EVEN THOUGH HOMESTEADING ON PUBLIC LANDS HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED, ARE THERE ANY PLACES IN AK IN WHICH A FAMILY COULD BUILD A CABIN AND DO SOME FISHING? I AM A MARRIED 35 YEAR OLD WHITE MALE WITH A WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN, WE WOULD LOVE TO LIVE IN AK IN THE WILDERNESS. PLEASE RESPOND WITH YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS SUBJECT. THANKS JOHN MCDONALD

-- max smart (nwflamining@aol.com), June 26, 2001

Answers

I can not even imagine living in such a cold climate. Though many have. But my life's adventure is not yours. And by the way, I live in Florida, but have "fer sale" a genuine wood burning stove, brand new, never used, made in Germany. Taking up space here. So forget the cost of the stove. Just throw in the cost of the freight. The freight charge was $100.00-$200.00. Plus twenty or so for dragging the thing out, while I slap a mosquito or thirty. But humor aside, I have seen Florida temperatures fall to 15 degrees, in years past. If you need it, email addy is true. I have been spared.

-- My Story (crobbs1@bellsouth.net), June 26, 2001.

Ummm, John - have you ever been to Alaska?

I have relatives who live there and I can tell you firsthand that it is not an easy place to live, nor is it cheap. Darn near everything has to be trucked in and consequently everything is expensive as all get out. The growing season is short to nonexistant, and you can't really keep much in the way of livestock unless you're willing to buy in almost ALL of their feed. Which since it has to be trucked up from the lower 48 is also outrageously expensive.

Things are SO expensive in Alaska that my cousins find it cheaper to fly down to the lower 48 once a year and go on a mondo shopping spree, pack up the stuff and ship it back up there and fly home.

What does your family have to say about living in the wilderness? Cabin fever is not a joke in Alaska. 4 unhappy people - or even one happy one and 3 unhappy - crammed into a cabin throughout the long howling Alaskan winter is not something I personally would want to witness.

The Alaskan wilderness is not something to mess with. I have known of one or two people who moved up there and seem to be thriving (no families btw), but most of them ended up divorced, or left. Conditions are extreme.

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), June 26, 2001.

There is no longer anywhere you can just go out in the wilderness and build a cabin and live the simple life. Alaska is a dream spot to most who have never tried to live there. If you don't know what you are doing trying to live in a self built cabin in the wilds of alaska can get you and yours in serious trouble if it don't kill you. The expense of everthing is wild and jobs are not that great after paying living cost.

-- David (bluewaterfarm@mindspring.com), June 27, 2001.

Hi Max

We live way up here, near the Alaska panhandle. What the others have said is very, very good advise. If you have never been up here DON'T jump the gun unless you can live with 9 months of bone chilling cold due to the wind never stopping from the north, more snow than you have ever seen and had to try and move to find the door. Up here in winter most places get an average of 10ft+ of snow, you slide down the snow bank to your front door and have to climb up it to get out. Most houses are built on tall foundations(imagine your place on stilts) that have the winter supply of wood to keep warm and your water from freezing(course you can melt the snow if the soot hasn't covered it). This is for the warmer coastal places like Hyder Alaska, inland it's harsher but as much snow(down to only 6ft+)Hyder has seen 28ft of snow in a 4 day period. On top of that you better by prepared to do without most of the fresh veggies, fruit, eggs, and most dairy products like real milk, butter and cream. We just don't get them when the winter sets in because YES everything has to be trucked in, costing a fortune, and passes are closed due to avalanches that sometimes take days(weeks) to clean up. Next, how old are your kids? There is little to no health services up here unless you can travel to the closest community(which can be as close as 2hours out to a whole 22 hour day(this is a small bonus to living up here, for 2 months we get 22+ hours of daylight but don't think that makes it warmer or that you can grow anything without a heated greenhouse). Most of the kids that do end up here are homeschooled, but safety for them is a really big concern. We have an abundance of wolves, bears including the largest grizzlies in the world, cougars, wolverines,but we also have the greatest hunting of deer, caribou and moose plus great fishing when you can get near the rivers without being swept away for almost all the warm months, or swamped by iceflows. The water is cold enough to kill in minutes. This is not any easy place to live and with young children it is really not a good idea, but if you have your heart set on trying I suggest you find a B&B hunting, fishing lodge, fly in and spend some time, remember though that they have made it as easy for you as possible but you will get the idea of what it's like up here. Good luck Anne

-- Anne (pygmy@bulkley.net), June 27, 2001.

