Food for thought

Yesterday was to be just another day of harvesting chickens, or so I thought.  Before I could go kill the birds, I had some other tasks to take care of first so that my kitchen would be ready for the process.  So I patiently scooped pumpkin from the shells that had cooked the night before.  And I separated the baked apples from their skins and cores.

Then I decided I better deal with four chooks that had been roasted and cooled, so I separated all the meat from the bones and set the new bone broth to boil on the woodstove.  Finally, I only had to put away all the food and get water heated up for plucking those who were soon-to-be next.

Down the hill I went with a bucket of feed and another of water and an ax.  I filled the feeders and immediately grabbed the biggest meat bird, carried her outside and quickly did my job.  Then back in for the next, and again for two more.  Two empty buckets, an ax and four lifeless birds came back up the hill with me.

In the winter I pluck and process birds indoors, while sitting on the hearth.  These girls were totally feathered out, approaching 4 months old, so plucking was pretty easy.  And then I started to butcher.

 After separating intestines from the first bird, I was shocked beyond belief to pull out a couple of handfuls of immature eggs.  I carefully set them aside and finished cleaning her, pondering how close she was to laying eggs.  But wait, she's a meat bird!  Funny how I didn't expect to find eggs in a hen.

But then again, I've never found eggs like that before.  It really took me back.  She was going to be a mother, or at least produce other food besides meat for my family and friends.  Ugh.  And so were her sisters, the ones I'd already killed and who were bleeding out into the snow.

When hunting, we only harvest males.  Many a time I can remember passing up the perfect shot when thinking about all the babies that the female in my sights could produce.  I don't know why the similarity never occured to me, as far as killing hens... it just didn't.  Until yesterday, that is.

Now its loud and clear.  This breed of meat birds takes longer to mature than the standard Frankenstein-esque Cornish X'es.  And when the slowest maturing hens get big enough for butcher, they're ready to lay.  All four of the girls that I harvested today were carrying eggs.  Lots of eggs.  One egg was even 100% complete and ready for the nest.

I'll be honest with you that I felt sick about what I'd witnessed, about what I'd done.  And now I have to decide whether to kill the last 3 remaining meat hens, or to let them start to lay.  You can bet that in the future I'll be more thoughtful when getting ready to kill pullets, there's no question that I don't want to be pulling eggs out of birds dead by my own hand.  I don't like it.

But it is what it is.  Now I have about three cups of white-less eggs.  They're just yolks with a lovely blood supply, and I get to decide what to cook them into... pumpkin pie?  custard?  popovers?  The options are endless.  I'll be interested to note how my family reacts when they realize the food they are eating was made with unfinished eggs.  I think they'll be cool with it.  I, for one, am looking forward to putting to good use that which I have taken.

After all, the rest of the parts will be carefully used.  Ben will take the offal for trapping bait, the livers get fed back to the rest of the chickens, gizzards and hearts and kidneys are already chilling for future stuffings, and the feet are stewing for ultra nutritious bone broth. 

And so today I find myself today extra thankful, in these last days before our traditional harvest holiday, and extra thoughtful about harvest itself.  As you eat your Thanksgiving turkey, I hope you'll take a moment of pause, and consider the process that brought it to your table.  Pass the food for thought, please.

Wood work

It might go without saying, but a healthy forest is essential to our way of life.  There's not a day that goes by where we don't benefit from the trees on our place.  When I was searching for raw, untouched land on which to build my homestead, an accessible woodlot was my number one criteria.  There were other important options to be checked off the list, but wood was definitely right there at the top.

I made my way to in Alaska in 1991, and the spruce bark beetles had already nestled in to the extensive forests of the Kenai Peninsula.  I worked my first two years down there on a wildland fire crew, mainly fighting fire in beetle infested areas.  Then I got a job working trail crew for the Forest Service, maintaining foot trail through lots of spruce forest.  We cleared trails of fallen timber, built boardwalks and bridges in remote areas using a backpacked chainsaw mill, and did alot of tread work.

