fall and froze them in freezer bags. Because we knew the meat was likely going to be fairly strong-tasting after the rut, we tried a new strategy this year: we soaked the meat in milk.

It sounds weird, but a quick internet search reveals that milk been used by many hunters to take the “gamey” taste out of venison. We figured it might work for post-rut caribou too. Sure enough, it did. It took several days for the meat to thaw, and then it was soaked in milk for 24 hours. We drained the milk and rinsed off the meat. On accident, some of the meat had not been covered in milk, and the difference in aroma of the milk-soaked versus regular meat was pronounced. If we harvest post-rut bulls again, we’ll definitely be using this strategy once more.

We mixed our caribou 50/50 with pork shoulder while making the summer sausage. If I had to do it again, I would probably use a 2:1 caribou to pork ratio. It just seemed a little too “porky.”

I’ve already written a blog post on making your own summer sausage, but this time we decided to create our own recipes. The pre-mixed summer sausage seasoning from Alaska Butcher Supply contains MSG, and we weren’t really thrilled by that. Below you’ll see our recipes and our notes on the finished product.

Regular Recipe:

• 25 lbs ground caribou/pork
• 3 cups water
• 15 tbs salt
• 1/4 cup mustard seeds
• 1/4 cup ground pepper
• 3 tbs garlic powder
• 1 tbs marjoram

Notes: I would say this recipe tastes better than the store-bought mixes. It simply tastes like your typical “summer sausage flavor.”

Spicy Recipe:

• 25 lbs ground caribou/pork
• 15tbs kosher salt
• 2/3 cup red pepper flakes
• 2/3 cup mustard seed
• 4 tbs ground black pepper
• 4 tbs onion powder
• 2 tbs garlic powder
• 3 cups water

Notes: This was by far my favorite recipe. I like all things spicy, and while this recipe gave the sausage a little kick, I think I will add more pepper flakes (or jalepenos or cayenne powder) the next time to make it even spicier.

Sweet Recipe:

• 25 lbs ground caribou/pork
• 3 cups water
• 15 tbs kosher salt
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 4 tbs pepper
• 4 tbs mustard seed
• 2 tbs garlic
• 2 tbs onion

Notes: This one was, by far, the most unusual. It wasn’t bad by any means, but one could definitely taste the sweetness of the sugar. I think this recipe will work well for sausage sandwiches, and I’ll be curious to see how my kids like it.

Cured and smoked cottage bacon, before being fried.

A couple years ago I wrote a blog entry on how to make your own bacon. For a while now, I’ve had the itch  to make more. The problem with making bacon is it can be prohibitively expensive. There is only one place in southcentral Alaska that sells raw pork belly, and they want $3.80 a pound for it. By the time you lose water weight from the cure,  take off the pork skin, and buy the ingredients for the cure, you’re looking at bacon that costs close to $7/lbs. While I’ve gone that route before, it sounded too expensive to do again.

Then I found out about cottage bacon. Cottage bacon is simply bacon made from pork shoulder instead of pork belly. It’s leaner than regular bacon, and far cheaper to make. With that in mind, I set off to make my first batch of cottage bacon.

THE PROCESS:

1. Get pork shoulder. Costco sells pork shoulder (also called pork shoulder butt). My wife went in to Costco and asked for “pork butt.” After the employee realized she wasn’t kidding, she eventually found my wife the right cut. Boneless, it costs about $1.80 a pound here in AK. The package I purchased was about 15 lbs of pork and consisted of two shoulders. I cut each shoulder into half to end up to end up with four pieces of meat weighing in just under 4lbs a piece.

2. Make and add your cure.  Since I had two shoulders, I decided to try two different cures. The important ratios to remember for any cure is the ratio of salt to meat and the ratio of salt to sugar. This will ensure your bacon does not come out too salty or too sweet. For instance, you should have about 12 grams of kosher salt for every pound of meat. Likewise, when adding a sweet taste, such as with maple and brown sugar, your bacon cure should have a sugar to salt ratio of about 2:1.

Below are my cure recipes for 5 lbs of pork. Do the math to adjust as necessary:

Maple and Brown Sugar Cure:

• 60 grams kosher salt
• 60 grams of brown sugar
• 60 grams of maple 

Black pepper rub:

• 65 grams of kosher salt
• 25 grams sugar
• 1/3 cup of course ground black pepper (add pepper to rub). After the pork has cured for a week, and you’ve rinsed it, add a  layer of pepper onto one side of the pork shoulder, to taste.

