There we go.
The sound of, skinning a deer is always,
kind of music to your ears.
You know that there's gonna be some back strap in the
pan in, like, 10 days.
Some tenderloins, heart and liver tonight for sure.
With winter setting in it's time to make sure you got your
meat put up so you can hunker down when the,
hits the fan.
I went out just on a kind of a, a lark this morning.
Thought I'd toss up the tree stand.
I wasn't in that thing 15 minutes and
I whistled this guy up.
It was what you call house luck.
And I am pleased as punch, rare to see deer this big on
the beach this time of the year, usually they're still
halfway up the mountain working their way down.
This is an excellent start for me.
This old boy is just about done here.
I could let him hang as long as earthly possible and
hopefully I can go out and snag, at least one more
at the very least.
Winter is coming.
I like to make sure I'm properly prepared.
I'm going to a place that I know the, the Doe's
kind of hang out.
And at this time of the year if you can find a spot where a
Doe travels reliably boy deer should come by at some point.
It's all basically how much Patience do you have.
Matt's hunting hasn't proved fruitful yet this year,
so I'm gonna try to hook up with him and drag him around to
some of my old spots and see if we can't squirrel us up
one more deer for winter.
Look at that.
I see a couple of almost yearling fawns swimming for
the island which means I need to pay attention over here,
maybe mom's over year with a big red orange buck.
Gotta keep your eyes peeled. It's that time of the year.
When these deer go into the rut cycle,
which is basically mating season.
Buck's get a whole lot stupider.
If you find the does there should be a buck somewhere around.
Two deer.
It's a little spike buck and he's small enough that I don't
see any horns sticking out.
Come on.
If he had antlers sticking up, you know, four or five inches
I'd try to get out on the beach and bust his ass but if
they don't have horns sticking up I don't shoot them.
Seen four deer, barely out,
within a quarter mile of my house.
None of them eligible.
As soon as I can hook up with Matt we'll go out and,
and do this in earnest.
Definitely feel the chill in the air,
that winter is right around the corner.
It's go time.
Everybody is super busy filling their freezer and
getting all their firewood up.
This is the last chance you get to do it.
Ooh-wee. All right. There she goes.
Bullseye.
That was perfect curly. Good job, man.
Thank you.
When you're good, you're good.
Let there be light.
I work a lot with curly on the barter system and I have some
batteries that he needs for his solar panels, and I got
some big trees that are threatening my property here
that need to come down so it works out really good.
Let's get rid of this one and I don't know, see how you feel
maybe we'll get rid of that spruce too.
Right, right.
Because I'm, I'm liking all this sunlight,
drying this side of the house up.
Yeah.
'Cause it's.
It's already got sunlight that it hasn't seen in years.
Yeah. Yeah, go for it, man.
Cool.
Big windstorms, we get them all the time,
especially this time of year and they can literally just
smash and take my whole house out.
I really just want to sleep at night and not have to
worry about at tree crashing on my house.
Timber.
I can get a suntan standing here now.
You can too, that's amazing how much light it let in.
That is beautiful, thank you man.
You bet.
Now, with the big tree there, you got a bit of a lean toward
your cabin it's pretty dangerous, I mean this thing,
it could go at any time and you wouldn't have a cabin left.
Well, let's do it before it gets any bigger and any scarier.
Hopefully, we can get her out where it belongs.
I've lived in port protection going on
33 years now.
Seen a lot change, a lot of people passed away.
But I have to be optimistic about the future.
This is home.
And I'm not leaving.
- Let's try and flip it. - Okay.
- There goes the firewood. - That's okay.
All right, I'll have you kind of direct the front end.
You can grab the lid.
Yeah.
It's a little sharp so be careful of your fingers.
Go dog.
I can't feel my fingers in this cold.
Okay.
We just moved into the new house.
There's a lot of things that we need to get done
before winter comes.
The biggest thing is a water system to catch all the rain
off our roof, so we're gonna be able to have
running water in the house.
This is our 1,000-gallon water tank, this is for our
catchment system and we're gonna have to get it up our
hill here and get it placed.
The hill's got a steep incline so it's not gonna be
easy getting it up there.
- Okay. - All right.
- Are we ready? - Yep.
Here we go.
Right now, we're packing water from the dock in town,
driving all the way back home and then packing them
up the hill, it's a pain.
This tank is gonna be a huge thing for us to be able to
actually conserve water and collect water for the coming winter.
This is a huge improvement for our life.
Hold on.
Smashed the living hell out of my finger.
The weather is really serious out here,
especially in the wintertime.
It can be deadly and just dangerous at any point.
You have to be a unique soul to be comfortable out here.
On Monday, southeast wind, 40 knots.
Rain, Gale warning, south Gale to 35.
Gale, that's all I hear on the weather.
