Megan in AK

Inside and out...the work continues

2008-11-04T10:53:00.005-09:00

Here's an interior shot of the cabin. We just had some furniture delivered last week. It is starting to look homey in there. We also had the "driveway" worked on. Up until now we would leave the house in the morning with flashlights roll up our pants, put on rubber boots and head up the hill to the car. The hill had turned into deep mud and could barely be traversed with a four wheel drive vehicle and was rough on the four wheeler. This also goes for bringing groceries down and laundry up. But we bit the big one and bought some crushed rock, like ten dumptrucks full and had the backhoe come down and make us a driveway. The backhoe moved our picnic table out of the way, onto the trampoline and I forgot to ask him to move it back when he left. That thing weighs so much we may just have to picnic on the tramp from now on. Now I can actually ride my bike, yeah right, maybe when it stops raining.

Happy Halloween

2008-11-04T10:34:00.004-09:00

Soiyor and Jonathan were able to carve the pumpkin before they took off last week. Jonathan to Sitka for an alternative energy conference and Soiyor to Juneau and Skagway for a volleyball tournament. Their pumpkin had a knife sticking out its head and a butt.

Back to Blogging

2008-11-02T15:05:00.001-09:00

Why can't I upload pictures? It seems that my computer got upgraded when we went back to school and I can't upload pictures with my Safari browser.

Sitka-Back in school again

2008-07-10T17:28:00.006-08:00

I am writing from Sitka now and using some new technology, i.e. a Mac. I have been double timing PCs and Macs but I am now convinced that I like PCs better. They much easier to manage photos with.

Anyway, I am trying to get another degree called Masters of Art in Teaching (MAT). So I have to do 5 weeks in Sitka. I was not happy about this. Jonathan and Soiyor are in Edna Bay and probably seeing lots of bears and catching lots of salmon. It is also time to make fireweed honey and kelp relish. I may try to do this here in Sitka. The sockeye salmon were running in Coffman Cove before I left. Now I have to sit in the classroom for 8 hours a day and then do home work at night. It's not all that bad, the first few days I saw a brown bear with two cubs during a nice trail walk and then we hiked up a mountain to a look out at 2550 ft.. The next day I went and bought a camera. Since than I haven't taken many photos because the work load has increased but here are a few from the Fourth of July parade here.

Summer in the Cove

2008-06-24T12:15:00.002-08:00

We had a good whalewatching trip out on the old bass boat on Sunday. We had Killer whales, humpback whales, sea lions and seals. Even Dolly loves to go whale watching.

These are some of the flowers that were growing in the yard a few weeks ago.

Here's Soiyor and Ant Misty

2008-06-24T12:00:00.002-08:00

The day Soiyor got here her Aunt Mistybrought her seven rabbits. The next night she got a new .22 rifle, its pink. I think there is only one rabbit left.

We've been busy going out on the boat. We've been camping and clam digging and crabbing and whale watching

This is a really bad picture of her carivorous Ant Misty.

It was time to move into the cabin.

2008-06-24T11:14:00.002-08:00

I came home from work one night, and Jonathan had moved the hot tub down to the cabin. Now that this was done, it was official we had moved into the cabin. He also brought the matress so there was no turning back. The hot utb area is beautiful with a deck and some potted plants. I am not sure if I have posted our hot tub before but it is very cool. It has a snorkle or scuba stove in it. It is just a wood stove that sits under the water and you load it from the top. Tub its self is an old barrel, just enough for the two of us.

Big John and JLo from Colorado built us some beautiful benches for the kitchen counter. They are made from black pine and pine pole with some awesome worm hole details.

Alaskan Bruises

2008-06-24T10:52:00.004-08:00

When Soiyor got here it didn't take her long to notice that Alaskans seem to be bruised or cut up alot. So we are starting a collection of cuts and bruises photos... Here Kyla shows off a slightly aged bruise that has lost some of its purple undertones yet clearly illustrates some pain was suffered.

This next one was a doozy, Becky was moving into her new place and moved her refrigerator across her calf.

In this one Jonathan raked his arm across a staple, this is by far not his only cut and scrape. As we were moving into the cabin I realized that we have seven boxes of Bandaids and most of them were empty. We are also on our second bottle of iodine this year.

Isn't this prescious, Soiyor's first Alaskan bruise.

Lots of training lately, and driving.

2008-05-04T18:59:00.005-08:00

I was sent to Ketchikan last week for a Phytoplankton Monitoring workshop. They sent me home with a microscope and a small lab to monitor phytoplankton in the cove. This is part of a nationwide monitoring network, the Alaska portion should be on the National Ocean Service site soon. When I got back I went into a Commercial Fishing Emergency Instruction and Onboard Drill course. Then I got to teach some of the modules to the students at the pool in Craig. They seemed to enjoy it, hopefully they won't need it. Then the ferry started up again on Friday so I am back to work on that as well. I saw six or seven killer whales yesterday and I have the first two humpbacks so far this season. I also saw another bear on the road. The road is getting some pavement so there are flaggers and lots of stuff to look at too. There's Brian on the roller and Jean standing by with her stop sign in case Brian gets out of control. I got home from the ferry and had a call from the Coast Gaurd that had to do with my harbormastering job and another from the National Weather Service about a weather station on a rock out in the middle of the straights that went out of service over the winter. They want me to check on it. That one may be a bit over my head but the rest is doable. No days off for a while. Summer is here.

Shelves, shelves, and more shelves

2008-05-01T07:00:00.002-08:00

Jonathan feels like he has been building shelves for weeks. The reality is he has. But they look great. We have spots for hats and gloves in the entryway and cool hooks to hang the never ending pile of jackets. There are also shelves for the bathroom stuff. I need to catch up and do the grout on the tile up there.

Another driveway casualty

2008-05-01T06:44:00.004-08:00

Robert was down at the cabin the other day. We usually tell people to back down so they don't have to back up the driveway in the dark. Well Robert stayed into the night, he was routering in the sink. When we went to back out the driveway it turned out he didn't have any back up lights. How he got the truck in this position backing up I have no idea. Anyway, everyone carries come-alongs because going in the ditch is sport around here. Russ and Johnna came out in the morning to help him out. One of our rigs was in the driveway ditch for a month this winter. Rumor has it that someone is going to blast a rock pit up on the road near where our driveway begins, soooo we may have a driveway this summer!!!!

Spring sprung again, this time I have the critters to prove it.

2008-04-22T19:40:00.006-08:00

I saw the first black bear of the season today. It was a little one but his coat was nice and healthy and very dark. He was eating grass on the side of the road, he was pretty relaxed and aware that I was there, he made his way through some grass and then went into the timber line. Jonathan called and said there was a weird white duck down at the ball field. It turned out to be four snow geese, 1 male 3 females, passing through on their migration. There were also a bunch of deer (sitka black tail) out too. They're all over the place.

I also found out I am accepted to the Master of Teaching program at U of Alaska and I also heard from my prof from URI. He wanted to know if I still plan on finishing my thesis, but I am pretty sure I missed the deadline on that one. If not I may be able to finish still. I have completed all of the course work, just have to turn in the darn paper.

Appliances

2008-04-19T09:16:00.006-08:00

We picked up the appliances from Boyer Barge. A chick named Rainbow runs the forklift there she's cool. When appliances arrive that means things are pretty close to moving in. Hurrah!! Jon drove through camp with a refrigerator in the back of the truck and rounded up Ken, Bear, Kit, Dusty, and Ron to help lift the washer and dryer up on to the loft. Then that night we moved it at least four times and we're still no sure where it will go. I think they just look so new, modern and weird that it is going to take some getting used to. We still need plumbing and a bathroom sink. But first we need more firewood, so that is what we are doing today.

Anyway the tile seems to be curing allright.

Happy Earth Day--After School Trap Line

2008-04-19T09:04:00.005-08:00

I went to one of the other schools on Friday which was early day and sunny! Notice the blue skies. Most of the kids went to Craig for an Earth Day Festival, I stayed at the school to work with a few kids on their science fair projects. At the end of the day, one of the kids went to check his trap line as soon as he got home and he got a beaver. He was really excited and showed it to us and the neighbors. He has a few pelts from the winter and is hoping to sell them to tourists in the summer. This reminds me that I need to go visit the new beaver dam I found earlier this spring that I posted about in March.

Spring Sprung then Recoiled

2008-04-19T08:31:00.005-08:00

So I was noticing Sunday that spring is really underway, I planted some lettuce, peas and chard according to the moon phase planting chart. This is a new system for me, I need all the help I can get.
There are some berry bushes with their flowers bloomed already. My helebore "Ivory Prince" had a great winter and has so many blooms.

Even the blue plastic collection seems to have grown.

Then on Wednesday we had white out conditions in town. I had to drive the Ecovan over to the school in Thorne Bay that day for a invertebrate education presentation. Normally I like to drive fast, but when I got to the junction I was stuck behind two log trucks doing 25mph. I kept trying to get a good shot of these ones because the one right in front of me was loaded with pecker poles, smaller logs, but the one up in front was loaded with just one huge log, called a pumpkin, that filled the whole bed. Alas, my batteries died out before I could get the shot. The money shot would have been the three of us together: two log trucks followed up by the Ecovan. I love this place, but I think that moon phase guide was printed in California--too early for planting outside still.

Carpet, again.

2008-04-17T19:31:00.004-08:00

The carpet got stretched into place, thanks Ron. It looks great, feels good and kitty likes it.

More on the eagle

2008-04-17T19:26:00.005-08:00

So a while back I blogged on the eagle. We got a package this week from Jon's accomplises, John and John. Really, they are all named Jon. Anyway, this is a blurry picture of a blurry picture, but you can tell that this is the condition they found the eagle in. The best part is the engraved caption they added:

Tile in the bathroom

2008-04-17T19:07:00.004-08:00

The bathroom floor is done too. We got some of this tile from the leftovers from a job Jonathan worked on and some from a neighbor that was going to throw it away, gasp. The shower also came from a plumbing job he did. The owner bought it and when it arrived on the barge they realized they didn't like so we snatched it right up, cha-ching.

I was going to go with just the squares but Jonathan asked for flowers. That is probably the last time that will ever happen. Anyway it is all grouted in now. We used a grout that was colored pewter. Will have to get more shots, or not. We had to keep the fire going for three days to let it cure.

River Rock Entryway

2008-04-17T18:48:00.005-08:00

Bear tracks are hard to make out of rock and cement. I had to use my handy Field Guide to Alaskan Wildlife. What luck finding a rock that looks just like the bottom of a bears foot. I should have tried to sell it on eBay. I hear Pope shaped frozen waffles are in high demand these days. This is actually bridge grout, not cement. But I think I already wrote about that. Nice stuff to work with but I have to remember to let it set a few minutes before starting to drop rocks in.