Learning how to analyze a forest, harvest trees and turn them into building materials with very little equipment changed the way I look at the world.  It gave me the ability to walk into a place and be able to create my own shelter... and its something no one can ever take away from me.  Knowledge is power. 

When I first started building, I had no trail to access the trees or the cabin site on my land.  I backpacked my new saw and Alaska mill through the brush from spruce tree to spruce tree, and carried timbers and boards out by hand.  Those were the days.  These days we use machines to move logs to the mill, and other machines to move timbers to our homesite.

We rarely cut trees just for firewood.  Most of our firewood comes as by-catch... lengths of log that aren't able to be used for building purposes, or "waste" from the building process.  Almost all of our kitchenwood comes from slab- that half moon chunk of wood between the bark and the flat timber.

All of our cabins, both here and in the bush, are log-built with local trees.  Floor boards and ceiling boards are carefully milled and planed.  Trimmings go into the cookstove and shavings go into the chicken house.  Outbuildings are often constructed with poles and slabwood.  And fence-posts are usually peeled spruce trees that have been tarred.

Whoever said that heating with wood warms you over and over was right.  Its alot of work harvesting trees, splitting lengths and hauling firewood.  They say it warms you three times, but I think its more than that.  Sometimes it seems like wood chores are endless.

When I was a kid I used to complain about having to move the woodpile.  I guess that was before I had the life experience to understand how basic and gratifying it is to provide for yourself, and how essential wood is to our existence on the Frontier.  Now I have to confess that I enjoy splitting wood, and the rest of the chores that go with it.

I love that we don't have to shop for furniture imported from some unknown part of the globe and constructed with questionable materials with lots of VOCs.  Our beds and cabinets and tables and benches and shelves are all homemade.  Birch makes especially fine furniture, but its not so easy to cure.  It like to twist and turn as it dries.  Cottonwood is also a hardwood, but it dries and shrinks for many years before becoming stable.   

Primarily we use beetle-killed spruce, though its bounty is starting to dwindle.  The trees that were killed by the beetles are now starting to rot beyond usefulness.  But we've done a good amount of work, clearing out the dead trees over the last 14 years, and improving the forest.  It feels good to know we've done our part, and our husbandry for the land shows through.

Now we're starting to clear an airstrip.  Most of the trees in the flightpath are deciduous... almost all are birch or cottonwood or giant willow.  So we'll be switching gears, building the new hangar with fresh leafy trees, instead of dead needled trees.  I'm sure it will come with its own learning curve.

There's alot of pride that goes into building livable structures with wood off your place.  It takes a ton of work, a good bit of practice, and not a little ingenuity to bring it all together.  I'm so thankful I had the foresight to purchase property with a diverse and usable forest, and the experience to make it work for me.  Without it, I might still be living in a tent, or squatting in someone else's cabin.  Its great to be home.

Dip netting

We live in the land of salmon... bountiful runs of wild fish, free for the taking.  If, that is, you are game for the adventure.  Our annual meat fishing trips are each unique in their set of circumstances- and we almost always get our fish.

Salmon is a staple in our house.  We set aside a two week block of time at the end of July to catch our limit.  That's how we always celebrate our daughter's birth and our wedding anniversary.  Usually we're allowed 45 fish, plus a 10-flounder bycatch.  And generally we bring home a small freezer full of meat and carcasses.

Our chickens and goats and dogs all go wild for fish carcasses.  You haven't lived until you've seen a goat fight a dog for a particularly fleshy morsel, or watched a yard of chickens pick a salmon backbone clean in a matter of seconds.

Often when we're dip netting, we bring the milk goat along.  She wears a backpack and hauls freshly killed fish on her back for us.  Otherwise, we have to pack them all ourselves... and that turns into alot of work.  In fact, its alot of work no matter how you look at it.

Sometimes the weather is great and the fishing is slow.  Other times its non-stop rain and wind and we catch our limit in a matter of hours.  Its never predictable, often exhausting, and always worth our effort.

Only permanent Alaskans are allowed a dip net permit.  Its called a personal use fishery.  There are strict regulations in place to limit which parts of which rivers and beaches are open, and when.  We use special nets stretched over a 5 foot diameter hoop, on a 12 foot long pole with a huge D-handle.

