Happy New Year!! After living in Fairbanks for over a year now we finally decided to throw boiling water into the air at -40F – something that seems to be mandatory to do if you live in Northern Latitudes. Here are the results.. 
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For an explanation of why water evaporates at such cold temperatures check out this posting.
And here is the bloopers reel…
Warning: This post contains gory images of fish corpses.
And here’s the first one -
There's a fish in my kitchen sink!
Everyone (except for vegetarians, vegans and myself) fishes in Fairbanks. And who can blame them, we do have the world famous Copper River Salmon in their natural element, aka the Copper River, up here, a mere 6 hour drive from Fairbanks.
Since I did not in fact have the gumption/heart/mindset to club the fish over the head myself, this following story is hearsay. On a rainy Friday night 3 brave boys set out on a smelly, muddy, exhausting trip to Chitna to dipnet in the Copper River. First stop was to acquire fishing permits, for a mere $20, the limit for Salmon up here is 30 per household. Imagine 30 15lbs salmon…that’s a lot of fish. Needless to say most people have freezer trunks outside – which incidentally don’t even need to be plugged in for most of the year.
Back to Chitna, the boys spent one sleepless night, 12 hours of driving and 8 hours of sticking a giant net into the river in the hopes a salmon would jump straight into the net and then gutting and hiking the fish back to the car. As the river is rather wild, you can’t drive straight up to it, so you have to park and then hike to the river and tie yourself off while dipnetting so you don’t fall into the river.
In any case, let’s speed forward to the part I was involved in… the boys returned with roughly 10 salmon between them and after a sleep and several hot showers the butchering could begin!
Can I just say that 10 fish, their blood, juices, fins, skin and flesh bits and other random things that sprayed from them equal a very messy kitchen! While the boys knifed, filet, skinned and vacuum sealed the girls fluttered about with their cameras shrieking at the all the appropriate places and tried their hand at lighting the BBQ to produce a decadent meal of freshly caught Alaskan salmon. The pictures below speak for themselves..
Last but not least there remained 10 fishheads, sad and lonely and without purpose. But alas, quick on my feet, I thought of a fabulous purpose for them: the star attraction in a legendary fishhead drop! From the second story window – with a countdown – splat to the porch.
The fine art of American-style canning has clearly been around for many years, yet somehow in the 15 years (yikes!) that I have now lived in the US this concept and knowledge thereof has completely eluded me. Mind you it’s been 15 years on and off that I’ve lived here, so maybe that’s my excuse.
In the past, when someone would mention canning I would conjure up this picture in my mind of a regular tin can and someone at home with a welder, welding the tin can shut after stuffing food into it. While at the time this seemed a bit extravagant to me – just to preserve some food – I would just scratch my head at these crazy Americans with the certain knowledge that surely I would never attempt such a thing myself…
Well, here I am in beautiful, sunny Fairbanks with 5 gallons of wild, freshly picked blueberries and cranberries doing the math that keeping these guys frozen would only work if we didn’t need to put anything else in our freezer – ever again (or at least until it is -20F outside, then we just keep the contents of our freezer outside..eh voila).
The puzzling word “canning” has come up in conversation way more up here then it ever did while I was living the urban lifestyle in DC – it seems people can everything here in summer (while stuff is available and fresh); moose, salmon, cabbage, zucchini, berries, apples..essentially anything that will fit into a “can” will sooner or later end up in one.
So I finally asked the ever important question: Where do you guys get the welder from??
Once it was all explained to me, I first had a good laugh that lasted a full 5 minutes… First of all, why call it canning if in fact it is glass jars NOT cans (and confuse the heck out of people such as myself)? And then boiling jars with food in them seems a bit..I dunno…icky? Then you have double boiled food on your hands which reminds me a bit of old people’s home fare … And not only that but all the special equipment for all of this costs upward from $50 (a bit steep for a student stipend).
