Wrapping up 2011

Well it has been a while, and now the end of another year is fast approaching. As fall has turned to winter Lou keeps busy making wine to keep the stores around the state stocked with Bear Creek wines. This week is the last week of the semester for me, so I will have a bit more freedom come next Monday. We have continued to do yard work between snow storms and have made decent progress.
Over the weekend we got another good dump of snow on the hill tops.
Lou and I left our house while the winds were still blasting sleet against our windows in hopes of gliding across snow at higher elevations. After a mini-adventure with our car we decided it was better to ski the road to the trails then drive there. And what a blast we had skiing down the road. Turns out that the road was much better skiing than the trails as neither had been plowed or groomed. We took ourselves on a 2 hour tour getting back to the car just as it got dark and smiling ear to ear. We are looking forward to our next opportunity to ski commute.
From the more distant past here are some shots from picking apples from our orchard and making them into cider. The cider was ready for thanksgiving. We tried a different recipe from past ventures in cider making and are really happy with the end result.Here is Lou picking crab-apples off a tree in front of the house. This whole "garden" will be a focus for us next spring. Right now it is incredibly overgrown. In fact it is terraced but you can't see where one level ends and the next begins.Here is the harvest. We have three kinds of apple trees (as far as we can tell) and harvested 30 gallons this year.The winery purchased a new crusher to deal with the apples. It made short work of the fruit.The press. Fresh apple juice is amazing.
Graham and Greta came down from Anchorage to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. As always we had a blast, good food, good drinks (they helped us put a dent in the cider), a little work, and lots of game playing. Below you can see the winery's production building in action as Graham, Greta, and Lou bottle Christmas Berry wine for the holiday shoppers.
We managed to fit in a little trek up the hill behind Bear Greek. Yeah for a snowing Turkey weekend.
Lou did a good job of getting us all in the photo and not cutting off any one's head.
One of the outdoor projects we worked on this fall was putting a metal roof on the shed below and cleaning out the junk left under the lean-to. Hopefully it will stay clear of junk......

Snow on the Mts

Yesterday Lou and I woke up to a cold house and a delightful change to our view, snow on top of Sadie's peak. Mid-September and the mornings are getting more chilly, the winds are more fierce, we have nights again, and now snow across the bay.
Other exciting changes, Lou and I now have a nephew! Baby Hank arrived Sept 16th. He is a healthy boy at 7lbs 6 oz, blue eyes and for now red curly hair.
The property continues to keep us busy. I have picked a gallon of cherries off our cherry tree and several gallons of raspberries, and black currants. We are waiting for the first frost to harvest the apples. Lou and George are making a wine barrel mail box for the winery, it is very spiffy. We also completed modifications on Louie's commuter path to the winery. It feels good to be get some projects finished. Best part is we haven't had to buy any materials, everything we need is already on the lot. That's right, old wine barrels just sitting under shed #2 waiting to be made into a mailbox. And we keep finding more, Lou wanted a glass lamp to put agates in......found one.
Last month we went to the Kenai Peninsula Borough fair. The pig races were a real hoot. Apparently oreo cookies are very inspirational to piglets. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. Don't miss the pig races if you ever have a chance to watch them.
George, Louie, and I helped out on a salt-march monitoring project for Kachemak Bay. We spent a day hiking across China-poot's large salt marsh identifying the different plants within meter plots. Here George and Lou make their way across one of the side channels on the way to our groups plots. Identifying salt-marsh plants in the plot at a low low tide. Lou trying to find a plot location using the GPS without losing his boot in the mud.Another aspect of the project looks at fish biodiversity in the salt-marsh. The day before the plant plots I went across and did a few seines in side channels and set up this trap to catch fishes on the outgoing tide. It doesn't seem to matter what I am doing, where I am, or what the weather is, if I get to "work" with fishes I am a happy gal.

Picture update

Here is a picture summary of some of what we've been up to in our spare time.
It is always nice to go for a paddle in the morning on a flat calm bay.
And when friends invite you to go halibut fishing everyone has a good time! But I think George enjoyed it the most. He was grinning ear to ear from the time the tractor towed the boat into the water through filleting his first halibut. We caught our limit and then enjoyed fresh caught fish and chips with friends and family in the endless summer light.

View of the halibut before Nikki pulled it into the boat.
Summer is still slamming up here. Lou's big race is this weekend, wine is flying out of the winery, and we are really close to owning a home. The grasses at the Fox River field sites has really grown up and everything is green. The slopes around Homer are covered in lupine as we hike to our headwater sampling sites.

An update

As expected summer in Homer is crazy busy. Lou is busy making wine to keep up with demand and training for the Resurrection Pass 50 mile run next month. Every time he goes out for a long run he is running farther than he ever has before. Last Sunday he ran our CDT average daily mileage in 3ish hrs. Go Lou!
I am loving my job. I get to be outside hiking around or measuring fishes almost everyday. Everything is green now, and gorgeous. The snow is quickly disappearing off the mountain tops. I'll try to get up a few pictures of the changes soon.
Although memorial day was last month I thought I'd share a few pictures of one of the projects we worked on that weekend.
Yup, that is a dead moose Lou is untangling.
This young bull got caught up in a neighbors wire fence while they were away. Lou and I went over to help them take care it. The local authorities don't deal with dead moose, but they do hold you responsible if it is on your property and attracts bears. As you can see it died right next to a power pole which, among other reasons, made it impossible to use any machinery to haul it out or bury it. So we got out the shovels and dug down until we hit frozen ground. Rolling the moose into the hole wasn't too challenging, but it did let loose some rotten odors. We layered the poor guy with lime and dirt, said a few words and plopped metal air stripping on top for good measure. To our delight no bears came looking for an easy meal and I didn't have to cut it up in pieces to haul it out of bears reach.
Other more recent news; I have been doing a tid bit of work on a property that Lou and I expect to close on in late July. We are trying not to get too excited or invest too much time until we actually have the keys.
There are apple trees on the property! And raspberries too. The raspberries were in need of some serious TLC, so I have spent a few hours doing that. See the before and after pics below.

