Friday was dubbed “Tom Day” because we spent the entire day on the farm with…well, you know who. To this point we had been impressed with Tom’s knowledge of the ecology of the farm, the hill on which it sits, and the undulating landscape of which the hill forms but a part—but after spending the entire day with him, it’s safe to say we are not just impressed but blown away by the variety, depth, and passion of his knowledge.

The students learned and tried their hand at SO many things today: pizza dough-making, blacksmithing, grafting trees, and, yes, splitting wood. Safety and context first, of course: Tom introduced the different types of axes (hatchets, splitting axes, felling axes, mauls), explained green and dry wood, demonstrated the behavior of knots in the grain when struck, and taught the students proper splitting technique. Then he put the students to work, splitting the wood to be used to bake their homemade pizzas in the wood-fired pizza oven that night.

How to put this…They definitely took a liking to it! They made fast work of the two wheelbarrows of wood, and would have kept going if there had been more. But there was more to do, more to learn!

More photos on all that soon. It’s Sunday night and we’ve settled into our hostel just outside Denali National Park and Preserve. Everyone has showered and settled into their beds. We feel clean and rejuvenated. Clouds and mist float through the sky, and the hostel-side creek rushes past with riffling whitewater and white noise. The mountains loom above us, inviting new adventures on this second leg of our program.

Tomorrow we set off in our hiking boots. Stay tuned!

— Kevin & Anna