Growing up I know that I witnessed (from a safe distance of course lest I be recruited to be domestic) my German grandmother and mom make jams and jellies and none of it ever involved cans (welded or otherwise), special pricey kitchen equipment, or boiling food in jars. The German and Swiss way to preserve food is to cook the food, stick it in jars, turn the jars upside down, let sit on its lid for a few days (this creates the seal), store in dark cellar and give to relatives as Easter gifts. Ta-da!
But alas, I live in America now, so I shall attempt to can blueberry jam (possibly followed by cranberry-ginger chutney, depending on how the blueberry guys turn out). I have successfully acquired a pressure cooker, though not at all sure at this point about pressure-cooking my blueberry jam jars (she says while suspiciously eyeing the pressure cooker sitting on her table) and special glass jar tong thingies. All I need now is a glass, nay a bottle, of wine “und los geht’s.” (German translation: and let’s begin).
For kicks and giggles here’s my recipe – thought you may want to read it for comedic value but also this potential catastrophe didn’t turn out half bad after all:
Gluten-free (duh), Sugar-free, Spiced Blueberry Jam
4ish cups of blueberries
1/3cup + another “schwupps” (German for a splash) Blue Agave Nectar
juice from 1 lemon
handful of cloves
powdered ginger (to taste)
3 tbsp low-sugar pectin
1. Boil your glass jars for cleanliness.
2. Stick blueberries, agave, lemon juice, cloves, ginger and a schwupps of butter in a pot. Awkwardly mash blueberries somehow for a while (I used a spatula).
3. Continue mashing blueberries while bringing the mixture to a boil, once it’s boiling slowly stir in the pectin. Continue boiling blueberry mixture while boiling your glass jars. Stop all the boiling when you suspect your jars to be quite clean.
4. Take jars out, place on a towel. Use special canning tongs for this if you have them. While jars are still hot, fill them up with the blueberry jam leaving 1/4 inch space on top.
5. When the jar water has stopped boiling but isn’t cold yet, stick lids in for a few seconds. This helps soften the plastic to create a better seal, or so I’ve been told. Put lids on jars, after wiping the edge of the jars – for cleanliness and sealing purposes. I am noticing that almost everything with canning either has to do with cleanliness or sealing stuff.
6. Stick closed jam jars back into boiling water, covered with 1-2 inches of water above the lid. Boil the whole thing for another 10 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes. Take out jars, place on counter and wait for popping noises to know that the jars have officially been sealed. Do not open jars again until you are ready to eat the whole thing, even if you forgot something inside (like to take off the blueberry stems or to pick out the stray spider you know was in your blueberry bucket).
7. Not entirely sure actually what this step is. I don’t think you need to store these guys in the fridge, but it might be a good idea to store them in a cellar or similar dark, spooky place. Oh at some point I was also supposed to remove air bubbles from the jars – but that didn’t happen, there was too much else going on at that time to fuss with air bubbles…
Time to do a happy-dance because no one seemed to have been harmed in the making…
PS: I didn’t end up using the pressure part of the pressure cooker..it honestly scares me a bit, all that pressure. Instead I used it for what it is; a large pot and just used it open-lidded to boil water. Ha!
Back in Fairbanks after 6 weeks of traveling around the lower 48 and a fabulous family vacation in Tuscany. I was also honored to be in one of my best friends’ wedding in a redwood forest in California. Unfortunately, I didn’t take many pictures at the wedding, but instead am posting pictures of Alaska in the summertime! Though I missed the 23 hours of sunlight on solstice I’m excited to still have 1-1.5 months of summer left, this means; hiking, kayaking, berry picking, fishing (if we ever get our butts in gear), collecting wildflowers, chicken coop building, music festivals and state fairs. Hoorah! (Oh and of course focused work on my PhD research..)
Summit Lake with a view of a glacier (the white slide-type thing in the mountains)
Braided river along the Richardson Highway - supposedly there is a wild Bison herd that migrates along the river.
