Tana and Adam Grenda live in southwestern Alaska with their 6 kids, ages 12, 11, 8, 7, 4, and 1. They live mainly a subsistence lifestyle with fishing, hunting, and trapping. Adam flies full time as a pilot for the National Park Service in Katmai National Park. Tana runs her company Bristol Bay Fitness, and is an online health and fitness coach and momma at home.
Alaska is a place unlike any other that I’ve visited. It is the kind of place where you go to visit, but never leave because its hooks sink deep into your heart and make you feel home.
It was like this for my husband and I as pilots from Idaho who both ventured to Alaska before we knew each other. After we graduated college, met, and got married, and had the opportunity to work in bush Alaska as newlyweds. We never felt more home.
This led to living out here full time. We immersed ourselves fully into everything outdoors that we loved to do. Hunting, fishing, and flying were our top favorite adventures, but living 300 miles off the road system and into the wilderness of Alaska produced some challenges.
We had no other option than to provide for ourselves year round by harvesting our own meat and creating our forever Alaskan home.
Things really changed when kids came into the picture. We struggled for years with infertility. One day, we got a call about a sibling group of 5 kids that needed a home.
We did not even hesitate, and said yes. Within months, we went from a family of 2 to a family of 7, and the next year, another foster baby showed up on our doorstep. We just recently adopted the 5 siblings last week, after a 2.5 year long battle.
Living this Alaska life with 6 alaskan native children is unlike anything I imagined. Our goal is to consistently teach them how to hunt and do subsistence activities, and connect them to their culture in every way that we can.
Our year-round subsistence activities begin in winter on the trapline where we trap wolves, wolverines, beavers, foxes, marten, mink, and more. We use the furs to sell and sew into mittens and hats and warm clothing.
Spring evolves into beach-coming where we hunt for treasures to sell and collect, along with shed hunting to sell moose sheds and fund the expensive produce we fly in from the big city.
Summertime is all about FISHING. I suppose this is not so much about fishing, but catching and straight harvest.
We catch thousands of pounds of salmon during the wild salmon run every June and July for subsistence. We put out a subsistence fish net, and pick the net to fill totes and totes of fresh salmon to smoke and freeze to eat on all winter. This is days and hours of work, filleting, and packing hundreds of pounds of salmon fillets.
We also do a little bit of gardening during our very short growing season.
As fall approaches, we hit the berry patches and make the kids favorite agutuk, or “eskimo ice cream.”
Fall means we start hunting hart to fill 3 big freezers with moose and caribou, and we start archery hunting rabbits, grouse, and other small game to add to our winter nutrition. Then it is back to winter hibernation, eating primarily meat and living on the trapline.
Our Alaska life throughout the seasons is one of subsistence, self-reliance, and doing everything ourselves from start to finish to provide for our family and always have a year’s worth of food storage, from fresh, wild game and living off the land as much as possible. Our kids take part in every piece of these processes and we can’t imagine our life any other way!
If you want to be self-sufficient and feed your family healthy hearty meals from scratch, you’ve got to
start milling at home. I know, I know, it sounds complicated and al little bit scary, right? But it doesn’t
have to be!
I am not well traveled. I’ve never flown on a plane. I’ve never been north of Ohio or west of Texas.I’m not as well traveled as some may say one should be, but this piece of land has housed all of my fondest memories…
Do you ever worry that your kids will miss out because of this homesteading lifestyle choice? This fear crosses my mind time to time. I’m sure many, if not most of you, could agree that it can be extremely difficult to get extended time away from the homestead for more than a full day, especially in the busy summer months when daily chores demand our regular attention…
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to ‘those who take care of us’ … the land knows you, even when you are lost.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass…
Babies, Business, and Bumper Crops: How I am Learning to Homestead with Babies in Tow
Have you ever had one of those days? You know the days when you are cleaning the baby’s diaper, milking the cow, scooping poop in the barn, wiping noses, and cleaning more poop off of kids’ shoes…
Hey there, Homesteading Mama’s!
I’m Rachel from @frontier_homesteading. My husband Ryan, three children and I have been homesteading for about 10 years now, first in Wyoming and now in Alaska.
We currently have milk goats, pack goats, sheep, a pig, a cow, chickens, rabbits, bees and a dog. Seasonally, we also have more pigs, meat chickens and turkeys….
Stained glass windows date back to the 7th century. With the earliest known reference dating
from 675 AD when workmen were imported from France to Britain to Glaze the windows of a
monastery…
Homesteading and growing food is not the easy way out of this life, i would say it is the hard way as there’s nothing convenient about it. It’s a lifestyle, a life change not a trend or hobby. Well, that’s my opinion any way…
Awakino Station is a child’s dream. There is the river to splash in, tussock covered hills to explore, animals to raise and a bustling kitchen with a baking tin full of something yummy to eat…