Yeah, I'm not sure if we're gonna be able to make it
down there but sometimes when it's blowing south we can
sometimes sneak our way around the corner, you know.
We're trying to peak out here on the straits and
see if it's worth going down to the bay to throw out
some crab pots.
See what kind of sea food we can drum up.
It's a little roll-y right here, that's a fact.
Seas 11 feet.
I'm trying to get my nose up here and see what it's doing,
see if it's calmer up here around the corner.
But I'm not sure if it is.
Ooh. That was a big one.
Notice, it's getting choppier out.
Seas 11 feet.
Hopefully, we can just snake on through this little
tide rip here, maybe it'll be nice on the other side.
Come on, baby, get 'em down.
Me, you guys.
Oi. Oliver!
Do this right now, damn it!
I'm not kidding around, this sucks!
. Damnit.
This is not cool, dude.
You're getting us in bad weather, Oliver.
Damn it! This is scary, dude.
I know, babe. It really is.
Me.
I don't like this!
Hang on, just hang on.
I need a.
I need to get the stavies out.
Breanna can you get the stavies down?
I don't know how to get the stavies down dude.
Damn it.
I think I'm gonna drop the Poles.
I need you to steer for just a second, okay?
Fixing here to drop the Poles.
It takes a little bit of the weight that's way up there and
kind of puts it out,
it'll balance us out a little bit better.
I'm hoping we might be able to just snake through
this tide rip here and get on down the line.
Okay, we got it.
Okay, thank god.
Me, man.
Things got shook upside down for a minute.
Yeah, sometimes that happens man.
It's kind of like taking the junk drawer and turning
it upside down.
No crab is worth that.
No, no matter how much fun I'm gonna have down
there crabbing, I'm not gonna have that much, you know,
sketchiness getting there.
- No. - Let's go home.
That sounds good to me.
I'm gonna go check on our house because if it's blowing like
this out here, it's gonna be in there too.
Yeah, we've definitely gotta make sure it's secure.
I haven't actually shot a deer in about a year now.
It's, it, it really sucks.
And I just ate the last of my jarred venison so I will see,
we'll see what happens.
For years and years I lived on a float house right back over
there and me and my brothers we'd row around in our little
boats and go visit our neighbors, we'd go visit litzi.
A lot of really, really good times back here.
I really wish she was still here.
The way she passed was one of the most graceful things
I've ever witnessed in the entire world and litzi was one
of the strongest most vibrant people a person could ever hope to meet.
She was one of the most beautiful tough women that I've
ever had the privilege to know.
She didn't take any from anybody.
Shut the hell up I'm gonna help you carry...
Okay, if you want.
- A plank in here. - If you want.
I didn't know she was, that sick as she was and there
was a lot of future left I thought, you know,
I thought I had a lot more time.
Yeah, I thought,
I thought she was gonna be here longer,
I think we all thought she was gonna be here longer.
We all hoped.
I thought she was gonna get to be...
Still part of my life
and my daughter's life and...
You know selfishly, I, I, I really wish she was still here.
No, this is not that easy to pull on up here.
I'll just push a little further until we
can get it turned.
Once we're through this little narrow spot here,
it should be easy.
Nothing's ever easy though.
The water catchment is gonna save a lot of labor.
Every time we gotta do dishes, you know,
you gotta go back to the store and get more.
It's a pain in the ass I want water at my house.
I just don't want to pack a ton of water up this hill anymore.
One more I think we can turn it.
Yeah. Okay.
It's so much easier.
Almost.
We're stuck through this.
- That tree. - Wait, come on.
This is not an easy place to live.
I've seen a lot of people come and go over the years
but Morgan's adapted to living in port protection really fast.
God, is that a stump?
- Yup. - Okay.
Steam roll it out of the way.
All I can say is Morgan's tough as hell.
She's willing to do this with me and that's,
that's something.
It's starting to get slippery.
Yeah, it is. We're up here now though.
- Yeah. - Okay.
That actually might have been the easy part.
We gotta get it through the thicket of the yard here.
Did you want to start digging before we get up there,
clear a spot before we get ahead of ourselves and
put the tank there?
Probably a good idea.
Yeah, 'cause it's just gonna take up a lot of room.
Right. Dig a hole for it.
We got a little bit of brush to beat here.
We used to camp on this little thing all the time
when I was young.
I wasn't looking for deer then though.
One of my favorite spots.
Dig a hole in the jungle they said.
It'll be fun.
I'm gonna get sweaty and grumpy here.
These storms are coming.
They're gonna get worse.
All winter long.
Be a good time to go through the basics and just kind of
work on the house a little bit and try to tie this place up.
Make sure everything's secure.
Yeah.
I definitely don't want to end up like
our neighbor over there.
That rolled his house over.
