Sweet defeat — Beekeepers’ honey dreams doused by rain

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Rosy Thompson robs one of her beehives Saturday, only to find a small fraction of the amount of honey her bees would usually have produced by this time in the summer. Persistent rain has kept bees from gathering nectar, which they need to produce honey.

Redoubt Reporter

This summer’s wet weather — one of the rainiest on record for Southcentral Alaska — has put a damper on many people’s favorite outdoor activities: hiking, biking, fishing, camping, gardening, etc. For most, the rain just means putting up with getting wet in order to engage in their chosen summer pursuits.

But for others, the consecutively rainy days have a much more dire effect on their activity of choice — no less than death, destruction, loss of investment and a lack of the sweet reward that can usually be reaped come fall.

“It’s just a wipeout year for bees. Anybody who’s keeping bees is going to be hurting, at least in our area,” said Brian Olson, of Alaska Berries farm off Kalifornsky Beach Road.

Bees don’t fly in the rain, explained Linda Albers, who keeps beehives with her husband, Steve Albers, on their farmstead near Kenai. Consistently rainy weather has kept bees high and dry in their hives.

“If they don’t fly, they don’t bring in any stores, so any stores that they have been able to bring in, they eat. And if they still can’t get out, they eat up their winter stores,” Albers said. “This was a year not to have them.”

The intermittent occurrences of dry skies — and the even more rare moments of sun — haven’t given bees enough time to gather adequate pollen and nectar to provide for their own sustenance, much less build up honey that can be harvested by beekeepers.

“They just use what energy and what stores they have to get to the next sunny day. This morning was sunny and fairly warm and they probably were out for a brief period, then if there’s two or three days of rain it’s kind of a moot point. What they stored is probably not enough to last them even a couple days,” Albers said Saturday.

Bees enter and exit the hive during a break in the rain Saturday. Nectar-producing flowers are almost bloomed out, so bees need to get busy if they are to generate any honey.

Now is about the last chance for bees to get busy, as dandelions have already come and gone, and fireweed, clover and other favorite nectar-producing flowers are about bloomed out, as well. If bees don’t gather now, there won’t be anything left to bring back for honey-making and winter storage, even if the weather does warm up and dry out.

“The nectar window is now, with the white clover and the fireweed. That’s all blooming right now and they’re not flying. And if they’re not flying, they’re not out getting anything,” Olson said.

The rain, plain and simple, is primarily to blame for the poor bee conditions, but cool temperatures don’t help. Bees can withstand cold, but it doesn’t particularly motivate them to fly and gather, said Rosy Thompson, who keeps two hives at her home in the Kenai area.

“The water bombs coming down take them out pretty easy, the big drops and stuff. But if it’s warm and just a little rainy they will fly some. But it’s not gotten above 70 degrees more than a handful of days this summer, so they’re not out in force,” Thompson said.

If bees don’t gather pollen and nectar, beekeepers will not only find themselves without honey to harvest, but they’ll have to start feeding it to the hive to keep the bees from starving. Sugar water or artificial bee feed can be used to sustain a hive, although Albers said that isn’t ideal.

“We do not like to supplement with sugar and artificial feed, because I figure that sugar does the same to them as it does to our immune system,” she said.

The bees’ own honey, if there’s any left over from a previous year, makes the best bee food, she said.

Rosy Thompson brushes bees from a frame of honeycomb in her backyard Saturday. The frame should be full of capped honey chambers, but the hive is not producing as much as usual this summer, due to the rain.

“The optimum thing to use is if you have honey stores left from the year before off of your own property. That would be the best to feed,” Albers said. “I just feel they work for it, they should have it. Any honey you bring in from the outside, if you just purchased honey for them, you’d be bringing in any diseases those bees may be carrying. You’re asking for disaster, basically.”

Keeping honeybees in Alaska can be challenging even under the best conditions. Hives can succumb to parasites, too much moisture can cause mold, the all-important queen can die and leave an otherwise healthy hive without a means to reproduce, and bears, moose and other wildlife can topple a hive in one swat of a paw or stomp of a hoof.

“They’re not natural to Alaska anyway. We’re keeping them in an artificial habitat no matter what, no matter how naturally or organically we try to keep them,” Albers said. “Unless you provide these little artificial homes for them they would never survive here, like goldfish or anything else.”

Overwintering beehives is a particularly daunting task in Southcentral. The cold isn’t even the main issue; it’s managing humidity, light, making sure there’s enough food, and timing when they start becoming active — not too early or they’ll die from eating up their stores or flying into snow, and not too late or they won’t lay eggs in time for spring.

“It’s hard to winter them out,” Olson said. “But if they winter out that’s great, then I don’t have to buy them, and then they’re ready to go when you’re ready to go in spring instead of waiting for buying them at a specific date and time. The earlier you get them out there, the earlier the queen starts laying eggs, the faster you can build up a population. It’s kind of like a war. You want to have as many soldiers at your disposal as possible.”

Olson has hope for a new overwintering system he’s building and hopes to try out next year. He’ll keep the bees cool and dormant until the weather starts warming in February and March. Once they get active he’ll open trapdoors to let them out of the hive to do cleansing flights over his greenhouse, which will be clear of snow.

Once bees get active in the spring they need to relieve themselves and can’t do it in the hive. But if they fly out too early and touch snow, they die. That’s what happened in his last attempt at overwintering.

“One week was all I needed and they didn’t make it. They all died. They couldn’t hold it anymore and once they start going to the bathroom in the hive they die. The whole colony died within three days,” he said. “But if there’s snow and the bees touch the snow, they’re done. They’re not going to get up and fly again. That’s the trouble in spring. It gets warmed up, they come out and start flying around and there’s snow on the ground.”

With knowledge and ingenuity, beekeeping is possible in Alaska, even on a commercial scale. And the challenge of devising ways to be successful is part of the fun, Olson said.

“I don’t think it has to be that way. I think a person can eventually get a theory or design that will work,” he said.

Honey is the ultimate treat for all the effort and frustration that can come with beekeeping, but the activity itself can be rewarding, as well.

“Why do it? That’s a good question,” said Thompson, who has been keeping bees for about 25 years. “Of course I like the honey, but they’re fascinating critters. I guess it’s kind of addicting. I got into doing it and just haven’t been able to quit.”

Years like this one certainly give reason to consider hanging up the hives, however. The Alberses used to keep at least 25 hives, but a wet, cold summer in 2008 wiped them out. Now they’re focusing more time on building their farmstead than baby-sitting bees.

“This year we only have four hives, just because of the losses we had the year before last. It was just devastating. The weather was like this and we lost all 25 hives. So we’ve been a little more cautious starting up again,” Albers said.

If there is a bright side for beekeepers to this year’s wet summer, it’s that it isn’t quite as bad as the summer two years ago. Thompson was able to rob at least a few frames of honey out of one of her hives Saturday.

“2008 so far is still the worst year ever,” Thompson said. “There was a lot of rain like there is this year, but it was colder. It didn’t get up to 50 (degrees) a lot that year. This year we haven’t gotten around 60 a lot. The bees won’t fly if it’s below 45 or 50, they fly more if it’s 50 to 60 or above. This year I’d say is fairly poor, but 2008 — that went down in history as the worst year ever.”

Feasting on sustainable growth — Group promotes local food production for health of community’s residents, economy

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Bobbie Jackson gives a tour of Jackson Gardens on Johns Road south of Soldotna on Saturday during a Peak of the Season festival, celebrating local food production.

Redoubt Reporter

In 30 years of gardening on the central Kenai Peninsula, Bobbie Jackson has cultivated a bounty of agricultural knowledge about what works and what doesn’t. She’s used that experience to grow Jackson’s Gardens into a several-acre spread with lush lawns, vibrant flower beds, greenhouses, vegetable plots, berry patches, freezers and a root cellar swollen with enough food to nourish her large, multigenerational family, and then some, throughout the year with homegrown vegetables, herbs, berries and even peaches, pears, grapes and kiwi fruit.

