Building A Hot Tub in the Woods

For years, I yearned for a hot bath out here at our cabin in the woods.  Ah, the relaxation of sinking into deep warm water, maybe with a book and a glass of wine after exercise or at the end of an eventful day.

But moving, heating, and draining water are all challenges in this setting that I never appreciated when bathing in a city.  In a remote, off-grid home with six months of winter, a cold water well, and no septic system, a bathtub seems like a decadent pleasure in a former, urban life.

After several years of trouble shooting water delivery problems at Latitude 61, we finally felt confident about securing running water ... most of the time - after we re-insulated our well and water lines for improved reliability.  So I started to think again about a tub that could work within our constraints:

a) It would have to be outside, because there is no room in the outhouse, cabin, or shower house.
b) We would have to be able to fill it by hose and then heat the water by wood or propane, during long, cold winters without fear of hoses, couplings, and water freezing.
c) And it needed to be close enough to the cabin that I would even CONSIDER a cold and dry ingress and wet and slippery egress.

Second Podcast Interview by Off the Grid News: Alternative Power

This 20 minute interview by Michael Foust of Off the Grid News focuses on our evolving use of solar and wind power and how we (sometimes) ensure running water during our long winters.

Ski Plane Lands in Eight Inches of Winter Overflow

This year's warm and soggy winter weather has disappointed - and endangered - outdoor enthusiasts on all sorts of skis - cross country, snowmachines, and planes.  At any temperature, when ice thickens on lakes and rivers, it pushes water up through spider holes and other crevices to flow atop the ice, with inadequate places to drain.  Unseasonable winter rain/sleet deepened those pools.  The modest moniker of "Overflow" belies its danger.


Nearly frozen water is thick - almost viscous - and it has a terrific affinity for metal, adhering to and weighing down any surface it touches.  This impediment to forward movement is bad enough when visible, but it is even more treacherous when covered by a thin layer of snow that looks soft and deep but actually insulates the water enough to keep it from freezing thick and safe for transport.

When we arrived at Willow's little rural, gravel strip airport (originally an emergency runway for the Lend Lease planes in World War II), Barry Stanley of Denali Flying Service warned us, “The ice is thick, but be careful of overflow out there. Land fast so you won't bog down far from shore.”  Then his passenger regaled us with a few harrowing and expensive lessons learned by friends whose airplane skis were trapped in icy graves.

So cautioned, my husband circled our Piper PA-20 over the lake at 1000 feet to spy any open water.  We saw none but three spider holes in the northwest corner - far from where we intended to land.  So far, so good, but it was hard to see much else.  Although mid-day, the light was completely flat, providing no shadow to identify moose tracks, snow drifts, snowmachine or plane tracks that could catch a ski.  In such white- on- white conditions, depth perception is severely challenged. Where is the surface? What angle and speed will ensure a smooth landing instead of a chaotic bounce?

First Podcast Interview by Off the Grid News

Michael Foust of Off The Grid News conducted a fast moving 30 minute interview with us last week, asking us about water, power, food production, bears, and sources of revenue at our remote property.

Here is the link to the podcast.  If you are interested in this, you may be interested in some of his other weekly interviews with off-grid families throughout the US and Canada.

Canning Home Raised Rabbit and Vegetables for Winter Food

September is when we are busy putting up lots of food for winter.  This is a satisfying feeling, rather like graduation. The efforts expended in earlier months to feed ourselves prove fruitful.  

Some end-of-season herbs, I dry, crumble, and store in jars. I particularly love lemon balm, mints, and red clover in teas. Anise hyssop is good, too. I also save and dry orange peel throughout the year (great in pea soup and teas).  This year, I decided to dry nasturtium and mustard leaves,  to enjoy their pungent flavors in winter onion dips and baked potatoes.  (Nasturtium tastes like horseradish).

Other foods I can in mason jars, starting with vegetables.  Last week, I canned about 15 quarts of kohlrabi, beets, cabbage, broccoli leaves, and mixed vegetable broth (from tough stalks). (Question: Does anyone really LIKE kohlrabi?  It looks like an alien softball and the flavor is turnip-like, but it grows easily here.)

This week has been devoted to processing the rabbits, a time consuming, week-long endeavor for my husband and me.  We raised 15 healthy Flemish giants this year. (An adult is bigger than a house cat). Six will go to a young mom in Willow who will return them (or six others, since 6 become 36 pretty quickly) to us in the spring. The other 9 will yield plenty of food this winter.

After what I hope has been a happy and healthy life for the rabbits,  Bryan shoots them quickly with a .22.  To skin them with a super sharp Cutco knife, he built a plastic, waist-high abattoir and pulls up a little bench.  Saving the hides requires meticulous work, requiring about an hour per rabbit, so he harvests three in a morning.  That is about all I can cook in a day, anyway, if I expect to accomplish anything else.  

Walking Tour of a Remote, Off-Grid Home in Alaska

I'm not sure what people envision when they hear that someone lives in a remote home in Alaska.  Certainly, the places I have visited vary quite a bit.  Even cabins for the tourist industry can be stunning resorts or, more often, modest fish camps.  Many homes we fly over and visit are in a constant state of transition - Tyvek on one side or a new plywood Arctic entry or the ever necessary additional storage buildings surrounded by a motley collection of trucks, RVs, ATVs, snowmachines, and boats.  We, too, have added structures and vehicles bit by bit since we bought the undeveloped land in 2007, but being a bit of a neatner family, we maintain a pretty orderly looking place, inside and out. Below is a tour of this remote homestead.

Home sweet home

If you flew by float plane air taxi to visit in summer (there are no roads over the mountains, bogs, or forests here), you would chug up to one of our two little wooden docks.  If our little plane or kayak were in the way, the pilot would maneuver toward a part of the shore with few trees (in the bog or among the fool's huckleberry) and jump into the water (in waders) to tie the plane to some bushes.  You would step down onto the float and then leap to shore.

Our five acre property is on the east side of the lake, looking west at two mountains (beautiful sunsets in winter).  No other homes are in view. (The other full time family lives on the same side of the lake as we do, and I do not know of any other full time residents within many miles.  30?  Uninhabited state land surrounds the lake.   I love the view, which varies, hour by hour, and season by season, from Alpen glow to auroras to storm weather barreling through the gaps in the mountains.

