Summerdale Smallholding

Recently, while searching for information about raising pigs, I discovered a British term that I really appreciate. Admittedly, I get a bit romantic about the Continent, the Isles included, and, even though I’ve never visited (except on Google Earth) and have no real knowledge on which to base such an opinion, I just sort of assume everything is more idyllic there. Pastoral images of English cottage gardens, Italian vineyards, and rural French countryside definitely resonate with me. A subtle formality can be found in the European rustic form that I feel is missing in most American landscapes. It makes me think ‘that’s the way things ought to look.’ So I’m not at all surprised by my reaction to the term smallholding.

Loosely defined, a smallholding is a small, single family farm designed to provide for and sustain its inhabitants, which is exactly what we are looking to accomplish with our new property. Not agriculture, per se, just us husbanding our little corner of the earth and maybe taking a few links out of our food chain. A process more so than a product, perhaps, but hopefully one that also generates some tangible benefits for the effort.


In keeping with the fine tradition of our good friend Thoreau, I feel inclined to document the entire enterprise, and since this be the medium of our times it seems as good a place as any to do so. Expect to see many more discussions, plans, solicitations of assistance, pictures, updates, trials and errors of this nature in posts to come. Sanctimonious non sequitur will continue to be a mainstay, alongside a running narrative on our smallholding activity.

Obviously, it is quite unlikely that we will ever see any real return on our investment, other than those abstruse benefits reaped from living a pastoral existence. Not even considering capital assets such as land, tractor and existent infrastructure, I doubt the operation could ever break even. But since the validity of that skepticism is something I am interested in substantiating, I will maintain a financial record using Google Docs and will share an other-than-quarterly report from time to time. Seeing as they are our only live stock at the moment, I’m split over whether I ought to include expenses related to the dogs. I tend to think not, though I may throw them in just because.

So far, the only cost has been $13.01 in diesel fuel. Bertha and I spent a day getting reacquainted while we peeled six inches of composted straw and manure from the area where the dog yard is going to be. Bertha has two left feet when I’m at the controls and she nearly foundered herself once when I led her into a particularly greasy patch of gumbo. She was definitely a little overaggressive moving the burn barrel, which she squashed beneath her bucket like an elephant might flatten a cockroach with its trunk. In the end, however, the trapezoid of ground laid out as the dog yard was scraped mostly clean and heaps of rotted straw and manure covered a majority of the proposed garden plot.

I’m not sure what to do about the garden. It needs to be plowed or tilled or all of the above. As with most of my opinions on the matter, I’m inclined toward an animal powered solution, especially since the area in question isn’t really big enough to warrant the acquisition of tractor implements. Currently, I am partial to the idea of getting a couple of pigs next spring and just letting them root up the place. It would mean we’d be forced to wait a season before we could plant, but on the other hand we’d have our own pork and we wouldn’t have to buy a plow or tiller. I haven’t a clue really but I’m banking on the assumption that pigs would break things down to a point that they would be hand-tillable afterwards, which may or may not be the case.

In that same vein, I’m divided as to whether a permanent chicken coop or an ark is a better bet. I’d rather avoid store-bought feed; the most organic, fundamental solution is what I’m after. And I don’t mean ad campaign organic either. I’m referring to the unadulterated interpretation of the word: of developing in a manner analogous to the natural growth and evolution characteristic of living organisms; arising as a natural outgrowth. Basically I’d like to see all the farm animals on the Summerdale smallholding subsisted strictly from the fodder at hand, and even though I realize that is highly unrealistic, I still think it a worthwhile goal.

As well, there is the question of weed control. We have a proliferation of thistle in our little pasture out front and the corral around the barn is thick with some kind of insidious invader. I immediately thought of sheep or goats, but research and nagging fear of the inevitable Siberian on sheep encounter makes me wary. In the end we’ll probably get some anyway, if not for any useful purpose then just for the fun of having them around, for a little while at least.

Betty's Isis of Bydog

In the meantime, I have been plenty occupied with our, or as Brandi puts it, MY new puppy. A lot of the motivation to buy a house out of town was born from our desire to greatly expand our kennel, and we wasted no time getting started along that path. I have been searching far and wide for a female Siberian pup with features similar to Kona and Blue, and I finally gave into temptation and bought a dog from a breeder in North Carolina that appeared, at least in pictures, to exhibit many of the same attributes.