Wild Porcupine! These guys were all over our tent site. Needless to say, they are now my new favorite animal!
No caption needed.
First round of wild Alaskan blueberries - about 45 min of picking got us this bounty. People collect 5 gallon buckets of berries during the summer here.
Beautiful clear mountain lake off the Denali Highway
Alaskan wildflowers - fireweed as tall as I am growing around our back steps.
The chickens have been growing over summer too - look at little Olive's fro!
Chickens!!! (or home project #2)
It amazes me at the outdoor animals people keep in Fairbanks; horses, goats, cows, ducks, geese and chickens. Guess animals as well as humans can get used to anything, even -40F. Supposedly..or so we will find out! We decided to join the ranks of those crazy people and get some chickens.
Not surprisingly, same as with the birch tapping experience, we didn’t think this one through before diving head first into it – and that is how we ended up on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a box full of chickens and no where for them to go and at least on my part no knowledge about chickens at all other than; I think that’s where eggs come from! (don’t you love our gung-ho style of attacking home projects?)
The chicken co-op with our first egg from our layers; Betsy and Athena (not sure which one gave us our first egg)
And this is the story of how 6 chickens ended up living in an Alaskan outhouse for a week… you’d think this would be a brilliant idea, because outhouses are as big or bigger than traditional chicken coops and there is already human poop inside so why not add some chicken poop to the mix. Well what we didn’t realize is that chickens somehow manage to spray their poop high up on the walls, peck at everything in sight, spill water a hundred times over leaving giant lakes behind and peck at human legs when humans try to use the outhouse. Note to self: don’t put chickens in an outhouse.
Patience one of our "medium" chickens, i.e. she's a few months old.
Meanwhile, Nathan was busily building our ladies a coop, sourcing 99.9% of the material for it from the transfer station (aka the dump). Fairbanks has an interesting “transfer station” culture – where your garbage becomes another man’s treasure. The other members of the chicken co-op (we are 3 co-owners, with a 4th backup owner) – meaning Michaela and I – also wanted to contribute to building stuff for chickens and decided to tackle the chicken run. Now Alaska is very well known for it’s chicken predators; hawks, ravens, foxes, bears not to mention our 3 cats and random hunting dogs that roam the neighborhood. Taking this into consideration we decided to build the safest chicken run ever – with fencing surrounding the whole thing, even on top, and screws and nails holding the it tightly together with no cracks for anything to get in. After we built it, we proudly surveyed our work and thought of how much the chickens will like it when we realized – we built it to be so secure nothing can get in, not even the chickens!!!! (Needless to say it’ll need some reworking this weekend…a door might be nice. Ha!)
Chicken coop in progress.
An example of my little to no knowledge about chickens was when one night I was hanging out in the coop and noticed that our smallest chicken had a giant lump on her throat. Alarmed I surveyed the other chickens to see if they had it too and sure enough 4 out of 6 had a lump varying in size under their necks! All a flutter I ran into the house thinking all our chickens got cancer over night and are growing crazy tumors and started looking up ‘chicken cancer’ online when I found out…. that that is completely normal for chickens! They have a crop under their neck area where they store their food and then digest it later. So the more they eat in a day the bigger their crop will be. Whew…so glad to have avoided chicken cancer. Wonder what other chicken mysteries we will discover in the next few months.
The peepers; Chanticlear and Potentially Olive (we haven't decided yet if her name is Olive, so for now we call her Potentially Olive)
By the way, if any of you reading this have any chicken advice for us (i.e. how to make them lay an egg, general chicken health, tips and tricks) please let us know in the comment section below, we would really appreciate it!!
She-Ra our other medium chicken...not drunk as you might assume but taking a sandbath (another thing I learned about chickens..)
With the jump in daylight hours (for about 2 weeks now we have lost all darkness and have transitioned to the realm of neverending daylight), the melting of snow, break-up of river and lake ice, and wonderful 70-80F degree temperatures it is finally time for outdoor home projects again!!
