S4E152 We Visited A Real Alaskan Homestead

Last week, we visited my brother Eric in Alaska.  He made arrangements for us to visit the homestead of some friends of his from church.  On this episode I talk about that visit and what I learned.  Am I inspired to move to Alaska?  Listen, and find out.
 
Enjoy!! 
Brian

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I am your host, Brian Wells, and I'm a fourth generation homesteader Since 2008, my family and I have been homesteading here in beautiful upstate New York. In 2019, I launched the Homestead Journey Podcast to help people just like you get started and find success on their journey towards self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and sustainability. This is the Homestead Journey and this is season four. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome everyone to another episode of the Homestead Journey podcast. My name is Brian Wells. I am coming to you from three B Farm and Homestead back here in beautiful upstate New York. Now this is episode 152. We are going to be taking a slight detour today from our. Recent topic of conversation, which has been the Mediterranean diet, and we are going to talk about one of the adventures that we embarked upon on our recent vacation to Alaska. We spent last week up in Alaska visiting with my brother Eric and his family, and just got back home yesterday, which is why I am a day late and a dollar short, uh, as they say in getting this episode out. Thank you so much for your patience, but I was just not up to recording an episode yesterday. Now you probably can hear I've got a little bit of congestion going on. Not sure if I picked up some heebies on the flight or if it's just the change in temperatures, but, uh, whatever it is between that. Kind of a little bit of jet lag and all of the things. I didn't have any confidence in my ability to be coherent in recording an episode yesterday. So again, thank you so much for your patients, but we're going to be talking about a visit that we took while we were in Alaska to a real. A real genuine Alaskan homestead. Not one of these fake Jake reality TV show Alaskan homesteads, but an actual real homestead. It was such a privilege to visit the homestead of Mark and Irene. I didn't ask them whether or not they have a homestead name or not. But it is an absolutely beautiful place. I'm looking forward to telling you all about it. But before we do that, I did want to jump on over to this week's homestead happenings. Now, we weren't here much of the week, but. There's a few things I did want to share with you, some things that kind of took place while we were gone, and so let me bring you up to speed on that before we jump over to this week's charting the course. So while we were gone this week, my dad came down and took care of the chores here on the homestead and I was very, very grateful for that. While we were gone, unfortunately, we did have, one of the smaller pigs in the, group that I had combined it. It died. And I think what happened, it was the runt. And I had thought about maybe putting it over with the littler pigs, the ones that, uh, were born, I think. Was it August or September of last fall, but they're definitely much smaller than the other pigs. And this one was maybe a little bit more in their size. I opted to keep it with the bigger pigs, and unfortunately I think it just got crushed in a pig pile. So, that was unfortunate. But, as my buddy Dave says, when you. Livestock. Eventually you have dead stock. And so we did lose a pig while we were gone and we had some pig shenanigans. What would it be without pig shenanigans here on three B Farm and Homestead. My, my dad sent me a text and he said, uh, Brian Bear has gotten in with the ladies. What do you want me to do? And I. Leave him be, I'm done fighting it. If he wants to hang out with the ladies, he can spend a spring of love with the ladies. Boris has been in there, bear's been in there, so I have no way of knowing. Who got who. So whoever has been, impregnated in there, well, it's gonna be meat pigs. There's no way we can register them. Very frustrating. But it is what it is. And so we'll see. Hopefully those pigs will be onto. Greener pasture, shall we say, before they Pharaoh. But it is what it is. I'm not gonna fight it anymore. So Bear is now in with the ladies hanging out, living life large, and we'll see what happens in three months, three weeks and three days. But some positive things because I don't wanna be all negative. There were some good things that took place while we were. The first thing is, is that these seed starting systems slash room slash whatever you want to call it, that we built in the basement, it is working out very, very well. It's maintaining a great heat. things are sprouting well, and I am very, very happy with how things are progressing in there. Not everything sprouted that we planted, but a lot of it did, and I am very, very