3. Let the pork cure for a week. Place the pork in ziploc bags and turn the pork over every day. The salt will draw out some of the liquid in the meat, and flipping it ensures the cure is able to evenly penetrate all parts of the meat.

4. Develop a pellicle. After a week, take to pork out of the bags. Rinse and pat dry. Then leave the pork, uncovered, in the fridge for 24 hours. This will create a sticky coating on the outside of the meat called a pellicle. The pellicle is what “takes up” the smoke flavor.

5. Smoke the bacon at 200F until the internal temperature reaches 150F. You can do this many ways. If you don’t have a smoker, you can add a pan of wet wood chips to a grill, allowing the bacon to take up some of the smoke flavor. Then you can finish it off in the oven at 200F. You can also do all of the smoking/cooking on the grill itself. You just don’t want the temperature to get more than about 200F, or the fat in the bacon will begin to melt. When I smoked the bacon in our home-made smoker, it took about 3 hours to reach 150F internal temperature.

6. Slice, package, freeze, or enjoy! Below you’ll see a picture of my cottage bacon. As you can see, it’s far leaner than regular bacon, and has a taste somewhere in between bacon, pork chops, and ham. It’s amazing…

Cottage bacon, fried and ready to eat. And nitrite free! Yum.

River helps me with the sausage stuffer.

A couple weeks ago, my family, my dad, and my brother gathered together to make sausage. I’ve made sausage ever since I was a little boy. I remember sitting on the kitchen counter of my grandparent’s ranch, helping my grandma separate pork casings and check for holes. I remember helping my grandfather butcher a pig or two that he bought at auction to mix with the venison — I watched as a living animal became tranformed into food.

Sausage making has always been a sort of celebration. In the cutting and grinding of meat, the mixing of spices, in the stuffing and the smoking, there is ample time for celebrating. We retell hunting stories and dream of next season. We laugh at the funny or scary stories that the year’s hunt produced. We reflect on weather and missed opportunities. We give thanks for the pure and nutritious wild game we have harvested.

All of this celebration happens in the midst of good work. We are busy from morning to evening with cutting, cleaning, stuffing, smoking, and packaging. By the end of the day, we’re  tired but happy at having put away food for the coming winter. The day is full of stories old and new, laughs, and memories…

I’ve been thinking about celebration a lot lately. As the holidays quickly approach I’ve been questioning what we celebrate and why we celebrate it. I’ve been thinking about how much of our cultural celebration has been co-opted.

Walk through any supermarket and one will see the “celebration industry” in full form. A cake is made from a box or purchased. Party decorations are readily available, pre-packaged, and licensed. One can even order balloons to be delivered instead of blowing them up themselves. What we call “celebrations” can easily fit into a shopping basket.

All of these products, of course, are promoted as making these celebrations “more convenient.” They’re marketed as taking the stress out of parties. What we forget is that celebration is more than just the party. Celebration is a matter of good work done together before and after the gathering. It is telling stories over a sink, or good-natured teasing, or of giving thanks for the past. This “good work” is largely removed from our pre-packaged celebrations. We hire florists and caterers. We buy branded themes of party favors and overly-sugared cakes. At the end of our so-called “celebration” we’re left with a trashcan full of plastic table clothes and a sugar hang-over. This is not true celebration.

Another problem with celebration is that we need something to celebrate. Celebration often comes at the end of a long and arduous journey — at the end of a marathon, the birth of a child, or the end of a hunt. These types of celebrations acknowledge the hard work and struggle that the participants have undergone. Of course, the highly commercialized holidays we celebrate — secular Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving  – in no way celebrate our accomplishments or struggles. They are merely celebration for the sake of celebration. These holidays no longer celebrate a successful harvest, the struggles of saints, or the birth of hope. We’ve replaced the meaning of these holidays with hearts, turkeys, and tinsel, a poor substitute. If anything, secular Christmas and Thanksgiving are meaningful if only for the good work that is shared in preparing the afternoon meal of turkey and cranberry sauce.

Finally, “entertainment” has largely replaced celebration. If celebration is giving thanks and good work done together, entertainment is a passive substitute. Celebrating a winning football team or our favorite actor receiving an Oscar may give us the same sense of pleasure and pride, but it is a poor alternative. It may quench our thirst for a sense of accomplishment, but we have not shared with others in good work, in struggle, in success.

With these thoughts in mind, I’m half-tempted to abandon many of the holidays we celebrate. And as I make seafood chowder and bread bowls for old friends this weekend, hopefully I’ll be a little more mindful of the good work that accompanies our gathering together — our celebration.