Remote Living: Food, Don't Take Mother Nature For Granted

The biggest lesson I have learned from increasing our reliance on personal food production is:  “Don't expect last year's harvest to repeat.” Maybe Mother Nature has a sense of humor.  She certainly throws some curve balls.  Because each season's harvest varies, I am learning observation and humility, and rebounding with a range of preservation techniques and alternative crops and recipes for when X or Y disappoints.  Below is a summary of this year's results with birch sap, honey bees, chickens, berries, vegetables, and herbs.   High points:  raspberry mead, nasturtium pesto, and naturalized cilantro. Oh, and moose didn't linger to devastate the berry bushes and apple trees.  Low points: birch sap and a rainy July.

An 8 foot tall swarm of honey bees

BIRCH SAP:  We were TOTALLY SKUNKED on birch sap collection, which absolutely blindsided us since the prior three years had been so easy and successful. In fact, we nearly doubled the number of tapped trees in anticipation (from 30 to nearly 55) and finished off the remaining sap and syrup from the prior year. The desultory drips and measly harvest result, I learned, from meager diurnal temperature differentiation.  Ah, yes, that.    Heard and noted.  So no syrup this year (need to reduce 100 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup).  We made twenty gallons of beer with the sap, which was fine, but this year's carboy of birch sap wine tastes watery.  Darn.

Destructive Bear(s) Visit

June of 2017 was a very active month for bear-human encounters in Alaska.  Some were tragic (two deaths by mauling). Others were humorous (the bear caught wandering  into a Juneau liquor store and standing  up to survey the array of candy bars before being chased out).  Anchorage police received so many 911 calls regarding bears sightings that they issued a press release imploring the public to call the NON-emergency number to report “normal bear behavior.”

Bear claws on repaired bee hive

This period was active for us, too.  Whereas last year we saw not a single bear on our remote property all summer, this month three bears visited in two weeks.  One (brown/grizzly)  we scared off with a marine horn.  Another (black) went into the freezer (See preceding blog article with a dozen recipes).  The third was disconcerting.  He visited several times and was destructive. (I say "he" because there were no cubs).

If you believe in the view that “things happen in threes,” this bear arrived on a day of multiple vulnerabilities: (1) the electric fence around the bee yard was off because a moose had gotten entangled and damaged the circuits, (2) my husband had flown to town for two days and (3) he took with him a first floor cabin window that need to be replaced.  

That afternoon, at 4:30 pm, I was sitting by an open kitchen window when a black bear slowly ambled past, about 8 feet away.  (They are disconcertingly silent)  I wasn't cooking anything aromatic, but I glanced nervously at the unglassed window ahead of him, and shut the window next to me, alerting him to human company.  This caused him to turn away, but not run, as the brown bear had done a week before.

Since I (discovered to my dismay that) had left my marine horn at the power shed, I grabbed a pot and top, opened the door and banged them together to encourage him to seek out quieter acreage away from my cabin, outhouse, and chicken coop.  He trotted off, but without much enthusiasm so I anticipated that he would return, especially since the chickens were squawking, “Come and get me!” under the cabin. Perhaps surprisingly, to readers, we have previously lost only one chicken to a bear, (other poultry to mink, weasel, owl, some unidentified canid, and disease/old age).  However, given this one's comfort in the company of human sounds and buildings, I thought it prudent to load the gun that I feel most comfortable firing.

Sure enough, as I loaded bullets in the magazine I saw him through the rear window, lingering in the hollow, about 150 yards back.  It may sound silly, but I turned on my computer's Pandora music channel and played it on the back porch, so he would hear a continuous human sound.  Apparently he didn't care for Indian sitar music and vocalizations, because he disappeared, but because I was now on the porch, the chickens all jumped up  to be with me.  After 20 minutes, I decided to lead them  back to their coop and lock them in.  I admit that I was nervous about the short walk in our woodsy and hilly property, but I figured if the hens attracted a bear's attention, I'd rather that they were not near me and that vulnerable cabin window. Fortunately, they followed me closely and the walk was uneventful.

When I returned to the cabin, I locked the other windows, installed the bear bars on the doors, and retreated upstairs to watch a 1940's movie, thinking that might calm me down.  The upper windows were open for me to hear  ... anything.  An hour later, what I heard was a crash on the back porch immediately beneath me. By the time I looked out, the bear had disappeared, but he had climbed up and dumped over a tall set of metal shelves and its load of  logs, boots, and gardening tools, and swiped a can of wood stain, which painted the grass a blood red color.   Thank goodness I had moved the hens away from that very location!

The next morning, I must confess that I stayed in the cabin for several hours while convincing myself that  I needed to survey the property.  When I finally ventured forth, it was clear that the bear had been so busy that  I am astonished that I heard nothing during my apparently deep night's sleep.  The first evidence was a big pile of scat in the side yard, left like a “Kilroy was here” message.  Second, he had clearly tried for a long time to get into the chicken coop (90 feet away).  A hole indicated that he had tried to dig under the run but was stymied by the underground “fence” of roofing metal.  Around the "run" (fenced and roofed outdoor area) I discovered many dislodged fence tines, but never enough together for a whole, strong paw.  The poor hens must have been terrified to silence inside the coop (building), because he pulled at the window pane separaters, too, but did not punch in the glass.  No wonder they lay not a single egg the next day.

More bear claw marks

Our bee yard is about 450 feet from the cabin, over the lip of the hill.  I approached with some trepidation.  It had been absolutely trashed and the bees WERE NOT PLEASED. The bear left tufts of hair where he crawled over the barbed wire so I could follow his movements.  He had tipped over not only all four hives, but also the two, heavy horizontal 4x6 posts to which they were all strapped, lifting those supporting beams up out of the metal frames in cement footers that elevated them above ground level.  His claw marks registered bright white in the green painted wooden frames and polystyrene insulating covers, but, fortunately for us, he was unable to loosen the ratchet straps.  How long did he try? Surely the bees  were frenzied and stung him many times.  Perhaps their defensive actions explain the lack of interest evidenced in front of the five rabbit hutches at the opposite end of the bee yard.

As soon as  my husband landed at our dock, we spent the day repairing damage.  With duct tape (of course), and super glue, we reassembled some hive lids, replacing others. Bryan attached fence patches inside the chicken run and rewired the electric fence, added an additional strand of barbed wire, and wrapped the ratchet straps around the cement footers, as well as the 4 x 6s.

