Bushcraft Log Cabin Project, Cast Iron Cooking and I'm a Ramblin' Man

Description

Bushcraft carving of a new handle for the door, cooking bear roast on a cast iron skillet, cold weather clothing to protect my face, my health issues and how I need to change my diet immediately, why I still need to earn money to pay for this lifestyle, why I need to stay active now that I'm 47, memories not regrets, Cali my dog hanging out with me in the cabin. And, I RAMBLE ON MUCH MORE THAN USUAL after the first 10 minutes.

The front door of the log cabin needs some work, including a new door handle for the inside and the outside. From this part of the build forward, I'm trying to use more rustic wood material from the surrounding forest rather than milled lumber. For the door handle, I make dowelling, bushcraft style, out of yellow birch and the door handles out of sugar maple. It's basically like carving feathersticks or a spindle for a bow drill fire set, but it has to be uniform in thickness to fit in the hole through the wood door and the door handles. I'm not exactly a carpenter, but this type of woodworking is really enjoyable and I'm looking forward to doing a lot more rustic, green woodworking. - log chairs, tables, a ladder to the loft of the off grid home and more. The log cabin is a lot cheaper this way, and I'm convinced once again that I could have built this cabin for free if I had more time, and definitely if I had help instead of building it alone.

For dinner, I cook bear roast on the cast iron frying pan over the wood stove fire, along with pan roasted vegetables. Cali, my golden retriever, begs for her share - she's a good dog generally, but begging is one of the poor habits that we can take the blame for.

I forgot to talk about face protection in my "dressing for cold weather" video earlier in the week, so I fill in the gap by talking about my balaclava, buff, face cream, silk gloves and my Thrunight headlamp.

At dinner time, while eating alone at the wood dining table lit by lantern light, I talk about the health issues I have developed and what I'm doing to clear them up as soon as possible. I found out this week that my blood pressure is high and it is a reminder that I have been letting my diet slip.

At the beginning of this video, my wife was actually at the log cabin with me and Cali, but she left after helping to decorate the cabin with some interior finishes, such as some dishes, caribou, rabbit and deer furs and a set of string lights for the sleeping loft.

With Cali sleeping on her own mattress on the main floor in front of the fire, I slept upstairs on a foam mattress, covered in furs and a Cabelas sleeping bag.

In My Self Reflections, I talk about resolutions and goals for this year, as well as why I built the cabin, why simple living and off grid, cheap living is better than modern society and our addiction to material wealth, and why it's important at middle age (I'm 48 this year) to stay active and continue to create memories rather than regrets.

A few more drone clips of the cabin and the surrounding forest show how much snow is on the log cabin roof and in the bush, and how the smoke rises out of the chimney.

Lighting used:

Copper Fairy Lights in Loft http://amzn.to/2BCmF0X

Solar String Lights http://amzn.to/2DvgU2n

Solar LED light bulb http://amzn.to/2BQvSQ2

Clean Burning Lamp Oil: http://amzn.to/2qz0nZ1

To see what I’m up to during the rest of the week, please 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/

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

you want in go to the door [Music]

one out

are you going out or not [Applause]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

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you going in do you want me to come over that's why you're right I'm gonna come over there you come in you go ahead come in or not I can't leave the door open [Applause]

[Applause]

before I get started on dinner here wanted to address a couple things that I missed in that gear video that I did earlier this week as always I got great two comments and suggestions and questions from you and I did forget a few things a couple things I actually edited out because sometimes it doesn't flow properly and I have to take them out of the final edit but then it kind of leaves the video lacking and leaves information lacking one of the main things I left out face protection is extremely important as well in the cold cold winter especially with the wind when it's blowing especially ice fishing or just trekking across a frozen lake the wind just beating on my face it's not so bad in the bush but out in the open like that that wind chill can get pretty severe pretty quickly and you get frostbite really quickly this is my camouflage want something I wear typically when I'm hunting but it's full coverage I find the ice up I don't like wearing them I avoid it whenever possible but it's just times that it's absolutely necessary to cover your face now I did mention goggles in the in the video on the clothing video the problem with a balaclava and goggles unless you get really good pair of goggles that has great ventilation is once it fogs up which is continuous with the chief pair it says just you're just not going to keep them on and again but he mentions curves a couple of people like Jean Boyd you were one of them that mentioned scarves on my Facebook page and you're right neck protection did mention that I tend to overheat so I like having an open collar so I can vent but then when I'm stopped or again if the wind's really blowing it's nice to have a scarf I don't like a full scarf that's kind of in the way I wear a buff which is also known as a Dickey it just goes on over the neck like that over your head and onto your neck and then you can do all kinds of things with it if you're breathing in cold air pull it up like this and breathe through it so the air gets heated up before it enters your lungs great as a sort of as a balaclava you can pull it like that and you'd be surprised how warm that keeps you tends to let's again unless there's a strong wind just having something like this in front of you your breath kind of accumulates here and if the winds not blowing it away then it actually warms up your entire face you'd be surprised that that's often enough there's all kinds of configurations I have a much longer one that's merino wool might be ice breaker or something and I find that extremely valuable because it can cover your neck and come up on fully over your head and it's a great layering system to have a toque over top of that as well so I highly recommend that I love those things

