|
Post by Anataq on Jan 29, 2005 13:41:47 GMT -5
Pam and I are very glad to have found your forum. I am sure that you will find many posts from us over the next year or so while we are finalizing our move to the Alaskan Bush. It is very exciting to be able to communicate with folks who have lived, or are living in remote parts of Alaska. Pam and I and our son Riley will be moving to our remote property on the Iliamna River in South West Alaska in the near future. We have been planning and working on our project for about the last seven years or so, and we are very near ready (or as ready as we're going to be) to make our move. We are striving to move as close to a subsistence based lifestyle as possible and so I am sure we will have many questions for you. We regularly chat on MSN Groups "homestead family," so if you want to join, we'd love to chat. Pam and I created a website to follow the progress of our project. We will be driving up to Alaska with the last of our things in May of 2006, loading everything onto the barge, selling the car and moving to our new home. Right now we have two large canvas tents and wood stoves for lodging and a storage shed for our tools and equiptment. We are building our home the spring summer and fall of 2006, or at least the 16x34 portion of it. We have so much to learn it's all a bit overwelming, but one step at a time. Anyway, I am sure I could go on and on, Thanks again for the great forum, hope to see it grow. -Anataq www.pawcreekhomestead.com
|
|
|
Post by Jenny on Jan 30, 2005 2:06:41 GMT -5
Great to have you in our forum. We do hope to hear lots from you. Feel free to ask questions, and to post answers. We checked out your website. Looks like you will have a beautiful homestead. Hope we can be of help, but it does sound like you're going to be more high tech than we are at ours Never been to Lake Iliamna, but have flown over the area several times. Looks great ! We'd love to hear more about you, and what prompted you to move to Alaska, that particular place, why you want to live that wat, etc. . . Maybe I'll post a question like that in one of the threads. Anyway, welcome ! ;D Jenny, Alaska HOMESTEADING Journal
|
|
|
Post by Anataq on Jan 30, 2005 2:47:44 GMT -5
Jenny, Thanks for responding to our post. Hmmm, in order to keep this post short I will save the full answer to the "why are we moving to the bush, why this lifestyle?" question for another post. To sum it up though, we are both tired of this super fast paced frenzy in which we now live, tired of the pollution, trash, crime, education, and on and on. Of course these are just excuses to live the life I've dreamed of. Of course I can not speak for Pam, but I know she to loves nature and the wild, loves family and is excited about the chance to raise our family in a way that some how seems more real. We have no delusions about the tremedous amount of work we face, and that there is a distinct amount of risk involved, but not to try is to live the rest of our lives wondering "what if."
Why Iliamna? well that's a tough one. I spent two years looking for a piece of land that would meet my criteria. I wanted a place without permafrost, with timber to build, preferably on a river near a lake, with water frontage. I wanted good soils, good hunting, fishing, berry picking, I wanted remote, but still accessable by methods other than just an airplane. Anyway, most of the real estate agents told me good luck and that I would not find what I was looking for unless I had a whole lot of money-which I did not. As luck would have it, I found what I was looking for, fairly moderate climate, great hunting fishing, on a river near a large lake, access to the ocean not far off, lots of timber, good soils and a beatiful stream which falls from a mountain behind the property. The one thing we have found out about the Iliamna area after having purchased the land, is that land if very hard to find in our area. Most of it is National Park, state land, or ANCSA lands, very, very little private land. The only draw back to the area is the extremely high Brown Bear population, of course this makes a good reason to visit us- to watch the bears. Lake Iliamna and it's tributaries see the largest sockeye salmon runs in the world and along with all the rest of the wild critters. Not to mention the area is very beautiful, a bit wet a times, and windy at others, but every place has it's drawbacks.
On the high teck issue, we have gradually scaled back some of the high teck, but we have an access issue that requires us to run boats, without the boats we do not have direct access to the village twenty miles away, we would be blocked on that side by ANCSA lands. As we become comfortable with our new lifestyle and we don't want to spend what little money we have on lots of gasoline, I am sure we will gradually scale back. Right now it is just a matter of filling out the last of the odds and ends on our lists. Trapping, hunting supplies, food supplies for our first year, building materials, etc.
Have lots and lots of questions, don't know where to begin.
Thanks again, -Anataq
|
|