Arctic Homestead


Book Description

Chronicles a family's efforts to build a home near the Arctic Circle in Alaska, depicting their moving discovery of love and courage in a land of modern-day outlaws, feuds, grizzly bears, and unbelievably harsh winters.




Alaska Homesteader's Handbook


Book Description

The Alaska Homesteader’s Handbook is a remarkable compilation of practical information for living in one of the most impractical and inhostpitable landscapes in the United States. More than forty pioneer types ranging from their mid-nineties to mid-twenties describe their reasons for choosing to live their lives on Alaska and offer useful instructions and advice that made that life more livable. Whether it’s how to live among bears, build an outhouse, cross a river, or make birch syrup, each story gives readers a window to a life most will never know but many still dream about. Dozens of photographs and more than 100 line drawings illustrate the real-life experiences of Alaska settlers such as 1930s New Deal colonists, demobilized military who stayed after World War II, dream seekers from the ’60s and ’70s, and myriad others who staked their claim in Alaska.




Go North, Young Man


Book Description

Go North, Young Man, first published in 1957, is Gordon Stoddard's account of his first four years as a homesteader on Alaska's Kenai peninsula in the 1950s. From building his first cabin (with only the aid of a basic do-it-yourself pamphlet), to growing an abundance of over-sized vegetables, to hunting and foraging and surviving the long winters, Stoddard portrays a down-to-earth look at the simple life he desired and created for himself. Includes 19 pages of photographs and maps.




Homestead Kitchen


Book Description

The first cookbook from homesteaders and co-stars of Discovery’s Alaska: The Last Frontier Eve and Eivin Kilcher features appealing recipes for anyone looking to live more sustainably, healthfully, and independently, regardless of where and what they call home. Eve and Eivin Kilcher, stars of the hit Discovery show Alaska: The Last Frontier, are experts in sustainable living. Homesteaders by choice, the couple has had to use their self-reliance skills to survive harsh winters in the Alaskan wilderness and raise a thriving family. In their debut book, the Kilchers share 85 original family recipes and advice on gardening, preserving, and foraging. The tips and techniques they have cultivated from their family and through necessity will help anyone looking to shrink their environmental footprint and become less dependent on mass-produced food and products. Stunningly photographed in and around their handmade home and farm, Homestead Kitchen illustrates that taking on small-scale sustainable projects is not only possible in a suburban/urban setting, but ultimately a more responsible and gratifying way to live.







Homestead Girl


Book Description




The Salmon Sisters: Feasting, Fishing, and Living in Alaska


Book Description

Introducing Alaska’s answer to the Pioneer Woman: Two sisters share their remarkable life story as fisherwomen of the Aleutian Islands—plus 50 sustainable seafood recipes that honor the beauty of wild foods. Share in the remarkable and wild lives of Emma Teal Laukitis and Claire Neaton, the Salmon Sisters, who grew up on a homestead in the Aleutians where the family ran a commercial fishing boat in the Alaskan sea. Their book reveals through stories, recipes, and photography this outward-bound lifestyle of natural bounty, the honest work on a boat's deck, and the wholesome food that comes from local waters and land. Here are creative and simple ways to enjoy wild salmon, halibut, and spot prawns, as well as simple crafts and ideas for exploring the natural world. The sisters are committed to sustaining and celebrating the seafaring community in Alaska, and their business of selling products related to and from the ocean donates a can of wild-caught fish to local food banks for each item purchased. “To flip through the pages of Emma Teal Laukities’s and Claire Neaton’s new cookbook . . . is to be whisked away on an adventure in the country’s northernmost state.” —Martha Stewart




Building Alaskan Dreams


Book Description

Adventure, hardship, heartbreak and ultimate victory are woven through this true story of one man's modern day Alaskan homesteading experience. After a series of disastrous events leads to a bitter divorce and destroys a prosperous mid-Western farming life, Travis hits the road in an old pick-up truck. Aimless and aching, homeless for several years, arrested in a string of small towns in the Deep South for being a vagrant and other petty 'crimes,' he finds himself on a downward slide until he reads of Alaskan homesteading in a 'Mother Earth News' magazine, and begins to dream of his own land. That dream comes to life in the shadow of Alaskan mountain splendor, where he creates a working homestead from little more than thin air and his own rugged determination and guts. Face-to-face encounters with bears, surviving 60-below zero winters in a tiny dirt-floored lean-to, learning to use dogs as draft animals to get the homestead work done - these are just a few of the challenges he must overcome to carve out a life in harsh sub-arctic Alaska. Interviews, original diary entries, photos and illustrations are an important part of the historical record of this homestead saga.




Alaskan Wilderness Adventure II


Book Description

Homesteading in the Wilderness of Alaska... Duane Ose moved to Alaska on a whim nearly 30 years ago, after surviving a gunshot wound to the head. He and his wife Rena were the very last persons to file a claim under the Federal Homestead Act of 1862-for a piece of property Duane describes as "a giant, fertile garden bowl, cupped warmly in God's loving hands." His new book, Alaskan Wilderness Adventure II, is part biography, part adventure, recounting how he and his young friend Jeff Peterson established Duane's homestead in the center of Alaska. With humor and vivid imagery, Duane has chronicled the trials and tribulations of building trails, constructing a home, and turning this five-acre slice of heaven into a habitable piece of property-a homestead Duane and Rena call Ose Mountain.




One Man's Wilderness


Book Description