Subsistence thread

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stikine

stikine

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Post up your gardening, fishing, hunting, or whatever you do to get your food. No grocery store stuff.

Just got back today from a successful gillnetting trip up the Stikine River for some sockeye salmon. I don't have a final count yet but we caught between 50 to 60 and called it good. Lotta work now to process, smoke and can. All good though. A couple of pictures and videos to share. The Stikine River is the fastest, free flowing, navigable river in North America.


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Great thread idea!

Is there a limit on the salmon?

Is the water usually brown or is it due to a lot of rain etc?
 
I can get the cans open all by myself :^D I don't do much of anything. Wild berries in season, spruce tips in the spring, and juniper berries is about it. I've been meaning to make better use of the spring garlic mustard. I certainly get enough of it, but I just eat some as I walk by.
 
I don't eat dead fish...........or live ones.
But I grow a shitload of vegetables.

Between the garden and the 60 m2 polytunnel we are pretty much able to live off the land all summer.
I can and freeze a lot, like 60 pds of tomato sauce, so it helps us through the winter, too.

The cherriers are ripe right now, between my 30 trees I probably have 600 pds.
The forecast says rain saturday, so I've called friends and neighbours to show up with baskets and pick their fill.
We've had a lot of happy cherry pickers here today :)
 
Our garden is giving us perfect edible pod peas now. Siberian kale in all our salads just about every day. Fresh basil and pesto regularly...need to pick and make a batch today in fact. Fresh oregano and parsley are going well too. Green beans are still a couple of weeks out, but you can see the little buggers forming up.
 
You gardening folks- do you do alot of composting? I'm having trouble getting into it. Seems like something that once you get the hang of it, it's a probably a no brainer.
 
I have a compost pile, but I don't grow anything. My main motivation is reducing waste trucking my stuff somewhere to sit in a hole and do nothing. I just add to the top. If I were interested in really using it, it should be turned every so often.
 
The promised rain didn't show up, so the cherries are still intact.
We are picking like crazy, canning, juicing and freezing.
Plus handing them out.
Had a truck driver that my wife really likes, because he is really helpful, delivering feed yesterday, sent him on his way with a couple of pounds of cherries.
My hay guy is cutting the neighbour's field right now, so I went up with a box full for him.
Never yet met a person, that doesn't get happy when given ripe cherries.

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Cherries are done here as of a few weeks ago. My main tree died a few years ago, but I still have some the birds planted. They get tiny little cherries on them. Not really worth picking and saving, but it's still good standing under the tree and just eating them. I need to spend some time figuring out how cherries work, and what the different varieties are. Different bark, different fruit, different structure; all cherry.
 
From what I've gathered, reflective scare tape or CDs are best hung close to ripening to prevent birds eating cherries. .

Bugs are another challenge.
 
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We are overloaded right now with peaches, cucumbers, sweet peppers, apples and yes, squashes.
What I really like about gardening is that each year, we will get a bumper crop of one type of fruit or the other. It all depends on weather conditions. For example if we get a high wind or rain when the blooms are setting, it will knock those blooms off and then will get a smaller crop. Over the years I realized that it’s actually a good thing! Because one year we will get a big harvest of pears, then we will can them, process them, whatever and they last a good long time. Then the next year we will be processing a different type of fruit. It all works out really well. There’s some things that I stopped growing for example corn. Corn takes a whole lot of water which we are in short supply of and I can buy it at the organic grocery or the farmers market for pennies on the dollar.
As for cherries, I removed the cherry trees for two reasons: one. The birds would eat almost all of them, and two, they require a lot of water.

my buddy who does a lot of fishing just came back with a load of salmon and dropped off some really nice steaks for us. Life is pretty good and easy and Sonoma county in someways
 
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