Where the heck has Dawn been?

Well, I’ve been kind of busy. Remember when I used to write about moose hunting and the harvesting and butchering that happened at the end of the year in the fall? Well, fishing season happens in July and The Man I’ve hooked up with is a fisherMan. We don’t typically get a moose every year now but we eat mainly salmon. Yummy, delicious, fresh-from-the-net sockeye salmon. The family commercial fishes and last week was a good week. Each sockeye weighs about 6 pounds and the tender that picks up the fish typically pays between $0.40/pound and $3.75/pound. This year I think they are paying $1.40/pound. Before we sell any fish, we put away enough fish for the family. I usually take about 60 fish for my family of six. We typically eat fish three times per week. My kids love it and I have quite a few recipes that rock. Oh, and I should mention now, if you are going to tell me I’m a bad, horrible person for killing another creature, then move on now vegan/vegetarian/meanie-head. Mind you, I have no problem with what anyone chooses to eat but I do have problems with people who randomly, anonymously write nasty things. If you have a problem with what I eat and publish to the web, don’t read it. If you do want to comment and say I’m a bad person, at least have the balls to use a name and link it back to your own blog. Don’t be a chicken-shit and write nasty comments and then put it in an anonymous post. Sheesh.  (Did you know there is such thing as a freegan? They only eat out of dumpsters. I learned this on Project Runway the other night.)
Many of you really liked the moose hunting posts and the backstory on the hunt and butchering so I figured I’d tell you a little bit about this too.





Bloody corpses below this line*.
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You’ve been warned!
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So here are the beauties. This is about 350 fish. Almost all of them are sockeye (red) salmon. This is my favorite kind. First, you catch the little suckers in a gill net that hangs between two buoys and two anchors. This suspends the net in the water and the fish try to swim through the net. Their heads fit through but the bodies do not. They get stuck by their gills. We pull them out of the water, take them out of the net, and bleed them (sorry to your squeamish sorts).


We get them to the beach and take them to the cleaning station.


Then they are put in bags in the creek. This creek looks nasty and polluted but that’s because of the high concentration of iron in the rocks here. The water is crystal clear and perfect to drink (well, except for our little friend Giardia - we don’t drink the water.)


Fishies get filleted. Son pokes heads.


One of my jobs was to man the vacuum packer and start processing the fish. There is no power here so this is all done with the help of a generator.


Here is some of the haul.


My son and I dissected several of them and looked for parasites, organs, and sex organs. He’s definitely a science nerd like his momma. Here he’s cutting out the eye to find the lens (yes, It’s kind of macabre but this is how kids learn about things and get interested).



Salmon roe.


While The Men were out fishing (7am to 7pm), I watched the six kids on the beach. One of them is just a little crawling guy who eats sand so he was caged. Yes, he’s in pink. When you’re at fish camp, you wear whatever is warm.


Here’s little J all cozy on the beach. He napped here for two hours and was happy as a clam.



The older kids played in the sand. No, it’s not like a Florida/California hot beach. There was a steady breeze and it was about 60 degrees.


Sometimes we made boat and floated them down the creek. Remember, the water is clear, it’s just the bottom that looks bad.


Five of the six cousins (see my son in the background?). Little man is sleeping.


On the way back to Anchorage, we drove past the oil rig. Is Alaska not a kick-ass state?


I actually have some sewing to show you. You’ve already seen it in these pictures. Hinty, hint, hint!

 

 

*Okay, this line used to say, “Bloody corpses blow this line.” There’s a really good reason I teach middle school-age kids. When I say that typo, I actually laughed so hard, water came out my nose. I have quite the imagination.