Build a Log Cabin: Front Porch, Self Reliance and Survival, Generation Z

Description

I chink the log cabin with clay and moss, build a front porch and talk about self reliance and survival for kids and young adults as Generation Z takes the torch from us. With 4 days of warm weather before winter, snow and cold weather returns, I must make the log cabin weather tight, and I put a wood deck on the front of the cabin before the ground freezes so that I can build a full covered porch over the winter.

With temperatures above zero, I was able to chink the outside of the cabin to keep mice and other rodents out. Cleaning up around the cabin was also high priority before snow covers the ground.

In my self reflections, I talk about hard work, perseverance and why I'm inspired by the next generation. I thank kids and young adults for following along and I name several of them specifically, thanking them.

The film starts off with drone footage of the cabin, transitioning from summer to fall to winter. A close encounter with two beavers preparing food for the winter adds to the scene. On the final day of the video, extremely high winds rule the day, knocking over trees, making whitecaps on the lake and adding anxiety to a hard day of work.

To see what I'm up to during the rest of the week between videos, follow me on my other online channels;

Website: http://myselfreliance.com/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/MySelfReliance/

Personal Facebook Page (Shawn James) – https://www.facebook.com/shawn.james.msr

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/myselfreliance/

My Self reliance, shawn james, winter camping, Bushcraft, Woodcraft, Survival, Primitive skills, Nature, EDC, Preparedness, Homesteading, Homestead, Camping, Fire, Self Reliance, Self Sufficiency, Living Off The Land, Off The Grid, Survival Kit, Bushcraft Kit, Pathfinder School, Firesteel, Ferro Rod, Carving, Primitive Shelters, Feathersticks, Campfire, Campfire Cooking, Bushcraft Breakfast, Fjallraven, Friction Fire, Dehydrated Meals, Food Storage, Freeze Dried Foods, Wild Edibles, Foraging, Life Hacks, Camping Hacks, Hunting, outdoors

Tags: Cabin,log cabin,off-grid,self-reliance,self reliance,tiny home,small home,shelter,bushcraft,survival,living off the land,homestead,woodcraft,woodworking,gransfors bruk,axe,dick proenneke,cabin living,alone in the wilderness,joe Robinet,hygge,shawn james,tiny house,generation z,inspiration,motivation

Video Transcription

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we're going to experiment with a few different methods for chinking this right here you saw me prepare it's clay which was pure clay that I had a different part of the property mixed with ash from the wood stove so that's going to be oak and maple and some yellow birch coals basically like careful ash and some moss and grass mixed in here to hold it together it's kind of like an adobe like a cob and I'm not sure what its gonna look like I think it's definitely going to stick together but there's different ways of mixing it different components you can mix into this so you can have clay salt and lime or basically ash you can mix it with grass or not the grass helps it hold helps hold it together but if you don't have that in there and you put something like salt and lime instead it basically turns to a hard concrete so you don't need that dad to grasp the hole together and stop it from cracking but because of the time of year and the fact that I can't probably get a lot of that clay anymore I'm going to try a few different methods to extend it maybe do more like a traditional mortar on the outside chinking here the outside gaps in the logs and then on the inside do this Claymore traditional method or I'll do one wall one way and another well another way so a few different ways this is a sort of an experimental cabin not doing anything to jeopardize the cabin but it's certainly willing to try some different things that I can modify over time if I need to so you got to kind of play around with this practice mixing it getting used to the consistency we've got three or four good days of above freezing temperatures still not ideal this would have been much better to do in the summer or fall but here I am doing it now so I gotta do what I best I can at this time of year see what I can learn from this I can always redo it ship it out and redo sections of it and this summer I probably will end up having to do that in some spots but won't know until I try it the other thing is it would have been a lot easier to mix with my feet just put it on that tarp in there which is what I had planned kind of stomp on it squish it all around more again of a traditional method this is a lot harder he wouldn't believe Oh join us this is to mix by this method that's a nice consistency though

