Life Without Running Water

I’m not going to lie to you. Living without running water took some getting used to, and my new favorite thing when I go to the city is to wash my hands under warm, running water. That being said, it’s a way of life to which I’ve become accustomed, just another example of living mindfully.

Any description of how we live without running water must first begin with how we get the water that we do use.

On a summer Water Day, which comes around every couple of weeks, it’s time to get the water from the river up the hill to the cabin. Thanks to a portable, electric, water pump, we no longer have to haul it up 40 steps in 5-gallon buckets weighing 40 pounds a piece. It’s surprising how two garden hoses, a 100-foot length of extension cord, and a small, $100 pump can feel like such a luxury.

The first task is to gather all of the buckets, pots, and water jugs, wipe out the river sediment from the inside bottoms so that they’re clean to start with again, and turn on the generator, which entails the “on” switch, engaging the choke, pulling the cord a couple of times, and letting it warm up before turning the choke back off. We have a small, portable, 2,000 watt Honda generator that’s been serving the cabin well for over 12 years. However, it is starting to sputter on occasion, so we’ve just ordered a new one – not bad for a $1,000 investment. I’d really hate for the old generator to just peter out one day while I’m in the middle of a sewing marathon. No worries. Hopefully, the new one will arrive via NAC (Northern Air Cargo) by next week from Anchorage. Everything is a process out here.

Which leads me back to Water Day. We keep the 100-foot extension cord lying on the hill so that it’s ready to plug in when needed. After getting that plugged into the generator, it’s down the stairs to the greenhouse where the garden hoses are stored under the back bench along with the water pump. We have to screw the two 50-foot hoses together and then carry the end of one down the last set of steps to the boat, along with the pump. Also, the extension cord is left with the last 50 feet curled up on the deck by the greenhouse, so that must be uncurled and the end carried down to the boat where the pump is sitting on the back bench, near the motor.

At this point, we can screw the hose onto the pump, and then, using a 9/16 wrench, we need to open up the primer hole and fill the pump up with water using the stainless steel coffee cup that we keep in the boat in case we get thirsty when we are out and about (Unalakleet River water is just about the best thing going!). Once the primer hole overflows and the cap has been screwed back on, it’s time to put the pump nozzle over the side of the back of the boat. We put it off the back, because the water is running faster further out toward the middle of the river, making it cleaner. We’re finally ready to plug in the water pump (remember, we already have the generator going, so the extension cord is live when it hooks on to the pump).

After about six seconds, water starts pouring out of the end of the double-length hose and into the 35-gallon trash barrel sitting outside of the greenhouse. That’s the first bucket to fill, being that the initial water can be a bit cloudy from sediment left in the hose from the last time. That trash barrel will provide all of the water that the greenhouse needs for the next couple of weeks.

Then, the end of the hose is carefully carried up the steps to the main deck where the majority of the buckets have been assembled. We fill the 5-gallon buckets for the house, first, so that one of us can be carrying those 40-pound beasts into the house while the other continues to fill more buckets. Two go inside at a time. Stacked, they provide an end table for the couch. Two more are stacked just outside the front door, to be rotated inside as needed. Two large, steel pots are filled and taken inside to provide initial drinking water for our dog and wash water for the kitchen. The two-gallon, countertop, water dispenser is filled to provide our version of running water for drinking. Finally, the outside dog water tub is filled along with another 35-gallon trash can to provide ready refills for the cabin.

Rain bucket

An important side note is that we have one, particular, 5-gallon bucket, which has small holes, the diameter of a pencil, drilled in the lid. This bucket is the first one we use in the house, because it is then placed underneath the porch, at the end of a drainpipe leading down from the metal roof, providing us with rainwater. The holes keep the larger debris, like leaves and sticks out of the bucket, but the rainwater still needs to be strained of pine needles and such before use. We only use rainwater for washing or the dog bowl because it doesn’t taste as good as the river water.