Alaska’s version of maple trees (aka maple syrup) are birch trees (aka birch syrup). End of April/beginning of May is when birch sap flows for about 10 days. A friend of mine is an avid birch tapper; she gave us instructions, a demo, birch syrup toffee and a tap and off we went in search of the perfect birch tree to tap. As it turns out we live in a spruce forest, and not very confident of how spruce sap would taste, we wandered over to a friend’s house and sure enough found a birch tree to tap there.
Now, tapping a tree is not easy, it’s a bit of a science. In our first attempt we had the tap, a drill, hammer and bucket. All well and good. Except when I went to check it the next day (birch sap only stays good for 24 hours, so either you have to drink it, boil it or freeze it within that timeframe) it had rained over night and the tipped-over-bucket contents I excitedly brought home that day tasted a lot like rainwater and forest debris. Wiser now, the next day we brought foil to cover the bucket and stabilized it with rocks and wood to keep from tipping over.
The other rather important part of tapping a tree is to have a plan in place for what to do with the gallons of sap that will come spewing out of the tree. We didn’t have such a plan. At the end of the 10 day period what we did have was a severe lack of tupperware and a freezer bursting at the seams with frozen birch sap. Luckily, we only tapped one tree this season…can’t imagine what would have happened if we had tapped 5 like originally planned, our house would have become a birch sap sanctuary.
When the time came to actually put human food in our tupperware and freezer again, we stuffed all the frozen birch sap into our slow cooker and cooked it for about 48 hours. Since the sugar content in birch sap is rather low, it is easy to just burn the whole thing off and not end up with syrup or just with burned residue, so it has to be watched pretty closely. And the end of this fun home project we ended up as proud owners of a quarter cup of our very own birch syrup (with added forest debris flavorings, because while we did think of straining it there didn’t appear to be a right moment for it, can’t strain it in frozen format and then it already started becoming gooey-syrupy). Ta-da!!
(Part II to follow…)
Our first attempt at birch syrup (+ forest debris flavoring)
… it’s 35F outside and you feel it is so warm you don’t even need a jacket! (to my defense, compared to -40F, 35F IS warm)
…at 40F it is a normal sight to see people in shorts and tank tops.
…it’s light out until 11pm in APRIL! Hoorah for long daylight hours!
…your cats think it’s time for breakfast at 6am because the sun already rose at 5am in APRIL.
…something called “breakup” occurs, which means all the snow and ice that has accumulated over 9 months of winter starts to melt and creates giant puddles and mini-lakes everywhere. Every store sells rows of ‘breakup boots’ – that is their official name and a necessity.
…Alaskans far and wide get excited for the Nenana Ice Classic. This seems to be the Alaskan version of state lottery, the entire state bets on what month, day, hour and minute exactly the ice on the Nenana River breaks-up. They measure it by sticking a tripod into the middle of the river, attached with strings to the shore. The minute the ice breaks, the tripod will move and will trigger a timer. You may be smirking right now, but this event is actually taken quite seriously. The jackpot last year was $200,000! http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/
…it is no problem at all to have a chicken coop in your backyard, even if you are just renting and don’t even own the property. Gotta love the absence of homeowner associations! Let the animal sanctuary/zoo accumulation begin!! I’m thinking chickens, ducks and geese to start with….let’s see what else Nathan will let me get away with, mwahahahah!
…it seems like your life revolves around weather. Ha! I feel like all my blogs are about weather and temperatures. A little personal update: the end of the semester and my first year as a PhD student nears. This means two things, first I am completely overwhelmed and stressed out by everything that still needs to get done in the next 3 weeks (as you can tell I took a procrastination break by writing this blog) and I am one step closer to figuring out what exactly my thesis research should be about. My topic as it stands now is on community disaster resilience in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). I am hoping to do an internship in the Caribbean this summer (poor me – I know, but hey after surviving a winter in Fairbanks, I think I deserve 2 months in the Caribbean this summer).