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it's a little gross is not much of a meal but I often don't actually do anything for food during the day when I'm busy concentrating on getting something done as much as I cook those huge meals quite often for breakfast and dinner there's lots of meals that I skipped to is I'm just focused on what I'm doing and I don't want to stop to do anything like cook something up I should actually just prepare some simpler meals in the morning that I can just eat like a sandwich but I don't mind skipping a few meals keep my weight under control and keep me hungry keeping motivated to get something for dinner so here's my little gross a little pan little pan and a little breast of gross gross rough gross

that was just a little I think my selfish coating that I had in that bag so salt pepper and flour basically this smells good

never had gross is one it's better than chicken my favorite all-time meals of any kind wild or domestic a little bit of salt better when it's fried up in butter that's my favorite way to do it or completely plucked and then roast it on a stick over a fire that's awesome too

so I'm just gonna eat this really quickly and then you're back up turn to get the top part of this chinking done before the Sun Goes Down I lose my heat [Music]

this is more like stone masonry than log-cabin building which is actually good because I have so many stolen projects planned for 2018 I'm going to be doing tons of this type of stuff so I'm really looking forward to it I've always wanted to do stone work and you can't put a shovel in the ground here like stones everywhere these little ones as well as these kind of boulders and all the way up to massive boulders in bedrock so the entire ground is that and then a little bit of soil on top so I'll have no problem collecting enough stones but first project I think is going to be like if a spring soon as the ground thaws it's going to be a kitchen an outdoor kitchen somewhere in this area here so stone full stone walls probably and top the countertop and then a grill fashion into that so like barbecue type thing and then a pizza oven out of clay so I'll have to put a roof on it it's part of why I've been collecting all the clay so that's the first stone project and a root cellar smokehouse and things like that foundation probably for a wood shed so tons of don't work that's really gonna be cool so this is hard on my wrist right now because I'm not used to doing this type of work but I'll get used to it real quickly I'm sure this is I have one more day of warm weather after today and then like it's December of third today or fourth so that'll be it I won't my might get the odd day over freezing but at night it's gonna be freezing for sure and I'll be so much snow on the ground that's still gonna be cold so what I'm doing here I can't get this outside wall done before that happens so I'm gonna have to leave it like this for the winter I'll chink just the inside with clay but out here what I wanted to do is make sure I get done today it's all the way around the cabin at least the top or at least the bottom two layers I want to have chinked with the hard material like this claim on the next year so that it can keep the the mice out mice out that would you go directly under the floor they get up through here at least they'll be on top of the floor now I'll have to seal the floor well so they can't get in underneath so you see how warm it is December 5th today we've seen the last couple of weeks where we've had lots of snow on the ground and some cold temperatures now we have a couple days of warm spell well I've actually have what five days so I've been concentrating on chinking something that I can do only in warm weather so that it sets up before it freezes this wind is the cold front moving in fast the waves on the lake were crazy and it's seven degrees Celsius that you see right now but it's going down to below zero later today so blow freezing and then some squalls are gonna come off Georgian Bay and blanket the ground and snow again so I've got maybe four or five six hours of warm temperatures to get a couple things done I didn't get the chinking done and not too concerned about it I can still do the internal chinking but there's one thing I do want and that's you get rid of this mud in front of the door here the only way I'm going to do that is to get a deck built and I can't get a deck fill to the grounds frozen so like I said I've got a few hours so I'm going to get a log a cedar log buried in the ground right here or half submerged in the ground so that I can build posts on top of that to build a porch roof and then put a deck on here ground is actually still semi frozen in a couple spots here but I can dig through that get a nice level spot get that cedar log down on the ground then I can come back at the deck later over the next few weeks or even in the middle of winter

to build the the important rules everything but like I said short window of opportunity really dark out today might get more rain yet but lucky to have warm weather like this in early December where the ground is actually visible so I better get going here

well this is the last of the rain I'm sure for this year get this in get the couple of flat areas coming out this way to put put the support studs for the Deaf and then let the ground freeze let it let's how far I want the porch to come out it's about eight feet almost sunshine

