After a long day of trapping, ice fishing, swatting bears away and building ice resistant houseboats, the Kilcher family has a hot relaxing soak on their mind in this week’s episode of Alaska: The Last Frontier on Discovery.
It is Otto and Charlotte who are featured in the Monsters and Critics exclusive clip posted above, as they work together in Otto’s well-appointed tool-filled workshop.
It starts out swimmingly. It ends in an explosion.
These two are in the beginning stages of creating a real working hot tub. Their goal is to try and straighten out the dent and creases in the metal of an old tub, that looks like it needs to be sandblasted too.
Later in the episode, sons Eivin and Levi will also help to rebuild this sorely needed homestead hot tub.
Don’t doubt that they will accomplish this goal if they are that determined.
The clip proves that husbands and wives who work together usually have some words at some point, especially if power tools are involved.
Charlotte Kilcher is a steady player in this homesteading yarn and has been Otto’s wife for over 20 years. Otto loves tinkering with everything mechanical and is the de facto go-to guy and fixer of everything broken on the homestead.
Charlotte is originally from Northern California. She is described as a “pioneer-minded woman” but she had to make a lot of adjustments from her move out of California where she was a warmer, happy vegan to a cold climate and diet that demands animal protein, as fresh produce becomes scarce.
She went to Alaska as wildlife biologist back in 1978. In an ecological calamity, the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill in South-central Alaska, she met her future husband Otto who kept her in Alaska and together they created a life, a family and a shared love of homesteading.
Otto is quoted as calling her his “hippy chick from Berkeley.” One thing is for sure, the clip shows Charlotte errs on the cautious side and has a gentle approach to correct the bad decisions that Otto makes in the workshop.
Given her background, Charlotte is adept at gardening vegetables in the short Alaskan grow period, plus raising chickens and ducks to harvest their eggs, and fostering healthy beehives and keeping bees so that pollination for her precious crops happens. Charlotte is even proficient at milking cows for dairy items like milk and homemade cheeses for the family.
Otto and Charlotte have a blended family, her sons Torrey and August, and stepsons Levi and Eivin who are in on this hot tub venture.
Also tonight, Atz Lee and Jane Kilcher – who successfully caught a tasty burbot fish last week in their ice fishing exploits – rush to aid of a fellow homesteader in distress while Atz Sr searches for a remote spot to set anchor and secure his floating homestead.
And Charlotte must enact some extreme measures to protect her herd from apex predators.
But you have to tune in tonight to see if any of these Kilchers get to relax in a hot tub that can hold water!
Alaska: The Last Frontier airs Sunday at 9 PM ET/PT on Discovery.