Summer Came and Went

It seems like June and July just zoomed on by. This year we were blessed with an over-abundance of blueberries. They were everywhere. My family and I picked seven gallons of blueberries just in the month of July. Unfortunately there were hardly any salmonberries-AGAIN!!! I'm just grateful to have my blueberries to bake with and eat with canned milk and sugar.

My baby girl, Cassidy, sure loves berries. I took her out berrypicking this summer not sure if she would get restless or enjoy the tundra. Turns out she loved the tundra. She was picking blueberries and filling her mouth. It was so cute how she would pick one blueberry at a time with her tiny little fingers.

My professional baby berrypicker!

This year was also a good year for humpies (pink salmon). I believe ADF&G counted over 3 million humpies in our rivers this summer! One day, my husband, son, and I went out rod and reeling at Egavik and the humpies were just boiling. We were catching every single cast! We ended up bringing 28 humpies home. I told my husband and son that we caught enough. They would have kept fishing if I didn't tell them to stop. Fish cutting is a lot of work. If my mother-in-law didn't take the fish I would be cutting for hours.

Another exciting thing that happened this summer was my two brothers and dad came up for a visit. Well, my brother Wayne Jr. came up, found a full-time job and ended up moving here. My brother James came up for a two-week visit. We have had so much fun going for boat rides upriver and fishing with him. My dad came up on the 4th of July and started working at the cannery. Work was slow for him most of the summer since there were so many humpies that were brought to a processor called the Akutan. Then the village had to go on water conservation mode. I believe we are on week 2 or 3 of water conservation. They needed a part to fix the water line. My dad was lucky to get more than 1 1/2 hours of work a day.

Oh yeah! Zac Brown came up a couple weeks ago! He was the talk of the town. Apparently he came up and stayed at Grishkowsky's upriver and did some fishing with his family. The day I heard he was in town, I told my husband that we should go fishing and try to find him. So we went upriver, but we didn't get to meet him. We did see him in a boat passing the other way as we drove up, but that was the extent of that. It's always exciting when someone famous comes to Unalakleet, since we are so small-town. :)

In no time, summer was over! :( I started back at work two days ago. I thought I would have all my silvers put away before work started, but the silver run was late and they are still slow to get into the river. A few people have been able to find the good fishing holes, but not my family. I think we put away 10 silvers at the most. Last year we were able to put away 10 silvers in one day. So, I guess I will have to save fishing for the weekends. Next year we plan on buying a subsistence net so we will be able to get more fish in a shorter amount of time.