Esteline “Estie” Moe, who has lived in Alaska since 1947, turned 103 this summer, celebrating her birthday with neighbors and family. When asked what the key to a long life is, she simply says, “You have to milk cows.”
Estie was raised on a farm in northern Minnesota, the eldest daughter in her family, and did chores alongside her father and two brothers. With 40 cows on the farm, she would milk ten cows every morning before breakfast and every night after school, shovel manure, and stack hay.
Like other rural families in those days, her family used a “biffy,” or outhouse, pumped their own water, and cooked on an oil stove. She says that upbringing prepared her well for life in Alaska. Later, while working as a waitress in Minneapolis, Moe met her husband Alvin. It didn’t take him long to figure out that she was a keeper. Shortly after they were married, he was sent overseas for military service. She joked, “We had 40 days and 40 nights together, and then he was gone.”…