Three AND six days later, THE BEAR (or a buddy) RETURNED. First, he rummaged around under a corner of the cabin, cracking and dragging a panel of plywood that covers the entry hole to our underground “gray water” tank .  I am always amazed to notice how silently they move, but why didn't we hear the wood scraping?  Perhaps he timed his visit when we were kayaking or doing noisy construction work in the back of the property.  If so, such daytime raids are remarkable.  So, we placed on the plywood two metal pie plates filled with little stones for a future noisy shakedown. He also left a new pile of scat ... by the front steps.   My husband went on high alert for several evenings, while I weedwhacked  to shin high the rapidly growing wild grasses and ferns that would otherwise obscure a long view to the woods.


On the second visit, the bear tested the electric fence.  We could see the bowed barbed wire line about 2 feet up where his bulky body had pushed, but when body parts encountered the active electric lines, he skedaddled.   Since then,  no bears have returned, or, perhaps I should say, since they are so silent, that we have seen no evidence of their perambulations.

We called Alaska's Fish and Game staff to describe our encounters and solicit their thoughts, as we have always found them informative and helpful.  The officer did not know why this has been such an active summer but acknowledged the plethora of reported human-bear interactions.  Our region, he said, is “crawling with bears” (so why have they revoked the predator control hunting permit here?) and our destructive visitor could have been “one of Charlie's bears” referring to a man who fed dog food to several generations of bears for more than a dozen years at his cabin on Rabbit Lake, not far from here, before being hauled into court to cease and desist a few years ago. Apparently, "Charlie's bears" have been implicated in some other cabin forays.

Naturally, Bryan and I have reviewed our safety procedures and vulnerabilities.  For example, we routinely carry walkie talkies, keep bear spray and noisemakers in various buildings, and are scrupulous about locking buildings and burning trash thoroughly.  Whether last year's paucity or this year's frequency of ursine visitors is the new normal, only future years will show.  In the meantime, I've asked for spare window parts, and I wish Charlie (and other people) hadn't fed all those bears, now looking to others for another hand out.

Spring Black Bear - Good Eating

On-line descriptions of bear meat as greasy and gamey give this tasty fare a BAD RAP.  I have NEVER found that to be true for the black bears we harvest in May and June (here in Alaska).  In fact, they are so lean (after a long winter in hibernation) that there is too little fat to save for lard.  

If you have been interested in trying bear meat but disappointed by the paucity of available recipes (almost always a stew), perhaps the list below of some of my preparations will be appealing. Since I am the kind of chef who cooks with a “bit of this and a bit of that,” the following meals are descriptions, rather than detailed recipes.
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The backstrap is slim, like a flank steak, but as tender as a beef fillet.  We grill it and flavor it like any beef steak.

The huge hams (shoulders and butt)  I smoke (over local alder wood)  between 170-200 degrees F for 10 hours.  The meat looks like roast beef but in taste and texture is more like smoked pork loin.  We cut them up to use in sandwiches, such as reubens and ham and cheese, and as a meat in entree salads, pea soups, and bean dishes. I don't flavor them when smoking, in order to vary the recipes later for all those pounds of meat... over many meals.

34 Degrees - Spring is Here!

Anyone looking at these photos might understandably doubt my assertion that spring has arrived.  We still have 1-2 feet of snow throughout the yard.  Temperatures linger below freezing past breakfast.  In fact, the iced tea I store on the back porch overnight flows around a frozen chunk at 11 am.

But even my chickens know that spring has arrived; they have started to lay eggs daily.

The snow recedes

The sun, which barely rose above tree top level in February now soars overhead, granting us 15+ hours of sun per day, so we retired the floor lamps to an outbuilding until September. Outside, the snow surface is degrading.  Along south and west facing hills it is sloughing down in sinuous lines.  In flat meadows it is pitted and pockmarked as it settles.  A sole pool of water is widening in one shallow spot along the lakeshore - perhaps the first spot where pike will spawn.

Forest Scavenger Hunt for Food, Remedies, Useful Products

Birch trees

Climbing the learning curve from “erstwhile city slicker” in Texas to remote rural life in Alaska, my acclimation has been immeasurably aided by several courses in botany, which have enhanced both gardening and foraging for food, home remedies, and construction materials.  Currently, I am enrolled in a fascinating on-line course in Applied Ethnobotany (offered by the University of  Alaska-Fairbanks).

As the name suggests, this field studies human use of plants - for food, fuel, textiles, shelter, medicine, and anything else.  I am learning how indigenous peoples and settlers utilized the resources all around them, that other people, like me, surely overlook. Interested readers will see below a list of resources they may be able to utilize for their own regions.

At the very beginning of this course, our professor instructed us to harvest some local plants for

Witch's Hair (lichen)

several projects.  Really?  In February?  In Alaska?  What could I find this time of year?  Well, duh, trees.  I live in a forest!  But besides use as firewood, construction, and spring birch sap, I did not know much. So one day, my husband and I pulled on our snowshoes and dragged a little plastic sled through the woods for a scavenger hunt. How fun!  In half an hour, we gathered two species of pendulous (hair) lichen with the evocative colloquial names of “witch's hair” and “bear hair,” chopped some chaga and “punk” conks off old birch trees, peeled off some loose birch bark,  gathered a handful of frozen spruce resin globules,

chaga

and cut a wrist thick swath of sweet grass sticking up through shallow snow beneath the shelter of a large spruce tree.

Remote Living: Once-a-Year Deliveries

People who live in cities and suburbs enjoy the gift of spontaneity:
a) frequent, short trips to the supermarket or a restaurant when “there is nothing to eat in the house.”
b) "just in time” delivery of purchases

Short days = cold hauling

By contrast, residents of small towns, villages, and island communities plan their errands around once-a-week or once-a-month visits to Big Box stores where they buy bulk supplies, including food, tools, and toilet paper, to be stored in ubiquitous sheds or walls layered with shelves.  Even more remote homes and villages await twice a year shipments, by boat or plane of a pallet-load of carefully selected supplies... and an eye - opening delivery charge ($0.30 - $0.60/lb).

In our case, our little airplane affords a certain amount of spontaneity for excursions and small purchases... when the weather allows.  But big, bulky, heavy, or flammable items, like furniture and fuel, have to await a  once-a-year window for transportation to our remote home.  As you can imagine, we maintain and continually update a precious inventory and shopping list for these important occasions.  Some purchases are planned (or wait) for several years, since transportation needs have to be triaged by priority and some seasons are truncated.

