Original subtitles

[dogs barking]

-[growling] -[dogs barking]

[man 1] Boys! Boys!

Boys! Boys!

-[Marty] Holy smokes. -Look at that thing.

I think we're gonna really have our work cut out for us.

This is the worst bear threat I've ever seen.

We've had bears make it over electric fences.

-[man] Hey, bear. -[dogs barking]

We've even had them under the house.

[Misty] This is pretty scary.

Bears have moved into this homestead.

[man 2 speaking]

-They were asleep in their tent and a bear attacked them. -Mm.

[Misty] There's nothing in the freezers. Zero food stores.

There's just nothing. It's empty. This is an impossible homestead.

[Marty] Here we go.

This homestead will actually resemble

a fort that bears cannot penetrate.

Drive it in!

There is a problem bear. This is his homestead.

Dude, are you serious? You've got bears in here right now.

-[bear growling] -[Marty] Bear!

[narrator] Marty Raney, master builder and stonemason.

[Marty] I don't see problems on homesteads, I see challenges.

[narrator] Daughter Misty, garden and food preservation expert.

[Misty] I believe you can grow food anywhere.

[narrator] And son Matt, skilled craftsman and predator protection.

[Matt] Wildlife is a constant threat.

But I draw the line between their home and your homestead.

[narrator] Together they use Alaskan know-how...

-Let's find some power! -Yeah!

[narrator] ...and ingenuity...

It's perfect. Ha-ha!

[narrator] ...to save the off-grid dreams of desperate homesteaders.

We work every second we can trying to help complete strangers.

That's who we are.

[Misty] You've got to love Alaska.

Fall moves very quickly this time of the year.

You have to be completely ready to survive the winter.

I love fishing here. Every time we fish here

and every time we come here, though, you see a lot of bears.

As winter gets closer and closer,

and the leaves fall, bears can get desperate.

[Misty] It happens really quick.

-Wah! -Oh, my God.

-Did it get you? -Yeah.

Let that be a lesson.

That's how it happens. Just like that.

[Misty] That was really scary.

[narrator] The Raneys are responding to a remote homestead

high above the Kenai River.

Located in Southcentral Alaska,

the region is a rugged and wild mecca for flyfishing

and a spawning ground for salmon.

The area also attracts a heavy concentration

of one of North America's largest predators,

the Alaskan brown bear.

Recently, the bears have been driven closer to the human population,

threatening homesteads and killing pets and livestock.

It's in this dangerous environment

that the Harpes struggle to hold onto their off-grid dream.

-I'm Jen. -I'm Mike.

-And we're the Harpes. -[Jen] And this is the Harpestead.

We purchased this property 17 years ago.

There wasn't really much to it.

We've just kind of whittled away at it.

We try to monopolize what we can of the acreage,

and we've been running it as a farm since about 2006.

[Mike] Things were really rocking around here.

We had, you know, up to 12-plus pigs on property.

Some of the best pork in the valley.

We had over 50 meat birds that we would process every year.

Our gardens were flourishing,

and it was just some really productive years for us.

But after the fire in '19,

things really dropped off around here.

The Swan Lake fire burned for five months.

It was doing unprecedented activity,

and we were just a valley and a ridge away.

-[siren wailing] -We had a lot of waiting to see where it would burn.

[narrator] Over 170,000 acres of pristine wilderness were destroyed,

which brought even more dangerous consequences.

Displaced wildlife was forced into the region around the homestead,

bringing with them Alaska's apex predator.

The bears, they kind of just funneled their way up here.

[man 1] Boys! Boys!

We've definitely had bears actually get into the coop,

to the point that they ended up killing

quite a few of the chickens in there.

[Ted] That bear got into Jen's beehives.

Our high tunnel got broken into.

We've even had them under the house.

[narrator] The increase in bear activity over the past three years

has threatened this once-thriving homestead.

But bolder aggression recently has paralyzed it.

This year, we had a bear show up in the early spring.

It didn't seem to have a lot of fear for the dogs

and didn't seem to respect

any sort of boundaries that we had in place.

[Mike] At this stage right now, to put any livestock on this homestead

would be detrimental to the animal.

[Jen] And having a child on this property, I am very fearful

that he opens the door at the wrong time

and comes into an encounter with a bear.

It's personally happened to me.

Homesteading here has always been a lot of work,

but unfortunately, with everything compounding over the last couple years,

it's getting to the point that if something doesn't change shortly,

I don't know that it's something that we'll continue pursuing.

[dogs barking]

-[Marty] Hello. -[Misty] Oh, my gosh. It's like a dog party.

-[Mary] Hello. -Well, hello there.

-Is it safe to get out? -It's safe to get out.

[Matt] Hello.

-[Misty] How's it going? Hi. -Jen.

Jen. And...

-Mike. -Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, Marty.

-Ted. -Ted. Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you. -How are you guys?

-[Jen] Good. -[Misty] How many dogs do you have?

[Jen] Uh, we have ten right now floating around.

I train dogs, and so I tend to accumulate a lot of them.

We also have our son who's nine. He's at school.

Okay. How do you fit into this program?

So I became friends with these guys a couple years ago. Live in a yurt up there.

I'm originally from St Louis, Missouri.

And the last three years, Jen and Mike were

teaching me how to homestead.

I do fear for my safety out here because of this aggressive bear.

It's super destructive, and I'm constantly on the lookout.

I have definitely noticed quite a bit more wildlife recently,

-especially some bears. -Why is there an increase of bears? Why?

A couple years ago, in 2019, there was the Swan Lake fire.

Massive forest fire over there in the refuge.

And that kind of destroyed a whole bunch of habitat

for those bears and other wildlife.

And ever since that fire, you'd notice an uptick in animals

migrating from over there to up here where it's still fresh and green.

Uh, we also have plenty of rivers around here

that have a lot of salmon.

Have you actually ever thought about how big,

how tall the brown bears are in Alaska? Look at this tape.

-That's so scary. -Oh, no. I'm not done. You ready?

Right... there. Ten foot.

That's how big the brown bears are in Alaska.

[narrator] The Alaskan brown bear grows up to ten feet tall

and can weigh 1,200lb.

With a bite force of over 1,100 PSI,

these apex predators could crush a bowling ball

or a human skull without flinching.

This time of year, before hibernation,

they're most aggressive, as food becomes its number-one priority,

making it a real and present danger to wilderness homesteads.

-How long have you lived here? -2006.

[Marty] Did you build the house too?

[Mike] Yeah. It was a family event.

-Jen and her dad designed it. -Nice. Is your dad still around?

He is not, unfortunately. He just passed away this spring.

-Oh, I'm sorry. -Yeah.

This spring, unfortunately, I lost my father, um,

which was a very, very hard thing for me. Definitely Daddy's girl.

He was kind of the person who made me who I am.

He always had faith in me.

He helped me do all of this.

The way that my father

was an influence and a parent in my life,

I hope that, in turn, I can pass that on to my child

so that, hopefully, he fondly looks back

and remembers me the same way I remember my father.

[narrator] But with nature reclaiming the Harpes' homestead,

cutting off their main sources of income,

Jen has been forced to find another way to make ends meet.

[Jen] I did take a job that leaves me away from the property quite often

so that we can pay the bills and keep the roof over our head.

It leaves me pretty disconnected from the property.

I would absolutely hate to give up on the dream of being here,

but I feel like I have one foot in and one foot out.

[Marty] That whole area down there

you cleared off, what was this all about?

[Mike] So this here is what we ended up with

as the final corral for our livestock.

We've reared up to 15 pigs,

and we've had four to six goats.

We lost our last goat, um, this last spring,

and we have lost poultry.