what else has something that I do I make up this cream now I don't know it's scientifically I don't know the Sun if there's scientific validation for this but I know there was a company I'm not sure if they're still around that makes a cold barrier cream I make this cream myself out of lard out of organic pig fat basically that I render down and then I mix in spruce tips like oil of spruce tip what else magnesium a carrot oil a whole bunch of things that are really good for your skin and there's coconut in there and then beeswax actually that makes it heart heard like that so it's cold right now but it's extra so it's extra hard but I put that all over my face my hands are dirty right now so I'm not going to do that but I put that a really thick glare on my face right to the point where it actually kind of has a shine I put it on after I come in as well and really at this time of year the air is so dry that I put that on almost daily regardless of whether I'm outside or not put it on my hands and my face neck everything keeps me moisturize so that's invaluable somebody else mentioned silks and the comment was short and sweet on my last video and they just said silk long underwear so base layer is used on Everest expeditions period I don't know if that's true or not I'm gonna take his word for it because I like silk as well I don't have any silk underwear or base layer top but I do love the silk glove liners in fact they're my favorite liners by far I think I cut that out of the video I did film a segment here with it a couple of days ago but it might have cut that out for some reason um but like I said silk really thin silk I could be so incredible that it can be warm but it is really thin like silk is but I mean tight weave and so they're very thin on your hands and you can manipulate your gear very easily with them on the only thing is they're not all that durable so they tend to catch on branches and things like that so I go through them and have a hard time finding them I think the last pair of bought might have been at Mountain Equipment co-op so you can check there I think they might have them occasionally but anyway that's some of the things I know I was missing from the last video I'm saying to get going on dinner here the light in here you're gonna notice extremely bright on my face right now these lanterns are actually bright enough and if I wasn't filming and when I'm not filming I don't have this light on all I have is these lanterns and a couple of candles it's just such a nice warm glow leaving the glow from the fireplace coming in lights up the cabin and you know it's enough so it's unfortunate that I need artificial light but because I'm filming I just have to do that know something I do carry all the time no matter where I am as a headlamp they're just extremely effective they're easy to stick into pockets you always have them on you and you know when your light goes out to candle burns over there the battery on my light there dies then at least I have a headlamp this is the through night headlamp I like it because it's very simple there's only a couple settings turn it on you can actually dim it or brighten it so it's good it's a that's enough function for me and with this rubber bracket I guess you could call it you just twist it up and down so one button aircraft aluminum body so it's extremely durable he'd drop this you can put it in water in fact I did a couple tests back in the summer when they sent it to me I wanted to release a video specifically on that but I didn't but I do like it and I think it's worth buying I think they're only like 35 bucks and like I said durable waterproof you can submerge it in water down to something like eight or ten meters or something ten yards so I recommend that as well but let's get dinner on the go Kelly's falling asleep here said long day outside which is great but I'm going to make something I'm sure that's gonna get her up because she's gonna be hungry [Music]

girl

that's me in there Cal you're looking at my reflection girl good girl so I've got carrots green beans onion celery and leeks and the meat is actually bear from an animal that my friend Terry harvested back in I think it was September gave me a nice back strap here it's never the most tender meat let you cook it long but it has lots of flavor and it's really good in fact it's basically like beef and I never trick people but what I'll do is if we have company I'll cook up a bear roast or some steaks or hamburgers or something or caribou or deer or something else but I'll also have some domestic meat as well some domestic animals in case and then give them the option in case they don't too squeamish to try it but everybody invariably does and without fail the end up liking the game as much or more than the beef or pork or chicken over rails for cooking so two or three years ago on this date my wife and I decided to have that we both need to lose some weight but we're eating too much and not getting enough exercise because we're in the midst of the winding down that we're taking care of that financial problem that we had but also starting up the other business that got us out of the trouble so we weren't focusing on her health Kelly I'll give you some okay do you want some okay take her to her dish so I'm not gonna feed her from the table so anyway we decided that we're gonna lose some weight so we so my wife found this app called

