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Off Grid Alaska Question

33K views 27 replies 18 participants last post by  Caribou 
#1 ·
I'm a big fan of the glut of Alaska shows on TV. I can't help but have one question and thats how these people who live out in the middle of no where pay for the goods they buy?? I was just watching a new show called Railroad Alaska and two different people living only where the railroad gets to would go to the tracks and got either propane gas or fuel from the railroad.....how do they pay for it???....they also have solar panels, generators, snow mobiles ect....and they live there year round....wheres the money come from?? plus the stuff they buy has to be expensive....how are they doing it??
 
#3 ·
Yeah I knew they got the dividend but I thought it was less than $ 2000.00 a year per person. That can't go very far with the price of fuel up there...... I just see all these different items they have like solar panels....they're not cheap at all and I imagine they are more costly up there......On life below zero the one couple lives out in the middle of nowhere and the guy has bulldozers, backhoes, a saw mill and huge solar panel banks.....all that stuff costs some serious money....just curious
 
#10 ·
Well first of all the dividend changes from year to year, this one was 900 per person and the one before that was less than that. Alaska is a intresting place, yes there things that cost more than the lower 48 but other things are the same. Bartering is a huge part of life just like anywhere that doesn't have tons of money. You aren't realizing that a lot of that stuff they had for a long time, none of it is brand new. Lastly if they are on a TV show they help with some of those costs.
 
#5 ·
Many take part-time seasonal jobs in the summer that the shows don't talk about. Fishing and tourist related jobs are popular. Many subsistence Alaskans trap in winter for cash.

I like to go to Alaska in the fall, which starts in late August. The common discussion in the Interior is " my job is over for the year, now I need to get the wood cut and down a moose."
 
#6 ·
Many take part-time seasonal jobs in the summer that the shows don't talk about. Fishing and tourist related jobs are popular. Many subsistence Alaskans trap in winter for cash.

I like to go to Alaska in the fall, which starts in late August. The common discussion in the Inerior is " my job is over for the year, now I need to get the wood cut and down a moose."
Off grid living anywhere means making the most out of everyday.If you don't want to work you do not want to live off grid anywhere.

now compound this by Alaska short grow season/long winter/hard winter weather patterns and you see that only the ones who want to live there with a " I will do what it takes" mental outlook do live there
 
#11 ·
Thanks all for the input......still amazed at what some of these people living in the middle of nowhere have despite seasonal work......they must be doing good on these TV shows plus they don't have to deal with electric, sewage, water bills and taxes like we do....I heard that they get paid good from the networks.....I heard that on average the cast of gold rush each get 80,000 and the big names get even more.
 
#14 ·
The TV reality shows gild the Lilly when it comes to reality. You can easily see that on Gold Rush when they are running equipment that costs well over a million dollars and not making a million gold per mining season. Or the Kilchers that need meat (they have a cow herd, chickens, turkeys for gosh sakes) so much that they spend 100's of dollars of gas on expensive boats, 4 wheelers, snowmobiles to achieve a few dollars worth of food hunting. Yukon men is a bit more believable with its larger group of residents from Tanana although there is a lot of monkey business to garner drama.

Real sustenance living requires a fair amount of built up equipment/land to pull it off. It is not something achievable by a person starting with nothing. You need tools, buildings, fields and labor. Outside income is a must unless you inherit all the stuff from your parents.

The other aspect of a TV show is they select what you see. They show the folks that are succeeding and turn a blind eye to those that do not have all the interesting toys.
 
#16 ·
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is salvage or junk yards...

That barge that Otto Kilcher has was salvage off a beach near the Kilcher homestead. It was said in the show when the barge featured that the owner called Otto up and told him he could have it. It was beached and upside down and the guy didn't want to bother with the work to salvage it. Otto did.

Otto also makes regular trips to the junkyard to get materials/parts and has his own personal junkyard going with all that stuff out in the yard (all in the show).

As has already been said, most of the equipment that you see on these shows is not new...some of it pretty old actually.
 
#17 ·
All any that said there plenty of people who live "off grid“ up here that don't have the most glamourist lifestyle. They don't have tons of crap that we think we "need" to survive. The trade off is a type of lifestyle that both very hard and very rewarding. As for land cost again you can't think in terms of the lower 48, while it's true you can't homestead like the Kilcher family did you can get land pretty cheap if you don't have things like roads and modern services on it up here.
 
#19 ·
I had a career working with hard rock miners. The Hoffman crew is as big a bunch of goofballs as you will find. They have learned a lot, but all still **** poor miners. They would never get anywhere without the TV show.

My aunt used to live down the road from the Kilchers on the Kenai. She thinks their show is funny because a road goes all the way to their house from town.

I like plenty of shows about Alaska, especially Life Below Zero. No story line, no script. Plenty of drama in day to day activities.
 