[Marty] There's no question that these homesteaders have a serious problem.

I'm thinking that the pig pen is too far away.

I'm thinking that the chicken pen is too far away.

Right now, today, if a brown bear came to this homestead,

it could come right to the edge of the property

and have bacon and eggs, and not one person would have a clue.

They wouldn't know. And bears avoid people.

At some point, we have to talk about the fact that you bought the side of a mountain.

-Yeah. -Because it's steep.

-I mean, look, I'm standing next to you. -Yeah.

If we're going to do anything on this property,

we're going to have to get these structures closer to the house

and create some level space.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna be sitting in an excavator,

resculpting this five acres.

[dogs barking]

-[Misty] Oh, my word. -[Jen] This is the high tunnel.

[Misty] Look at this thing.

[Jen] It's a little overwhelming right now.

-[Misty] How big is this thing? -[Jen] It is 30x72.

[Misty] What a crying shame an empty high tunnel is.

It's harvest time. That thing should be packed to the brim.

Explain to me why this looks the way that it does.

For sure, I honestly didn't even come in here much this spring

once issues with the bears started.

It was just kind of low on the priority list

as far as things that I was able to get to.

Did a bear ever try to get in here?

-Yeah, I can show you. -You wanna show me?

I had suspected that the bear might have gotten into the high tunnel.

-[Misty] He went in? -[Jen] He went in.

It was probably only about six weeks ago.

-Only six weeks ago? What? -Only six weeks ago. Yeah.

We're talking about a bear that is, like, almost four feet wide.

This is an impossible homestead

'cause you're dealing with an impossible predator.

So you combine that with, oh, yeah, and they have a kid,

these are major, major problems that do not have easy solutions.

So as far as food goes, you're heading into wintertime.

Right now. Snow in the mountains.

What are the food stores looking like?

We normally have about three-plus freezers filled.

And what do you have now?

Um, anything that we have left over is left over from last year.

So we really don't have a lot.

[Misty] They're going into wintertime with zero food stores.

They've canned nothing. There's nothing in the freezers.

Just nothing. It's empty.

So we have to figure out another food source,

because the season's over.

[Matt] What is this tent?

[Ted] So this is where anything that, you know, you want to eat

over the course of the winter is stored here

in freezers and refrigerators.

They're mostly empty now. But chickens, fish, the pigs.

Okay. So this seems like a pretty important structure

to have a tree smashing it

or potentially get smashed by other trees that I see here.

[Ted] Yeah, this is kind of like the lifeblood of the property.

Ted showed me their food storage, and it gave me bearanoia.

It's not even a shed. It's a glorified tent.

It's not manageable. There's zero bear protection.

All it takes is that one bad encounter,

and things aren't gonna go so well.

It's only a matter of time before this thing gets ransacked by a bear,

-and then you don't have any more food storage. -Yes.

Okay. There's a lot going on on this little five-acre homestead.

Yeah, the forest fire came and went.

And that fire went out and I think, at the same time,

their homesteading dream fire went out as well.

Everything you have in your homesteader back pocket

on bear defense is exactly what this homestead needs.

[Matt] Yeah. And I think our biggest thing we need to do is

consolidate everything and create usable space

where all these animals, anything that we're gonna introduce,

could actually have a place that's manageable.

[narrator] To help the Harpes reclaim their Alaskan dream from bears,

the Raneys will design and build a homestead fortress

enclosed with an eight-foot game fence.

First, Marty will scratch a new foundation

into the mountainside to consolidate the homestead

closer to the human footprint of the house.

Misty will move and redesign the existing chicken coop,

strengthening, expanding and bear-proofing the exterior.

While Matt will focus his attention

on building a new food storage locker.

It might be the most challenging thing ever to say that

you're going to bear-proof a homestead,

especially in Alaska.

We can do as much as we possibly can to deter a bear.

The more we can kind of layer up the defense,

then we can make it as bear-proof as possible.

It's not like I can't relate to this property on a mountainside.

Crazy driveway. Bear problems. We have it all.

What you have going for you is you have Alaskans

standing at your doorstep.

So everything we've learned together

on how to deter bears is what we're gonna do.

-Excellent. Yeah. -So are you prepared for a little bit of mayhem?

-Absolutely. -[Marty] Okay.

Committed 100%.

-Okay, so thank you. -Thank you.

And we'll see you guys in the morning. Fair enough?

[bear growling]

[Misty] Head on up. Head on up for a sec.

[narrator] In Southern Alaska,

with reports of more aggressive bear encounters in the area,

the Raneys bring in a local bear expert

for a refresher on safety.

So whether you see a bear close or far, three simple rules.

Rule number one is don't run.

Rule number two, don't scream or yell.

Rule number three,

if you do have a bear approaching you, raise your arms up.

Just try to make yourself appear as a larger entity, right?

And then start talking to the bear in a stern,

you know, meaningful voice.

At that point, you should already have your bear spray out,

and be ready to deploy it.

And if you do need to spray the bear, just keep doing it

until you empty the can if you have to at that point.

Listen to this story. Jamie's worked with us

on other homesteads in this area in the Kenai Peninsula.

And I was listening to the news one day,

and there you were. What happened?

Well, we were camping out in the Skilak Lake area.

-About 15 miles from here. Okay. -Yeah.

And I swore I heard three distinct blasts

of a safety whistle followed by, "Help".

I started hollering out to the people to see what had happened.

They were asleep in their tent, they heard something, and it was, of course, a bear.

And unfortunately, when they heard it,

it startled them awake so they both sat up.

It surprised the bear. The bear attacked them.

And even though it said I had no signal,

the 911 dispatch emergency patch did go right through.

He's gonna have to have a few surgeries down the line,

but at the end of the day, we have living friends.

That bear safety meeting put a lot of things into perspective for me.

It just goes to show that bear encounters

happen at a moment's notice.

-Thanks for the good reminders. -Absolutely.

-Thank you so much. -Yeah. Thank you so much.

-All right. Back to work. -All right.

[Marty] Everybody have bear spray?

[Misty chuckles] I want some.

[dog barks]

[Marty] All right. Here we go. Careful.

We're fortunate enough to get a excavator

to move a mountain of dirt.

Get out in front of me. Get out in front of me.

It will take the excavator to tweak, bang and clang

because we need to consolidate

all of the creatures on this homestead

where they can be observed and they can oversee any activity.

So my goal is to give them flat surfaces

on a mountainside homestead.

[narrator] To carve out a new homestead footprint,

Marty will grade and level two separate 30x60-foot terraces

directly in view of the main home.

One for immediate use,

and the other for future livestock grazing or expansion.

Then once the homestead has been consolidated,

he will enforce the perimeter with an eight-foot game fence.

-[Mike] Yeah. Bingo. -Next!

[Mike] The fencing here took, you know, four of us ten-days-plus.

And to see Marty take it down in a matter of minutes...

he's making it look pretty easy. Pretty amazing.

-[Marty] Whoo! -[Mike] Yeah. That's the real deal.

[Jen] So this is the old chicken coop.

This is the first structure that we built,

-the first barn that we built. -Okay.

[narrator] On the edge of the homestead, by the Harpes' former chicken coop,

Misty and Jen look for ways to restore the structure

for the reintroduction of livestock.

So this is pretty scary to me.

[Jen] You do see bear pawprints on the glass.

He broke one of the windows in the back of it,

got in there, chased the chickens around, killed some chickens.

-That's really wild. -Yeah, yeah. It's pretty scary.

[Misty] This is one of the most intense chicken coops I've ever seen.

There is a problem bear. He lives here.

This is his homestead, not theirs.

And I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, this place,

this homestead, it needs food.

But if we bring livestock here, how are we gonna keep it safe?"