She’s happy to share her knowledge, but like an overripe tomato vine, the harvester needs to pick fast in order to not miss out on a juicy tidbit:

Yellow zucchini can be grown successfully on the peninsula if it’s started early in a greenhouse, but butternut squash isn’t worth the greenhouse space required to grow it.

Don’t believe plant salesmen or printed labels that say fruit trees only grow to 6 feet tall. Alaska’s endless summer light keeps them growing to 14 feet or taller, even if they’ve been pruned at the start of the season.

Most books are overcautious with blanching instructions. Peppers, onions and chives don’t need to be blanched before being frozen, but other veggies — including peas, no matter what else you might hear to the contrary — only need to be in hot water just until the pot comes to a boil again. Then drain, put in cold water, dry and freeze. But use an older, manual-defrost freezer, since an automatic defroster will suck moisture out of the food.

And so on. A tour around the gardens with the gray-haired, springy-stepped Jackson results in a bumper crop of tips, tricks, tried-and-true techniques and wisdom, presented in the grandmotherly, “You don’t have to listen, but you will if you know what’s good for you” vibe. The sheer volume of information was probably more than most listeners could soak up in one shot, plucked from Jackson’s vast mental stores of experience, which dwarfs in capacity even her five freezers, roomy root cellar and three, 8-foot walls of cookbooks.

But the overall point of the tour Saturday, and the potluck feast which followed, took root among the participants — that local food production needs to flourish.

“You can grow a garden, freeze it and be as healthy as if you bought everything at the store,” Jackson said. “To make young children think they have to buy expensive food that they can’t afford is wrong because it bankrupts them. We have to teach them how to help themselves.”

Nectarines grow in a fruit tree greenhouse at Jackson Gardens.

Jackson and husband, Harold, hosted Saturday’s Peak of the Season Festival at Jackson’s Gardens on Johns Road south of Soldotna, put on by the Kenai Resilience organization, which formed last year to encourage a more sustainable community. Participants were encouraged to bring a locally produced dish to share, recipes to swap and to tour the gardens, listen to live music and visit with others interested in local food production.

About 60 people attended the gathering, in overcast yet dry-for-the-most-part skies. The idea for the festival came from a potluck Kenai Resilience held last winter, with the idea being to demonstrate the sometimes surprising volume and variety that can be produced locally at the height of the growing season.

“The purpose was to celebrate local foods and encourage people to be aware of and eat local foods and grow local foods and appreciate what we’re able to grow,” said Heidi Chay, a Kenai Resilience organizer. “The reasons to promote your local food system are to strengthen your local economy, create jobs, you get healthier food and you benefit the environment by not transporting your food from the other end of the country or other continents. By focusing on local food, we imagine we can get a lot more of it produced.”

Food producers come at the activity for several reasons. For some, it’s a business venture, with a wide range of definitions of business success. Jackson, for instance, said she only sells the flowers she grows to get money to pay her grandkids to help around the gardens.

Others garden for heath reasons, to know and control how their food is produced.

“I’ve always been into the natural foods,” said Molly McNally, who practices homeopathy in Soldotna. “I grew up on a farm so, for me, this is first nature. Some people say second nature, but it’s just normal to me. I feel weird when I go to the grocery store and buy groceries.”

To many, cultivation and harvesting are relaxing, rewarding experiences in self-sufficiency.

“Someone made the comment that, ‘I don’t do it because I have to do it. I don’t do it out of fear. I do it out of the joy that we can do it.’ I think that’s part of it for me, too,” said Lee Coray-Ludden, who usually is a food producer, except her goats recently ate her garden so she stopped at Alaska Berries Farm on the way to the festival in order to bring something locally grown to the potluck, even if it wasn’t from her garden. “I believe in Alaska. I believe in the fact that we can take care of ourselves.”

Coray-Ludden is a member of Kenai Resilience and works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural

Heidi Chay, with Kenai Resilience, opens dishes brought for the local foods potluck Saturday, as Ellen (older) and Juliet Ellers, of Ionia, survey the spread.

Resources Conservation Service in Kenai. She said she’s exasperated by the statistic that only 2 percent of the food Alaskans eat is produced in the state.

“We need to support our local producers and we need to eat locally. We can do it. We have tremendous potential to do it, but I don’t think we’re maximizing it as much as we could. A lot of people don’t realize how many producers there are. We don’t have to go to Safeway or Fred Meyer for all of our food. We do have other choices,” Coray-Ludden said.

For Jackson, gardening is a mixture of all of the above, plus a desire to be economically self-sufficient, both as a family and a community.

“How many of you think they’re going to ship food to Alaska if there’s a major terrorist attack, earthquake or war? Are they going to bother shipping food to 600,000 people in Alaska when there’s 30 million in New York City? You’re not going to get it, so you better take care of yourself,” Jackson said.

She produces and stores enough food each season to feed her family throughout the rest of the year without having to visit the grocery store. Some of it is economical shopping — buying bulk at frozen meat sales and stocking up and storing other foods when they’re on special. The rest is growing economically. For Jackson, fresh and healthy food isn’t enough. It has to be cost-efficient, as well.

“The whole idea is to save money. Anybody can have a greenhouse if they throw lots of money at it. People build a greenhouse and heat it and it’s $10 to heat a day to get a $1 tomato, so you need to learn how to do things cheaply,” she said.

It’s a practice she’s perfected over decades of trial and error, after experiencing the sometimes-harsh reality of the challenges inherent in gardening on the central peninsula.

“I was 27 with five babies and I needed some flowers to keep from going crazy. So we ate beans for a month to save money — my husband was a little tired of beans. I went and bought $100 worth of perennials, and everything died. I was so mad that I spent 30 years finding out what will live here,” she said.

The answer of what will grow here is sometimes surprising, especially when walking into the Jacksons’ fruit greenhouse, with peaches, plums, apricots, pears, nectarines, cherries, apples and even kiwis.

The greenhouse cost $20,000 in materials, with labor by Harold Jackson. That’s something you build “if you’re crazy, not to save money,” Jackson said, but it does actually pay off in the long run, depending on your overall lifestyle.

“A snowmachine is $10,000 or $15,000. Or a new car — we drive all junky cars. A trip can be $10,000. So it just depends on what you want to do with your money,” she said.

They started their gardening operation on a far less lavish scale, with one greenhouse attached to the back of the house. In spring when she’d start her plants, she’d set her alarm for about 3 a.m., get up and dry the family’s laundry, venting the hot air from the dryer into the greenhouse to keep the plants from freezing. She also uses low-cost heater coils, meant to unthaw frozen gutters, with layers of folded Visqueen on top to keep her plant starts requisitely toasty.

“For two weeks it’s heating that soil with the cost of a light bulb instead of $5, $10 a night with propane or whatever,” she said. “Start small with whatever you can afford.”

That’s the idea behind home gardening that Jackson and the Kenai Resilience group most wanted to take seed: If everybody does a little, we’ll all be a lot better off.

“In some cities in the United States, 80 percent of the people are on food stamps. That is unsustainable. We are bankrupting America,” Jackson said. “Each one of us has to take care of ourselves, take care of our children, take care of our extended family and then help those who cannot help themselves. But we shouldn’t help those who can help themselves. We need to train them and teach them to grow themselves.”

Cool hunt — Archaeologists, Native youth look for ancient artifacts among receding snow

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Michael Bernard, Kenaitze Indian Tribe. Members of an expedition to search for ancient Native hunting artifacts hike a slope in the Kenai Mountains up into the low cloud cover that added a challenge to the trip in early August.

Redoubt Reporter

Caribou season doesn’t open until the second week of August, but a group of hunters got a jump on it this year, heading up Devil’s Pass Trail on Aug. 3 to the late summer range of the Kenai Mountains caribou herd.