Yeah, what neighbor?
Crap, this thing's a monster, man.
This would be one that's gotta be perfect.
My plan is to try to make it pull over onto
this high spot.
Okay. I like.
That's why I put all them trees there and
it act as a cushion and that.
So, I don't.
Because of the water lines, try not to hit.
- Is that. - Are we there?
That's pretty level.
Let's see if that tank fits in here.
I'm gonna check the game cam.
That's a nice big buck.
Yeah, that's a least a two by.
That's a big buck marching around over here.
Okay, let's go over a develop a strategy.
Hopefully if all goes as planned it's gonna go right
between that and we gotta fire hydrant over there
that we gotta.
- Think about. - Try not to hit.
Well, I trust ya.
I wouldn't let anybody else do it, I trust ya, curly.
I know you know what the hell you're doing so.
- Well... - It's...
Every tree's different, you never know.
Yeah.
Curly has been a logger for many, many years
and that guy can literally lay a tree down like
putting a hot dog in a bun, I mean,
he'll tell you exactly where that tree is gonna land.
Woo, wee!
He's getting ready to go.
Ho, ho, ho, ho!
If this tree was to fall on this cabin and take it out,
I would lose my livelihood so it would just literally
financially destroy me.
It's going, it's going! Holy!
Whoa!
My god, you're okay and everything right?
Whoa!
- That was scary, curly. - All right, well.
Man.
My adrenaline's still really going.
Woo!
After all these years, it's still there, man.
This water box got crushed but,
I can rebuild that.
Your cabin's still standing.
Yeah.
Boy, I'm glad that's the hell out of the way and
everything's safe.
Ain't nothing I can't fix.
Well this is some premium looking firewood,
let me tell you.
I'll be all set for next year man.
Yeah, well I guess we can cut some rounds off of this.
Hoo, are you up to that after all this?
- Yeah. - Damn.
- Yup. - God, thank you, curly.
This thing was a monster man. Monster down!
What we need to do is basically we just kind of
need to go about securing the whole float.
You can see how like look at our power cord,
see how it's kind of moving around?
Yeah.
You know, that's, that's me pushing just
a little bit.
What's going on here is our front float moves with
our side float.
And so what I want to do is kind of try to fasten that with
a chain or some sort of something to make this not
happen quite so bad 'cause you can see it separating.
Other thing we can do is run around and check all
of our lines.
From the float to the beach.
That'll really help us be more secure.
I mean, lots of stuff to do kind of before winter hits and
it's all good stuff to do right now.
Yeah, before we're in the middle of a storm and
it happens when we're sleeping.
Yeah, exactly I want to be able to sleep sound at night.
This weather is definitely just reminding us
that winter's approaching and we're gonna have to deal with
worse and worse storms.
Okay. Hand me that staple right there.
It's like twister.
Like twister, yeah.
Our neighbor lost his house just a year ago and so
that's definitely something that I don't want
to happen to us.
There we go.
This new chain's definitely gonna help
the two floats.
We didn't have anything holding the two floats together
so this is going to help immensely like I
can't wait to see when it actually gets hit now
what it's gonna do, I think it's gonna really hold.
Cool.
Well, now we got this done here,
I think we should, do the same thing again on the other side.
Okay.
Burn your beard yet?
Singe my beard? Maybe a little bit.
Is that what I'm smelling?
Man, that feels actually pretty solid, that's good.
That's good news,
being as it's the foundation of our house.
Okay.
This is our first house together and so it's really
important for us to take care of it and make sure that we can
maintain it because it's everything to us and we want to
make sure that we stay here.
You can hear how a sound that log is.
- Yeah. - Hot damn!
That's solid.
Good, I like, I like, I'm liking that.
I like that too.
I'm digging the out of that.
Cool.
Well sweet, yeah I can tell we're blowing around,
we are not moving anymore.
I can tell a difference.
We are definitely connected.
Cool. That's what we're going for.
Way more secure.
Yeah, now if we can just run down and
check all the lines.
Definitely have our work cut out for us.
At the next water bar, we'll stop and I'm gonna send
you out just to where you can see 'cause there's an
opening out there.
And I'll blow the deer call.
I think this is it. It's nice little, little pocket.
Things hang out here for sure.
I've shot a lot of deer in places just like this.
Let's go find a comfortable place to sit and tweedle.
Hey, go for that end of the log over there.
It's going to make my deer call.
I haven't blown one for a year,
but let's see if I can still do it right.
We definitely have some living here.
That's about as fresh as it gets.
Not warm, but close to it.
But, you know, as life goes on, Matt,
he's got his life and he's busy most of the time.
So, this is kind of a special time we can actually
take a few days and go out and do some things together.
There's always something good about that.
I don't get to see him near as much as I should.