Blue and Kona



Tensaw in repose

Now that she has arrived, I can see that Isis tends to be a bit more characteristic of Tensaw and is missing some esoteric quality that the other girls possess. It seems her coat is smoother, like Tenny's.  If nothing else, she certainly shares his gift for song, a fact she is quite willing to demonstrate.

Our other objective with the kennel was to acquire a command leader from a proven bloodline that could guide our green dogs and get us started toward building a real sled team. In particular, I was interested in Anadyr dogs, as I had helped handle the purebred Siberian team of J.P. Norris at the Tok Race of Champions and I knew the quality of his line. After months of detective work, Brandi sleuthed out a sled dog operation in Pray, Montana, called Absaroka Dogsled Treks who, as luck would have it, had a command leader and an Anadyr brood bitch they were willing to offer us. Our plan is to travel east early next month to check out these dogs and hopefully acquire what would be an exceptional foundation to our kennel.

aerial view with planned improvements

Before we can do that, however, there is the little matter of fencing the dog yard. I called Ken at Bitterroot Fence and made tentative arrangements for his crew to set posts some time early next week, but with four inches of fresh snow and the truck thermometer reading 6 degrees when I left the house this morning I would not be surprised to hear that they were running somewhat behind schedule. Ah, the glory that is winter in Montana!

Lost Bearings

In Yakutat, a native man stopped his truck to tell me that, for huskies, the dogs were very well trained. It was a nice thing to hear. Sometimes because they’re not perfect I get fixated on their flaws and forget how wonderful they truly are. When you’re in heaven, I imagine it doesn’t take long before you forget you are there.

Other than that compliment, port call in Yakutat was disappointing; brutally so. As we were entering the bay, I kept checking my cell phone, hoping to see bars. No such luck. I hadn’t spoken to Brandi since Wrangell the night before, and I was feeling low. After Yakutat, we were heading out to sea, across the Gulf of Alaska, and there would be no talking with her until Whittier. I let the dogs off leash and watched them dive head first into snow banks along a lonely road leading God knows where.

When you are busy shaking a selfish fist at the world, it isn’t always easy to keep in mind that you were the one who put yourself in this predicament. There being no cell service in Yakutat is to blame for keeping me from a conversation with Brandi; never mind the twenty five hundred miles I put between us by taking a job in Alaska. Wireless transmission makes much more sense than buried or overhead cable in a tiny isolated outpost like Yakutat. A wireless infrastructure would be cheaper to install and easier to maintain than a traditional wired one. There is no reason why there shouldn’t be cell coverage here.

Necessity is the mother of invention they say. Later, while I sat on the ferry struggling with the mounting sense of estrangement I felt as we sailed away from just about everything I hold dear, I came up with at least half a dozen technological advances that would have allowed me to connect with the world outside. None of them were going to close the distance, but several had the potential to bridge the gap.

A cell phone is simply a low power radio which transmits its signal to tower antennae connected through computerized exchange switchboards to the cabled phone system. Each cell phone has two channels, one that transmits the conversation and a second that communicates with the cellular system. As the cell phone moves away from one tower and closer to another, this second channel informs the cell phone of signal strength and directs it to switch its transmit frequency from the far tower’s weakening signal to that of the closer, stronger tower.

Since the dawn of communications, repeaters have been used to carry messages over long distances. The Great Wall of China was designed so that each guard house would be within sight of another, so that signals could quickly be sent back and forth along the wall. In fire communications, radio repeaters bounce signals from mountaintop to mountaintop, providing contiguous coverage over vast and isolated ranges. Why not apply this concept to phone networks? Cell phone users in the United States number approximately 200 million. Add another channel to those handsets, and that’s a whole lot of repeaters.

If every mobile telephone handset was enabled to repeat signals, transmissions could be piggybacked through multiple handsets over distances much greater than a low power cell phone could ever hope to reach on its own. Cell phones are idle most of the time; software could be developed that detected nearby mobile radios and essentially turned each individual handset into a separate cell. In all but the most unusual circumstances, there would always be a chain of handsets linking an end user to an exchange.

In theory, that basic restructuring could also help me as I bobbed across the Gulf of Alaska aboard M/V Kennicott. Certainly technology exists that would allow the ferry to offer cell phone and wifi connectivity with the mainland via satellite, but a repeater concept could be utilized to turn each marine vessel into its own floating cell. A message could be bounced from craft to craft down a shipping lane rather than being beamed to a satellite or carried on a transoceanic cable. Would the investment in technology and infrastructure be worth it just to allow me to talk to Brandi? If you asked me that day, when I was cut off from my world by endless ocean waves, I definitely would have contributed my share to make it an option.