The area was chosen as a likely migratory route used by the herd in late summer and fall to escape the heat, predators and insects of the lower-elevation portion of their range.

Though caribou were what drew the expedition to the high mountain slopes, basins and valleys still streaked with snow and ice, meat wasn’t the ultimate goal. Rather, they were hunting for evidence of the hunters who had tracked caribou to those same locations hundreds if not a thousand or more years ago.

The expedition included biologists, historians and archaeologists, as well as a youth work crew from the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, there to search for evidence of Dena’ina hunters, the Athabascan Native inhabitants of the Kenai Peninsula.

“We really don’t know a lot of the history. We’re trying to piece in who lived where, what resources they used and where they used them,” said Sherry Nelson, an archaeologist with the Chugach National Forest.

To accomplish that goal, the Forest Service is searching for and recording artifacts, footprints of houses, food

Members of the Kenaitze Yaghanen youth program, from left, Gabe Holley, Raven Williams and Robert Bearheart, take a rest from their horses on a trek. The youth helped in the search for artifacts.

cache pits and other evidence of the Native inhabitants of the area. Typically, those surveys happen in lower-land areas, in the forest at fish camp sites around rivers, where the Dena’ina spent much of their time. This was the Forest Service’s first trip into alpine areas to search for hunting artifacts in the Chugach.

Alpine exploration is a burgeoning trend in archaeology, as climate change creates new opportunities but also a sense of urgency in searching for artifacts. Receding snow and ice fields uncover new areas to be searched, exposing artifacts that have been locked in the ice and snow. But once uncovered, organic materials, such as wood arrow shafts, won’t last long before deteriorating.

For the August expedition, the Forest Service studied satellite imagery and GIS maps of the Kenai Mountains and considered biological information of caribou in picking a spot to surv

ey that Native hunters likely once used.

Three teenagers from the Yaghanen youth program and program organizer Michael Bernard went along to lend their eyes to the search, and to learn more about archaeology, caribou biology and the history of Dena’ina hunters.

“This is a brand-new one for us going up into these ice fields looking for artifacts,” Bernard said. “We’re usually down there looking for things in salmon fishing areas, now we’re moving up into larger game hunting areas. It’s interesting. There’s kind of a big push emerging now in the circumpolar north to go out and look at these ice patches and hopefully gain more information into the hunting ancient people did.”

Their quarry was lost arrows, micro blades and bolts from addle-addles, throwing devices used to launch spearlike weapons. Their search area was the perimeters of melting snow patches. Being above tree line, anything made of wood or stone not found in the alpine could be a hunting remnant.

Even with modern mapping technology, the search itself was low-tech — hike up to an ice patch and just look around the edges. The task is further complicated by the traditional practices of the Dena’ina, who subscribed to the “leave no trace” philosophy long before it became en vogue with modern-

day campers.

“With the Dena’inas, usually they would never leave any items lying around because it was disrespectful to nature. There were beliefs behind it,” Bernard said. “The way we hoped to find any of the hunting implements is maybe they got lost. When you aim for something you might miss. The idea is maybe some of these artifacts — bolts or arrows — would end up becoming lost in the ice field and as the climate changes and ice patches recede, these artifacts might be revealed.”

For the Yaghanen youth — Raven Williams, Robert Bearheart and Gabe Holley, the experience was full of firsts. It was their first extended horse-riding trip, as the Forest Service contracted with Alaska Horsemen Trail Adventures in Cooper Landing for transportation. Getting to try riding bareback was a high point all three teens mentioned.

Just being up in the mountains camping for three days seemed like an opportunity for which it was worth hiking, even if they did it in soggy sneakers and uncomfortable rubber boots.

“I thought hiking a mountain would be super fun, and it was. I always wanted to go hike up a mountain,” Bearheart said. “I’m kinda into archaeology and I thought the horseback riding and camping was going to be fun.”

The teens got to try using an addle-addle and learned about the Dena’ina hunters and their hunting practices. Mainly what they learned is an appreciation for how resourceful the hunters were.

“It must have been really tough for them,” Williams said.

“We just had three days of it, they lived out there,” Holley said.

Wet, windy weather and low cloud cover put a damper on the expedition, making it nearly impossible to conduct a thorough search as clouds obscured the high-elevation snow patches, driving the search crew back to camp empty-handed, but not without their hopes of still finding something.

“He thought he saw a stick across the other side of the ice patch,” Williams said, teasing Bernard for a false alarm.

“I did see a stick. It was just the wrong kind,” Bernard said. “I was very excited because we’d actually found a caribou migration trail that went right up into the ice patches, but the weather came in

Gabe Holley pokes along the edges of a snowpatch in the Kenai Mountains, looking for ancient hunting implements revealed by receding snow.

so we couldn’t hardly see. The weather didn’t cooperate with us so we didn’t get to look as much as we wanted. But we did what we could. We didn’t find any artifacts, but the Forest Service was very pleased and excited to go back. Hopefully the opportunity will arise again next year with that partnership and we’ll get to do some more.”

Nelson, with the Forest Service, said the youth crew did a great job and she was happy to have them along. Alpine artifact surveys are just starting in the Chugach, but Nelson said she hopes to make it a recurring effort.

“It would be really nice to get out every year and keep surveying each year as the summer melts out so we can catch the artifacts as the snow melts away. I think there’s a lot of potential up there,” she said.

Shared history — Russian archaeologists tour historic sites on peninsula

By Joseph Robertia

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Arthur Kharinsky and Vladimur Tuckonov, two archaeologists visiting from Irkutk, Russia, listen to Kenai Peninsula College anthropology professor Alan Boraas explain Dena’ina cold storage cache pits at the site of Kalifornsky Village last week during a tour of 17th- and 18th-century archaeology sites of the Kenai Peninsula.

Redoubt Reporter

In summer, many people come to the Kenai Peninsula to live in the now — taking part in fishing, wildlife watching, hiking and all the other outdoor fun the area has to offer. But last week, two Russian visitors came with an eye toward the past, touring the area to learn about what their countrymen did here more than 200 years ago.

The scene then looked much different than now. In Old Town Kenai, next to Veronica’s Coffee Shop, the view is of a lush grass field, law offices and colorful apartment complexes. The scene is tranquil today, with coffee shop customers sipping cups of coffee or tea. Not so in 1797, when a bloody battle between Russians and the Dena’ina, the Athabascan Native inhabitants of the Kenai Peninsula, was fought and the future of this area was forever changed.

Despite that the 60 or so Russians in the fort had the advantage of cannons, mortars and firearms, the Dena’ina — armed with war clubs made of stick and stone — proved to be formidable opponents. Nearly half the Russians in the fort were killed, and the next spring their company pulled out. From then on there were rarely more than a handful of Russians occupying Kenai at any given time.

“Had things gone differently, we might all be speaking Russian right now,” said Kenai Peninsula College anthropology professor Alan Boraas, while telling the battle tale to the two visitors, who were hearing with keen interest the story for the first time.

“In recent years there has been a lot of interest in learning about the American side of our history,” said Vladimur Tuckonov, speaking through his translator, Stan Mishin, of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe.

Tuckonov was one of two archaeologists from Russia who came to learn about the role past kinsmen living in this area played in Russian and Alaska history. For last week’s tour, led by Boraas, Kharinsky and Tuckonov were joined by members of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe and a handful of other state and local history professionals.

In addition to Old Town Kenai, where Redoubt St. Nicholas was built in the late 1700s, the small group visited three others sites including: Kalifornsky Village, an abandoned site, but still a sacred and spiritual place to the Dena’ina people; and two sites near the mouth of the Kasilof River, one of which is where Redoubt St. George is believed to have been located. At each site, the group learned the history of the features there, from both oral and written records.