Water catchment hauled in last winter

Thus, after seven years of waiting,  I look forward to a bathtub and my husband now has the rocking chair he has long wanted for the front porch.

Generally, January - March are our “hauling season” because the rivers are frozen thick enough to become speedy iceways for lodges and residences located alongside, as well as for the recreational snowmachiners and dog mushers who traverse them, too.  We, however, live an hour's snowmachine trip west of the rivers, so we need the right snow conditions to get there.  This winter began with so little snowfall, that we lost the entire month of January.  Devil's club spikes, alder, and even small spruce trees perforated the trail. Our only neighbor told us he went out into the woods to hack out some underbrush and even move around some snow!  But by the time we went out, his hard work was obscured by a 24 hour snowstorm that blanketed the landscape with a pillowy soft 13 inches.

So, before we could go anywhere, we had to construct a snow road hard enough to support the weight we anticipate - up to 1000 pounds - otherwise, the snowmachine, sled, and all purchases will be mired in the deep, soft powder, perhaps even far from any assistance.

Snow Based Desserts (Ice Cream, Sorbet, or Granita)

Did you know that you can make desserts with snow?   It is a fun novelty, but also extremely fast and easy - another way to enjoy the season's bountiful precipitation even indoors.  What a great activity with children of all ages.

After a fresh snowfall, I scoop up several cups worth and leave the bowl outside on the porch while I rummage around my kitchen assembling metal bowls and spoons (which conduct the cold, and thus buy you time in what has to be a fast job) and  ingredients, which include a liquid, a sweetener, and some flavoring agent.

I've flavored various bowls of snow with chocolate, birch syrup, honey, last summer's raspberries, canned peaches, and the morning's fruit juice.

The density of the snow will determine how much liquid the snow can absorb, and that, along with the liquid used, will determine the texture.  I have found that cream and condensed milk confer a silky mouth feel, like ice cream, and can be eaten right away. Milk snow is flakier, like ice milk.   Bowls flavored with fruit juice or other water based liquids tend to be more granular, like a granita or a sorbet, and benefit from refreezing time, unless you purposely want a hard popsicle-like texture.

Sample recipe:
Over four cups of snow, drip a tablespoon of extract or liqueur, sprinkle 1/2 cup of white sugar, and slowly pour about a cup of milk, juice, or other liquid, while gently folding the snow to incorporate all ingredients.  Taste and adjust.  Most people will want more sugar.  Total labor time: 2 minutes.

Deep Cold - Grin and Bear It

It was -36 F (-38 C) this morning, and is -20F (-29 C) now.  The whole week has been like this. Brrrrr!
What are the practical and emotional aspects of life in such weather, both inside and out?   My main reaction is that it makes me feel vulnerable.

INSIDE:

We heat our two room cabin with a woodstove.  At such temperatures, we are burning about 50 pieces of aged, dried birch logs per day.  Last MONTH, which was warmer, we depleted our wood corral by more than 1/2 cord ( 4 x 4 x 4 ft.) This WEEK - probably the same amount!  In milder months, we let the fire go out during sunny afternoons to empty cold ash from the woodbox to a metal storage container we stow in the snow.  This week, we dare not let the fire die, so we shovel hot embers into the metal bucket and carefully carry it outside, hoping that the walls won't rust and perforate from the heat... for a few more weeks.

Even with a vigorous fire, the cabin is cool.  The kitchen area measured 46 degrees while I made breakfast yesterday.  Cooking oils had congealed.  The juice and tea that I store by the front door (away from the fire) floated ice flakes.  The snow we track into the door mats takes an hour to melt. And this chilly interior occurs despite my husband's dogged night time efforts to pile on additional logs every few hours while I snuggle under a down comforter.

Even though the windows are double paned,  we close the lined draperies as a third line of defense.  Every window interior is rimmed with ice until the sun hits half of them, mid - afternoon. The metal of screws and hardware INSIDE the doors is coated in hoarfrost.

Sunshine makes an enormous difference, psychologically and physically.  Our view is lovely and bright with reflection off the snow covered lake and yard.  It looks deceptively warm.  I don't mind puttering around the house for several deep cold days, working in sunny nooks on one project or another.  But my husband, more energetic than I, gets cabin fever.  He longs to go outside and do something... until he does, and then returns faster than he intended, for some hot tea and warm cake I have ready and waiting.

Winter Solstice Day at an Alaska Cabin

Everyone's life undulates with daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms, determined often by routine tasks.  At our remote home, winter chores are determined by weather and prioritized by heat, water, and food.

Below is a sample winter day, at this off-grid, off-road home in the boonies of Alaska (with notes about the subsequent -2 and -22F days that followed).

Dec 21 (+17 degrees)

HEAT and POWER:  When my husband is home, he gets up several times a night to stoke the fire.  But yesterday he flew out to attend a meeting in Anchorage.  Since I am a sound sleeper, I awoke to a chilly interior temperature of +47F. The power had gone out during the night, too, darn it. Naturally, at latitude 61 at 6 am, it was pitch black - and would stay that way for another three hours.  I donned my winter-usual attire: two shirts, two socks and a pair of lined sweat pants, as well as a headlight that I keep by the bed, to venture down the circular stairs to the main room, where I started  a fire in the squat little wood stove from the tinder, kindling, and log boxes lined up by the back door.  While it caught, I moved the all important coffee pot onto the propane stove, and bundled up to walk back through the woods, to the power shed, about 450 feet above and behind the cabin.  It was snowing lightly under a hazy, quarter moon.  On the way, I emptied the chamber pot into the outhouse.

I am not a morning person, so I hate having to face the cold and yank the generator pre-dawn, before coffee.  But December delivers miserly amounts of solar and wind power, so we supplement with two hours of generator to provide interior phone, lights, and Internet.   At the shed, I checked the voltage meter's record when the power conked out.  Hmmm, it is higher than I would wish at these temperatures. I hope the batteries aren't dying.  I tugged futily on the generator rope five times before it roared to life. Pleeeeeease connect!  My glasses fogged up from the exertion.