Ok back to work..
Ahhh I am sorry to report that it is indeed still winter up here. Sixteen inches of snow fell over the weekend and temperatures still range between -40F (or colder, but I wouldn’t know because our thermometer only goes to -40 below) to 10F above. I literally don’t know anyone who lives here who has not had car trouble at some point this winter. Cars are just not meant to be driven in subarctic temperatures. It’s true.
Almost bottomed out..yikes!
But instead of harping on about the cold (afterall what did I expect moving to Fairbanks and all) I’ll let you all in on some more subarctic secrets (this stuff probably happens in the arctic as well and probably in the antarctic too come to think of it).
1. Square tires. Nope, it’s not a typo, square tires happen when it’s extremely cold (even for Alaska standards) and the air in the tire and the rubber freezes to the shape of the tire while it is parked. So the flat part that touches the ground freezes flat. When you start up the car and drive it feels like you have 4 flat tires – makes for a bumpy ride! Luckily with friction it slowly warms up, evens out and becomes round again.
2. Diamond Dust. Don’t know if this is the “official” term, sounds more like a code word for drugs if you ask me. But to be fair, people on drugs probably see this phenomenon too, without ever traveling up here! On cold, sunny days ice particles dance through the sky and glitter like diamonds. It’s truly amazing! The first time I saw it, I definitely thought something was wrong with my eyes!
3. Sun Dog. Rainbow parenthesis around the sun. No kidding. To the left and to the right or above and below. This happens because light gets refracted in the ice particles that are whirring through the air. For a picture and better explanation of both diamond dust and sun dog click here.
4. Hoar Frost. Frost builds up upon frost which has the effect of producing sheaths of frost, which makes everything look like a scene out of Narnia. For an explanation of hoar frost click here.
5. Northern Lights also known as Aurora Borealis. I don’t need to explain these guys, except have I mentioned that we have a direct view of the aurora out of our bedroom window?? Yes, we are living the life. Here are some shots I took (btw I’m still learning how to photograph the aurora, it’s not as easy as it may seem, so forgive the blurriness).
Northern Lights
Northern Lights - view out of the bedroom window
6. Ice Fog. This one is a little annoying actually, but once again in extremely cold temps water vapor turns into ice which mixes with car exhaust, coal plant exhaust and wood stove smoke to form one soupy mix of particles that stick around in low lying areas until the temperatures rise again. Yum! Happens especially in and around downtown Fairbanks. Good thing we live above that mess.
7. Tropic Fever. What happens to Fairbanksans when they have been through five months of winter and know they still have 3-4 months more to go. It manifests itself in limbo competitions, flower leis and bbq’ing in -15F surrounded by snow and hoar frost (special thank you to Marilyn for the tropical additions!).
Doin' the limbo dance...
Frozen fireweed in the backyard
..I am officially sick of the cold. What does it feel like to wear shorts I wonder?
I think I will spend my summer in the Caribbean!
Source: www.hammockoutdoor.com
PS: My Alaskan friend gave me kudos for lasting until the end of January before feeling this way…she spent her winter break in Florida!
PSS: To combat this winter-cold-blues, I am throwing a tropical birthday party next week – we will crank up the heater in the house, everyone will wear their bathing suits and we will limbo the night away!!
Once the thermometer gauge dips below the zero mark it is like we enter a whole different world. Strange and curious things start to happen, cars, houses and our bodies stop functioning like they usually do and rules from the “above zero” world don’t apply anymore.
Humans in Below Zero
Six months ago, before we moved to Alaska I would have considered -10F really really cold and would probably have avoided leaving the house altogether. These days when it is -10F or even -15F outside I find it balmy and will drop everything I’m doing to go outside for a ski or a for a walk to take advantage of the “warm weather.” What craziness..
