Alaskan Bush People

Hey, you wanna get the bread warming up?

Yep, that's pretty frozen.

Should I just, like, sit on this? Warm it up?

No, get off the bread. Birdy, come on.

You don't sit on everything.

I'll just carry the bread with me for a while.

With the temperatures dropping, keeping all the food thawed,

It's definitely been harder.

One of my solutions is just carry it with you.

Just keep it in your pocket. Keep it in your jacket.

I don't know, feel. Is it helping?

-Yes. -A little bit, right?

Ooh, put it back in there.

You're not gonna want to eat that little piece.

That's just burnt.

That piece is for you.

I think I can warm the bread up and myself,

If I do a little a little rolling,

I don't know if I want sweat bread.

It's not gonna warm us up if we're not active.

We got to be active, gabe, we got to be active.

Yeah, are you ready?

Yeah, and...

Go!

Whoo! It's so frozen! Aah!

It's so frozen!

I'm really dizzy.

Whew.

Body heat bread worked out pretty good.

The sweat bread definitely thawed.

Got us our carbs and protein

And everything else, you know, so I can't question it too much.

She thawed the bread out.

Mm. Oh, bird.

Yep, good job.

Yeah. Eggs below zero.

On this episode of "alaskan bush people"...

You ready? Yeah, okay.

You know, there's a lot of excitement

On the mountain this winter.

There's my sweet little angel.

But there's a lot to lose now, and we're not ready.

We need to be gathering as much lumber as we can.

That's the important thing right now.

Start peeling boards off of this thing.

My biggest concern is that

Willow's gonna come and kick me.

Willow!

With this storm coming, the animals are my top priority.

If I was an ostrich, I'd like this.

Hang on, guys.

-Hold on. -Hold on.

Our pusher rod just snapped in half.

Feel that? Temperature's dropping.

Do we have enough time to do all this?

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Baby.

Come here, baby. Come here, baby.

Mm, cute baby.

Yeah, is this my smiley girl? Is this my smiley girl? Yeah.

She's my smiley girl.

alright, my little angel.

You know, being a dad is great.

It's probably the greatest feeling in the world, you know,

Taking care of little ones.

I feel like I was kind of geared for it.

It is definitely different, though, when you're the dad,

Like, you're the guy, like, the buck stops there.

Okay.

Here we go.

Here we go. Feels good to be headed back out.

Oh, yeah. Sophie's first time up on the mountain.

She's gonna love it.

Life on the mountain's pretty rough,

But that's the way all of my brothers and sisters

And I grew up, and I don't want her to be a city baby.

I want her to be a bush baby.

So I want some of her first sights and smells

To be of the bush, you know,

So it reminds her of the same things

That my childhood reminds me of.

-Yep, who wants a hot dog? -I'll take a dog.

Is that them?

-Hey. -Hi!

Is that a nice little blanket or is that a baby?

-Oh, my goodness. -Oh, she's buried in there.

There's my sweet little angel.

We planted our seed on top of this mountain

And the seeds are falling off the tree

And they're planting, too, and soon,

It'll be like a forest, wolf pack forest.

Can I hold her?

Bird, you look really natural with that baby in your arms.

They're more fun than cats.

The first time I met gabe's little baby girl,

You know, she's a chunky baby, but she has these big eyes.

You can see a lot of gabe in the eyes.

Little tater tot. That's what I call her.

How you doing, daddy?

Doing good, da.

Da, dad, and daddy.

-The three daddy-o's. -The three d's.

You know, after sophie was born,

We wanted to wait just a little bit,

Get her immune system working with just raquell and I,

You know, just let her get her sea legs,

Basically, or her mountain legs or whatever.

I'mma warn you one thing here, daddy,

You blink and it's gonna be 20.

-Wow. -It's hard to believe.

Yeah.

You know, there's a lot of excitement

On the mountain this winter.

Number three winter coming up. It's going fast,

And we've never had this much on our plate before.

But there's a lot to lose now, and we're not ready.

It's good to be back up here. I can tell you that much.

Good to have you back.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

-It really is. -How have things been up here?

Winter's coming.

I think it's here.

It's late December in northern washington,

And a life-threatening cold front has been forecast

To strike north star ranch in just four days,

Plunging their 4,000-foot mountain

To temperatures of negative 20 degrees fahrenheit.

You know, the progress on the main house

Is going really good, but because of the weather

And everything everybody's anticipating,

The lumber's been delayed.

They don't want to risk bringing their trailer

All the way up with all that wood, you know,

And that's where we sit right now.

We have nothing to work with.

If we go back a half step,

We're gonna lose everything we gained.

Did you see we got to worry about now,

There's cold coming?

Supposed to be really, really cold, you know?

I mean, bad enough it's gonna hurt everything

That isn't used to it around here.

We've never been.

Too frozen? -Yep.

It's actually gonna start

Getting dangerous for us to be down there

In that trapper shack.

In places up north in alaska,

It gets so cold it would literally freeze your skin.

A little crack in the wall would freeze

The entire house. It was like 39 below zero.

Everything's frozen.

Even the harder winters back in alaska,

The family was really what we were taking care of,

And now we have so many lives that depend on us

That that just adds a whole lot more depth.

All the animals that we have on the mountain,

They can all handle cold and heat.

That's why we got all of them.

But with the wind shear, it's too cold.

We picked up some more horse blankets.

They need some kind of wind break.

You need to do the same thing with the ostriches.

Just any way we can to winterize and get ready.

The wind on the top of the mountain,

On top of being cold,

Could freeze an animal to death in nothing flat.

It'd be great if we could build shelters for all the animals,

But we don't have a lot of material.

If we don't get these structures for all the animals,

It's gonna be hard for everything to survive

On the mountain.

I do not want to lose stuff,

I don't want to lose the water pipes,

I don't want to lose windows, I don't want lose chickens,

I don't want to lose the horses and all that.

With the cold front coming,

I can't imagine how cold the animals are gonna get.

All animals mean a lot to me,

But milky way holds a special place in my heart.

Want some milk? You want to stand? Oh, good.

Okay, hold on.

When she was born, she had a lot of trouble

And her mom wouldn't let her suckle.

So I had to actually, like, bottle-feed her.

Go on, little baby. Go to your mama.

Until her mom, you know,

Finally took her back in. And so,

I want to make sure milky way is safe when the storm hits.

We don't have any stocked-up lumber at all, but, you know,

That lance, he's supposed to have a place up there.

Y'all can pull down some boards.

One of you guys have to take them.

Let's see if we can get it.

Lance, who lives on our neighboring mountain,

Has this little abandoned cabin.

He's saying that we can just take it apart

Because he's gonna get rid of it anyway.

That's gonna be a good find

Because I think it'll give us lumber