“We do have a Russian connection,” said Clare Swan, an elder of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. Several elders of the tribe can trace a portion of their family tree to Russian ancestors. “As an elder, I believe in teaching and passing on knowledge. Touring these sites and talking with our visitors, this is a great way to share information and knowledge.”

Boraas echoed similar sentiments.

“This is a way to disseminate the history of this area to a diverse group, who will each take it to their own place and contextualize it,” he said.

Since the end of the Cold War, relations between Russia and the U.S. have warmed, increasing cooperation between archaeologists on both sides of the Bering Sea.

In 2004, the International Association of Specialists on Russian America was formed to further facilitate communication and collaboration between Siberian and U.S. scholars interested in the study of Russian America.

Tuckonov, a curator from the Talzy architectural museum in Irkutsk, which primarily focuses on the preservation of historical structures, and Arthur Kharinsky, a professor of history at the Irkutsk State Technical University, are members of this international association. Their studies brought them to the central Kenai Peninsula last week.

Their trip was made possible by utilizing leftover funds from a National Science Foundation grant obtained by Dave McMahan, with the Office of History and Archaeology in Anchorage, and Ty Dilliplane, a historical archaeologist with the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Also members of the international association, McMahan and Dilliplane are studying, in part, the ties between Irkutsk and Russian America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

“The Russian American part of our history is largely forgotten about,” Dilliplane said. “But it’s such a colorful part of our history.”

The farms and factories of the Irkutsk region produced a wide range of products that worked their way into the Alaska trade. Examples are iron hardware, glass, distilled spirits, copper goods, salt and rope, to name just a few items. During the late 18th century, Irkutsk was also heavily involved with Chinese trade items, such as cotton cloth, silk, tea, porcelain and glass beads, which were procured and also redistributed to Russian America.

In addition, many people prominent in the settlement and history of Russian America are linked to the Irkutsk region, including Grigorii Shelikhov, Aleksandr Baranov, Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin and Ioann Veniaminov.

Boraas said that, in terms of the recent Russian visitors, their experience was likely far different than if they had stayed in Russia studying this area from afar.

“It’s one thing to read about it in a book. It’s another thing entirely to be out here, seeing it firsthand, smelling the air and hearing the ravens crying overhead. This experience is priceless to really understanding history,” Boraas said. “They (Kharinsky and Tuckonov) understand this. They understand you’ve got to be at that place.”

Kharinsky concurred.

“To properly understand history, you have to study it from the beginning to now, and study people and their culture and traditions,” he said, through his translator. “Then you can relate and understand how we’re all interconnected.”

Science of the Seasons: Pretty eye-catching — Water lilies dress up pond surfaces

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photos courtesy of Dr. David Wartinbee. A yellow pond lily flower rests just above the water surface. The many flies on the flower are probably pollinators. The rounded flower is usually about 2 to 3 inches across.

Over the past several weeks this summer I have had the pleasure of visiting a variety of lakes on the Kenai Peninsula. What has been obvious is the diversity of aquatic plants that inhabit different lakes.

The growth forms include rushes that extend 3 feet straight out of the water, some plants that are almost entirely submerged, and some with long slender leaves that float on the surface, pointing in the direction of the prevailing wind. One of the most common aquatic plants seems to be the showy yellow pond lily.

These beautiful plants are known by a large number of names, like spatterdock, yellow water lily, yellow pond lily, cow lily or just its generic name, Nuphar. They are easily recognized by the large, floating, heart-shaped leaves and the rounded yellow flower that just sticks up out of the water.

This plant is found all over North America and at one time it was thought that all were members of the same species, with local variants. More recently, with the advent of DNA analyses, scientists believe that there are a number of different species. Those found in our area are thought to be Nuphar lutea ssp polysepala but that is certainly still being debated and will depend on who you talk to. While they share the common name, lily, these aquatic plants are not closely related to the hundreds of species of lilies found in flower gardens.

Dark spots on the leaf of a yellow pond lily are beetle larvae that feed on the leaf surface cells.

Yellow water lilies are usually found in shallow ponds or lake waters of up to 4 feet in depth. There are several lakes in the area with a complete ring of Nuphar growing all around the entire shoreline. What we see of the plants has grown up from the bottom, where extensive rhizomes serve as an overwintering root. These inch-thick rhizomes are embedded in the bottom sediments and can be more than 15 feet long.

Leaves and flowers grow to the water surface with long, flexible and rounded stems. That stalk flexibility gives the ability to withstand heavy wave action that can occur around them. In some cases, when the water levels recede or the water is shallow, the leaves may stand up above the water. When winter arrives, the leaves and stems die back while the rhizomes and smaller roots remain.

The dark green, glossy leaves are usually floating on the water surface. These leaves use specialized cells called aerenchyma to trap gases so they float. The aerenchyma gases usually contain a fair amount of oxygen that is produced as a byproduct of photosynthesis. The leaf surface is covered with a thick, waxy cuticle that is hydrophobic and gives it the leathery feeling to the touch.

The cuticle causes water to run off the leaf easily and it doesn’t pool on top. This is an important issue since water that gets trapped on top of the leaf would become overgrown by algae and would shade the underlying photosynthetic cells.

The green fruit of the yellow pond lily shows many seeds are forming inside. These seeds are used for food by ducks and even sometimes humans.

Flower stems rise from the rhizomes in midsummer. The pretty yellow parts are actually sepals that surround the anther and stamen of the flower. They produce an attractive odor for the first day or two and that attracts pollinating insects. Once the flower is pollinated, it begins forming a green fruit that contains a number of seeds. These green fruits can remain on the surface of the water or be drawn back underwater.

Like all emerging aquatic plants, the underside of the floating leaves and the many stems become an attachment site for numerous species of alga and a variety of aquatic invertebrates. If you touch an underwater stem it will feel slippery or slimy because of the many attached organisms. Some aquatic beetle larvae feed on the leaf surface and can be seen as dark spots on the leaves. Other insects attach to the undersurface and feed on the attached algae.

Leaves emerge from the water, gain attached organisms, get eaten by a variety of insects, discolor to an ugly

Yellow pond lily leaves are shown in various states of health and disintegration. From left is a new leaf, a leaf with insect scars, a scenescening (“growing old”) leaf, and a leaf that is about to completely disintegrate.

yellow and deteriorate in a short period of time. Next time you get to see some of these pond lilies, notice that there are some leaves that are falling apart, while others are in perfect condition. Scientists have used time-lapse photography to document that turnover from a newly emerging leaf to a disintegrated yellow mass takes only a few days.

Besides being a resting site for various aquatic organisms, like insects, birds or amphibians (in more southerly areas), yellow water lilies have been a food source for many Native peoples and a number of aquatic mammals. Beavers and muskrats are known to feed on the stems and rhizomes. Since the rhizomes are only somewhat embedded in the bottom sediments, beavers frequently use these large rhizomes for winter food under the ice cover.

Many Native populations have also used the rhizomes as a starchy food source. While I have not tried it, I understand it can be somewhat bitter. That bitterness comes from the many alkaloids contained within. These rhizomes were also used for medicinal purposes. Some Native groups brewed a rhizome-root tea to treat fevers, chills and heart troubles. Fluids from the rhizomes have been used to treat skin and mouth inflammations.

The next time you visit a local lake, look for floating yellow water lilies. Remember that, aside from providing aesthetic pleasure, these plants provide attachment sites for many aquatic organisms, food for a variety of animals, large and small, and even provide medicines for some Native groups.

David Wartinbee, Ph.D, J.D., is a biology professor at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus. He is writing a series of columns on the ecology of the Kenai River and Cook Inlet watershed.

Funky fungus — Wet weather brings bumper crop of poisonous mushrooms

By Joseph Robertia

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. While these young fly agaric mushrooms are easily identifiable due to their red color and white spots, some young buttons of this species can be mistaken for edible puffball mushrooms. Those seeking the latter should be sure of what they’re picking, since fly agarics are toxic.

