(photo: Pioneer Peak behind field not under cultivation near tents)
Hello! I have been up here at the Spring Creek Farm outside of Palmer, AK for about two weeks now. (Visit http://www.springcreekfarmak.org/). It is an amazingly beautiful place full of life. I am lucky enough to stay on the farm, in a walled tent with Valerie volunteering my time to farm production. We do our cooking and cleaning up in the farm house, which is Louise Kellogg's house. She donated the property to Alaska Pacific University (formerly Alaskan Methodist University) in the 90s, for an outdoor educational location in addition to the main campus which is in Anchorage. It seems to be a pretty cool school with outdoor adventure skills oriented programs and a masters in outdoor education which meets out here on the farm. The entire property is some 800 acres, with several very large hay fields under production, the rest woods. And woods like I have not seen before! Since it gets so windy in this valley in the winter and any old time, the Mat-Su valley, the forests are all the same height around 40 feet or so. Birch, Cottonwood, and Spruce make up the overstory with many shrubby plants and herbs underneath. And mushrooms! I did not expect for there to be such a diversity of mushrooms, but I should not be surprised, this is the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest and these are healthy relatively undisturbed soils. 
Louise passed away in 2001 and now the farm house and farm area is taken care of by APU. Ben and Mimi manage the farm and have their own cabin behind the house. Gabbi and Val are the interns, Catie just left last week to Maine (she is a good cook!). Rebecca lives in Anchorage and was a volunteer earlier on in the summer. Val finishes next week as do I with her, Gabbi will stay through most of September. Frost is expected to come before then.
I am very impressed with the farm. It seems very full and healthy. The fenced in area is probably close to 2 acres, with about half of that under production as garden beds. The fence is electric to keep Moose out.
(photo: garden beets)-beets (red and gold)
-carrots (several varieties sweet and rainbow colored)
-salad turnips
-radishes
-rutabaga
-onions
-scallions
-garlic
-potatoes (many varieties, a really tasty purple one!)
-peas (shelling and snap, about 9 100 foot rows 4 or so feet high, literally tons of peas, well close to)
-zucchini
-summer squash
-winter squash
-brassicas (broccolli, cauliflower, romanesco, cabbage)
-mustard greens
-arugula
-salad lettuce mixes
-spinach
-purple orach
-pac choi
-oregano
-cilantro
-thyme
-sage
-calendula
-parsley
-celery
-sunflowers
A greenhouse with tomatoes, cucmbers, and basil
(photo: Brassicas at market)
...I have surely missed some. Most of these crops have went to market. Needless to say I have never eaten so farm fresh before.
Taz, is one of Bud's dogs (The hay farm manager who also lives on the property just before the Kellogg house), although she seems about as wild as any dog I have met, but still so friendly!! She is actually the coolest dog I have ever met, she seems to be 'omnipresent' on the farm and surrounding fields and woods, all of a sudden she will appear. She does not wear a collar and seems to survive mainly on meat from her own kills, we saw her nose deep into a dead calf in an adjacent field when we were walking the other day. She definitely has a consciousness more equal to that of a human rather than what I might normally think of as a dog.
(photo: Taz 'Taslina')
On the same not of meat, Ben and Mimi also raised a bunch of chickens this summer, some laying hens but most for meat. Yesterday I helped participate in the second and final slaughter (Val did not). I did not actually kill any of the chickens but did all the rest on about 4 of them, taking off the feathers and taking out the internal organs, saving neck, feet, liver, and heart. I feel it is a good experience for me for future homesteading skills and one that I should take if I am to continue to be a conscious carnivore - taking life should not be done without thought in my opinion.
Regarding the different aspects of being at such a high latitude:
It is getting dark at around 10 pm these days, the fireweed is past flower and the birch and cottonwood leaves are turning yellowing and falling. In fact, up here they do not so much refer to autumn as fall but rather 'fell' as once you notice it it has already passed, and winter is here.
Another interesting surprise to me is north, which is about 15 or 20 degrees to the right of where I would expect it to be at this latitude.
A lot of weather passes through this valley which is is fed by many glaciers (Knik and Mat for starts) and bordered by 5000 foot mountains, a very impressive and surreal place to be. It is nice to be in a place with a much cleaner atmosphere than California, and from the photos you can probably tell that clouds come and go all day long, with wind, sun, and rain.
(photo: Gabbi and Val walking out on the Matanuska River floodplain, Knik Glacier Valley in background)
(photo: Field and sky)
(photo: highlander)
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