A few flowers got swallowed by the wet grout. These ones seem to stand out okay.

This will be a fine place to take off wet clothes and house break Jonathan.

No Cabinets, Shelves

2008-04-17T18:20:00.004-08:00

I love the new shelves. We beach combed the wood and it has some beautiful worm holes along the edge. All of the wood we used here was part our scaffolding during construction.

Jon used some of the left over bamboo to make a counter. That was his first attempt at bending cedar. Very nice. This will be next to the refrigerator. We picked it up from the barge today. He's down there wrestling with it now while I blog :)
Red cedar on the bottom shelf. That brad nailer is his new favorite tool. It uses an air compresser that runs off the generator.
He custom bent each nail to hang the mugs. They are a priority and must be within easy reach. Mom if you are reading this those are the ones you gave us. Martha yes that is the mixer! Amy the canisters go on the counter. Dad those are the lanterns from the barn.

Kicking the carpet and the Annual Beer Hunt

2008-04-09T11:08:00.005-08:00

Sunday was another big day. After we did all that cement work on Saturday, we made it to the annual beer hunt. Every year, Danny and Jackie hide lots of beer cans along their boardwalk. They live across the bay so you have to take a boat out there. Or snowmachine. Before we even got to the harbor we hear that Ron had ridden his sled from the harbor to the party but it sank before he could get to land. His wife is going to kill him if doesn't die from hypothermia. On our way back from the beer hunt we notice that the dock is broken in half. Ron must have driven the boom truck down there to get his snowmachine out of Randy's skiff and split the boards and broke the hard wear. Serious damage in one night. I'll be harbor master tomorrow I think. Anyway Jon's dad Bill and Donna came over that night but didn't come to the hunt because they saw Ron on the sled and figured they weren't ready for the festivities, so we stopped by and woke them up after the beer hunt. Then we kept walking and stopped by Becky's late night, to borrow some sunglasses. The next day we were lucky to get anything done. Ron came down and kicked in the carpet in the bedroom. Jon and I got the bathroom ready for tile.

Oh yeah I have to refinish the sink. The list keeps getting longer.

Floors, not that the tar paper was bad.

2008-04-09T10:40:00.005-08:00

We have been dedicating all of our attention lately to getting floors in. The bamboo is down and done. On Saturday we put down the entry way floor. Here I am working on a design for the stone for the floor in the entryway/mudroom. I hope the bear paw prints come out ok. They are in the shot below but should look better when it is dry.
Don't do it Kitty. She thought about it for a while but in moment of clarity she just walked across the rocks in stepping stone style. Dolly on the other hand did walk through it but we decided to leave her paw prints in there.It will look much different when it dries, we used a grout that was surplus from a road construction job. They use this stuff to patch bridges and can hold something like 3000 pounds per square inch. I just want to be able to stomp our feet off when we come in.Next is the tile in the bathroom. And kick in the carpets. And another counter. And shelves. And plumbing. And trim. And hooks. And...

This is how the counter came out so far

2008-04-03T13:20:00.006-08:00

I love them. It was weird though. We have been planning them so long that when they were in place it just seemed like nothing new. I think we have 18 feet of counter space to work with. The sink is nice, we beach combed it. We bid on a faucet on Ebay since it is a wall mount, its a little hard to find. Hopefully we will win. The center section is big enough to sling a deer up there and piece it up.
We have one more counter to build next to the fridge. Jonathan is going to make it out of the left over bamboo. We ordered our appliances too. That was super scary but I think we did really well. Still I am loosing sleep over it. We have an old fridge and stove but realize with the waterwheel and generator set up they will never have enough power to work. So we ordered a super efficient refrigerator and washer and dryer. We also ordered a propane stove, so we will have to bring in a tank for the propane. Hopefully the supply for this fuel will be available for some time. Gas and diesel supply was spotty this winter. We always have the wood stove though ;) Jon's Mom had to do her laundry by hand on the floathouse when they grew up. Another lady told me how she had just the spot in a river with perfect rocks for doing laundry. All this was just 20 years ago. I don't even want to go there.

He'll never be house broken.

2008-04-03T12:52:00.006-08:00

Ok, so we have this beautiful new bamboo floor. Dave and Jonathan and I worked on the floor for hours two weekends ago. The counters had to go in after the floors, I wanted to be careful of this strange store bought floor.So Dave and I chased Jonathan around with a shop vac until we realised we couldn't keep up with him when the chainsaw came out again. I guess this is how plumbers install sinks? Oh yeah and dormers. Oh yeah and the framing. Oh don't forget the ceiling, waterwheel and pantry. Chainsaws for all your building needs.
We have been saving this piece of hemlock for the counter forever. It has been moved and shuffled around so many times. It was the second piece of building material drug down here on the four wheeler, after the center pole for the house. Dave cut the left over from the center pole piece into legs to support the counters. We aren't having cabinets because Jonathan can't see into them and because we have a nice big pantry for storage. So it will be open under the counters. Big Jon from Colorado is building us some custom benches for one side of the bar.

Blue Skies and Eagles

2008-04-03T12:18:00.008-08:00

Last weekend we had a blue sky at one point in the day. Jonathan whistled at it and it whistled back. Jonathan has a way with eagles. Growing up in southeast he and his family have rescued all kinds of critters. They once had an injured eagle on their floathouse for several days until the Fish and Game could come and pick it up for rehab. Last summer, he rescued one that was drowning a couple of miles offshore. He got it dried off and released it on the beach in front of the trailer where we could keep the dogs away until it could fly. I told him sometimes I feel like Bam Margera's mom, April, because everytime I come home it seems like it is something else. I was shocked/speechless when I came home and there was a bald eagle in the living room.

Dream Pantry

2008-04-03T11:53:00.005-08:00

These are the designs I drew for the pantry. The neighbors gave me a hard time for measuring the bisquick boxes, dog food bins, crab cooker and some of the cool appliances and canisters we got for our wedding. But hey, they will all have their own spot. I didn't get any pictures of the finished product before we moved the tools in there to put the floor down.

This is what it looks like right now. Please excuse the mess while we are under construction. Yeah right. The light is one from the cottage that was being leveled on Damon's Point that we ransacked for parts. Those green boxes are left over bamboo flooring. The sacks of cement are waiting for me to do the entry way floor this weekend. I like how he used beachlogs for the supports. They look like they go right through the shelves.

The right side wall is covered with shelves just for jars and cans. We jar food alot in the summer and also buy canned goods during case lot sales they have up here in the fall. Hopefully this way we will be able to see what we have so we don't buy twice.
The fuse box is very deceptive as our electrical system is super complicated. Sometimes we are on the generator, sometimes we are on the waterwheel. Sometimes the power goes out when too many power tools are runnning, so you don't really just flip the switch when we blow a fuse. I doubt that this will ever be easy.

A new pantry

2008-03-24T19:49:00.007-08:00

Jonathan made me a super super pantry. Lots of shelves for big things. A couple of potato and onion bins and big bins for the animal food. The whole right wall is shelving for cans, I even measured the cans so they would fit. There is alot of room for turning around. Originally we were going to stick the washer/dryer in there but we have a different spot now. So now we have the back wall to fill up too. Very good when we only shop about every four to six weeks and do alot of canning in the summer. I should be able to start putting stuff in there any day now.

Marsh, grassy flats, and a beaver dam

2008-03-24T19:15:00.005-08:00

Last week I took the cat and Dolly out for a walk. The tide was in so I thought we could go see if there were any birds out at the grassy flats. I always call them the marsh but noone knows them by that name here. Apparently the propper name for them is a fens. Anyway it was a nice walk. I found a duck decoy and a beaver dam under construction. The kitty even walked next to Dolly and I the whole way.
This is a beaver dam under construction. With fresh cuts and green boughs. The beaver is blocking off a small creek draining through the marsh but it will soon be much wider...The water is running around the dam and eroding the bank down stream. I will have to go back and see if beaver goes all the way across.This is the logging area not far from the dam. This new dam is about a hundred feet in front of an older dam. That is about four times wider than this new dam. This was the logging area for the older dam. The woods have turned to a swamp behind this dam. It is all flooded and the trees that are still standing are dead. Kitty pushed through for a while but it got a little quaggy. Dolly and I looked for the beaver but we never saw it. Secretly I wanted to have a beaver down by the cabin so we would have a nice pool. Well that secret is out.

I Brake for Salmon

2008-03-24T18:55:00.006-08:00

I heard rumors today that Chuck had caught the first King salmon of the season. So as I was driving home from work, Chuck was stopped in the road talking to Danny (we call this the information highway). As usual I just pulled around them while they were talking. But this time Chuck flagged me down. He pulled a nice filet out of the back of his truck. Sure I brake for salmon, so with a fresh piece of fish in hand I headed home to make sushi. Amy and Bob gave us a sushi set for christmas that I dug out of the boxes that are already packed to move out to the cabin. We're having sushi, sashimi and miso tonight. YayYa.
And I got to use the last of the winter keeper carrots I planted last year. Last summer we did a sashimi taste taste with four of the five salmon species we have here: King, Silver(Coho), Sockeye(Red), and Dog(Chum), no humpies(pink). Normally kings and silvers get all the attention. Even sockeye because their meat is pretty. I have turned up my nose in the past to dog salmon. But in the taste test that is the one I liked the best. It must have been in the middle of the season to get them all fresh. I think we caught a couple and we begged some of the others at the dock. But you know what, fresh king sushi in March will do.

Totems in Kasaan

2008-02-17T14:09:00.003-09:00

That's a happy whale This bear spies down on you as you walk along the path.

This is a totem pole that was raised by the school. The students helped carve it, you can read more about it at www.kasaan.org

Kasaan-Original local architects

2008-02-17T13:32:00.006-09:00

I have had these pictures since the fall. I went down to another town on the island called Kasaan for some school stuff. Before I had to do the lessons, I took a walk down to their Long House and got some nice photos. Everything is alive here, the bridge is almost back to nature again. If you want to know more about this place and these people (Haida) they have a great website: http://www.kasaan.org/

These are shots of the long house interior. While Jonathan and I have been building the cabin I often think of these houses because they represent the local architecture that has been used in Southeast Alaska for so long. Although back then lots of people lived together and could pitch in to build such enormous structures. Now we just have a few people in a house at a time. They had lots of space and storage for the endless projects they had to do in their subsistence life and for entertaining themselves and visitors and of course a fire pit centrally located with plenty of ventilation. Also I bet they could put some honking pieces of firewood on the fire, no woodstove door to fit it through.

This is the view you get of the long house as you aproach it from the beach. There is a fine beach in front for beaching canoes. It is made from some serious planks set vertically unlike horizontal clapboard. You can see the adze marks on the wood still. Good pitch on the roof.