After all of the buckets are filled, we spray down the garden good, if it’s been dry, and wash any rugs or other mats that need it. Fresh river water, a little laundry soap, and a sturdy broom work amazingly well to clean rugs, which are then left to dry on the porch rails.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the work is done yet! First, we unplug the extension cord from the generator before turning it off, because it’s hard on both the generator and the pump to turn off the generator while the pump is still plugged in. Now, we head back down the 40 steps to the boat to unplug the pump and empty the excess water out of it, unscrew the hose, and haul the pump, which weighs a good 15 pounds, hose, and extension cord back up to the greenhouse deck where we unscrew the two hoses, roll them up and return them to the greenhouse along with the pump. The lower 50-foot of extension cord is then rolled up and placed neatly next to the greenhouse, ready for the next Water Day.

In all, it only takes about 20 minutes of hard work for two people working together, and there is an amazing sense of accomplishment and teamwork when it is all done.

Water Day is a completely different beast in the throws of winter, which lasts for at least seven months. The task involves a snowmachine with attached sled, a 5-foot long, iron, ice chisel, 5-gallon buckets, a pot for dipping water, and the courage of a lion. This task is assigned to Gregg because of my healthy fear of thin ice since my fall through it a few years ago, but that’s another story. I’ll go along to help, but I’ll never go alone. We load up the sled and head downriver just a couple of miles to a spot where there’s a spring on the north side of the river that never completely freezes over. Parking the snowmachines a safe distance from the edge, we carry our supplies over, Gregg in front with the ice chisel, poking it hard a few feet in front of him as we go, making sure the ice is safe. Once we find the perfect spot, we take turns pounding at the ice until the chisel finally finds its way through and water seeps up through the hole. One time, when it was my turn, I was tired and putting my entire weight behind the chisel when it swiftly broke through the ice and abruptly stopped 12-inches down at the bottom of the river. The force of my own weight behind that sudden halt caused my head to lurch down hard onto the flat-iron surface of the chisel, hitting between my nose and top lip on the unyielding, cold metal. Blood everywhere, I was relieved to realize that I hadn’t broken any teeth, simply elicited a major blow to my face resulting in a fat lip for a few days. In actuality, even though the river is not very deep where we chisel out the hole, it is moving so quickly that it makes a whirlpool in the hole we’ve dug.

Once the hole is big enough to dip the 2-quart pot into that we’ve brought along, it’s time to fill the buckets with a mixture of slush, ice, and the clearest, coldest water on earth. Four buckets are usually our limit because they have to be hauled up the river bank and then 40 more steps to the cabin. At 40 pounds a piece, that’s no easy job. The buckets slide heavily into the snowmachine sled, and we take a slow drive home, careful not to tip the buckets. In the winter, we can make that 20 gallons of water last one week if we’re conservative with it.

In a pinch, we melt snow for wash water. However, it takes 10 cups of snow to make one cup of water, so it’s a long and arduous process. Our heater is already on, so we don’t have to use additional fuel for the process and it’s one more way to pass time on those dark winter days 200 miles from the Arctic Circle.

Every morning, winter or summer, starts with Gregg making coffee in a 30-year-old, stainless steel percolator with a metal basket for the grounds and a glass percolator top. There is usually a small amount of coffee in the pot from the previous day, so he uses that old coffee to rinse out the metal basket of excess grounds. There’s no sense in wasting good water! For fresh coffee, he dips the water out of one of the 5-gallon buckets filled with river water that sit between the couch and the dining table, using a plastic cup for a dipper. That coffee pot gets a good scrub once every month, whether it needs it or not.

Life without indoor plumbing is much easier in the summer. We have a drain pipe that runs from the metal, double sink in the kitchen to the hillside twenty feet or so from the cabin, but that can’t be used in the winter because of the freezing temperatures, and winter here lasts from September through March. During those long, dark months, all waste water must be carried outside and dumped over the rail. Using environmentally friendly, biodegradable, and compostable cleaning products is a must to keep our indoor and outdoor environment healthy. That includes hand soap, dish soap, laundry soap, household cleaners, shampoo, and even toothpaste.