-We're really far from your house. -Yes.

-We need to bring food here this week. -Yeah.

What is that animal?

-It's gonna be livestock of some kind. -Yeah.

Do you think if we try to move this, it will stay in one piece?

That's a valid question.

The most effective way to keep your livestock alive in Alaska

is to have the pens really close to the house.

I wanna save myself a ton of time, a ton of materials, hopefully,

and just hook onto this chicken coop and move it to a better location.

[narrator] Misty and Jen will first dismantle the dilapidated lean-to

before moving the coop to its new home

within ear and eyeshot of the Harpes' house.

Then they will add a fully enclosed chicken run

that will extend beneath the coop structure

before reinforcing the walls with a layer of bear-proof armor.

[Misty] When was this built?

-It's probably been up for about ten years. -It's made it a while.

[Jen] This is one of the first structures we actually put on,

and it was just kind of the start of homesteading here.

I would absolutely love to see kind of the first thing that we've done here

actually successfully move,

um, and be able to keep it here on the property.

There you go.

[Matt] Sweet. That's good.

[narrator] Across the homestead,

Matt and Ted break ground on the new food locker.

[Matt] Now I feel okay about building something here.

One of the hardest things to find on this homestead is flat space.

But we're making progress,

and it's gonna be a perfect footprint

to build a shack for all the food storage to be bear-safe.

[narrator] Matt will start with a raised 10x10 foundation

before installing a sloped roof designed to shed winter snow.

Then he will fashion a locking mechanism

for the handmade door, durable enough

to withstand the force of a brown bear.

You can't start building a shed

unless you have some kind of foundation in, which we do now.

We got all our pier blocks in.

-Now we're gonna build a deck. -Okay.

So grab that saw,

and we'll just start cutting everything to the perfect size.

And then we'll start slapping it together.

-You in? -Yeah, I'm in.

Cool.

When I first came to the property, it was more of a functional homestead.

I was learning a lot from both Jen and Mike.

And then things kind of just started slowing down,

and the nail in the coffin was the bears.

[Matt] That is a beautiful cut right there.

[Ed] So I'm super excited to get this property up and running again.

Part of the reason I moved up here was so that I could learn how to homestead

so that maybe I could do it someday myself.

All right. Sun's out. Homestead's out.

Okay, so let's screw it.

Okay, it's gonna work.

[Marty] What I'm doing now is I'm just trying to figure out what we got for material,

but there's just enough rock in it.

[Mike] Yeah, it will be grown over.

Picasso would have loved this piece of property.

Why? Because it's got steep angles everywhere you look.

-Can that stump go? -[Mike] Get her out.

[Marty] Our job is to create our own masterpiece,

take those steep angles and make them flat.

Hm.

Where's that water coming from?

That can do a lot of damage. It can saturate a lot of land.

I hate showing up on a homestead, and the terrain is that steep,

and then I start digging knowing that I'm gonna

probably find springs and create more of a problem,

and that's exactly what's happened here.

[narrator] Snowmelt and heavy rain can saturate the soil,

eroding the foundation,

causing a catastrophic failure in ground stability

or even a mudslide with the potential

to wipe out the entire homestead.

[Marty] We got to find out where it's coming from.

We gotta figure out what we're gonna do with it.

Not good.

[Marty] I don't like it.

[narrator] While grading an area for the new homestead footprint,

Marty has encountered standing water threatening

to further destabilize this steep mountainside homestead.

Okay. So we got a culvert that's basically dry.

-Yeah. -It's dry in there.

[Mike] I know.

And a trench full of water. I mean, how deep is this?

If you don't have to have standing water on your property...

-Yeah. -...let's get rid of it.

I agree.

-Fair enough? All right. -Yeah.

We'll jerk that culvert out of there,

-set it off to the side, dig the trench, put it back in. -Yep.

Wanna just look at the slope of that or put a level on that?

[Mike] Let's do it human eye. I'm all about it.

-That's cowboy construction there. -Amen, brother.

All right, let's hit it.

I'd venture to say that

at least one million culverts have been put in wrong.

Fire in the hole. Make it a million and one,

'cause the one right over there on this homestead

wasn't even functioning.

That's a nice culvert.

Now I'd like to get a strap on it. And don't get killed.

-And, hey, partner? -Yo.

-Wouldn't break my heart to double it. -Okay.

Our job was to rip it out, dig it deeper,

fix the trench, give it a good fall line, and...

[Mike] Here it comes.

...try to drain the swamp.

That's running like a son of a biscuit.

-Let's put a culvert in. -Let's do it.

There you go. Take her down.

What we're doing is digging it out to get that water moving.

And we'll reset the culvert here and put some fill on top.

[Marty] How are we doing?

-[Mike] We're getting some good flow. -[Marty] All right.

[Mike] What I saw go on here today made my head spin.

I mean, huge progress.

And, you know, at times, it's hard to see things change,

but you know it's for the better.

We've got water. Looking good.

[Matt] Okay. Let's stand these walls up.

Awesome. Good job.

[narrator] At the site of the new food locker...

[Matt] This is called a sheetrock scribe.

[narrator] ...Matt gives Ted a crash course in homestead construction.

You make your mark on this seam.

Use your finger down here. Some people use a block of wood.

Sometimes you'll need to, 'cause you will get splinters,

-depending on the type of wood. -Okay.

Working with Matt Raney has been great.

He has so much information.

-[machine whirring] -[Matt] Something sounds weird.

[Ted] Yeah, I went in a bad angle.

I can't wait to see what else he has in store for me.

[Matt] Okay. Now screw this wall into that wall.

It's extremely important that we work alongside

every homesteader on every homestead

and make sure they have the skills to take ahead into the future.

And when I started working with Ted,

framing up this structure here,

I realized he had no experience.

Good.

I'm teaching him from the ground up how to build this shed from scratch.

-Let's start working on the rafters. -Sounds good.

[Matt] It's a great way to learn

because you're not gonna learn any bad habits.

And Ted is really getting a ton of experience

that's gonna help this homestead a lot.

-That feels good. -All right. We got a really nice template.

Let's start rolling out these rafters.

[chainsaw whirring]

[Misty] All right, I got the trees down.

[narrator] A few acres away, Misty and Jen prepare

to move the coop closer to the house.

I feel like we can use the skid, hopefully lift the structure

and kind of feel it out to see if it can be moved.

I feel like it can be. But even get some skids underneath it,

rig it with these logs.

Get it to a place where we can hook up to it

and just yank it out of here.

-Uh, but in the meantime, we'll just keep moving. -Okay.

-That sounds like a plan to me. -Let's do it.

[Jen] So the plan that we have going on right now is that

we're trying to basically build something underneath this coop

so that we can hopefully pick this thing up

and move it to a new location that's more convenient.

Okay, here we go. We're gonna lift.

[Jen] There you go. Oh, you're under it.

[Misty] Okay. We're ready to move this thing.

-How's everything looking? -[Owen] You gotta turn, like, right now.

One thing about visiting homesteads in Alaska is,

we can tap into our community of friends and family.

So I have Maciah, I have Owen, and I have Jen.

So between the four of us, hopefully we can move this chicken coop.

It's, like, not gonna be easy. The building's old.

But for Jen and Mike, it's really important.

Here we go.

-The thing is on the move. -[Jen laughs]

[Maciah] Good job, Misty. Looking good.

[Jen] It's very important to me that we'll keep

-some of the structures that I previously had. -There you go.

[Jen] My father taught me the knowledge and the skillset that I have.

And he and I built a lot of this.

[Misty] Okay, moment of truth. We gotta do a wheelie over the ravine.

[Owen] Oh. Hold on.

Uh...

