End of 2009, Beginning of 2010

* NOTE:  I just realized I really haven’t posted here for a long long time.  Since the last post, Scott came to help erect the walls and we were at a pretty slow standstill due to time and fund issues.  A lot of work got done after Brent got off work early September 2009.  The following post includes an update starting in October around the time of our wedding.

May 28, 2010

Spring or Summer:

It is officially spring…or is it summer?  The birch leaves are out, the alder leaves at higher altitudes are making their appearance, and there are buds on the cottonwood trees.  In the lower altitudes the dandelions are blooming, and grass is popping out everywhere.  In fact, I saw someone mowing their lawn in Homer this past week!

I have been wondering if spring really exists here, on the lower Kenai Peninsula.  We go from dark cold short days, to longer days that seem to get longer so quickly – it is light out until midnight.  We still have remnants of the past winter in the form of packed snow on the north slope of our land.   The nights are still cold and frosty (32 out this morning).  However, it seems like when things start growing, they really grow.  Before you know it the wild celery is out of control, the grass is unmanageable again, and the fireweed is inches tall!  Perhaps our spring is different – it appears to be the same as the fall:  dry plants, no leaves, melting snow.  When things start to grow again it is summer already!

Due to my hibernating tendencies of the winter, I have not posted at all.  I try my best to bring everyone up-to-date.

Brent and I got married on October 3^rd.  We were lucky to have some of our family up for the event.  With so many helping hands around we were able to get a lot of things done.  Brent was able to finish putting the roof on our cabin.  Rich, Brent’s dad, built us a wonderfully useful outhouse (we double it as a home for the generator). With the help of Chris (my brother in law), John (Brent’s little brother), Rich, and a rented splitter, we split the many cords of wood we collected in the summer and stacked them in a temporary wood pile for the winter.

My two sisters Cristina and Victoria, my mom, and Sue (Brent’s mom) were indispensable when it came to organizing the wedding.  Scott and Beth (Brent’s older brother and wife) helped get the reception hall together and ready.

A special thanks to my mother for taking the time and love to make my wedding dress.

All in all, the weeks leading up to the wedding were extremely hectic, overwhelming, and incredibly busy.  However, so much got done with the help of all out loved ones.

After the wedding, with the help of my sister Victoria, we got the windows and doors, the woodstove, insulation in the ceiling, and most of our belongings into the house.  The following Saturday (October 10^th), Brent and Victoria packed their bags in the middle of moving things into the house, jumped in the car and hastily drove to Anchorage.  Victoria left the evening of the 10^th.  We are so thankful that my sister stayed the extra week, without her, we would not have gotten as much done as we did.  For the first time in our newly wed life, Brent and I spent a restful night at our favorite hotel in anchorage, the Comfort Inn.  The next morning I drove Brent to the airport and said my good-byes as he headed out west to Dutch Harbor for yet another season working on the crab boats.

My drive home was long and rather depressing.  Talk about lots of time to think about stuff.  I was going back to a giant mess that needed to be organized, having to bring in the rest of our belongings before the snow flew, and to try to find work for the winter…oh yes, and an un-insulated house.

The organizing was not that bad, I like doing it, and it kept my mind busy.  Everyday I would bring in a new batch of things, organize, box them if needed, arrange them nicely in a pile, bring in more stuff, and do it all over again.  Most of our things went up unto the loft which consisted of 3 tongue and groove sheets of plywood covering half the floor span where my bed was, and two OSB sheets on the other half of the floor to store all the things I was organizing.

That week (Wednesday) I got a call from my boss at Fish and Game asking if I was looking for work.  It was like a miracle.  I went in the next day to find out there was a temporary job clipping Lingcod fins in the lab for two weeks.  My boss also encouraged me to talk to the research biologist in the commercial fishing department because he had grant money to hire a database person.  After the two weeks of Lingcod fin cutting, I switched over and began a long winter of database work.  What I thought would be a month of work (November), turned into December, January, February, March in Cordova on a little side job for the same department, and half of April – at which point I started back at my normal job working on the Anchor River project.

The work was tedious, and boring, but it was literally a lifesaver in November.  The temperatures dropped quickly, the snow started to fall, and things froze up.  The month I spent alone in our little cabin was probably the hardest thing I have had to endure in my entire life.  I would get up in the dark, by candle light and headlamp I would feed our pets and get ready for work.  Spend all day in a nice warm office during the daylight hours and head home in the dark again (thanks to short Alaskan winter days).  At home, I would start a fire, start the process of cooking dinner, melting water for the dogs and myself, and keeping busy in front of the wood stove for several hours before heading up to bed all bundled up.  It was hard and lonely.  I heard from Brent every two weeks or so, and usually our phone conversations were limited by the amount of time Brent had in port or by my cell phone and how much battery I had left.  The last week before Brent got home was crazy cold – the temperatures dropped to -2 below zero in the morning (I am not sure how cold it was in the night), and I started loosing morale with the cold, the frozen water, and the dwindling wood pile.  That week Brent called to tell me he was on his way home!  By the time Brent got home at the end of November, I had almost burned through all the wood we had planned on using ALL winter!  Brent’s homecoming was one of the happiest moments in my life.