Motion detector lights illuminated the snowy path as I return past the woodshed,

food shed and outhouse to the cabin.  The buildings look pretty - the steep angled roofs and the log or green painted walls.  I spied animal tracks,  sharply outlined by shadow, mostly hares and voles diving below the insulation of snow covered bushes.  I reflect on the hungry black mink I saw yesterday, bounding through snow to close the distance to a gray hare twice its size. On the back porch, I grab an armload of logs, and step inside, smiling at the orange fire and the welcome scent of coffee, which I sweeten with dried milk and honey from our bees, and scoot under an alpaca blanket to read the Internet news and emails.   I always check weather first, which determines tasks I can or should do that day. Today is supposed to be clear and in the teens, followed by a deepening cold snap that I don't look forward to:-2F and then -22F.  Those will be days for indoor projects.  

Obviously the number of logs we burn depends on the external (and internal)

temperature.  In the teens, we use about 15 logs per day to warm the two room cabin.  At 0 F, the number doubles and at -15F triples. This number of logs heats a two room cabin to the 50s and low 60s.  As you can imagine, my most important winter task is to haul plastic sled loads of aged, dry birch wood that my husband has felled, chopped, cut, aged and stacked during the prior two years, from the roofed wood corral to the back porch, and then, on a daily basis, fill the interior bins with bigger and smaller wood.  Let's just say that I never postpone this chore.

Bear Neighbors

Piquing a bear's curiosity

Living on the far side of three, bridgeless rivers,  we are less concerned about human intruders than ursine ones.  In fact, we don't even have locks on our cabin. This reflects one aspect of “bush protocol” which is that if an honest person  needs to get into your cabin while you are gone it might be for a really serious reason.  In fact, a friend with a remote cabin taped to the inside of her  door a note with her name and home phone number, saying that a lost or endangered wanderer is welcome to use supplies in the building but when home, safe and sound, please let her know what has been used up.  

An alert  visitor to our home might notice that our entrances are constructed differently than city ones.  In town, home and hotel door hinges are attached INSIDE the door, away from the prying tools of bad guys. By contrast, our hinges hang on the EXTERIOR because we aren't worried about visitors with opposable thumbs.  Rather, we are trying to deter 300-700 lb hairy bruins inclined to shove in a weak door. With four inch thick doors that open outward, and a sturdy  doorstop inside the doorjam, we hope to retard the forward momentum of a foraging bear.

A bear's goal of attack; the food shed

Windows are obviously more fragile than doors. Next to each of our entrances is a double sheeted plate glass window.  I don't kid myself - the big 4x5 picture window in front is vulnerable.  I just hope that its position,  up eight steps and 8 feet above ground level evades detection.  Besides, neither porch window opens, and therefore neither emits any beckoning scents.  One time, a bear did indeed lumber up onto my back porch, bump against the door, stand up and look in the high window above my stove, eye level with me (inside).  However, it was my banging on the window that attracted her curiosity, rather than encouraging her departure, as intended.  My bad. 

Another friend described a sight I would have loved to see (from a distance.)  He was inside his cabin when a bear ambled up to a low window and peeked in.  The light was such that instead of seeing the interior, the animal viewed the reflection of a very close bear looking right back!  Outta there!  

Weather Trumps Everything in Rural Living (Alaska): Enjoy it!

One of the things I like best about living in a climate with rapid seasonal variations is the constant “use it or lose it” lessons in appreciation.  Everything changes so fast here that I can only “see these beauties” or “do those activities” at specific times of year, some as brief as a week.  Miss it?  Wait a year!  So, we have no “mañana, mañana” attitude.    This fact contributes a celebratory immediacy to waking up every single day.   Below are seasonal notes for our home, at Latitude 61, in Southcentral Alaska.

WINTER:

View across the lake in winter

Temperatures:  Normal:  -20 F - +20 F, November - March

Transportation:  Ski plane and snowmachines, snowshoes, cross country skis, bunny boots

Beauty: A silent, black and white world

Favorite images:  heavy snow coating tree branches and buildings; lacy ice halos on birch canopies; the aurora borealis, our log cabin puffing birch smoke from the chimney.

Animals:  Audible/ visible owls, eagles, and ravens, and coyotes.  We see tracks of quieter animals in the woods, like martins, hares, foxes.  Once a lynx (I think).

Favorite activities:
Outdoors: Snowshod and booted walks, cross country skiing, snowmachine treks through the pretty woods and across frozen lakes and bogs,  tracking animals, seeing dog mushers and moose, ice fishing picnics, grooming trails, beautiful regional flights.
Indoors:  no urgency to leave during three day snowstorms or deep cold and dark; starting seeds on every window ledge as I plan the gardens, on-line classes and book immersion.

The Unpredictability of Raising Food

Raising one's own food - whether it is a pot of herbs on a window sill or a farm - is a satisfying endeavor.  But the results can be unpredictable.  Usually the variances are due to my own errors, but Mother Nature throws curve balls each year, too. For people who live in a town, a failure of a crop just means a trip to the supermarket.  But for people living remotely, as we do, learning to grow, harvest, and store food is a high priority.  We made many naive mistakes, and sometimes took several years to draw logical conclusions and make appropriate changes.  Now, though, we raise and forage for about 65 foods, including meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and sweets.

For readers who think, "One of these days, I'll throw some seeds in the ground," may the following highs and lows of our experience help you start off better and advance faster than we did.  Notes are organized for perennial and annual plants, eggs, meat, honey bees, and harvesting/storing food.

PERENNIAL PLANTS:
Perennial plants, both native and domesticated, are NO BRAINERS.  They can produce for decades, require very little care, and the wild ones offer excellent information about the types of plants well suited to your locale.

How I Harvest Wild Plants for Food and Remedies

Fireweed, clover, and yarrow on our
property in Southcentral Alaska

Many resources (books and online) that encourage readers to collect wild plants for food, medicine, and other purposes, neglect to describe WHEN and HOW to harvest, dry, and store them.  This deterred me for several years.  Then I met a delightful woman who has become my mentor - the go-to person anytime a cartoon-like “Huh?” forms above my head.   By trial and error, year by year, I am learning about the bounty in my midst.  My new enthusiasm combines elements of botany, gardening, wandering, observation, research, and cooking.  It is increasing my independence as well as my respect for Mother Nature.

Below, I answer FAQs that may help other novices who want to get started on simple preparations of plants they recognize as safe and not sprayed by pesticides.  The questions are sequenced from plant harvest to storage through preparation.