Half the time when you blow a deer call you won't see anything,
either you didn't wait long enough or they're
just not coming in but there's a high proportion of the time
you gotta be really careful when you start moving again
because you might have a couple that might
still be 50 yards,
100 yards away from you and coming to the call so,
gotta be extra careful, Matt.
Just be very watchful.
So, what's next, boss?
Let's get the tank. This is not the fun part.
No. No, it's not.
We managed to get the tank up to the top of the hill
and now we have to get it to its final resting spot which is
definitely the hardest part.
How do you want to do this?
Turn it and do it that way?
Yeah.
It's gonna be hard. This part's gonna suck but.
Okay, yup.
I'm a little nervous just because it's a lot bigger than
both Carl and I.
Nothing's easy.
And we have a stretch of terrain that's just
full of roots and stumps and everything.
It's a little intimidating.
I don't know if we can roll it over that pile of rounds, we could try though.
You want to try?
- Yeah, let's do it. - Get underneath it.
Then we can endo it this way, just go over the
yeah.
Yeah. Okay, where are we?
So, can you get up there and just shove it?
Maybe.
We don't have a hospital nearby so it's
definitely a big worry out here to make sure that we
are being safe about the things we're doing.
- Woop. - So just shove it up?
- Yeah, let's try it. - Like push it.
Well, I don't know how much shoving we'll actually be able to do,
it's just awkward.
God!
Nope, wrong way.
Well, that didn't work.
Okay, hold that side so it doesn't come down.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. Let's try that again.
- Woo! - Boy!
Looks pretty good, don't it?
Okay. Wow. We have a water tank right here.
Small miracles.
So, we can start building the box.
Our little insulated box?
Yeah, for the outflow.
Yup.
Well Matt, I think we're gonna have to go into phase two.
If you got in a good spot I could through
the on, and, like,
push back real far and see if I can flush anything out.
Yeah.
I'll see ya, maybe meet you at the road in, like, an hour.
Okay.
So, the idea is my dad's gonna go to one location,
sit in the tree stand and I'm gonna get moving.
I'm hoping I can push the deer out of the mountains
towards my dad.
Gonna, sneak through these woods,
that's where my tree stand's at.
Cut some rounds off of this.
Very fancy chainsaw carving.
Yeah.
I've done a lot of, you know, random odd job stuff
especially growing up with my dad, you know,
he's kind of a handyman.
Put in some water tanks with him too so I have a,
a pretty good working idea of what I want to do.
So, the last piece is putting a lid on this.
Which I was gonna use the scraps I got left.
Sit in the tree stand.
This is the perfect elevation,
and not that high off the ground.
If he spooks something, I have a really good view from,
from where I'm sitting.
Paid off in the past.
I'm gonna do everything I can to get a deer right now.
Being out here, it takes, number of different skillsets
and the ability to adapt.
You can't just sit around twiddling your thumbs and
expect to have meat in the freezer,
it's a lot of work.
Got a couple of ducks went into the water right next
to me down there.
Real pretty ones.
Holy, is that some firewood?
Good lord, man.
It'll burn, burn, burn.
Yeah, I can't hear anything now.
Living at the float house,
we never really did get to do what we wanted to do because
it's a temporary home.
And moving into home here is an amazing feeling.
We have a blank canvas and we can implement all these
things that we've had in our heads and start building things.
Holding on there real good.
Look at that, perfect.
Nice.
Hell yeah. All right. Let's get it.
Yup.
I just kind of really want to secure everything down
as best as we can.
Check all the lines out.
Pretty much, go through them all.
Yeah, I mean, it's something that you have to do
every couple years and it's been a couple years since
we've done it, so.
Yeah.
There's four lines coming off the float house that
attaches us to different rocks in areas
and spider-webbing us in.
Part of general maintenance of
owning a float house is going along and checking
those lines and making sure they are all in good repair.
Especially with the winter coming in and these hard winds.
Just going to walk down this line now,
see what I can find.
Whoa.
That's some old rope.
That line is actually still good.
Where does this go?
Over here.
Just end.
I mean, this sucks but I am glad that we found
the problem right now.
Yeah.
Because this is definitely not something you
don't want deal with when it's blowing 50 out.
No.
So we can definitely add some length to this and
secure it over to that line.
Because I am worried about getting blown away.
So, what we'll do, I have to gather a lil bit of extension
line and we'll just have to run it down over there.
It's another thing on the list to do,
but has to be done before winter.
Yeah.
I think I can, put this water box back together.
I think maybe we should go ahead and clear
all this brush off it here and assess the damage and
make sure that nothing's broke.
We can rebuild. I'm gonna put these guys.
- Loosen up. - Curly.
What a do-do head.
The purpose of this box that I clipped is to support
the fire hydrant, also holds up the little box that houses
all the, the fire tools.