Sure enough, the chicken coop's pulling away

and sliding down the mountain.

It looks crazy.

We're, like, inching down the mountain.

Should I lift on that close strap?

[Owen] I don't know. It's really wanting to go down.

-And then we're gonna lose it. -[Owen] Yeah, down that hill.

Sit. Sit. Sit.

Stay.

[Misty] The worst thing ever would be

to have the chicken coop roll down the side of the mountain.

I'm gonna need backup.

-[Marty] What have we got here? -So we got a little sideways.

-[Marty] It's like a luge. -Yeah, we're at a tipping point, Dad. Look.

Look at the log. So we can't--

-I wouldn't be on that side of it. -I know.

It's not great, but we're doing really good.

-This thing was over there, right? -Yeah, we're doing good.

-We've had some highs and lows. -Keep telling me that.

Here's what I've heard all morning. You're doing good.

-[chuckles] -But this building's about five minutes

-from rolling down the mountain. -[Misty laughs]

And how about this? I'll come alongside you and just hold it here.

I'll get right down here, put my bucket here.

We might need a tire. Stick it in between that

and the building, I'll be real happy.

In a normal family, the daughter runs up to the dad and says,

"Hey, can you help me with my homework,

or change the tire on my car?"

But in my family, you get requests like this.

-How weird is this gonna get? -[Maciah] I don't know.

[Misty] The building's completely sideways,

and I'm pulling with the skid steer,

and my dad is holding it up with an excavator.

There's a tire involved. I hope we make it in one piece.

Okay. Dad, that's as far as I can take it.

You gotta take over. I'm passing the baton.

Cut it loose and get out of the way. Thank you.

On a homestead, if you come together and work in harmony,

you can move a chicken coop

any place to your heart's content.

[Misty] Yeah!

-[Marty] Where do you want it? -[Jen] That's looking good.

-Yoo-hoo! -What do you call that?

I'll tell you. Poultry in motion.

[women chuckle]

Now that it's in its new location, you can see it from the front door.

We need to bear-proof this thing, so that's gonna be the main focus.

-Okay. Yeah. -Ready?

-Let's do it. -Sounds great.

[Misty] We did it!

[bear grunting]

[Marty] We've been digging, and pretty sure we've discovered

where all of the water's leaching, right?

In our quest to give them flat ground,

there must be half a dozen areas

where water's seeping out of the banks that I've exposed.

So we have trenches everywhere.

But at some point, those trenches have to go somewhere.

I've brought in a 20-foot culvert,

but we've got a problem. We have a 20-foot culvert,

but we have to span 32 feet. So we went into cowboy logic.

Um, do you have any roofing material here?

I got some, uh, sheets available.

[Marty] You bring them down here, we'll make

-a homemade homestead culvert. -All right.

[Marty] Hey, he's got old roofing material that he salvaged God knows where.

Yep, perfect length. I'm impressed. Good job.

But that old roofing material is going to be used

as a extension on a 20-foot culvert.

Grab the end of this log.

We're gonna set that right on that metal.

So this old-school way

of doing things the homestead way...

Pull that over. Get it to fold under there.

...not having all the right materials

directly off the shelf, brand-new, from a store,

this cowboy mentality, that's what I'm all about.

Oh, love it. I didn't save those things

for eight years to let them just sit there.

Ha. It's good to see they're getting put to use.

Yeah, that's looking good!

[machine whirring]

-[Matt] It's working. -[narrator] Up by the house,

Matt puts the finishing touches on the food storage locker

with a doorway strong enough to keep out a ravenous bear.

Okay, I got a crazy idea. Oh, yeah.

A lot of people don't know this, but I recently took up blacksmithing.

I'm gonna try to make a bear-resistant latch

to prevent bears from getting into their precious meat storage.

On this homestead, there's no anvil.

But I do have acetylene torch...

an excavator and a big, heavy hammer.

That's all I need.

We're actually starting to see a piece of rebar

turn into a really useful, strong tool

that's gonna prevent bears from getting into that food.

All right. Now we're bending steel.

I think this is gonna work. Whoo!

We got a hole going straight through into the wood.

I'm gonna put a pin in this way.

It will be easy for a human being to just pull that pin out.

But a bear's gonna be wracking its brain,

making itself tired trying to bust into this hinge,

going through the heavy-duty steel.

Awesome.

[dogs barking]

[bear growling]

[dog barking]

[Mike] This is good bear travelling country here.

[narrator] After hearing noises on the homestead overnight,

Mike takes Marty into the surrounding forest

in search of signs for the potential culprit.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. What's all the activity?

This is almost like a natural game trail right here

at the bottom end of the property.

Over here, Marty. Look at this. Got some older sign.

And then we got, it looks like some little bit fresher tracks

right in here. Look at that.

-[Marty] Yikes. -[Mike] Yeah, that's some old brown bear.

-Yeah, this is- -Ho, ho, ho. I got it right here.

-Holy cr... Dude, are you serious? -[Mike] Yeah.

Not far from this homestead, there's world-class fishing rivers.

These bears know human presence.

But we've taken it to the next level.

Chainsaws and Skil saws and banging and clanging.

In spite of all of this unnatural noise,

these bears are still right here.

Pretty impressive.

You got bears in here right now.

This is a really high level,

really crazy bear activity homestead.

You know, after we leave, are they gonna be fully prepared?

Are the coops or the pens, is it gonna be secure from bears

and the Harpes are gonna be set?

[Marty] You gotta think about the Alaska brown bear.

It's a very aggressive animal at times.

The question is, at those times, are you prepared for it?

That's kinda what we're dealing with here.

There's three types of fences laying in a pile right now.

I ripped them out of the ground.

They had the traditional electric fence.

They had an upgraded high-tech electric fence.

They had six-inch squares, right? Hog panel or farm fence, whatever.

All of them clearly failed.

There's one fence that I would recommend for this homestead.

It's the fence that we put in at our property.

And that is an eight-foot tall, higher than that,

eight-foot tall, high-tensile strength game fence.

[narrator] Traditionally made from steel

and stretching anywhere from four to ten feet tall,

a proper fixed-knot game fence

differs from a traditional fence in both strength and stature.

While more common uses range from managing livestock

or lining rural highways,

high-tensile game fences are used in zoos and wildlife preserves

to keep more dangerous animals at bay.

May not be a cure all,

but it's better than anything these guys have ever tried.

When you combine that with other bear deterrent methods,

it definitely helps.

And I also have bear deterrent ideas, but mine are old-school.

I'm just going with what's tried and true.

Have you seen how close the coop is to the house?

Like, that alone makes all the difference.

So we're halfway there for bear security,

but I have a few ideas as well.

I wanna know how prepared

the homesteaders themselves are when it comes to bear encounters.

I wanna test the homesteaders and see

if they can actually hit something with bear spray.

-Cool. -Have you ever done a bear spray?

Um... [laughs]

I did everything the guy said not to do.

-The wind was blowing. And then it-- -You got it on yourself.

Nothing hit the bear, and I was like this, crying.

Couldn't see a thing. Waiting for the bear to maul me.

Yeah. So the first time you used bear spray,

-like everybody, was when it was do or die. -Yeah.

And so why don't people train how to use bear spray?

-That's a good call. -Let's get back to work.

-Sounds good. -All right.

All right. So let's talk a little bit.

[narrator] With the two terraces complete,

Marty and Mike move onto the next phase

of the homestead fortress, fencing.

[Marty] And you've probably seen that around Alaska.

Comes off of the oilfields up in the North Slope.

-We call it drill steel. -[Mike] Uh-huh.

I wanna install a lot of fencing

all under the banner of bear-proofing.

We're not gonna build a four-foot-tall fence.