Redoubt Reporter

Over the last two months, the amount of clear skies and sunshine is better measured in hours rather than days, but there is one benefit to all the waterworks.

“There’s lots of mushrooms right now,” said naturalist Dominique Collet, of Sterling. “You can fill a basket in no time.”

Collet, author of “Willows of Southcentral Alaska,” “Insects of Southcentral Alaska” and the soon-to-be-released “Mushrooms of Alaska,” leads instructional field forays to teach fungal first-timers which mushrooms are edible, including a few that are highly palatable, and some that are not.

“It’s like grass,” Collet said. “You can eat it, but it’s not very good, and mushrooms are the same way. There are 700 to 800 species in Alaska. Some are edible and good, some are edible but not good, and some are toxic or poisonous.”

One of the most commonly seen mushroom species in Alaska is also one of the ones to avoid: Amanita muscaria, more commonly called the fly agaric.

“You want to stay away from this one,” Collet said. “It can get you very sick.”

A fly agaric at its peak color. Red, with shades of orange, is a hallmark of this species.

Luckily, though, this mushroom is also one of the easiest to identify, due to its distinctive appearance and frequent depictions in media and commerce, such as in the “Super Mario Brothers” video games; children’s books and films, such as “Alice in Wonderland” and “Fantasia;” and even in lawn ornaments and stools for ceramic garden gnomes.

“There’s nothing like it,” Collet said. “It has a large, conspicuous red top with white spots. Underneath the cap it has creamy, white gills and a little gill skirt on the stalk.”

This is what the mushroom looks like at its peak, but novices can occasionally mistake fly agaric buttons for the puffball mushroom, which is similarly round and white but safe to eat.

“When they’re very small, they look like eggs,” Collet said of the young fly agaric, which at this stage is still covered in a protective tissue called the universal veil. “As it grows and tears out of the veil, the red color will develop.”

The white spots remain but change their location on the cap as it grows. Prolonged rain can fade the color of the adult mushroom and diminish the appearance of the spots. So this summer, in particular, mushroom hunters should use caution to not confuse it for any similar-appearing, edible fungus.

Mature fly agarics may fade in color and their spots become more difficult to see.

As for the mushroom’s name, Collet said that it is believed to be traced back several hundred years to when the fly agaric was used as an insecticide in Europe.

“It would be sprinkled into milk to kill flies,” he said.

In humans, the fly agaric can be equally dangerous. Poisonings have been reported in children and adults who ingested it hoping for a hallucinogenic experience.

With any mushrooms, pickers should be absolutely sure what they’re harvesting. Either consult a reliable mushroom guide or a mushroom expert to make sure it’s safe.

“There’s no quick shortcut to identifying all the edible or all the toxic mushrooms,” Collet said. “You just have to learn a lot of mushrooms, know which ones to eat, and never eat what you don’t know.”

Winging It: Bird migration starts to reverse direction at Chickaloon Flats

By Sean Ulman, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Sean Ulman. A short-billed dowitcher s surveyed on the Chickaloon Flats.

Aug. 11-Aug. 15 — Half a click to our trapping site, a yellowlegs swings around us and boomerangs back to the compound of ponds that has been packed lately with the greater (bigger tringa) species.

This sentinel sounds like a lesser. Its pitch is pinched to a higher part. Streaking by, it also appears to measure shorter — stunted beak to straight-out legs. Anticipating arriving to a pond loaded with lessers, I decide that no bird symbolizes birding at Chickaloon for me better than either yellowlegs. We soon learn that all 11 foraging miniature ostriches are greaters with olive-based bills, which means the messenger was likely a juvenile greater yellowlegs.

The fall migration is protracted. Birds move south in less urgent pulses than the race north to the breeding grounds. Yet, in all likelihood, we are past the major movement of the adult lesser yellowlegs and adult short-billed dowitchers. We haven’t seen a lesser since Aug. 8 and we went four days without a dowitcher. We’re still catching adult greaters.

Juvenile shorebirds leave the breeding grounds after adults. We’re expecting those young visitors as well as adult pectoral sandpipers any day now.

We saw a young arctic tern with a partially filled gray head patch and a charcoal juvenile mew gull on Aug. 14. This was our first tern since presumed Chickaloon parents and young left us July 28. The mew gull departure caught me off guard when I totaled up my daily count on July 16.

For five days, 30-foot-plus flood tides spilled over, morphing the marsh and mud into a temporary water world. Familiar with the comprehensive sheet flow action on Plot 1, a liquid quilt tucks in near the runway. We set out two hours shy of high tide to survey the water works on Plot 2. Our daily virtual Frogger video game routine — leaping gut ruts, hopping hummock to hummock — took on an accelerated degree of difficulty. Sloughs became blown-out aquifers. The submerged board was boobied with sinkhole traps. It was like a futuristic bonus stage. It was fun. The trick was to aim for areas flagged with seaside arrow grass stalks.

We remained relatively dry and confirmed that Plot 2 isn’t as susceptible to sheet flow. Sloughs turned spates funneled the water in. Six hours after the high tide, most of the water has swept back to sea and the large and creeping alkali grasses, which had displayed straw and rosy tints, are burnished a dusty sage.

Visiting the last of our random GPS points to classify vegetation, we found another secret Frogger level. Wading through shoulder-high bluejoint and beach rye grass, I was chopped down several times by hitting twisted-in driftwood tripwires. Game over.

On Aug. 13 at 11:37 p.m., we saw our first hooter of the fall, perched on the tallest spruce snag in the timberline across from the cabin. Aided by brightening binoculars, I watched a great horned owl lift its tail as it hooted and then set sail. Cadenced-stiff wing whips propelled the bowling ball bird toward the candled pins and blinking bulbs of Anchorage.

Sean Ulman received his MFA in creative writing from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. He and his wife, biologist Sadie Ulman, are conducting a two-year bird survey on the Chickaloon Flats for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Hunt for land rules before the quarry — Regulations can vary by ownership

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

Image courtesy of Kenai Peninsula Borough. The Kenai Peninsula Borough offers a mapping function on its website. The interactive program can display the ownership of different regions and land parcels of the borough.

The Aug. 10 opening of various hunting seasons arrived with the usual August rains. That the rain actually started back in June is the real distressing part.

It certainly put a damper on preseason scouting. But it seems the fall hunting is going to be dismal for moose, as it most always is when you consider the typical success rates. Perhaps slightly better than this year’s king salmon odds, but not much.

Spruce grouse seem to be in a down cycle, black bear are still prolific and for those willing to climb to the high-country berry patches, probably provide the best odds of putting big game meat on the table. On a high note, the snowshoe hare is as good as I can remember since the early 1970s. Of course, they are primarily a winter game species, but this time of year it’s good to note where they are for future hunting.

But enough of that. What I really want to discuss is property and access for those who utilize the outdoors, regardless of the activity. Alaska outdoor-oriented folks are blessed with a staggering amount of public land that is there for all to use. With that, public land has numerous landlords, and some have different regulations pertaining to use. These include the Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Forest Service, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Mental Health Trust Authority and others.

These various departments hold the majority of large tracts of land on the Kenai Peninsula. The Internet makes checking regulations for land use by these various landlords relatively easy. The other large landowners on the peninsula are the various Native associations. They also have regulations pertaining to their use.

Some of this land is easy to identify, such as the Kenai River Special Management Area, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and the Chugach National Forest. These areas and regulations pertaining to them are readily identified with signs and with references in hunting and fishing regulations. There are numerous pamphlets free for the asking at the various offices of these organizations.

Other lands are not so readily identified or marked by signs. An example would be the Marathon Road/Nikiski Emergency Escape Route. Accessing property from this route, you could be on land owned by the city of Kenai, DNR, BLM, Mental Health Trust, Salamatoff Native Association, Kenai Native Association or various private landowners.