I loved the mushrooms that were growing in the shadow of the totem pole leading right to the door.

The Wheel is not Spinning

2008-02-17T12:23:00.006-09:00

Our hydro wheel is covered with ice, but the water is still running. The day we had the painting party, even the creek was covered with snow. At least we could still find the bridge going across so we could get rinse water for the painting.
I was hoping the weight of the snow would take down the trees that are all crisscrossed over the "trail" and creek because they seem a bit dangerous. But if the snow didn't take them down maybe they are pretty stable? The batteries were charged enough to run the lights and stereo. We are running the generator for all the power tools. Jonathan made this dashboard for the car stereo we are using for our home stereo, it runs great off the batteries, it even has one of those old cigarette lighters we plug the iPod into. I am keeping my eye out for different gauges like an ampmeter, barometer a voltmeter, etc. I would alos liketo hide the wires when we move in.

Some interior shots, and Harley the Dog

2008-02-17T11:53:00.005-09:00

This is going to be the entry way. As Steve says there are only two kinds of clothes in Alaska: wet and dry. So this will have lots of hooks and room for boots. The floor will be more stone work like around the woodstove.

The bright pink(?) wall will have the fridge against it and some shelves and a counter (that I started planing this weekend, I think it is spruce, it is the piece on the saw horse below).

Misty mixed up her own color for the bathroom I think it looks great. We can't put grout on the tile for awhile because it can't freeze for like 30 days or something. Whan we went on vacation we bought a vanity light for the bathroom, but one of the shades broke. It is never easy to get stuff here.

Winter Storm Painting Party

2008-02-11T13:38:00.002-09:00

Last Friday the talk around town was the weather. NOAA had issued a severe winter storm warning for our area. There were printouts on the doors at the market in Thorne Bay. Here in Camp they had to strategize grating the road because the town was out of diesel until next week (they don't use snow plows on the roads in camp, they use the gravel grater). Normally the weather just sucks here, but this weekend it was extreme. Sounded like the perfect time to get the cabin painted.

When we went out that morning and couldn't get down the road because of the snow, we figured we wouldn't see anyone that day. Good ole' Misty and Dusty came down on the four wheeler and got right on it. Becky was right behind them, she left her truck up on the main road and said it was stuck so she just left it there in the middle of the road. Nobody is going past where we live especially with the grater not running. We borrowed a cool paint sprayer we powered up with the generator. Becky sprayed I followed with a roller to smooth it out. Misty and Dusty were downstairs with rollers. We needed more rollers and primer, Misty thought it would be a good idea to do accent walls. So we headed up the hill to the cars. Becky and I snowshoed because it was just too deep to walk. Jonathan and Misty had to push the fourwheeler most of the way up. When we got to the top there were some friends on a snowmachine, they helped get the trucks moving. Brian and Sheila walked out there through the snow. We weren't sure if we went out, if we would get back in. But we did and got Becky's kids and made it back out. It was still dumping snow. The kids just disappeared in the snow, their hats were all we could see. We worked into the night and got the whole thing painted. Including accent colored walls from some leftover paint Misty had. We finally took down the scaffolding inside. I think it has been up there for a year or more. It was awesome of everyone to come out on such a snowy day and paint until it was done. Wahoo! The floors will go in next week. All that wood we salvaged off the float house for the floor, and that Steve planed last summer, is going to be trim now. This is on the recommendation from Bill and Chuck, who have built a bunch of cabins in this country. They have used cedar on their floors and no matter what you do, you get big spaces between planks as the wood dries and it dents and scratches. I don't mind cedar floors but they recommended ordering flooring so we did. Hopefully it will get on the barge next week and we can pick it up in Thorne Bay. Sounds heavy.

Sheetrock Sucks but the walls are done.

2008-02-11T13:09:00.000-09:00

We have been working on the walls since October, and it hasn't been pretty. We bought sheetrock for two reasons, 1) it is more fireproof than cedar walls (there have been a few fires lately around here and it is clear that sheet rock slows down the loss) and 2) we could get it here by ferry without too much risk of it getting wet...

Until you back it down our (unfinished) driveway, after dark, and into a muddy ditch 100 yards from the cabin. When the tie downs broke, the whole unit of rock went onto the ground. Every sheet had to be hand carried to the cabin through ankle deep autumn mud. Thanks Dusty and Misty for helping, glad we stopped at the liquor store.

Jonathan and Dave really busted out and got the stuff cut and hung up. Thanks Dave. Mudding and taping didn't get finished until after our Christmas vacation. Chuck and Becky finished it up in about 3 days. To hide some of the imperfections, Chuck let us use his texture blower, the whole cabin was texturized in a day. The next day we primed, 5 gallons wasn't quite enough so we scrapped some more around town.

I have to admit this was not my favorite part of construction, and it was hard to get motivated to get down there. Sometimes Jonathan and I would go down and just sit by the wood stove in all the sheet rock dust. I am soooooo glad that that phase is over.

Many Random Jobs-Its tax time

2008-02-11T11:58:00.000-09:00

In order to survive in a place that doesn't have any industry, I have to work many different jobs at a time. The last time I did my taxes I had 7 w-2s to turn in and a couple of 1099s. This past year I was working on the new ferry here in town. It looked really big at its christening in Washington state.

Here it is pulling into Wrangell with the cargo doors open and ready to offload. I work on the forward deck doing the bow lines and spring line during dockings. It is 198 ft long and we go between here, Wrangell and Petersberg four days a week. See the northern route for more info. http://www.interislandferry.com/ They are 12 hour days and the work is very much appreciated as it is hard to find work locally. My commute to the dock is about 1/2 mile. I think Jonathan took this picture while I was working. The ferry makes it much easier to get materials as we don't have any stores. We sprung for sheetrock for the cabin because we could actually get it here by ferry.

Another job I have is working for the school district with a program called ECOVan, which is a partnership with the Forest Service. It focuses on outdoor education and watersheds. We are developing a website for it: www.sisd.org go to PROGRAMS on the left and select ECOVan. We have done some outdoor survival exercises like firebuilding and shelter building. Right now we are doing a K-12 program on alternative energy. The kids will be building their own hydro power wheels and windmills. They also had to inventory their school appliances for energy use in watts and kWh. Power is a big issue here because our local diesel generator produces power for town at $.48/kWh, the national average is around $.07/kWh. Thank god for squirrel power!

Yet another job I have is the harbormaster job. With something like 68 slips available it is not that time consuming especially in the middle of winter. Our little town has outgrown this harbor. It was originally built by the logging camp and was designed really for skiffs. Today people are upgrading to really nice sport fishing boats and more commercial boats are using this end of the island for seasonal moorage so they really don't fit into the slips that we have. The good news is that we got a $1 million grant to upgrade the harbor. We just need another $.5 million to get power down there. I would love to do some experimental tidal energy production so if there are any orgs out there reading this andd you need a guinea pig location, please send your proposals. We have 17 foot tides in the harbor.

Ok that is it for the picture perfect jobs, I am not going to go into the other ones. At least until my taxes are done.

Betty and Paula Go to Alaska

2007-10-04T15:15:00.001-08:00

In all the hustle bustle before the wedding I never looked at these ones from when I picked up Paula and Betty in Ketchikan to get over to the island. We stopped after we got off the ferry and the window completely shattered all over Paula. They did a fine job cleaning up the parking lot. What a way to start off the trip. After a breezy ride, we got to the totem park. Paula says "hey, look a chicken"

Betty was fascinated and put the local men to shame with her work ethic.

The Beach Trail Revisited

2007-10-04T14:34:00.000-08:00

My how things change around here. We had another widow maker storm. High winds and trees down everywhere. Remember that brag blog just two entries ago about the beach trail. Well its gone now, the trail not the blog. Right after the J+M log, the trail has become vertical. The rest of the "trail" is just littered with the former canopy of the woods. I will try to do a little before and after here.

The light in there has totaly changed so it will be interesting to see what grows in its place. The root wad is about twenty feet in the air and thirty feet across and supported what looks like three or four trees.

The pecker pole on the bottom is the former hand rail for going up and down the steps. Just under those trees are the beautiful steps that Jonathan lovingly made for our wedding party. You can still see the bottom ones under the big trunk. They are pretty much still in position except that they lead to a fallen down tree instead of a fabulous path.

Since the tree is so big we are not sure we can safely cut through it...and get the root wad to fall back down flat, will take some serious come along work. In the mean time there is still good mushroom picking in the surrounding woods. We have put up five gallons of chantrelles, some shaggy manes, and I made oyster mushroom lasagne with italian deer sausage last night, mmmmmmmmm.

Another New Roof

2007-10-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Part of the reason we haven't moved in yet is because of our old roof.
Our first roof was done with rolled gravel paper but didn't work right. It leaked. Not sure why. This turned out to be just fine though because Jonathan had no reservations putting the chainsaw through the old roof to build the dormers earlier this summer. With the dormers in and winter coming, we ordered a different kind of roof to be put on the barge and shipped up here. This time we just went for the good stuff that everyone uses so we know it works. Its called Snaplock, its a kind of metal roofing.
The rain just beads up and rolls off. We had to order it over the phone sight unseen, but Jonathan had a friend help make a parts list (flashing, trim, ridgecap, etc.). We love the blue roof, it is a good substitute for a sky, which we don't get all that often. When there is a pile of building material sitting around it doesn't last long.

Jonathan couldn't wait to get it up, so dangling from a rope, again, he got the roof cut and screwed down in about two and a half days. It was raining, hard, the whole time. Another reason Xtra Tufs are the best. (see Jon's feet above) All roofers should wear them. Here is the view from the outhouse:

Temporarily,we put some corrugated plastic left over from the

greenhouse up for windows. Ha, ha, ha temporary.

The Beach Trail

2007-08-08T12:46:00.000-08:00

Across from the creek is a trail through the woods going down to the beach. I have already posted some shots of it (Wedding Party Prep at the Cabin--June 2007) but here are some more because this path rocks.
As you make your way through the woods, the beach starts to show through the trees in one direction and the cabin in the other. The creek runs out to the beach draining into Clarence Straights on a low tide.

Updates to the Cabin

2007-08-08T11:22:00.001-08:00

While Jonathan's friends John and John were here, the three Johns put in two dormer windows. I guess Jonathan woke up one morning a put a chainsaw through the roof. So that is where the dormers are now. They are five feet long and three feet tall. The amount of light they let into the cabin is amazing and now we can go up the "stairs" without bumping our heads. They even put shelves into each one so I can have plants there year round. What a difference. Now we need to put the insulation in the roof and put the blue metal roof on over the gravel paper that didn't do so well last winter.