Around here we are kind of basically the fire department.
If there's a fire, we have to use all this equipment here.
I'm thinking if we put this,
nail this side board back in and then put the top back on
and build this way maybe.
We'll see what we can do here, but.
Can I send this over to you?
Yup. Garr.
"Garr". Are we talking like pirates now?
Curly is probably my best friend around here.
He's always there anytime I call,
he's a really good man and a perfect gentleman.
Tilt this back.
That looks like a job for curly man.
Da, da, da, da, da, da.
There. There you go.
Well, that's that.
Okay, now for the.
The fun part. Get a hold of it.
Yeah. My god.
Get my fingers out of there.
Mary's a pretty good friend, you know,
I've known her ever since she's been here and one of
the main reasons why I, I live here, you know,
is because people help each other out,
that's a lost thing in the lower 48 these days.
People don't do things on a handshake or anything like that.
So how you feeling,
you still got a little more gas in ya, in your saw?
I probably do.
I got one more tree if you're up to it.
- Let's check it out. - Do it to it?
Yup.
I think I've been kill-poked by the wind.
We've got a wind that's coming right out of the fricken northeast.
I can tell when it's getting slightly hypothermic;
my body wants to move, getting some blood circulating.
I might take a little walk here,
get out of this damn tree before I freeze to death.
When it's 36 degrees,
just above freezing you gotta keep moving.
Frozen fingers.
It kind of puts a hitch in your giddy up.
Probably get to scooting before the water comes in
over that dally bar.
I dilly dallied too long there.
If we can make it.
We're getting our feet wet, I think.
Not the time of the year to be getting your feet wet.
I think it's shallower over here,
step on this rock.
Come on!
Been known to not be the sharpest pencil in the stack.
I managed to get my feet wet,
just barely but I won't be doing a whole lot of
sitting around that's for sure.
With wet feet, you gotta keep moving.
Trying to hang the gutter now in a very awkward spot.
My dog is not happy about me doing this.
The guy that feeds me is doing something stupid,
somebody stop him.
Now that the tank's in the ground,
it's time to start hanging gutter and then run some pipe
to the tank and hopefully start collecting water here.
I think the safest thing to do is to tie the ladder off
so I don't fall.
It's definitely nice having Morgan around,
she's a good helper.
She's strong.
But currently Morgan's working at the store so it's just me.
There we go. That feels way safer.
Does it seem safe on that stump?
I don't know.
Hey, I don't want to go up here anymore than you
want me to, dude.
Trust me.
We'll try it. I guess.
Smart guy doing smart guy things.
Super-duper safe.
It's always raining,
really not when you want to put gutter up.
And it's blowing too so it's not really good conditions to
do it but I'm gonna do it anyway.
That just doesn't feel safe at all.
Right about there, that should give me my grade.
The basic principle for the water catchment system,
when it rains, water's coming off the roof,
it goes into the gutter, that goes into our water line
that runs across the yard.
I think that's it.
Yeah, I guess the next step is trying to clip some gutter in here.
That goes to the top of the tank and then the water we're
gonna use that comes out the bottom.
It looks good, I think. In my, my professional opinion.
I guess now it's just hooking up hose.
My goal has always been to find the right partner,
somebody that wants to do this life, live this way and,
you know, I finally found that in Morgan.
It definitely drives me to want to make these improvements,
make life better for her and for myself.
She's a big part of my world.
Look at that.
It's all fairly well secured.
So, now... I gotta find a hose
long enough to get from here over to the water tank.
I might have to go beach combing.
Me and Matt agreed to rendezvous at the road
in an hour.
Seems like it's been an hour but sometimes 15 minutes
can turn into an hour.
So, there was an old float house back here,
quite a few years ago tipped over and exploded all of the
beach but the people that used to live here had a
water system up to a damn on this creek and I'm not positive,
but I think there might still be some old pvc pipe
running up there.
We are going to go over here and take the
line from this old float house.
Yeah, this float house has finally settled down,
I mean, it's kind of where it's going to rest for the
rest of its life.
And so, we are going to go snag one of those lines that
was holding it up to the beach.
So, we don't end up like this float house too.
There is a line right there.
I see it.
This is an example of what could go wrong in a float home.
Okay.
That's a nice thing of line.
That's a dandy thing of line.
And here's the wayward son. Just coming in.
- Howdy, howdy. - Could you hear me at all?
- No. - Okay.
No, I was too far.
I kept looking that direction,
I knew which way you were,
I thought maybe something would squirt out
of that edge over there.
You gotta be able to make them step out.
And if they're too smart to step out,
then you're out of luck.
And this is what we're here for is this stuff and I
don't think this is the size I want though;
this looks like one inch.
But hopefully there's more up the creek.
What is this right here?
