Another harvest season is almost behind me. Within a few weeks, it will start snowing here in Fairbanks, snowing and sticking. Every year I wonder what happened to spring, summer, and fall? In Fairbanks, the snow is usually gone around the first week of May and it starts snowing by the first week of October. That leaves about 5 months to grow a garden, forage for wild edibles, hunt, fish, raise any rabbits, turkeys, pigs, or chickens for butcher, and harvest on and around my homestead, which I still have not named. As you can imagine the non-winter season flies by. I always feel starting in July things start ramping up and by the end of August, I am just running trying to keep up with harvesting and preserving food anyway I can. Every year I tell myself that I am going to make myself a ‘Harvest Calendar’, something I can refer to so I don’t forget to pick blueberries, raspberries, look for morels, breed my rabbit on time, harvest the rhubarb more than once, incubate eggs, turn the compost, butcher my turkey on time, etc. If I miss my narrow two-week window to pick blueberries I have to wait another whole year; I don’t have the patience for that! This is the year though, I’m finally doing it, I’m making myself a calendar. I’ve missed picking wild blueberries for the last time!
Here is my calendar for the seasons. Yours will be different of course, mine’s in Alaska, your’s, I’m hoping, is in a bit friendlier climate for growing.
January
Seed catalogs start coming in just to torture you when it’s -40F out and there is so much snow you can’t see your raised beds. Dream of somewhere hot and tropical. Add a layer of shavings in your henhouse. Check you hens combs for frostbite.
FebruaryÂ
Order seeds. Scrub the rabbit hutches with snow and a wire brush if there is a thaw or anything above 10F and remove the nest boxes from the rabbit hutches.
March
1-15 Breed meat rabbits.
15-30 Put the downspouts and water collection barrels under the downspout. Start collecting birch sap for syrup or drinking fresh. Plant tomato seeds.
April
1-15 Incubate eggs for layer chickens and heritage turkeys. Hive bees in the top bar.
15-30 Clean out the chicken house of litter from all winter, kick the chickens out of the house into their covered outdoor run for the summer, prep the indoor chicken house for brooding baby chicks and turkeys. Clean up 6 months of dog poo out of the yard that appeared when the snow melted.
May
1-15 Eggs in the incubator should hatch. Buy broad breasted turkey poults from the feed store. Plant cold weather crops direct sow (beets, carrots, lettuce, turnips, peas, kale, potatoes).
15-30 Fertilize the rhubarb and raspberries with rabbit poo. Stake up the raspberries that have fallen over under the snow load and clean out any dead vines
June
1-15 Harvest the first crop of rhubarb and freeze. Turn the compost. Plant the seedling tomatoes, zucchini, basil, herbs, and beans in the garden/greenhouse.
15-30 Go on vacation and have an excellent housesitter from the local CSA down the road watch your place.
July
1-15 Get caught up on all the chores you missed while on vacation. Breed meat rabbits again. Go dipnetting for salmon. Look for Morels and realized you probably missed the peak season while on vacation.
10-30 Peas, lettuce, and kale are ready for harvest.
20-31 Harvest wild raspberries and  wild blueberries.
August
1-10Â Harvest Wild Blueberries. Thin the carrots
10-20 Harvest domestic raspberries and wild mushrooms especially Boletes.
15-30 Harvest beets & turnips. Pick apples and make apple cider vinegar.
September
1-15Â Harvest wild cranberries & rosehips (depending upon when it freezes). Pick the last of the lettuce and peas before it freezes. Buy hay for the rabbits.
15-30  Harvest potatoes and carrots. Clean up the smoker and start smoking salmon, rabbit, and moose sausage. Clean up the garden by harvesting the last of the crop and fertilize with rabbit poo. Clean up the yard before it snows and you lose things until next spring. Put away your gardening tools in a place you can remember. Put away all water holding systems for the garden and animals before they freeze. Butcher turkeys. Turn the compost and harvest potatoes that you threw in there in the spring.
October
Continue smoking salmon, rabbit, moose, and turkeys. Butcher pigs and smoke bacon and hams. Hook up LED light bulbs inside and outside of the chicken house on a 14-hour timer and hook up the heat lamp in the chicken house to a thermostat. Spread manure over the gardens and turn before the ground freezes.
November
Spread a layer of shavings in the chicken house. Scrub the rabbit cages with a wire brush and snow before the temperature drops below 0F. Make homemade bone broth. 
December
Give the rabbits a nest box with hay for added warmth if the temperature drops below -15F. Add a layer of shavings to your chicken house, check for frostbitten combs.
And these are just the things that are out of the ordinary or things that are on a set schedule. There are still the constants of; watering, weeding, butchering rabbits, cleaning cages and houses, firewood, making cheese, cooking, baking, building, putting up or ripping down fencing, gathering eggs, looking for escaped animals, selling, trading, or buying animals, making kombucha, and cooking and eating lots of good harvested food.
I can’t emphasize enough how helpful this is to write everything down. While writing this calendar I realized I missed a lot of things this year, because I hadn’t written them down, and now I need to hustle and finish things on my list before the snow flies. And I bet after I post this, I’ll think of a half dozen other things that should go on it.