In the top photo you can also see the stairs and boardwalk Jonathan made leading down to the creek and workspace under the house. There are beach-combed boom-chains running the length for railings, a very nice touch. The board walk leads to these steps going down to the creek. The photo on the right is looking down from the bedroom. You can also see the terraces I am trying to get filled with dirt for a shade garden. The shot below is more detail of the steps. They have oyster and clam shell risers, cedar steps, and are lined with sediment striped rocks from the beach. The board going across the creek leads to a path going down to the beach. I think there are some shots of that already posted but what the heck I'll put more up because it is so dreamy.

Best Seat in Alaska:More on the Outhouse

2007-08-08T11:04:00.001-08:00

This is the best outhouse ever!
Jonathan made this for the wedding, it has raised beds in the front for peas. A urinal is inside for the other pee. It even flushes!
The lid and seat are custom made from a door. The knob on the right is his handle on life. Mom and Dad gave a us the double header seat from the barn in Marshfield for our wedding. Jonathan said it was too nice to use. We are going to use it as a frame. One side for a picture of Paula, the other with a picture of John (Buckley).
Yup, running water here, too! We don't have running water in the cabin yet. But I know a plumber.

Garden Logbook

2007-08-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

It's mid-season and I want to do an inventory of what's going on in the garden. What's working, what's not.

The greenhouse is full right now. We started a new raised bed this year-20 feet long with a plastic covering system to keep young plants warmer and to protect from too much rain(above). Also two more small ones in front of the outhouse for peas, get it?(see the next posting on the outhouse) We have been trying to fill the stone wall terrace by the creek with dirt for a shade garden, but it is slow going with a four bucket average and then a break. A tree fell in that terrible wind storm and we have been raiding the dirt that was exposed under the root system. It is just too hard to dig in this country. All of the ground surface is occupied by plants, shrubs, moss, tree roots, rocks, sticks shed from the trees or thick sticky mud. So fallen trees that go down from the roots are a great source for dirt. I put some starfish, seaweed and compost, bagged soil, lime and peat to boost it a bit. The results in the garden with this dirt have been better than another raised bed (below, see yellow leaves, small squash)I filled last year with trucked in dirt. Maybe that area doesn't drain as well?

Chives need to be split up for next year.

Tomatoes--The Boa greenhouse tomatoes I started from seed stunted after second true leaves: Use individual pots next year instead of flats. Watch inside temp in Late Feb and March. The same variety from Phil has made the most mature plant in greenhouse, he used light in house to start. There are lots of flowers, no fruit yet (8/07/07). The starts from Barb that are in the ground bed are close behind some are an Oregon variety, others are Roma. Been using bone, blood and potash mix, Algalbloom, and Miracle Grow. Flicking buds. The ones in left raised bed: two feet, some flowers. The ones in right side raised bed, 1.5 feet. no flowers.

Lettuce-Variety pack. Broadcast seeded. 10 plants after thinning in 2 square feet. Pinching flowers on some that are 2 feet, others just starting to shape head. Keep clear at soil.

Cucumbers-Phil's has one fruit and some more flowers. Of the five seeds I started I have four that made it. One is vining nicely with flowers no fruit yet. the two in the back are small 2 inches, no vine. Right side raised bed.

Carrots - two varieties. Four square feet in rows, did second seeding after first thinning. Sheila and Lauren ate one--yummy report.

Radishes--what happened? Bolted went to seed, woody roots. Second planting a little better. Maybe let go too long around wedding time? First was done in rows, second broadcast, neither made a great crop will do another soon. Darn it love radishes.

Cilantro-seeded self from lst year, not very full bunches. Second planting coming up now. Third planting just last week, need MORE CILANTRO next year.

Basil--Got greedy and picked young leaves. So off to a slow start, now filling in and looking good. Candidate for pots in dormer windows during winter.

Summer squash and Zuchini-started from seed inside in pots. Betty transplanted June 8th when she was up for the wedding. Thanks Betty. Have several small (1-2")fruits and lots of flowers (good stuffed with cheese and fried). They are outside along the greenhouse, seem to be protected enough by overhang. The one that is in the back bed is very small compared to the ones in the side bed.

Fava beans-Wow. Lots 8-10 plants in back bed. Setting flowers, 2-3 feet tall. Leaves starting to yellow, added blood, bone, ash yesterday with some liquid Algobloom. The ones in raised bed by outhouse (12-15 plants are beyond supports-3 feet tall, three feet of garden space. More flowers better color. Deer have not eaten these! Can't wait to see how these beans do here as green beans don't do well here because of the dampness.

Chard-12-15 plants, 3 feet of raised bed by outhouse. Got a beating from rain and damaged leaves, then the deer have pretty much stripped them (8-1-07 -- 8-6-07). The young leaves at the bases look good though still hope? Still small enough, will keep plastic over that end of garden to see if it keeps the deer out.

Beets-two varieties. Been eating greens for a few weeks, deer have eaten rest. Very few leaves left, beets are small but maybe salvagable. Four feet of garden space in raised bed by outhouse.

Parsnips-two feet of garden space. Look healthy but deer have eaten most of the greens over last week. Have not pulled any to see size they seem very firmly set in ground. Plastic will cover these too from now on in hopes to fend off deer.

Dill-- I forgot that I planted some seeds before I planted the fava beans right over them. There are a few dill plants that came through anyway, slow growing?

Peas-in front of outhouse. Useing fishing line to support. Need training. Been picking peas since 8-1-07. Have six plants, need more, but where, build a trellis next year.

Perenials-that were mowed by deer last year are looking good in raised bed in front of outhouse had plastic covering untill they got to a good size.

Rhubard- started from seed, tiny tiny tiny. Need to find a crown to split with someone. Will try today.

Cauliflower- tiny heads. one inch. Four plants in bed behing green house, need fertilizer. Two in raised bed by outhouse. One inch heads too. Started from seed inside with broccoli and cabbage. The broccoli and cabbage must have gotten lost in wedding scramble. So I don't think any are planted.

It is sunny out right now better get my hands dirty.

Summer Food Processing

2007-08-07T10:07:00.000-08:00

Over the last few weeks we have been in food collecting mode. We have had some visitors that have put some serious time into this too. Thanks Big John, John J Lo, and Lauren.

We have filled the freezer with salmon halibut and red snapper fillets. The smokehouse was running for a few days and there is a pile of smoked salmon all sealed up. The crab just keeps coming. These particular ones became crab cakes at the wedding in Marshfield. Fresh shrimp from a friend's pots are so good, nothing like the stuff you get in a store.

We have jarred up Fireweed Honey made with fireweed and clover blossoms and lots and lots of sugar (20 cups), blueberry jam, blueberry syrup, blueberry pies, wild strawberry daiqueries for the shrimping trips, wild strawberry jam that came out more like syrup but yummy on Lauren's Betty Crocket skillet biscuits she cooked on the fire outside a shack. The garden has started producing too. We have been eating peas, chard, beet greens, and letttuce, the deer have been eating parsnip greens, seedum flowers, chard and grass. Flowers keep showing up in my car when I get out of work. Jonathan? And we haven't taken any deer yet, hunting season opened Aug. 1st.

Some Wedding Shots and Vows

2007-07-25T11:49:00.000-08:00

It was a beautiful and sunny day in Southeast on June 10. We got married on the bow of the MV Delphinus. http://www.dolphincharters.com There was a bit of wind but it was warm and everyone stood by on the dock to witness the event. Here's a couple of photos from the day. When the photographer went to take the traditional ring photo she took one look at our hands and said "oh no never mind". But we managed to arrange them to make them look somewhat decent, rough hands come with the territory. I had a request to send/post the vows, so here they are posted below. Capt. Ronn did a great job presiding over the ceremony. The Mouse ears are from Disney World. Jonathan proposed under the fireworks show at Epcot Center with Amy and Bob on one side and Martha and dave on the other. Very brave. So Amy got us the ears and we vowed we would wear them on our wedding day, so did Dolly.

CAPT. RONN: Friends and neighbors and relatives, we are gathered here today to witness the marriage of Jonathan and Megan. To do so, we must perform these vows in an act of ceremony.
But what are these things: to wed, to marry, to take a wedding vow? Vows have the crucial feature of making real the very act to which the vows refer, the union of two people in marriage.
It's not enough just to think the words of the wedding vow, no matter how sincerely you may be thinking them. (If it were enough, then I wouldn't be here and neither would you.) And it's not enough even to say them. (If it were, Jonathan and Megan could just recite these lines to each other in a skiff, say, or while making smoked salmon, and—voila—they'd be married.)
Although we've just begun the ceremony, some interesting questions have already gathered on the horizon: Is this set of words, so far, “accepted”? Are they “appropriate for the dedication of a marriage”? Are we doing the wedding “correctly” and “completely”? Is it enough simply to say, “Do you, Megan, take Jonathan to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
MEGAN: “I do.”
Capt. RONN: “And do you, Jonathan, take Megan to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Jonathan: “I do.”
CAPT. RONN: As it turns out, it is enough, and the words just uttered by both Megan and Jonathan are sufficient—but not because of the words themselves.
First of all the words must be meant “seriously” and not self-ref.
The problem with that, though, is that the distinction between serious and non-serious is always uncertain, especially with these two, and any attempt to solve that problem by insisting on the “proper” context for a statement is bound to fail.
For example, we are all familiar with the sign on the dock that reads “no unattended dogs on the dock”. But this sign fails to take into consideration that the dogs can’t read the sign. As the sign has clearly been ordered from a professional sign maker and posted in a conspicuous location, through its context we understand it to be serious. It's a bit like the comedian George Carlin's observation about official signs. “NO JOKES,” perhaps, “but what about riddles?”
Our point is that the distinction between “serious” and “nonserious” as determining what makes this ceremony binding doesn't solve the problem; it only pushes it back a notch. We can only ask, “Did you, Jonathan and Megan, seriously mean what you just said about taking each other as husband and wife?”
MEGAN AND JONATHAN: Yes, we did.
CAPT. RONN: Okay, good. Now we're getting somewhere, legally speaking. When such words are uttered in the “appropriate” context—by two parties who have obtained a marriage license, presided over by me (“by the power vested in me,” as we often hear), and so on—then those words are nevertheless binding, no matter what anyone thinks.
All of which is why the very first definition of the word “marry” in the Oxford English Dictionary is “to join for life as husband and wife according to the laws and customs of a nation”. And this, in turn, is why it is misguided to think that what validates a wedding ceremony is the making public of innermost feelings, and the sincerity or earnestness them. That may be a dramitic performance, but it is beside the point of the wedding vow.
This is why the act of marrying, is to be described as the saying of certain words, rather than as performing a private and spiritual action.
To understand the act otherwise—to see it as, indeed, the outward sign of a private and spiritual action—is precisely what makes most wedding vows so uncomfortable for Megan and Jonathan.
Such pronouncements, heartfelt though they may be, indulge in a fundamental misunderstanding. They do not understand that the power of the wedding vow as a performance doesn’t come from the bride and groom revealing their most intimate and spiritual feelings—as if somehow the more heartfelt and confessional your ceremony is, the more married you are—but rather from the public and repetitive nature of the act itself.
This is why Megan and Jonathan are not going to drone on today about how much they care about each other, how they promise to do this and not do that, and so on. First of all, they assume that you all already know how they feel about each other without being told in graphic and revealing detail—that's why you're here. And second of all, it takes a lifetime, not twenty minutes, for two people to define for themselves what the word “marriage” means. Your presence here is simply to witness their commitment to undertake such a mission.
In sum, then, it is not the “uniqueness” or “originality” or “sincerity” of the vow that carries its force but its repeatability, its utter unoriginality. So that is how we find ourselves at this moment in the middle of a vow that is itself largely about vows. That such a vow may itself be taken as highly “original” perfectly exemplifies the point about statements and context that provides the joke in the “No Dogs on the Dock” sign: If we wrote a vow about vows, you would have to take it seriously, wouldn't you?
So it isn't that you, Megan and Jonathan, have said particular words, or even that you have performed particular acts such as the customary exchanging of rings to symbolize your commitment to each other.
[Megan and Jonathan exchange rings.]
Rather, it is that you have agreed to do and say these things under certain binding circumstances—circumstances to which you have, as it were, surrendered yourselves.
And now I will say, “by the power vested in me,” that I now pronounce you husband and wife. Jonathan, you may now kiss-- not your girlfriend, or your domestic partner, but your wife with a binding force more powerful than all the kisses that came before.