happy with how things are progressing in there. The other thing I wanted to bring you up to date on is my experiment with the currents and the grapes. Now the currents are doing, That the current cuttings have all leafed out. I think that's gonna work out very, very well. But so far the grapes haven't done anything and so we'll see whether or not they take off. Maybe they're gonna be a little late to the party, we shall see, but the currents right now are, are doing very, very well. I think the next step in my experiment, and I think I may have mentioned this, is to find some willow, because willow is supposed to help things root and so I'm gonna get some willow cuttings. There's a lot of people here in the area where I live that have willow trees in their yards and so I'm sure it will not be hard for me to get some willow branches to put in to try to encourage. These cuttings to to take root and that I'll be able to plant them. But so far, so good, at least with the currents, the grapes not so much, but time will tell and I will keep you updated on that and hopefully this year, unlike last year, I will be able to carry all of this to completion and I'm not going to end up losing track of it and tapping out early. That's my small quick homestead happenings update for this episode. I do hope things are well wherever you are at. So as you can see, one more time, I am flying solo here in the Homestead Journey Podcast Studios. Bonnie is not joining me on this episode. Hopefully she will be back with me next week as we begin wrapping up our series on the Mediterranean Diet. But today we are deviating from that a little bit to talk about a visit that we took last week while we were in Alaska to a real Alaskan homestead. Now my brother has some friends, mark and Irene who are homesteaders in Alaska. And they were gracious enough to allow us to stop over and see what they've got going on. And it was certainly a privilege. It was a pleasure, it was an honor, and it was so eye-opening to see how they are homesteading. They have an absolutely beautiful setup. They're on 40. Three or four of it, maybe five of it's been cleared. But, the view, oh my goodness folks, the view off of the front of their house is just absolutely magnificent as they're looking towards, uh, some beautiful mountains, just these rugged mountains there in Alaska, just absolutely breathtaking. It was so beautiful there. when they bought that property, there was no house. There was no barn, there was no greenhouse, there was no generator house, there was no chicken run. There was nothing like that. It was raw land, and they have been working to clear it and to set it up as a productive homestead. One of the first things I noticed when we pulled onto the property was this barn, we'll call it, that they had created out of shipping containers, Conex boxes that they had built a roof over top of and then put a back on. Now, I don't recall ever seeing anything like this. I found it to be rather fascinating and just an absolutely wonderful idea. If you are going to start a homestead from scratch and there's nothing there at all to level out a piece of land and to bring in a few shipping containers, put a bit of space in between them, put some rafters, a roof on top of it. And, and to basically have a barn, but an easy way to secure your tools and so forth. I just thought it was brilliant. And so now they have a spot in between the shipping containers where they can pull their tractor, where they can store, gear. They have a place to hang all of their shovels and things like that. They stored their chicken feeders and all of those kinds of things underneath there. I, I believe they stored some of their feed in there. I, I, I don't remember all of. What they had there, but certainly a nice open area, uh, underneath that roof. But then within the Conex boxes themselves, they had storage. On the one side, he had tools and a workbench a little bit of a workshop, we'll call it, set up there, so to speak. He was able to secure that, lock it up nice and tight. It's heated so we can go out there and work in the winter, which was really, really nice. The other side is where they have freezers and they also store their winter gear and their summer gear depending on what season it is. I just thought it was absolutely brilliant and so certainly something that I plan on keeping in the back of my mind if I ever decide to do some kind of homestead from scratch. Now, I highly doubt I'll ever do anything like that, but certainly I thought it was a brilliant idea. Next to the Conex boxes, they had a generator house. Now they just put in a, a new Kubota diesel generator. I don't remember how big it is, but it certainly is big enough to power their entire homestead. Their plan long term is to put in solar, but they haven't gotten there yet. They're trying to figure out what direction they want to go with regards to batteries. So right now they have this