And the Winner Is...

Thank you to everyone that left a comment for Katrina about her interview.  I too believe her work is amazing and I was lucky she agreed to be spotlighted.

The winner of the giveaway was randomly selected by using random.org.  Katrina's beautiful stationary goes to...

Lina Decker 

It was really cool to see the actual process! I love the feeling of embossed paper - it is the same as the wonderful feeling of opening a blank notebook. Newness, crispness and possibility!

Congratulations, Lina.  Please contact me with your address so we can get your stationary in the mail.

Don't forget Katrina for all your letterpress needs!

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Flora Friday

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Don't forget to check out the interview with Katrina from Ma Joie.  Get inspired and win a lovely gift. Today is the deadline to enter.

Road Trip || Alaska

"I can't believe she is your grandmother."  That is all I heard the entire trip.  She is not your typical 80 year old woman.  I had to keep up with her.  She's feisty, and so when she said she wanted to take a cruise to Alaska I told her I would go with her.  When she finally realized I was serious, we booked it.  

I've never been on a cruise, and that was fastest and easiest way to see Alaska.  If I had to do it over again I wouldn't get on a boat, but I loved sharing this experience with her. 

We flew into Seattle to get on board.  We were lucky enough to have lots of sunshine in Seattle and I was hoping that was a good indication of the days ahead.  Of course they were having record highs, but I loved it. While in port, just beyond the shipping yards, you could see Mt. Rainier in the distance. 

Then we sailed for two days.  I didn't think the boat was ever going to stop rocking.  It didn't make me sick, but it left me feeling out of control of my body.  You know when you've had a few drinks and all of a sudden you can't quite control your dexterity?  It felt like that but without the buzz.  I'd be walking and then all of sudden take a side step when the boat shifted.  

When we finally passed through Canadian waters, our first stop was in Tracy Arm.  This was my first experience with icebergs.  Plenty of Titanic jokes heard under breath, but I did have a slight freak out moment.  They really are larger under the water than they appear on top.  I did not want to put our new life boat skills into practice.

Tracy Arm is a long channel and the Captain navigated this large boat around the icebergs like a ping pong ball and we were successfully able to see the Sawyer glacier.  

As we motored along I started to understand why Alaska has so few inhabitants.  The wilderness is vast and expansive and there seems to be no way to go but up. 

Upon closer inspection of the glacier, the most beautiful shade of blue I have ever seen was glowing. Glacier blue has a whole new meaning, but no matter how many photos I took, I couldn't seem to get the color to translate.  It looked as if someone dropped a bunch of cotton candy right in between the mountains.  It appeared fluffy and light when in reality it's jagged, and solid.

After leaving Tracy Arm we headed to Juneau, the state capital.  This was my favorite destination, although I didn't know it would become so then.  The Seattle weather was not an indication of our trip.  The two days at sea were spent in heavy fog, but we were lucky it lifted slightly when we drifted into Juneau.     

The city reminds me a lot San Fransisco.  There is only so much space to build here though and so the landscape is tight.  Straight up behind the buildings were wooded mountains beaming towards the sky.  Water falls were gushing down into ravines and clouds lingered low. 

When you got passed the tourist trinket shops, the truly local businesses were charming and friendly.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to explore the streets long because we had a couple of excursions planned.

First stop was river rafting on the Mendenhall.  This lake and river are glacier melt and the temp is around 35 degrees.  We donned our rain gear and life jackets and sat in the front of the boat.

We got up close to an iceberg that drifted off the Mendenhall glacier.  We were able to break off a piece for closer inspection.  It's full of sediments.  I knew it would be, I just like to see science applied to life.

While on the river the clouds came in close and it started to rain, but since we had waterproof gear on it didn't really matter.  We shot the rapids, and since we were sitting in the front of the raft we got hit with all the water.  We stayed dry but we didn't stay warm. 

While out on the river we saw salmon swimming upstream for the spawning process, bald eagles in trees and on the shore.  Even though we were cold, we were able to see a lot of life we wouldn't have seen on the street.  

After we shot the Mendenhall we got on a boat to see a few whales.  It's one of the best times of year for viewing whales in Alaska because they are busy eating in order to get ready to migrate back to Tijuana.

  

We did spot several humpback whales.  They don't always travel in groups, but when they are feeding they will team up to maximize the feeding process.  Plumes of water were everywhere in sight. 

This little guy put on a show for us and breached a few times. 

We were also very lucky to see Orcas.  Even the locals were excited about this.  This is a rare sight around here and I'm happy we got to see three of them together. 

Of course no experience to Alaska can go without a bear sighting.  They are so prevalent.  After leaving Juneau we traveled on to Sitka which is on an island and then to Ketchikan.  While in Sitka I learned that on this very small island there are 1.4 bears per mile.  Your chances of running into one is high.  Since I have a thing with bears it was only natural that I spotted one. 

But alas, it was in captivity and not in the wild.  We viewed a bear sanctuary for orphaned cubs.  This guy is just a baby.  I'm afraid he will be huge when he is an adult and I really wouldn't want to run into him in nature. 