Wedding Party Prep at the Cabin

2007-07-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

The weeks before the wedding were very busy down at the cabin. Jonathan really hustled to get it ready for the hoe down. The first priority was an outhouse. We have the best seat in Alaska in there including a sky light, running water in the sink and...urinal. The obligatory half moon on the door is from his family's floathouse. My Mom and Dad refinished the two header from the barn outhouse in Marshfield (circa 1838) for a wedding gift. So our outhouse is a real heirloom.

Jonathan and Dusty dug into the mud going down to the creek to get these steps in so our guests could get down to the creek. They are beautiful with oyster, clam and scallop shell risers. We had a lot of shells to line the paths with.

Continuing across the creek, Jonathan cut through some of the logs that lay across the path to make a beautiful path down to the beach. This was no small task he had to get out the big chainsaw (Big Red) with a six foot bar to cut through one that was easily five feet around. You can see it just beyond the tent (accomodations for out of town guest). We used to have to slip and slide to climb over that log which was a major obstacle to getting to the beach, but never the less a really impressive log/former tree. The path now goes through an opening he cut in it. The cut pieces were used to make stepping stones along the path. He carved our initials in one side, which made me cry because that is so romantic.

He also put some railings up with beach-combed boom chains to prevent people from falling off the porch (it worked!). The wedding turned out to be a beautiful day and we ate outside. Everyone brought their favorite potluck dish and ate on tables! There was a campfire burning in front of the greenhouse just in case it turned cool. Log torches burned the length of the driveway to light the way down the driveway and keep the no-see-ums away.

We did it!!

2007-06-23T20:57:00.000-08:00

June 10, 2007

Oops...still snowing.

2007-03-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

I really just wanted to show off the stone wall I built, some day plants will grow behind it. Started some seeds this weekend, am I jumping the gun?

The Jolyn Sunk

2007-03-29T20:19:00.000-08:00

I got a comment from Jenny, she is running a dive boat in the Carribean. My advice to you Jenny: if it sinks untie it from the dock.

This boat was one of our favorites. It was a wooden double-ender hand troller. Kind of eerie seeing it through the water like that. We went down to check it out on our last trip to town, the dock was straining to keep it at the surface.

It is still snowing. It has been snowing for soooo long. Not normal. The Iditarod was earlier this month and the mushers had runs without snow even though they moved north a bit. Maybe they need to move south?

Where are we?

2007-03-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

My students say that they had a hard time finding our town on Google Earth. Bob took this screen shot a while ago. Our cabin is in the lower right corner by the Google logo. You can just barely see the driveway going down from the main road. The larger point is Luck Point, that is towards the main part of town, unfortunately that part is clouded out as we usually have cloudy skies.

The first aerial is of town when it was a logging camp from 70s - 90s. It has expanded out from the center and runs down towards what you can see in the Google image.

The other is an aerial that I found on the internet, says it is our town but hard to tell.

We are in the Southeast panhandle part of Alaska kind of near where the Boardwalk Lodge star is. And a rainfall chart for our area, not many days clear of clouds. Time to start the garden.

Widow Makers

2007-03-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

A little while ago we had a freak wind storm. It was a pretty calm morning when all of a sudden a wall of wind came across the cove and it blew for about 20 minutes. The destruction that happened in those 20 minutes was unbelievable. It was almost like a hand came down and slapped us around for a little while. I heard a bump and stepped outside to see a tree on top of the trailer, while I was standing there another fell on the wannagon. These were small trees, sometimes called peckerpoles, so they didn't do much damage, in fact Jonathan considered leaving one there so he could hang his deer from it. While I was still outside I heard a pop and a tree closer to the beach snapped in half at the trunk, it was about 4 feet wide(much like the photo above). That's when I had to make a decision: stay inside the trailer that felt like it was going to get launched or find a clear spot with no trees to stand in. I stayed inside channeling all the Judy Garland/Wizard of Oz energy I could muster up.
The next street looked like a spider web with trees down on power lines, there was something like 22 trees on the wires in about 1000 feet. Jonathan was further out the road near where our cabin is when he heard it come. He stepped out onto the porch and watched 5 huge trees at least five feet wide just go down like dominoes. These ones were easily 75 feet tall. They left a huge amount of open space in the woods above them , but an absolute mess on the ground around them. I am very cautious when walking in the woods now, because just one branch falling from the trees around here is enough to do some serious damage, I look up alot now, that is where the story is in these woods.
The pictures I have here were taken out at Luck Lake a few days later they give a pretty good scale of the power of this wind storm.
This picture of Jonathan next to a "wall" is really the root ball of a huge Sitka Spruce. The roots are not very deep, so this one just took the whole ground up with it when it went down. In the background of that shot, you can see another tree that is snapped part way up its trunk. We looked for the the rest of it to see where it fell, it was blown into the woods about fifty feet from where it broke.

This is a shot of an old trapper's cabin. We counted about thirty trees down all around it, but the old cabin made it through the storm. This day was very different without even a ripple on the slushy water. Nice enough for Ronny to get in and do some fly fishing and Jonathan and Dolly to wade around for sunken treasure.

Sqirrel Power

2007-03-11T18:05:00.000-08:00

So Jonathan was fixing a furnace. The firebox caved in so that was the end of the furnace. He thought the squirrel cage(the part of the furnace that circulates air) looked alot like a water wheel. So I came home one day and this was in the living room.

His buddy Bill remembered seeing something like that on the internet. So after much searching he found this picture of a squirrel cage gone water wheel that someone did at their house:

You can read about it and other supercool home brewed energy makers here:

http://http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_experiments_waterwheel.html

INTRODUCING JONATHAN'S SQUIRREL CAGE WATER WHEEL

Compared to the picture of when it was in the living room, he modified the opening a bit so the water could flow in and out better. In that picture, he had an alternator off a car attached to the wheel, but it didn't work. Then he then got another motor off an old International Log truck. And he thought he was really onto something when he hit 1.5 volts, but then wired it wrong and burned the motor up. A few more (weeks of) trials and errors and scrapping together some material McGuyver would be proud of, and some help from the chat rooms on the otherpower.com site, some rare earth magnets lathed into the armature, duct tape, a chainsaw to notch a fallen log, and a rectifier, I am happy to report that we are generating our power. The batteries are charging at a range between 11.50 and 15.5 volts enough for some lights and a stereo. We worked on the floor all weekend with lights running and the stereo blaring and never ran out of power, we even played a UB40 cassette tape to really give it a workout. With a few more batteries we'll be able to power the cabin refrigerator, TV, computer (free blogging, yeah) etc. inverted into 120 AC power, the kind you just plug into the wall for. We are now able to flip a switch at the door and the lights and music come on. In the interest of not overloading the system, we plan to have a propane stove and hot water heater. We are also hoping to have some on-demand hot water heated by the wood stove. Other than that our cabin is now powered up.

You can see in this shot that we just used an existing log that fell across the creek a while ago. The water only drops about 3 feet. As it falls it turns the wheel, the wheel turns a belt(that he got from some old snow chains that go on a dump truck), the belt turns the motor (that he found left for junk in a closet somewhere). The motor he modified by taking out the center part that spins inside the coils. He lathed off some of the metal so there was enough room to stick 8 earth magnets(the kind that are inside computers) onto it and it could still spin. He arranged them 2 by 2 in a North South North South pattern around the center of the motor. I guess this is keeps them repelling themselves and makes the motor turn better to increase the RPM. (My high school physics teacher Mr. Zicko would be glad to hear that some of the stuff I learned in his class is still sinning around in my head) So from the motor you can see a green wire, that goes all the way up to the cabin where it charges the four car batteries. This is how the energy will be stored, we would like to upgrade to golf cart batteries (think weddding presents, I'll see if I can register at Allied Battery Co.). After the power goes through the batteries as DC power, it then goes through a 20 amp inverter which changes the power to AC and connects to the house. That is what we love because we can plug anything we want into our many, many outlets and sockets that we so carefully installed with the dream that someday we would actually have power running to them. And now we do!!!

Girls Night at the Oyster Farm

2007-03-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we had girls night at the oyster farm. Griz and Sharon live on an island about 5 miles from here. They have had an oyster farm for about 25 years there. It gets pretty quiet in the winter so we went to visit. Jonathan's sister Misty, Becky, Ruth and I got a ride out there. We had our own little cabin. The refrigerator is just a box that is attached to the house and you can open a door in the wall and get your food. The outside temp is just right for refrigeration. Griz has a windmill making electricity for the whole place. We wired up an outlet to try to get Sirius radio but no signal.
We hopped in the skiff and headed for the Observatory trail.

This is a pretty wind blown spot looking strait down Clarence Straights. The view here is looking towards town.

Afterwards we headed to the beach and set off fireworks that Sharon hoards in case of visitiors. I was scared a few times. Good show. Of course we had the best oysters, she made them with just spinach and cream baked in the oven, mmmmm. Those are some oysters getting cleaned on the dock.

When we went back to town the next day, this rainbow was right over the oyster farm, where we had just come from.

