Harvesting Potatoes, Planting Garlic & Making Spaetzle 

My guess for the potatoes being eaten, is likely voles or mice & the slugs are after the remains. Great harvest, considering the year of drought. You’re doing great! Thanks for sharing! Have a great week 🤗💗🇨🇦

Ariel and Eric! My favoriteAlaska people.

Oh, man! My Oma(granma), made the best dang spaetzle! I still have her spaetzle board and knife(almost 100 yrs old). Its a small handheld cutting board That's thin on one end. She would put dough on the board then slice off them off into the boiling water, lightning fast and perfect. Then, serve with browned butter !

Been making Spaetzle for over 50 years. Water, flour, eggs, little salt. We use Spaetzle instead of potatoes with eye roast of beef and gravy.

So exciting that you got to do a little gardening this year after all!

What you are making is almost like a potato gnocchi. They are quite good sauteed in a bit of butter, or even covered in a sauce of some kind. Good luck in storing your potato harvest!! 🥔🥔🥔

I’m taking a break from gardening… only to watch this video, then back at it for me! Y’all are my favoritest, bestest, most motivating friends that I’d love to meet from the Internet. The teamwork is making y’all’s dream work, and I’m so happy to be along for the journey! Thanks for having me/us!!!

In Poland, this dish is made from grated raw potatoes, some flour (can be potato flour), an egg, spices, knead the dough and spoon it into salted boiling water. ready-made dumplings need to be mixed with fried bacon and onion, and finally sprinkled with crumbled cottage cheese. You can add fried sauerkraut instead of cottage cheese. delicious!

My grandmother was of Lancaster PA German heritage. Sunday dinner was always a roast of some sort. Beef, Lamb, Pork, Chicken, etc. Spaetzle was a standard. Her recipe which I use today is like somdhomestead9031 - Flour, eggs, water, salt. Nana used a spaetzle cutter that was older than her. I use a spaetzle cutter we bought from Lehman's. I learned the hard way using that cutter. Spray the hopper and cutter with vega spray. Easier cleanup. Enjoy. 73 & God Bless

I would strongly suspect mice or voles are nibbling on the early new potatoes which then scab over after the mice and voles move onto other food as the season progresses. Super common with potatoes grown in some straw. Mice and voles love nesting in straw and it’s kind of a perfect rodent party venue with accommodations and food readily available. As always, great video ❤

I'm going to apologise now for the long comment. 😂 Great video, potato harvesting can be like a lucky dip run by Nature herself. The eaten bits of the potatoes reminded me of what used to happen to my raddishes and strawberries. Not slugs, but slaters (you may know them as sow bugs, pill bugs, wood louse, etc). That really looked like slater damage to me, and maybe the slugs just took advantage? Usually, to me, slug damage looks different. We resolved the issue in two ways... let our chickens in to eat the slaters, planted the foods we didn't want slater eaten in styrofoam boxes (away from the chickens) or hanging baskets only filled with shop bought potting mix. Not going to work for potatoes, except maybe the chook feast bit. 😂 Spätzle (spaetzle) - Arielle pronounced it right. I grew up pronouncing it wrong, and I'm half German. 😂 It's shhh-petz-la. Meant to mean "tiny sparrows" I think. No idea. And two better German dishes to use potatoes in would be kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes) or hoppel poppel. The trick to getting the extra moisture out of potatoes for the pancakes is to grate them when raw, put them in muslin cloth or similar, then squeeze the moisture out. You can then just add grated raw potato to the batter (for sweet pancakes), or soften it by cooking with some onion until onion goes "glassy", let cool, then add to batter (for savoury). Hoppel poppel is a little like the Uk's bubble n squeak in that it can be made with cooked veg leftovers. But I prefer it the way my Opa used to make it. Boil whole potatoes in the evening before, allowing them to cool in the water overnight. Next morning, peel them (should come off easily with just your fingers), and dice into big bite size pieces. Add diced fatty bacon (speck works best) to a cold skillet then heat so the fat melts and renders. I can't eat onion, but traditionally you cook diced onion with the bacon. Add the potatoes to the skillet, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Cook until edges of potatoes start going crispy. Then crack some eggs over it, and keep cooking until done to your liking. This has to be one of my all time favourite comfort foods. 😁 I sometimes add baby spinach and feta to it. Sorry for long comment, thanks for reading it all. ❤

A potato /noodle is a POODLE!! Hahahahaha😂 Love the dynamic between you two! It’s inspiring seeing what two people who work well together can accomplish.❤

Love potato harvest day!!