Tasks as forgettable as brushing my teeth require extra attention. In the summer, I fill a juice glass with water from the bucket, dip my toothbrush in it, apply toothpaste and brush, being sure to set the glass down first. Otherwise, my vigorous brushing with my right hand causes me to shake and spill the water I’m holding in my left hand. Then, because it’s summer, I can spit down the kitchen sink, rinse my mouth out with water from the glass and spit that down the sink, too. Then, I swish my toothbrush around in the water that’s left in the glass before pouring that down the sink. My glass gets dried off so that it’s ready to use the next day. In the winter, this process requires two glasses, one for the fresh water, and one for the spit water. Then, the spit water has to be taken outside to toss. Always mindful.

Time to do the dishes. I squirt a nickel-size puddle of cocoa butter oil into my palm to rub on my hands before slipping on the purple rubber gloves I use to wash dishes. The oil absorbs into my hands as I submerse the gloves into the wash water; it’s like having a spa treatment for my hands while I wash dishes. The water has been heating on the oil stove for an hour and is almost boiling, perfect temp for washing dishes that practically dry themselves, but impossible for my bare hands to withstand.

I always start with the silverware, letting it soak for a few minutes in the steaming tub of soapy water. The plastic is blistered around the inside of the yellowed tub a couple of inches from the top from the scalding dish water that’s been poured into it over the past 20 years or so. Each fork, spoon, knife, and serving utensil gets a thorough scrub before being dropped into a twin tub in the next sink hole, steam raising the humidity in the small cabin to mold level. That reminds me; I need to check the floorboard behind the trash can again to see if it needs a bleach wipe down.

We only wash dishes once a week; sometimes I can eek out a day or two more, if we use soup bowls instead of plates for a meal or two. Because we have to haul our water and heat it up on the stove rather than just turn on a tap, we are mindful of dirtying dishes. Fourteen mismatched plates are stacked in the cabinet amid an assortment of bowls and glasses. In the silverware drawer sit 26 forks (yes, I counted them), and a few less spoons and knives. Since we use mostly cast iron that can be wiped clean with a paper towel or heated on the stove with less than a cup of water for tougher mess clean-up, there really isn’t a need to do dishes more than once a week for two people. Gregg and I each have our favorite coffee cup and drinking glass that we use for a week.

However, if I’m gone for a couple of weeks, like went to visit the grandkids while Gregg was busy with trapping season, he reuses plates, forks, everything while I’m gone. When I get home, he’s only used one plate, one spoon, one fork, one knife, a coffee cup, and a drinking glass the entire time I was gone! I am a little more civilized than that.

The dog provides a useful plate-rinsing service after every meal so there is never dried food stuck to the dishes when wash day rolls around. We live in a very symbiotic environment. With regard to that, we do rely on paper plates to fill in the gaps. I buy the cheap, thin, non-coated paper plates and we’ll often eat off of those placed on dirty plates that the dog has rinsed for us. It helps us eek out a few more days between washing dishes, and they go into the burn bag, not the landfill.

Laundry Hand Washer and Wringer

The burn bag is just one of the ways we reduce our landfill donations. It is actually an empty dog food bag (we buy dog food in 40 lb bags). We keep the empty bags and then use those, because they are thick and stand up on their own behind the kitchen trash can, to put any waste paper products from mail, paper towels, paper plates, packaging, etc. When the bag is full, it goes downstairs into storage with cardboard boxes that have come home with us from town, all to be burned once we have a large pile and the wind is cooperating for a day. Our local village has a very limited recycling system, but we do save all of our #1 plastic and aluminum cans to take to town. It amounts to one kitchen garbage bag full every other week or so. I also save as many glass containers as possible because I know they’ll just end up in the landfill. I reuse them as storage containers in the cabin, making it easier to store rice, dried beans, q-tips, etc. I also decoupage jars to sell at market, filled with candy. All of these practices cut way down on the amount of true trash that we have to haul to town.