We're gonna build an eight-foot tall fence.

-[laughs] -We're gonna stick these in the ground four feet.

We'll probably go every 20 feet.

Then we're gonna put a high-tensile commercial game fence

that's eight-foot tall in profile.

We're gonna pull it tight with an excavator and secure it.

Keeping a bear out, this is kind of the go-to fence.

-We're going in straight. -Yep.

-Fair enough? You ready? -Oh, yeah.

[Marty] Okay, straight up and down from my perspective.

-[Mike] Looks good here. -A lot of rock.

-[Mike] There she goes. -[Marty] Now that we've built a place of refuge

for chickens, goats, whatever they wanna bring to this homestead,

we took it to the next level.

Eight-foot-tall, high-tensile strength fencing

is a deterrent for anything.

Grab a pipe. Here we go. Ready? Going in.

-[Mike] Towards you just a little bit. -[Marty] Thank you.

[Mike] Looks good.

Watch out, my friend. Watch out.

[Mike] The tall game fence is something that we've always mentioned.

You know, "Wow, wouldn't that be great, to have a game fence?"

Especially with a lot of the critters

that we've had here over the years.

Just something of this magnitude, this is top-notch.

This is exciting, to get a fence.

[Mike] Yeah, it is. Especially a game fence.

Yoo-whoo!

It's one thing that I don't have to do now.

[Marty] We've got limited time to provide this homestead

with bear-resistance.

The clock's ticking.

[Mike] Keep going. Keep going.

[growling]

[narrator] Later that day, with the fenceposts installed,

Misty aims to level up the chicken coop.

[Misty] All right. Is that long enough, you think?

I love the new location of the chicken coop.

It's right out their front door. You can see it from all their windows.

And it just gets an incredible amount of sun.

But I just need to figure out

what kind of bear protection are we bringing to the table?

Because, obviously, there's a bear problem.

This coop is made out of 17-year-old OSB,

which is this pressed, engineered plywood.

It's not meant to last, so I wanna beef it up.

I wanna put on my chicken coop armor.

We actually scored from the mill that's right here

a bunch of rough-sawn lumber, and I wanna use it as siding.

I was thinking it might be easiest just to throw some metal up.

Like, do, like, a little metal wainscot

and then, like, plank siding above that.

[Jen] I think that's a great idea. I like it.

-[Misty] Okay, here we go. -[Jen] Yeah.

[Misty] So we're gonna eyeball this right now. Here we go.

Working with Misty is fun. Really fun.

Getting to work alongside another woman who knows carpentry,

she brought things to the table that I had no idea about,

as far as trying to defend everything.

It's really fun to get taught that.

[Misty] Let me stand back and look.

Oh, yeah. It already looks better.

[Jen] Truly, there's things that have been on my plate

that I have wanted to do, I've dreamed about doing,

and I've not ever been able to find the time,

the money, the resources to make happen.

Um, so having them come here is absolutely amazing.

And it's even more important

because I have to leave, unfortunately.

I work remote at one of the gold mines up in Alaska,

eight hours away from here.

And I have today and tomorrow with you guys,

and then I will be pulling out of here.

-[Misty] Oh, my gosh. Two more days? -Yeah.

That's crazy to find that out. That's good to know.

-I'll make sure my dad and Matt know, right? -Okay.

Like, we're pretty similar.

That's probably why we get along good.

-Is that the way it works? I don't know, -but it's been fun.

-But it's been... It's like hearing myself talk. -Yeah.

So, like, it's not... You gotta have some really thick skin.

-Yeah. -Be really tough. [both laugh]

I'm sure it's been really difficult for Jen to be,

like, this thriving farm that the community depended on,

to being like, "Man, we had a rough spring and summer,

so I gotta go to work. I gotta find a job."

But hopefully, that's a very short-lived thing,

and she can come back, next spring, hit it hard

and just get back on step.

Um, so, you know, I'm entrusting you guys

-to do this. [both laugh] -I'm gonna miss you.

I know. I'm gonna miss you too.

It's been fun. It's been really fun.

Oh, no. Our time is cut short. And then there was just me.

-[laughs] Yeah. -Oh, man, I can't believe that.

We're gonna take this over to that, grab that end.

We'll take it over to that fence.

[narrator] Less than half the week remains on the homestead,

but the workforce is about to gain another member.

Hey, guys. Someone's home from school.

-[Misty] Yay. -I want you guys to go ahead and meet Bayne.

-Hi -Yay. Hi, Bayne. How's it going?

I like your freckles. I'm a big fan of freckles.

We've heard a lot about you.

-It was all good. -[chuckling]

-How do you like living out here? Pretty crazy? -Mm-hm.

-You guys have a lot of bears. -Yeah.

We have a lot of bears, too, but I think you guys have bigger bears.

Dealing with a predator like a big brown bear in Alaska,

not one, not two, but many is really difficult.

And Bayne's really young.

He's an only child out in the middle of nowhere,

and I think that's where, you know, the pressure lies.

You wanna come work with us? We could use an extra set of hands.

Wait, I could use an extra set of hands.

-Wait, wait. -Probably be an operator.

Ooh. We should rock, paper, scissors of who gets Bayne as a worker.

-All right. Hit it. -Okay.

Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

You guys don't know about excavator.

[all laugh]

Matt gets Bayne.

-I win. -Wow.

Oh, wow.

[Matt] A bear will charge at you 35 miles per hour.

Bear!

[Marty] You can come to a property.

But it really means nothing if the homesteaders aren't invested.

I'm about to give them a test and the only grade that I'm going to accept is an A.

-Okay. So we got some 16-penny nails. You got your hammer? -I got my hammer.

Jen's been a huge help every day.

And unfortunately, she leaves tomorrow.

We still have a ton of things to do.

We have insulation to finish, perches, laying boxes, chicken run.

So for me, we gotta split up. We gotta divide and conquer.

And it's gonna give me a chance to really see what Jen's made of.

So I would love to be able to make bear-proof shutters

that we actually attach to the outside of the structure.

I've seen them in Denali Park with cabins with, like,

bear claw, like, scratches on the cabin, and the cabins are intact.

So if it works there, it's gonna work here.

Okay. Let's make one.

Okay. So this ain't no joke, folks.

Making a bear-proof shutter is literally...

When you flip this up, every point of entry

will have bear shutter on it.

And as soon as they reach up and they put their paw on that...

Touch that.

-Yeah, I wouldn't wanna do that. Yeah. -Yeah.

So we're gonna pound about 100 nails into this one shutter,

and it's gonna be random, and every, like,

couple inches, we'll just go for it.

So I'll take one end, you take one end.

-Okay. -Okay. Sounds great.

[Misty] How are you keeping livestock alive on the Kenai Peninsula?

It's not one thing, it's multiple things.

It's combining, you know, fencing with live wires with bear shutters.

Obviously, Jen knows the importance

of bear-proofing the chicken coop.

They've had a lot of bear activity with the chickens.

Uh, for me, it's about, "Hey, let's try this technique."

She didn't know. She's never done a bear shutter.

-Let's flip this thing over. -Okay.

Okay, here we go. [grunts]

Oh, yeah. That's medieval.

[Misty] Little tricks, especially when it comes to bears

are gonna be really handy on this homestead.

You have a window that's 12 inches by 36 inches.

So it's like a long, skinny guy.

And I want you to make the bear shutter.

-Okay. -All on your own. Can you do it?

I think I can do it.

Misty went ahead and taught me how to build these bear shutters.

And so I'm just trying to get a couple more made

so that on the chicken coop, all the doors and windows are gonna be covered by them.

-Misty, you wanna come check this out? -Yes.

-I think I got it. -All right.

