Iditarod Work Day

You might remember this year over Thanksgiving when we headed out to Ed and Ruth Iten's house to chop wood. Well, yesterday we headed out there again for some more work. Ed is an Iditarod racer; he has about 110 dogs and has 3+ teams each year in the Iditarod. In order to be able to run this race, there is an enormous amount of work that has to happen to prepare for the race. So, each year, Ed and Ruth have a work day where they invite people from town to come out and help them get ready. They provide all the food (for people and dogs), and of course everyone is always excited to head out to their beautiful home site about 40 miles out of Kotzebue. There were around 30 people out at their place yesterday to help with the work. We were so lucky to have the most beautiful weather; it was around 10 below and it snowed yesterday morning so the trail out to their place was amazing. I could not believe the amount of work that goes into getting ready for the race. They have to have a certain percentage of fats, proteins, commercial dog food, etc. for each dog. All of this has to be chopped up and divided up into bags 10lb bags. Then, it has to be labeled with a certain color yarn so that it can be sent out to the correct check point on the trail.

They get the "leftovers" from meat processing, which is put into a mixture:

Then, it is cut up using a table saw (because it is all frozen), and it has to be chopped up into small, bite-size pieces so that the dogs can it eat. Finally, it is all put into bags, 10lbs at a time. My job was to get the chunks after they had been cut and put them into the bags.

Michael was doing the chopping:

The dogs also get a portion of "commercial" dog food, which is the type of food you would feed your dog. This also has to be measured into bags 10lbs at a time. Here is my friend Serena and I doing this job. (We made 60 bags worth!).

They also feed the dogs fish on the trail. This is all Shee fish that was caught by Ed, Ruth and their dog handlers by setting nets through the ice.

First, the heads are cut off using the table saw:

Then, they cut up the fish into steaks. Finally, they use a hammer to pound out the guts from the middle:

After all the food has been chopped up, bagged, and labeled, it has to be brought into town via snowmachine, and then put on a plane and shipped to Anchorage where the race begins. Crazy! As you can tell, we sure had a great time. It was fun to learn about all that they have to do to get ready for the race. Plus, we got to head out to the beauty that is around us and hang out with our good friends. After all the work was done, we spent the evening eating all of the "people" food that Ed and Ruth had prepared for us. What a great experience!