With regards to laundry, I have a friend who generously let’s us use her washer and dryer during the winter, which usually amounts to two or three loads one day during the first week of the month, more when I wash linens every couple of months. During the warmer months, April-August, I make use of our own laundry hand washer with an attached laundry wringer and clotheslines on the porch. What would normally be one load in town turns into three at the cabin, but it’s what we have, it works, and it’s all we need.

Washboard

To increase the time between laundry days in the winter, I wash underwear and socks on the washboard in the kitchen sink tub after I dump the dirty dishwater and warm up some fresh wash water. It’s really not a big deal, just another chance for a hand spa treatment. Then, I’ll hang them on a bungee cord stretched between the kitchen cabinets and the pantry, over the oil stove to dry.

Cooking? I never boil pasta and throw the water away. I have learned the exact amount of liquid it takes to cook pasta, no more, no less. At our cabin, pasta always gets cooked with whatever it’s going to be served with. If that’s spaghetti sauce, then a little extra water or veggie stock gets added to the sauce and in goes the dried pasta to cook right in the sauce. No waste. That’s how I make macaroni and cheese and anything else with pasta or anything else that requires boiling water. Boiled eggs are a delicacy that we only indulge in in the summer months when we have the water pump hooked up, because I haven’t yet figured out a way to cook those without wasting water. If you had to haul that water up 40 stairs, you wouldn’t waste any either!

Outdoor Shower (coffee dregs thrown
on the hillside behind the shower)

Bathtime is a term used loosely around here since we don’t actually have a bath tub. We do have a shower bucket. It is a plastic 5-gallon bucket with a dozen holes the size of an ice pick in the bottom. There is a rope attached to the bucket’s handle, and it runs through a pulley in the rafter over the porch, and then a loop at the end of the rope hooks onto a nail on the porch support beam, about a foot from the floor. After heating a large stock pot full of water on the kitchen stove to an extremely hot temperature just short of boiling, it is dumped in an empty 5-gallon bucket (we have a lot of 5-gallon buckets) and the bucket is filled the rest of the way with not-quite-room-temperature water from one of the full water buckets in the cabin. The shower water is then hauled outside. The shower bucket is lowered to the floor of the porch, the shower water is quickly poured in, and the shower bucket is hoisted back up to the rafter and the rope loop is securely fastened to the nail. The showeree better already be on the porch, naked with shampoo, soap, and towel in hand, because there is no on and off switch for the shower bucket. The water pressure is strongest at first, so hair is the priority and then I work down from there. I usually still have water in the shower bucket when I’m finished bathing, so I put the empty bucket under the shower water stream to conserve it for later.

Water Day Cocktail!

When Gregg was living his best bachelor life for 30 years before I came along, he used to shower standing in a rubber tub filled with dirty clothes and laundry soap and he would dance around in that tub to agitate his clothes as the shower water ran off of him and into the tub, thereby using the same water to wash himself and his clothes. Double duty! Since I’ve come along, that’s a thing of the past.

We do drink a lot of water. That can’t be helped. There is nothing better than a glass of cold river water mixed with whiskey - it’s the freshest and coldest on water day! A true celebration of all that we’ve accomplished.

Spring Gardening in the SubArctic

Our cabin with the greenhouse down by the river

With March comes the promise of Spring. The days get longer. The snow begins to melt. The frozen river begins to open up. There is less need for the heater. It’s time to plant the seeds for the garden and prepare for the long days of summer. Living offgrid in western Alaska only magnifies our desire for fresh produce.

