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Posted: 5/6/2025 3:37:44 PM EDT
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I'm way out in the sticks with an Internet connection, don't see many people. Might be a dangerous combination. But I do have lots of neighbors that come by. There is a one-eyed squirrel sitting next to me on the couch as I type, in fact. Figured I'd tell you about some of our neighbors and maybe some of you with more non-traditional furry friends might want to share. When we first moved to Alaska about seven years ago we brought our sweet ferret with us and two cats. That weasel was the light of my life, smart, sweet as can be, free range, litter box trained, loved to explore whether it was trails or hotel rooms. She got to run the trails here in her old age and passed just two weeks shy of her ninth birthday. Got another squirrel on the couch expecting a handout right now, they expect my hands to have a nut and sometimes attack my fingers when I type, kind of funny. Anyway, after losing my ferret I decided no more pets for me, I can't handle the loss. The two cats are gone, as well, and I will remember the time they both went chasing two snowshoe hares by the yurt and out of site and how thirty seconds later they both came running back to the yurt with two snowshoe hares chasing them. I wish I would have gotten that on video. So now we have neighbors.  While The Wife Fishes The front glass of our cabin opens up but when it's cold we just crack the door and the squirrels come in and visit. Sit on my shoulder or on my lap or on the couch. We have a deadwood tree in the center of the cabin they sometimes perch up in. One squirrel came in out of a storm we were having and took a nice nap until she felt rejuvenated and then she went back out to brave it.  Squirrel Takes a Nap in Storm I pull dozens of ticks off of them each spring and summer, mom's bring their babies over and we babysit, and the one-eyed squirrel we call "Guard Squirrel" has his own house out on the deck. These red squirrels are always fighting and he probably lost his eye in a scrap. So we built him a house and he went straight to work insulating it and moved right in. Didn't even haggle on the price. We also have a male and a female ermine who visit the cabin just about daily.  House Ermine The male ermine ran Guard Squirrel out of his house and started storing some fish in there, so I cut back on the handouts. He also stores meat around our cabin including in a battery box we have for our DeWalt batteries. We call him "DJE." Our squirrel pirate eventually reclaimed his house, but then the female ermine also chased him out of his house and then took a several hour nap in there while he slept on the deck railing next to his mansion. She is a very cute squatter though. He has since reclaimed it since she left.  Weasel Steals House We put some tubes around the deck for the weasels and they love them. When taking some food to go, DJE drew a goshawk that nearly got him and in another episode a bald eagle nearly nailed him. He got under our grow bed in the nick of time and the eagle landed in a nearby tree. I brought him a tube from under the grow bed to off the deck and he used it. I doubt he'll ever let me pet him, they are definitely not ferrets, but I can tell he knows I'm on Team Weasel. We also love our Gray Jays. Very smart birds, very bold, and super cute. They have an impressive language and communicate to each other in a complex way. They land on our hands and bring their juniors by each spring and sometimes they will flap at us the same "feed me" flap that the juniors do to their parents. By the way, Guard Squirrel just ran another squirrel off the couch, very territorial. Gray Jays are interesting because they're very bold when it comes to humans, but they stay in the forest and don't live in towns for whatever reason. I like that about them. They also work with us to run off goshawks who come by, it's a team effort.  Grey Jay Lands on Hand And our little nuthatches follow us around the forest in the hope of getting a peanut.  Hatches in the Mist While the wife was away and I was doing work with an excavator, a poor raven was walking on the path in front of me. Not flying off. So I picked him up and he rode up to the cabin with me in the excavator. He had the flu and it had taken his ability to fly. Since the wife was away I risked a Darwin Award. We drove hours to Anchorage to a bird rescue but once I was there they said if he had the flu they would put him down. Maybe I should have dropped him off, but I didn't. We drove back and he passed away in the cabin after a couple of days. That flu is an awful way to go and I thought about dispatching him but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Maybe I should have. But he did have a couple good days on the deck (I kept the other birds away), he ate like a king, and I made him a cushioned box to lay down in when he was on his way out.  Raven Comes In Out of the Rain Grabs a Snack And Sits by Fire And one of the coolest moments we've had is when I got a Great Horned Owl to come to the deck after hoo'ing at him. And then when I hoo'd at him while he was on the deck, he actually responded to me. But other than looking in the "human exhibit" he wasn't interested in being social.  Owl Visits Deck I still have to convince the porcupines to come up onto the deck and I'm hoping a lynx brings her kits by for a bowl of milk. Our furry and feathered neighbors really make this place. Except the bears. I know they see the deck party, but they have to stay away. |