some of you noticed on the last video that I changed the way that door swings had changed so it's hinges on the outside swinging out so one of the reasons for that is I found it from a neighbor the closest neighbor that there's some poachers in the area and he wouldn't be surprised if they stop by and check they're at the cabin haven't seen anybody back here yet and I've got trail cameras and there was snow on the ground so no cracks but casein happens it is more secure if it opens oh just for the simple fact that you can't bust it in it's easier to bust the door in than it is to probably one oh that's little be trim so lit on the inside so you can't bust it in and then the other reason and the reason I did that too swinging in to begin with is that there's more of a concern for snow load up against the door then there is for security or bears people keep mentioning bears with black bears don't typically bust the door in because that door doesn't look any different than a window for example why not going through a window instead of a door so that's more typical so I'm not too concerned about bears and people I wasn't concerned about until I heard that as well but the other reason is room so small cabin as you know and has to be extremely efficient to efficiently laid out inside and that includes inside the door so you do want to have the width of this door swinging in a free space so that you can go in and out comfortably and take your boots off and let the second or third person in and you don't have to step right inside on that side so it's okay if the door swings out show you why so that you can do things like this so firewood stocked it right inside the door which I did will always want to do I thought I would have more room with the door swinging open but swinging in but it's not quite the case so for this door was swinging and still will be hitting this pile of wood so I couldn't have that there I'd have to just pile a couple horizontal this way which wouldn't be as efficient I couldn't put as much in here so I'm going to leave the door on the outside I'm gonna probably stack firewood here quite often leave enough room for boots to come off and drive by the fire and then have clothing hanging above it here so I do prefer this like I said you'll look like I said this thing I'm gonna have to pay attention to and in be a little bit concerned about is snow now I'm building this porch right here that's roof is going to come out eight feet so that's gonna stop snow from coming in this way but of course it can still blow in and wind patterns tend to curl snow around corners so we might get a build up here too for that reason I'll keep about a foot of space between the the sill plate and the deck and also I'm here most of the time so it's not like the snow is going to accumulate suddenly overnight while I'm in there and I can't get the door open even if that was to happen I could probably push it because if it's typically when we get depth of snow it is lighter snow because it's cold and you can push that open now the other option is I can go through one of the windows if necessary that that and that window are operating and they're high enough above the ground that they're gonna be above the snow that's snowpack for the most part and I'll keep those clear anyway so that's why I'm changing the door to swinging out I'm not sure we're going to get that to that today but I'm gonna try to change this door room completely actually I've built a new one this door is glued two by sixes and because of the temperature and the fact that this wood was still a little bit green and I didn't get the back support cross braces on before I put it up it started to work already so I'm going to take this door off all fasten some braces to it and I'm either going to use it as a door for the woodshed or as a table I kind of like it as a table actually so that that might happen sooner than later so if that door doesn't go on today it'll be on the next day or two and we'll go into the next video - that a real decorative part of it that's going on the outside which I'm going to reveal in the next week or two all right so still got these warm temperatures a very good this deck on that window huge tree just fell over just beyond that where I could hear it crack II and then I heard hit the ground what people are talking about removing trees from around the cabin heights strong winds like this even though that's not typical that one now does make me nervous [Music]

temperatures dropping this is sand and gravel mix all of this in here so it drains really well and that underneath it's rock got big boulders in bedrock but I'm going to need sort of a trough on the outside of swale did I root the water that comes off the higher ground down that pathway keep the water out from under here and just keep shoveling it off and making sure the roof overhangs index a decent amount fuck around this again there's another tree falling over wicked I lost my table put it inside now thought I would have one built by now I watched the program a few years ago I don't know what it is now two or three years ago it was on Netflix and it was basically about gut bacteria and how we destroyed our beneficial gut bacteria through the use of antibiotics but also through a poor diet of processed foods a white flour white sugar and all that kind of stuff and lack of fiber in particular so he experimented with the diet and don't quote me exactly I think it took two to three weeks only to get his gut bacteria back to a completely healthy state and improved his health overall I'm immensely I took that program to hurt I've made a lot of changes to my diet including adding a lot of fiber back into it that's why that breakfast frittata has a whole bunch of different things a whole bunch of different vegetables and proteins in it to increase the fiber in particular yeah in addition to high fiber diet I also eat fermented foods every day of some kind so there's the sourdough bread which is fermented grains made with fermented grains but I really like kombucha and kimchi in particular kimchi is is putting mushrooms on kimchi is fermented vegetables at the Korean dish correct me if I'm wrong like the frittata that I thought was Spanish that we told me many people told me it was Italian not Spanish so I stand corrected on that apologize to the Italians but I'm pretty sure it's mono it's South Korean kimchi South Korean soul it's often made with usually made with napa cabbage or your cabbage green cabbage and seafood of some sort in there so it might be shrimp or a seafood sauce or something soups like seafood oil like fish oil or something I like to make it that way too and I a lot of hot spices as well hot peppers which is typical which is I think traditional so I really love that stuff I kind of get addicted to it I need to eat it every day and I haven't seriously been sick in at least two years since I started doing that including even colds or flus that my daughters would have they bring it home from school and get a little slight touch of it and then completely eradicated almost immediately when they were getting the full symptoms so I've really attribute that to clean living healthy living and and diet in particular so I've got mushrooms here leeks and another strip loin steak but we don't have many of those left now you know I hate frying good steak good meat of any kind but because I'm just so busy working I don't have time to get a fire started out there and get coals made so just cooking in the frying pan again a very glamorous eating spot all right one more week of construction zone and then I have to get something built so I'm gonna get that deck on it's just a loose laid floating deck for the winter not gonna do much to change it in the spring other than nail it down and just make sure it's level it's always going to be free-floating from the the structure of the porch uprights in the roof so it'll do a good enough job for the winter keeping it my free in the spring in particular yeah so anyway so after that's done like I said tomorrow which won't appear in this video but tomorrow I'll put that new door on I'll frame that door in to make that completely airtight frame the outside door from the outside that window then that wall is 100% done on the inside weather tight all the chinking is done and then I'm inside for the rest of the winter pretty well other than building that porch which I'll do on some nice days probably January thaw or something but other than that you can finish this floor this week I can start the table and a bench trimming out all the other windows and and then building railings in a new ladder to go up to their loft and building a bed up there with some storage like rodent free rodent proof storage so yeah lots and lots of projects for at least the another for the next month or two then I'm just gonna keep doing cool stuff and finish that door like I keep mentioning dude I mean about doing a bunch of stone projects around here but the ability material here's the soil that brown stuff that's all just decomposed leaf litter for the most part actually level

