Spruce Tip Farm and Nursery

10/18/2023

Hot and sour soup all from the garden or wild, except the brown rice noodles, with homemade miso.

08/16/2023

Yes, we have honey for sale! Alaskan sustainable, harvested from overwintered bees. $40 per pint in reusable glass canning jars.

12/28/2021

So, we love our veggies and so do the ducks. To help feed the ducks during the winter we’ve been growing monster zucchini, some are for seed saving and some are for duck food and there’s always the ones we missed 🤣. These don’t taste great to me but the ducks flap for joy. These things keep really well. Kinda amazing. When these are gone, we’ll share our potato harvest with the ducks. Cooked, of course. Good thing we grew 300 lbs of potatoes. Maybe we can grow more.

12/15/2021

It’s usually the simple things that make me happy. Excited to find my water glassed duck eggs are beautiful. So, my ducks lay brilliantly all spring, summer and fall. Then they molt and cold comes and they take the winter break. So what to do with that abundance at the end of the summer. Well, store them for winter baking, yippee. Apparently an old timey method but I’ve only learned of it several years ago. Happy to say it’s well worth it. The eggs are essentially perfect. https://homesteadingfamily.com/preserved-eggs-water-glassing-eggs-for-long-term-storage/

Preserving eggs using the water glassing method is a long-standing historical [ractice that works wonderfully for long-term egg storage.

11/30/2021

06/21/2021

Yay! It's that time of year again!

05/21/2021

Want to learn more about composting? Composting is the ultimate in recycling that feeds your garden. We will talk all things compost and build a lovely pile. I love compost. I've been composting almost my entire life and started at an early age, much to my mother's horror. You can learn form my many mistakes, lol.

6-7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 1

05/12/2021

And this is why we love the fuki.

05/12/2021

Spring feels cool and slow. But some darlings are back. No pictured is the monster beast fuki. Black currants and gooseberries are awake too.

05/07/2021

Oh baby! We’ve got luscious, delicious shiitakes almost ready to harvest. This was an experiment to see if they’d grow on alder wood chips. Yay, they love it. The alder was chipped green last year and dried. We have used birch wood chips and/or sawdust in the past, but we’ve be doing less woodworking so were short.
This method requires sterilizing the wood chips in special autoclavable bags that maintain sterility yet breathe. While it would be lovely to do the more traditional method of log inoculation, we have yet to find suitable logs. We have tested birch and cottonwood. But, except for the use of plastic bags, I’m happy with our method. And it takes 2 months to get shrooms instead of years.

04/09/2021

So...the last Long Pie Pumpkin of the season. Still keeping pretty well, even though I wasn’t as loving with them as usual. Normally I’d have washed and dried them, and then oiled them to keep them from desiccating. The layer of white inside is from drying out a bit. It mostly scrapes off with the seeds. Nice luscious orange flesh. Gonna cook it up for one last pumpkin pie. Yummm.

I still have seeds for planting. There’s still plenty of time to get them going. I’ll plant mine in a couple of weeks, I think. If you’d like me to mail you seeds, pm your address. Or stop by. Happy growing!

04/02/2021

We have an abundance of duck eggs! $7 per doz. Happy ducks fed organic feed. I grow greens for them in the winter, and share our carrots and kohlrabi with them. No soy or corn.

03/23/2021

Dreaming... https://m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR34Bc-ktv0gbcKi2W0Pa7tftB40ic79L8TnQwXzwvsr4-kpxyZJF2MGQ84&v=SZiT9vhPX6Y&feature=youtu.be

Mark's Book about his Life without Technology: http://bit.ly/MarkBoyleBookMy Mini-documentary about Mark & Cabin: https://youtu.be/tkZoUuAqRhkMark Boyle live...

03/23/2021

Tincture processing today. Schisandra berry with elderberry tincture for immune support and valerian root plus passionflower for sleep support. Only one that we grew here is valerian root. It’s a great plant to have in your garden. Beautiful, robust perennial that shoots up a tall stalk of white flowers every year. Bees love the flowers. You can dig the root in the fall after establishing it for 2-3 years. Best chopped/pulverized into ethanol within a day or so. I extract for at least 3 months.

03/22/2021

I’m thinking about water on this World Water Day. Yes, there’s more than 3 ft of snow in the ground and it’s beginning to melt. That’s our first watering. But whether this year or next, we will have at least periods of drought. You can do many things to help reduce the loss of moisture in your garden. Adding lots of organic matter and activated biochar helps immensely. Methods discussed in this blog post are also useful.
https://www.growingwithnature.org/deal-with-drought-on-the-homestead/

Are you dealing with drought on your property? These 19 methods will help you drought-proof your growing areas. Click to get started today.

