As the tide turns, a bushy soap opera

[tungularafishcamp]

Well folks, never made it thru high school so don't expect too much here, am just a bush rat in this modern era of internet and ez livin. So am just sittin here in my new man cave trying to figure out what to say.

Grew up mostly in suburbia as an air force brat, never found a place that felt like home I hit Kodiak island when I was 20 and it has been home ever since!

I bounced around on different big boats and different fisheries in both the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea until I had enuff of a nest egg to buy a gill net site at the S end of Kodiak. I would set net for salmon here for summers and then fish big boats all winter until I started makin babies then it was time to shift to smaller boats as you get more family time. Big boat fishing is great but the boat is your wife, your wife your mistress and your a stranger to your kids so it was an ez choice.

Funny thing was when I quit the big boat fishing and the sometimes big money it brings to get more home time my wife liked it better the other way around so left me for bluer pastures but I got 2 great daughters out of it and for some reason had way more money even though I was makin way less

Becoming a single dad just spent summers at fish camp for many years so kids could go to school and be civilized in town. Remarried and got 2 sons out of the deal and all the kids loved fishcamp til the middle teens then it was a prison camp/torture chamber, too bad we didn't have internet then, or maybe it was a good thing!

Kids are all out on their own now or off at college so am out here as much as I can be and still keep my current wife She is just winding up her career as a nurse, she loves it out here and it gives her time to work on her art.

I do dungeness crabbin, salmon, and halibut fishing now but other fisheries will keep coming and going. Am playing around with octopus fishing
now, building some experimental pots. Also added a couple of 20x50 high tunnels and started raising produce for a remote cannery near here.

We get all our electrical needs (except welding) met by a water wheel, and now have skype so life is pretty cush! From June thru August quite a few folks live out here but by sept 1st most are gone although there is a small village and the remote cannery not too far away.

Although there are a lot of freedoms here that I sometimes take for granted, til I travel anyway we still have all the rules and regs that everywhere else has and even get to pay borough(our version of a county) taxes for NO services as the ocean is the hiway/runway around here. Keep waiting for them to pick up the garbage but no luck so far:laughing:

Being out here alone much of the time you learn to figure out make things work, just usually not the "right" way. Not sure how I ever did it without a tractor, just had one for a few years but wow it makes life easier! Not sure how I ever had a tractor or did anything else out here before I found tractorbynet for the huge wealth of knowledge/help that is here as well as the comradery on here (and no I am not a communist Houston Scott)

Rick

PS Not really a man cave but the start of the new root cellar.

 

[mmurphy]

That is one great looking "Man Cave". I would love that area but, winter time blues from lack of sun in winter would be a killer on me! Does the Ice Road Truckers go by?

 

[MarkV]

Rick I am glad you posted a little history. For those of us that lived in the city your kind of isolation is hard to imagine. I have seen some photo's of your camp in the past how about a few more sometime. When do you come in for the winter or do you?

MarkV

 

[MossflowerWoods]

Rick,

Same questions as MarkV. Where do you go in winter, and more pictues PLEASE!

I assume you use a generator when welding. I also assume you have your own fuel depot you keep stocked.

Be well sir!
David

 

[k0ua]

Thanks for the Bio Rick, that was interesting, if you can please post some more pictures, and tells us what all you use your tractor for.
thanks

James K0UA

 

[Egon]

Thanks for the post. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

Solitude is great for some. For me it would be great during midsummer but come the colder short days things would just fall apart.

Pictures would be interesting?:thumbsup:

 

[joemd11]

Excellent post Rick! Good to see how people in different areas live. Post some more pics when you get a chance as many of us will never get a chance to visit Kodiak. Oh, and watch out for those bears!

 

[tungularafishcamp]

:laughing:The call of nature got me up a little bit ago and was standing on the porch answering that call, hear a snort and a little 3 yr old bear was trying to get into the bait tote even with the deck lights on. A shout got him moving on his way.

I can get my fuel from the cannery that has several fuel barges in every year and it has large storage tanks so that makes it ez for me although payin for fuel is not so ez these days. $4.40 last fuel barge.

It seems like I use the tractor for about everything these days, movin boats motors, nets, fuel, fish, haulin kelp, building, mobile scaffolding,you name it not sure how I ever did it all without the tractor. I have put pics on many specific posts in the past but I will add a few here. Hughesnet is a little slow on the upload so I don't do too many at once.

Rick

 

[tungularafishcamp]

Other tractor uses

 

[tungularafishcamp]

Couple more I have of the old n new greenhouses