what's the level - it's actually slight slope that way which is what I want ground slopes turn out way - that way from there to here so I want a slight slope in it that way including a couple of trenches I gonna have to make underneath for all the water and rain that goes through the deck I don't want it collecting in here you can't get it so - drainage channels going with you other than that I'm happy enough with that for the winter I said these things will move around a little bit then I'm gonna leave it free-floating and then in the spring oh just pull their boards off slide them off cause I'm not gonna fasten them lift these torques them so that she'll Sookie ban that the wood preservation technique in this video up here

charcoal these things up put him back down charcoal the two by fours as well burn them and then seal them with linseed oil anyway happy to get this done and probiem dodd i'm jumping around all over the place trying to beat winter see me do some chink eating and that you know i was rushing to get the roof done the the outhouse i got just enough fall i think to get all the things I needed to get done I wouldn't have done this porch like I said except I wanted that log in there so that I can build a porch over the winter I'm just gonna flatten that out a little bit hopefully that doesn't freeze in so I could pull that up and burn it as well I'm just gonna put a flat spot right here this is a buffering posts on either end they don't have a coming down sloping from a higher section up there and I can have to do some fancy configuration around here so I can make it wide enough that's the slope it on this way probably across at least a video link and service would gutter gutter accident I want to get that done so I have something over the winter to like so I could have waited just waited till spring to do the porch but come January or February marks of like community the sooner the better to get a roof on there it stops no from accumulated in their hand so I can get the firewood back in here I'm hoping to get one more warm day to that I can chink that outside of the wall

and I might even be able to tarp it in actually yeah put a tarp in there open the door and the window let the heat out and then check that wall yeah I'm doing that for sure actually I just thought of that

this just feels good to be sitting out here weather's still not too bad December 5th and Here I am sitting on the front porch of the cabin already feels good but tomorrow morning and I wake up and this will be all snow snow and too cold to sit outside and the lake could probably be half frozen over you

you

before I start working today I just want to get something off of my mind quickly and I'm putting it at the beginning of the video because it's something I feel strongly about this week and I'd like to share it before moving on to the long slow boring process of chinking the cabin so this morning I want to talk directly to my daughter's my nephews and nieces and all the kids and young adults out there that are watching this video and who have been watching my channel and watching the cabin build I read a funny meme a more meme or everyone say it french-canadian and he wants to say ma'am and what it said was don't be disappointing yourself that's your parents job I thought that was funny ironic and sad all at the same time because it appears to be true but what I want to say to my daughters is that it's not disappointment it's not disappointment I can never be disappointed in you but sometimes looks like disappointment is actually just concerned and and a wish for you to lead a happy and successful life and not make the mistakes that we made not make many mistakes and protray to protect you from all the pain and suffering that's out there in the world and that's all it is it's not anything about control or wanting to instill our values or opinions on you it's simply about trying to protect you and make sure you have a happy life and I do feel guilt and I think our generation feels guilt over the way we raised you we grew up I think maybe having things a little bit too easy and then we passed it down to you and we made your life even easier than we had it you know when you complain about chores we either did it ourselves or we hired a housekeeper when you were hungry instead of making a healthy meal we took you to McDonald's when you were bored on a long car drive instead of singing songs or telling stories or playing games looking out the window we bought you a Nintendo DS when you were bored at home we got your computers and and video games instead of preparing you for the real world we made life easier for you we thought that was the answer we thought giving you everything you wanted and

