Several years ago, I began a journey into a more self-reliant life style for my family. My goals were to save money and provide healthier foods for us year-round. I have always had gardens and in the past two years, I have made use of the local berries, planted perennial food sources and started baking our own breads and cooking most of our foods from scratch. I even sell some of my breads, cereals, treats and jams at the Tanana Valley Farmers Market.
This year I am moving into micro farming, an exciting expansion. We are raising 6 chicks with my sister, have refurbished our greenhouse and are building two 4 x 12 raised bed gardens. Along with our wild raspberry bushes, we are adding 3 domesticated raspberry bushes, a choke cherry tree and are playing with two Russian apple trees.
Why are we embarking on this way of life? I think that to really understand why we, and so many other people here, choose to lead a more self-reliant life style, we have to look at Alaska itself.
Alaska is a unique place to live. In a way, people are expected to be self-reliant. Many of the creature comforts normal in the other parts of the U.S. aren't available or are very expensive here. They become luxury items or are just done without. These comforts may be more accessible in the cities, but cities here tend to be small. Except for Anchorage, once you leave the city limits, life is much more rural in nature.
We live on 5 acres in an unincorporated small town about 25 miles from Fairbanks, Alaska. Although Fairbanks is the second largest city in Alaska, the city itself had only 31,535 residents and the urban area had close to 52,000 people in 2010. The Fairbanks North Star Borough, which is slightly smaller than the state of New Jersey, has a little over 97,000 people.
When I moved here almost 13 years ago, most of the homes would be considered cabins and close to half had no running water. People built their own homes with what money they had on hand and continued to work on them for years after moving into them. This hasn't changed much since then. When a family grows, another room or addition is added to accommodate them. There is a local laundromat, along with having washers and driers, assumes the critical service of providing potable water and showers to the community. People bring jugs and buckets to carry water home at 25 cents for 7 gallons.
Most homes are heated with a combination of heating fuel (the price of which has skyrocketed as all fuel has) and wood. As the price of fuel rises, the use of wood burning stoves increases. Cutting trees and gathering wood is a huge money saver! Also it is what keeps our house warm when it is 50 below zero and our heater can't keep up. The cost of heating homes here tends to keep them small.
It is now mid-May and spring is on us. The leaves are coming out quickly, still that beautiful mint green Walking with my son the other day, I had to smile at how many sheep, goats, chicken and bees I could see or hear. As summer approaches, gardens are being prepared, chicks are being raised and hives worked. As July approaches, salmon will be caught and frozen or smoked, eggs and milk collected and first harvests made. August will bring the raspberries, the blueberries and the high and low bush cranberries. Early September is filled with harvesting and storing vegetables, herbs and berries. September and October brings hunting season and the moose, caribou and sheep meat to feed the family for the next year.
Alaskans tend to use technology to increase their ability to be more independent and self-reliant. Bush planes and jet boats are used to get to far off hunting grounds, homesteads and villages. High efficiency heaters heat homes during our extreme winters. Battery blankets and oil pan heaters allow our cars to function during those cold months. But even with technology, Alaska is not an easy place to live. It is the modern frontier and I believe that the people who pushed West during the 1800's would not feel that out of place here.
