Log Cabin - Leatherbound Door and The Hole in the Floor?!

Description

NOTICE: TURN YOUR SOUND WAY UP! Sorry, my mic failed on me so my audio is excruciatingly low. My Self Reflections was unusable so I'll film another segment later in the week.

Continuing with the log cabin construction, I cover the inside of the door in leather using a similar technique that I used on the carved footstool that you see in the cabin.

I also finish the icebox in the floor so that I can start storing food below ground, hopefully preserving it for much longer than it would in the hot (or freezing) cabin. Homesteading off grid means I need to come up with more ways to harvest, cook and preserve food for long term storage, probably my greatest challenge in this long term wilderness homesteading experiment.

With the freezing winter temperatures we have been getting this winter, I am burning a lot of wood and I am spending a lot of time gathering it, cutting, splitting, buying, etc. Bringing it from the road to the cabin is mostly uphill and it takes a lot of time.

One thing about the cold is that it doesn't usually snow as much as it does when it's warm and snow squalls come off of Georgian Bay. I have to shovel some snow, but not much and I haven't needed to shovel off the roof yet.

There's a pesky red squirrel trying to get into the cabin and I shoo him away from the logs on the front of the cabin, but he simply jumped down and hid in my stack of firewood.

Living offgrid is challenging and hard work, but there is no schedule so I am able to work at my own pace and do some relaxing around the fire with a good book.

Cali, our golden retriever, wanders around in the first part of the video, but I'm alone for the final couple of days as my wife is off with the dog.

http://myselfreliance.com/sourdough-bread-receipe-100-whole-wheat/

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Tags: Cabin,ASMR,log cabin,off-grid,self-reliance,self reliance,tiny home,small home,shelter,bushcraft,survival,living off the land,homestead,woodcraft,woodworking,axe,dick proenneke,cabin living,alone in the wilderness,joe Robinet,shawn james,tiny house,primitive technology,primitive living,TA Outdoors,Survival Lilly,Canada,Ontario,canoeing,primitive skills,carpentry,hygge,save money,cheap living,cast iron,cooking

Video Transcription

so even though I have that nice big dining table or there it's now covered in stuff becoming my workbench my storage food storage dish storage so I need to get some cupboards bills got that sourdough bread that everybody keeps asking about that my wife makes not going to get a chance to make a video on that anytime soon I don't think I plan on making it oven that sits on top of the wood stove but I'm not sure what I'm gonna get to that in the meantime so many people have asked for the recipe for the sourdough bread because she does such a great job with it if you do want that recipe I'll put a link down below that takes you to the website where a post of the the recipe I finally got it off of her and just put it up there for now so I'm having something I made a big batch of off-camera what it is kimchi that I made so it's fermented cabbage a daikon radish what else onion fish sauce and that's a garlic and ginger and then to that threw that in a big pot and added celery some kidney beans and the can of our jar of crushed tomatoes stewed tomatoes that's a great great meal complete meal and there's no meat in it a problem with me telling all you guys last week with my high blood pressure is that now you're all watching and keeping an eye on me people are giving me all kinds of suggestions recommendations on what I can do to change my diet so I don't dare cheat on camera all right we'll see you in the morning good night

that's the dehydrated dehydrated blue [Music]

guys like your pancakes fluffy they can fluffy or thin a lot of people ask me about seasoning these cast iron pants we've got a collection of up here cast iron pots pans and people criticizing when they saw that pant from last week peameal bacon is the absolutely worst stuff to cook in a frying pan never know the salt coming out of it tends to instantly take that coating so that's what you were looking at last week all of these pots and pans came from garage sales single majority of them came from my parents you just found my garage sales they were all in really really rough shapes I've had to restore all of them and this one you know for example or not what I haven't done yet that looks like a really cheap cast and coated something this is a really good pen so I've had to just refurbished those so how I did that took steel wool in copper wool and took all the rust off first of all and then just started coating with oil really rubbing it in then heated it up put a bunch of oil like high heat cooking all that grapeseed oil let that really soak into the pan and then I've just wiped that off and then do it a couple more times it still takes a while though to get a really good nonstick coating on there you know so every time I clean this pan for any of these pans don't use soap and water I'll just wipe it down and if I can unless it has something like that assault that itching from the salt pork in that case I have to kind of scrub it down with a cloth like this not with a steel steel quote so it's abrasive but it's not steel and then I'll put it back on the stove a whole bunch of oil let it heat up all those pores open up and then oil soak right back in again and I'll just take a clock and kind of rub it in these wood utensils are the best to not metal so it doesn't scrape it the wood almost creates a patina like a hard surface on that pan so it's actually beneficial to kind of push it around push that oil around with it then it works great the piece of pancakes aren't sticking out at all beautiful so the dots like sharpening I'm going to do some videos on sharpening tools it's not super difficult to semadar paying attention to the little details so that's fairly simple process and it takes patience you get frustrated because you think you're not doing it right but really you do have to oil the things you have to oil them pretty well after every use with tools it's all just about maintaining that angle so if that's the bevel on the knife or the saw or plane or whatever it is yeah that has to be maintained exactly that that angle as soon as you go like that or that it created a little bevel micro bevel in the wrong direction and now you have to straighten that out again so again not particularly difficult but I would guess to both of those things have a call a bit of an artist to get to the feel for doing it and then take time and get some experience just doing it often smell these sourdough pancakes it's not like traditional pancakes is that sour smell to it and you know once you get used to eating sour and fermented greens in this case but even vegetables you get addicted to it it's what our body needs so you know if you're new to this that might turn you off but the smell in here is just so so so nice my wife's baking bread today too so that would be nice too