There was so much to see and I'm afraid I'm going to have a plan another trip.  Traveling around the state is tricky though because there are not a lot of roads.  Most travel is done through boats and small planes.

We made one last stop after leaving Alaska and that was to Victoria, British Columbia in Canada.  We were having issues with one of our propellers so we arrived in town really late and didn't have time to see much.  We opted for a pedi-cab ride to give us a little history around the city.  It was a beautiful city and I know I'll be spending time there in the future.

Our trip was beautiful and an event I will never forget.  I'm a big advocate of traveling, but I have a new perspective on getting out there and spending time with those you love.  I have the best grandmother, even at 80!

To see more photos from the trip you can jump over to my flickr page. 

Irrigation Education

Corn is big business in Nebraska.  In fact companies like Monsanto, my nemesis, have set up shop in the state to test plots for new genetically modified seed.  They call it progress, I call it destruction.  But, that political point is not for this post.

I love corn.  I grew up running through the corn fields.  Every weekend I spent with my grandparents during the summer, irrigating the corn was on our list of chores to help with.  Although, grandpa let me run around more than work.  Grandma recently told me that was because I wasn't fast enough!

So while I was back in Nebraska last month I was feeling a little nostalgic and I decided to follow my brother to his "office" and took a few shots to show you what he does during summer vacation.

I've introduced my brother before.  He's a pretty special guy, and father to my two favorite boys.  His office is whatever field he happens to be working in that day.  He has a true farmers tan.  

There are two typical ways to grow crops.  Dry land or irrigated.  Of course dry land means throw out some seeds, pray for rain, and hope you get a crop.  My part of Texas is predominately dry land.  If you've got a small piece of land, or you're not depending on the crop to make money (crop rotation year or food for animals) then dry land is the way to go.  

On the other hand, you have irrigated crops or crops that you have to water.  There are several ways to irrigate, but the most popular is with a pivot or through pipes laid along the edge of the fields.  Since pivots are expensive and a farmer can have several hundred acres to irrigate, there are usually more than just pivots being used in an operation. 

Where the water comes from is bit tricky and I won't go into too much detail, but if you watch national news at all you will eventually hear about the farmers fighting for their water rights.  If water is not pumped from the ground via a well then it has to come from a public water source and is called surface water.  Most of the water in Nebraska comes from snow melt in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  Farmers have water rights and the best way to explain that is like stock shares.  You have so many "shares" for your irrigated acres.  If Colorado uses your shares before it gets to you, there are issues.  So you can see where problems might arise. 

So back to the fun part. My brother took us to a quadrant of fields that are flood irrigated through pipes via a well.  No water right to argue over there, the water is pumped straight out of the Ogallala Aquifer from a private well.  

This particular well feeds water to all four fields.  Each field is flooded every twelve hours.  A farmer doesn't have a summer.  You hope to get rain to fill in the other hours or to pump less out of the ground, but otherwise you are out in the fields at least every twelve hours, all summer if all goes well.

The first step is driving to the middle of the quadrant down a long, bumpy road.  No A/C even in 100 plus days.  It's not good for the body or the truck that can sit idle sometimes.  

First you have to have unhook the pipe from the last field you irrigated and then hook up the pipe to field you need the water in now.  This is all done through a riser.  A lot of technical jargon with the use of the riser so just think of it as a junction to help send the water in the right direction.  You want the water to travel as little as possible because once it's pumped out of the ground it depends on gravity to move it.  The farther it has to travel the less pressure it has and that means it won't saturate an entire row. If you don't get this right you have a bunch of corn at the end of your field that doesn't get watered. 

Once all the pipes are in place you head back to the well, check the oil, the pressure, yadda, yadda and then start the pump for the allotted time.  

It's very important to check that your well is pumping the accurate amount of water and no alarms are going off.  The pump is a machine and since you depend on it to pull water out of the ground for your crops, it's important to maintain.  Too much water or too little water can ruin your entire crop. 

Once all is good to go it's time to open the gates on the pipes.  It's important to carry a shovel with you when walking through the middle of a cornfield.  Not for irrigating, but for killing rattle snakes.  Mice love corn, snakes love mice, you do the math...

Although you can't see it in a photo, there is a small opening that runs between each row of corn.  It's covered with a sliding door.  When the well is pumping the water to this pipe the pressure is starting to build with all of the gates closed and it's filling the pipe that travels to the end of the field.  Once that happens you start on the far end and begin to open all the gates, one by one, as you walk back towards the well.  The water gushes out of the pipe and runs down the row.

You can see the water traveling down the row and delivering water to the corn on both sides.  It is almost like a science to get the water equation just right.  If anything goes wrong it can make or break your salary for the year.  Talk about pressure.

This in a nutshell is flood irrigation via a well.  When September comes, it will be time to pick up all the pipe and store it for winter and then harvesting begins.  His job is never boring.  I wish I could spend more time with him out there.

Would you do this all summer in 100 degree weather?