The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Arctic homesteading

 last couple in ANWR still homesteading

Heimo Korth grew up in the suburbs of Wisconsin and when he was 18 wrote a letter to a random trapper in Alaska looking for work. He got a job as a packer, learned to love the wilderness of Alaska, and has been there ever since homesteading with his Eskimo wife Edna.

A small 3 man film crew spent 10 days with Heimo and Edna to get a feel for what it's like to be one of the last full time homesteaders in the 19 million acres of prime boreal forest that is now known as the Arctic National Wilderness Refuge.

It's an excellent documentary you can watch for free here that provides a glimpse into this lifestyle and climate. The producers don't hold much back and you learn first hand how to snare and skin a rabbit without using a knife. I really liked Heimo and Edna and felt like I was visiting them with this film. Makes our recent bout with a colder than normal winter look like a day in the park compared to the struggles they've got to go through to get by.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I recommend Alone in the Wilderness, which is a documentary Richard Proenneke filmed while building by hand his cabin in Alaska, and living through his first couple winters (of 30 total). I saw it via Netflix.
Comment by joey [kitenet.net] Sat Feb 27 19:56:33 2010
That sounds right up our alley! I'll have to add it to our queue.
Comment by anna Sat Feb 27 20:04:22 2010
I was just going to echo what Joey said above but he beat me to it. You can also get a book written by Dick Proenneke and I believe a small part of his adventure is on You Tube. It's amazing. I will check out Mark's link.
Comment by HeatherW Sun Feb 28 17:48:42 2010





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