As a side note- Everyone at work looked out for me that month by asking if I was alright just about everyday.  The Hickman’s kept in touch and insisted that if it got too cold or lonely I could come stay with them, or if I ran out of wood, they would come help me cut more.  You may be wondering why I didn’t take them up on their offer?  It probably is hard to understand, but it is a combination of stubbornness, pride, and the desire to be successful on my own.   I am glad I stuck to it.  It was hard, but it made me a stronger person.  Now I know I really am cut out for the life Brent and I have chosen.

I picked Brent up in Anchorage, had another memorable evening at the Comfort Inn, and headed home.  That weekend we bought insulation for the walls and completed that project.  I could not believe how much heat the house retained after that.  The following weekend we bought 2×12 boards and installed the loft floor.  After that we put up sheetrock around the base of the wall both downstairs and upstairs.  Brent and I built shelves for our kitchen goods, and later Brent built me temporary kitchen cabinets.  We made a couch out of blocks and a solid core door, a feather bed, lots of blankets and pillows.  That is really as far as we could get until the summer came again.

December 31st we drove to Seward to get coal.  We got 2 tons for $80 and were surprised at how well the car towed the two tons on an 18 foot trailer on icy roads.  That is how we ended our year!

Brent got a job working for PGS, a seismic surveying company, for three months.  He literally was working near home, since they were surveying in the neighborhood.  He worked every day without a day off.  With the money he earned we bought the shingles for the roof, a new chainsaw (almost as tall as me), a generator, and an extension later.  We also bought the lumber to build a small porch for the front door, and a chicken coop.

Right now we have installed the porch, but still need to build the new porch steps.  We built the chicken coop on the platform our tent was on last summer.  The coop is almost done – the roof needs to be finished, and the windows and door need to be installed.  The chickens are arriving in the mail on the week of June 21^st.

I started five perennial flower seeds.  Columbines, Delphiniums, Shasta Daisies, Alpine Asters, and a plant called “The Pearl” – they are low growing plants with white pom-pom looking flowers.  I am going to make a flower bed in front of and around the porch for the flowers.

This month we celebrated our one year anniversary – May 13^th - as proud owners of land and a home.  We got the chance to look back at this past year and see how much work we did.   I am still in awe of how much we have accomplished.  Brent and I started out with very little money – oh wait…we still have very little money – but somehow we were able to convert that into something tangible, something that belongs to us.  Our home is not done yet, but it ours!   Sometimes it is hard to remember why we are putting ourselves through such hardships – the hard labor, long hours, making every dollar earned count, and stress.  However, when you look at the big picture it is easy to remember why we are doing it:  Unlike a lot of other people our age, we actually own a place to call home, we don’t have a 30 year mortgage, we have 10 acres to do with what we please, and with a little more work and dedication we can soon be on our way to living a more holistic, sustainable life in touch with what is really important.

Keep tuned for more updates from our small Alaskan homestead.

Floor

Murphy’s law caused the weather to turn for the worse.  It has been raining since last weekend.    However, rain or shine, one must continue to work in Alaska.  Conclusion:  The Floor is IN!!!  Brent put the entire floor in last weekend.  I helped nail in the joists, but since I was at work could not help as much.

Foundations

So I know this has been forever, but I must update.  For the record I have been really busy and have had no time.  Also, on top of it all, my computer crashed and has gone to computer limbo.  The Tech guy that gave me the bad news said I might as well buy a new one because it will cost more than it is worth to fix. 

Last weekend we went to Anchorage to pick up Marian, one of my best friends and maid of honor.  She came to spend the rest of the summer with me, help me stay sane as far as wedding plans go, and have an adventure.  

The weekend before that, Brent and I put in the foundation.  We bought 8×8″ treated boards, centered them, placed them in their holes and filled them in.   To fill them in we had to go to Dibble Creek Rock, a gravel provider, in order to get a bed load of gravel.  Since it was the weekend, no one was working the machinery,  so we had to load the gravel in the truck ourselves.  That was a lot of work.  Either way, it got done and we were really happy. 