Kodiak, where I live, and the Southeast part of Alaska are milder, temperate rainforests. However, they are very expensive, and most people live relatively near each other. There are remote places to buy out on the islands, but that means commuting to town by boat.. and sometimes waves and weather are awful. Villages sometimes have a one or two teacher school if they have enough kids, if not, then there is a state subsidized amount for homeschooling materials. Lots of alcoholism out in the bush, too.

My advice is to go to the State jobs site, look for a job, move to a town or city, and do a reconaissance for a year or two before moving to the bush. Mainland Alaska has rough cold weather, as in the post above, and Kodiak has the worst ice storms I've ever seen!

Here is my latest entry from my garden journal this week:

Report from the Homestead: June 25, 2001

The bad news was that the slugs ate my whole first vegetable garden and most all of the seeds planted elsewhere, except for the alliums like chives. However, little birds would get in and scratch up many seeds also, so that was another source of seed loss. Since then I have learned to water only in the morning to let the ground dry out before the evening slug attack. Also, we have been having an unprecedented dry spell here in rainforest Alaska; of concern because even the salmon can’t run up the streams because some are so low. The reds fooled all the fishermen by running up early: wonder how they knew?

The other disaster was the loss of all my ducks and geese to a big dog one night. It got UNDER the fence and killed them all, leaving prints behind. I cried and cried. However, three weeks later I figured out that the woodshed under the house could be pretty easily fenced in with chicken wire, and went ahead and bought four young goslings and six comet pullet chicks (three weeks old.) I’ve been taking down the original fence and have put up the new pen. So far, it seems to be working, even though we found that some of the heavy firewood we had put all around the bottom to hold down the chicken wire had been moved by a dog. I have been carrying heavy stones to make a more permanent bottom to the fence.

Now to more good news: The second replant of my vegetable garden seems to be taking off. The long dry spell is helping, although I really am careful about watering since we are on a well. I got some really good plant stock on web specials from Raintree Nursery in the Northwest, including alpine strawberries, an apple and a crab, 2 pears, etc. The red currants I planted earlier are actually fruiting. The gooseberries, rhubarb, chives, raspberries, four boxes of comfrey, and lots of mint are doing well. Some of my experiments in propagation, including 3 highbush cranberry and two window boxes of rosa rugosa cuttings are doing well, although I seem to have lost about half of the 16 gooseberry whips I started on the hillside to the dry conditions. I am having to replant many of the perennial vegetables like Good King Henry due to slug loss of seedlings, but I had not used all my seed, so that is ok.

On other fronts, we have been making a lot of gardening and poultry friends, weaving a better network of community support. The young clerks at Safeway were all very interested in my ducks, and sorrowful over our loss of them. They had been saving the lettuce cuttings once a week for them. I have connected up with our local garden club, as I love to grow flowers also, and am going on a wildflower walk this week. I have been learning to identify many of the common edible wild plants, and also found out that I am allergic to Pushki sap.

The long, long days allow for gardening until 11:30 at “night” (or whenever I drop!) We have also had time to get in a decent airtight woodstove, replace our propane bottle and add a second one, stack a lot of the wood, build shelves and a new bridge over the stream, and clear more salmonberries off for garden space. Many thanks to two of my strong sons for much of this! There is an awful lot of just plain hard work here. One thing I did want to pass on was the idea of looking at setting up everything to make it as efficient as possible. For instance, having feed in a metal garbage can (rats) in the goose pen, ditto their litter. Putting wood uphill and close to the door. If not uphill, installing a pulley system to haul wood up. Chores can take up a lot of time, and it is worth thinking about how to save minutes and work that you do every day. All that time and effort otherwise can pall after a while.

**** I have gardened for alsmost 50 years, and I lost my whole first vegetable garden to slugs this year! Banana slugs are 6-7 inches long and eat a lot!

Alaska is not tame and it is not safe. A lot of people die just being inexperienced or unlucky- bears, ice cold water, dirt roads, ice, etc. etc. Think twice!

-- seraphima (seraphima@ak.net), June 27, 2001.

