Getting the Barn Ready for Packing Season | Remote Alaska

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Well guys, it's been a hard winter. It's still dumping snow in late April. We're going to take today, we're going to get this old barn cleaned out, get a milk stion built, get it wired, and get ready for packing season.

[00:00:20]Okay, better lock that door. Everyone's going to bust in the feed room.

[00:00:32]Well, this place is a mess. So, I'm going to start cleaning this up and then we'll get to work.

[00:00:45]Oh, look, a ladder.

[00:00:48]I knew I had another ladder somewhere. I made the mistake of not latching the door and one of these two boys made it in here and broke up all my foam board.

[00:00:58]Look at that, Lane.

[00:00:59]>> Yeah.

[00:01:00]>> What's that?

[00:01:01]>> A print. A >> horse.

[00:01:04]>> Oh, it's a halflinger print.

[00:01:15]>> It is cold out. I'm ready for mosquito season.

[00:01:23]Let's tack it up.

[00:02:00]It's lit.

[00:02:19]I got a box of wires here. I'm going to try to get this barn wired up for Amy, get some lights in here, and then tie this into our overall cabin power system. We're going to go down, make some coffee, warm up a little bit, and then grab the snowcat, haul some lumber up here, and finish this thing off.

[00:02:33]>> Bring my coffee.

[00:02:36]>> I draw.

[00:02:39]Remember, even though we're layered up, it's above zero. So, we're going to make an iced coffee. Dennis and I love coffee. We drink way too much. I discovered you can whip honey. So, we've been making these whipped honey lattes with espresso powder.

[00:03:06]That's really good. Really strong. I want to be careful with that.

[00:03:09]>> All right, we're gonna get the snow cat and get back to it.

[00:03:13]>> Sun is bright, huh?

[00:03:21]All right, at least it's sunny.

[00:03:32]Warm out, huh? Going from cold to really warm.

[00:03:39]I'm going to go hook a sled up to this thing. Grab a few bales of hay and a little lumber.

[00:03:47]Cool.

[00:03:55]We got about a foot of heavy wet snow in the past few days and this thing doesn't do too bad in it.

[00:04:06]It goes from snowing to melting really quick.

[00:04:12]This tarp isn't too great. And with all this snow falling and melting, we should probably get all these up in the barn.

[00:04:26]This is some heavy wet snow. This snow track's not really enjoying it, but it's doing it. This barn got really hard to get to when our snow machine went down.

[00:04:35]So, now that we have this thing, we can start hauling hay out here.

[00:04:58]Well, if we had a bigger sled, we could definitely haul more hay with that thing. It's going to be in the works for next year. I'm going to go grab some more.

[00:05:36]Even though it's still snowing, this is the time of year the bears are going to start stoking around here. They come out of hibernation and they're hungry and we have a lot of food here. So, it's always good to be watchful.

[00:05:52]That hitch pin didn't fair.

[00:06:00]Our plan this fall is to stack this thing to the timbers, maybe on both sides. That way, we don't have to haul hay in here in the real hard months.

[00:06:21]It's good thing we bought this thing because the way the weather's going, we'll be using this till June.

[00:06:30]Well, this pile of hay is all nice and safe. I'm going to go make a few shelves and see what's going on with this electrical panel.

[00:06:40]>> This is my sky diver.

[00:07:02]Perfect.

[00:07:06]It's below 20°. It's still cool out.

[00:07:21]Going to put a few supplements and different stuff up here.

[00:07:37]Some wound care.

[00:07:41]It's really nice to have some shelves and some organization up here.

[00:08:06]All right, I'm going to hang some tack.

[00:08:11]>> It's nice when the sun comes out. Amen.

[00:08:39]Yeah.

[00:08:55]Some of the hardest days of winter for me isn't when it's -50 in January. It's when it's 20° and snowing in late April.

[00:09:15]over there.

[00:09:28]Nice to have all this tack all hung up.

[00:09:30]We're still on the search for a couple pack saddles for Wyatt Nike. Those will be next.