One room school house

2006-12-03T15:34:00.000-09:00

Shortly after I got back from shrimping, the teacher in our school quit. He and his wife were from Florida and wanted to give Alaska a try. So they tried for two months and it just wasn't what they were looking for. So the I was asked to be a substitute teacher until they can find another teacher to move up here half way through the school year. They haven't found anyone yet. If you're interested please see http://www.sisd.org/ .

I am teaching 7th through 12th grade in one room. We have 7 periods a day and I am teaching technology/portfolio, Algebra I and II, English, Earth Science, Phys. Ed, and Alaska History. There weren't any lessons plans or sylibi left for me so I have to figure all this out with the help of the lead teacher who teaches kindergarden through 6th grade in the other room (trailer). It is challenging but I really like it.

We had some exchange students from Mexico and Germany visit the class last week. They are enrolled in another school on the island. We took them snowshoeing on a nearby logging road and had lunch in an old rock pit. There are six girls (ages 12-17) and one boy in my class. Having some fresh blood in town caused the hormones to rage. The girls who didn't want to go in the first place were now fighting over leaving. At lunch I overheard the boy say to the exchange students "Remember in America, it is always the man's fault".

More on shrimping

2006-12-03T14:20:00.000-09:00

The post I did on my shrimping trip didn't have any photos. It was sooooo busy the first few days that I couldn't even step away to take some shots but I did get a few.

This one shows the unique design(for AK shrimp boats) of lining up the string of pots on a rail. This saves having to haul them up and over the freeboard and each string of five pots can be kept together until their final resting spot in the water is found. I feel like the lobster boats back home did this rail set up too. Each of the five pots is connected to a longline, which is set to be however deep, maybe 50 to 75 fathoms. The long line has a buoy on the other end so that they can find it again. Above, Dean and Chris are bringing up the last pot in the string. The pots are lined up so that when Dean, the captain, steams over to the right spot he tells Chris over the loud speaker. Chris tells him the number on the buoy so Dean can mark it on his chart to keep track of where all his pot strings are, and also keep track of how well he is doing in each area.

When Dean steams back to the buoys that are in the water, Chris snaggs the buoy out of the water with a gaff, gets it loaded on the block (the metal wheel thing behind Dean's head) and Dean runs down to the deck from the wheelhouse and they pull each one over the side onto the rail. There are some bungees that open up and the shrimp fall into a tote below the rail. Even though the pots are big(75-125 lbs each), one will average about 10 pounds of shrimp per good set because shrimp are creatures of space. They don't like to be close to each other, and if they are they have long spears on top of their heads that they can stab each other with, but mostly they just stab us while we sort them.
This is the sorter that I mostly worked on. I would grab the shrimp out of the tote on the deck and put them into baskets that held about fifty pounds each. The first few days we were doing so well that each set would get a full basket and maybe half of another basket. Then I would take them into the sorting room(just a tarp that divides the deck into two spaces) and run them through the sorter you can see in the above photo. The shrimp are dumped into the tray and I push them one by one onto the rollersthat gradually get wider. This way they are sorted into smalls, mediums, large, extra large, jumbo, and super jumbo.
The boat I was working on sold their shrimp to a cannery that sells them on the Japanese sushi market. We were provided with very, very specific directions for handling the shrimp because our boat was considered a catcher/processor. The goal was to get the shrimp from the water, through the processing and into the freezer as fast as possible so that they are frozen alive. Misty and I were the processors. From the sorter, they were dipped into something that makes them poop so they don't have that unattractive bleck vein in them. I got to make that dip solution every 200 lbs. mmmmmmmm. I called the dip bucket the cess pool.

From there they were given to Misty who is the master finger packer. She worked on an other boat that marketed their own shrimp. She was trained by a Canadian lady who works with the Japanese buyers and knows how they like their shrimp to be presented. Misty has done this for a few years so she is very good at it. For every one case that I could finger pack to the specifications she could do four or five cases. The shrimp aesthetic goes something like this: shrimp are lined up in two layers with all legs and antennae tucked under and eyeballs lined up in a perfect line, their butts are tucked under and their swords have to alternate facing left and right, and each box has to be with in grams of the size specification that they have been sorted by. Then they have to go into the freezer. However the freezer can't be opened that often or else it doesn't stay a the required -30 degrees F. We finally got a system down and we think that the shrimp were out of the water and into the freezer somewhere between 45 minutes and and hour. We hustled. We worked hard and lifted crazy heavy stuff. My face was still healing and my hands were raw and punctured. But this fishery only goes from 8 am to 4 pm. So at night we holed up in a protected cove and ate really well, watched movies, and did anything else you can imagine that goes on on fishing boats like:
Haircuts
I was only on the boat for the early part of the season, Chris left a little bit after me. For the last month or so of the season, it was just Misty and Dean working the pots. She did all the pots on the rail, got the lines ready, and all the processing herself. A lot of hard work, I admire Misty and Dean a whole bunch for the insane work that they do and am glad that I had a chance to work with them. Thanks guys.

The cool weather has settled in, Arlo Guthrie style

2006-12-03T12:38:00.000-09:00

You know what that means, firewood. The local heli-logging company, Columbia Helicopters (a.k.a. the Cartel) finished up their work for the season. Their sort yard, a former rock pit, is nearby so we all headed down there to do our part to "clean it up", i.e. this is an easier way to get firewood because it is already on the ground. However, its ownership is questionable because the wood is from the Forest Service, and cut by the Cartel that dumped it in the rock pit. Our town is surrounded by the Tongass National Forest (http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/ ) so basically any wood you get here is Forest service. Anyway, in the photo above, you can see that the big log Roland is leaning against has a rope tied around it. The other end is tied to Jonathan's truck. He pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and retied it and pulled some more to get it down to be cut up. He pulled until it was both close enough to the splitter and until his bumper fell off.
Then Dave bucked it into pieces long enough to fit into our woodstoves. This is the same chainsaw he used to cut our solid wood doors for the cabin. I never knew how useful this blade would become, go figure. We did maybe five or six of those logs that day. Once the logs were bucked the guys used axes to cut the circles into pieces that Connie and I could manage to get under the wood splitter that we borrowed for the day. She would operate the lever and help get the wood into place. I stayed squatted and pulled the cut pieces out of the way and reloaded it from the pieces the guys were cutting. In this picture, Connie and I got to take a break and the guys took over on the log splitter.

You can see how big the "smaller" pieces are that the circles were cut into by the guys feet and then the final size in the back of the trucks. We cut about three months of firewood for us, for Dave, for Connie and Roland, and another couple loads for some older folks in town. It was a huge job and we were hurting and cold by the end of the day.

So we rolled out of there and about 100 yards away, the Forest Service had a "road block" set up. This was the first case of law enforcement I have seen here first hand. We don't have any police in camp, sometimes the State Troopers will come through town. I wasn't really sure of the status of the wood in the rock pit, but there is no hiding four trucks full of firewood and us covered in sawdust. We were about an hour from any kind of town in the middle of a national forest. They had barricades and sirens and a K-9 car and rakes and shovels and other implements of destruction. I was trying to remember all the verses to Alice's Restaurant and decided to tell them that I put my license and registration under that pile of firewood. It turns out they only ask for hunting licenses here. I am still trying to get used to how this place works, the rural learning curve is a steep one. In the end, they didn't even look twice at all the firewood they could hear us cutting up all afternoon 100 yards away. http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml

Excuses Excuses

2006-12-03T12:22:00.000-09:00

Haloween has come and gone. Jonathan and I were sea creatures at the community Halloween carnival.
Well I am back online again. My internet satellite connection was shut down by the FCC because it was interfering with some kind of communication and was violating some kind of regulation.

My guess: the stump that it is mounted on froze and repositioned the dish. We are right under the floatplane flight path that services town. I can see the trouble this could cause, we do get our mail once or twice a week if the floatplanes can fly. One of priceless experiences of living on the island.

Another priceless moment: Old man Wes swallowed his tooth this morning.

Gone Fishing

2006-10-26T17:30:00.001-08:00

I went fishing so I haven't been updating the site lately. Misty, Jonathan's sister asked if I could help out on the boat she works on, the Island Pride, out of Petersburg, Alaska. It is a 58 foot limit seiner(salmon) but is rigged up with a sorter and freezer for shrimp season. I have never worked on a commercial fishing boat so this was a whole new thing for me. I have read about the all the horror stories of working without sleep in excrutiating pain in horrible weather. Fortunately, the spot prawn fishery in southeast Alaska is managed by bankers (not really) because you can only work your gear from 8am to 4pm. Very nice, got lots of sleep. The weather while I was on board was calm and sunny, the best weather we had all summer. It was so sunny it was hard to see the buoys on the water surface for the reflection. Pain, okay I was sore, very very sore, but mostly good sore.
My first days on the boat were really busy because we had to get the boat set up...freezer, shop, sort room, rack, make bait bags, shop, move pots(60-125 pounds each)and then move them again, shop, get the lines together with the buoys, and shop more. There are a million things to remember to get ready befor they leave the dock.
We were loading bait from the cannery down to the boat roof onto the maindeck and into the hold. I had to catch about a thousand frozen sub-zero humpies(red salmon) from Dean, the captain, on the top deck and hand them to Chris in the hold. A few "slipped" out of Dean's grasp right onto my head. The best one hit me right in the mouth and split open my lip. So as I'm staring up in the sky to catch the next humpy, the shredded remains of the inside of my mouth just kept getting stuck in my teeth and there was blood over it all. Misty couldn't stop laughing, and we couldn't stop working. By the end of the day it looked like a really good silicone implant. I should whap a frozen humpy across my face more often.

Bogger Names

2006-09-16T12:15:00.000-08:00

I just did a post about the the Nuakati Boggs. One of the best parts of this event is the names people come up with for their rigs. Here are a few that I enjoy.
This first one represents our little town, One Stop Fuel Coffman Cove, its named for Earl(see on the hood). We call him "Old Lead Foot" because one of his legs is shorter than the other so he has one shoe with a six inch rubber sole...

Dad, if your reading, this one's for you..

A little luck of the Irish...

Everyone's favorite, the Bug Bogger...

And my favorite...

dirt diggler

Mud Boggers

2006-09-16T10:24:00.000-08:00

Due to some technical difficulties, I haven't been posting for a couple weeks, but now we're back on line, hopefully. The roads continue to be built, but this post is more about the off roading extravaganza that we have on the island. It is known as the Naukati Mud Boggs.

Naukati is an unincorporated town on the island, which means that it is not a real town, just a bunch of (strange) people living in a remote spot. We call people from there Naukateers. It's a wild west kind of place.

But for six amazing weekends in the summer, they host the Mud Bogs. People from all over the island work on modifying their scrappy island rigs to race through 200 ft. of thick soupy mud.