Bees and Wasps: Hives, Stings, and Remedies

Because we are beekeepers in a remote, wooded area of Alaska, I have become much more attentive to all the pollinators on my plants.  For each of the last eight years we have cleared patches and paths in our  thickly wooded property, I have gotten “up close and personal” with a number of other stinging insects, too.  In fact, my husband, who was wearing Kevlar chaps while chainsawing recently, was stung multiple times just above the top of the chaps - near his groin!  Ouch!  He came bolting out of the woods like Forrest Gump ("Run, Forrest, run").

This experience, plus a “bad year” for bees and wasps here, prompted further research. (Informative insect information can be found at www.insectidentification.org, www.insectstings.co.uk and www.beespotter.org.)

The two most interesting factoids I have learned are about the venom (bee and wasp venom have different pHs) and the hives.  Both may help me (as well as readers) respond better to future trans-species altercations.

Yellow Jacket

All stinging insects are far less dangerous, even benign, when they are out and about on their own, pollinating (bees) or predating (wasps). However, they can be scary and dangerous if you disturb their nests/hives.  Not only may one sting you, it will emit a pheromone that triggers a warrior response to attract others to sting you, too!  Withdrawal is the better part of valor, followed by washing the clothes that may be imprinted with the pheromones. My husband washes his bee suit after every hive check.

Weeds: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Eat 'Em!

Several years ago, I earned a Master Gardener certificate through an excellent, on-line class via a state university.  But deep down, I know that I am just a weed farmer.

Everything grows so fast in an Alaskan summer that my property is overwhelmed by prolific “native plants” (which is the politically correct way to refer to weeds). I live the expression, "watching the grass grow."   My vegetable and flower plots wage  losing battles against nettles and horsetail. Dandelions proliferate everywhere. Sweet grass grows to 6 or 7 feet and then smothers everything near by.  We can't even find the ducks' eggs anymore.

This state of affairs used to bother me more until I made a concerted effort to learn about these plants.  As a result, I will never look at my property the same way again.  I still weed and weedwhack like a maniac, but I now appreciate some of this opportunistic vegetation for food and hair/skin care.   If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em, or pour them all over yourself.

Am I  justifying my overgrown yard?  Absolutely!  But, truly,  I have also gained immense respect for  the abundant vitamins, minerals, and flavors that lie at my feet..  Nowadays my husband encounters a demon scientist in the kitchen, conjuring up various teas and treatments that I test on him.  If he is still walking and talking the next day, that concoction is a keeper.  

Left to right:  raspberry, horsetail, nettle, fireweed, dandelion
Horsetail for hair and insecticide (how is that for a combo) and the rest for tea

Kitchen Skin and Hair Care

The only thing that Laura Mercier and I have in common is our first name (although the lovely CEO was my next-door neighbor when I lived in a high rise in Houston,TX). I have never been one to purchase expensive cosmetics and have been appalled by the prices paid by friends and relatives for teeny, tiny tubes of La Mer creams and lotions.  So, with these disclosures, I promise never to offer cosmetic advice!  However, I love to have really clean hair and skin.  I revel in  the way my face feels after a professional facial.  So I am delighted to recreate that clean, smooth result with common kitchen ingredients (1- 3, that require less than 2 minutes to assemble and cost less than $12).  Below are 14 recipes.

Readers:  why NOT compare a home made application on one  side of your face and your favorite purchased item on the other, or alternate two procedures, for a week each? See what you think. 

Turning Alaskan Birch Sap into Syrup, Part 2

(This is Part 2, focusing on cooking the sap down to syrup.  To read about collecting the sap, please enjoy the prior article).

In our neck of the woods, the sap started running on April 2, 2016, more than 2 weeks earlier than in recent years and 6 weeks earlier than a particularly late spring several years ago.  Whenever Nature decides, we have to be ready.

Assembling the evaporator

Fortunately, we had strung the collection lines among two dozen trees in February and early March.  After that, Bryan started to assemble the "woodstove" he bought from Leader Evaporator (in Vermont), which consisted of a sheet metal exterior, about 600 pounds of heat resistant bricks (some of which he had to cut to fit), and a short, metal chimney.

Unfortunately, the masonry cannot be cemented together until the temperature rises above the mid-40s, which did not occur regularly until late March, and once that occurred, it started to rain!  Every day for a week!  So that set us back a bit.

The evaporator was finally finished and the first test fire ignited on April 1.
The very next day, we discerned drops of sap flowing down the plastic lines to the collection tank next to the wood  stove. Phew!  Perfect timing.

Collecting Birch Sap for Syrup, Part 1

In 2013, I wrote a blog article about collecting birch sap in the spring to make beer.  Since that topic has continued to attract hundreds of readers, particularly this time of year, I thought an update might be in order, especially now that we have “amped up” collection to hundreds of gallons and now enjoy the delicious syrup, too.

Whereas collecting a few gallons of sap from a few trees is very cheap and easy to do, and nutritionally/flavorfully worthwhile for residents of a boreal forest, collecting enough and cooking it down to syrup is a huge endeavor, perhaps better suited to a business or affinity group. Below is our experience over several years.

The previous collection method

In  2013, we picked four trees close together, tapped them, and let the sap drip into a vinegar bottle we bungee corded beneath each tap and thus collected an initial 2.5 gallons. Because we were so pleased with the flavor, nutritional value, and versatility of the sap, the next two years, we “uppped” our take to 15 gallons, collected by a length of food grade tubing connecting each tap to a five gallon bucket at the foot of each tree.  We collected our target amount in only 3 or 4 days. Easy in, easy out.

Five gallons were immediately deployed as the liquid (replacing water) in a batch of home brewed spring beer.  (Bryan reports that he could not discern a difference in flavor or texture from the 2013 batch of 1/2 water and 1/2 sap, but he enjoys the contrast to his chimay recipe made with 100% water.)  It  has an initial taste of wood and banana.  The banana flavor recedes, but a pleasingly light woodiness and sweetness remain.

Winter Ski Plane Challenges in Remote Alaska

Winter flying introduces a number of duties and challenges not encountered in warm weather, but there are some advantages, too. Below are a few anecdotes from our ski plane flights, as we fly to and from our remote home in the Alaska Bush.

PRE-FLIGHT:
Warm Up:  Like any car in cold climates, we have to warm up the plane, since we do not store it in a hangar.  The day before a flight, Bryan unravels a long blue electrical cord  stored behind a cedar loveseat on our front porch, and threads it from an electric plug on the outer wall, down through the snow to the frozen lake where we have tethered the plane to two boards frozen beneath four feet of lake ice.  With the cord, he charges the plane's battery, since its performance degrades in cold temperatures.