[00:09:38]These skylights are nice, >> aren't they?

[00:09:45]>> This building was an old pig barn. Amy and I were able to save this portion of it this past fall. We still have a lot to do to improve it, but it's definitely better than it was. I don't know.

[00:09:56]I might be able to fix this. It's pretty broken. I think I'm just going to move this thing and put an exterior door right here. That way we can come in and out of this room without going through the barn part. I'm not going to get too crazy with wiring this thing. I'm thinking I'm going to do three outlets, one in each room and then hang a light.

[00:10:11]Amy can have some light in here in the winter time. You don't really need a breaker panel because I can run the wire off the breaker panel at the new cabin.

[00:10:17]But just for the sake of doing it right, I'll put a panel in here. I'm going to pull this one down, see if I can fix it.

[00:10:23]If I can't fix this one, I have another one here that's kind of big. I'll take a look at that. If not, I'll just buy like a little spa breaker or something and that will do the trick, too. I'm not going to try to save this device. I'm just going to pull all this apart. I'm going to see if I can fix this part of the panel. If I can't, I'll start pulling apart that one.

[00:10:49]So, we want like our main power is going to come in and hook up to these lugs.

[00:10:53]And I guess I could just mount it in the same way and just try to tack it there and there. Let's try to do that. It doesn't look that bad. It's a little bad.

[00:11:07]Look, See, I don't need all these breakers. I really could get by with like one breaker.

[00:11:12]And you can clip these on either side.

[00:11:14]And I think I'd be clear of a screw if I put it in the side there. So, I'm going to try putting two of these in the side here. And we'll see what happens. Might just crack this. But then, well, now it's junk.

[00:11:32]Strong metal.

[00:11:34]Definitely not decode, guys.

[00:11:39]Make sure our breakers fit back in there now. Yep, no problem.

[00:11:49]13.

[00:11:55]All right, let's see how this goes.

[00:12:09]I have all this wiring left over from our old cabin. I have some wiring conduit here. It should be long enough to go across the barn. I think I'm going to use that.

[00:12:19]I'm going to swap out these old breakers. This thing sat in the rain for quite a while. So, I have these. I'm gonna throw them in and get rid of these. They're probably fine. They sound fine. See if they fit.

[00:12:32]Yeah, those are better. We don't really need six breakers, but All right. What do we got in here? We can take this.

[00:12:42]We've been working on a power system for the cabin and the homestead. When I get it finished, I'll run a line in here permanently, but just for now, I'm going to run this into the panel. I'll plug this cord into this, and then we'll plug this into the generator. And that will do it. Right out there. Look, there's already a hole. You know, they make like little uh grommets for this. We can pick one up. I don't have any.

[00:13:08]I don't know what all this stuff is.

[00:13:09]We'll just cut it all back.

[00:13:12]This is exterior grade wire. I'm not really sure if it's supposed to run into a panel, but I think it's going to be fine. All right. We got our positive, our neutral.

[00:13:23]That's our ground. This panel doesn't have a grounding bar. I have one here.

[00:13:27]I'm just going to stick it in for the sake of having it.

[00:13:32]I've wired whole cabins with nothing more than a knife and a screwdriver.

[00:13:36]Wonder if I have pliers somewhere.

[00:13:37]Pliers would be a help.

[00:13:40]Like that.

[00:13:42]You know, I'm going to cut this one back like that. I'll leave everything kind of just rough and then all this is going to come back out. See if this stuff even works.

[00:13:53]Okay, I never cut back far enough.

[00:13:57]The grounding bar isn't really grounded to anything, so I'll just stick it in there for the sake of sticking it in there.

[00:14:05]Okay, I have devices. I just don't think I have the clamps for the wire itself.

[00:14:12]I think when I wire this thing, I'm probably going to go up just for now.

[00:14:16]We'll see if this works. Take this knockout out.

[00:14:22]We use this breaker right here.

[00:14:36]All this will have to be cut back for now.