lose it a cell phone app that tracks calories so we both start tracking our calories and we started snowshoeing like crazy and just getting lots of exercise every day

we didn't have a dog at the time was right after gunner passed away and before we got Callie hasn't been on a scale in a while and jumped on us on this electronic scale and it came up with a number and I thought there's no way obviously it's heavy um there's no way I could be that weight I've never been that in my life my wife got on this scale on the same thing she thought it must be heavy by 10 pounds or something so sure enough I get home and I jump on the scale or scale at home and wait and and it read the same thing so 196 pounds I'm 5 foot 10 my average weight over the years has probably been 180 pounds and I've never had a low body mass index I've never had a low body fat um so I was okay with 180 but my proper weight probably from my height if you look at the stats the proper weight for five for tens like 165 pounds but I've never been that haven't been that light since probably grade 9 or 10 so I set a goal of losing 25 pounds and I averaged two pounds loss per week so 12 and a half weeks and I'm going 13 or 14 weeks and I lost I lost that I lose 30 28 pounds so I went all the way down to 168 pounds I felt great actually didn't really feel too light I looked probably a little bit thin but I was getting lots of exercise so I was a I was in really good shape it's not like I just lost muscle mass anyway 196 pounds down to 168 and I bounce back at average like 170 to 172 for the rest of that year which I was happy with but after that kind of started letting things go again slowly very slowly and Here I am two or three years later so I jumped on the scale a couple of days ago because I felt like there was something going on like I had a couple of minor issues and I just felt like I had high blood pressure so so when I was in the grocery store last we could put on the blood pressure monitor and it came back really high tired and I've ever had actually and I know why over Christmas holidays I've been eating really poorly and over the last year as I was building this cab and I started just slipping eating too much first of all I knew I was eating a little bit too much and I was okay with that because I was working hard and I needed the extra muscle so in order to gain muscle fairly quickly you need to eat enough calories that ends up also putting a little bit of fat on so it was okay with that so my New Year's resolution is to get back on the healthy plan healthy eating plan yeah almost always done so I'll be eliminating a few things from my diet and then straightening some things out again so one of the issues over the last year in particular was working on the cabin started buying meat from the grocery store instead of as I'd gone through the two deer that I shot last year and instead of sourcing organic and healthier meat we're eating regular corn-fed beef from the store and then pork and and and other meats that weren't organic or weren't from the land and I know when I do that that ended up getting too many calories and too much saturated fat and just a bad nutrient profile in corn-fed beef that just makes me not perform am I my best I'm sold right now I'll be getting back to it so have a deer in the freezer have a grass-fed beef in the freezer which is extreme

healthy extremely good meat and some geese I'll be catching fish another thing I didn't do as much this year I didn't fish as often or a 2017 so I'm going to get back into that getting a lot more fresh fish from the lakes and rivers around here and other small game and so on so my goal is to go from the 180 4 or 5 pounds that I'm weighing right now back down to I think not quite down to 170 maybe 175 or 173 and try that weight out for this year because I have a lot of big projects to work on again physically demanding projects this year that I need my strength so I can't get too lean and and lose any muscle mass this is great a lot more vegetables sticks it spin it good girl stay ok okay sorry pop let's go to bed okay let's go to sleep lay down lay down good girl good night tell my wife's been decorating well Kelly's all curled up on her bed down there by the fire hope she's not too warm but she was tired so I think she'll be able to sleep I'm going to pack it in so I might read for a little bit and and try to get to sleep early so that I can get up early in I need to get this place more weather tight so I think I'll spend tomorrow fixing up that door a little bit more and then it's late the floor as well it's a lot of cold coming up through the floor big day all right good night

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so one of the reasons I wanted to build a cabin when I was younger and it still holds true today is that I wanted a cheap base cost of living so that I could get it and explore have the extra money to get it there and explore and do other things and that still holds true today I think a problem with these big houses that we have is that they cost a lot to maintain you've got a lot of money into them first of all locked up and they cost a lot to maintain they're not set up for going away and leaving them for any like the time the bills just keep coming or right the utilities are still there they're less but you're still paying them so having a cabin like this with essentially next to no ongoing costs such as utilities the property taxes on this property are only $150 a year if you go back to that no permit video no permit required video that I released back you know in August or September I talked about how it's the snow melting on the stove to talk about how we found this property why we bought this particular property and that was one of the reasons it's an unorganized Township and the taxes are next to nothing

