Christmas Letter 2014

Karns Christmas Letter:

Christmas Party 2014

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all our friends and acquaintances. We hope you are well and enjoying this holiday season.  We haven't written a Christmas Letter in a while, so we hope to catch you up with us.

This year we are sharing remembrances from the garden. As many of you know, growing and gathering food has become major part of our life, so why shouldn’t we compose our thoughts according to the rhythms of the garden? We hope you enjoy it.

Planting the seeds

Seedlings

As the old saying goes, “To reap the harvest you must plant the seeds”—which is always a major endeavor for us, requiring the twin qualities of pre-planning and going with the flow. 

This is how planning-and-flowing worked for this year’s seed planting.

Seed Blocker

We did the planning this year: planning what we wanted to grow, ordering the seeds, finding out when they should be planted, and which growing area it should go in. 

Then, around March 1 Cindee used her new soil blocker to make soil blocks for planting, and she planted an amazing array of seeds, strategically setting them either under a grow light, or in a place where they could catch the spring sun.

Auri helps

Then the seeds began to grow into the cutest little seedlings.

This is how flowing worked for this year's gardening season.

Then, we went on a vacation in April and most of the fragile little seedlings died and had to be re-planted…late.

Then we realized that we had planned one of THE major workshops of the year (rocket mass heater construction: theory and practice) during the very season when we should be transplanting seedlings and planting salad.

What a fabulous group of builders!

THEN, having 14 people in the house, the bacteria just couldn't consume all the waste that went down the drain (dishes, showers, etc) and we had a system collapse.  :-(  All the fish died.  Note:  I did NOT take pictures of dead fish.  Sorry.  It took a lot of the summer to get the system back in balance again.  Luckily the neighbor boys helped me clean the pond.

THEN, we were EXHAUSTED, but in the end, of course, we went with the flow.  Everything got planted or replanted, though maybe a little later and a little differently than we originally planned.  

Then the teaching continued the same natural-build theme. The greenhouse needed the rough-coat of plaster. The finished plastering lesson was inside our house.  We made a beautiful mountain design for our living room wall with the help of the talented students and instructor. 

Sharing the harvest

The greenhouse produced peppers, pickles, green beans, cucumbers, and lots of tomatoes. In our home we grew 4 varieties of apples and 3 varieties of mint! The garden boxes produced broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, radishes, peapods, fava beans, beets, and the most beautiful lettuce garden anywhere.

Fava Pod

You never know what will come out of new things…or even old-tried-and-trues, for that matter. This year we decided to grow fava beans…maybe for soup? We heard they grew well in Alaska, so we decided to give them a try. We never grew them before, so if they did poorly, we would hardly miss them. It seemed an experiment worth trying.

Fava Bean

 It turns out that fava beans are good for more than just soup. One of our neighbors came by and practically gushed when she saw our fava beans. It turns out that fava beans contain a natural component that helps with the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Ruth’s husband suffers from Parkinson’s. We were so glad we had them and could give the whole batch to these friends. Next year, we will definitely plant more.

Reflecting Back:

Looking back, what a year it has been!  Our food was bountiful this year. We tried to grow, hunt, fish and gather enough food to provide at least 50% of our own food for the year, with plenty to share.

Wild foods included salmon (fresh filets and smoked), blueberries, and a fabulous moose hunt (thanks to Curt’s niece, Brittany, who talked three generations worth of the Karns/Hoffman hunting clan into taking her hunting for her first time). We were glad to have enough to share with friends and extended family this year.

---

We planned as well as we could, then went with the flow and we still got a harvest.  Sharing the harvest is an essential part of life. God blesses all of us with personality, relationships and other gifts to share. In the sharing there is enough for all, but in holding back there is never enough for anyone. Friendships always bless us, and we hope to also be a blessing to others.

When the tasks of life are shared, everyone involved also ends up sharing in the camaraderie, which is itself a harvest. All of life can be about sharing, and so all of life—even the preparation and the implementation phases—can be about sharing the good stuff.

We hope and trust that you are also taking joy in what you are building for the future, in the new life you are planting, and in the harvests of life you are planning on sharing with others.

Curt and Cindee

PS:  If you want a VERY brief synopsis of what Cindee and Curt have been doing in past years, Click Here for our Christmas Letter: The Back Story! We have sections on Home-and-Family, Cindee’s Business (The Alaskan Bioshelter and Permaculture Center) and Curt’s Work (Executive Presbyter and Owl for the Presbytery of Yukon).