Yeah. Yeah.

-What do you think? -I love it.

-Think it'll work? -Yeah, let's go hold it up in the window.

Okay.

This is new. I personally didn't know they existed.

Um, so it is something that I think we'll be implementing

on kind of all the coops

and, you know, really anything that we can to help deter the bears.

-How are we fitting? Yeah, man. -I like it.

-Okay, we'll put some hinges on it or a little slider bar. -Okay.

-And this thing is the new bear shutter. -Okay.

-[Matt] How you doing? -[Bayne] Good.

So I'm really glad you're here, Bayne,

because I've been thinking about this bear danger on the homestead.

-[Bayne] Mm. -And we're gonna do something special,

-and I think something that's gonna be really important. -Mm.

Many Alaskans bring bear spray with them in the wilderness,

and they use bear spray for the first time

when they have an encounter with a moose or a bear.

I think it'd be a really great idea to train using bear spray.

Something that's safe that you can shoot around your property.

It's not gonna mess with your dogs. It's not gonna attract bears.

And it's not gonna make you go blind for a long time.

One thing I know about bears is their noses are real sensitive.

So if you can get something that irritates a bear

-really bad on their nose... -Yeah.

...then you can get that bear to go away and move away.

And that's why they invented bear spray.

So this is a training canister, which means if I spray this,

it's not gonna mess with our noses, it won't mess with a bear's nose.

That way, you can spray and test our skills with bear spray.

First things first,

a bear will charge at you 35 miles per hour.

What they do is they put their head down

and get whatever they're going for.

If a bear is gonna charge you, where are you gonna aim?

-Probably down. -Exactly.

And that's why I put the X on the bottom.

Basically, you start low and go high.

-Are you ready to start spraying? -Yeah.

Bear's coming for you. What are you gonna do?

-All right. -[Matt chuckles]

That's a good spread there.

That was pretty good. All right, Bayne. Okay.

That was good. Sometimes it's just a little shot,

and sometimes you have to just empty the whole can.

Well, check this out. I wanna make this as real as possible.

When the time is right, you're gonna have to draw the bear spray

and defend yourself from something big.

We got a high level of bear danger on this homestead,

and I wanna see how prepared

these homesteaders are for a bear encounter,

whether the bear encounter is nonchalant

or it's full-on crazy.

-Okay. Are you guys ready? -Yep.

Give me a second.

-Bear! Bear! -[Ted] Oh!

[all chuckling]

Using myself as a target inside an inflatable bear suit

sounded like a really good idea at the time.

Get me out.

But when I ran in there,

I think I trained Ted and Bayne a little too well.

Unzip it.

Because they sprayed

the ever-loving heck out of that suit.

Bear!

I think Bayne went in the hardest

and just unloaded the whole, entire canister right into my face.

-[laughs] -[Ted] Good shot.

Oh, wow. I gotta tell you. I got sprayed real bad.

You both did amazing. [chuckles]

After seeing how well Bayne and Ted performed with the bear spray

when they were really put to the test,

shows me that they're a lot more prepared

to face a bear on the homestead than they've ever been.

I feel good about where this homestead is with bear preparedness.

Our work here is done. Let's get back to the projects.

[Marty] Clint, we'll hook this one on right here.

[narrator] With the homestead fortress on hold

as Marty and Mike wait for the fencing to arrive,

Marty has a plan to build some much-needed

covered storage on the lower terrace

while also putting Mike's off-grid building skills to the test.

[Marty] Sometimes I move a little fast.

I never talk to the people. They don't know what I'm up to.

It's one thing to cut beetle-killed trees,

protect the homestead from the next forest fire,

but it's better if you can use those trees to build something.

In fact, I approached Mike with that scenario. He was all in.

But what he doesn't know is I'm about to give him a test.

This is really a lot about instruction.

Yeah, encouragement, inspiring,

but what are we actually teaching you?

You got a roto hammer in your hand.

The bit is sitting on a rock...

and we just moved four logs into place.

What do you think is gonna happen?

-Probably secure these logs to the rock. -With what?

-Drilling a hole and some rebar. -I love it.

So do me a favor. Find the center of that

and see if you can virtually bury that bit.

I'm gonna cut some rebar.

[Mike] The skillsets that Marty has, it's incredible.

It's very inspirational.

See if that will go down that hole and you'll know when it bottoms out.

You'll know. Hear that sound?

-Oh, yeah. -Done.

You can come to a property and build structures,

create fencing, and move a mountain of dirt.

You guys communicate.

But it really means nothing if the homesteaders aren't invested.

Okay, hold right there.

Can you bring it down just easy? Nice and easy, bring it down.

-Okay, we're on it. It's in the hole. -[Marty] If it's in the hole,

then hold that thing vertical and he'll hit it with an ext.

[Mike] Yeah. There she goes. It's going.

There it is.

We have a structure going in there, using some primitive

materials that we've gathered here.

And it'll have a roof on it and be dried in.

Every covered area in a homestead

that keeps stuff dry is super valuable.

So your job is to set it on top of there.

-Okay. -[Marty] Take that level and push it up.

He's got it close.

Some people are fully immersed in embracing the homesteader life.

It's perfect.

I got that feeling from Mike.

You're strong. I like it.

As this whole project's taken hold, you get excited.

You feel the motivation, the energy.

And these people bring a lot of that.

-You're clear. -[Marty] Money. Done.

Grab us another log!

-[Misty] All right, Jen. -[Jen] Hey.

[Misty] You ready to, uh...

-Wait, my foot's stuck. -[Jen laughs]

-Wow. -Like--

[all laugh]

[Misty] Not even kidding.

Whoo.

Yay!

Wow, this is, like, the second damsel-in-distress moment this week.

[narrator] With only two days left in the rescue,

Marty, Matt, and Misty are ankle-deep in projects

designed to bring the Harpe homestead back to life.

[Marty] Hey, come on over here for a second.

[narrator] Including the addition of a brand-new well pump

that will greatly increase

their water flow for future livestock.

We've pulled the pipe and the pump all the way out,

knowing that we needed to replace it.

-We put a one-horse pump in there and motor. -[Marty] Wow.

[Dave] And then we added seven sticks of pipe

to get us back down towards the bottom of the well.

So right now, how much water do they have on call right now?

You'll have about 600 gallons of water per day.

-Awesome. -That's what this thing makes.

Oh-ho-ho.

-That's huge. Yeah. -That is--

-[Marty] 600 gallons? -[Mike] That's a win.

-That's awesome. That's huge. -[Marty] Wanna do laundry?

-I do, yeah. -You wanna get goats and pigs and chickens and dogs?

-I do. -More dogs?

Yeah, all the dogs.

-[Dave] You got enough water. -That's awesome. Thank you.

All right, let's go down here and see what's happening.

[Marty] Look at that. The strongest fence that money can buy.

Ready? Let's roll it over here a little bit. [grunts]

[narrator] Now that the fencing has arrived, it's time for Marty and Mike

to wrap it around the newly installed posts.

I think we're ready to manhandle this

down to the other corner. Ready?

Bears will walk through most fence.

But this is the go-to fence

if you're trying to keep something big in and out.

Oh, this is real-deal stuff here.

-You love it? -Yeah.

Makes me feel good.

-Yeah. Yeah. -If you'll hand me a board, board one.

-[grunts] -Watch that bear window.

I wanna put the screws on this side of that wire.

Anybody building a fence knows at some point, you gotta stretch it.

Chicken wire, you might stretch it by hand.

Bigger fence, you might pull it with a four-wheeler.

I've pulled it with a snow machine.

But we've got an excavator

and the most skookum fence known to man.

And we're gonna pull it hard.

You're gonna be able to play a tune on this thing.