Last year, we made raised garden beds out of old 4-wheeler tires that Gregg had stacked outside of his shop, having been thrown aside when folks had him install new tires for them. After cutting the inner rims out of the top and bottom of the tires, they served as vegetable and planters both in our garden space. I’ve been doing some reading about soil-warming techniques, and, living where we do, permafrost isn’t very far down and our soil stays pretty cold all summer, even with the long days of sunshine. Cold soil makes it nearly impossible to grow most vegetables. Even in the raised beds, brussel sprouts, beets, turnips, and mustard greens just laughed at me last year. This year, I’ll be trying some new vegetable varieties including Improved Dwarf Siberian Kale, Gourmet Mesclun Salad Mix, BC-2 Zucchini, and Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash!

Kitchen table planting station

My seeds all come from Denali Seed Company, known as “America's foremost authority on cool climate gardening,” because they have over 40 years of experience with the various climates of Alaska. We are considered zone 2a for plant hardiness in the Unalakleet area, but even that has quite a bit of variation. Even though we are only eight miles east of the actual village of Unalakleet, which sits on the Bering Sea coast, we are surrounded by hills and the temperature at our cabin can be up to 15 degrees cooler in the winter or warmer in the summer than the village. We also get a lot less wind. Because of this, we should be able to grow some decent vegetables. However, the drawback is that we still have such a short growing season.

I learn a little more every year. The year before last, my first year with the greenhouse, I started everything too late, since the greenhouse wasn’t ready to use until the first week of June. I also learned that our garden soil was just too cold, resulting in almost a total loss for kale, radishes, beets, carrots, cabbage, and mustard greens. My answer was to build the raised beds with the old tires. After a lot of work incorporating organic soil boosters and fertilizers, I felt ready to try it again the next year.

Kitchen table half-full of seedlings

Last year, I learned that onions, cabbage, and carrots are a lost cause, even in the greenhouse, so I’ve given up on those vegetables. We also only harvested a handful of very small tomatoes before the season was over, so I’ve started those seeds earlier this year, Polar Beauty and Early Tanana, and will plan a way to keep the greenhouse warm longer into fall. The peppers acted the same was as the tomatoes, but I’m not ready to give up on them yet, so I’ve planted three varieties this year, California Wonder, New Ace, and Hungarian Yellow Wax. However, my Beit Alpha Cucumbers and Provider Bush Beans did well in the greenhouse, so I will plant more of them this year. My zucchini did well in pots outside last year, so I will try to plant some of those along with summer squash into raised garden beds in addition to having them in pots.

Window shelf behind the couch

The only vegetables that I’ve found to thrive in our garden’s cold soil are peas of any sort and rhubarb. Because it takes a lot of peas to have enough to can, I’m going to plant three varieties this year; Freezonian, Early Frosty, and Maestro. The peas can be planted directly into the garden soil as soon as the last freeze has come and gone; they’ll even withstand a light freeze here and there, so I love them!

Gregg also made several trellises out of Iron Dog and Iditarod trail marker stakes that he gathered along the river and cross country trail between here and the village. The trails get marked with stakes every 100 yards or so in March. When the river breaks up, the stakes end up in the bottom of the river or out in the Bering Sea, so I feel like we do our part to keep the environment clean by gathering them and reusing them. It’s also free wood that can be used in a variety of ways around our homestead! They make perfect trellises for climbing veggies like cucumbers, beans, peas, and zucchini, and I use them to stake my tomato and pepper plants.

Making good use of trail markers.

The nearest greenhouse is in Anchorage, a 400 mile flight away, so I don’t have the luxury of buying seedlings, which means that even my herbs have to be started from seed. Cilantro, Bouquet Dill, and Large Leaf Italian Basil are my favorites, and I hope to use them in homemade salsa, pesto, and pickles that I will can this fall. We are still eating Bread & Butter Pickles made with last year’s cucumbers, and pesto made with last year’s basil. I’ve also recently learned that most flowers from edible plants are also edible, so no more throwing away those tops that I pinch off. This year, they are going into summer salads!

