Variable Food Production Results at a Remote Alaska Home

Please click on this link to an article we published on survivalblog.com.

Summary: 
Raising (including hunting and fishing) food (meat, fruit, vegetables, herbs, and honey) yields highly variable results from one year to the next so we are not cavalier about a good harvest.

Here are some of our successes and failures, lessons, and mistakes.



Photo: Nasturtium vinegar.  So beautiful, and tasty, too, with a horseradish like bite. 

Freeze Up Thwarted

Freeze Up begins in fits and starts in mid-October.  I envision Old Man Winter playing tag with three lively grandchildren - Wind, Water, and Ice.  He lets them chase each other back and forth across the lake until he wearies of the game and declares Ice - his favorite grandson-  the winner so he can move along to other seasonal tasks.

First, ice forms in the still water below and behind our docks and then extends in the shallows on either side.  One night,  I awoke to a lovely, evasescent sight.  A full October moon was reflected in the inky water, framed by newly formed silver ice floes.  As soon as the moon moved, the image vanished.

The next day, my husband and I kayaked among the shifting ice.  Some stretches were gossamer thin, patched together with visible icy stitches.  Others were thick enough, even after only one day's formation, to withstand a paddle's prodding.  The windward side of these floes had developed a curb, higher than the shallow center, where gentle breezes blew laminar sheets of water over the surfaces, thickening them, millimeter by millimeter.

Alaska Ecosystem Changing

Pike from a few years ago

Our eco-system is changing in obvious ways.  Because we spend so much time outside, raising and foraging for food, cutting trees for firewood, and tending our bees and animals, I am certainly more attuned to it here than I ever was when living in, transporting by, and going to various air conditioned cocoons in Houston, TX. 

Perhaps the following examples at our home will be useful to people considering moving up here or anywhere new to them.  Advice:  call the Department of Natural Resources to confirm any long-distance assumptions about the location that interests you. 

Beautiful Frost

Termination Dust- first snow

Yesterday, September 25, was the end of summer.  Mid-afternoon, rain turned to wet, sloppy snow which then pelted the flower beds.  The long white streaks were stunning against the purple, candelabra-like anise hyssop, and blended into the tufts of feverfew below.  Sure enough, once the clouds parted, I could see the layer of termination dust on the mountains.

Termination refers to the end of warm weather.  Dust?  That is far too unattractive a term for the initial cap of snow.  One of my favorite sights here is the double image of snowy mountains reflected in the still lake, divided by a row of yellow birch in fall or bright green foliage in spring.

Frost on a fern leaf

Despite the undulations of the hillsides, the snow etches a razor sharp line.  As autumn warmth wanes, the snow will descend to ground level, where it will stay until next May.

Frozen cosmos

Today, I awoke to 28 degrees and the loveliness of a frost covered world.  The tops and edges of all plants are decorated in white.  I particularly love the delicate transformation of lacy ferns.  Flat leafed plants appear dipped in sugar.  Pink and purple cosmos seem frozen in time, as though the White Witch of Winter froze them for her winter garden.

Frost is especially delightful because it lasts for such a short time.  The moment the sun warms a patch of foliage, the icy molecules melt, returning the plants to their everyday garb.  Thus continues the autumnal decay.  The leaves and flowers will mulch and warm the soil below, bedding the nursery for the next generation.

Butchering Chickens: Slow and Effortful

For five or six years, we have raised laying hens and enjoyed them immensely, for their eggs, foraging for bugs, and alerting us to predators, as well as for their entertaining antics.  We have kept 4-6 at a time, and named them.  I have never been able to kill any or eat those that died.

However, I do like to eat chicken, so I thought it time to explore raising and butchering meat chickens.   A friend  had the same idea.  So she bought 25 Cornish cross chicks, which are the ones  most commonly raised for meat in the U.S.  We agreed that she would care for them for 6-8 weeks, we would split the cost of purchase and feed, and then my husband and I would join her for the butchering work.  

Restraining cones with occupants

Here is what I learned and what I will do in the future.

When we arrived, my friend was fuming that the development of this breed is unconscionable and she will never buy them again.  The Cornish cross is bred to gain weight so rapidly that by 6-8 weeks (6 weeks for us), they are unable to live with their unnatural weight distribution.  Their hearts, lungs, and legs cannot support them.  Many had respiratory problems, three appeared to have died of heart attacks, and one had a broken leg.  None behaved like her laying hens, which are active, social, and curious roamers.  These chickens were listless and sedentary.  They also SMELLED BAD – which is apparently a known trait.   Her daughter cried at the state of them.

We set up the butchering area outside for five of us to work: