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
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
LOL!!