After ten days of gorging on salmon I’m happy to get it all packaged up and be distracted by plants for a minute
My life has definitely revolved around the salmon lately. As it should this time of year. Much more than it has around variegated nuggets. Thank you guys for the votes of confidence. I’ll see what comes of it. Maybe those nugs will just turn brown and sickly looking when they dry. I might quick dry one and see just out of curiosity.
Glad you guys appreciate my barbarian lifestyle. This place is really not the easiest one to live in sometimes as the weather is usually atrocious. But wind and rain washes away most of the people too, so that’s good IMO. Most of the time the place is wet cold and dark, and the elements can beat a person down if you let them. Not everyone loves living with bears and bats either. Sometimes it’s paradise. Sometimes it’s some sort of drab purgatory.
There’s food gathering here year round though which is something I love. In very early spring the very first delicacy is the young nettle shoots, steamed and served with sour cream or butter. Yum! Then it’s seaweed (especially nori in spring, and and dulce and kelp later). Shore plants like sea asparagus and goose tongue, oolichan (candlefish), herring roe on kelp, chinook salmon, crab, and halibut, also salmonberries. Early/mid summer is wild strawberries, red huckleberries, blueberries, cloudberries, wild cherries, early mushrooms such as oyster mushrooms and morels, spruce tips, scallops, oysters and clams, then coho salmon, trout, more halibut, sometimes tuna, more deer hunting, and the wild plums. Also the domestic gardens that kick in with vegetables, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and apples, and all the standard crops. Late summer is wild blackberries, currants, salal berries, and crabapples, and all the domestic garden harvests. Also the salmon start schooling in the inlets and coming up the rivers, and that’s a huge event too. Fall is the time to harvest various mushrooms - a major occasion around here, including the magic ones - which traditionally peak around Halloween and are accordingly much guzzled around that time. Also more cranberries- which are amazing and last basically till spring cause they resist freezing and can be found anytime it’s not too snowy. Fall is when the food processing and canning workload becomes pretty serious. Also the deer hunting takes on a more serious tone too, as it’s really do or die in the freezer-filling dept.
Winter is a good time to eat clams and oysters and various other shellfish like mussels, cockles, and other types of shore food. Also a good time to catch the winter salmon species like steelhead and winter chinook, and find random berries that cling to the vine- especially cranberries. The deer get harder to find along with everything else. It’s dark and wet. Nettles come along anytime after New Years now. It used to be April at the earliest but things have gotten warmer...
And we start all over again.
Do I even
need to mention that our resources are currently being raped and pillaged to the bitter end? Probably not...
Yes that fish is most definitely smoked Tead. The only grill was the rack in the smoker. This is what we call candy- a sweet brine, and multiple maple syrup and brown sugar/whatnot glazes. It’s eventually cooked to perfection by the heat of the smoker. Perfection meaning very moist and almost a little raw in the middle still - as salmon
always should be cooked.
The pic wasn’t really meant to portray a large amount of fish. Reality is that I gave away and ate over half of my salmon from the trip before I even made it to that pic. Then at least half to 3/4 of the stuff that ever made it to the freezer will also be given away by Christmas. With any luck though we will do many more fishing trips before summer’s over, and freeze, smoke, can and give away lots more. Trading and gifting is an active part of the culture here. The same reason I grow much more weed than I can smoke. That may change and I may get tired of paying the power bill, when everyone can buy it at the corner store. Time will tell.
Hmmm yeah well I might take your bet Grizz. Think I’ll live two more years? Who knows. My girlfriend once suggested building a box and burying some of my wine underground just to save it from us. I’m thinking to build some sort of wooden vault I can screw well shut
Thanks Amy for the preemption. Just in time. I was thinking to pm you but figured you already know your own way around. Ha ha.
I’d hate to lose you cause of the meat or anything else - like mild chest pounding, etc. I figure most Aussie girls have seen worse.
MI the Chocolope is alive. Thankfully! It’s just a three inch high sproutling at the moment.I overwatered it somewhat before I went away- because I didn’t know how the weather would be and thought I might get stuck somewhere and be gone for ten days or something. So it wasn’t too happy about that - but it looks like it will pull through.
Kriaze! lovely to see you back around. Cheat all you want dude. Ya gonna stay awhile？ That bud is from a mutant variegated Chocolate Mint. Easiest to google plant variegation, just in case you don’t know what I mean by that.
Just finished harvesting the readier looking of the Y Griegas and taking a break to smoke and post this overly long post.
Back to work...
the trichs on it look awesome 
you rock, thank you lol 