"Behind every successful homesteader is a woman with a good job." - an Old Timer I met
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Very cool OP - temp and neatness both! Wondering why you moved out to the wilderness. I'm a good ways in the country where I live, but about 35 minutes from a hospital and closer to a city. How far are you away from town? What's it like? I've often considered moving out far, but there aren't that many places left where you can do that. |
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Originally Posted By Macumazahn: Very cool OP - temp and neatness both! Wondering why you moved out to the wilderness. I'm a good ways in the country where I live, but about 35 minutes from a hospital and closer to a city. How far are you away from town? What's it like? I've often considered moving out far, but there aren't that many places left where you can do that. We're actually about the same as yourself. We're not actually that far from a small town, it's a thousand feet below us and after a thirty minute tracked ATV ride it's only another half hour or so to the hospital. We are clearing out an LZ this summer and will rely on a helicopter for emergencies should we need to go to the hospital. I say we're remote because you never see people where we're at and the nearest neighbor is a mile away. One area of our acreage is a thousand foot drop (we're on a bluff) and we're next to state land and that goes for hundreds of thousands of acres. You feel like you're in a national forest up here. But there are people living down where our ATV path starts and we can hear neighbors firing rounds and occasionally we can hear road noise but not often. This video has drone footage that puts it in perspective if you're interested. If you want to move out further than you are, and further than we are, there are plenty of places in Alaska for that. I'm lazy and unskilled and started later in life. I'm in my fifties now. So it has been slow going and we still have a ways to go, but we're cresting the hill. Why did we move here? To get away from large population centers and to try to live as self sufficiently as we can.  The Gnostic Forest Homestead |
"Behind every successful homesteader is a woman with a good job." - an Old Timer I met
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Originally Posted By JimmyAR: Nice. When's the drywall go up? We just have tongue & groove and metal siding. We still need to put up the countertops and interior walls and the floor. But not this summer, gonna put up more solar and do some root cellar work and hopefully build a chicken coop. Originally Posted By SanchoCobb: We have the same neighbors looks like. And same wood stove… Awesome place! They're great neighbors! Blaze King is an awesome stove ain't it? But we're so scared of fire (seems like every winter several cabins burn down) that we try not to use it. We actually heat with an electric heat pump most of the year and we'll be putting in a Toyo for our bad-solar backup. I'm hoping to cut several cord of wood and put in a woodshed and never burn it, just have it. My dream backup would be to get or build a wood gasifier that actually worked reliably to run a generator. Then I'd make charcoal and store it in a water proof underground structure. It would last forever and provide electricity without having to rely on fuel. But unfortunately from my research it seems a gasifier is not a practical solution, at least not anything I can afford. |
"Behind every successful homesteader is a woman with a good job." - an Old Timer I met
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A family of lynx on the property. Lynx Kittens |
"Behind every successful homesteader is a woman with a good job." - an Old Timer I met
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Gray Jay brings its Junior by the cabin and then breaks my camera for me... Gray Jay Brings Junior and Breaks My Camera |
"Behind every successful homesteader is a woman with a good job." - an Old Timer I met
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 Bush Celebration: 4 July 2025 |
"Behind every successful homesteader is a woman with a good job." - an Old Timer I met