Hello Again

Welcome to a new year! Three months have passed since the last post and, really, I have no excuses. I'll say I was hibernating. Here's a short recap:






October saw commercial shrimping for Atlin and Huck....tasty! 

 Every year we spend Thanksgiving week out deer hunting on Chichagof Island. This year the weather made things really tough--with two of us hunting for 7 days we only got one deer. (We saw upwards of 35 does, but only two bucks.) Atlin made jerky out of the whole thing--delicious, but meat sure doesn't last very long that way. It's a good thing we still have moose and goat in the freezer! The best part of this trip was that Huck hiked with us for 4 days. It was his first deer hunting season where he didn't have to get carried at all. Things sure are coming together now that he's four!

Dressed female turkey

November also saw the butchering of our two turkeys. The Thanksgiving female was quite a bit smaller than the Christmas male. She was about 20 pounds and he 40. They were amazingly delicious, and provided an abundance of leftovers for extended family and ourselves. I boiled the carcass down and made several batches of stock to freeze for soups, and I bagged 8 meals worth of meat. We've been eating wonderful, fresh soup with homegrown potatoes, carrots, parsley, onions, garlic, and turkey. Too bad I have to buy the celery.

 

December has been the month of eggs--I'm selling 6-10 dozen a week! When we returned from our hunting trip the refrigerator was packed with a couple hundred eggs. Luckily, this town has a high demand for fresh eggs!

 January brought me full circle with my composting co-op project--ONE FULL YEAR of community composting! It was long and hard with it's ups and downs, but I made it. About two months into the project, I thought,"Can I really do this for a year?! Now I feel like I can go on forever!

More about these and other projects in the near future--I'm going to try to get back to doing weekly posts. It maybe be winter, but the harvest isn't over!

Fall in Maine

I got my first moose! 

It was a wild, dark, and starry morning of coyotes howling and bats darting. It gave way to the dawn of loons calling, crows cawing, and moose grunting. A friend was cow calling and raking brush for about five minutes at first light when a bull started grunting at us. My father saw it walk out of the trees about half a mile down a logging road while I sat in a growing clear cut. I first saw it at 50 yards but because of the angle, I had no shot. I waited patiently, sure it was going to bust us and take off, but he kept walking while he stared right at me, blazing orange and wide-eyed. He was getting closer and finally I knew I had to take my shot before the bull tripped on my father. I got him steady in my scope as he took three more steps, and as soon as he stopped, BOOM!. He jumped off the road, into the trees breathing heavily. He was silent, and I could see my hunting partners wondering if I had missed, but I knew. Then we heard two heavy breaths, then what sounded like a giant tree falling, pops, cracks, boom and all. He gave his loud last breath, and then our loud excitement began. From the time I pulled to the trigger to the dying breath seemed to last forever in the moment, but it was probably 45 seconds. They say the work starts once you get a moose down, but in Maine they have things like logging roads, trucks, power winches, and skinning hoists, so it really wasn't very hard. Since it took my father 30 years to get drawn for the tag, I look forward to another moose hunt when I'm 60 and he's 90!

The weigh station where you register your moose. 668 lbs.

Home to show Huck and family.

Skinning it at the butcher's house.

 It was also a great harvest time while we were there. My aunt gave us loads of tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden and some of her homemade garden pickles and green tomato relish. We got to pick pumpkins from a pumpkin patch, buy fresh corn at a farm stand, pick buckets of potatoes behind the commercial harvesters, and pick wild apples to our heart's content.

We also were lucky enough to go on a horse-drawn wagon ride to see the leaves in their peak of oranges, reds, and yellows.

  Fall in Maine is great! 

Fishing and Shrimping

A hump of a humpy!

Tossing it in the tote

 Gillnetting is done and now I get to stay home for more than a couple of days at a time--what a relief! It was a great season of family gillnetting, but I'm looking forward to living without the constant blare of a diesel engine and being able to actually walk around.


Our life is completely surrounded and supported by food. The thousands of pounds of salmon that we catch to make our $$ is just a start. We have a good time getting delicacies for ourselves in the downtime of fishing. Huck, the self-proclaimed man in charge of the shrimp pot, scored us plenty of prawns last week with a little depth-finder know-how from Dad .

Shrimping

 

 Huck starts with a shirmpy voodoo dance.....

...then hauls it in until he feels the pot.....

  ....Mom or Dad takes over......

 

....then Huck puts them in the bucket! 

 Mom pops the heads off, 

Huck throws the heads overboard for the halibut to eat, 

mom sautes the shrimp in butter, 

and we all stuff our faces, 

Sriracha sauce optional.

We also scored this tanner crab who happened to be standing on top of the pot when we hauled it in! 

We are so lucky to have this life! 

Family Time

We just spent the past few days family gillnetting, which is always a blast. I'm not much of a sport fisherman (except for ice fishing), but I just love picking wads of fish out of a quarter-mile long net! The gnarly 'gater teeth ripped a hole in my rain pants at the knee, the brailer bag hook ripped a hole at the back thigh, and my jacket zipper, corroded from our trip a few weeks ago, gave way. Luckily, I was having so much fun I didn't care that I was constantly wet!

My son is amazing. We've raised him in a completely reality-based environment, and his understanding of the world is astounding. We've taught him through example and through outright discussion. He reasons with remarkable power and is able to construct logical solutions to problems. We include him in our daily adult lives and always explain things without "dumbing them down." When he asks why buoys float, I tell him it's because they are less dense than water. When he asks why it's not dark at night, we get the globe and a lamp out. He's seen one cartoon in his whole life, (and that was the doing of an unknowing uncle), and I think that has had the biggest impact on his world view. His brain is full of the world, not of other people's imaginative drawings and conversations. I realize that I am a complete radical on this, but I truly believe that television is a giant obstacle for children. It may not actually harm them, but it certainly isn't doing any good. At the very least it takes up valuable time that could be used for an actual experience, like taking a walk, observing worms, or erupting a sand volcano. It's always been apparent on the school playground Huck's perception of a game is quite different than the other children's. One day he came home and said he played Batman. I asked how to play and he said, "One person pretends to be a bat and chases the other kids." He was imagining an actual bat, while others were imagining a man in a costume. Things like this happen with him all the time. My favorite one is when his friend said she was going to be a fairy for Halloween he responded that he was going to be a skiff. Clearly he was picturing her in a ferry costume. Anyway, enough of my neurotic parenting ideals..... We've been mostly fishing, eating lots of fresh and homemade food, picking berries and playing outside. It's been a fun couple of weeks!

Running the hydraulics to haul the net

Watching the bouy as he drives

Atlin verbally coached Huck through his first jog up to the bouy. Huck was stoked on getting use the clutch without help!  
Dog salmon are the bulk of our gillnetting catch. 'Gaters are spawned out Dogs. They are the meanest looking salmon you'll ever see!

I love 'gaters!

 After three full days of fishing on the boat, we came home and crashed hard. In the morning, Huck wanted to......go fishing in the canoe! After the majority of a month on a boat, Atlin wasn't too keen, but Huck's enthusiasm won. We trolled around a bit with no luck, then hiked up a creek and landed a cut throat trout. Atlin set the hook and Huck reeled her in! It was a great (and sunny!) day.




And since fishing is the lively hood of our family, I couldn't pass up this t-shirt at Salvation Army. I combined it with a plaid cotton shirt tail to make a cute just-above-the-knee flared skirt. It's destined for the Haines Fair next week. I wish I could keep every skirt I made!