#21 ·
the Kilchers .... there's parts of the homestead that never get shown .... Atz seems to be private about his own home ... can't remember them ever showing him at home .... been wondering if Jewell might have a home somewhere around the homestead .... with all her $$$ it would make sense to have a tidy little 5000 sq ft summer home around
 
#22 ·




We make our $$ with Traditional arts and crafts displays,for museums in the US, Europe and Japan as well as personal items for ourselfs, and others who live around here. Bartering is a big part of keeping our food fresh and varied. We make and sell one kids size fur Parkee and we buy 10 fasionable jackets and still have hundreds of dollers for other stuff, like the gas to get more fur.....

We also dont pay rent, we own our buildings and tent out the rest of the places. We dont heat with heating oil, but we do heat our water, with 8$ a gallon heating oil, about a gallon aday in our house. We pay income tax's, but insted of buying stoveoil and food,we buy about 300$ a month from the store here, mostly sauces, spices, suger, flour, coffee tea, fresh/frozen fruit for 7 of us, we get wood and Hunt/Trap/Fish/Gather.

Sometimes seasonal work payed a great $$, when I workd 120 days straight at a gold mine or wildlands firefighting, but thats all hit and miss, its better to hunt :D

We have a bank account and we send $ to the town its in and use a card an dthe internet. All villages have post offices, so if it fits, it go's. Other stuff can be flown in, at least to a village, then we gotta figure it from there...

We use Snowmachines and Boats, 4 wheelers, but none are for pleasure, they are like a pickup truck in the utility role, and if you added them up in cost, they are still less than a truck. we dont have roads to anywhere but a grabvel pit and the airport, but the rivers it, both soft and hard water transpo.
In our home here in Noorvik, we have about 700$ a month in utilitys of Electricty, internet and water/sewer. Electrifyed since '95, water n sewer'd since 2002, internet since 2007 so its getting better all the time and we can always get what were willing to work for

I can only speak for Life Below zero, but we are not scripted at all. No time for it anyway.
The editors do funny things, we laughed how in the last episode I went for dry firewood ,to saw some logs to manageble sizes and bring back a boat of firewood, and poles clean of bark so the wife and girls could hang the fish, as we had just opend the camp.(fresh spruce poles are sappy and need a couple days to dry before hanging fish on them ) I spent 9 hours cutting almost 50 logs up, and getting the poles as I went along.The last log right before home was the one that went in the boat They showed me looking for the poles, but not a shot of me sawing the logs that the high water had put along the bank. No chainsaw, just majic Karate chops or lazer beam eyeballs....LOL!!
I was tasked to do so, while they fished, which is the norm.
They show the next day when I was splitting the fire wood of the day and then jumping in the boat with the ladys, where they and I put the cut logs into the river,and towed 'em home...... and still no chainsaw....editors :D LOL!!
 
#25 ·
I've been witness to a reality tv show being filmed, and there ain't a whole lot of reality to it.(Bubba Que on Food Network).

Life below Zero and Mountain Men seem to be less reality tv, more documentary. As with anything the editors/producers need to tweak the plot lines just to make it more interesting to the viewer.
 
#26 ·
Nat Geo keeps it real, they demand that we film, then wirte what happend, so we actually have a huge ammount of control over whats filmed, 'cause were the ones doing it .

We have 7 kids, 2 adult boys with their own familys, 1 adult daughter out seeeing the world and 4 daughters at home.

The filming mostly follows the girls and Agnes. As Hunters/Gatherers, we divide the chores according to the sex's and they can only be one place atta time so they follow Agnes , as they allready have hunting going on , so me and the sons are sidelines, untill its dinner time :D We dont mind at all, and next year they will follow me and the sons more closely as we do what men do while the women do what they must do. .Besides, Im the "4th white guy" from tthe lower 49, Agnes is quite local , and like Sue, shes in balance with the others in the cast. besides, how many times do you want to see an animal in a trap or a guy cutting wood for heat in the 8 month winter?

No, the best bet is Agnes, she makes my show :D
 
#27 ·
If and when I go to Alaska ,I want to move there and explore the whole state on foot.
I have no problem with harsh weather and dealing with cold or having several jobs floating.
I use to live in the mountains in southern California and raised my family there too, the culture of a small town is more appealing to me than living in the city .
I know it takes time to be accepted in a community ,it largely depends on what you are bringing with you ,$ and skills and a community attitude .
A lot of people that move up there loose about half their furniture ,no matter how it is transported there ,it's just plain rough land or sea.
If there are materials to build things ,I have no trouble doing that, it's my favorite past time.
I already live some what off the grid ,only because I have some hi amperage equipment here my own battery inverter system can't drive .
It's OK I have alternatives , I always do.
I am curious though . why do I not see ( in photos ) wind mills ? are they not allowed ?
 
#28 ·
You would most likely do well, Arleigh.

Theres alotta small windmills at various camps and such, and a bunch down in Kotzebue, but the piles of dead birds, ravens, hawks, eagels and such at each mills base was most likely the reason folks here said "no, thank you." when shown the Kotzebue ezamples. It was actually quite a crap load of dead birds there....
 
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