[00:14:41]All this stuff would have to be trimmed back and organized. But I'm just going to put this in there for now and see if everything works. If it does, I'll pull out my good wire here and conduit it and we'll put it in all nice and neat.

[00:15:21]I think I got it right. Let's see if it works.

[00:15:37]Well, I must have done something right because it works. Next time we're in town, I'll get some clamps and things to run this wire across the ceiling. We'll put some lights in here and we'll call that good. I'm out of this.

[00:15:52]There we go. Better than it was. I think Amy's going to try out her stansion.

[00:16:07]This is a much better setup. I'm really going to enjoy milking out here. We have a moose bone back in the cabin. We want to roast up when we finish up here.

[00:16:18]We're going to go make something warm to eat and warm up, too.

[00:16:23]Before we go, we're going to see how these guys do with firearms. They're pretty good with power tools, so let's see.

[00:16:29]>> This isn't a very loud gun, so shouldn't scare them too much. We'll see how they do.

[00:16:38]What do you think, boys? It's okay.

[00:16:46]Not too bad. One of these guys is going to be my partner in hunting spruce hunts. We're going to head back to the cabin.

[00:17:01]Oh my goodness.

[00:17:10]Looks pretty good. As long as these two don't break in here again, it will stay that way.

[00:17:30]Three eggs today. Something for these guys to scratch their butt on besides the fencing.

[00:17:46]>> I have a moose bone I've been storing in the smoker here. I'm going to take it out, cut some pieces off it, and we'll make some bone marrow butter. I got a few pieces of meat for the pups, too.

[00:18:01]Okay, look at all that marrow. I'm going to put this back in the smoker. We'll take this piece in, roast it up, make some marrow butter.

[00:18:19]This, huh? Oh, look at that.

[00:18:22]>> And she's gone.

[00:18:23]>> There you go, Tuck.

[00:18:26]Going to make a loaf of sourdough to put our mousse burgers on.

[00:18:53]Okay. All right.

[00:19:02]Pop this in for about 20 minutes. We also made a fresh batch of goat cheese.

[00:19:06]We're going to top the burgers with that, too.

[00:19:11]I think we're going to do a really big bed of potatoes this year.

[00:19:23]I think this is done.

[00:19:27]These are really good and pretty just roasted over coals on a fire or directly in coals. Yum. It looks great. All right, I'm going to scrape this out. Mix it with my butter.

[00:19:53]Beautiful.

[00:19:56]I'm going to let this get nice and melty while we finish cooking the mousse.

[00:20:01]You want middle or in pieces, please?

[00:20:07]Dennis and I are going to have a fried egg on top of our burger. We got 10 new chickens about 6 to 8 months old. So nice to have fresh eggs again.

[00:20:18]Time for some bone marrow butter.

[00:20:30]All right, Mina wants hers separate. I love cookies.

[00:20:39]Give you the egg that did not break.

[00:20:46]Let's eat.

[00:20:53]>> Delicious.

[00:20:54]>> I've been looking forward to this all day.

[00:20:56]>> Yeah, >> me too.

[00:20:59]>> Dig in, Lane.

[00:21:00]>> Thank you. I love bone marrow butter.

[00:21:03]It's delicious.

[00:21:05]>> Bone marrow is great, >> isn't it? Moose meat, bone marrow butter, fresh sourdough. I'm not going to complain.

[00:21:11]>> It's very simple, but it's good. It's very rewarding.

[00:21:15]>> That was a long day.

[00:21:16]>> Well, that was a good day to get that all taken care of. It does a lot for the morale to go up there and have it all tidy.

[00:21:21]>> Definitely. Hopefully, the weather breaks and we can start using these horses. Yep.

[00:21:25]>> At this rate, I think we're going to be fishing in the snow. It's about 9:00 at night, so we're going to clean up and get some rest.

[00:21:32]>> Hey guys, this is Amy and Dennis from Holtfast, Alaska. We are a small family living in the Eastern Interior building a subsistence homestead.

[00:21:39]>> Thank you guys so much for watching. We hope you enjoyed that video and we'll see you on the next one.