Our Latest Hostage/ Guest Worker, Guest Worker!

I gotta practice that term.  Guest Worker!

It happened.  We burned through all the eligible family members that we could con, er, persuade to visit Alaska for a work-cation.  The last guy, Zach, Beret's wife's brother was a stretch to even be called a relative but we got two good years out of him.  He actually moved on here in Alaska to a paying job but we won't hold that against him!

So we had started pulling nets with this year's products ourselves and were writing to Char send back ache liniment.  She sent instead the web address of a great site, ********.  It actually charges people to be matched up with us, the host.  

It is such a great site that Larry and JR want to keep it a secret so that all of the other farmers and locals don't get to the best workers before we do. 

People write a profile touting their skills and we can select from those that want to travel to Alaska.  We wrote up a listing for the location, the housing conditions, and the work involved with pictures and interested parties can contact us as well.

I don't want to brag about our writing skills or maybe it was the photography but we woke up the next  morning to the ping ping ping of incoming mail.  We were stacking them up! 

 It seems everyone between the ages of 20 and 40 dreams of taking a gap year and working on an oyster farm in remote Alaska.  They want to live off the grid, work from 3 a.m.  until 11 p.m. in the cold rain with wet, heavy nets, and stay on a cot behind the cabin with no running water.

And I told 'em like it is.  You will be chopping wood, carrying water, eating whatever you catch, and playing second fiddle to Brick, our dog.  He sits on the boat seat!

They pay their own way here.  They agree to work around 25 hours a week on the farm plus help with the living chores and we provide the room and board.

We heard from a couple from Australia, Poland, a girl from Malaysia, a Frenchman, a Scotts, several Brits, a Hoosier, and one guy from New York City.

We wrote back and forth with several people.  We ruled out the New Yorker right away.  Too citified.  After all these exotic applicants who do you think we actually invited?  A good ol' southern Indiana farm boy!  

Yep!  Lee showed up one week ago.  Jerry spent the weekend boating him around and taking him fishing and out to pull in the shrimp pots.  On Monday we put him in rain gear and he was soon elbow deep in oyster poo.  He is catching on quick, is polite, likes my cooking, and is willing to do whatever.

This weekend we are having a three day rainy, windy gale.  He still seems to want to stay.  We are all ready talking about  promoting him to management and pulling in more workers.  Jerry can take a different one out fishing and adventuring each day.

********, what a deal.

Just a Typical Day around the Float House

We worked hard yesterday so we slept in today.  Larry and I washed, tumbled, sorted, and re-netted 3000+ oyster.

 JR, Zach, and the fearless bear dog drove to Whale Pass to catch herring.  It is sort of like a smelt run but not with nets.  They use a pole with 5 hooks on each line and just jig it up and down.  Dad was so good at that when he was here that he could routinely pull in four or all five fish on at a time.  I don't have the patience to wait for all the hooks to fill up.  I guess that I used up all my patience back in my school teaching days. The men got home around 9:30 and had to clean and freezer bag a cooler full of fish.

Pickle, smoke and use for bait. Herring are a vital part of the food chain around here.

So it was 9 a.m.before I wondered out to the green house with my coffee which I sweetened with leaves off my  very own home grown Steavia plant!  I don't know what else to do with it, any suggestions?  (the Steavia, not the coffee)

 The green house got totally torn down and rebuilt this spring with reinforced visqueen and is doing well.

I wondered from there to sit on a nurse log to watch the water and finish my coffee.  Recently we brought home an old but new to us float to move our shed onto to free up float space to add a bedroom/bath and sun porch to our cabin - very ambitious plans. A float has logs laying one way with one log pulled up across on each end that you lash all the other logs together from.

 This rider log as they are called is pretty old and weathered so that it has grass and small trees growing out of it - a very rainforesty decor. That is called a nurse tree, but I digress.  I am sitting there watching the fish feed on top of the water and other things feed on these top fish.  Once you hear an eagle fly you will never forget the sound,  You hear a voop, voop (rhymes with loop) as they flap their wings - it is surprisingly loud!

 Henry, our resident heron was fishing from the shore.

 A river otter swam to within a few feet of me.  He was really looking me over.

  It was a nice start to a day that got even better before the rain chased us home.

Finishing my coffee, I talked Larry in to a quick boat ride to check on some new oyster lines we recently put out.  There is no such thing as a quick boat ride around here and we know better by now than to go off with out our proper gear, but off we went.

On our way to the lines we cruised by some of our favorite beach spots.  We collected enough sea cucumber off our gear for a delicious treat.  Moving on we checked on some more cuke- friendly beaches.  I peek in an old stack of trays that were exposed by the low tides and to my delight, they were filled with all sorts of sea treasures.  I got out some oysters, horse clams, and scallops.  We did look at the new lines and those were feeding fine.

 We went to an older spot, just to check and ended up moving bags, changing lines and moving support posts, me without rain gear, gloves, and in my old, leaky boots because we were just going out for a minute.
We pulled some bags that were ready and met up with the other guys at the processor.  They had been out digging clams.  We cleaned, processed the oysters, clacked the clams and got dirtier and wetter.  We did clean some of the sea cucumbers, clams, and such for a delicious lunch fry.

 Back at the house by 1 p.m. I mixed up some sour dough bread using my starter mix (have you tried yours, Beret?).  Yep, this has been a pretty typical day around the float house and it isn't over yet!