The potatoes could be being eaten by voles, I'd say- google some variation of "voles eating potatoes" and you'll see all the image results have a very similar look to what you're pulling out. If you want to keep them off your crop you'll need to basically line your potato bed with hardware cloth and screen them out that way- plus plant them alongside alliums, so the smell keeps them away. Google also says there's some flowers with bad-tasting bulbs which can be effective, too

Potatoes. In 1949. We went to Northern Ireland, visiting my grandfather’s farm. He took me, a nine year old boy, with him when digging up a batch of potatoes fro Sunday dinner. Noting that the spuds he dug up were all coloured purple, I asked Grandpa; “Does this mean they’re already boiled?” My words, from a nine year-old schoolboy, never away from a big city before, went around the entire farming community like a rocket.

Mice and moles make trails through the straw and they stop for lunch along the way. Slugs are just a bonus.

We look forward to our greenhouse build someday. ❤🍃🤞

I can relate to Arielle excitement about the earth worm especially here in FL we have nothing but sandy soil.💜

Spätzle are absolutely delicious in a variety of dishes. If you make them with cheese, you would usually put them in an oven dish for a while almost like a casserole so the cheese gets nice and brown on top. The Spätzle without cheese are absolutely fantastic with venison and a creamy mushroom sauce. As someone else in the comments already said, your dough should be a lot more liquid. Think pancake batter. You really don't want to be able to fold it with your hands like this. (I suspect the potatoes are to blame for this - try making them without those and see what you think!) Fully agreed that it looks like you got some voles munching on your potatoes there. Once you are ready to make your new garden next year, it might be a good idea to put down some anti-vole mesh first to try and keep your future harvest safe, if possible.

19:16 "we're makin our dough, here we go, the ones we know... we've got merlot" (str8 bars)

My favorite couple getting ready for fall and winter picking potatoes and setting in garlic for next year. Always hard workers and make old farmers proud the job they do. Love you guys, hope all works out for you two this Fall and Winter.😍❤❤🙏🙏🌹🌹🌹🌻🌻🌻

It's either a rat, a vole, or gopher. Check around the areas to see if you have any hills, if so you know it's a gopher. Just holes and tunnels are voles/rats. Moles also make little hills, but they only eat worms, grubs and bugs.

We've also had partially eaten potatoes uncovered at harvest. In our case, the culprits turned out to be voles that love to eat tubers etc. We're located in northern Ontario, Canada. We thoroughly enjoy watching your videos.

Love it when you harvest veggies. Cannot wait for you to start your veggie garden at the new home. Hope it going to even better than the old place. And that is going to be hard one to better. ❤

I'm so excited to see how your garlic grows and the garden next year! The bird formations were amazing-I can't imagine all the noise those birds would make wherever they land😂

Just read that growing potatoes following grass can lead to slug action. They likely were there for the grass and got lucky. 😮

Käsespätzle is the best childhood comfort food! My dad is from Austria so we always had a bag of spätzle in the freezer when he made a heap-ton of it. The cheese to use is emmentaler and the dish is supposed to be made in the oven, (according to me), spätzle, cheese and onion being layered. If you can't find emmentaler cheese (emmental in English) any good cheese used in a gratin is good - it just has to be aged so the flavor is rich.

Sending support, love, and kindness from Lexington, Michigan, USA

The hens are just as excited to hear your potato hill has worms!

You made Gnocchi 😊 it's an Italian potato dumpling! It's really good with a ragu or a tomato sauce or even a butter sauce. I think it would taste fantastic with the garlic stuff you made!

The noodles are called Zwirl in Germany and are better if the potatoes are cooked the day before. great video ❤

Love watching you guys work together! My favorite homesteading channel!

I have to say I love seeing a gardening video from you guys. I was a little sad when you converted the high tunnel to the chicken run. But hopefully you do a bigger and better one.

