A couple living in rural Alaska revealed what it takes to live the off-the-grid lifestyle, enduring temperatures as low as negative 50 degrees.
Amy and Dennis decided nearly a decade ago they weren’t happy with city living and uprooted themselves from Massachusetts to live off the land.
The lifestyle, they told DailyMail.com, is not for everyone but it’s a dream for them and their daughter Lena.
Living off the land means foraging and hunting for food, using solar power and generators to have amenities that city dwellers may take for granted – such as running water – and having to chop wood in order to stay warm.
Giving up suburban life, they began their journey by looking for rural land closer to their original home in Maine.
‘We really wanted our own property to build and raise a family on, and to really live a homestead lifestyle and produce a lot of our own food,’ Amy said in a recent YouTube video, a platform they have dedicated to helping others learn skills they’ve acquired over their journey.
Amy and Dennis said: ‘We had no idea what we were doing. Building or anything like that. That was all learning, but that was some of our favorite times.’
The pair took time to save up and learn how they could pursue their dream. Dennis said: ‘One of the things we did when we lived back in Massachusetts is we just connected with local farmers and gardeners.
Amy and Dennis decided nearly a decade ago they weren’t happy with city living and uprooted themselves from Massachusetts to live off the land, they began in Maine and now live in rural Alaska
They see temperatures as low as negative 50 degrees and rely on chopped wood for fires. Solar power systems help them generate electricity in the summertime, while a generator is substituted in the winter when there’s much less sunlight
Hunting, fishing, farming and foraging are all key elements to their homestead lifestyle but also a great way to keep their costs down, they usually hunt local native game
‘And we would buy in bulk and then practice canning and fermenting. We’d garden on our windowsill and have little raised container beds and attend classes too.’
Eventually, they found their first homestead for $5,000. They cleared the land and got to work building their dream home.
Although they had little comforts and found it tough at the start of their journey, Amy said that ‘it was some of their favorite times’.
‘It’s like anything you’re starting to do, you just read about it and everything’s kind of a theory, and you get out and do it,’ she said, discussing how they learnt to heat and power their home.
Once they learnt everything from their first homestead, they felt more adventure awaited them.
After spending a short time learning more about farming by moving to a nearby farmhouse, they carried on to their main focus: Alaska.
‘We developed a lot of skills back east and we brought them here with us, but Alaska is completely different. You’ve got to get out and keep active, and once you do that the winter isn’t so bad,’ Amy said.
‘The lack of sunlight in the winter is a challenge,’ Dennis said. ‘So you got to get out. Even at night, when it’s a full moon, it’s a gorgeous time to take a little shoe or ski.’
‘It’s been negative 50, [that] was the coldest temperature we’ve seen. You just prepare for it; good gear makes all the difference. Make sure you have your wood, and we live in a frontier community so there are other folks out here and we all help each other out,’ they said
They make many things from scratch, including sourdough and coffee creamer, and live off vegetables they grow or forage or meat they hunt
‘We eat a lot of game meat. We eat a lot of salmon because it’s so good. It’s really wonderful. The mainstay is really moose, caribou, and salmon,’ they said
Alaska presented a whole new different lifestyle to prepare for, including unbearable temperatures and long winters.
‘It’s been negative 50, [that] was the coldest temperature we’ve seen. You just prepare for it; good gear makes all the difference. Make sure you have your wood, and we live in a frontier community so there are other folks out here and we all help each other out.’
However, Alaska came with delicious perks despite the cold temperatures.
‘The berry picking in Alaska is on a whole different level than anywhere we’ve ever been. You could walk out behind our house here and you could fill up a small pickup truck with blueberries.
‘We do a lot of berries, but also a lot of root veggies because they grow really great in Alaska, we make a lot of sauerkraut, potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, broccoli. It’s one of our big, big things we can grow and then we can a lot.’
Not only have they found the foraging and farming to be a delicious perk, but the Alaskan salmon that they fish almost on their doorstep is some of the freshest and most delicious they’ve had.
Hunting, fishing, farming and foraging are all key elements to their homestead lifestyle but also a great way to keep their costs down.
‘We eat a lot of game meat. We eat a lot of salmon because it’s so good. It’s really wonderful. The mainstay is really moose, caribou, and salmon.’