When fishing on the Kenai, its mostly done in the water wearing neoprene waders and insulated gloves- whether in the ocean waves or the river proper.  When fishing on the Copper River, all fishing is done from the bank... generally roped in, lest you fall victim to the fast moving water.

Wherever you are, its a cold, wet, smelly job... and is sometimes more enjoyable than others.  Of course, most of the work begins after the fish are pulled from the net.  Just killing a fresh silver is a chore in itself.  Then comes the gutting and skinning and boning, the canning or smoking or freezing.

But ya gotta love it, however it comes out.  Salmon fishing and dipnetting in particular are basic to our lifestyle.  One winter, I ate salmon everyday.  Salmon and rice and cabbage, and occasionally some cheese and salsa.

Salmon patties, salmon salad, broiled salmon, baked salmon, barbecued salmon, salmon dip... you get the picture.  Whole cookbooks are written just about storing and preparing our resident wild fish.  Yep, a person can get tired of eating salmon day-in and day-out, but it sure fills the freezer and the belly well.  Let's go fishin'!

Wolf country

I will never forget the first time I walked with wolves.  It was one of those highly spiritual, momentous occasions that becomes part of your personal imprint.  That energy will always stay with me and influence who I am, as well as who I become... even though I had a few preceding encounters.

I remember one trip in particular, coming up over a pass above treeline on the Kenai Peninsula.  I was working on a remote trail crew, maintaining 250 miles of foot trail.  It was hard and rewarding work... and we saw much more wildlife than human traffic.  It was a great place to live and work when you're a hermit at heart.

That day we got to watch a grey wolf, trotting around the high tundra, moving away from our three person brigade as we approached with heavy backpacks and light hearts.  The beauty and silence of that high valley was fantastic, and it seemed just right to be sharing it with such a creature.

The second happening was a couple of years later, when I was living in a yert on my homestead while still building my cabin.  I woke in the morning to fresh snow in early April.  My puppy Mowgli was sleeping next to me, and my first awareness of that day was his low growl.

I got right up and grabbed my shotgun and peeked out the door to see what I could see.  And there I was face-to-face with a small black female wolf.  She was sitting on her haunches not 6 feet from my tent door.  We spoke for a short while, and then she arced off in a wide circle... stepping away into the wild.

It was that same spring that brought the experience.  I was doing a rough bush survey of the perimeters of my land, tromping through the bushes with a compass in hand, tying strings on branches to mark my path.

When I came to the big swamp, I looked up to see a large white male wolf sitting on a tussock.  He was hunting voles.  And as soon as we saw each other, he and my dog Sancho started to approach each other.  I didn't know if he was going to stop when he got to my dog, or keep coming for me.  So I looked around for a tree to climb, not knowing what to expect.

My heart was pounding, and there was nothing but snarly black spruce around.  I had no where to go.  And then the dance began.  As the wolf came closer, Sancho dropped back.  Then Sancho moved forward again, and the wolf retreated.  And so it went, as I calmed down and stopped to admire the magnificent beauty around me.

There I was, beneath the gaze of Castle Mountain.  Nothing made by man in my sight, only wild country and an eerily wild predator in my reach.  Finally, the white wolf feinted back, beyond the trees bordering the swamp.  And so I continued my survey.

Several times over the next hour, I looked up from my compass to see him a few dozen yards off, watching me... shadowing me as I walked quietly through the open forest.  Then he'd make a half circle and disapper, only to reappear minutes later.

Even though we regularly see their tracks on the trails and riverbars, it was to be a few years before the next wolf sighting.  This time Ben and I were at Camp 5, staying at his dad's main cabin in the Talkeetna Mountains.  I woke earlier than Ben and was up drinking coffee, watching birds and letting the river go by.  Then a large grey wolf walked right into camp.  He looked around, inspecting things for a bit, and then he was gone.

