I wholeheartedly recommend a visit with Beth if she’s still having workers come to her farm to help with her summer peony harvests. Hannah and I intend to at some point in the future do this again with a slightly different take. The COVID-19 global pandemic has had a massive impact on all our lives. In our case, we’ve done a lot of personal growing and stretching as have many.
Look, I’m not saying we didn’t give it a good shot during our stay. But, looking back on it now, I think I could have given more and I definitely do have more insight to contribute to her operation after ruminating on our experience. I was really sorting myself out during our stay. I had just gotten my bachelors after an excruciatingly circuitous educational path and was still grieving the death of my uncle. Hannah was working her job part-time remotely from Homer as well. I think Beth sensed where we were and was incredibly understanding.
My impressions of her and her husband are that they are some of the warmest and hardest working people I’ve ever met. Beth’s summer harvest posses are generally comprised of WWOOFers, neighbors, friends, and really anyone she can wrangle in town willing to help.
In hindsight I think I would have been much better off handling the growing of the vegetables on the homestead side of Beth’s farm. I didn’t take the initiative to be more involved in that aspect and the responsibility had already been doled out. It was definitely my bad.
It’s hard work and long hours but the short summers in Alaska have a kind of electric energy. You can really sense the gravity of every creature hustling before winter converts the lush, verdant, landscape into frigid endless darkness. There really is something special to be found in Alaskan summers if you can harness the manic energy. A word of caution though: there is a very real danger of that endless daylight consuming you if you don’t have a good handle on yourself. It is very easy to burn the candle at both ends and burn out during an extended stay. That said, we had a great time on her farm and made many friends. I will always cherish the memories I made that summer.
Toward the end of our stay, Hannah and I tried to make the most of our scheduled time off to cross off a bucket list item for me. I was set on trying to figure out how to catch salmon on the fly since the moment I knew we were headed to AK. The closest, surest, shot for catching fish seemed to be the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers during the late sockeye run so I focused my energy there. I tried fishing the Anchor River a few times but it was always crowded and all I caught was rockfish. It took me the better part of my first time out to figure out how to weight my leader to get the drift right on the Upper Kenai. I’d really never fished water that fast before and never had to fish unweighted streamers in moving water. I was also really not ready for how hard these fish fight. They’re incredible. I wasn’t careful with the first fish I had on and the reel bloodied my knuckles because I couldn’t get my left hand out of the way fast enough as the salmon peeled off line.
I lost more flies than I’d like to admit on the first day. It was brutal and really just me being dense thinking I could fish light leaders. I ended up having to buy some of the commercially tied Russian River streamers from Gwin’s the first day. Thankfully I brought all my tying gear with me to AK so I was able to tie up more flies for the next outings.
Unfortunately, for Hannah, these outings meant a significant amount of time wet wading in cold water with a constant drizzle to help me net the salmon. She was a real trooper and I am very thankful she, while not willing to fish, was willing to help me achieve a bucket list dream.
Once you’ve got one on, its best to beach them ASAP or you’ll be fighting the current more than the fish if they get out into the main channel. A quick fight with 30# flouro, use of the ikejime technique, and bleeding the fish in the current, are the most ethical and efficient ways to harvest salmon and preserve the quality of the meat. The first time out, a helpful local taught me how to efficiently fillet salmon at a processing station. The fish were excellent pan fried but I really wish I had smoked some.
After I figured out the appropriate weight for the depth and strength of the current, it was very easy to limit out in about an hour which was great. I’m definitely not a fan of combat fishing. During one trip out I dinged my rod with a weight and sure enough later that day the rod broke on a fast run. I ended up renting an uglystik fly rod from a local guide shop for my third and final trip out. At the end of every trip I’d run down to a fish processor in Homer and get my fillets flash frozen and vacuum sealed in 2# portions.
Protip: When fishing the sanctuary, stay slightly behind the line of fishermen downstream from you to make sure you’re not the dingleberry that pushes the fish into deeper water by wading too deep. The fish tend to hug the edge of the main channel in slower water to conserve energy. Also, any reasonable spot on the river during a good run is a good spot. It’s really about timing the cast properly once you get the weight right. I can’t tell you how many times someone tried to cozy up to me thinking I had some kind of magic spot because they saw me catching fish.
- Wait for a school to push up.
- Cast the fly sufficiently up stream so that it will be at the depth of the fish by the time the fly intercepts the school about 1/2 – 2/3 the way through the drift.
- Feel a bite and set the hook.
