Garden Harvest & Winter Prep Before the Ground Freezes | Autumn In Alaska

[Music] [Music] myself [Music] what about that little guy keep him right yeah of course wow there is a lot of tomatoes out here what the heck well we are in the garden the high tunnel specifically and things are just crazy right now we have a week coming up of below freezing weather we've already had one frost but we're gonna have a lot more so i need to get some things done we're at the a real crunch time i've been working on pulling our green tomatoes or unripe tomatoes some of them are ripening i've been pulling them off of the plants and i still have a lot more to do and we definitely need to get that done by tonight or we risk damaging some of these and this is just one of the things we need to get done today we have a lot more to do we have a lot more to do over the next few days to make sure we get stuff done in time so i'm going to start with pulling off these tomatoes you don't know where they're at though i can help you find them [Applause] did you know that there's actually you probably believe me more than one way to make tomatoes to bake them to pick up hey look at these bad boys baby bad boys yeah unbelievable for alaska hey we're going to add on tops we have a lot of salsa a lot of tomato sauce things are going great in here really impressed with the how well ariel did with these tomatoes this year i'm working on one of the last ones this is the cherry tomato one i saved some good ones for eating tonight but i mean we got some good tomatoes i mean look at that one so we're gonna eat some fresh ones there's more too that's all we're going to be doing today i think we ended up with over 30 gallons of tomatoes and i actually have quite a bit in our freezer already as they ripen i'll move them over to the freezer it's not really very glamorous i've probably mentioned this before i would ideally have these ripening on the vine and i'd be bringing them inside and eating them enjoying them that's just not how growing tomatoes is in alaska you have to bring them inside to ripen and so that's exactly what we're going to be doing overall i'm super stoked with the tomatoes we got and the varieties i'm really happy with with the varieties we grew i just think this is like my best tomato year even though they're all green this is definitely our best year we're gonna get these inside and keep chugging along i don't know i'm gonna lift this oh yeah that's not that heavy that's maybe like 80 pounds what do you think you like this squat that's probably like 80 pounds uh we're getting a few things built for the bees last year we overwintered two hives this year we're doing better we have three so we gotta do everything that we've done for the two we gotta build for this third one so this is gonna hold their candy board i gotta build a little shim for the bottom and i gotta get all the insulation and a fewer things ready but almost done with this one i put these all on and then i realized i had to put the mesh on first so i had to pull them all off yeah it's pretty lame took a long time isn't that like classic me and you that's like me no it's just here we i'm so stupid i think we're just doing so much all the time it's hard when you think you're like thinking in advance because you're doing stuff like next year [Applause] pretty nice it's only five cloves excuse me what are you doing we're finally all ready to plant our garlic we just harvested the garlic from last year that we planted and now it's already time to plant some new garlic this year i kind of switched things up i bought a lot more garlic i'm actually growing over double what we grew last year because it just wasn't enough for me i ordered lots of varieties that have less cloves but they're bigger these are all hardneck garlics this was actually the row that we had our onions growing in and so we just prepped it we took out the onions we got rid of some of the chickweed and we added some of our own compost that we have we've had it for about six months to a year so it's still it's still breaking down a little bit and there is some horse manure in that as well we're gonna get all of the garlic planted and then throw some mulch and fertilizer on top of it no i just okay i'm gonna cut it huge yeah huge crayola i mean who would not want a big clove if you only liked a little bit of garlic you don't like as much flavor garlic but if you're like oh it's like a lot of flavor then these cloves are awesome and we're just making sure to keep as much of the skin on as we can so we hope not to lose too many wow we are moving right along here i think we're gonna have like 10 feet more of a row than we did this year or i guess last year so a lot of garlic probably doing these like i'm not going too deep i'm doing like maybe two inches but we are going to come over this with some uh some compost and some chicken litter so probably end up having these about five inches in the ground and ariel she never forgets to remind me but you want them like that when you plant them can't plant them upside down or they won't grow here quick onion it fit like down to the garlic clove it fit in this whole area we have which is pretty amazing but we're doing some fish bone meal do a good amount on these a little bit of chicken so our property has a little bit of a bog on it probably about an acre they're not good for a lot of things like building but