Update on life in Alaska

Long absence on here, but I wanted to keep moving along.

The house has come to the point of livability, moved in early November with just the sheetrock's 3rd coat of mud to do, along with priming and then painting. The best laid plans have come and gone and one wall is painted with 3 walls mudded. Priming has been a big plan but has yet to happen. Its tough once you move in and get situated. I think the break has been long enough though and will commence the project this week. Our little woodstove has been working steadily through the winter and has kept the place nice and toasty for the most part. The drawback is that in order to wake up to a warm house when the temp drops down to the -10's or below means waking up at 3 am to add some wood to the fire. A larger stove will be one of the plans for next summer along with a number 1 fueled Toyotomi stove to moderate and allow for some long weekends out without a freezeup. So far the coldest temps seen at the new place have been in the -30's and that was Saturday night. Most of the cold snaps in town have been down to the -40's and the Tanana Valley inversion has kept it up around -20. Saturday seems to be a fluke with a weather system blowing through and knocking out the inversion, but Sunday brought a warmup from -20 in the morning to +3 by the afternoon.

The supremely steep driveway has proved to be little trouble for the most part. Once snow falls, I plow and we drive on it without any problems. There was a horrific 3 day rainstorm back around Thanksgiving that froze upon hitting the ground and coated the driveway with almost 1 inch of solid ice. I tried chipping it, I tried sanding it, graveling, ice melt. Nothing made it budge at all. So, for a few days we parked at the top of the hill and walked through the woods. Then a nice snowstorm moved through, gave it a good coat of snow and it became drivable again. Who would ever have through that more snow would be the answer to a slick driveway.

This winter has passed pretty quickly so far. Lots of firewood cutting, splitting and stacking as well as skiing, snowshoeing and ice fishing to report. The past weekend was spent out ice fishing in a rented hut with friends on Quartz Lake all day Saturday and then hauling firewood up the hill about 60 feet all day Sunday. I moved about 1 cord worth of split birch logs in three stages up the hill. It was back breaking work and my arms and abdominal muscles are reminding me why its always best to pull the 8 foot logs up the hill then cut and split them where they can be pulled from instead of cutting them where they fell to wrangle together at a later time. Lesson learned. Now for the other 4 or 5 cords that still remain down the hill. I'll slowly chip away at them as time allows.

Started seeing seed catalogs in the mail this past week which is heartwarming. Its nice to think about a garden about this time of year, start planning and deciding what sounds good to grow. Haven't really figured out exactly where the garden area is going to be yet, but its becoming a priority sooner than later. Just need to figure out who I know has a box tiller attachment for an ATV that I can use in the spring to break up the ground and get it all ready. Potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, spinach, broccoli and whatever other random seeds sound good will be in the bunch. I'd love to find some sort of super hardy northern variety of hops that tolerates the Fairbanks season if anyone has any recommendations. Meat rabbits are in the agenda for the 2011 summertime so I have to get a plan together to build a hutch for them, along with a revamped chick coop for meat birds this time around. Having laying hens was a good experience, but heating them through the winter was real bear. If I ever dig a cave out of the hillside, I may consider them again where I can keep it climate controlled a little better and use the surrounding ground for insulating, but for now, its one season birds only.

Until something else happens worth writing about…
Thanks for reading,
-Justin