It was really that easy. I didn’t get any foul hooks on the three trips I went out on and only lost fish that managed to shake the hook while jumping. I think I’d like to explore more areas next time and try some shrimp flies for sockeye now that the pressure is off and I know what’s up. As always, check the ADFG website and the regs BEFORE you head out. The sanctuary is a special regulation area and the salmon runs are heavily regulated.
Ah, the famed Homer Spit. We really didn’t spend much time here. It’s honestly a terrible tourist trap and the collective groan of the locals can be heard when a cruise ship rolls into town despite tourism being a huge economic driver outside of fishing. If you have some time off a cruise, do yourself a solid and use a rideshare app to have a local cart you around. There’s a lot more to Homer than the spit.
Some of our favorites in no particular order:
- Fat Olives
- Pizza and beer
- The Bagel Shop
- Bagel sandwiches
- Two Sisters Bakery
- Brunch
- Coffeesmith
- Best coffee in Homer in 2019
- Save U More
- The good grocery store
- Homer Farmer’s Market
- Russian orthodox pastry vendors
- Seriously, just trust me on this.
- Jams and jellies
- Birch syrup
- Live music
- Russian orthodox pastry vendors
- Kachemak Gear Shed
- Sporting goods
- Down East Saloon
- Dive bar
- Live music
- Cornhole
Sorry Homer brewers, the beer scene was pretty wack in 2019 compared to Southern California. The quality just wasn’t there and many of the classic beer styles were not even close to true to style. It’s entirely possible that things have gotten better but I was disappointed. Yeast management and sanitation were clearly lacking and the water profiles were off. Y’all need to wrangle a brewer transplant from the San Diego scene.
– Past me to future me
A week before we left Homer we went on an amazing two night backpacking trip across the bay. Beth dropped us off on the beach in Halibut Cove and we hiked into Kachemak Bay State Park from the Saddle trailhead to the Grewingk Glacier Lake area.
One of my favorite things about the trip was the Grewingk Creek hand tram to get across to the Humpy Creek Trail. It’s a real workout to pull yourself across and is really a two person job. I had no idea but these kinds of trams are apparently pretty common all over Alaska.
The Humpy Creek Trail is a real delight to hike. If you get the chance to watch the creek from the bridge crossing during the spawn take a second to pause and take it in. The schools of pink salmon coming in at the inlet were amazing to watch as well. I’d like to come back to Humpy Creek to fish for Dolly Varden.
The first night we camped along Humpy Creek despite the black bear warnings. In the morning we hiked the Alpine Ridge Trail out and back ending our trip for the day back at Grewingk Glacier Lake.
It was a strenuous trip but I loved it even despite a surprise encounter with a bear who had made some bees angry. We both quickly ran away from the ransacked hive and I suffered a few stings but was glad that was all that happened.
Falling asleep to the sound of glacier calving was both amazing and terrible. I would like to do this trip again but maybe do the Grace Ridge Trail instead. This is truly an amazing park to backpack in.
We had one fun and one honestly not-so-fun harvest experience on our way out. Hannah helped with apiary duties de-capping and spinning the frames while I did some last minute weeding. Beth’s peony/wildflower honey is really something else. You HAVE to try it. It is a very mild floral honey that is light in color. I really have not tasted anything like it since. That was the fun experience.
The not-so-fun experience was the chicken harvest. While we learned a lot and I am glad we got the opportunity to do it I’m not sure I’d want to do it again. I probably would have been okay strictly on the butchering side but I ended up on the slaughter and de-feather side of the chicken harvest. We spent the summer raising thirty or so Freedom Rangers full well knowing we’d be slaughtering them but when the time came I just really wasn’t mentally prepared. Last time we had worked on a chicken farm, our host used a mobile slaughterhouse so we didn’t have the opportunity to experience that. This was visceral, literally. The experience of harvesting fish in the past did nothing to prepare me for the experience of harvesting the chickens. Everything we did was by-the-book humane but it was still too real for me to process what was happening in the moment. It was a little traumatic for me looking back on it but I’m glad to have experienced the full responsibility of being a meat eater. This was a real deal semi-rural homestead experience. We loved it and it took us a long while to unpack it all after we got home.
The next post will include our Subaru Forester bed build and trip home through some amazing national parks in Canada and the US.
Places: Kachemak Bay State Park, Grewingk Glacier Lake, Humpy Creek, Russian River, Kenai River, Kachemak Bay, Halibut Cove, Homer, Scenic Place Peonies, Homer Spit, East End (Homer)