Spring is also the time to take stock of, and start cleaning out, our freezer. We have a freezer in town at Gregg’s small engine repair shop where we store mostly meat (caribou, moose, and salmon), cheese (we stock up when it’s on sale), and berries that I’ve picked both on the tundra and in our own raspberry patch. By April, our freezer is running pretty low. Any berries left from last year get made into pancakes, muffins, or dessert bars, and I make jelly from juice that I had strain off of the berries after they thaw. I hate to throw anything away, so I had save the juice, instead of straining it down the sink. Sometimes, I even add a little dried Lavender that a retiring teacher gave to me after clearing out her kitchen pantry. After making lavender tea (steeping the lavender in water and straining it through a cheesecloth), I mix it with the blueberry juice to create an absolutely delightful jelly! Straight lavender jelly tastes similar to fireweed jelly, quite a treat!

Fireweed Tea in the making

Unfortunately, I have yet to successfully grow lavender. However, I do grow other types of edible flowers for medicinal and canning purposes. Bachelor buttons make a delicious, pinkish-purple jelly that tastes like strawberries, and Calendula makes a golden-colored jelly that has a citrusy taste. I also harvest wild Dandelions in May to make an amazing honey-flavored jelly. Just remember to pick Dandelions that are not near a road or neighborhood that might contain exhaust fumes or pesticides. Thankfully, we have fields and fields of them miles away from civilization of any sort. Of course, the same rule applies to Fireweed, which makes a beautiful deep pink-purple jelly with a taste that hints of rose petals, but Fireweed won’t be ready to pick until July.

To make jellies from edible flowers, simply remove the petals only, add to a pot with 3-4 times as much water as petals, bring to a boil, remove from heat, and cover. I let it sit overnight before straining the liquid through a cheesecloth. The liquid tea can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one week or in the freezer for six months until you are ready to use it! I usually store it until I have enough to make a large batch of jelly at once, saving time and propane.

My Livingstone Daisies

I also always order a package of Alaska Wild Garden Mix flower seeds because it’s fun to see what pops up in our planters on the deck - daisies, poppies, columbines, and more. Finally, as a daisy-lover, I always plant an abundance of showy, Livingstone Daisies in the planters alongside the stairwell from the river.

Getting the seeds planted is the easy part. After we haul several buckets of dirt and a couple of armfuls of seedling trays along with a trowel, garden gloves, and fertilizer up from the stairs from the greenhouse to the cabin, I cover the kitchen table, to which we have added the extra leaf, with parchment paper and I’m ready to begin. Once the seeds are planted, one tray at a time, they get watered with a whiskey bottle because the inner cap enables the perfect amount of dribble to water the seeds without moving them. Meanwhile, Gregg has installed our seedling shelf above the couch. I plant and plant and plant until the shelf, the window sill, and half of the dining table are covered. That’s it, and I have to stop for now! Planting seeds the last week of March means that they will be ready to transfer to the greenhouse by the time they need to be repotted the first of May.

Inside the greenhouse

When May rolls around, my next project is to head down to the greenhouse to heavily soak all of the soil in my pots down there. The dirt is extremely dry from sitting out all winter and needs a couple of days of loving care before my little seedlings can be transplanted into them. We’ll be past hard freezes, and the days will be amazingly long, at least 16 hours of daylight. I believe we will be gaining an hour of sunlight every week by then.

Remember, living offgrid, all of the water for these plants has to be hauled up from the river to our greenhouse and cabin. However, now that the river is breaking up, we can again use our portable, electric water pump, and no longer have to haul it up 40-some steps in 5-gallon buckets weighing 40 pounds a piece. It’s surprising how two garden hoses, a 100-foot length of extension cord, and a small, $100 pump can feel like such a luxury. With this, we are able to fill a 30-gallon trash can just steps from our front door.

One day's harvest last year

I’m counting on these veggies and herbs to not only provide us with a year’s worth of food, but also to give me a little extra to sell at Saturday Markets – I already have people asking about them. Perhaps I’ll just hang a sign out down by the river and have folks stop by here to get the produce fresh out of the greenhouse to take with them to their fish camps! That’ll be a first out here, for sure!