If you want to visit Kodiak Island in Alaska, you have two options. You can take a flight from Anchorage, about 250 miles away, or take the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry from Homer, which takes about 10 hours. Kodiak is stunningly beautiful and very remote. For the roughly 13,000 people who live there, it’s what makes Kodiak home.
This is certainly true for Adelia Myrick and Tollef Monson. As off-grid homesteaders on Kodiak’s western coast, the wife and husband duo make their living off the water. Owners of Alaska Sea Greens, they farm kelp in the winter and fish for salmon in the summer.
“Salmon brought us to this corner of the world. I think it’s pretty amazing that our fishing skills, our boats, our knowledge of lines and knots, all transfer to kelp farming!” said Adelia Myrick. This seasonal blend of fishing and farming help Adelia and Tollef earn a living on Kodiak, while maintaining a deep commitment to environmental sustainability.
From Tide (and Farm) to Table
Homesteading, a loosely defined eco-conscious lifestyle centered on producing your own food, has become popular on social media in recent years. Adelia isn’t here to influence you. She wants you to know that homesteading isn’t as glamorous as it looks online—it’s really hard work!
“Homesteading, to us, means living completely apart from a town or village or a grocery store! We’re pretty self sufficient. We make our own electricity through solar and batteries (we do have a backup generator), and we rely on a lot of subsistence food. It's about being closely involved with the environment,” said Adelia.
Adelia grew up in Kodiak. Every summer she, along with her parents and twin sister, fished for salmon. In 2016, she decided she wanted to homestead full-time. Adelia returned to Kodiak with her husband to build a life as close to nature as possible. They forage, fish, and grow fruit and vegetables in their greenhouse. This process of homesteading profoundly influenced her relationship with food.
“You understand how much work goes into the food on your plate! It makes you appreciate knowing where food comes from,” said Adelia. “We’re not purists; we still go to the grocery store; but we’re much more in tune with what we can do for ourselves.”
By selling their kelp and salmon, they also help connect people across the country with sustainable food systems. Their salmon is sold through Soul Mate Salmon company, which currently delivers sustainably harvested salmon directly to consumers. Meanwhile, Alaska Sea Greens kelp is processed on Kodiak and sold off-island for use in soil amendments and sustainable agriculture.
A Perfectly Timed Crop
Kelp is an extraordinary crop for many reasons. The macroalgae doesn’t require fertilizer, it filters everything it needs from the environment. Kelp farming also helps the local environment. It absorbs dissolved carbon dioxide from the environment through photosynthesis, and kelp lines provide valuable refuge for marine life like juvenile fish. For people who fish and farm, the seasons complement each other.
Salmon fishing season typically begins in June and continues through September. Kelp is planted in November and harvested in May, so it doesn’t overlap with the busy fishing season. Just as importantly, many of the same equipment and skills transfer between industries. The same small skiffs the they use for salmon fishing are well suited to tending to the kelp farm, which helps keep operating costs down.
This will be Alaska Sea Greens’ sixth year of kelp farming. They grow sugar kelp by wrapping spores around a rope, which is then suspended horizontally in the water. For most of the year Adelia and her husband manage the farm by themselves, although they usually recruit a few friends for harvest days. After harvest, they take the kelp to Kodiak town for processing. It’s ground, treated with a stabilizer like citric acid, and then sold.
“We were so excited to learn we could farm kelp in the off-season from our fishing,” said Adelia. “As lifelong salmon fishermen, we’re very proud of Alaska’s sustainable fishing industry, but kelp farming has strengthened our relationship with the environment even further. Kelp farming feels like we’re doing something to help take care of the ocean.”
Fun Fact
Guidelines for seaweed farming in Alaska are colloquially known as the “50-50 Rule.” They require that the seed for kelp is sourced from no greater than 50 kilometers away and from no less than 50 individual unrelated seaweeds. This aims to help preserve the biodiversity of wild kelp.
Since Alaska Sea Greens is more than 50 kilometers from a kelp hatchery, that means they harvest the kelp reproductive material themselves! Each September, Adelia’s husband Tollef dons a wetsuit, fins, and mask to dive into chilly Alaskan waters for kelp. They send it to a hatchery for processing, via a mail plane that comes once a week, and they receive ready-to-plant seed about 6 weeks later.
Recipe: Uganik Kelp Pesto and Smoked Salmon Pizza
This pizza recipe features kelp pesto, which can be made fresh or frozen and used months later.
Ingredients for Kelp Pesto
- 1/8 to 1/4 cup kelp puree (see directions below)
- ½ cup grated asiago cheese (or to taste)
- Very large handful fresh basil
- ½ cup toasted pine nuts
- Juice of ½ a lemon
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 generous glug of olive oil
Directions for Kelp Puree
- Blanch kelp by dipping it quickly in boiling water, until it turns bright green
- Blend in a food processor or blender until smooth
- Freeze to store
Directions
- Add pesto ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth
- Spread pesto onto a pizza crust (homemade or store bought)
- Top the pizza with grated cheese
- Add other toppings (Adelia prefers locally sourced treasures such as foraged morel mushrooms and smoked coho salmon)
- Bake at 450 degrees for roughly 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the crust is golden brown