Is that pipe?
Looks like, it's about inch and a half,
I think that's inch and a half.
That'll work for our outflow off the bow.
Let's go look at that other one.
Woo!
This was one of my main offenders that I wanted
to get rid of.
Yeah, I see why.
'Cause it's dead.
Yup. Dead hemlocks are not good.
Pretty rotten on this front side.
And it's not really rooted either.
- No. - So that makes it danger.
I think that these buildings over here and the bow
going that way and I'm gonna try to put it right through
that slot there between these bigger trees.
Hopefully she'll lay right in there,
there's a lot of dead logs back there that'll kind of
cushion its fall and that.
Yeah, as long as I'm not messing with anybody's water.
These water lines, they run throughout the village and
that's our water system.
It's, fresh mountain spring water.
He needs to be super careful.
Make sure that it doesn't crush the waterline 'cause I could
take the whole community out of their fresh drinking water.
You don't think it'll hang up on any of these trees back here?
I hope not.
I'm gonna go ahead and fire her up and get started here.
Okay. Junior, you come back here with me.
You stay. Scary tree, scary tree.
Be careful, man.
Junior, I hate this part, I hate this part.
Still gives me an adrenaline rush felling these things.
Especially, a danger tree, that rush is always there.
There it goes, it's going, it's going, curly!
It's going! Curly, it's gonna go!
It's moving, it's already going!
Ooh!
- Hoo, hoo, hoo. - Sweet!
Man.
Curly, when you hammered that thing, that wedge in there,
it started tipping that way while you were standing there.
God, my legs are shaking.
That's the whole idea.
Supposed to do.
It went exactly where you said as usual.
Water pipe's safe?
- Yup. - Boy, that was exciting.
Yeah, yeah. I got a rush from it.
Man. Thank you, curly.
Thank you, curly.
Now that the danger trees are gone I don't have
to worry about them falling on me while I'm sleeping at night in a storm.
That one was scarier than the big giant tree by the
house to me for some reason.
Man. Thank you.
Let me show you these batteries I got.
Good deal.
Before I hook everything up and start letting water in,
I gotta put in a valve down at the bottom.
Let's see if that fits in here.
Okay.
There we go.
That should be good.
So that's gonna be my pipe going out.
Start filling this thing with sawdust.
Would you look at that. That is a dead toad.
I thought that they all went instinct.
Toads are vanishing,
industrial pollutants and stuff this,
that and the other.
When I was a kid, we would get the eggs out of
the ponds and, and let them hatch, you know,
and so we could see the tadpoles.
That's the first frog I've seen in 20 years, or toad.
Pretty slick little set up.
Slicker now than.
Definitely been a back saver for me.
There we go.
Hey, stay right where you're at, man.
Help an old lady out, mister boy scout.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Get you a little free juice, man.
Fill this up with sawdust.
The sawdust, the idea is you pack it in
around your valve inside this foam insulated box
and it'll actually compost,
and it'll create heat, just kind of keeps your valve from
freezing in the winter.
Yeah, anytime you need to get to the valve.
Just dig it out.
Open it and close it, Bury it back up, put the lid on.
It should stay insulated.
It should never freeze, hopefully.
Now I can go run pipe across the yard.
Then we get to test everything and see if it works.
Replace that line with that new line and I think we
will be kind of covered on all four corners again.
- Good. - Okay.
I'm gonna try to tow it over here,
to the beach the best we can.
Just get the...
Hang on, throw all that out, actually.
There we go. This will pull out.
That okay?
Yeah. It will pull out now.
This old anchor line isn't attached to anything.
So, we are hoping that if we just re-attach it with an extra line,
we can secure it to the land.
So, our house is secure and everything is good to
go before winter comes.
Hold it in gear until I can get out, okay?
Okay.
Go hook up to the float.
Okay.
I'm just gonna pull it my way, okay?
Our plan is, Breanna's is going to pull it tight one way,
I am going to try and pull it tight the other way and just
attach lines to the rock.
And I think that will give me enough security, you know,
to hold it down.
You can tie off to that cleat.
That one?
No, the one over, that, that,
where that green line's hooked up to, right there.
You can tie on top of that green line.
This is going to be interesting.
Good job.
- Forward! Forward! - What?
I just need you to pull it my way when you tow.
What way do you want me to pull this thing?
I need you to pull with your bow facing towards me and
your stern facing towards the cleat.
Just get flipped around 180 degrees.
Okay Breanna, that's good.
Start pulling up.
Slow, just slow.
Hey!
It's not gonna work, Oliver.
It is, if you just go slow.
Just barely above idle.
Not happy at all doing this.
I'm not impressed in the slightest.
I'm tired of doing this kind of dumb.