Give it a swing, Clint.

Don't be shy. Hold.

Perfect. Let's see if we can pull this up.

Ready? One, two, three.

-You see how cool it is? -Mm-hm.

Isn't that amazing?

-Okay, you wanna go around that fence. -Yep.

Pull it as hard as you can.

[grunts] And then we're going to pin it to the post.

Guess what? I want one on every one. Can you handle it?

-I got it. -Okay. I'll be down here.

[Mike] We're just securing the fencing here to the posts.

This is about as good a fence as you're gonna find

right here for big game.

This is used in our Alaskan animal sanctuary

just over the hill here to keep all of Alaska's animals in.

So for us, it's gonna be keeping all of Alaska's animals out

and keeping our critters safe.

Okay, turn. I have an idea.

I wanna take just, like, an hour

and try to bang something out. So here we go.

[narrator] On the main driveway, with Jen preparing to leave

for her remote job eight hours away,

Misty has a final going-away surprise.

I like this.

We don't have a ton of time to do anything extra on a homestead,

but I think it'd be worth a couple hours

to do something nice for Jen

and recognize your dad's such a big part of this homestead,

even though he's passed.

Okay, that was really heavy. Okay, I'm gonna go get Jen.

I have high hopes for this homestead.

And maybe Jen having to go away to work is a very short-lived thing.

And I 100% think that this place will be...

thriving one day very soon.

I just wanna show you something really quick.

-I made you a little present. -Oh.

-Thank you. -You're welcome.

-Do you wanna try it out? -I do.

[both laugh]

I just thought it'd be worth my time to

just like spend a couple hours and do something nice.

I really appreciate it. Like, really appreciate it.

-I'm gonna bawl. -[both laugh]

Did you learn everything from your dad?

-I learned everything I knew from my father. -Really?

[Jen] From day one, I was in the garage with him fixing vehicles.

Um, I was building sheds.

I was working on the house. I was doing all these things.

Um, and... [sniffles] ...you know,

he'd just... I was his constant sidekick.

I mean, honestly, like, I watch you and your dad work together,

and it was a lot like that. This really means the world to me.

Mostly coming from you, too.

-Good. -Truly.

-Thank you. -You're welcome.

So the Harpestead is complete now

-with this little bench, I feel like. -It is.

-Thank you. -You're so welcome.

[both chuckle]

Oh, yep. I love it.

My father was, obviously, a huge influence in my life.

Um, and, it just... You know, I hope that

somewhere, somehow, you know, he's seeing this and is proud...

'cause it really does mean the world to me.

I will be leaving to go back to work.

And, you know, it's kind of a lot of weight

on my shoulders to walk away from all of this,

um, and to know that my husband

and my child are here and keeping up with it.

-Packed up and ready to head out? -I am.

-All right. -I'll see you in a couple weeks.

Drive safe.

-Bye. -I love you.

-Give that little guy a hug. -Be a good boy.

I've really enjoyed working with the Raneys.

I think it brought in a lot of motivation,

a lot of energy, um, and a lot of great ideas.

From the bottom of my heart, I can't thank you guys enough. Truly.

I am hopeful that this job that I've taken is,

you know, a transition back to the property,

so that I can be home more with the family.

We'll actually take those like a log cabin style.

It will resemble a fort where the bears cannot penetrate.

The goats just showed up.

It's freezing. Snow line's moving down.

So they need heat. They need protection. They need a cool place.

What are you asking me?

I need room for two goats at the manger.

In here?

[Marty] How's it look?

-[Mike] There you go. I like that. -[Marty] Thank you.

[narrator] On the upper terrace,

after installing the high-tensile fence,

Marty and Mike race the clock

to complete the final step of the homestead fortress,

protecting the vulnerable entryway.

[Marty] You got some more hooked? Thank you.

Well, I told Mike, "I'm gonna build you a fortress."

I built him the same fence that I have,

except he has something I don't have,

and that is a huge pile of telephone poles.

We're gonna use them.

It will actually resemble a fort where the bears cannot penetrate.

We'll actually take those like a log cabin style.

We'll just notch 'em around this.

We'll lay 'em right there since they're treated telephone poles.

-Yeah. -Lay it right on the ground.

We'll notch, notch, notch, notch all the way up here to there.

No bear will ever get in.

-No bear will ever go through that. -Okay.

[Marty] I know you know how to do log work. You've got a log barn down there.

-Okay, let's go. -All right.

-Give me some saws. Quick. -Let's do it.

When they were doing some pole replacement

here in the neighborhood, they needed to get rid

of old poles, so we gladly stored them here.

They've been stowed away for about three years.

[Marty] Got marks. We've got marks.

-Right here. -Thank you.

Whoo!

Ready? Follow me.

I think compared to anything that we've had on this property,

this is gonna be as good as you can find.

You wanna flip a switch from knowing that

you're behind the eight ball to all of a sudden,

you're getting lifted up and put back on your feet.

[Marty] That's gonna hold a bear.

It's almost dreamy. It's overwhelming.

There's so many emotions that you go through.

Little telephone hardware.

-So this will be a cool place to hang a light. -Yeah.

Did I ever tell you I was a professional logger once?

Oh, yeah.

See a bear get through that.

What we're trying to do is put the spacing of the poles here

so there's no room to reach through.

This is gonna be great. This is awesome.

[Marty] But it's not finished.

-Well, how's she look, Ted? -That's solid.

[narrator] By the house, Matt shows Ted

the homestead's new and improved food storage.

This is a lot more solid than that tent.

This is not just a place where you put freezers.

You could put vacuum sealers in here.

You could put everything to process meat

and freeze meat, store food. And the most important part is,

this is a lot more bear-resistant than that green tent.

If a bear comes up here, it might be able to, you know... [grunts]

But it's gonna have a really hard time

pulling this little homemade cotter pin that I got here.

Pull the pin.

-Still can't get out until you pull this. -Okay.

And then you gotta pull the door...

like so

and then you can get inside. What do you think?

Wow, yeah. That will keep them out.

[narrator] Six days ago, the Harpes kept their hard-earned food stores

in an outdoor tent

vulnerable to the elements and invading wildlife.

Now with the addition of a 10x10 reinforced food locker,

the Harpes have a safe space for food storage

that won't attract unwanted guests.

This is much safer. That's for sure.

The shed with the freezers is such a huge improvement.

I feel safer that we have all of our food

in a much better structure, as well as a processing area.

A lot of fish go through this property.

So I can't wait to just get to vacuum sealing and storing.

I think things are gonna run smoothly from now on.

-All locked up. -Food's safe inside.

-Feel good about this. -I feel great about this.

Alaska is a tough place to homestead.

And these homesteaders, they had a bad year.

And I feel very privileged to have helped them

to get this homestead squared away and ready for winter,

so that when Jen comes back, things are a lot easier.

Thanks for being a great teacher.

I'm looking forward to everything else we have to do.

Yeah, man. That's the right attitude.

-[Marty] Misty. -[Misty] Yeah.

How's it going?

Well, I got some interesting news. Ready for this?

Fresh, like last night or this morning,

bear tracks right behind that old chicken coop.

-[laughs] -Not kidding.

I'm so glad we moved.

I'm not kidding you. That's not the best news.

But the fact that you did move this for that very reason is amazing.

Also, the goats just showed up.

[goats bleating]

-Nice. -Well, it's nice, but it's freezing.

Snow line's moving down.

And one of those goats turns

-eight weeks old today. -Oh, they're young.

So they need heat. They need protection.

They need a cool place.

Okay. What are you asking me?

I need room for two goats at the manger.

-In here? -Yes.

-Okay. Well, this definitely changes a lot of things. -What does it change?