Along this route there are many seismic trails, old firebreaks, power lines, pipelines and private property access roads.

Along any of these trails the land ownership can vary from side to side and may change at any point along the way. The land held by the Native associations requires written permit to access, Mental Health Trust Land has some specific regulations regarding use of off-road vehicles, and private property holders may have no-trespass signs posted. While many may not feel this way, given the entitlement attitude so pervasive in this state, users of these areas are responsible to know where they are and what rules apply to a given piece of property.

On the other hand, how is one supposed to determine who owns what? Fortunately, the Kenai Peninsula Borough has an outstanding website on which one can find boundaries and land ownership very easily. On the Internet, go to http://mapserver.borough.kenai.ak.us/kpbmapviewer/.

When the site comes up, there will be a prompt that asks you to accept the user agreement. Once accepted, there is a map of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, including the west side of Cook Inlet. To find specific areas, click (left click if using a PC) on the map and zoom in using the zoom feature. At the top of the page there is a tool bar that lists “Identify” as one of the options. Click on that option and then zoom into the area for which you are looking. The map will show roads and property lines as you zoom in.

Now, click on a piece of property and click again and a window will come up displaying the property owner, the legal description and the acreage of the parcel. To look at another, just put your mouse cursor on another parcel and repeat the process. You can check any piece of property on the Kenai Peninsula using this tool, making it one of the most valuable resources the outdoor users have available to them, outside of Google Earth.

Once ownership is determined, the organization’s policies may be reviewed or the administrators contacted to determine if there are specific rules regarding the area. The same can be done with private property.

This subject probably won’t find favor with some folks, but it is a valid issue. The way property is treated by some (junk cars abandoned, appliances discarded, broken glass from televisions and computers, bags of household garbage strewn about) has created some trespass issues that would otherwise not be issues.

Who could blame the property owners from restricting access when they find this sort of disrespect? As a property owner myself, I know I would be enraged to find a refrigerator tossed into my yard and shot to pieces.

Steve Meyer has been a central peninsula resident since 1971 and is an avid hunter, fisherman and trapper. He can be reached at oldduckhunter@gci.net.

Almanac: Linda’s (lost) Story — Mushroom hunter has memorable morel-seeking trek

By Clark Fair

Photo courtesy of Linda Story. Shown here dip netting the mid- to late 1980s is Linda Story. It was during this same time that Story became lost while hunting for morel mushrooms in the Skilak Lake area.

Redoubt Reporter

When Linda Story spotted the rump of a large moose in her path, she shifted her direction among the mixed brush and deciduous trees. Then she peered off to her right and saw a cow moose with a brand-new, red-haired calf in a little patch of willows. When the cow began moving toward Story’s dog, a white husky mix named Cheechako, she veered again.

Just that quickly, she was lost.

Story, of Soldotna, had driven about seven miles down the western end of Skilak Lake Road that sunny Saturday morning, May 31, 1986, to hunt for morel mushrooms with a half-dozen other members of the Alaska Mycological Society.

Trained by former Kenai Peninsula College naturalist, Boyd Shaffer, the amateur mycologists had parked along the gravel road just before noon and headed north into an old burn area, where they employed their training in seeking signs of the delectable fungi.

But their luck was poor that morning, and about the time the group was ready to head back to their vehicles, they discovered a few morels that gave inspiration to Story, if not the other members of the group.

“I got excited,” said Story, then 49 years old. “There just wasn’t enough of them to get really excited about, but I thought surely I could find some more. So they were headed back to the cars for lunch, and I said, ‘I’ll be right behind you.’”

Shortly after she was left alone with her dog, she encountered the first moose.

“Seeing a moose out there is a little different than seeing one in your yard,” she said. “And the dog, he was the best-trained dog — not because I trained him; he just came that way — and it was like, ‘Chako, stay right here,’ and he did.”

Then they came across the cow and calf.

“I changed direction again, and that’s all she wrote. I was completely disorientated.”

In the rolling terrain, there was a similarity to every direction, and Story was at a loss to select the correct one.

“Chako had wanted to go this one way,” she said. “I rode horses since I was a kid (in Oregon), had horses actually until I moved up here, and I would never have thought twice about dropping the reins on the horse and letting him take me home. And why I didn’t trust the dog, I don’t know. I just didn’t. And I do think he would have taken me the right way.”

Wearing a light jacket for warmth and tennis shoes for comfort, Story set down her wicker basket containing barely a handful of fresh morels, and sat for a while, remembering that it was often better to remain where one was when lost than it was to tromp off and risk moving farther away from help.

But the mosquitoes were numerous and voracious, so after hollering a few times and receiving no response, she made her best guess and began walking.

“I can be impatient, and thought for sure I could get out of there. I was probably going in circles for a bit,” she said.

When the mushroom hunters had first parked their vehicles and disembarked, Story had made the conscious decision to leave her daypack in her car, containing her lunch, insect repellent, extra clothes and her lighter and cigarettes. She had expected to be gone only a short time. Although she smoked nearly two packs a day back then, she left behind her brown-papered More filters because she didn’t want to bother the others in the group, all of whom were nonsmokers.

Although she grew hungry as she wandered through the woods, what she missed most was something to battle the insects. She wouldn’t have minded a cigarette, either, but she wanted it more in the hopes that the smoke would drive the bugs away than to satisfy a craving for nicotine.

Without a wristwatch, Story was unaware of how much time was passing, but she continued marching doggedly onward. She tried noting certain landmarks — trees, rocks, rises — as she traveled over deadfalls, around brushy copses and across boggy, “muskeggy” stretches that soaked her shoes and the bottoms of her pants.

At some point, she tripped on some undergrowth, and the morels tumbled from her basket.

She began to wonder what her recently born granddaughters would think one day when they were told of Story’s disoriented tromp through the woods.

“I just had visions of them being told stories of their grandmother, who was lost in the woods and was never found again, or the ghosts of mushroom hunters past,” she said.

Finally, she crested a small hill and was able to see a power line in the distance. She knew that the power line must parallel the Sterling Highway, so she aimed herself and Chako in that direction.

“It didn’t seem all that far, and I figured if I got to the highway, I could get back (to the other mushroom hunters),” she said.

“We kept going, and there were some really heavy willows and I heard a really loud rooting. And I could smell — I’m 99 and nine-tenths positive that was a bear in there. Evidently, we were upwind from him, and Chako was a good dog. He stayed right by my legs, and we kept going.”

About the time she was actually able to see the highway, she found herself on the wrong side of a small lake, probably in the spruce-forested hills between Egumen and Petersen lakes near Mile 70. She trudged around its perimeter, and at about 5:30 p.m. she climbed up onto the blacktop of the Sterling Highway and began trying to flag down a ride.

“I was out there waving my arms, with my basket over my head, on the highway, and nobody stopped. And I was obviously not a hitchhiker. So I just put my head down and I thought, I’ve walked this far, and I can walk the rest of the way. But I kept waving at cars, and finally a gentleman stopped.” she said.

The gentleman was Jack Wilson, a retired HEA employee living in Anchorage, and Wilson drove Story (with Chako curled up at her feet) the five miles west to Skilak Lake Road and then all the way up the road to her car.

“When we got back to my car, there was a paramedic,” she said. “There were Alaska State Troopers. There was a helicopter sitting in the clearing. There were 15 to 20 people from the wildlife refuge — and my husband. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to get out of the car or not.”

Although Story was relieved to return to her friends, she was also embarrassed when she realized that she had inspired a full search-and-rescue operation.

Story said that the chopper had not yet gone out, but that the area had been searched by a fixed-wing aircraft, which she did not recall hearing or seeing.

The other members of the Mycological Society had alerted troopers at about 2:30 p.m., after first attempting to find Story on their own.