We do a lot of in a lot of stressful situations,
on a normal day, it's really easy to be, like,
"hey babe, you're doing real good" but when she can't hear
that and she's sitting there thinking she's doing wrong when
she's doing just fine, I can't communicate.
It really just kind of leaves a huge gap in things.
All right, well, here's what's going on, can you hear me?
Just give me like this when you're ready
for me to pull.
I get really, like, just adrenaline rush.
I just can't even think sometimes,
I have to sit there and just be, like,
"okay, what do I do next to fix this situation that we're in"
and nobody likes to be caught in that.
You can start pulling on it my way.
- Okay. - Cool, thank you.
What we're doing here is we're just pulling some slack in
towards me so that way, we'll get kind of sucked up nice and
deep off this beach, so we don't have to worry about
hitting bottom at low tide or anything.
Is it working?
Yeah it is, working really well.
She's pulling at that motor and it gives me a chance to kind of
not have any pressure on this line and I can just tie a
couple simple knots that'll hold this.
And when I set these down nice and tight,
this is what's holding my whole house.
Yeah, that's definitely tight.
All the slack is pulled out.
Okay, babe.
Did it work?
Yeah, it worked really good.
Thank you.
Yeah, man.
Well, I feel better now that we've got the line
more secure.
Yeah, man. Me too. I, I really do.
I mean I can tell that we're sucked in here a little bit
further and we're not moving around quite as much.
I'm gonna feel good going into the winter now.
Yeah, kind of right where we want to be.
Well, this looks about, like, a good a spot as any.
We just need to hook our ground wire
into the panels.
Pretty excited about getting into these solar panels,
the price of gas is ridiculous anymore.
It'd be nice to be able to get up in the mornings and flip the
light switch on and, have power and then not have to go
out and start the generator.
That would be pretty awesome.
That goes there.
- Bango. - And it goes there.
There is light! Woo-hoo! It's blinking.
It's working?
This is kind of a new thing to me, you know,
and I think I'm just gonna gradually build up my battery
bank and everything as I go, you know,
and hopefully within a year or two I'll be
set up pretty good.
Fire up the disco ball, curly.
Yeah.
I don't know if I'll go that far.
Now we got the valve on there,
I think this is the last thing is just connecting all this and
we'll run it to the tank.
- Yeah. - Clamp it all together.
Sounds good to me.
Nice.
I feel pretty well stuck together,
we're not gonna rip that apart pulling on it?
- I don't think so. - Walk it out.
Dog, move. Dog.
Hey. Cool your jets beast.
Go ahead and crank it down.
Okay.
Is that going anywhere?
Nope, doesn't feel like it.
Buying a piece of property and working on a
house has kind of been a dream of mine for a long time.
So, where's the, that's going into the.
That goes in the top.
I see and this is our outflow.
- Yup. - Nice. This is cool.
Morgan definitely motivates me to work on things.
She hates packing water jugs so water system,
kind of a no-brainer, yeah, keep the old lady happy.
Wow. Going nowhere. That's it?
Now we just gotta test it.
Say it looks good to me.
Imagine, we'll have a couple spots we need to work on,
but I just want to see it work.
- Yeah. - I'm excited.
Yeah.
All right, we'll see if it leaks anywhere.
- Just a little. - Over there.
Do you want to follow it back to the tank and see
if you can hear it going in there?
- Yeah. - Hell yeah.
A little drip I can fix that. Nothing but a thing.
It's coming through.
It's definitely, just a trickle of water right now but
it's definitely something, it's gonna take a long time
to fill it.
But we'll have to wait for a good rainstorm for that.
Get right up under there.
Yeah. God.
- That is so cool. - That works.
We moved in the new house,
it's only been a couple weeks now.
It's warm, it's dry, we're harnessing nature,
it's a good feeling, just roll with it, keep working,
keep making things better.
About good there.
Sweet, now we just gotta wait for it to rain.
Yeah.
Which hopefully it does eventually.
That's so exciting.
Yeah, we'll be in business for the winter.
- We've got water. - Yeah. Hell yeah we do.
I'll blow the call once and we will wait, like,
ten minutes or so.
Cool.
Probably call it a day if nothing steps out.
You can't compare, harvesting your own meat to
walking into a butcher shop and buying a steak.
For me, it's part of the lifestyle being able to get out
and do the work.
And by I mean do the work, sometimes it takes days to see
one of these guys.
I think today's hunt is over.
At this stage of the game,
it's getting a little bit late in the day.
So it's time we just kind of quietly mosey back.
We got a lot of ground to hunt our way through,
so we'll see what happens, maybe we'll win the lottery and
get one on the way home.
Lordy be. Look at that.
That's a moose, right? Yeah.
For something to snap a live tree off like that.
I've seen a few of those, you know, over in the
last 20 years.