03/06/2021

The State of Alaska has grants available to eradicate bird cherries. These are unfortunate, misguided grants. The reasons for the war on bird cherries (Prunus padus) that have been promoted is that this invasive species kills moose and salmon. Both of these conclusions are misrepresentations of the data. Bird cherries are useful trees. In addition to the beauty, the bees love the early blooming flowers. Birds love the fruit (and spread the seed everywhere). The wood is very strong and useful. The berries are still processed into flour in Siberia (it is delicious used in baked good to give a chocolate flavor). As global warming continues, spruce trees will likely become extinct. Bird cherries may be an important part of replacements for tree species that can no longer survive here.
The two juvenile moose found dead and examined by ADF&G had essentially empty stomachs with the exception of the noted bird cherries, which contains potentially toxic cyanogenic glycosides. These moose were clearly starving, which unfortunately happens during our harsh winters. Most of the time moose avoid plant containing cyanogenic glycosides, such as bird cherries and our native elderberries. If we want to reduce the deaths of moose, consider how many are killed or maimed by cars, reduce speed limits.
If we want to protect salmon fry, a well-documented problem is road runoff, which contains a chemical from tires that kills salmon (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/common-tire-chemical-implicated-mysterious-deaths-risk-salmon). Roadway waste runoff in Anchorage is dumped, untreated, into our creeks and waterways.
The studies that supposedly show harm to salmon by bird cherries don’t. David Roon and his collaborators1 noted decreased terrestrial prey subsidies along riparian corridors where European bird cherry has become the dominant stream bank species. They state simply there may be fewer insects falling out of the trees/shrubs for coho fry to eat. The streams were shown to be unaffected at the current level of cover on the weight or biomass of the sampled coho salmon and the ground litter insect populations were similar. Here is where the story gets more complicated. The most prominent leaf associated biomass that contributed much of the greater abundance of insect mass was a sawfly larvae occurring at a high level in thin leaf alder. The specific species of sawfly was not noted, and there was no discussion that this source of biomass could be from another invasive species. This was around the time that an invasive European green alder sawfly was becoming established.
The same author, David Roon et al. 20182 , in a subsequent paper, noted that the invasive sawfly were decreasing the availability of native terrestrial species and devastating leaf cover but again no impact on the coho was detected. The somewhat unusual, and seemly unsupported conclusion of the two papers is that bird cherry is a problem but invasive sawfly is not when in both cases no impact was detected on urban coho of our riparian streams. This has a somewhat political feel to the conclusion, in the absence of evidence. It also turns out that coho share the opinion of my ducks that sawfly larvae are too nasty to eat.
The point of this discussion is that we have a changing ecosystem with climate change and the introduction of non-native species. Reductionist approaches to single factor changes may miss the complexity and can be “cherry-picked” to support actions. The “evidence” presented is hardly a support for single minded notion of poisoning of bird cherries or green alder saw fly. Invasive insects can open opportunities for less susceptible species, and bird cherries are formidable opportunist. Bird cherries are here to stay and the products of Monsanto are not an answer unless the goal is more product sales—which leads to more issues with non-natives.
Invasive European bird cherry (Prunus padus) reduces terrestrial prey subsidies to urban Alaskan salmon streams
DA Roon, MS Wipfli, TL Wurtz… - Canadian Journal of …, 2016 -


1. Riparian defoliation by the invasive green alder sawfly influences terrestrial prey subsidies to salmon streams
DA Roon, MS Wipfli, JJ Kruse - Ecology of Freshwater Fish, 2018 - Wiley Online Library

03/02/2021

03/02/2021

Ahhh...the joy of collecting and growing seeds. It feels joyous and exciting. These tiny brown dots in the jar are lobelia seeds with the seed pods on the table. I almost missed this year since it was a cooler spring and summer. So I brought the plants inside before frost and some of seed pods got plump with seed. Plant these on the surface as they need light to germinate, like other tiny seeds, such as water cress and thyme.

02/12/2021

So, I’ve got some extra seed for Welch onions. These are lovely perennials, hardy to our cold location on the Hillside at about 900 ft above sea level. I use them as green onions throughout the summer and I also dry some for winter use. If you’d like some seed, send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope or arrange to stop by for pick up. I’ll hopefully have some plants for sale in the spring.

02/05/2021

Permaculture has been a designing practice in my life for decades. It has and continues to give me more balance and hope in these times of transitions. You don’t have to do a PDC, but it can speed the learning. It is a very important tool for becoming beneficial rather than destructive. https://www.discoverpermaculture.com/permaculture-masterclass-video-1

Join me in this four-part series as we explore how permaculture is *precisely* what we need to help our health, food quality, and communities thrive.

02/03/2021

Wanna improve your soil microbiology and increase the water holding capacity of your soil, while reducing your carbon footprint? Don’t forget to charge your biochar! https://permies.com/t/149979/homegrown-improvised-biochar-kiln

This improvised kiln was intended as a proof of concept only but makes very high-quality biochar that after quenching shatters to a small size with minimal force. I admire the many sophisticated designs that are being developed and am only a little embarrassed to present this, but sometimes one pers...

02/02/2021

Okay, let's talk about weeds. We have often only heard about the bad things invasives do, but what about the good. Bird cherries are generally hated around the Anchorage bowl. These were planted here because they are beautiful in the spring, but are hated for spreading and taking over. Indeed, the birds have and continue to spread them widely. But they have utility. The wood is excellent, highly prized in Siberia where they are native. They can be coppiced, which is also why they are hard to remove easily once established. The berries are made into a delicious flour in Siberia. In Anchorage, members or the Pioneer Fruit Growers are experimenting with grafting cherry and plums onto hardy bird cherry root stock. Do they kill moose as reported? Maybe only stupid moose or starving moose, is my suggestion. Moose and bird cherries have co-existed in Siberia for a very long time. Cars kill more moose; I’d rather ban cars.
Bird vetch is also well-hated. It was brought to Alaska along with other legumes as part of an experiment in the early 1900’s to provide fertility because they fix nitrogen. Those that were winter hardy are now well established. They improve soil fertility and can be used as animal fodder. I pull it if it’s getting out of hand and feed it to my ducks.
I love dandelions. The bees love dandelions. My ducks love dandelions, greens and roots. We eat the greens in the spring and harvest the roots for tea. As a matter of fact, I have to be careful not to over harvest around our homestead. I won’t want to run out. LOL.
In addition to Tao Orion’s book Beyond the War on Invasive Species, I highly recommend Fred Pearce’s book, The New Wild.