they are good for mushrooms and for some reason this bog has like an amazing amount of winter chanterelle mushrooms we're getting them tonight it's probably about eight o'clock maybe 7 30. we've got maybe an hour and a half until the sun goes down we want to harvest these mushrooms i'm not sure if the frost is going to kill them but i don't want to risk it so we're going to pick all these i've already picked a bunch about a week ago and we're going to finish them off uh two single ones look just like this oh there's one right there yeah they're all they're all over right there all right are you serious that was a good patch right there there's probably about 40 mushrooms it's gonna take all day all night it's easier if there's wasn't anything huh i know and i love these having these in the winter it's so nice getting there well we're doing pretty good out here so far i think we've got about two gallons worth which is very good but we're gonna dry them down they usually shrink down quite a bit we're gonna try to get a few more but we are losing light and i'm hungry for dinner i found a few like that this area has but there's over there do you see kind of through the floor oh my gosh there's a ton it's weird they grow like that see these are the areas that you really you know these ones when you dry them i just we have one batch left from last year right okay yeah and then we have two more one and a half from this here so far and i was gonna say i just checked the ones that we just dried and they smell so good they smell like want that rattler to get me so you find any mushrooms yeah okay what when i get them off the inner cover do you want to get the stuff stapled on there's no hurry i don't do it right a second totally and completely ready is that the next step let's just make sure it doesn't slush anymore i thought we did it right no it doesn't you're right um yeah that's perfect and then i can just throw this on it's a tight budget you won't do this real tight here i could not imagine lifting these i don't even know how people do that like headbutt uh look at all that babe yeah i must it must have been connected i would think with that first time it's definitely possible because it's such a big hike it's highly possible not to see them so we just finished preparing the hives for winter and we pretty much did the same thing that we did last year we gave them extra food and we also gave them extra insulation two of these hives did make it through their first alaskan winter last year and so they'll be going into their second winter we added on a new hive this spring and i'm pretty optimistic that they they did really well so far so it's a pretty strong hive i think all in all we have three very strong hives we leave them a lot of their own honey so they can overwinter with such a harsh cold climate in the winter for these bees they really just like hunker down in their hives and they're in there for about six months before we can check on them in the spring the main issue that causes failure with them is moisture and starvation so with giving them all that extra food and insulating them and we also have an open screen bottom board and some shims on the top with a quilt box and all of that kind of allows extra you know airflow and some ventilation to get rid of the moisture inside the hive we've got quite a bit more to do today so i'm going to get cleaned up and we're gonna head to the garden little little fruit salad before we get it started out here in the garden we're gonna knock down the celery or harvest it and a few other little things the frost was like a chance last night it didn't come it didn't go below freezing but tonight it's supposed to be like well below freezing so we're gonna get a few things harvested out here oh those are good here okay so you want to pull the celery act then right or am i leaving it in i mean pull it my pulmonary cell right can i see what it looked like how big did it get all right like golf ball no no you cut it you cut it really into base usually but you know what that's good though hon we really don't have that much room to store this stuff doesn't frozen with some onions sound really good and we can just throw them in dishes i think that sounds delicious silly yes yeah it's always good yeah the celery racks are really weird i probably wouldn't grow this again that's really really good celery on your life yeah it's a nice one that's utah this is uh tango there's a nice one here beautiful is that enough for dinner the size of that turnip we love this purple one it's a big one because this is not going to tolerate the frost at all very well yeah yeah it did start later trick it's gonna take me a few hours tonight so i'm just sorting through our greens and harvesting a lot of them and they can go a lot longer they can definitely tolerate quite a few for us but we just shut down pretty early you know eventually we're gonna get to where everything's gonna be completely frozen there'll be snow and so it's just not realistic for us to leave a lot of these greens out here so i'm just going through and harvesting as much as i can again and i can give the rest to the chickens and maybe some of it i'll just leave out here and let it kind of compost too all in all it was a really good year for greens [Music] well we've got our work cut out for us excellent harvest from the garden today a lot of hard work these past couple days