Why doesn't it work anymore to "live off the land?" (Chitina: rent, live in)

[SOON2BNSURPRISE]

What about the Brown family on that Discovery Channel show, "Alaskan Bush People". Is the show real or fake?

Maybe I will ask the question in the main forum. LOL

[AKStafford]

Originally Posted by SOON2BNSURPRISE

What about the Brown family on that Discovery Channel show, "Alaskan Bush People". Is the show real or fake?

Maybe I will ask the question in the main forum. LOL

I answered in your other thread... Alaskan Bush People is completely staged.

[Rance]

It's real. Real stupid.

[Haolejohn]

Originally Posted by HannahTravels

Yeah, we freeze a lot of ours too. I'm curious how you speed the process up for picking? Hand-picking, even just a quart sized bag, always takes me a little bit. Not an eternity or anything, but it isn't something that I could run out and do before work.

There is a berry rake thing. Don't laugh, but I actually used a dog poop scooper thing...seriously


Another way to speed up the process is finding a batch that is very good. I once sat down in one location and in 30 minutes I had two gallons picked. Barely had to move. Of course it took me over a week this year to get a gallon.


Unfortunately my job doesn't allow me to take the time off to hunt like I would like to. SO I am stuck hunting on weekends and after school. Luckily I have plenty of fish in the freezer just in case. I will say that this year was the first time I have bought red meat from the store in over two years.

[HannahTravels]

Originally Posted by Haolejohn

There is a berry rake thing. Don't laugh, but I actually used a dog poop scooper thing...seriously

This is great! Haha.

[Haolejohn]

Originally Posted by HannahTravels

This is great! Haha.

I bought it to pick up dog poop. While sitting at the gate in anchorage I had an elder approach me about it. He thought it was a berry picker for people with bad backs. I ran with his idea. Never used it for poop but only used it on one weekend berry picking. Wasn't terrible, just wasn't the best either.

[pittsflyer]

Because you would still have to have a job to pay for the mortgage, land taxes, etc. Even people that "lived off the land" still had to import things and these days I cant even leave my house without spending a $100. I am just trying to grow some food in my apartment and the start up costs are staggering.

But its the mortgage and land taxes that will ultimately do you in if you are trying to do that these days.

[starlite9]

Unless you live by the ocean, it is a very hard lifestyle. If you are a bit lazy, you would be toast in the interior. By the Ocean the term "when the tides out, the table is set" applies. At least on the interior you could have a fish wheel and have dried fish for winter, but it still would be a battle to survive. To farm, you would need machinery to clear land and then your aren't self sufficient needing fuel and parts, winter would be very hard on a horse and again would require outside food source or you let it roam free in winter to feed itself and the wolves/bears would eat it!

You can live comfortably, but it would require having links to towns.

[mitgreb]

Originally Posted by MouseBandit

But all the folks you read about during the 50s, homesteading and proving up the land, they made it. Were they not truly self sufficient in the way I'm thinking? It doesn't sound like many of them had outside jobs or loads of money to buy food items. Their descriptions and stories sound like hunting, fishing, gathering, and the occasional garden and root cellar got them by. Am I just seeing what I want to see in those accounts?

The 1950's! You better go back another 100 years to find someone truly "living off the land"! And they best not be wearing store bought clothes!

[RayinAK]

Originally Posted by MouseBandit

Awesome. I'm liking the idea of homer as a starting place. Weather sounds like something I could like, not tons more rain than PNW, but not as hot as the Mat-Su (or as Oregon!), on the road system but not city. Sounds like the culture would be similar to what I'm used to here, combo of hippy and redneck, lol. Lots of fishing reasonably accessible. I'd love to be all hardcore and live way north of Fairbanks, but that's a ways off, haha. Plus I need forests and woods to keep me sane. I picture a year or three getting the hang of things, learning and testing our skills and capabilities, and just seeing if it's all we think it is. the husband will definitely be working, at least the first few years while we come up with another plan. He currently does civil construction, but I don't see tons of jobs for that, nor is he excited about working outdoors through winter, lol. So,it might be time for a career shift for him. :-). We will be looking at that as well.

While you can fish and hunt around Homer, it's not as easy as you think if such fishing and hunting is done for subsistence. Living off the land is nearly impossible today in most of Alaska, unless you own a very large parcel of land by Juneau and vicinity, or perhaps somewhere in the interior where there is plenty of migrating wildlife.

Lets take Homer, for example: you just can't make it to the sea to fish through private property. But there are public boat launch areas. So if you have a boat, you can do some fishing. Also, you can fish in some of the rivers nearby (Ninilchik, Deep Creep, Kenai, etc.), but it will be combat fishing. There will be hundreds, if not thousands of people fishing in the same areas.

Moose and bear hunting: again, not as easy as you think. Most Alaska residents are concentrated in the major cities and towns, so often you have to travel great distances to hunt, and the success rate is not that great. Even here in Fairbanks we have hunters coming over from Anchorage to hunt moose and caribou along hundreds of other hunters from Fairbanks. It means that the success rate is very low.

If you have lots of money and want to increase your success rate at killing a moose, then you can have a small airplane pilot flying you to a remote area.
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Back in the early 1900's the few outsiders coming to Alaska could live off the land, hunting, etc. But nowadays it is not possible. Most of Alaska is owned by the Federal Government, the Native populations, and the State. The amount of private land is very small and expensive.