doing the earlier work for you and defending you from your teachers and your classmates and all they heard out in the world we thought that was helping you not realizing it was doing a disservice that we weren't preparing you for your your life we weren't preparing you for the hardships in life and we weren't preparing you for the difficult world that we we live in in difficult society we live in and the challenge is that your generation has to face that even we didn't you know for the first time in history our kids my kids and your generation are going to have less than us you have less fresh water less clean water less clean air less healthy food less healthy soils to cook to a girl your food and is less fish in the oceans there's less game in the forest there's less forest period there's less wetlands because we've paved over them to put new stores in a new restaurants and new developments there's less global stability because we've created a world where where we're at conflict over another and we're fighting over the last remaining resources and those resources are getting thinner less abundant and our population is growing we're at 7 billion people on this planet now and within your lifetime we're going to be at 9 or 10 billion people and we are on a finite planet where the resources are limited now I don't mean to scare you with all of this information and I'm sure you know it but it's just different when you think about it royalty of the past would love to have had the luxuries that we have like indoor plumbing and you know electricity turn fear if it's dark out you flip a switch and the light comes on if you want water you turn on the top and water comes out if you want food you go to the grocery store and you buy whatever you want if you or you pick up the phone and order something in these luxuries that we take for granted these days weren't available to people of the past and not too long in the distant past but we take those for granted and we complain that we don't have enough it's unprecedented things are going backwards a little bit I think it's a challenge and it's an exciting challenge or your generation to fix the mistakes that my generation and the preceding generations made before us and that is to stop act now stop consuming things in excess and and be more efficient and be simpler and happier with a simpler life and now work together to make a better world and we're passing this torch on to you and we hope you do a better job than we did you know it's time for you to inspire us it's time for you to set a good example for us because we haven't done such a great job setting an example for you now the people that are watching this channel typically I think or maybe the exception and are preparing for you know being more self-reliant and I think that's what it comes down to we need a self-reliant generation to pick up that torch and and stop relying on somebody else to fix the problems out there so I look forward to seeing what you do with this torch and and how you make this world better not only for us but for you and your kids and the following generations this is not practical for most people but I think for me it's setting an example for myself and you my daughters and all the other people out there watching this to not snap your fingers and expect to have something appear before you expect to get everything you want just because you asked for it things take time they take hard work and if we want good results and and we want greater rewards and we need to sometimes take that path of least resistance and and turn that down and follow the path that more resistance where we put more work in time and effort into something but the rewards are greater I've been doing nothing but chinking for four days that it's just a slow tedious job that doesn't have much reward as I'm doing it the end of the day I'm gonna end up with a warm cabin as a result and I hope it's making you think a little bit more about what you're doing with your life and and what your future plans are and that it helps you on your path to self-reliance alright thanks for watching that video guys I mentioned I wanted to give some personal shoutouts to some of the younger people that are watching the video I'm gonna have to read this because there's a long list I appreciate everybody and I hope I didn't miss anybody I so I'll start out with so George and his son Darin risotto from New York City Jaclyn the artist from Connecticut Ric Richard Lumpkins dog Kelsie is 16 year old from Arizona Jada who's 9 a Brier Waddington who's 6 years old and her mom Katie Legere Jack who's 10 and his mom Carol Glover

so Samuel is 4 and Judah who's 2 and their dad Theo Rustin Hodges and his two daughters ages 8 and 10 Daniel Kincaid and his son Audrey who's 2 in Kirsten who's 6 Joshua lund is 15 you know this guy Joshua very nice he's 15 years old he said I'm a kid I'm 15 but give a shout-out to one of the younger kids bonding and learning with their parents best wishes from Utah thought that was very very nice Dan who's 13 and his 18 year old sister Liza ELISA who's generally too busy making it with her boyfriend while they're watching and dad Chris from Holland Haley who's 8 and Audrey who's 6 from Caledon Ontario and their mom Dorothy Dorothy's 15 and zou or Zooey 13 and mom and dad dad's Frank Alex he's 21 and Hunter 13 Caleb 9le 6 Lydia 3 and mom and dad Joshu 17 from central Virginia and he has a channel called White Oak outdoors Mathilde who's 7 in Austin who's 5 from Australia their dad is Jason Nora who's 9 and W who's 40 Serena who's 4 and dad Christopher Chung from Quebec with the wind picking up so the audio might not have been the greatest and that last part of it so there's Anna 9 and price 10 and their Uncle Joe Shea Phillips Levi Walters who's 13 years old Lily who's six and Logan who's 13 and there I think it's their mom and dad James and mom Diana J like I said the beginning of the video it's your generation who are taking over this world and I hope you leave it a better place and we did for you and I look forward to seeing what you're going to do with it I look forward to seeing the self-reliant skills that you guys put into action so thanks for watching this video everybody and I look forward to seeing up here at the cabin again next week take care have a great week [Music]