Once the temperatures are -20F and colder however, being outdoors becomes a little uncomfortable and at -35F and colder it becomes pretty darn uncomfortable and it’s essential to bundle up to the point where the only thing visible are your eyes (and even then your eyeballs and eyelashes freeze) and doing normal chores like pumping gas and loading groceries in the back of your car becomes extremely un-fun.
My frozen eyelashes.
A 10 minute walk from my office/trailer to my classroom results in eyelashes that are frozen together and I can barely open my eyes to see where I am going, frozen nose hairs that feel like giant buggers but are not (or “snotcycles” as my friend Monica put it) and frozen, iced-over hair where ever it sticks out of my hat. The thing with frozen hair is that it becomes susceptible to being broken off like icicles and hence can lead to an involuntary haircut!
Cars in Below Zero
The main difference for cars between above and below zero is that once the minus sign appears (-) you gotta plug your car in. Huh? You want me to do what? Yes, you read right, plug the car in. Garages are a very rare commodity in Fairbanks, the only time my Jeep is ever garaged is when it is at the mechanic. The rest of the time it is outdoors in whatever temperatures are thrown at it. After a certain level of cold (it varies by car, somewhere between 0F and -20F) the fluids in the car engine freeze which means your car won’t start or it will seek revenge on you later on if it is forced to start in such cold weather. To avoid this, I have a block engine heater, an oil pan heater and a warming battery blanket installed, all of which run to an outlet that sticks out of the front grill next to the license plate. The better parking lots around town have outlets for every parking spot where cars can be plugged in with an extension cord. It is a pretty funny sight actually walking through a parking lot with cars plugged in, looks like the cars are on leashes and need to be tied to posts so they won’t run away.
It also turns out that windshields crack when it’s -20F outside and you blast the heater on the dashboard inside. Hmm…who knew? Without naming any names, some of us learned this the hard way.
One of the first mornings when the temperatures fell to -25F the radio news announcer issued a caution for people not to go fast over bumps in the road because the frozen plastic bits on the cars could go flying off in all directions…great as if the 2 inch layer of ice isn’t hazardous enough, now I have to watch out for flying frozen plastic bits. My jacket that has a plastic outershell that always freezes as well as soon as I set foot outside, which makes for a very stiff, crinkly experience.
Here is a picture that has nothing to do with cars or plastic, but is a Halloween pumpkin that has been outside since October! Since it's virtually a freezer outside it will stay preserved until spring when we will make a pie out of it..
Cabins in Below Zero
In general I think our cabin it pretty well insulted and our one and only toyo heater in the living room is holding up pretty well in keeping our house warm – for the most part. A few days at -25F revealed an ice build-up on our windows INSIDE the cabin. Along with a recent discovery of ice on our electricity outlets again INSIDE the house. Our bathroom with the shower, unfortunately the room furthest removed from the heater, is probably the coldest room in the house and I know this because after we take a shower the entire bathtub freezes over, which means the next person to take a shower has to start it off standing on a layer of ice..brrr…
Frost build-up on the INSIDE of our window.
Nathan noted the other day when it was -30F that going from outside to inside our house was a whooping 90F difference in temperature!! We keep the indoor temperature at around 64F… What can I say, we like to pose challenges of adaptation to our bodies on a regular basis. Keeps them on their toes…
Sun o’ Sun, Where Art Thou?
Now to the most important question when living in Fairbanks in winter….Sun where are you??? On winter solstice we had 2 hours 40 minutes of sun, from 11am to 2:40pm. And since we are so far north the sun is never at a 90 degree angle in the sky, in summer it might be about 60 degrees but in winter it seems the sun just creeps along the horizon which actually makes for beautiful scenery because it seems that it is always either sunrise or sunset, there really is nothing in between. The time sequenced photos below will show you what I mean.. it is a little bit small but if you click on it it should open in a separate window.
Sunrise to sunset a few days before winter solstice.