Personal concerns aside, it simply makes sense. Our entire understanding of economics requires revision if we expect all to enjoy a comparable standard of living. Traditional models for determining the economic viability of infrastructure development simply don’t account for the duality that arises between the local and global marketplace, between short term feasibility and long term practicability. Calculated vision must drive capital investment, not the whims of consumer demand and commodity pricing. A goal must be set; plans lain; and deliberate steps taken. What it is we are attempting to accomplish should be the compass needle guiding development; not whether an endeavor creates a financial profit over a finite time period.

As we approach Whittier, messages from Brandi stack up thankfully on my cell phone. Sharp biting wind roars down off surrounding mountains and drifts snow against a massive structure on the hillside overlooking the port. Institutional in appearance, the concrete and glass construction is acutely reminiscent of Cold War era Soviet architecture.

That was once the biggest building in Alaska, a fellow passenger tells me. Vacant and deserted, it now more closely resembles the Bates Motel. Ghosts of bygone values peer from behind its empty windows. Previously deemed essential, it is now dispensable; a monolith to the fallacy of economics. Indifferent and unfeeling as dinosaur bones, its fossilized remains pay tribute to the high cost of false vision.

Don't Be Scared, Cobe

I’ve been hanging out in Hamilton with Brandi. We met this past summer while we were both working wildland fire in Kootenai Country. She is pretty amazing. When I first met her, she was quite the conservationist, but I’ve been doing a real good job breaking her of such sensible habits as only driving when she has to, walking to the store, not buying things she doesn’t need, and turning off lights when she leaves a room. We have been getting along very well, and I have high hopes for us, if we can only get past Alaska.

As I mentioned, I was working on the Kootenai when I met Brandi. I’ve been working in fire management since 2000, and one day I had an opportunity to take a new position within the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, working dispatch in Lincoln County where I grew up. At the time I took the job, I was working in Missoula and getting awful tired of that town. The job on the Koot seemed like just the ticket; I could stay at my pop’s cabin for minimal rent and get the dogs out of the city. Besides all that, I had planned on moving back to Troy anyway, to research and write a novel. This was perfect.

That attitude didn’t last too long. A funny thing about hometowns; no matter how much you change while you’re away, or think you do, they always seem to bring you back around to who you were. By the time fire season 2008 was getting started on the Kootenai, I was looking for a way out. One day at the office, my buddy Slick Rick and I got talking about Alaska. Working in a dispatch office, you’re always trying to find something new to Google. That’s what I should do, I said. I’m gonna Google jobs in Alaska.

One Google search and two emails later, I was filling out an application for a new dispatch job with the State of AK Division of Forestry in Tok, Alaska. If I thought the job on the Kootenai was good, this was great. The job announcement was for the position of lead dispatcher, which meant I would get the supervisory experience I hadn’t been getting a chance at here in the Northern Rockies region. And talk about peace and quiet to write; Tok was literally in the middle of f’n nowhere, despite its dubious distinction of being the first Alaskan town after Canada along the Alcan. I’d already gotten all I needed out of Troy as far as research for the novel. When they offered me the job, I was on top of the world.

Not because of the job, however. The job offer had taken on a rather bittersweet flavor, actually. No, the reason I was on top of the world, as I told my pops the afternoon it happened, was because Brandi McCoy called me. Sure, I’d been subtly pursuing her, but it was more due to the fact that I couldn’t NOT pursue her than through any belief that it would truly amount to anything. Still, it had amounted to something, and that something has turned out to be much more worthwhile than I could ever have imagined.

So now we’re preparing to say our goodbyes. The ferry to Alaska pulls out of Bellingham, Washington, on February 20th, and the dogs and I will be on it. How’s that going to work out, you ask. I don’t know. Brandi is an absolute beauty, in every sense of the word, so I’m feeling a bit insecure about the situation, as you might imagine. We have been at each other’s throats lately, to be perfectly honest. We’re both just scared, I guess. It’s been pretty good, this thing we’ve found, and we’re worried we might lose it. And we might.

Brandi is going to get her own dog. I’ve been fighting it tooth and nail, but I couldn’t tell you why if you asked. I would give you a lot of reasons, but I couldn’t really tell you why. My best guess goes something like this: Siberian huskies were what I brought to the table; if she has one of her own, where does that leave me?

In Alaska, I guess, but there will be plenty more on that later. Check back.