It has grown over the years and it is about the only public event we've got (except for a marathon in May). They put some bleachers in this year, and had a live band and bon fire after hours.

Some friends just moved here from Arizona to work for the school. The school provides housing for teachers. In Naukati, the teacher's trailer is in the middle of the pit, so when the trucks come out of the mud they circle around the teacher's trailer to get back in line to go through again. They also do their pit stop all around their yard, so it was pretty "exciting" for the teachers to have the Mud Boggs surrounding their new home on their first weekend in Alaska, ever.

We got pavement

2006-08-24T12:20:00.000-08:00

For this tiny town, there is quite a bit of development going on.

Here is the first bit of pavement was laid down in town last week. We have had dirt/gravel roads up 'til now.

We have a new ferry and ferry terminal that goes between two other islands, one has a town of about 3200 the other has a pop. of 2500 people. This photo was at the inauguration/christening last January in Seattle. I will try to get a picture of the terminal up here, that was a huge project in itself.

They are also developing the road that comes into camp and connects to the rest of the island towns. This has been a major project going on for the past three summers. It was a one lane dirt road, very narrow and curvy. It will now be two to three lanes wide and less curvy. Lots of people who live in camp work on this road. There are also alot of people from out of town that come to live here during the constuction, which leaves a bit of a housing shortage in the summer, but it seems that everyone found a place. The work that is required for this job is amazing, even after seeing the Big Dig for so many years. It is raw, wet and remote land on an island much larger than Long Island but with less than 4,000 people. This the only part of southeast Alaska that you can actually drive to other towns, there are 9 towns that you can drive to with populations that range from 30 people to 1500 people.

The road on the right is the old road, the road on the left will be the new road.

The city also got a $1 million grant to expand the harbor. This is very exciting for me because one of my jobs is harbormaster and there is a shortage of space in the summertime at the dock. We are gong to run another finger out the middle and then a dock parallel to the existing one. We probably still won't get electricity out there. There is a new school and a clinic in the works, but that may be a bit down the line. We did get a new post office this year and they are building a new seaplane float this month. They are in the process of putting up street signs. Nobody ever knew what street they lived on. We just made up addresses and the post mistress would sort by name. Our mail comes by float plane three times a week, so Fed EX definitely does not apply here.

My camera still works!!!

2006-08-24T11:34:00.000-08:00

I went to town the other day to go food shopping and register for a class. On my way home, my drink fell and I guess some of it fell into the pocket where I had my camera. It soaked in cider for an hour until I found it when I got home. But look it still works. Here's some of the stuff from the greenhouse.

Good thing because groceries can be expensive. For example, 1 gallon of milk = $4.83. A loaf of Orowheat bread = $3.75. Head of cauliflower = $3.76. My total bill for groceries was $290.22 for 104 items. I can't remember if that is expensive or not. But that will last us for about 4 weeks, 2-3 meals a day with no restaurants to get out of cooking a meal. Shopping here, you don't have the selection like in the lower 48. And what ever is in stock is what you get. I think it all comes by barge, so produce is hit or miss. There is no significant agricultural farming up here. I think a bale of hay is around $20. So we are enjoying the greenhouse and plan to expand it this winter.

Camping High and Dry

2006-08-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

We went camping for a few days this week to get out of town. We took the boat, a tent, a chainsaw (for firewood), and a really crummy map. The crab pots had few crabs in them so we brought them alng for the trip. Jonathan really liked old barnacle eye.

We went into every nook and cranny that we could. The first night we found a really cool spot that you can only get to at high tide.

We did a bunch of exploring and got back out of the next day to find ourselves in another spot that you can only get into at high tide. This one had a Forest Service Cabin with boat access. This picture is of our boat high and dry.

The little island you can see under the corner of the sign is where we beached our boat and then walked the creeekbed to the trail head. That trail is supposed to go to a cabin 1.5 miles away on a lake. Well, a few hours later we still hadn't found the cabin or the lake, and the the trail just sort of stopped. Back to the boat in case it floats.It was a nice hike though.

Floathouses

2006-08-12T16:30:00.000-08:00

I seem to take a lot of photos of float houses around here. This first one belongs to Jonathan's family. I tis in a cove near here. The water has just about reclaimed it. We have salvaged a bunch of stuff from it for the cabin.

This one is also on (well just offshore) the island. It is one of my favorites with a separate floating chicken coop, greenhouse and workshop all floating in a beautiful cove. My friend Jenny and I dove around this one a bit.

Floathouses can also be for community business, this one is the community center and postoffice. The school district is housed on a floathouse and Fish and game have floathouses scattered around to use as bases in the field.

Cabin Interior

2006-08-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to show some details of the inside before we slap up some insulation this week. This is the ceiling of the entry way that extends into the bathroom and the pantry. I cut most of it with a chainsaw and a template so that the notches would all fall into the same place. Jonathan was so romantic back in Marshfield when he told me the first thing we were going to do when we get to Alaska is... teach you how to use a chainsaw. Well he followed through. So half way across the floor, he says "you're going too slow, give me that chainsaw" and he cut a hole right through the spalt. I finished the rest of the floor. Dat da da da.

The hearth is still under construction. Most of the beaches around here have rough angular rocks but we found a beach that has these nice smooth round rocks. We hand picked each one. We still have to put up the back wall but we ran out of cement. We will get it the next time we go to town, about 1.5 hours away on mostly gravel roads. Please tell me you can see the flower pattern. We still have to put Coca Cola on it to get the cement "dusty glaze" off the top. Coke eats cement. Do you eat Coke?
The smaller room will be the computer room. That floor in there is the top side of the spalt ceiling I cut from the chainsaw. The bigger room is the bedroom. The wood stove pipe goes through the room, we hope that it will help with heating. The door in the bedroom goes out to a little deck that looks over the creek. It's really there so Jonathan can pee outside at night, old habit I guess. The bridge is made of two more spalts. The center pole was around 25 feet long. Jonathan found it floating in the cove. We stood it up by ourselves, in the snow, very tricky. There will be some railings around the upstairs floor, and I am sure by the time anyone sees them they will be covered with laundry drying. We aren't sure if our plan for electricity (a pelton wheel, like a water wheel in the creek) will produce enough power for a dryer. It rains too much for a clothes line. Jonathan's family had a wall behind their wood stove on the floathouse that opened up and had rows of line for hanging clothes. Just one of the details we have to figure out. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, thank god we already built the bridge. For now we are off to put in the wiring, switches and plug-ins. Even though we are not sure how we will get power to run through those wires, it is good to have wires in your walls before you cover them up.

No Frills Gas Prices

2006-08-09T11:30:00.000-08:00

A glimpse of life around camp. This is our no frills gas station with a view... This is our no frills gas price... Yup that's $3.70/gallon. We have our own key to the pump so it's 24/7 service and they just send us the bill every month. Whoopeee.

More Meat

2006-08-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

We did some smokehouse work this week...salmon and deer jerky. We used alder with the bark peeled off for the wood. The smokehouse is over at Jonathan's father's house so we had some help keeping the fire going for a few days. The fish and venison were both marinated for a couple of days. Then it was in the smokehouse for a couple more as it has been raining, alot.

Home Processing

2006-08-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

This is our processing spot . This afternoon I am going to go do some canning. The smoker is already started up. Jonathan is going to go shrimping with a friend tonight. Oh my gosh, there is a lot of food moving through here. The greenhouse is also needing attention. I should be able to can some stuff from there. Then we can focus on the cabin again for the winter when things slow down.

A Subsistence Skateline

2006-08-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

I broke away from the computer last night to go check the skateline with the guys. A skateline is a series of 20 hooks that are clipped onto a main line and stretched out and anchored kind of deep to the bottom. We pull ours by hand. Fortunately, Jonathan had some friends come help pull and bait the line. I just had to untangle hooks and pass them to the guys for baiting. We got 2 good size halibut and a yelloweye (red snapper or rockfish). I am not sure how much they weighed whole but after they were filleted we had a five gallon bucket overflowing that must have weighed fifty pounds. Between halibut and salmon and crabs we have had to set up a fish processing area on the front deck of our trailer to get it all together. We will smoke a cooler full of marinated salmon, can some salmon for sandwiches, freeze some fillets. The halibut will be frozen into dinner portions. The crab will be cooked, cleaned and frozen. We have also begun on deer meat. So far we have only one deer, we need maybe three or four more. We will make corned venison and can it for sandwiches, smoke deer jerky, steaks will be frozen, and lots of deer burger. All this in our free time from work. I have a hunting license, it came with the fishing license, but I don't even know how to shoot a gun. Good thing I can cook.

Cabin Sequence 3

2006-08-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Okay I explained what I am doing here two posts down. Anyway I am trying to show the sequence of the cabin going up. These are the earliest pictures I have on the digital...

Cabin Sequence 2

2006-08-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

The first wall...Four walls framed in... The floor plan walls are inside...

The stairs and the second floor are in...
TThe center pole and beam are up...

Cabin Sequence

2006-08-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

For this post, I had in mind those flip books that look like a cartoon. I wanted to do the cabin so that it looks like it is growing up from the ground. Anyway these are the pictures I have found, and this is the cabin so far.... oops I guess I can only do five at a time and there are a lot, so stand by.

Shopping by barge

2006-08-01T20:39:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday, our forty foot container arrived by barge. When we went to California in May we bought a car and boat on a trailer from Jonathan's father. After a few months of figuring how to get it here, it finally came, full of insulation, electrical wire and fittings, as well as some stuff from Costco and Home Depot. The whole jalopy was loaded into the container in Seattle and arrived in another town on the island about an hour and a half away. Unfortunatly, it has been raining so we can't get it down to the cabin yet. We will as soon as it stops raining, hmmm.

Before/After

2006-07-30T17:16:00.000-08:00

Dolly hung out with a back hoe today. The backhoe took a dig, then Dolly took a dig in the newly unearthed mud. It looks like this went on for a while.

The Dentist Boat Came to Town

2006-07-30T16:59:00.000-08:00

The bush dentist stopped in town on Sunday. He and his wife have been running a dentist boat "The Jenny B" since the sixties. They go to all the camps and small towns in the area. He just pulls up at the dock, you can go down, make an appointment, and get your teeth worked on onboard. The funny thing is that you have to hold this button thing in your lap to ground his instruments. I guess you also have to hope no one goes by too fast and makes a wake while he's drilling. There wasn't room at the dock, so we had to climb over the deck of the packer "Towego". After he left here, he headed out to the gillnetter opening in Clarence Straits and was going to work on a fisherman while his nets were soaking.