Hi Max. You got some good responses on the subject of living and homesteading/farming in Alaska and I would like to throw my 2cents in also. First, get out a good map of Alaska. Note how far South and how far North, also East and West our State lies, then note the approximate sq. miles we are talking about, then you will understand the various conditions, weather patterns, problems moving goods and/or livestock. Note also where the roads come from and go to, plus the railroad, then note towns positioned on the coast line with deep ports for cargo shipping. Just useing good common sense you can figure who has it easy and who does not. I live in the Matanuska Valley with paved roads and the railroad just by my lower pasture. I raise gardens and flowers so big and so beautiful, I wish you could see them. I have every animal you do and maybe some you might not have. We have Walmart, K-Mart, Fred Meyers, Gotschalks, Auto stores and the list goes on. Our prices are now very comparable to Montana and Oregon. I have visited these two States in the last year and did some comparing. We have no State Tax and some of the Oil Revenue, or the earnings from that fund, called the Permanent Fund, is sent to every man, woman and child in Oct. It has been near $2000.00 a year now for a while. We have some of the best public schools you could find and many private or pay-as-you-attend Christain ones, and we have several universities and schools of higher education. There are so many jobs not taken that there is just no way you could not find several to fit your skills, we all worked some pretty strange jobs when we first came here 30 years ago but it paid the bills, then you just move on or up, as the case may be. Come on up and rent a place out in the country, then let the family decide if this is for them or not. A year would be a good test. Good luck, E-mail me if you would care to. Maureen at Ravens Roost Farm in Palmer, Alaska

-- Maureen Stevenson (maureen@mtaonline.net), June 28, 2001.

Hi John.

You've certainly some good advice here, but the next previous post bears real consideration. At one time I did some research into the Kootenai peninsula area since it is one area where it's possible to 'homestead' similiar to the lower 48. There really are very diverse ecological niches in Alaska, but most people only think SNOW!

You really need to go check it out to know for sure.

Good Luck!

Randle

-- Randle Gay (rangay@hotmail.com), June 28, 2001.

thanks to all of you for your replies to my inquiry on ak homesteading....I take your warnings seriously and will take your advice into consideration, but i doubt anything or anyone can stop me from pursuing my dream of living in the alaskan wilderness. my wife is probably my biggest supporter, and my children, well they just simply don't know better.for the past 5 years we have lived in a wilderness area in the se united states, built our own cabin, and enjoy the lifestyle.so i am not as wet behind the ears as you would think,i have worked as a carpenter since i was 14 years old and have accomplished everything i set out to do in life but the only people who have profited from my work are my employers, i have gotten very little from it after paying rent,paying for gasoline, and paying the grocery store. there are many reasons to get away from the rat race, crime, pollution,politics,overpopulation,loss of individuality,etc.... but i believe the number one reason to escape the lower 48 would be to show my children what true freedom is so that future generations of mcdonalds will be even more self sufficient and not dependent upon others, so that they may breathe some clean moubntain air. july 4,2000

-- max (john mcdonald) (nwflamining@aol.com), July 05, 2001.

Sounds like you're already out of the rat race... which brings up the question: "Why Alaska"?

cheers,

-- Max (Maxel@inwindsor.com), July 05, 2001.

Ever since i was 17 yrs old i have dreamed of going to Alaska and living. I would listen to the tales from my friends who went there to work on the pipeline in the mid-70's and wanted to go. over the years i ahve met several folks who lived in Alaska and heard their stories. i almost came close in '93 when the graduate school i attended has a professor who lived there and said the winters were milder there where he was (forgot where, think near the ocean) than those in the snow capitol of the world, Buffalo, NY. Hey we had the infamous "Blizzard of 77!" I happened to get saved my from intentions when i was hired by a private psychiatric hospital in MD just a week before the Alaska recruiting folks came to recruit teachers at the college. i teach special ed.

But over the years i had dreamed of going and even sent out resumes to schools there, got a few instant intervies, after all, special ed teachers are hard to find, especially in my niche, severe disabilities. I found this ranch here in Ar so here we are. i think the main reason i didn't seriously jump on aplane was the fact that even though I LOVE homesteading, i show my goats and there really aren't any competitive shows there. Plus the expense of hay and grain would break my bank. Oh well... maybe one day if i ever retire from goats.

Good luck and hope you find your, "piece of heaven" there!

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), July 05, 2001.