Um, the chickens and the goats will have to be separated.

They're young enough where they can pick up disease from the chickens.

So it does change my build on the last day.

So I'm gonna... So I'm gonna get to work.

-Are you upset about it? -No.

Well, if you are, this is the heartbreak goatel.

[chuckles]

This is, like, really crazy.

We pull out of this homestead in a few hours.

And this whole build,

when it comes to the chicken coop, has to change.

What I thought was gonna be a pretty easy day

has now become a really hard day.

No pressure, Misty.

When you encounter a bear,

it's not gonna be on the golf course.

This is where it's gonna happen.

The thickest brush you're in is where it's gonna happen.

[growls]

-[screams] -[Matt] Bear!

-[laughs] -Look at it.

Look at it. That's how it's gonna happen.

That's how it's gonna happen, right there.

-Oh, nobody pulled their spray. -No.

[Marty] The Harpes have about a half a dozen

bear encounters they've captured on video.

I have to get them prepared for anything and everything.

All right, so what happens is, boom. My hand's behind my neck.

Now try to flip me over like a bear. Try to flip me.

You're not gonna flip me. You're not gonna flip me.

If he can't flip you over, if he can't get you, then you might survive, Okay?

On that happy note, back to work.

[Matt] That's terrifying.

This thing is becoming a pretty cool pen.

We're gonna take it one step further. Stand by.

Clint, drive it in!

[narrator] With only hours left before the Raneys hit the road,

Marty, Mike, and Clint work to enclose the homestead fortress.

Come on over. We're going for it.

I do not think that I shall see a thing as lovely as a tree.

Here we go.

Every tree is beautiful in its own way,

even one with a gnarly little dogleg in it.

That tree will be there for decades as a monument to the insanity

that took place here over the last seven days.

I wanna believe that a bear's gonna look at that and go,

"What? Things have changed on this homestead."

So whether it's the fencing or the telephone poles or the logs,

they all work together in staving off the neighbors.

-I like it. -Oh, dude, that's money.

[Mike] That's what I'm saying.

-It's money. -Yeah.

[Misty] Whoo! Crazy day on the homestead.

The chicken coop now needs to house a couple of goats.

This was a pretty crazy day.

My dad walks up to me just now and says, "Hey,

I think we need a place for these goats to go."

And I'm like, "What?" I need to build, like, a little goat pen

inside the chicken coop. No pressure.

But we have to make it happen.

You wanna help me with some stuff?

-Yeah. -Yeah, come on in.

Thankfully, I have my dream partner. It's Mr. Bayne Harpe himself.

I'm gonna ask your dad , but have you ever used a nail gun before?

-Uh, I don't think so. -Okay. They're really fun.

They're really easy. So I think you're gonna be fine.

Remember, never use these tools without one of your parents' help.

So you push the tip down and pull the trigger.

Done. Do the other side. Yep.

We had so much work to do, and he was so fun to work with.

I just am, like, so happy to have a helping set of hands.

And I know when Jen comes home, she's gonna be a very proud mama.

Nice. Perfect. Okay, give it a jiggle.

-Good enough for chickens? -Yeah.

I'm thankful for the Raneys to come and do a lot for us,

and help us get the chickens, the goats, everything.

-[Misty] Is it Bayne-approved? -[Bayne] I like it.

[narrator] A week ago, the Harpe homestead was devoid of livestock

and slowly being reclaimed by nature.

But now, the outbuildings have been

consolidated closer to the house,

allowing for a safer environment

for the family and future livestock.

And the new goats and chickens

can flourish in or out of the elements,

safe within the fortress walls.

These guys need names.

This is a farm where they don't name any of their livestock

because there's so much loss.

-Want to sit with them for a sec? -Yeah.

[Misty] That affected Bayne.

So for the first time, to have animals you can actually name,

he's gonna spend a lot of time with these animals

and be their caretaker, and I think that's really good for him.

You know, these animals, they're gonna have a good life.

-What do you think? -I like them.

-Are you happy to have goats back? -Yeah.

All right, buddy. Log and stone.

-What do you think? -[Mike] Oh, this is incredible. Whoo, yeah.

A few hay bales or farm equipment or a trailer.

This has got a lot of future ahead of it.

So here I am, the bear,

and I've got a fortress of telephone poles.

I come around here. I've got eight-foot-tall

high-tensile strength game fence.

And now I'm thinking, "Whoo, things have changed here."

I think this will keep the bears out

and this will allow us to definitely rear some livestock

and not have that stress and feeling that they're vulnerable.

I mean, look how big this area is. My gosh.

-[Mike] It's a BFZ, bear-free zone. -[chuckles] Bear, BFZ.

[narrator] Seven days ago, the Harpes were besieged by bears

decimating their produce and livestock,

forcing Jen to take a job off property.

Now, with the new 30x60-foot homestead fortress

and the additional terrace for expansion,

the Harpes will be able to protect their produce

and bring animals back to the property

for themselves and their community,

eventually allowing Jen to return to the homestead full-time

while also making the property safer for their whole family.

Anything else we can do?

I think we're looking good here. You got us back on our feet.

I'm excited about the future of the Harpestead.

-[Marty] Hey, gang. -[all] Hey.

Raise your hand if you're tired.

[all laugh]

-Tell my dad what's here. -Baby goats and chickens.

I saw them and your dad saw them.

You can tell he's happy. Look at your face.

-Look at Ted's face. -[Misty laughs]

Bear preparedness is at an all-time high on this homestead.

I agree. Also, there were three eggs today...

-What? -...in the coop.

-Are you serious? Wow. -Already?

-Oh, that's breakfast. -That's cool.

Got three eggs already.

I think my mom will like eggs a lot. [chuckles]

So there's food on the homestead.

To me, it's, like, significant of the things to come.

And I think that's really exciting.

I mean, it's incredible to see what happened here.

When I hear those chickens and the goats,

it's an inspiration and motivation right there.

I mean, it's... We're back on track.

-I can't wait for the eggs. -[all laugh]

[Mike] Before the Raneys got here,

this homestead was at a tipping point.

After getting to spend a week with the Raneys,

we are at a way better spot for our animals.

The rejuvenation that has gone on in my heart,

and I know my wife and my son,

this is something that could really keep those dreams alive.

So on that note, we say goodbye to the bear homestead.

And I have to get my bearings

to find my way back to Hatcher Pass.

So thank you very much.

-Thank you. -You're a good man.

-And thank you. -Anytime.

And you are everybody's hero. You're this, like, this cool guy.

A lot of dirt got moved on this mountain.

A lot of structures were either moved, built or resurrected.

All of it under the banner of bear-proofing.

But something else happened that I witnessed.

A change in the homesteaders.

There is a spark that's been ignited in the whole family.

If you can get in here and resurrect a homesteading dream,

that is hitting the ball with the big end of the bat. [exclaims]

Bye.

[dogs barking]

Since the Raneys left, we've been really enjoying

all the animals, and the eggs have been relentless.

We've been distributing throughout the community.

We always wanted to make sure that our child knew how to do chores,

so he's kinda developed a bond with the animals,

and he's done a great job with them.

One of the nicest things that the Raneys came in and did was a fence.

The animals have remained safe.

[Mike] And we've been bear-free. No visitors.

The process and preservation shed, or Ted shed,

as I like to call it,

has become an integral part of this property.

[Mike] It's provided great security

for all of our processed chickens we eat throughout the year.

[Jen] I was able to actually square away the same job

that I was doing up north, but here.

And now I get to come home every night, focus on the property

and the animals and the family a lot more.

I'd like to, once again,

thank Marty, Misty, and Matt

for kickstarting us

and bringing this place back to life.