Every so often, you'll, you'll, you'll come across a place,
that might have two or three of them, you know,
it was probably thrashing out on it for a while, and then,
decided to get tangled up in his horns.
- That's impressive. - Yeah.
Hey, wouldn't that be something if we did see a moose?
I'm not prepared for a moose.
Okay. Let's get home.
Stop!
I thought he had bigger horns.
He's just a little spike.
The kind we normally don't shoot.
I could have swore his horns were about that big though.
Just a two-year-old probably.
Damn.
I don't like to shoot young deer.
I wouldn't call it a moral code or anything but it's just not
in your best interest because if you wait a year,
come back he's gonna be 25, 30 pounds heavier.
You got him, that's what counts.
Yeah, well god, bless this deer's little soul for sharing
his life to me.
It's gonna provide some very tasty, very tasty food.
I'm not in this for the glory, I only hunt for food.
We just have to face that fact that we're like every other
living organism on the planet,
you have to consume something in order to survive and
now we actually have plenty of venison for winter.
Things are looking pretty good.
That's almost the best part of the deer.
I love deer heart.
I think it's about time we get the
hell out of here.
Put it on and wear it. Let's put it back right there.
I'm really happy. I'm, I'm extremely happy.
This is a subsistence hunt; We're not trying to put antlers
on the wall.
We're trying to put food in our stomachs and it's always fun
making something produce so it was definitely a good day.
Perfectomundo.
All right, now we got ourselves a nice little potluck
going on this afternoon and,
I thawed out some Halibut for my,
contribution to the festivities.
Making a beaver stew.
So, life is good.
Winter's about upon us and that, you know, it's,
nice to have a, a get together and that and,
kind of celebrate the fruits of our labor here.
I'm excited to go hang out with everybody and just kind of
catch up and see how everyone else's seasons been going.
Yeah.
We might not see each other all the time,
we're all kind of hermits but we're family out here.
These are ribs off of a nice big four by five buck.
This old boy gave his life to feed me so, I,
I tend to take as good a care of him as I can.
For some time, I was kind of beginning to wonder
about port protection.
Everybody was disappearing at an alarming rate and,
and now I'm starting to see growth.
People moving into the area, the younger generation and
I'm really thankful for that.
I really enjoy being able to pass on knowledge to each and
every one of them.
Gotta keep this place still going.
I'd say that those are ready to chow.
I'm gonna have to wrap these in some tin foil and
be on my merry little way.
There's a nice little batch of Halibut.
- Time for a totty? - I think so.
There's been a lot of change here in port protection
and with that I feel like a lot of growth.
We've lost a lot of old timers in the last few years.
We all feel the loss of them.
And so, the only thing that can, we can really do now is just
take what we've learned and continue their
legacy of living out here.
Always sad when you lose a major member of your community
but by god we're having a party and I know that he would
approve of these ribs.
Mister muehlberger would be happy as a cat covering
up the cat box.
The biggest change this year was the loss of Gary and litzi
but when you lose good friends of yours,
you just basically put your nose to the grindstone and
really appreciate the fact that you have good memories of them
and don't take anything for granted especially
your time here.
Happier days coming.
God bless his soul.
He's part of the universe.
Man. Butt nuggets, yeah.
Yeah, that's some surf and turf, I'll take it.
That looks so good.
Right? Heck yeah. Who brought the Halibut?
A few of them out there this summer man and.
Yeah, that's, that's tasty stuff, Dave.
I wish I would have brought my Halibut I shot aboard,
to be nibbling on right now.
That little diving trip there Troy at least you had one
on the spear for a little bit.
Yeah. It's progress.
I was really only gonna stay for about a year,
but I really just fell in love with it out here.
A lot of the people,
they've truly pulled together to,
to help me build my very first cabin out here.
I'm so appreciative and this is home now.
The highlight of my year is,
I almost got ran over by a deer.
But I, I squeezed the shot off before he got to me.
It was him or you, him or you.
And the, the low part of it was is,
his horns were only that long, I,
I generally don't shoot those little bucks.
It's better than the phantom deer I shot, so.
Those don't taste as good.
This place is definitely very much part of who I am.
This year it's been good for me to feel, like,
I have purpose in helping the community and the people
that I care about.
I'd like to throw a toast.
To family, to friends,
to our greatly lamented fallen, Gary, litzi,
we miss and remember.
Cheers.
May our winter be short, may our memories be long.
May we find the fortitude to pursue our futures and fortunes
here in the last frontier.
Hear, hear.
Cheers. Cheers.
- Salud! - Salud!
We got kicked in the teeth pretty hard this year but
even through the crucible of adversity we still seem to
manage to pull together as a community,
no matter what they throw at us, we will strive,
we will thrive.
We keep a few of these gatherings going through the
winter we're all gonna be fat and happy by spring.