really, really awesome. Kubota generator and with a flip of a switch, if the grid goes down, they can be powering their entire homestead off of that generator. Really, really nice setup. They had a wonderful, wonderful greenhouse there and it was what I referred to as an Anna White style greenhouse. And if you know, you know, um, if you follow Justin Rhoads, you saw the greenhouse that they built several years ago. Very much in that same style. I don't know if Anna White. Develop that style, or if it was more that she came up with plans for people to be able to build them easily. She actually is from Alaska, and so I saw those style greenhouses all over, all over Alaska. Um, Very, very popular up there. So I don't know if she took an Alaskan style greenhouse and popularized it or if just Anna White style greenhouses are now popularized in Alaska. It's kind of what came first. The chicken or the egg, I don't know. But they had this absolute beautiful greenhouse and the awesome thing was is I think it was like 30 degrees outside. Uh, there were still snow banks that were like three feet deep, and inside that greenhouse I could see it was like 78 80. I mean, it was, it was just beautiful in there. So definitely something very, very, doable from a home setting perspective, to have a greenhouse of that style in Alaska. Certainly not, outside the realms of possibility. Now getting into the greenhouse, well, being able to open up the door, you're gonna have to dig a little bit to do that. They were actually in the process of digging. To be able to get in there and get things going. But, uh, that was really, really nice. Now they do the majority of their gardening there in raised beds, and that is something that, from my understanding, is very common in Alaska because raised beds are going to, uh, warm up faster than in ground, uh, gardens wood. And so gardening in raised beds is very, very popular for home gardeners in Alaska. And that's certainly what they did there. But they do some in ground gardening, particularly with potatoes, I think he mentioned. But the bulk of the gardening they do is in raised beds. Didn't get to see them because as I said, there was like two or three feet of snow on the ground while we were there. I think the Monday that we were there, there was like six to eight inches of snow that they got, and we got more snow throughout the week. Some places we visited, they had snow banks still over the top of my head. And where there were not snow banks, just the depth of the snow from the snowfall that they had gotten was up to the bottom of, of stop signs. It was, it was incredible. Um, but. Because of that, I didn't actually get to see their raised beds. So I have to take them at their word that they garden in raised beds, cuz it was just a mountain of snow. From my perspective, They do have a lot of fruit trees. They have perennials, they have berry bushes, so all of that grows up there. A lot of cherry trees, I think they had there. Um, I think they had some apple trees there on their homestead as well. So doing a lot of perennial type things in addition to their annual gardening, which that was very, very encouraging to see. Now, one of the things that I was thinking is like they've gotta have a really, really, Short growing season, I mean two to three feet of snow. That's not gonna disappear overnight. But what I found is that actually their growing season up there as far as last average frost date and first average frost date is very similar to mine here in beautiful upstate New York. But the big difference for. Is that they have the very, very long Alaskan summer days where they'll get 23 and a half hours of sunlight. And so because of that, they actually can grow huge squash and pumpkins up there. In fact, I think it's like world record. Pumpkins and so forth are grown in Alaska because of the amount of sunlight that they get. So their growing season, while it's very comparable to mine because of the length of the days there, they actually can grow more stuff than I can grow here, which I just found Absolut. Fascinating. I would've never thought that. I had never thought about that. And so that was just very, very eye-opening to me. Beyond gardening, they have chickens, so they have a nice little coop. I would call it one of those Amish style coops, where it's maybe eight by 10. Has the nest that sticks off the back where you can collect the eggs from outside. It's pretty well sealed up and they actually have a hover heater inside of it. So he said it can get down to 30 below and without hover heater in there. It keeps that coop at about 30 degrees, which is plenty warm for chickens. While we were there, they were also in the process of raising a batch of Cornish Cross. I think they've got about three weeks, and they will be processing their first batch of Cornish Cross Chicken. So they're right about on the same schedule is I would be up here in beautiful