Shopping for Wilderness Living

Enjoy discovering a parent’s secret survival tactics while living off the grid and raising five children under the age of five years old.

Living in the very remote interior of the vast Alaskan wilderness requires much determination, self motivation, and strict discipline to survive the long days of pressing and often overwhelming demands. 

If you’re a parent, you don’t have to be living off the grid to relate to what it takes to keep up with a family’s daily needs.

My very young children were all dependent upon my constant protection and faithful watch care over them.  This increased tremendously the level of responsibility and work involved to exist in an extremely isolated and dangerously remote environment.  

Providing a safe shelter, abundant source of water, and nutritious meals each day were the fundamental needs that consumed much of my time and energy.   Any spare time was used to take care of the unexpected tasks familiar to a family raising young children.

Shopping Twice a Year

Shopping for food and supplies was done twice a year on the homestead.  That may be difficult to imagine, but it was a blessing in so many ways.  I’ll explain my reasoning.

An extensive amount of planning and preparation were required to be sure all of the family’s food, clothing, and necessary personal items were secured for at least a six month period of time.  Traveling an hour from the village of McGrath by airplane to shop in the big city of Anchorage was very costly, but it was the cheapest way to purchase large amounts of food and supplies.

It was a gruesome task searching for each item on our lengthy several page shopping list.  It took several days of scurrying around with a borrowed vehicle to do the tedious task.  

In reality that was the easier part of what we considered a “family vacation”.  The greater amount of work began after the shopping was done.  The 50+ boxes of food items and supplies needed to be packed and labeled for shipping.

Packing and Shipping

During the packing process, the food and supplies were divided and organized in boxes that were marked for each designated month of use.  Boxes marked “January “ were only used for that month.  When February 1 arrived then boxes marked “February” were opened.  This method helped greatly to give a fresh food supply each month as if I just went shopping (there were only dry or canned goods packed in the boxes).

Labeling, carrying, and shipping by airplane all the numerous boxes of supplies was the next step of the journey.     

Exhausted, we all finally arrived back to the airport in McGrath hoping all our supplies joined us.

Once the large mountain of boxes arrived in McGrath, loading the supplies onto our boat or wood sled to be transported to the homestead was necessary in completing our mission.  

It took several wearisome days before all our supplies made the long journey from store shelves in Anchorage to our shelter in the wilderness. 

Unpacking, sorting, and storing all the supplies still would have to be accomplished.  You can imagine the challenge of keeping our cherished food supply in a safe location while living in a plastic shelter in the midst of a wilderness thriving with wildlife all around. 

Finally our shelter was well stocked with hopefully enough supplies for the next six months.

Bush shopping was quite the adventure!  Now do you understand the blessing of shopping only twice a year?

Join me next month as I continue to share a parent’s secret survival techniques learned through our young family’s homesteading adventures.