The next day, an hour before the flight, we pre-heat the plane. When we first bought the aged plane (a 1954 Piper PA-20), the owner gave us an ancient Red Dragon heater that he had not used often.  To utilize it, we drag it down to the plane in a little black plastic sled, along with a 20 lb propane tank, a board (as a flat, hard surface for the heater), a battery charger, and a five foot long heating tube (that you shove up into the engine compartment).  Unfortunately, the tube  was so perforated with tiny holes that it took us 45 minutes to pre-heat the engine.  Not a fun wait at freezing temperatures!  Once we figured out the problem, we bought a new one for $200 that cut the time down to 15 minutes.  Well worth it.   Until... one day, when the low temperatures and the low voltage battery charger conspired to cause a near emergency.  The charger was underpowered for the job on a particularly cold day.  It had enough power to generate a hot flame but not enough to push the heat through to the plane's engine.  The tube caught fire!  We lacked a handy fire extinguisher but Bryan yanked it out of the cowling and tossed it on the snow, where the fabric sheath disintegrated into fluffy, gray ash. We learned several lessons that day.  One is to keep a fire extingisher with the dragon heater.  Another is to make sure that the bungee cords of the cowl cover are totally detached from every single hook for a rapid whisk away from the nose cone.  A  third is to utilize my snowmachine instead of the modest battery charger for future power (and the added convenience of grooming the landing strip after he departs).

Start Ups: How is Your Financing Going (or Not)?

Every day, our company receives calls and emails from companies seeking investment.

The large ones we route to our investment banking practice and the small ones to our investment conferences in New York, where they can represent themselves to investors without an intermediary.  (Others call about our narrow angel investment criteria in telecom or board positions).

But the great majority of callers do none of the above.  Some want something for nothing.  Others are dreamers whose aspirational companies are unlikely to get off the ground, but remain the subject of loving and lengthy monologues.

It is pretty easy to separate the wheat from the chaff –
(a) those callers who understand the endurance race aspect to raising capital vs.
(b) those who think  they just have to talk someone's ear off to collect no-questions-asked checks.

The following paragraphs include snippets of  seven, initial conversations with members of the latter group (the naive idealists or what?) followed by my behind-the-scenes interpretation.  What is your first impression?  Do you think the caller will be taken seriously by a finance professional?  If not, do not be like them!

Entrepreneur 1: “I don't need to hire your investment bank or present at your conference.  I will be funded by then.”
Us:   “Then how can we help you (I'm wondering,  uh, why did you call us)?” and “Wonderful news!  Are you currently negotiating a letter of intent?  (No)  Do you have a closing date on the calender (No)."
Entrepreneur 1:  “But we have several initial meetings scheduled and they'll love us.”
Interpretation: This caller does not know that investment is often a needle – in-a-haystack search, followed by a lengthy period of due diligence, a letter of intent, negotiated terms, legal advisors, finally culminating in a well defined closing date.  In other words, it entails a protracted and wholly predictable schedule of milestones.  Therefore, this blithe comment reveals that s/he has never worked with investors before.  Some service providers may take advantage of that.  In any case, s/he has lost credibility with professionals who know what s/he does not.

Jr. Iditarod Race from Our Front Porch

Living out in the boonies as we do, we see more eagles than people. But once a year, we have front row seats for a dog mushing race that runs right past our cabin.  We look forward to this each February.

A racer passing by our porch

The Junior Iditarod is a two day, 150 mile race for teenaged competitors (14-17) that has been run in the vicinity of Willow, Alaska since 1977.  Each musher must raise, care for, train, and race his or her own team of dogs (usually 10), so the competition is the culmination of many months of commitment.  The entry fee is currently $150 – 250, depending on date of payment.  The prize money of about $10,000 is split among the fastest finishers, but that surely doesn't even cover the expense of feeding and training a whole kennel of dogs. Before the recession (before 2009), the peak number of participants I found was 22. Most years, though, the entry pool consists of only 9-12 intrepid racers.

It is fair to say that more volunteers than competitors participate, many of whom are long timers.   They have volunteered their time as pilots, snowmachiners, ham radio operators, check point timers, cooks and bottle washers.  Each gathering includes some reminiscence of the kids who graduated from this race to enter the “senior” Iditarod – the grueling 1000 mile race that starts  the following weekend (First weekend of March) and lasts for ten days.  Our only full time neighbor (within ten miles) has offered his small lodge as a check point for a decade or more, which is why the race route passes us.

Refrigeration Alternatives Off-Grid

I love icy cold fruit juice and white wine.  How can we accomplish this at our off-grid cabin?

How do we store cheese and other dairy products, as well as fruits and vegetables? 

We rely on a mix of powered and natural methods that vary somewhat according to the season.  Each is highlighted below.  Non-powered methods include a cold-hole, canning, and drying foods, as well as the simple expedient of utilizing freezing temperatures, snow, and shade. Powered methods include a propane powered refrigerator and solar/wind powered electric freezers.  Some of these approaches can work for anybody, anywhere.     

Year Round:

Many years ago, we dug outside our food shed a “cold hole” that functions as a refrigerator.  It is not as big as a basement or even a root cellar, but it functions the same way.  It is the depth and size of two vertically dropped, welded, food grade 55 gallon drums. Over this hangs a beam from which dangles a metal cable on a winch.  When we lift aside the double layered wood and polystyrene lid, we attach the cable to a sturdy eyelet on the top of a set of five, layered lucite shelves that fit within the double depth of the canisters.  Each shelf can support 8 - quart jars of food, or a net bag of vegetables, or several packages  of dairy products.  The temperature varies from top to bottom of the hole, at different times of year, but it is always above freezing and below 52 degrees, so functional for refrigeration.  I have been very pleased by its reliablility for storing potatoes and unopened cheese all winter, for example.  It is not convenient for everyday use, but excellent for long term storage and occasional retrievals.

What If??? --- Stocking Our Emergency "To Go" Bags

The FAA requires each private pilot to carry emergency supplies, not only for him/herself, but also for the number of passengers on board who could also be stranded in a remote location and have to fend for themselves either until help arrives or until they hike out to find some.