upstate New York. The big difference though is that they are raising all of these Cornish Cross in their basement. And their basement isn't really a full basement. It's more of like a combo between a crawl space and a basement. So basically what they did is they went up, I think like two blocks higher than a regular crawl, crawl space would be. So what that means is you can kind of get between two joists and you can stand up, but then you kinda have to stoop down to kind of move around. But it's working out great for them. And they're raisin. I think they had 30 Cornish cross in the corner. No smell. They're having to work at it, I think they use straw instead of shavings. They use chop straw, I think is what she said, instead of shavings. So they're having to clean it out very regularly, not to get that smell up into the house, but they're doing the things. They're raisin Cornish cross meat birds, and I think their plan is to do two batches this year, and they're hoping to sell one batch, which should cover the feed for both batches. And you can't argue with that. It's working out great for 'em. Also down in their basement. They have a freeze dryer. They have, uh, a place to store all of their dry goods. So they got a little bit of a pantry going on down there. They've got all of their canned goods down there, and when I'm talking about they've got canned goods stored down there. They do a lot of canning, they do a lot of pickles and jams and jellies and vegetables and meat and fish. They can all of the things and. So that was very, very exciting for me to see that. And that actually is something that seems to be pretty common in Alaska, um, is for people to be involved in canning, in particular fish. They had some salmon that they had smoked and then they had canned and they gave us a couple of jars of that. We took it back to my brother's house and we opened up one of them and had that on crackers and I actually brought a jar. With me here to beautiful upstate New York. But while we were at my brothers, he took out some of his smoked salmon and we turned it into a smoked salmon dip. And oh my goodness. That was kind of like, slap your mama. Good. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I mean, it was good stuff. Yes, absolutely. But speaking of fish, That and hunting really seems to be a big part of Alaskan culture and that is to really ev avail yourself of the resources that God has given, has granted them. That's something that I probably don't do well. In beautiful upstate New York. I don't avail myself of as much as I should have, and I certainly don't talk about as much as I should here on the podcast. Things like foraging and things like hunting and fishing. Now, to be frank with you, part of the reason why I don't talk about them much here on the podcast as far as the hunting and fishing aspect of it is it's not something that I really. Doing and, and we'll talk about that here in a second. And then the foraging thing has been something that's been very, very interesting to me. Something that I want to learn more about, and it's something that I'm looking forward to learning more about at the upcoming Southern Adirondack Homesteading Festival in May when Rich Giordano does some foraging walks. Very, very interested in that. But because I haven't done much of it and I don't know much about it, I certainly haven't covered it much here on the podcast, and that's probably a failure on my part. It's probably an oversight on my part, but the hunting and fishing thing has just not been something that's been something that I. Have really ever enjoyed much, with the exception of when we lived in Brazil. When we lived in Brazil, the style of fishing that we did was far more active than the fishing that we have a tendency to do here in the United States, which is go cast and cast and cast and drown worms. And honestly, probably the reason why I don't enjoy it is cuz I'm not good at it, you know? But there are people that'll go out and walk rivers and fly fish all day and if they don't catch anything, they're happier to pig in mud. That's not it for me. If I'm going fishing, I want to catch fish. And if I don't catch fish, then to me, I've wasted. Same way. When it goes, when, when it comes down to hunting, like for me, I don't enjoy hunting just to go get out in the woods. Like I can go out in the woods and get cold and not carry a gun with me. To me, if I'm going hunting and I don't get something, I don't bring back some game of some sort. Then to me that was a waste of time and I just don't wanna waste time. So for me, hunting and fishing, Unless I'm guaranteed to catch something, it's just not my jam, which is fine. Different strokes for different folks, but it does seem to me that the hunting and the fishing in Alaska is much better, and it's a little bit of a different style of. Hunting and fishing a little bit more active than what I am used to doing here in beautiful