Southwest wind pours in gusts off the mountains, swirling sheets of white snow over the blue-gray ocean. We’ve been out cutting cedar driftwood logs and splitting them for firewood, but now our second little woodshed is full to the brim and though it’s only 4 pm, the day is starting to mute itself toward darkness. Time to come in, stoke up the woodstove and put a pot of hearty winter soup on to simmer, made with our own venison sausage.

This is the first whole winter that we’ll have spent in Uganik together, since usually we are in Minneapolis sharing our salmon with everyone during the holidays. The turn of seasons from fall to winter has been a time of really settling in. We’ve worked on many many catch-up house projects, which are seemingly endless (but satisfying!) since we are starting from raw nature and building this thing from scratch with, of course, no ability to just run to a store to pick up anything - from screws to tile to paint to siding. Trying to plan 6 months out for materials, all the details of which we have to learn how to do, is quite the calculus. So far we’ve got an indoor toilet and concrete countertop in the bathroom that we have poured and epoxied in place, a bunch of additional foam insulation and rough cut spruce siding coming along on the exterior of the house, new shelves under the stairwell for Tollef’s hard cider brewing operation from local trees (ours are still too young), some interior paint, long-overdue office reorganization, and so many odds and ends accomplished inside and out.

Local (almost feral) apples from the neighbors’ old homestead trees that we press for cider.

Constructing our underwater wild kelp farm has also been a major effort these past few weeks - heaving 300 pound anchors, attached to lines and buoys, into the water, floating our kelp growing lines as close to exactly 7 feet under as possible, and tensioning them just so. Both of us are so glad that our setnet fishing skills directly transfer to this type of water work – tying the knots, setting the anchors, tightening everything either with our outboard or a come-a-long – all these activities are second nature to us. We are totally ready to plant the kelp seed, which is on twine that we will wrap around the lines, but now it’s mother nature’s turn to push pause. We have to wait until the weather warms up just a smidge because the kelp spores will freeze if it’s below 32 degrees when they go overboard. Luckily, with our maritime climate we can expect temperatures to come up soon. Maybe next week we will officially be growers! Though this journey has been almost 2 years in the making, what with the many agency approvals and nearly endless paperwork, and though it’s such a new venture that processing, products, and markets aren’t exactly nailed down yet, there’s a palpable excitement bubbling in us about being a part of the pioneering surge of mariculture in Alaska while also doing something that is so great for the ocean.

Settling in isn’t all about projects, though. On good weather days, when the wind is calm, we try to make time for adventuring in our home territory – skiffing to the farthest inner reaches of the bay and hiking deeper in than we’ve ever gone, or alternately heading to exposed outer capes for a little deer hunting to fill our winter freezer. One day we loaded both of us, our hiking/hunting gear, and the dog in our little inflatable raft and took turns rowing a mile up a tidal lagoon, disturbing the cold silence by occasionally crunching past panes of ethereal, glass-like skims of ice from the fresh water floating atop the salty ocean, while a pair of bald eagles and numerous deer watched us from the fjord-like surroundings. Something about the stillness, the frozen beauty of the vegetation caked in frosty ice, left us uninterested in hunting that day. We chose to just hike and take it all in.

Checking for deer 2000 feet above Village Islands, Uganik Bay.

Sometimes the good weather adventuring happens right off our front porch, as was the case when we finally fired up the old 1913 Wisconsin-made claw-foot bathtub turned wood-fired outdoor hot tub that was from the old cannery that used to be in this spot. Years ago, Tollef found it cast aside, overgrown with grasses, and had been promising this setup for a year. Prior to this, we had an open fire under the cast iron, leaving smoke in our eyes and sparks popping around the grasses. Finally now it’s all contained in a homemade woodstove cobbled together out of an old propane tank and a smoke stack from an abandoned derelict boat. What a treat to inaugurate it with a full-moon soak, with a glass of gifted Prosecco at hand. It was too overcast to see stars, but through the waning clouds the moon graced us with her lovely face as the steam rose vertically in the still evening. That was a fine way to end the day. Looking forward to another warm soak is an understatement.

Happy December, all!-Tollef, Adelia & Vali — Happy December, all!
-*Tollef, Adelia & Vali*

Alaskan Fall To Winter