You young folk are such good cooks!! 🙂 What a wonderful channel!

Italians make something similar called gnocchi pronounced "in yo ki" using potatoes, flour, egg. Then you thumb the dough to make a shell like pasta before boiling them. Usually use tomatoes sauce but have also seen them used with a cream sauce.

Potato picking, very familiar. We had two big gardens of potatoes every year growing up. We had probably 1000+ pounds of potatoes every year that went into the root cellar.

Last year we had a a time with chipmunks 🐿️ eating our potatoes 🥔 our new cat 🐈 has taken care of that problem for us.

👏🏻👏🏻🎉🎉🎉🎉Yay, potato harvest.

Great vid. Love those potatoes and the Carmel onions. Make those often. That's a good dish with fresh goose. The bee shed looks the trick for protecting the hives this winter. The best with those and the garlic patch. Moles. grubs worms hit the potatoes. Maybe at different temp times. Need you a creeper with a pull rope in the crawl space to handle the crates of stored food. Very easy to hurt you back twisting lifting and trying to work upside down. Much like my 50 years in the low coal mines of east KY. except the sky won't fall. Can't wait til the next one. You all take care. The big change is on now. Time to gather and drain all the water implements. Do some basic service checks on the tractor. It's a southern ride.

Please put 3 bed and breakfast rooms on your property. I need to be able to spend a week there. I know others, need to spend a week there. 🤣

Voles are munching on the taters

I looked it up. Slugs often spoil main crop potatoes by making holes in the tubers. Damage can be serious in autumns following mild, wet summers especially in heavy soils.

I love watching all of your videos. I noticed that when you put the potatoes and batteries in your crawl space it was hard to move the heavy things around. Maybe Eric could build a little board with wheels to move things around down there. Also, maybe a leaf blower would be easier than a broom in your giant Quonset hut. Keep up the great work!

Even though we are In completely different states, I know that we have similar climate, flora, and fauna. We are zone 3 in Northern Maine. I battle the same issues with my potatoes (and carrots, peas, beets, turnips, and winter squash) and one of our biggest issues is voles. They love to eat our garden before we can. I was mulching with straw, and it turnout voles absolutely love straw. Just a possibility to consider. Ours survive in -30+ under the insulating snowpack. Good luck with the coming winter. We’ve enjoyed watching you for years!

Arielle Gnocchi is another treat you can make with mashed potatoes, flour,eggs and water😊

I enjoy watching potato harvesting, finding all those treasures. Can't wait to see you with a garden next year, bigger and better than the old homestead.

Grandpa used to call the slugs cut worms, hit tubers and cabbage in the garden, he put ashes around the plants to control them? Mom was German and pronounced it "spetz-lee", would scrape along the bottom of the ricer with a knife to cut them about 1.5 inches long into the boiling water. Super fun to watch you guys each week, keep it up.

Another channel I watch had voles eating her food. She put a wire fencing down on the ground then put cinder blocks around that to keep the voles from digging under and eating all her potatoes, beets and carrots. I love that even the bugs are innocent until proven guilty. Glad you got some potatoes.

I definitely get excited to find out I have worms (in the garden, of course)! Love all that you share, thank you!!❤✌

Potatoes are determinant and indeterminant so chilling for one only keeps the taters from getting sun

The potatoes being munched on is voles or mice . They got me one year.

An acquaintance of mine told me he went to a composting conference around Thanksgiving. He said the people putting on the conference buried whole turkeys in their compost pile and they were baked by the heat.

You just prepared "Halušky", which is traditional dish in Slovakia (Europe) however we just boil them and combine it with bryndza (soft type of sheeps cheese) and bacon. We even have a special gadget for making it (but very similar to ricer you used). Love it!

You guys are awesome.Thanks for sharing! (Never seen someone so happy to crawl underground with potato baskets...) :))

Lol! Great video as usual kiddos! The ice cup smashing was fantastic! lol

Ariel and Eric, glad to see a video from you guys. Blessings to you guys and your fur babies.

These potato harvesting are always my favourite.

