Coming all the way from Switzerland trying to settle in America, he travels far; hitch hiking getting all the way to Alaska and meeting many new people that help him on his way. There is no road to Homer, so he has to go over and around many treacherous mountains and through deep forests. Once he reaches his destination he calls his girlfriend back in Switzerland and insists that she comes to join him.
      She agreed with the land and they decided that they would stay. For work Ruth and Yule Kilcher learned to farm and grow potatoes in Anchorage until they could build their own homestead. Once they got settled they had their first child, named Mairiis (Mossy) Kilcher. Mossy was born in Anchorage because there was no hospital in Homer. After a few years had passed, they decided to have more children. By the time the last child was born they had eight children. As the children were growing up they couldn’t socialize with other children their age. The lack of socializing was due to the fact that they were always helping around the house and on the farm. As the children helped out, they always made their work fun. Mossy said that she would try to play as much as she could because she loved to be in the woods and to go bird watching. At first there weren’t many homesteads out by their house until the children were older. The closest homestead was at the bus turnaround that was about two miles away. They only saw their neighbors about twice a month or so. They were home schooled for while, but Mossy had mixed feeling about it. Her mother felt the same way and thought they needed to spend more time with friends. In order to get to school, the bus picked them up at the bus turnaround that was about one mile away from their homestead. At the bus turnaround, Mossy and her sisters had a trunk full of town clothes and farm clothes. When they went to school they would get in their trunk and pull out their town clothes and get all prettied-up for school. They also nailed a mirror to the tree so they could fix their hair.
      Mossy’s mother and father never found out about the town clothes until a few years ago, and her mom thought it was a riot.
      Another story Mossy told was that once every week a plane would fly over their homestead and everyone got really excited. The planes also flew really low to the ground and they would throw a box wrapped in toilet paper that was filled with mail. Everyone was so excited to get the mail once it dropped from the air plane, everyone would all scatter trying to find where it had landed. Once, Mossy’s grandmother wrote her a wonderful note from Switzerland saying that she was going to send her delicious Swiss chocolates. Well, Mossy and all of her siblings were awfully excited and couldn’t wait to eat the special chocolates that were being sent. It was that time of the week and the plane was flying low. Everyone was all excited and ready to go. The box was all wrapped and ready to jump. They let go and the box was falling just fine when a big gust of wind blew and the boxes of chocolates were never found again. The whole family was really sad because they were so looking forward to it. They even spent days out searching for the box, but it was never found.
      Mossy has had a challenging but fun childhood as she gets to watch Alaska change and see how everything is different from the time she was little to now. To think all of her hard work back than has really paid off and now she has a wonderful farm of her own. Most of her family is still around here and I really hope that they will come together because they have some wonderful stories they can tell