The Back Story (for those of you not on Facebook)

Christmas Letter: (the back story)

OUR SHELTER SYSTEM

For the past six years we have lived in our bioshelter home, trying to learn from nature how to live and thrive more naturally. We get great water without well or septic system, heat with great efficiency and low pollution, rely on earthworms and other creatures for our compost and water systems, and otherwise love our home life!

Roof Top Garden

Curt hauling dirt

Our Food System:   Everything has a beginning point. For us it began with a decision to reduce our use of fossil fuel use as much as possible. Reducing fossil fuel consumption challenged us to grow our own food, because that would minimize the fossil fuels used in fertilizer and transportation. Growing our own food called for a greenhouse. The greenhouse needed some monster cottonwoods cut to bring in the sun. Those cottonwoods begged to be used, as did the rooftop deck on our garage—which meant milling the lumber and building some rather artistic garden boxes for the deck. The garden boxes asked for soil, of course…so we bought soil, guaranteed to come mixed with the right balance of minerals and organics, and NO WEED SEEDS. What we didn’t know is that “no weed seeds” meant they had sterilized the soil, which eliminated the entire community of organisms needed to transfer nutrition from soil to plants. Who knew? It took the whole growing season for the soil to fully recover.

 Last year (2013) Cindee and Curt spent the summer hosting classes of people wanting to learn how to build a clay-straw building. This, we hope, will work as a 3-season greenhouse, though the process works great for many Alaskan homes and structures.

In 2012 we added indoor apple trees to our food system.  They continue to produce really yummy apples of various kinds:  red harrelson, state fair, lodi, and honey crisp.

THE PEOPLE IN THESE SYSTEMS

Climate Change Conference at Portage Glacier

Curt continues to serve as executive presbyter and owl (hovers to get the big picture) for the presbytery. In past years the presbytery has been exploring what makes a strong “indigenous” Christian church (indigenous leadership!), and how the church can take more leadership in Earth Care.

Also, alot of energy has also gone into exploring the shape the church will take in response to changes in society. All these things have been preparing the way for what is happening now, and what will happen later. This was also the year when the presbytery began to give legs to the Indigenous Church movement, forming a village ministries oversight committee led by village folks, and designing a process for five of the villages to receive coaches for indigenous church leadership.

The Earth Care ministry team was also busy, hosting a Climate Change conference, bringing Presbyterians from the Lower 48 and Alaska to meet with U of Alaska science profs, Alaska Native leaders (Aleut and St. Lawrence Island Yupik) and religious leaders (Presbyterian, Lutheran and Russian Orthodox). This, in turn, planted seeds for a multi-denominational effort for next year. This effort also spawned a new worshipping community that Curt is working with. Busy!

Cindee started the Alaskan EcoEscape Permaculture Learning Center to teach skills for sustainable living (everything from goat cheese to Permaculture Design). In May Cindee and her colleagues finished teaching their first ever, winter-long Permaculture Design Course. The class was held one weekend per month at the UAF Experimental Farm in Palmer, Alaska. Seventeen students lived on campus monthly for a weekend of very intensive, experiential learning. Permaculture Design teaches observation, research, collaboration and practice as a way of life, designing how to thrive in sustainable relationships that nurture land, biological life systems, individuals and societies.

Keith and Courtney

Keith and Courtney have been staying busy in Denton,TX. Courtney is a truly gifted music teacher, working at Ginnings Elementary School. She also sings and acts in community theater, and keeps her in-laws happy just knowing her. Keith is working like mad to finish his Doctor of Music degree this winter. He also directs a UNT jazz band, TA’s and teaches in the UNT Jazz department, and managed to win two composition awards along the way, the Herb Alpert Young Composers Award last winter and the 2015 JEN Student Composer Showcase this winter. Go, Keith!

Dan, Jeanie and Aurelia

Tycho Harold Talbot
Google Tycho Brahe for the back story of his name.

Dan and Jeanie have their own rewards living in Fairbanks. Aurie turned 2 this year and blessed her Alaska grandparents by spending time charming them off-and-on all year. Big sister Aurie helped her Mom and Dad welcome her new little brother, Tycho, into the family. Dan is studying to be an electrical engineer, and served as an intern to the Fairbanks North Star Borough, helping them explore ways to make Alaska’s interior region more energy efficient! Jeanie loves her work as director of the University of Alaska Physics Lab, though she is on maternity leave, just now.

Holiday tidings,

Curt and Cindee