The last time I recall seeing wolves, was on a low level flight up over the pass from the Talkeetna River into the Chickaloon River valley.  That day we circled down to spook a pack of 5 wolves who had a big bull caribou surrounded on the edge of the river.  Whether that bull lived to tell about our rescue or not, I don't know.

Wolves are all around us here.  They are a silent part of our landscape, and even though we don't often see them face-to-face, we always know they are there... just beyond the shadows.  As predators, wolves come with a well-earned reputation... and as with most meat eaters, they have a raw, wild beauty that is remarkably unmatched.  This is wolf country... our home.

Bush flying

My husband is a bush pilot, and so is his brother, Bill.  Luckily for both wives, our husbands are doing exactly what they were born to do.  Thank goodness, because being a bush pilot's wife is not for the faint of heart, to say the least.

When I met Ben, I had 7 or 8 years under my belt of being around and traveling in small aircraft- the preferred method of travel around much of Alaska's bush country.  So when he asked me to go flying with him in his 150hp Piper Super Cub, I didn't hesitate (after the requisite interrogation about his pilot resume).

I drove up to his brother's airstrip at the Matanuska Glacier in March of the year 2000, and I watched as he warmed up the airplane in lovely pre-spring weather.  We spent some time flying around the mountain valleys that day, and I got to see my homestead from the air for the first time.  Little did I know, that the antics of that memorable trip were to become a way of life for the family I hadn't dreamed up yet.

A month later, Ben asked me to fly in to his family's trapline in the heart of the Talkeetna Mountains- to help close down the cabins for the inbetween season while airstrips turned to mush, and to wrangle his Dad's Akita puppy on the flight out.

I made a quick mention to my parents about where I was going, and I told my closest neighbor, Bob, as well.  Its a good thing I did, because we planned to be gone only one night... but the trip turned into a week-and-a-half dance with bad weather and failing airstrips.  We had radio-phone communications with Ben's Gramma up at the Glacier, and she was able to relay messages to Bob- who kept my goats and dogteam well taken care of in my stead.

That trip was destined to be a milestone, a measure of trips to come and unknown circumstances to be managed.  That trip became a figure of speech... just one night.  Let's go in for just one night.  We're only going for one night.  Well, now we know the gamut of what can go wrong and what might change the best laid plans.  So we try to plan for the unplanned and cover all bases.

A few years later, after we were married, Ben was doing back-to-back flights into his Dad's main cabin to pull moose hunters out in the fall.  Each time I heard his airplane down at the strip powering up, I knew he was taking off for another flight.  A quick look at a clock to mark the time, and he should be back out in an hour thereabouts.

As the ETA comes and goes, a bush pilot's wife starts to consider all the possibilities.  A broken plane, a missing hunter, a mislaid satellite phone, a quick stop at another camp for something forgotten.  As the minutes or hours tick by, intuition comes into play.  Is there something wrong, or isn't there?  Do I initiate a rescue, or give him a few more minutes to buzz the cabin and set everything right?  The pit of the stomach points in a direction.

I picked up the phone and dialed Bill, my saving grace.  I told him "Ben's overdue and there's something wrong."  And while we were still on the line making a plan, Ben called Bill on the satellite phone and reported a broken axle on takeoff.  Everyone was safe and sound, but no one was going anywhere until parts were flown in.  And that was that... Bill saved the day.

Thank goodness for satellite phones.  They've brought my sick tummy to rest more than once. I couldn't really quantify just how many times they've set the record straight.  Usually its not an emergency, sometimes its a mishap, and often its a nothing deal.  Occasionally its not, its a direly emergent situation that must be dealt with on the fly... but those times deserve chapters of their own.

Airplanes are as much a part of our everyday life as cars are to Americans and bikes are to schoolkids.  Perhaps even more so, as the maintenance needs can't be met by just any streetcorner mechanic... and the annual cost far exceeds that of our home and family. 

All that money and angst is worth it though, as bush flying is one of the most exhilarating experiences imaginable.  And of course, its essential to our lifestyle and livelihoods.  I wouldn't want to trade it for anything.  There's just nothing like soaring over remote mountain valleys, pointing out sheep and goats, settling down on river bars and mountain tops... and just being able to get away.