“They were a little worried about a heart attack or something like that,” Story said.

They were surprised to learn that she had covered so much ground. As the crow flies, the distance between the mushroom hunters’ starting point and the point at which Story reached the highway is about four miles. Since she did not travel in a straight line, particularly in the beginning, it is likely that she traveled five to six miles during the five-plus hours she was lost.

In the end, however, she arrived safely and uninjured, albeit with her exposed skin punctuated by the red welts of numerous mosquito bites.

“A girlfriend of mine the next day told me she thought I’d been in a car wreck, my face was so bitten up,” she said.

Perhaps worse than the mosquito bites, overall, was the razzing she had to endure. In the next few days she was interviewed by the local newspaper and a local radio station, and she then became the recipient of several gag gifts.

For Christmas, her son bought her a compass, and her son-in-law sent her a T-shirt that read, “Don’t Follow Me. I’m Lost, Too.”

“I’ve gotten teased a lot over that,” Story said. “That’s been my claim to fame.”

And it is with a bit of chagrin that Story recalled again the advice to remain, if possible, in the area in which one is lost.

“If I had stayed put,” she said, “I think they would have found me in a matter of maybe a half an hour at most.”

Fair fun in training — Racing pigs, performers ready for weekend event

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of the Kenai Peninsula State Fair. Pigs make a turn in the Ninilchik fair’s annual running of the Kenai Peninsula Racing Pigs.

Redoubt Reporter

It takes a trained eye — and, OK, mostly luck — to pick which of the Kenai Peninsula Racing Pigs at the starting line will cross the finish snout and shoulders before its competitors.

But it takes training for the pigs, too.

The six competitors in the annual running of the pigs at the Kenai Peninsula State Fair in Ninilchik, held this weekend, don’t just show up in the starting chute knowing that it’s time to trot. It takes practice to get their curly tails moving.

Fair organizers buy the pigs from an area farmer in late June or early July, said fair manager Lara McGinnis.

“Then we train them for the summer. You train them how to run in circles, to get used to the loading gate and get in the habit of running around a track,” she said.

And how, exactly, does one train a pig to run in a track? With treats, of course. True to the gluttonous image their species inspires, pigs are suckers for food. They’re also pretty sharp and learn quickly what they need to do to get a reward.

“Whoever gets there first gets the treat, so they like to try and outdo each other,” McGinnis said.

A certain chocolate-and-vanilla sandwich cookie is particularly motivational to get the pigs moving.

“My volunteer tells me I shouldn’t say ‘Oreo’ unless they give me some money, but the pigs love Oreos,” McGinnis said.

The pigs apparently would prefer a different treat, as McGinnis and her volunteers discovered by accident, but it’s one that McGinnis can’t stomach giving to them.

“We get all sorts of scrap food from the restaurants around here,” she said. “We dumped in a box (of scraps) one day and they rooted through everything until they found the hot dogs. Pigs like pork. We were all appalled. I don’t think we’ll do that again.”

Once they’ve done their duty entertaining crowds all three days of the fair, held Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Ninilchik Fairgrounds, the racing pigs face an uncertain future.

“This little piggy goes to market,” McGinnis said.

People buy the pigs after the fair. So far, five of the six are already spoken for. One will stay in the family, with McGinnis’ 10-year-old son, Robert, trading his services taking care of the pigs to be able to keep one.

All in all, the racing pigs are a lot of work, but well worth the effort come fair weekend.

“I’m not sure who gets the better workout — them or us,” McGinnis said of the pigs. “But we’ll definitely have the Kenai Peninsula Racing Pigs back this year. That’s a big crowd pleaser. I think I’d have a riot on my hands if I didn’t have it every year.”

Many other fair staples will return this year, as well, including 4-H Junior Market Livestock, rodeo events, vendor booths, kids activities and arts, crafts and food exhibitions. The annual parade will travel down the Sterling Highway from the Inlet View Lodge to the American Legion hall starting at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Also Saturday, at 3 p.m., the popular Backwoods Girl competition will be held, with women racing to haul and stack firewood, carry a 5-gallon pail of water without spilling, fry an egg without breaking the yolk, and start a fire with one match and keep it burning for 60 seconds, all while carrying a baby-sized doll on one hip. The winner gets a brand-new chainsaw.

A variety of musicians and other performers will occupy both a mini and main stage. Musicians include Rebel Blues, Tuff-e-Nuff, Mark Elf, Hurricane Dave, AK Free Fuel, 150 Grit, Nana the Banana, the Xtra Tuffs and LuLu Small. Other performances include the Cupiit Yurartet Dancers, the Swinging Golden Girls, Native stories by Patricia Wade, and the roving antics of the Wild West Express.

“They’re these really cute guys — cowboys — and they ride around on their fake minihorses and lasso kids in

A young rider-to-be tries her strength on a mechanical bull at a past Kenai Peninsula State Fair in Ninilchik.

the crowd and make them give them a kiss on the cheek to let them go, and do all sorts of wild and zany things. You just never know what they’re going to do,” McGinnis said.

A few new additions will join the staple fair favorites this year. The fair’s entrance got a facelift recently, with a farm-style fence and new, Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant ramps. Once inside, a whole new experience awaits kids with Matti’s Farm. It’s a passport-style learning experience that takes kids around the fairgrounds, to visit stations with activities that teach about different aspects of farming. It was created in honor of 9-year-old Matti Martin, son of Blair and Ronna Martin of Diamond M Ranch in Kenai, who died in a livestock accident at the fair last year.

“Matti was a farmer. He had a love of farming. We’re hoping to instill the love of farming in every child that walks through the gate,” McGinnis said. “We’ve got a lot of really fun, interactive things dedicated to Matti. That’s the biggest, neatest new thing. We have been working on that for five months. It has been quite an undertaking.”

There will also be a free barbecue from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday to celebrate the opening of Matti’s Farm, a nonprofit organization established by Matti’s family to expose kids to the farming lifestyle and the valuable life lessons that come from it.

For older youth, a new teen center has been added this year, called the R-Zone. Video game and computer tournaments, such as “Guitar Hero” and “Halo,” as well as pool, arm wrestling and other competitions will be held, with a $5 admission fee. A different tournament each day will offer a $50 prize to the winner.

Amid the exhibitors showing off their arts and crafts, 4-H kids showing the results of their hard work raising livestock for auction, and all the other talents on display from performers, McGinnis is calling all fair-goers to show off their skills, as well, in an “Alaska’s Got Talent” competition. Registration, with a $25 entry fee, is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, with the talent competition at 4:30 p.m. Friday. The winner will receive $500 and a slot to compete in the finals at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer for $5,000.

This isn’t just a singing competition, so anyone with a skill is encouraged to show it off.

“I will take anything from a whistler to a spoon player. I think I’ve got a couple breakdancers coming. I don’t care if you hula hoop better than anybody else, I want to see it,” McGinnis said.

She and a fair board member will be the judges, and will be swayed by input from the audience.

“The one that gets the wildest response from the crowd. So everybody wants to bring their best supporters with them,” she said.

Gates open at 10 a.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and kids, and free for kids 5 and under. On Friday, families get in for $20 and two cans of food to benefit the Kenai Peninsula Food Bank. For more information on the Kenai Peninsula State Fair, visit http://www.kenaipeninsulafair.com.

Plugged In: Cameras may be larger than they appear

By Joseph Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

Image courtesy of http://www.photozone.de. Smaller cameras don’t necessary relieve the bulk problem with big lenses. This is an extreme example, with a long telephoto zoom on a compact camera body.

All I want for Christmas is the perfect compact camera, one that’s small and light, but with perfect image quality, high-grade interchangeable lenses and robust construction. Oh, and please make it affordable. Leica already sells systems like this, assuming you have a spare $10,000 or $12,000 and didn’t notice that we’re in a recession.