blueberry sourdough pancakes and I have taken so long making this meal that's actually getting light out so I almost be close to eight o'clock seven forty nine

and it's so hot in here but I can't open the door and I want the heat to thought with that pile of moss and clay over here so I get chinking nobody wants to see that it's a few things that I do that nobody wants to see working with my shirt off

singing dancing or you'll be on meditation which I do just do it every morning we're gonna recheck that blood price really thank you for all those things that I do with the things that I don't do I shouldn't have five this is not exactly a stressful let's go you reuse those hinges from the dormer don't see what they kind of shape there man I keep making work for myself I'll do mortise these hinges into the floor here in take these birds so that that's it's it's not going to sit flush that that hinge part here's a pin it's going to be above before but I don't have a cabinet here anyways he wants to burrito

good story about this paddle beside me in 1996 my wife and I got married and we met in 93 when I was 23 years old and got married in September of 96 well in May of 96 we bought a house together and we had travel an hour north of where we grew up or where we lived at the time and where we met where I grew up so we had to go an hour north northern to find it was cheap enough that we get a four we bought this house for ninety nine thousand in May but because we were still saving money to start our lives together we were both still living at her at our parents house houses so we only bought this place we just used it sort of as a cottage for the for the summer until we got married and when we did come back from our honeymoon we moved straight into the house now it's somebody that my wife was a host keeper got a housekeeper oh yeah a nanny four years prior became really good family friends and they gave us this either as a wedding gift but we're thinking it might have been a housewarming gift so September 96 so at the time I was an outdoorsman but she wouldn't have known how much I liked canoeing so it was pretty unique that she got begin with but what's even more cool we just discovered this lately is that this paddle was made by Fiona of badger paddles

so before magic paddles came in existence she was taking these paddles I think she barely made it as well and then painted these scenes on to them so that was her a gift and then I just like I said discovered last year that that's where this paddle originated so I thought that was very cool there he kind of come full circle so two years ago or a year and a half ago in the fall my wife and I brought a canoe offer rich Swift of Algonquin Outfitters nice red chestnut connealy just to go up and you know spend the weekend out on the lake and camping by country and take some photographs so you can see these photos are probably some of the best that she's taken and so my best cut from there as well it will Mike lent us a pair of badger paddles for that shooting for that paddle so can't wait for them to see this they don't know about this they don't know that I have one of her paddles another now I've got it on display permanently in this home new home for it so quick another quick story this stool here I made that back in 1996 based on a sort of a template that my dad and me he made that stool similar to this I don't know probably early 70s so probably 20 years earlier before I made this so the reason I wanted to explain about that footstool this week is that it ties into the door so back in the early 90s mid early to mid 90s when I was a sheetmetal apprentice we would get or I would get laid off periodically in the winters from shortage of work so during that period I need to make extra money so I had about carving decoys and selling them at craft shows and then these footstools

I would make those and sell them at craft shows or take orders I don't remember back then how I took orders but probably from the craft shows I guess so it make these things anyway most of them I carve decoys on them the wolf at the time was significant to me because I'd been seeing a lot of wolves out in the wild at the time including some really close encounters one-on-one personal experiences that really touched me deeply so I carved that wolf based on the image of a wolf that I had seen in the wild so the fabric just picked up from fabric land or somewhere and then attacks and a little bit of padding underneath and then upholstered them myself as well and then we moved up up north and I didn't have time to do that anymore and started you know doing things around the house and getting ready to raise the family and things like that so I stopped doing that kind of stuff

but ended up with a lot of materials left over so I use fabric fake leather and then some of this real leather so this is real Kowhai full grain cowhide and then the brass tacks around the outside are all materials that I had left over from that that period so significant to me to make the door sort of in the same vein as the footstools I thought that was kind of unique so based on what you see of the door and what I've done with the foot stools in the past you might have an idea of what I plan on doing to the exterior of the door which would also explain why I left this door for so long the way it was was a no hurry to get it done because I was planning this and also planning on something on the outside as well so all of these things like I said are significant to me they can take whole cabins and you know very personal but all of these things that I'm adding into it that have collected over the years all have a significant story behind them the bear is the first big-game animal that I show up in my early 20s that's the only height I've actually kept from a bear over the years well donated the rest of the First Nations in Ontario that necklace that I wear my wife took a claw off of this rug actually and had it made into a necklace for our 20th wedding anniversary so that's significant these racks on the wall deer racks or our deer that I shot you know 10 to 15 years ago so I want to thank everybody once again for watching these videos watching this video I really appreciate it I hope you'll to continue to tune in and if this is your first video please check out the playlist and just subscribe if you want to keep watching these and make sure you hit that notification bell a lot of people are complaining that very they're not getting notified or that YouTube has completely unsubscribe them for some reason they can't understand and I can't understand something going on but if you want to make sure you're getting notified then hit that Bell up by the subscription tab at the top of the page so thank you for watching this video really appreciate it look forward to seeing up the cabin again next week take care and have a great week [Music]