Soooo loving what you two are doing on your new property. ❤❤❤❤

I thoroughly enjoy watching all your videos. A senior, as I am, many of the things you do are out for me. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasure to learn from you. There is always something new. Thank you for sharing. You have become very dear to me, even though I am so far away from you. Stay safe and enjoy ALL your dinners. ❤

Nice ice cup! Bird formations we awesome! Good potatoes harvest too !❤

After several years of working on our soil, I was so thrilled to see all the earth worms! So I get that!! Looks like a pretty good harvest for the potatoes, considering it was your first attempt. We have a crawl space too, but not as nice as yours. We just filled our wood box today, in anticipation of twenties at night later this week. Great video as always, just love watching your adventures!!

Congrats on you no work potatoes harvest! Natural. Organic. Homemade. Free!!!

Uggggg! I have a terrible problem with moles coming to eat slugs and voles following to eat my potatoes. I tried a large raised bed with hardware cloth in the bottom but they broke through. I finally had to get 30# nursery pots and put several layers of hardware cloth over the holes to get a harvest. Yours is very respectable in spite of your critter problem.

"We've got worms!" I guarantee that all gardeners say this and never think of the more icky connotations of that phrase! LOL!

Those mutant potatoes remind me of balloon animals! I'd be happy with what you got! I need to try growing potatoes. Hi from Massachusetts!

I really love this couple and their content. So relaxing watching you guys. Even-though I'm sure it's hard work, it's inspiring me to test my own skillsets.

That ice mug smash at the end looked personal 😂

As soon as I saw your partially eaten potatoes, I thought it looked just like what the slugs do to my potatoes in Oregon. So yes, I believe that the slugs got to your potatoes.

More vids you guys great 😃

As a gardener in Australia those weird looking spuds are Pink Fir Apple I think, an old variety I love and that’s how they usually grow.

We live west of Bragg Creek, Alberta in the Eastern Foothills of the Rockies and you have voles eating your potatoes. Our weather and landscape is so similar to yours. I found i had this problem with voles when I covered my potato rows with straw and/or wood shavings. The voles love to use these layers as runways and homes with food readily available. I don't have the problem as much when I layer with soil and compost. hope this helps. We love your videos and have been watching since you arrived in Alaska.

My routine here in tropical Alligator Creek, Queensland, Australia when I wake up and there is a vid from you guys: I immediately put on a vid from anyone else, so I don't miss anything of your vid while I go make a cup of coffee, feed/water my parrot, and do anything else I need to do so I can be undisturbed for 30 to 60 minutes. Grab my coffee, head back to the laptop, select your vid, go full-screen, and enjoy. Love your vids and they are the highlight of my internet-viewing week. Thanks.

The cooking, gardening & build videos are my favorite! Pls Keep 'em coming ~ you two have a unique charm about you, thx for sharing with us

Nice harvest of potatoes and love spaetzle!

That happened to us for the first time ever this year in northern Labrador. We discovered it was mice who did that to our potatoes. Never seen it before.

I am from the South of Germany...we call this "Schupfnudeln". It is also really good if you fry Sauerkraut with bacon bits add the Schupfnudeln and the onions without the cheese. Enjoy!

wow I never heard of potato spätzle here in Germany, but I bet they are tasty!Onion and cheese is very traditional though -best of both worlds😃 Ariel's pronunciation was really good !("Spats-la"). Greetings from Germany

Another great video. Stay safe you guys ❤😊

Looks like Mole or Vole to me . Great harvest.

You two are doing a really great job with your place take care and Thank You for your great videos showing how you are living in Alaska Thank You very much.🤠👍🇺🇲 🇺🇲🍠🍠🍠🍠🧄🧄🧄🧄🇺🇲

Good evening from Syracuse NY everyone thank you for sharing your adventures in life

Hey fellow gardeners, the Spaetzle originated from Eastern Europe and actually it is national dish in my home country Slovakia and we called it Halusky and there is easier way to make them. You just grate raw potato add egg,semi coarse flour and salt and trough special sieve with bigger holes throw them in salted boiling water. Then you sieve them ,rinse them with warm water and once they are sieved you add curd cheese and melted butter,add more salt and you can topp it with fried pancetta or small chopped bacon and also we do it with special kind of cheese called bryndza or you can do it with sour cabbage which you first fried with oil and onion. And this dough you can also make without potato and add some nice chicken stew to it 🙂