The Greenhouse

2006-07-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

In February Jonathan and I spent a morning staring at an empty space behind the cabin. We had no idea of how to go about building a greenhouse. We used a stick to scrape out a hollow in the dirt. We set two long pieces of scrap wood in those hollows and that became the foundation or skids to build the greenhouse on. We used scrap lumber from the cabin to build the frame. Jonathan had traded some plumbing for some clear corrugated plastic. He also salvaged some nice old boards from his family's floathouse for the flooring and potting bench. Of course we got some beach wood in there too. So here is our super Alaskan greenhouse that we have been harvesting out of for about 2 months.

We started our seeds in March. We did radish, lettuce, spinach, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, zuchini, summer squash, tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro, basil, and thyme. I've also been doing some flowers and perenials. It was our first year gardening up here so we have to do a lot of trial and error. But, we have already decided to put an addition onto the greenhouse for just tomatoes. We are also going to do some 50 ft. raised beds outside. Some things we will start in the greenhouse and then move out to the beds like broccoli and cabbage, other things are going to stay inside, like the tomatoes which are five feet tall right now.

Pretty Pictures

2006-07-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

I have some requests to show what it is like around town, also known as camp, so here are few photos that I have on hand to show you.

This is the view from our front deck at the cabin. We have a tent set up to kep the generators dry.

The cabin we like to camp out at. It was an old homestead and later used for an oyster farm. The floathouse used to be the gym in a school for one of the towns on the island.

Just some shots with nice light from around town.

These photos were taken from a floatplane (DeHaviland Beaver) from Ketchikan to Craig.

More on Milling the Lumber

2006-07-15T14:14:00.001-08:00

We had to pick up the mill in town and tow it out to the road. (Yup that's one of our trucks. Maybe I should do an entry just on island trucks). When Waylon came to help Jonathan with the motor, he says "Man, did you pull this out here with your truck?" Jonathan says "Yup". Waylon says "huh, well I'll be". Waylon's Mom was not a fan of Waylon Jennings, I asked.

We(Jonathan) backed it down the road to the top of the driveway. I got out of the truck for safety. He lined the mill up with the first log in line and jacked it up about 5 feet on one end so it would be level.
Of course before we could do this, the log boom truck had to come out and prepare the logs for the mill. Danny had to make a roll-away(like a ramp) to load the logs on. He lined up seven Sitka spruce logs.

Joanthan and I managed to roll the first one into place but after that we had to use a peavy and some local teenagers to move the rest into the right position on the mill. I am not sure how many days we were out there making boards, but it was a great way to keep warm. Between yarding the logs onto not so even rollers, fixing the mill deck because we got tired of our feet breaking through, hauling all the boards down to the cabin, shoveling sawdust, burning scraps, etc. we managed to keep pretty warm.

Low Tide

2006-07-12T17:42:00.000-08:00

This morning we had a -3.5 low tide, this afternoon's high tide is aroung 17.3 feet, so we have about 20ft. difference in tides today. Too much current for diving so we went tidepooling

We started out by some islands in hopes of finding some abolone. We only found one.

The seals were keeping an eye on us while we were slipping around on the rocks. Maybe we should try flubbing around on our bellies like them, less bruising.

Then we moved to our secret oyster beach and got a couple of buckets for dinner. Pretty low tide, huh? Dolly, the dog, doesn't miss a fishing trip. today she tried jumping from the skiff onto a floating log, her front paws made it but as she pushed the skiff away, her hind legs stayed in the skiff. She got so stretched out before she finally went in the drink.
The silver salmon are in. Last night I caught a nice one in a creek as long as my arm and landed it myself in a tricky rocky waterfall situation. Today they were jumping all around us in the skiff, but not biting, for crying out loud.

2006-07-06T11:55:00.000-08:00

Salvage
Over the winter we salvaged a bunch of stuff for the cabin. We call it going shopping. We have an idea of what it is that we need to build with and head out in the skiff. Beachcombing the small islands around here has provided some great stuff. This is the story of how we got the beams for the living room and the porch for the cabin.

We needed straight logs not too round but 20 feet long. With that in mind we made about six "shopping" trips. We would head out in the skiff to a beach like this... and and search for what we need.
When we find the log, we tie a rope around it and Jonathan pulls it down the beach with the skiff. I stand by to untangle it from other logs. With 17 foot tides, it can be a long tow down the beach. When we have enough, we make a log raft and tow it behind us back to camp. There's J with the tow in the background.

When we get back to camp we grunt the beach logs onto the back of the truck and tow them through camp to the cabin. Dolly helps.
On this particular day, the ground was either frozen or dry enough to drive down to the cabin to unload our beach logs.

Finally they have to be hung...

2006-07-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

We had a great 4th of July here in camp. Heavy on the Crisco and wrestling, but somehow the two were never combined. Maybe we didn't stay up late enough. Some of the events were the greased pig chase, the greased pole contest, electric arm wrestling, and Sumo wrestling.

I think the pigs got pretty hot, not as hot as they are going to be in four months in the smoker.

Then there is the greased pole contest, where you have to start from standing and run all the way out to the end of the pole to grab the pinwheel. This years winner got $511.

Sumo wrestling was a big hit. The suits were really heavy and so were the finalists, except for one 16 year old girl who held her own pretty good against some 250 plus pound burly Alaskan guys.

Dolly gets painted each Holiday, this time she was American. She got in a bit on the grease and wrestling.

It got dark enough for fireworks around eleven o'clock. Up in Anchorage they said they didn't start till around midnight, and it still looked pretty bright out on the news. Six degrees of latitude makes all the difference.

2006-07-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

Whoaa--is this actually working? I did some trouble shooting and my uploads via the satelite dish outside our trailer are working. Hoorah hoorah!

So now you've got to see the saw mill we used for all of the dimensional lumber in the frame of the cabin. It's called a mobile dimensional sawmill. It produces rough cut lumber that we obviously don't kiln dry or treat. We used mostly 2x6s for the frame. Any scraps were used in the greenhouse or for firewood.
It has a Volkwagon engine on it. Jonathan borrowed it from a friend in town, there are several here as there aren't any Home Depots within a thousand miles. We still can't drive down the "driveway", too much mud and roots. So we parked the mill at the top of the driveway and jacked it up about 6 feet on one end so that it would be level. Jonathan milled the logs (spruce, hemlock, and red/yellow cedar) and I chained 6 boards at a time onto the four-wheeler to take down to the cabin.

This was back in January, so we were in the snow sometimes and the days were short, dark by 3:30. But we worked hard and cooked on the wood stove. I did catch on fire one day getting a little too cozy with the stove, my insulated Carharts burn from the inside-out apparently. Fortunately Jonathan is experienced in this and we cut the backs off an old pair of Carharts, then Shoe-gooed them to my warm pants, chaps style. Very nice. Made it through my first full winter in Alaska that way.

2006-07-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

We are now in July since the last post in February we have milled all of the lumber from the trees that were on the ground. All four walls are up(we milled all the lumber ). The roof(had some uncut plywood barged in from a plywood maker in Washington $10 a piece vs. $22 on the island) and then drove a few hours to pick it up). The windows we salvaged from a neighbors yard. The doors are cut from one solid piece of wood, huge!). Our greenhouse is flowing over with greens. I even chainsawed the bathroom ceiling from some scrap spalts from the saw mill (the left over slabs at the bottom of a log when it is milled). Lets see if I can get some good pictures up here...One from the backhoe that put our wood into a pile for the mill and one of the fire from limbing the trees, it burned for three weeks and was seen about fifty miles away, yeowwww.

2006-02-01T13:38:00.000-09:00

I have been trying to update the history of the cabin but am falling behind and work continues. So I will have to mix the history in with the more recent work.
Over the last couple of weeks we have milled the ridge beams(2x10s) and raised the center support post (really a big piece of beach wood). Jonathan and I raised both of those by ourselves. It looked like a big spider web of rope we had rigged up to keep the post from falling.
We put up 11 rafters together. Then the guys showed up and blew through the rest. The face board at the bottom of the rafters required some monkey work in the rain and hail but they got it done. We are now waiting for some plywood to come up on the barge from Washington.

2006-01-16T13:50:00.000-09:00

Well by the time spring break rolled around I was ready to get back up to see J. By this time he was getting the first floor banged down. All boards were tied down to the fourwheeler and dragged down the "road" onto the "driveway" and then lugged up to the deck and banged in. I am glad that I did not have to do any hammering on that trip. We did get to go crabbing and diving. The geoduck divers were in town too so we got some fresh clams.

2006-01-15T12:02:00.000-09:00

J started pioneering in the road and the driveway in the winter of 2004. I met him in July of that year. By that point he had cleared enough to put the first few support posts in. At this time we could only get about half way down the road and had to fourwheel onto the lot. He would spend days out there, camping in the wall tent and drinking his BV. The posts that support the deck are made of trunks of either spruce, hemlock or cedar. He was able to get down to bedrock to lay them. There are 12-15 posts, all with 45s for support. The trunks came from the property and he had to cut each one to size to create a flat surface for the first floor decking. They are beautiful, it is a shame that they are mostly skirted in but you can still go under there to admire them and they provide a more than sturdy foundation for the cabin. We decided to keep the 45 degree thing throughout the cabin for detail work.

I wasn't able to come back to see J and the cabin until January of 2005. By this time J had finished the posts. We were still four wheeleing in from the "road" which we could only get down about half way in the truck, it was rubber boots the rest of the way. We decided to go to the lake with the dog. The lake was frozen and we dared each other to go out farther and farther to see where the ice would break. Then we realized there was a wolf on the point and he was barking at us and easing his way out onto the ice to check us out. Our dog took off towards the wolf and we screamed to get her back. She changed her mind about half way towards the wolf, turned around and came back, best decision she ever made. We put her in the truck and went back out on the ice. The wolf had company, slowly about six or seven more wolves came out of the trees and into view. They also made their way out onto the ice. They were all making noise and keeping an eye on us.

After about an hour of watching them emerge from the trees and play on the ice, four swans flew right over us in the still frozen air. We could hear each movement of their wings. The mountains and the lake were covered with snow as white as the swans. The swans disappeared into this as they flew away, but not their wing beats.

Eventually, the group of wolves made their way back into the tree line except for the first one we saw. It stayed right on the point barking and barking. We were getting cold sitting there on the ice so we decided to go for a walk up the stream where the swans had come from. As we made our way over there the wolf followed us, staying about 50-100 yards behind us but barking the whole way. When he couldn't see us as we would go beind a tree or a corner he would come in closer but move back when he could see us. We didn't walk too far mostly because we were being followed by a wolf whose barking cut through the cold quiet. But the wolf was behind us where we had to go back towards the truck and the dog. We just went about our business and the wolf kept his distance and an eye on us. He went back towards the point as we made it back to the lake. The dog was waiting for us in the truck and we made our way back to camp through the snow. We drove by the "road" to the cabin, letting the cabin rest till spring.