Before


AfterThis and another isle just like it created three piles up to my waist of dead raspberry sticks.
The raspberry stocks that are greening up are well over my head. With a little grooming we could have a healthy harvest of berries from year to year.
Here are some pics of the apple trees. For the most part the apple trees (and two plum trees) are in great shape. But the rabbit population has done damage to a few of the trees. I have a lot to learn about keeping plants happy and healthy so we can harvest fruit in the fall. Who knows, bee keeping might be in our future.....
Looking from the raspberries across the apple tree patch. Check out the harvesting ladder.From the other side of the apple tree patch, a couple of younger trees in front.There are other fruit producing plants in the orchard as well. But we'll wait until after closing to think about those.

Jaz's summer job

This summer I am a tech for Kachemak Bay Research Reserve. KBRR is part of the national estuary system. I will mostly be working on a project at the head of the bay at Fox River Flats. The pictures below show some of the sampling procedure. We seine in several side channels and then ID and measure all the fishes we catch.The plastic totes are insect fallout traps to look at prey availability.
The overall focus of the project is looking at habitat use of salmon smolt before they make the transition to the ocean. In the picture above Tammy is measuring the temperature, salinity, & conductivity of the channel water. Almost all of the fish caught are released after being measured and weighed. There also is a diet component, so a few salmon smolt (shown above) come back to the lab with us. We have had one week of field work so far with many more to come. It has been fabulous to be out in the field again. The group of people I work with are a lot of fun. The site is just starting to green up, but the surrounding mountains are still covered in snow. I look forward to watching summer take over at the flats.
Besides all the fishes we catch there is a lot more wildlife happenings, gobs of birds, and even the occasional wolf track. I hope to see more than just wolf tracks this summer.

Meet the Fraurer Kitten

We got a kitten a week ago. Lots of fun and entertainment. We were told that it was a girl, but yesterday the vet informed us that this little fuzz bucket is actually a boy. So as much as we liked the name Alta, we decided it was a more girl name than boy name. Which means that Thor is an option again, although we are leaning towards Zin. He is a winery kitty after all.

The Traditional Archery Journey Continues

I have been attempting to get a rabbit this winter with my traditional bow and recently...I succeeded! The Homer area has experienced a rabbit boom this year so they are plentiful. I have been going on walks around the neighborhood getting attuned to the habits of the rabbits. I have certainly had some failed attempts and flung arrows that did not meet their mark over the past few weeks but fewer than I would have thought. This particular rabbit did not make it easy. I had to perch in a tree to get elevated enough to have a shot over a hump and initially only the rear 3/4's of the rabbit presented a shot. I ended up shooting wide and spooked the rabbit. Lucky for me he only moved five feet or so and presented a similar shot but this time it was its head 3/4's that was exposed. I shot my second arrow and it found its mark. Rabbit stew for dinner! This is the first animal that I have taken with my traditional bow and it was very satisfying. I kept the skin so that I can try to tan it and maybe make some slippers. The fur has tons of soft down in it seeing how it is winter time.

Happy trails to everyone.

Winery new building

Here are just a few pictures of the new production building for Bear Creek Winery. It is a beautiful timber frame shop, just up the road from the original building. The tasting room isn't moving, just the production side of the business. There isn't enough room to make and store all the wine they need to meet demand at the original site. So far, they have only moved in cases of wine that were made in the original building, but in the very near future they will start making wine almost exclusively in this new building.
As you can see the building gets lots of natural light. Our days are now about 11 hours long, equinox is just a week away. They have a forklift to move around pallets of wine, which is a lot better than moving them by hand.
The wall behind the forklift in this photo opens to the space that will have a walk in freezer for all the berries. Right now there are many pallets of wine being stored back there.

The forklift has been jazzed up with this spiffy Bear Creek Winery decal.
Here is a picture of most of the Bear Creek Winery crew, missing are two of the winter employees and my Grandma who makes lunches for everyone. They are standing in front of even more cases of wine along the opposite wall of the shop from the last pic. The building has a lofted office space too. It is going to be a different summer with the new building up and running. Between people coming in the door for tastings and the distributors orders they keep busy around here. It is awesome to go into Fred Meyers and see Bear Creek Winery bottles on the top shelf of their liquor store!

Out my window

This photo was literally taken out the window by my desk 5 min ago.

Life in Homer has been moving right along. Lou is busy working in the winery and just this morning I taught my first lecture of the semester. After lecture I got in a ski under blue bird sky's. It has been so sunny around here my face is starting to tan. Back at my desk for the afternoon and life keeps making me smile. Two young bull moose are helping themselves to the frozen grass on the lawn. They are mostly getting along, but I have seen them push each other, just a little, with their antlers to get a better angle at the grass.
Before these bulls showed up we've seen two sets of cow and calf every day.
I went outside to get a few nicer shots. The moose in the front isn't just closer to me, he really is bigger than the other guy. FYI Jake - neither of them are legal....yet.