This past weekend we were going to put the floor in but because of the 4th of July holiday, we didn’t get paid when we thought we were going to paid, so the floor did not go in.  Instead Brent and I took the time to meticulously level out all the posts.  Now everything is ready for this weekend, and the floor will go in.  Since I don’t have my computer,  I can’t put pictures up, but I will at some point.

I have been taking pictures of all the wildflowers, and when I get the chance to post pictures, I will make a wildflower post.  They are so beautiful.  Right now the fireweed is about to bloom.  I can’t wait to see what out property looks like since most of it has fireweed growing all over it.

Wedding update:  I printed the envelopes and inserts for the invitations.  The invitations are ready to be printed, but I am waiting for the priest who will marry us to confirm the time we picked out.  I figured out what I will use to put on the napkins, and other decorations, and most importantly found out that the church has plenty of china and silverwear for us to use. 

The weather has been incredible.  Last weekend the temperatures hit above 80 degrees.  It cooled off a little this past week because it has been foggy, but I can’t complain.  However, it has been too hot and since it has not been raining, the fish are not running up the river, making my job a tad boring.

It is almost the weekend again, and I haven’t had time to update on what happened last weekend.

Brent and I finally had 3 overlapping days off.  Saturday was deemed a “sanity” day, started by the puppies final rabies shot, and followed by a drive to Soldotna to get pet supplies, visit the thrift stores, and just get outta town for a day, and into a bigger town.  That night we enjoyed a band called Three Legged Mule at Duggans, Homers version of an Irish Pub.  We loved the music so much; we are considering celebrating our wedding night to the beat of their drums, base, mandolin, guitar, and accordion, and of course old time bluegrass lyrics.

Sunday morning was slow due to Brent having too many beers the night before.  Either way, we made great progress by finding AND clearing (to bare ground…no grass, mind you…) a space for our 16’x24’ cabin.  We searched for a spot big enough so that we won’t have to rent large expensive machinery to clear out stumps, which would set us back another month.  To get to bare ground it took a first time around with the weed whacker, followed by racking and taking out large logs and bigger branches, followed by another round of the weed whacker, more racking, and a final weed whacking.  We then staked the four corners, squared them, and admired our work.  In the background is a very large 7’ pile of the grass taken out…perfect for my compost.

On Monday we started our day in Homer doing laundry, showering for the week, going to Spenard Building Supply (SBS), our equivalent of the Home Depot, to get window quotes and finding out if they have 8×8” pressure treated posts for our foundation, making a reservation for an Auger to dig holes for the posts for next Saturday, and a delicious cup of soup at the Two Sister’s Bakery.  The rest of the day was dedicated to clearing out a swatch from the “entrance” to the cabin site so that we can drive in supplies and equipment, like the Auger.  I might add that clearing out a swatch is not as easy and quick as it sounds.  Clearing these spaces takes a HUGE amount of energy.  Let me just say that I don’t think I have EVER worked this hard in my life…as far as manual labor goes.  It is satisfying.

We had dinner with Surge Lecomte, our neighbor, poet and author, and his girlfriend Denise, who is a more distant neighbor.  Afterwards we watched a movie and got ready for work the next day.

I am finally feeling like we are getting somewhere.  Having cleared the spot where the cabin will go makes me feel like we are one GIANT step towards making things happen.  After tomorrow (Saturday), I will feel like we will be almost done (joke…but really…the progress is fantastic), if we get the posts in place.  Brent says this is the hardest part, and the most time consuming.  He says that after we get the foundation in, it will be breeze, God willing.

On a romantic note:  I am more in love with Brent than ever.  Let me explain.  When we first met, while living together at the Anchorage bunkhouse (for work), he asked me if he could borrow one of the books that I had been reading; Living the Good Life, a book about a couple who started a homestead and lived a sustainable life in Vermont.  I think this book sparked our earliest conversations that eventually led us to discover how close our dreams for life were.  We talked for hours about modern agriculture and the benefits of small scale farming, homesteading, our great love and fascination with nature, how to go back to nature in these modern times, and how our very different backgrounds both led us to want the same things.  Thinking about those days when everything we said and shared seemed so dreamy and perfect causes me to smile.  I smile because I have finally found a man I love, respect, admire, and trust who is willing to take a calculated risk with me in order to make both of our dreams come true.  It is hard to believe that a mere two months ago we were making our journey to this area hoping to find something to call our own.  It is harder to believe that we are actually realizing the dreams we talked about back in October of 2007.  All the hours that I have spent working next to Brent on our land has made me fall in love with him all over again.  Working next to him makes all the hard labor fun and enjoyable.  The blisters and the soar muscles are instantly forgotten when I step back and see what we are working together to gain for our future.  And most importantly, Brent and I are realizing the dream that was born when we first met: to Homestead in Alaska.

