Sockeye Fire - A Garden Holdup and a Community Challenge!

(Photo Courtesy of Trish Houser)  This is smoke from the Sockeye fire hovering around our homes.  Trish and Bob live about 1/2 mile away from Wicked Raven Farm.

June 15, 2015 a large wild fire started in our neck of the woods.  7200 acres burned and 55 homes!  (See facebook link here for more information) But the HHS Garden, ball fields and parking lots as well as our school became the staging ground for all of the firefighters and other personnel who were working on the fire.  We had over 400 "hot shots" who are special fire crews from all over the country!  We had local organizations providing supplies and support, as well as the Middle School being used as the evacuation shelter for more than 200 people who were displaced because of the fire!  It's no wonder we didn't get far in our planting and growing in the school garden!

This year we obtained two apple trees, three rhubarb plants, strawberries, raspberries and some chives that will be perennials in the garden for us and we had planned out where they were to be planted even!  The above photo shows some all terrain vehicles parked next to the Hugelkulture beds where the raspberries and strawberries will go.  We also have a tent that is the transportation headquarters for the fire teams.  It gives us a good scale to see where a greenhouse might fit nicely!  The blue round thing is a hand washing station and of course we all recognize a Port-a-Potty there peeking in the right hand side of the picture.

This photo was taken when the ATV's were out on the fire and the orange tent is actually where the apple trees will go!

In the trees behind the orange tent you can see some of the other tents.  Some of those folks are firefighters and some are evacuees.  Not all of the people evacuated were able to take their pets so they chose to have camp out here at the school so their pets could stay too!

Our potatoes have sprouted up nicely!  This is after a fresh watering.  Right now due to the fire and the staging of man power in our school yard and garden we have to carry water over to the garden from home to put on the plants.  Our garden hose is not designed for drinking water and the fire teams asked that we not attach our hoses to the water spigots and possibly contaminate the drinking water out of them.  Government regs!  The fire fighters felt sorry for us part of the time but there was nothing to be done for it - fighting the fire and keeping all those folks safe and sound is priority!  For Sure!

With the help of some firefighters from Fairbanks I was able to get the shed crate over against the fence and get it set up as tool storage.  We cant plant anything right in this space as it is a natural gas easement and we dont want any digging going on or have to have a tree or plant cut down eventually due to poor placement so it is a great location for our garden storage.

Here are those sweet sugar snap peas!  Up about 4 inches now and trying to grow great guns!  It has been so hot that nothing is really thriving as well as we would like!  But by September they will be prime and producing!  You cant see the Candy Onions very well but they are there and trying as hard as the peas!  We should have at least a few do well in this bin!

Here are some Kohlrabi that were donated for us to try!  Thank you Sammy Taylor for this wonderful addition (as well as for the Raspberry plants, strawberry plants and the mint)!

There is a Black Krim tomato in the tire set up and the rhubarb, chives, some cabbage plants, and a few of the raspberries are surrounding it waiting to be planted when it is cooler and there arent any fire fighters in the yard!

This is the squash bin and we had to put up some walls to shade them from the hot sun during the afternoon.  No matter how often we watered they were wilting from the heat!  92 degrees on this particular day - it's the hottest I remember it for years and years - since I was a kid!

This is the grassy area across the parking lot from the garden.  These are firefighter tents.

So now you know a little more about how  our garden is growing and why some of the things arent being done as we would like.  But we did get a lot of great PR for our community, our school, the garden and the people who live here!  Many of the people I talked to in the garden were there to rest and feel a little "normal", a touch of "home" or to know that things will grow again in the case of the gentleman who lost his house in the fire.  One of the firefighters said when I came to water one day that a rabbit pulled up some radishes and ate the tops so she had eaten the radishes and she hoped that was okay!  I said sure - did you eat the rabbit too?  They have been a problem for us this year as well - even going up on high porches to eat the flowers in planters there!  My neighbor lost a whole planter box of flowers that were on her porch to either a marauding moose or to a rampant rabbit or a little of each!

The fire is now 96% contained and most of the firefighters have moved on to one of the other 52 fires burning in Alaska right now!  The Fairbanks firefighters who helped me move the shed crate were headed back to Fairbanks and hoping that their houses were still intact!  

Below photo shows the baseball, softball and practice fields full of firefighters and their tents!

We had a little rain today but not nearly enough to keep the fires at bay, keep them from starting or even to help dampen the ones already burning. You know its too hot when an Alaskan gets angry when the sun comes out - but that is what happened today!  Here's hoping tomorrow brings wetter weather!

Stay tuned for some new up-cycles that I am working on as well as continued updates on the garden both here and at the school!