Absolutely we use potatoes when making spaetzle and normally we use parmesan cheese not a Gouda or a cheddar cheese. Definitely always use potatoes to make them and your fried onions looked fantastic!! Yummmy! It was taught to me by a German and that’s how they did them although I’ve never made them with a potato ricer before I’ve only squeezed them out of a ziploc bag where I’ve cut holes into it and just sliced them off with the dull side of a knife. Definitely going to try your method next time. Also my dough is usually more firm almost like a perogi dough…almost. Looked like you enjoyed them. Congratulations on your harvest and I hope your garlic becomes a wonderful harvest next year. When your compost is that hot it’s time to turn it and add more to it, is what I’ve always been told. Also great to let your chicken scratch through your compost they will keep it turned for you. God bless, I love watching your videos! 🥰❤️🙏🏻🇨🇦

Slugs are responsible for potatoes w holes in them. Otherwise is either voles or mice. Also wireworm which is the larvae of the click beetle 🪲 tunnel throughout the potato 🥔 leaving access for the slugs. ❤

No Tolerance: Slugs often spoil maincrop potatoes by making holes in the tubers. Damage can be serious in autumns following mild, wet summers - especially in heavy soils.

The Spaetzle dough has to be more fluid, much easier to get it through the press 😊

Opah needed to be said at the ice glass breaking! lol. Those noodles looked really good! Great harvest of spuds - I certainly don't think you will have trouble with freezing in that crawl space. Good job!

Moles, voles snd chipmunks do exactly that to our potatoes 🥔

Nice video, good to see you 2, was not as excited but hey potatoes. I have so much fun with you guys, building, fishing, hunting, its going to be a exciting year. Love ya all

Truly is amazing to see all that you guys have done this year you accomplished a lot of what you set out to do. Waiting in anticipation of what you have planned for next year

I literally just came back from my garden picking the last batch of potatoes. that is hilarious😂🎉😂

Slugs love potatoes Those pink potatoes you were harvesting we call the pink fur apples and are great in salads and are really tasty I really love watching your programs it takes me back to when I was younger and loved doing what you’re doing now I still manage a bit of fishing now and again Thanks again for your lovely videos

Another fine episode of your life and love it

What a nice potato harvest in a quick made bed. I miss seeing you guys in your garden at the other homestead, but I know the future garden is going to be awesome. Can hardly wait to see the new garden making in progress. What’s the difference in climate temperatures from the old homestead? Can’t wait to see your garlic harvest next year. I love watching videos of your adventures. Eric and Arielle you two are an inspiration for others. Keep up the good work and I will keep watching. Bye for now from Alabama.

when i first saw the birds flying, i thought it was the concrete cracking. i thought, OH NO!

That yellow one is really beautiful it ought to be delicious

Ive been harvesting my vegetables this past few weeks and all of my courgettes (zucchini) my lemon and English cucumbers and my my peppers and all of my potatoes have all been demolished by slugs plus I have to add the slugs are absolutely massive this year. Also they even attacked my raspberry and blueberry plants. My garden has been a complete failure this year because of slugs.

Anything that you provide for yourself is a lovely little harvest - just bet those potatoes will be much enjoyed come winter! I so love watching the chickens getting in on the action - made my day!!☺ Lots to look forward to - no pressure!😄 Be happy, stay safe❤

So my hubby is Dutch and we make spaetzle and traditionally it’s just flour and water and salt through a spaetzle machine. I am Italian and you pretty much made gnocch noodles…gnocchi is potatoes, flour, egg, salt……all looks amazing no matter what you call it…yum 🤩🤩 oh and we add crumbled bacon to our spaetzle….delicious 🤗

so i thought spatzel had potatoes too like i literally ate spatzel in germany and thought i remember it having been made from potatoes. so i had to look into this! it sounds like most spatzel in germany is made from just flour & eggs. but it turns out there is a noodle dish called Badische Schupfnudeln that can be considered a type of spatzel. it is basically a potato noodle/gnocchi-like dish that is primarily regional to southwest Germany, specifically the Baden-Baden and the Baden-Wurttemberg areas