P.S. I have posted a picture of a Chocolate Lillie.

June

It is midway through June and we have not actually broken ground yet.  I guess both Brent and I have secretly been stressed about this seemingly innocent fact.  This weekend however we brought our concerns to the table and talked about our options.  The conclusion?  Downsize, of course!  After stacking out the proposed location of the 30’X19’ with a 5’ artic room and a 6’ porch house, our eyes nearly popped out of our heads and an exchange of looks was enough to say, “This is too overwhelming.”  The idea now is to build a small 16’x16’ “starter” cabin on the other side of the property (the one bordering Coraban Rd.  We decided on the location for a couple of reasons:  1.) There is a nice row of pine trees that gives the spot some privacy.  2.)  The power line runs along the property there, and it will be much cheaper to put electricity in.  3.)  Access to the road is short and since we probably will not put a driveway in by the winter, will be easier to walk.  The other benefits of building a smaller “Starter” cabin are as follows:  1.) Less space equals less money, 2.)  The idea of MAYBE buying a second car…a beater upper,  3.)  More money to spend on the wedding, which we will only do once, so we might as well make it worth while.  4.)  A much more enjoyable summer.  5.) NOT having to rent heavy machinery to de-stump BEFORE putting in a foundation.  6.)  Being able to build our dream house slowly, without pressure, and being able to incorporate things we really want that would not be possible now because of time and money.

That is that.

We started building a small little “cabin” for when Marian gets here in less than 3 weeks.  We priced out what it would cost with structural lumber ($700!!!!), and decided to build with ruff cut scraps from the lumber mill on the North Fork Rd.  It looks like a shack erected from the woods…

Finally, I walked quite a distance upstream on the South Fork of the Anchor river today, and to my pleasant surprise there are TONS of Chocolate Lilies everywhere.  I think these particular flowers are among my favorite Alaskan flowers.  They are beautiful.  The only place that I ever saw them, and rarely, in Petersburg was in the middle of muskegs.  Here they are ALL along the river bank.  If only they were still around in October I would use them for the wedding.  There are a lot of other wildflowers starting to bloom.  This means that it is wildflower picking time of year, which I LOVE to do.  Perhaps on Friday I will pick bunches of them and fill the tent with them for the weekend.  I love flowers.

Hiking Across the Bay for the Day

This weekend was very fun.

On Friday afternoon I hitched up the boat (which took a long time because I could not get the hitch safety on, so finally I hammered it down so I could get to town in time for Brent to get off work), loaded the truck with all sorts of goodies, the dogs, and sleeping gear for the night.  I met Brent at his work’s bunkhouse where I took advantage of a warm shower while doing a quick load of laundry (when you live in a tent out in the boonies you take advantage of any shower opportunity you get because they come far and few between).  At about 8:30 we were finally launching the boat at the Homer Harbor Master on the Spit.  It took us about 35 minutes to cross the bay and get into the protected waters of Halibut Cove.  We left right at low tide, so getting past the narrow “s” shaped channel (which I am told is very tricky and can have you on rocks in a minute) set us in a bed of kelp which kept getting tangled in the little 4 horse motor.  It took us what seemed like another half hour just to get to deeper water in the cove.  Finally we arrived at the ranger station, seeing a couple of otters and a beautiful sunset on the way.  Bob and Kelly, the state employees running the ranger station were in the shower when we got there, so we just unloaded our stuff and the dogs into the cooking cabin (for the trail crew), which was to be our home sweet home for the night.  Might I mention that BOTH of the dogs got sea sick and barfed all of the food in their tummies out.  Then Bob and Kelly came out to greet us, my first time really meeting them.  The girls, Meagan (age 10) and Isabel (age 7), who are very fond of Brent, were asleep.  We went to bed, me on the couch, Brent on the floor (on a foldable mattress pad), and the dogs on the other couch….at least after 3 hours of running around, wrestling, licking our faces, fighting with each other, and other fun puppy night-time games that are played to keep their owners awake.  In morning we slept in until around 9 am.  After a bagel breakfast, we headed out on the 2 mile trail to China Poot Lake, a short hike but long enough for the dogs to get tired on and us to get back in time to miss the day breeze in the bay.  The day breeze is simply a gusty breeze that sweeps through the bay making the water too choppy for a small craft.  The hike went fantastic; the dogs did not have to be on their leashes at all!!!  Fisher and Jessie did so well that our worries about their running away from home habits back on the property were ceased.  They would run up ahead, and when they made a turn and could not see us any more, they would peak their heads around the corner until we were in view, and then they would keep on running.  We crossed paths with 4 groups of people, and the dogs did well in this situation as well, not running after them, but instead running ahead on the trail with us.  Finally, when we got to the lake, the dogs dove into the water, being a hot day, I assume to cool off.  It is the first time they have gone in the water as deep and they did.  The hike back was rough on the puppies; I could tell that they were really tired.  When we got back to the ranger station we got word that there was a small craft advisory.  We hurried up and loaded the boat to see if we could get through, but we arrived to very close cresting 5 foot seas.  We turned around and spent another night at the ranger station enjoying Bobbie and Kelly, the girls, puppies, and Smores next to a warm bon fire.  The weather channel on the radio forecasted the winds to die down after mid-night, so we planned and executed a successful escape back to Homer at 4 am.  We got back to our dear little tent in the boonies in time for me to gather my belongings and head down to the river for another 4 day shift of counting fish and maintaining the Anchor River Weir.