getting ready for this cold weather but we're gonna head inside we're gonna make dinner we're gonna light a fire and i'm gonna welcome in this cold weather uh so well we finally finished processing all of our vegetables and i just wanted to show you how awesome our house looks right now we have our garlic and onions in here because it is going to freeze tonight we have our mushrooms drying and the tomatoes underneath them ripening and some ferments i have going on back here so the whole tiny house thing it is small um i know we don't show you our house a lot and this is why because this happens this happens a lot this is actually very normal for us it just is not realistic to have this stuff outside since we have no climate control outside but in honor of all this awesome produce we made a wonderful dinner well it's pretty much like appetizers we're eating for dinner it's a lot of bread this one right here it's sourdough bread that ariel just made but this one has just some sauteed chanterelle mushrooms with salt and pepper and a little bit of garlic [Music] and then this one i'm looking forward to this one this one has keeper cheese and it has the uh onion jam on it that one's gonna be good this one's like bruschetta but we didn't have all the ingredients so we did tomatoes olive oil salt and pepper we rubbed the bread with some garlic and we got some chives on there come on in let's eat okay which one are you most excited about i'm looking at that one this brew shot is really good though i did try it already what does that onion jam taste like i got a leaf of sage to me it tastes as i know we didn't add wine but there's something earthy about wine in there or oniony like caramelized onions like french onion soup it's really good and i mix this kefir cheese with olive oil salt pepper and some vinegar that could be why it tastes like that [Music] now these mushrooms are awesome fresh but they don't last forever obviously so we dry them and this is what they look like dried really good too yeah it's kind of weird they actually have more flavor i think when you dry them rehydrate them use them again so we already harvested those was that from this season uh yes so that's from this season and we got another half jar from the season plus all the stuff on the screen and then we have morel's leftover from last year it smells really good really mild like maybe mild cheese i don't even know they don't have much of a flavor like that nutty almost they're good they're really good dried they definitely taste more they're more strong that's good that's really good i'm gonna you know i'm gonna do it right there i just made a sandwich oh my gosh it was a really good idea i'm gonna dip my number shut up can i try the capers these are some of our pickled nasturtium seeds we've never tried this like capers that's what they're supposed to be yeah i eat these out in the garden a lot they kind of taste like a nasturtium which is extremely spicy but these are like even spicier so peppery pepper yeah almost like wasabi you know sure i don't really like them oh man i personally wouldn't compare them to capers but i mean no i could see how some people would be interested in that to me it's just a little spicy okay that one i just ate maybe on top of soup there was something wrong with that one oh it was like a maybe it was already like okay that went too far as a seed it was already like dry that one second one was really good whoa we tried to get ones that were real swollen it's get some spice to them okay are you done with those or you want more i don't want any more of this but those are pretty good onto the bruschetta yeah we've always loved bruschetta so we haven't had in a long time well this one is delicious too those tomatoes are they are fairly good for being ripened in alaska yeah i love on bruschetta the garlic on the toast when you scrape it on there you get that strong garlic flavor of course who doesn't love that which one's your favorite the bruschetta i like the trio i really like all of them i like all of them as honestly my own styles are all of them i was gonna point towards that one but i think i like them all cool they're awesome right well it has been a great garden year another learning year for sure and we're excited for winter yep cheers to another winter so good i that's what i was going to say that one but i actually like all of them the mushroom one it needs like more i didn't cook enough mushrooms or something there's just a little too much bread i need something else i like some cheese or something this is not how i would actually eat it mushrooms on bread but i do like the flavor of the mushrooms and that's why i think all three of them win all right so i mixed all three and it's better than any individual one right here do you want one too

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 317,131

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, homestead alaska, tiny house alaska, off grid cabin, off grid in alaska, cabin in alaska, homestead off grid, life in alaska, garden alaska, high tunnel garden, greenhouse alaska, gardening alaska, gardening cold climate, greenhouse tomatoes, solar fence garden, greenhouse garden, growing food, grow food for a year, garden vegetables, homestead living, overwintering bees, wild mushrooms, planting garlic, tomato harvest

Id: VPGNlRoodoc

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021