‘We really wanted our own property to build and raise a family on, and to really live a homestead lifestyle and produce a lot of our own food,’ Amy said
‘We do a lot of berries, but also a lot of root veggies because they grow really great in Alaska, we make a lot of sauerkraut, potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbage, broccoli. It’s one of our big, big things we can grow and then we can a lot,’ they said
Alaska has offered them their dream lifestyle, accompanied by beautiful scenery and a thriving, tight-knit community. They attribute knowing some of the most ‘down to earth’ happy people around them to their life ‘immersed in nature’
They make their own sourdough and coffee creamer, as well as keeping chickens and goats. Even with cost saving measures, they still need to work.
‘You definitely need some money, even living off the land. So, we have run various businesses over the years and some of which we’ve converted to be home based. We’ve bought and sold property before and worked in real estate, so that’s kind of our main one now.
‘We do remote real estate work, and [Amy has] a team in Anchorage that I work with. We live pretty minimally other than that.’
They also keep costs down by preserving their food by canning and freezing and are able to run multiple freezers off of their solar power system, which they supplement with a generator in the winter.
They say rural life hasn’t cost them their social life and their daughter Lena does lots of things city kids do like go to playgroups.
Their community in Alaska has about 100 year-round residents, which even has their own schoolhouse.
‘We developed a lot of skills back east and we brought them here with us, but Alaska is completely different. You’ve got to get out and keep active, and once you do that the winter isn’t so bad,’ they said
Their community makes a strong effort to stay connected, their closest neighbor is a four-minute car ride away, and their nearest small town is an hour and a half away
‘I mean we get more social interaction, and you wouldn’t think it. We do get more social interaction a lot of time because it is such a small community and everybody’s always popping by or asking you over for dinner,’ they said
‘It’s like an old school, one room schoolhouse that has all the kids in it, from little kids to seniors in high school, they all go to the school.’
Their community makes a strong effort to stay connected, their closest neighbor is a four-minute car ride away.
‘I mean we get more social interaction, and you wouldn’t think it. We do get more social interaction a lot of time because it is such a small community and everybody’s always popping by or asking you over for dinner.
‘We just went over to dinner to a neighbor’s house a couple nights ago and we all cook something. You definitely get that interaction still.’
Amy and Dennis found their community to be closer than they had experienced before, even compared to their lives in suburbia.
‘A lot of people do your subsistence activities together. So, we’ll all go fishing together. We’ll go hunting together and whatnot. It’s hard nowadays to have such a supportive community. So, we feel really lucky. They were very warm and welcoming and really wonderful,’ Amy said.
‘You find people from all over, which is something I didn’t expect personally. We have college professors, biologists and all sorts of folks. Our closest neighbors, one’s an anthropologist. The other is a retired high school principal,’ she added.
‘It’s very beautiful and especially in the summertime, Alaska really shines,’ they said, commenting on the summer days that typically come with 24 hours of daylight
‘It’s very rewarding. People become very happy because of it. Alaska is one of those places where people really, really love it or they just hate it,’ they laughed
While rural Alaska has provided them with their dream lifestyle, they take the risk of living an hour and a half from a small town with medical clinics.
Should an emergency happen, they would rely on local nurses or doctors and have to be helicoptered to a major hospital from the clinics in town.
‘You have to be prepared and cautious. You know, so we do have medical supplies for what we can handle here at home. For anything a little more intense, we can call the nurse practitioner. There is a paramedic in town too,’ they said.
‘You have to be in good health. If it’s something you want to do, you wouldn’t want to come out here if you’re not in good health,’ Dennis said.
They said that health is a main priority and should something go wrong, where they needed consistent or more ‘intense’ medical care, they would return back to the northeast.
‘We’ve been blessed to all be really healthy, which is really fortunate. While we are young and healthy, I think it’s a great way to raise children.’
They also keep costs down by preserving their food by canning and freezing and are able to run multiple freezers off of their solar power system, which they supplement with a generator in the winter
Their rural life also hasn’t cost them their social life either, including for their daughter Lena. ‘They’ll do weekly play groups for the kids, and they’ll all go over for bingo night or whatnot. They really do make an effort to keep everybody together and socialized’
They said that health is a main priority and should something go wrong, where they needed consistent or more ‘intense’ medical care, they would return back to the northeast
‘It’s very beautiful and especially in the summertime, Alaska really shines,’ they said, commenting on the summer days that typically come with 24 hours of daylight.’
They recalled that the summer and winter months are each beautiful in their own ways, including being able to see the northern lights and landscapes of snow-covered trees backing onto gorgeous mountain views.
‘It’s very rewarding. People become very happy because of it. Alaska is one of those places where people really, really love it or they just hate it,’ they laughed.
‘Even the day to day. That’s some of our favorite day to day living and getting to have so much time to live like this. It’s fun. Definitely. We really, really like it.’
