Wednesday, December 31, 2008

New Years Moon with Venus

35 below at the house and I just got home from work. The moon has been looking pretty amazing these last few days with cold clear sky. Today though, ice fog has moved in. Not too bad at our house which is a little higher up, but really thick and gross in town. Just imagine all the exhaust, steam, smoke and dust all swirling around between ground level and 50 feet up, as a nice fine particulate freezy mist.
Tried out my new camera from the driveway. Heres what the crescent Moon and Venus looked like at 4:45 pm. The blobs are particles from the ice fog that reflected the flash.

3 dogs in a cold cabin.


Squirrel, Gunnar and Snorri (fatty)

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Ice fishing without a proper hut... not so good.









A couple of Sundays ago we went ice fishing with a couple of friends. We drove about 40 miles out Chena Hot Springs Rd to a pond not too far from the springs- which was the real motivator upon my agreeing to partake in the excursion. A nice soak in piping hot water sounded like a decent trade off for spending a few hours on the ice. I think it was only hovering around zero that day, but the wind coming off the hills was wretched. April and I built a fire on the pond with some wood we pulled out of the nearby trees. It didn't do too much to help keep warm because the heat was blowing away from us. The act of hauling the wood out was doing a better job at that than the fire itself. Honestly, I think I was the only one not having a good time. I stuck it out as long as I could and finally admitted that I thought the whole thing was bullshit. They all had a good laugh and we packed up our stuff and left. For me it was a lesson learned. I will try ice fishing again, but it's going to be in hut where there's no wind.
oh yeah... I forgot to mention that we only caught one fish and it was about 4 inches long.
Chrissy

Saturday, November 8, 2008

some Halloween photos of the dogs that I haven't had a chance to put up








These are some photos that Mandy took. She also made the adorable costumes. Squirrel is the littlest one.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Its cold today

Ptarmigan hunting and scouting for Caribou



From last weekend, skied in, hiked up, up and up, got a few ptarmigan, spotted a good size moose and then two caribou hanging out on a mountainside.

Some more photos from Burbot fishing back at the beginning of October


Chrissy on the Tanana River


Some older wolf tracks on the river bank, pretty big ones.


Some of the delicious burbot.




All of these photos are courtesy of Mandy R

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Deep Freeze

Its been a cold October this year. Uncharacteristically cold for this early in the winter. Someone even told me that it was a record this year for the coldest October.   
We haven't posted much lately because we haven't spent very much time at home. We've been busy with splitting firewood for next year, clearing brush from the land and having massive bonfires with it. Skiing will be good soon, as we just got some more snow and it seems that most of the trail systems nearby have been groomed to some degree. A little more snow and we'll be in great shape.  This morning it was a bitter 12 below when I got up to let the dogs pee and check on the chickens. We're dogsitting for a lady I work with so we currently have 4 in the cabin. That's a tight squeeze with 480 sq. feet of living space, 1/4 of which is taken up by a bed.  Our chickens have been belting out eggs at a rate of 4 a day. I am pretty impressed with their ability to stay warm. We put a 250 watt infrared heat lamp in the coop to keep them toasty and that's helped them out quite a bit. 
Most people that I've talked with about chickens up here lock them up in a closed space for the winter and use a light to keep them warm. Chrissy and I couldn't handle that so we put a few towels over the doorway to the coop and cut them into overlapping strips so they hang down like the door to a walk in freezer. This seems to be keeping in the right amount of heat and keeping out cabin fever for the chickens. It took a day or so for them to figure out what a door was and how it works, but they managed to get it.
We still have our rabbit and hes started pulling his own weight a little. When I go out to check on the chickens in the morning, at least 3 of them are almost always huddled around the rabbit. This thing throws off heat like you couldn't imagine, hes got a huge ring of fat around his neck and can barely stand to be inside the chicken coop, but when he is... They all hover around, soaking up the heat loss. 
I've been trying to get Chrissy to put up some photos of our newest dog Squirrel on here without any luck so far. After seeing this though, she might get motivated to do so. Squirrel is a little damien shia tzu that terrorizes Gunnar and Snorri, in a good way. She keeps everyone on their toes. She sort of found us a few months ago when Chrissy was still working at the greenhouse. An employee showed up with her and said she was following her husband home on his motorcycle, looking lonely and dejected with only a cheapy flea collar on. Chrissy obliged to take her home and put up flyers. We took her home, put up flyers, never heard anything and kept her.  When you can see photos of her, you'll understand why we did. She has this pathetic loneliness about her that is pretty irresistible. 

I'm headed up the Steese Highway this weekend to do some scouting for caribou with a friend. We cant hunt for another month or so, but wanted to get a headstart on things and ski around a bit. Plenty of snow up there for good skiing and we can do some ptarmigan hunting while we're out too. We saw lots of tracks when we went up last weekend with boots only, but its just too much work to hike very far when you have a foot of snow on the ground. Skis will make for a much better time this weekend.
Hopefully the temperature stays tolerable, since I have waxless nordic skis, they quit being very functional down around 10 below. They just get slick and don't get any bite on the snow to get you up hills. 
Thats about it for updates right now, I'm sure I can think of more to write a little bit later.

4 above at work - Justin

Monday, October 13, 2008

Burbot fishing

We went burbot fishing this weekend with bank sets on the Tanana river, all day saturday putting out sets and then most of the day sunday hauling in fish. End of the day we had 10 good size burbot, with the largest being 24". 
It was pretty chilly when we went to pull the sets, got about 4" of snow on the ground and it was blowing hard along the river.

Fishing for Burbot













Friday, October 3, 2008

other exciting news.... our first golden egg


Justin looking like a jerk cause I was taking too long to take his photo.

Monday, September 29, 2008

View of the driveway from the bottom





Matt and Mandy helping move the White Spruce.



We decided to save the White Spruce to use for rough cut siding on our house. We're thinking that we can rent a saw mill and cut the logs ourselves. Can't get anymore local than that.

As promised...
















These are some photos taken from last weekend. We first had to move the 'roughed in' driveway to its new location. Then we moved some land at the end of the drive for the garage area.