upstate New York. So perhaps it would be something that if I lived up there, I would avail myself of more than what I do here. Uh, here in New York, my brother had freezers full of fish. And in fact, he sent me home with a, an entire cooler filled with fish. And, uh, my family and I will be enjoying that. And he was happy to get rid of it because it's coming up on fishing season and he wants to be able to go get more fish. And so he's going to be able to do that in part because he blessed us with a cooler full of fish. But that certainly does seem to be a very, very important part. Not just the, this homestead's approach to being self-sufficient and self-reliant and sustainable, but it really does seem to be a big, huge part of the Alaskan culture. There's so much more I can say about the, their homestead. They're just doing all the things. It was very, very impressive. And again, I'm looking around here, we. Mid-April, two to three feet of snow on the ground. And I'm thinking, how in the world are you gonna raise and grow any food here? And yet they're doing all the things. And then as they started explaining to me about the growing season and the impact that the long sunny days have on their ability to raise and grow food, I was like, oh duh. Why didn't I think of that. Now down the end of the road from where my brother lives, uh, is a couple, Mike and Missy, who have kind of adopted my brother and sister-in-law as their own children and my nieces and nephews as their own grandkids. And they are big time into, uh, gardening as well, and they're doing the whole fishing and the hunting thing. I mean, Mike actually has a grizzly bear that he shot. Mounted in his living room, like it's, when I say mounted, it's on its hind legs. It, it's a full on grizzly bear mount. I mean, it's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. But he's into all of those kinds of things. But he also is a big time gardener. And so my nephew Finley, has been starting plants down there. With Mike. And so every day Finley would leave to go down to see if his plants had popped up. It was fun to watch him be very, very excited about raisin and growing food, and I loved seeing that. While we were there, my nephew Bryce, he's been wanting to get some plants started, so they got him a little Jiffy pot, uh, greenhouse thing, um, with a. Pete pods and he got some, uh, brassica started and I, I, I think some peppers and maybe some tomatoes. Um, Finley has some tomatoes and cucumbers and watermelon and I think lettuce and Mike himself has tomatoes and peppers and I don't even remember all the stuff that he's got started. He's using rayd beds as well. And so it's just very exciting to see my nephews and my niece, uh, Bella, as well, be around these people that are very, very passionate about growing food. And to see, Bryce and Finley in particular get bit by that bug. Um, hopefully it sticks and they will be the next generation of Wells's carrying on the tradition. Of raisin and growing food. So overall, certainly it was a vacation. We did some skiing, did some sight scene. All of the things, certainly not the best time. If you're wanting to go to Alaska and look for a homestead, um, certainly not the best time of the year to do that. And I, I will tell you that's not why we went. My brother said his mission was to, um, convince me that I needed to leave beautiful upstate New York and move to Alaska, and while I found Alaska beautiful, and I understand why it has captivated my brother and sister-in-law the way that it has, I would say that I'm still not convinced that I need to move to. Now I would love to spend a season growing a garden in Alaska. I think that would be fun. I would really love to experiment to see just exactly how these long days affect what you can raise and grow. I, I would absolutely love to see that, but I don't know as I'm ready to leave beautiful upstate New York yet, maybe someday, but. I still love it here. Beautiful Upstate New York. Anyhow, folks, I hope you found this interesting. It certainly was a privilege and an honor to visit the homestead of, of Mark and Irene, and then spend time talking with Mike and Missy about how they raise and grow food there in Alaska. And I certainly came away inspired. I came away challenged, and I came away with a little bit more knowledge than when I arrived there in beautiful Alaska. It's just, I, I can't say it's more beautiful than upstate New York. I'm not gonna say it's less beautiful in upstate New York. I'm just gonna say it's beautiful in its own right. Maybe that's lame, but it is what it is. I still love beautiful upstate New York. I do. I do. I. Anyhow, folks, that's it for this episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. Any questions at all, reach out to me, Brian, at the homestead journey.net. You can find us on all of the socials. The links will be in the show notes, and until next time, everybody, keep up the good work.