Summer!

Life on the farm has been ever changing. We have gone from ice to thaw, to mud to spring, and now summer, we are seeing new things everyday. Things have been happening fast, the entire spring season seemed to only last a few weeks. We have been experiencing determined mosquitoes, the birth of ducks, and even the passing on of a goat.

We just finished our first week of the CSA (community supported agriculture) subscription season. From what everyone has been saying, this is when everything at the farm becomes full speed. We harvest, pack, and drop off at pickup locations, weekly produce subscriptions for 150 families all over Alaska. Mostly they are in the mat-su valley, and Anchorage, some are flown out of the Palmer airport by bush plane.

This week also marks the start of the Arctic Organics’ own market. Every Friday at 5, with most of us still in the field harvesting for the Saturday market in Anchorage, River and Sarah open up the garage for people from the community to get the first pickings of the weekly harvest – talk about farm fresh! This week was the first and market. The first harvest was fairly small and we did not want to sell out of produce before the Saturday Anchorage market, so it wasn’t advertised, except to regular friends of the farm. Fabian made and sold some of his amazing cookies for 75 cents a cookie, an amazing bargain for these cookies! The garden is catching up quickly and this week we should have enough to fill both markets. People say the Friday markets here on the farm become a bit of a frenzy, I’ll have to wait and see.















The field is fully planted and it is starting to take shape. We just had our first spinach harvest, some leaves larger than my hand, impressive. Also our 2nd week of Pac Choi harvest, along with other leafy greens like, Mizuna –a mustard green, Aruglua, and mixed greens. The Garlic is reaching well a foot and a half tall. All the squash are flowering. Tomatoes have been producing, and some pepper plants have miniature versions of their final crop. We have just planted the perennial herb garden and should find it filling out over the next few weeks. Today a seeding of 130 trays was done; most of them are the next round of salad greens. They will sprout in a few days and be in the greenhouse for about a month before being transplanted into the field.

We have a man made pond that was dug out a few years ago. It holds all the water for irrigating the field. We ran it dry, on a Friday. It took 2 of us the better part of a whole after noon of running 3-inch fire hose from the farm down to a creek, about 1000’ away. The Beans have the water rights to the creek, and as long as it keeps flowing through a culvert just downstream from where we pump we can take all we need. The pump ran all weekend, with the hose pushing water through it with enough pressure to make it solid enough to stand on without giving an inch. By the end of Sunday it was full again. A lot of water! We will have to fill it at least 2 more times this summer.

The weather has been full of personality. It has been a very cool, cloudy, spring, and the garden is a few weeks behind a normal year. The past few weeks have been full of clouds, but when the sun breaks, it turns days into deep hot endless sun. It is often in the 50’s in the shade and just feet later, approaching 80 degrees in the sun. After full day of afternoon sun the shade feels incredible.

My girlfriend Jamy has been here for a few weeks now. We are sharing the “Beach Bungalow” in the corner of the field. We call this corner of the garden the beach. A lot of the rows that are directly seeded in the field are covered with row cover, a thin white fabric to protect the plants from insects. The fabric has several feet of extra width so as things grow; the plants just loft the cover up with them. When the wind is blowing it looks like waves breaking on a dirt sea. It’s a perfect place to be, tucked away in the far corner of the farm. It has been great having her here. We have been busy making the place our own, and cooking a lot of delicious meals.

We mostly hear birds. They sing day and night this time of year, or I should say all day, being things don’t get dark. They have been on of the small things that can bother a good nights rest. We are used to hearing the birds singing in the morning. Often I will hear them at say – 2 or 3 in the morning, and my brain things it’s morning. All in all sleeping has not been a problem. I am usually getting my 8 hours just fine. The sun takes a lot out of you when it shines for 14-15-16 hours a day. When it’s not the sun, usually the daily farm work has been good medicine for sleeplessness.



Fresh Pasta for the potluck



Potluck Frenzy