What Do you DO up there? Gearing up for FISHING at Our wilderness living homestead!!!

When discussing wilderness living, Alot of people ask, 
           "WHAT do you DO up there?" 

That was a question we too were asking before we were "Up there".  I think the thing that goes unsaid or maybe unnoticed by those who are "up there" is that we dont "DO"  things in the sense that urban dwellers do. When we were urbanly sequestered, we often "planned" our days to "do" this or "do" that, be it grocery shopping, retail shopping, mowing the yard, going out for dinner, seeing movies or other such happenings that are planned in day to day living in an urban environment. ...But, what does a person do when they live in a remote location where there are no shopping malls, no restaurants, no lawns, no bowling, etc?  Well, let's see...

When we arrived in our wilderness living remote location, we greeted alot of trees. We found ourselves standing on a large acreage parcel that was never developed in any way. It was a piece of raw land of towering trees, thick underbrush, swamp and wildlife galore.  We stood there with a chainsaw in hand and a gas can in the other and wondered, "where do we start?" It was quite overwhelming! Alot of green and nothing else besides mosquitoes and blue sky.

Since we had no place to stay we left for the nearest town and rented the cheapest motel room we could find to sleep for the first 2 nights. We could only afford 2 nights so had to have a building up in 3 days, ready to sleep in on the third night. It quickly became obvious, that cutting wood was going to be one of those things we "DO" up here.  My husband had brought along a small Alaskan chainsaw mill and got right to work cutting fallen trees into boards for the "cabin" we had set a small goal of an 8'x8' "cabin" 

that we would add onto in 8'x8' sections. Bears were a big worry since they weren't very shy, none of the wildlife was, as they rarely encountered humans in this location and didnt mind strolling into camp as usual. We wanted to get 4 walls and a door up as quickly as possible, worry about the roof later. :)
Little did we know the bears were the least of our troubles, the mosquitoes were going to be our biggest adversary!  Which brings me to one of the other things we "do", " we war against mosquitoes!" There's the smudge fire, the deet, the swatter, the screens (that are questionable in their usefulness as there are so many cracks in the rustic boards, doorways, and window frames that must all have "welcome signs" posted at each of the openings, which allow the little buggars to enter uninhibited!). 
                             
Another thing that makes it hard to narrow down what we "DO" is that you can't plan what you are going to "do". When you live remotely you invariably never have all the things you need to do a project. So you are constantly having to "make do", or figure out how to "do without". So much time is used up trying to compensate for a lack of needed tools, supplies, parts, daylight, sunshine, etc. So just the "doing" is what we "do".  EVERYTHING we do takes so much more time than in urban settings. In town, in a garage, your tools are all handy, along with electricity,  and the hardware store is just down the street. In a remote location though, Your husband, wife, or child, may be using your hammer just when you need it or have used it and left it "who knows where" and it might take an hour just to find the hammer! Likely you will bend over and grab a large hunk of branch or log to pound with, which will be effective, but will take longer (as usual) than using above mentioned hammer. In variably you will run out of nails or screws in the middle of a project (like the roof) and will require unforeseen trips to town many miles away, eating up precious daylight hours.

Another thing we "DO", is try to get everything done during daylight, since there is no electricity. Candle power or lumens take on new meaning when it is applied to real candles and not electric lighting. Trying to do detailed work in 4 or 6 candle power is challenging and time consuming!

When all the building is finally completed and the big fluffy flakes of snow start to gently fall from the sky, there is something else we "DO", we pour hot coffee from the pot on the woodstove, into our mugs, we prop up our weary feet under a quilt on the bed/sofa that we built with our own hands, We watch the flakes fall in a dizzying array of wonder and beauty, while soaking up the warm heat from the fire crackling in the stove and reflect on the satisfaction of all we have accomplished in the proceeding months. So these are some of the things we "DO" up here!

Getting to be time to think about tapping trees. As the weather warms during the day and freezes at night there is a brief window of time that the tree pushes sugar filled sap up from the roots to the top of the tree to create energy for the tree to bloom. It generally happens when the days are 35f degrees to 40f degrees  during the day, and when the nights fall below freezing 32f degrees. This is the ideal time to draw off sap to make Maple or Birch syrup or sugar.  After the nights warm to above freezing the tree will bloom and the sap will cease to flow adequately for syruping and the season ends. Here are some pics of trees we've tapped... 

We put out about 60-100 taps each spring.  Each tree gives about 15 gallons of sap in a good year.  It will take approximately 40-50 gallons of sap to boil down into 1 gallon of pure maple syrup. No sugar is added! All the sugar comes straight from the tree! *********************************     NATIVE AMERICANS have a legend .....that says that the maple tree used to give forth straight pure syrup right from the tree. But the men would all tap the trees and lay beneath them all day drinking the sweet candy syrup, and they got fat and lazy.  So the Great Spirit got angry and opened the tops off all the trees and filled them with water...And that is why men must now work to evaporate off 50 gallons of water to get 1 gallon of the sweet pure syrup!

When the sap comes from the tree it is clear as shown here...

When the sap is heated over the fires the sugars concentrate as evaporation of the water occurs... as the sugars begin to roast over the flames it turns golden just like marshmallows do when you roast them...

.... See how the sap that is roasting in the pan above is turning golden compared to the sap just warming in the pan to the left of it in the picture above?

Below is the finished syrup.  We keep the fires burning about 20 hours a day for about 2 weeks straight! We are really tired, literally exhausted by the end of the run.  We usually make about 15 -20 finished gallons of syrup about a year's supply for our family of 4.

With Syruping Season finished... We are moving on to FISHING SEASON!!!

The weather has been pretty cold, there is still about a foot of snow on the ground but there have been some intermittent warm days, and a few sprinkles so spring is about to SPRING, I hope!!! We are anxiously awaiting ICE OUT ...(but ITS STILL A FOOT DEEP) !

The kids and hubby have taken up the lure making hobby as of late to help assuage  the "fishin' itch".

They are in different stages of carving some wooden lures

as well as in the process of tying up some flies.

This isnt anything my husband or young sons have done before, nor have they any prior experience, and no one to give them instructions, so please forgive their learning curve, but I was impressed with their progress and cant wait to try them out myself. They have started quite a variety so far, poppers, lures and hope to use them for PIKE, WALLEYE, TROUT, PANFISH....These lures aren't Cabela's or Bass Pro, but they are our own made with our own hands that we hope will provide fun and food in the very near future! We'll keep you posted on how well they worked! They are proud of their first production! Its been a good time for dad and sons!