High-end compact cameras with the image quality of digital SLRs have become quickly popular. Given the choice, most people prefer a camera that’s small, light and unobtrusive, rather than bulky and heavy. Even Ansel Adams, best known for his work with large, tripod-mounted view cameras, preferred the spontaneity later possible with handheld Hasselblads.

By mid-September’s Photokina exhibition, we’ll probably see a few last-minute announcements of upgraded Micro 4/3 cameras by Olympus and perhaps Panasonic. These were among the first, and still best, compact, large-sensor, Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens cameras (sometimes waggishly termed EVIL cameras).

Pentax and Nikon are known to be developing new “unique” and “distinctive” high-end EVILs, but those crumbs in the footnotes of their annual audits are all that’s publicly known.

Canon claims to be merely “studying” whether to make such cameras, as well they should. Small, interchangeable-lens cameras have captured a remarkable 11 percent market share in the year since Olympus introduced the first truly compact model, the 2009 Pen E-P1.

That’s amazing growth, considering the vast number of decent dSLR and traditional compact models against which these few compact EVIL cameras compete. Let’s digress for a few paragraphs and consider why they’re doing so well.

Unlike personal computer technology, where a model “year” lasts about three to six months before the next upgrade, high-end camera lines rarely undergo radical change. That’s because a camera’s dimensions and features are largely dictated by its mechanical lens mount and the size of its sensor. Lenses require correct spacing from the sensor and, as a result, most dSLR lenses work only with the specific lens mount for which they’re designed.

Although larger APS-C and full-frame sensors are capable of noticeably better image quality, these larger sensors require physically larger lenses. That, in turn, limits how small we can make large-sensor cameras. Zoom lenses used on large-sensor cameras tend to be bulky. Even if the body is thin and compact, a large lens protruding from a camera creates a sense of overall bulkiness. Single-magnification “prime” lenses, particularly from Pentax, Leica and Olympus, are usually more compact and generally sharper, although often more expensive.

Many serious camera and optical companies, such as Nikon, Leica, Pentax and Olympus, are actually rather small and resource-limited. They need to be careful where they invest their limited research and manufacturing funds. Largely because of the extreme care required to manufacture and assemble any high-quality lens, every quality lens is costly to develop and produce. As a result, it usually takes several years to market an adequate number of decent lenses for any completely new camera line. That, alone, limits how often successful new camera lines can be introduced.

Interchangeable lenses are also a sizable investment for photographers. There’s a lot of inertia and serious photographers are properly reluctant to abandon an existing system in which they’ve invested a lot of money.

In order to make their new camera lines as attractive as possible to existing serious photographers, camera manufacturers try hard to make their camera bodies and lenses as backward-compatible as possible, usually by retaining the same lens mount for decades. Nikon, Canon and Pentax lenses from 1980s film cameras still work correctly on current digital models.

But I digress.

At war with weeds — Specialty crew roams state to combat plant invasions

By Jenny Neyman

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Milo Wrigley, left, and Peter Nicholson were on the Kenai Peninsula last week to help survey and mitigate invasive weed populations, like this clump of pineapple weed on Tsalteshi Trails.

Redoubt Reporter

To help carry out her crusade, Janice Chumley called in the cavalry last week — a roving crew of specially trained hit men, of a sort, called out all over the state this summer to take care of situations that are growing out of control.

Their mission is to seek and destroy. But instead of guns and handcuffs, they carry plastic bags and shovels. Instead of cowboy boots or military fatigues, they wear rain gear and leather gloves. And instead of criminals and outlaws, they hunt weeds.

Chumley is the integrated pest management specialist for the local branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service. Under the “pest” bailiwick is invasive weeds — introduced species that compete with native plants and can take over natural habitats.

Photo courtesy of Division of Forestry. Orange hawkweed is prolific at reproduction, making it a particularly dangerous nonnative weed.

Weeds may not seem like much to get worked up about — what’s a few dandelions or oxeye daisies? They’re flowers, after all. How bad could they be?

Chumley is as driven to yank those noxious invaders out by their pretty little roots as she is to educate people about how dangerous invasive weeds can be. The consequences of an infestation can be nothing short of environmental and economic decimation.

“We want to protect our fish habitats, and habitats for all our mammals. That stuff really relies on native vegetation and the insects that live on it and the things that feed on it. If you displace that, you’ve just displaced their food source and they have to go somewhere else for it. A lot of the plants that we introduce, some of it has toxicity to animals so that they can’t utilize it, and a lot of it they don’t recognize as a food source. They didn’t grow up eating it, so they don’t now,” she said.

Part of her crusade, shared by invasive plant coordinators across the state, is to eradicate the weeds. But it’s far too big a job to do herself, akin to stopping a Kenai River flood with a dish sponge and a sippy cup, so the other focus of her work is to enlist recruits to help the cause. She gives presentations at public venues, distributes information, partners with agencies like the Kenai Watershed Forum and takes kids on weed-pull events, all to grow awareness and a volunteer base of weed pullers.

This summer, thanks to one-year federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Alaska has another resource to employ in the fight against invasives — a four-man crew of weed warriors on loan to invasive plant coordinators throughout the state. They work eight days on, 10 hours a day, with six days off between assignments, and have been to Delta Junction, Fort Wainwright, Fairbanks, Cordova, Seward, Portage, Girdwood and Talkeetna. Last week they were sent to help Chumley with whatever projects she deemed most vital.

“They’ve been a huge help,” she said Friday, as their week was wrapping up. Not only are the crew members extra sets of hands for weed eradication, they’re extra sets of eyes trained to identify invasive species and extra mouths to help educate the public of the threats of invasives.

“This program has a lot to do with education. People see us working on the side of the road, a lot of people stop and ask us. It’s a good opportunity to tell them about it,” said Milo Wrigley, of Delta Junction, one of the crew members. “If they know people are out there trying to take care of these invasive plants, it might trigger more people to start doing it themselves. Just taking care of their own plot of land is a start. If everybody takes care of their own garden, and everybody takes care of their own lawn, that’s a lot less work somebody else has to do.”

The crew members are certified to spray weeds, with landowners’ permission and in safe circumstances away from water sources. The weather cleared enough Thursday that they sprayed an infestation of tansies in the city of Kenai. Rain the rest of the week meant they resorted to hands-on methods of weed eradication — pulling them out, digging them up and smothering them with tarps.

One of their biggest undertakings was a new infestation alongside the Kasilof River. They pulled out 367 pounds of weeds that probably came in through revegetation work, Chumley said.

“It’s directly next to the river. You don’t want it to go to seed and travel down the bank. And it’s right by the state park. That’s how infestations spread rather rapidly,” she said.

Weeds like disturbed ground — any area that has been dug up, scraped clear or burned — where weed seeds have clear access to bare ground. Many invasive weeds are prolific at reproduction and can quickly crowd out natural vegetation. Invasives can be masters at hitchhiking, being introduced to new areas through revegetation work, or even through seemingly innocuous carriers like fire equipment brought in to wildfire areas or hay brought by mushers for sled dogs. That’s why part of the focus of the weed crew is to survey invasive weed infestations in the state.

“Some areas have never really been surveyed for invasive weeds before. Places like Aniak, where you have a lot of dog mushers and straw is brought in for the dogs, you have a lot of introduced species where you wouldn’t think you’d find them. So to be able to do survey work in areas that haven’t been surveyed previously really offers a larger map of how things are moving through the state, and potentially what kind of economic damage that they can do to areas, whether it’s through fishing or forest issues. So, really, it’s a big deal,” Chumley said.

Even with the extra help of the weed crew, some infestations are simply too far gone to be worth spending time on. Pineapple weed, for instance, with cone-shaped, yellowish-green flower heads and dissected leaves that smell sweet, like pineapple, when crushed, is so widespread that weed pullers could spend all their time attacking it and hardly make a dent.