Aviation and personal gear, winter

My husband and I think that this is such a prudent idea that we also apply it  to our car and snowmachines.  Each one has an emergency bag, too.  Even our home, in a way.  Because it is small, we store clothes, food, matches, and supplies in various outbuildings. Perhaps some of those structures will be unimpaired even if our cabin is damaged by fire or earthquake.  Each year, we re-evaluate our “to-go bags” with the goal of reducing weight/bulk while improving efficiency and effectiveness. Currently, the largest (blue) one (for the plane and snowmachine) weighs about 25 pounds.  The small (black) backpacks weigh about 10 pounds.    

Reality Check of Alaska Reality Shows – My Experience

I read recently that there are 36 Alaska Reality Shows at one time! What? Doesn't anyone want to see characters in Wisconsin or Maine? How about Puerto Rico?

My experience with these shows is limited to conversations with seven – count 'em: seven - producers who have contacted us over the past three years.

We have (politely, I hope) declined them all. Often we suggested other people we thought might be more interested in them or more interesting to viewers. Below, I'll share my observations from those discussions.

Since we don't own a TV, I have seen only a smattering of random episodes when I have visited relatives and friends in the Lower 48 who invariably ask, “So, do you know the guy/gal on this show?” However, I am as entertained as any Alaskan in local feedback on programs by people who are more “in the know.” Occasionally, writers for Alaska Dispatch News review a show, usually by humorously panning the obvious fakery of the situation.  Then, locals chime in at the bottom of the on-line article to add more details. For example, one show looks like it is remote but apparently the camera is planted in the parking lot of a pizza joint! It points across the road to an empty stretch of woods where that show's “hero” does whatever he does to look like a mountain man. In general, Alaskans accord a loss of credibility to participants. On the other hand, I viewed one episode of an ongoing series (Building Alaska) that depicted realistic experiences directly analogous to our real-life endeavors, and in our neck of the woods, too, so maybe there are some other realistic ones out there.

In our case, we have been contacted by two producers each in LA, NY, and Europe (UK and Netherlands) as well as the National Geographic (two producers, one in Singapore and one in Hong Kong). Four of the seven were independent producers rather than name brand shows. Each small firm seemed to toss out story ideas, film an episode or two and then endeavor to sell the idea of a series to a distributor. 

The topics broached by these producers with us included the following:

*Mistakes we made, as city slickers who moved out to a remote home in the Alaska woods.

* An “average week” with us in the winter/ in summer
* Life skills we could teach their host to demonstrate
* Life skills a rural child could teach a child host

* “Alaskan-type jobs” of people living remotely

* Pretend we were shopping for a remote property and then choose ours
* Compare/contrast our life in Alaska with a family living in someplace tropical, I think it was Costa Rica

Utility Usage: Off Grid Alaska vs. India and South America

Because we live in Bush Alaska with limited power and few modern conveniences, most Americans of our acquaintance think our lifestyle difficult or at least odd. But after reflecting on our past five winter visits to India and South America, we have concluded that our modest carbon/utility footprint is not that much different than homes we visited in India, Argentina, Paraguay, and Peru (some affluent and others very modest). Many readers have read that the average U.S. Household produces about 3 times the carbon of European homes and 10 times those of India. The examples below may indicate how they do that, and how readers can live well with lower utility bills and expectations.

PLUMBING:

We rely on an outhouse and interior chamber pot, which is certainly more primitive than all but one home we stayed in (on an island in Lake Titicaca, on the border of Peru and Bolivia). In fact, that part of the world is “decorated” with identical colorful metal outhouses, gifts of the government. But even in Peruvian urban areas, with populations of 500,000 to 12 million, each bathroom with flush toilets instructs users not to put ANY paper down the toilet, but to deposit the noisome tissues in an adjacent trash can. In this way, presumably, old sewage systems can accommodate burgeoning populations.  (I did not encounter this in Ecuador or Chile.)  Each wash area usually has a much used cloth towel hanging on a nail for use by one and all.  

Throughout India, one needs to carry one's own toilet paper into most public facilities or pay a person kneeling outside. Inside, some offer western style toilets, usually with a bidet wand instead of toilet paper, but many offer instead a tiled floor, with an oblong hole surrounded by textured foot markings and a bucket of water nearby for rinsing the hole and floor (no flushing mechanism). Increasing numbers of U.S. homes and restaurants are starting to install low water toilets, particularly in water starved and high cost areas.  To encourage such proactivity, my parents' suburb in San Francisco publishes and distributes a “wall of shame” list naming “water hog” property owners. 

 As a side note, Indians who have visited the U.S. are startled by the lack of privacy in our public stalls. I can see their point! Our “peekaboo” panels are indeed much less private than the floor to ceiling walls and doors common throughout India, but found only in the better restaurants and clubs in the U.S.

Living Off-Grid with Dark Alaska Nights

One of the pleasures of living far from the ambient light of a city's glow, with its sharp illumination of street lights and commercial signage, is seeing the sharp distinction of natural dark and light. Mountains and forests block the sky so their edges outline a gorgeous sprinkling of stars, and sometimes, satellites and auroras.

Here, in our remote corner of Alaska, we are encircled by mountains, hills, and forests which serve to lengthen the long winter nights.

Moon setting, 8 am, February

One of my most startling realizations upon moving here was the basic observation of when and where the sun rises and sets! (visit www.suncalc.net) As a Southern city person, I took that predictable east-west arc for granted. Obviously, though, the closer one lives to the equator, the more constant is the trajectory of the sun, year round. Up here, at Latitude 61, the winter and summer suns are like two, totally different seasonal visitors. The winter sun traverses only about 1/3 of the sky, from south to west for 4-8 hours of daylight before dropping precipitously behind a 4500 foot mountain. In summer, the sun ambles around ¾ of the sky, from east to north west, over the course of a 20 hour day. Because of the earth's tilt, beautiful sunrises and sunsets last much longer than in lower latitudes. This time

Sunset, 4:45 pm, February

of year, as I sip a steamy mug of coffee, I peer through the windows to see the colorful striations from about 8 to 9:30 am. In the afternoons, we plan early dinners to take advantage of the lovely light between 4:30 and 6. Surely this is the pink light that Sydney Lawrence captures in his astonishing “portraits” of Denali.

Because of the long winter nights, we generate less solar power than in summer months. Rather than rely on the generator for additional power, we make our peace with the darkness. Other than sticking a hand in the knife drawer, it is fairly easy to function in absolute