I must comment on todays events as well-

The temperature by the river stayed near 68 degrees all day, while Brent said that it reached 75 up at our place.  The water in the river at 7:30 pm tonight was 58 degrees!!!!!  That is warm water…warm enough to regret not having jumped in and swam in it.  L

The bugs were out and I got about a dozen mosquito bites.  Hopefully in the near future I will no longer get quarter sized welts on every mosquito bite.

After complaints were made about the wheelbarrow not making it past exposed roots on our trail and no direct path to the garden, Brent brushed a new path wide enough for the wheel barrow with no sticks or stumps in it.  He also went as far as removing all the roots from the trail to our tent by cutting them out with the chainsaw.  Tomorrow he is going to extend the trail of the “garden” to a spot where we picked for composting, and another one down to the creek.  This year’s garden location might change.  Since we don’t have running water we are wondering if it is a better idea to put the plants near a water source instead of trying to bring up enough water….hence why we might build raised beds further down on the hill.   We shall see.

The dogs are still doing great.

Rain

Thing are slow on the old homestead.  Brent went off to work on Tuesday, which is the day that I got off of work.  Tuesday itself was very productive.   After an emergency run to the vet because of a lame puppy leg due to a tangle with his chain and a tug of war (Fisher was fine, just a lot of bruising and an x-ray that confirmed the bone structure of a very large dog-to-be),  I turned a messy pile of chopped wood that Brent made into a beautiful 16′x4′x2′ rectangle.  For those of you who are aware of firewood lingo, a cord is 8′x4′x4′, so the 3 trees that Brent cut made 1 cord.  Brent wants to cut 10 cords by the end of the summer.   After the laborious stacking of wood, I re-planted most of my little pumpkins into bigger pots so that they are more comfortable until the beginning of June when we will put them in the ground.

The rest of the week was very uneventful.  It rained a lot and I didn’t want to go move hay around.  Instead I became a semi-expert in compost.  A trip to the Anchor Point Public Library,  a composting book later, I am ready to begin collecting materials to get a compost pile going.  The biggest thing is to get a lot of different stuff to throw in the pile for better composting.  So far I have a 20 gallon garbage can full of coffee grounds, several salon’s worth of hair clippings (full of nitrogen, as good as manure), and a future phone calls when more coffee grounds are available from different shops around town.  I haven’t been able to get waste greens, but I have not visited all the places I could get them at.  Add a trip to the beach for seaweed, some hay from our property, a truck full of manure, a trip to the local mill for sawdust, and our first compost pile is ready to start fermenting.  According to the book, if the pile is made right, it should be ready within 14 days (which is when the pile starts cooling off), it won’t be pretty looking soil, but it can finish decomposing in the garden.  At the rate of collection that I have going, I might be able to get a lot of compost this summer, enough to get the soil of our garden-to-be ship-shape for a wonderful growing season next summer.  This summer I don’t expect much from the garden, we are just testing things out as far as what grows and how long it takes things to mature.  The only thing that I hope does well are the pumpkins, simply because I am counting on them for decorations for our October wedding.  Jon, one of my co-workers, worked with a local farmer last summer on the North Fork, and he said they tried out pumpkins.  He said they grew, but didn’t have enough time to turn orange.  I should ask him how they were growing them.  I plan on covering the mounds with black plastic, and creating a dome with clear plastic for a green house affect.  One of the ladies who owns one of the greenhouse garden shops in Homer told me to make the greenhouse open from east to west so that the wind goes in to cool off the plants.  We are lucky we have a south facing slope.

Another thought:  I plan on saving the ashes from our wood stove this winter to help melt of snow from the garden area faster so we can get an early start on the garden next year.