so now that this place is getting close to finish I have a lot of work to do outside of course a lot of other buildings to build and the you know bath house I need to pull make this place livable essentially another order for my wife to join me here and I don't blame her things that I take for granted like being able to sponge bathe or jump in the creek or in a lake to bathe right up until freeze up and then as soon as the ice melts in the spring not something she's going to be willing to do nor my daughters when they visit so I need a bathhouse so I realize now you know I would hope he's probably need to make that a little bit more comfortable and just get all the other things in like that outdoor kitchen it's place has to feel like a home that you could live at forever has to have all the amenities that make it comfortable even though me personally this would be it for me I could live just like this and be quite happy it's not sustainable for most people including my wife which like I said it's completely understandable I think it's worth having a place like this to remind us of of how simple we can live and how happy we can be in something so simple but on the other hand to use it as kind of a base home to go there and see new things and do different things so not much of a reflection this week but but it is that time of year where I like to just sit back and think about the things that I did last year and then plan for the things I'm going to do this year set some goals and of course the goals I've set for the property or one thing for the land here in the cabin and then there's the personal goals like getting my diet back under control on my weight under control and my blood pressure lowered and things like that some important things that allow me to continue enjoy this lifestyle unfortunately this might be like a lot salt pork meals ahead of the year okay I've got a little bit of a high blood pressure situation going on right now I'm going to be 48 this spring in April so assess that age we're going to start to pay a little bit more attention to a perfect diet because my dad had actually both sides have history of heart issues and high blood pressure so something I'm gonna always have to watch so some people might say I'm only going to be 48 it's not that old and you have a family history have to be extra careful and my diet is pretty good but tend to let it go when I'm working hurt so I'm gonna have to pay attention to everything I eat now back on the organic healthy low saturated fat more plant-based diet excuse me don't beg give your own food there yeah I'm gonna miss pork this is your thing so I have to get back on to the lifestyle that I had been leading up until a couple years ago where I was growing pretty much all over food and raising it and then just preserving at this time of year creating things like jarred tomatoes and and other vegetables and frozen things and so on so I'm not shipping it in so it's an ambitious year but I've done it in the past and you know obviously all of this is in addition to that but back then I had a traditional job or company to run so I was just as busy can't use the excuse that I don't have time to do things because I know it's just a matter of prioritizing my time in the past and they are prioritized watching TV or you know doing things that were to get used to my time which is fine everybody goes through that phase but I don't want to get stuck in that face and and then you know 20 years from now look back and think what did I do during that period what a waste of time I was young back and even though I'm 48 this year if you're younger than me you don't consider 48 young and if you're my age you don't consider young go here and your sixties or 70s or 80s you sure do and you got to keep that in mind you know keep moving and keep doing things keep having fun times and creating memories and not regrets so that's my goal for this year and forevermore is just to keep going keep doing things different keep creating these great memories and doing interesting things and having a place like this to unwind that it's just to me the ultimate you know it's a reminder of everything that I go out there and do to be able to come back to this and this be the reminder of this

simple the the basics of life you know how simply we can live and and appreciate this and be happy with this and then everything else is a bonus that's what I love about this place this lifestyle and the beauty is if you're just starting out and this is your dream you want to move off-grid the cost of living is low some people are saying yeah we've got money and that's why you can do this that freed up time but this place is built extremely cheaply what I recognize is that the world is changing the economy is not what it was the resources are not what they were we don't have the abundance anymore so what happens if I started another company and that goes bust as well and then a massive debt and I'm older now and can't recover so didn't make sense to me so I when I started my self-reliance my real goal was to actually change my lifestyle so that that money could last my lifetime and that's exactly what this is I still need to earn money I still need to make my for my everyday living expenses people are saying I'm retired well not really retired I'm just choosing to live a lifestyle that I can afford that makes me happy makes me healthy and happy and that it you know is enough if I you know couldn't earn enough money to quote do those things that have those expensive things if I'm in a position where I have to simplify and I have run out of resources run out of money to do that that is too late end up in a position that I am struggling to find a way to acquire something like this so I said it to acquire this while I was making money so that I could go back to these basics and and live like I said live happily now because I'm married that means something different than it did when I was younger or or if I was single now if I was single this would be it I would live just this simply it would still explore but cost of living for one person is extremely low and I have a wife and therefore compromise and part of that compromise is to add more amenities to this place that I would on my own into this property and to continue to go and do things that she's excited about or interested in outside of this simple life and that leaves full of compromises and it doesn't mean integrated life means that you're sharing your life in somebody that you love yet no compromise includes some sacrifice but you're not talking about major sacrifices where you give your self up you give up your dreams and your aspirations inspirations so I think it's important to get a real sense of who you are and what makes you happy and try not to give that up in your marriage or in your relationships with other people thank you hey girl you're bored now you want me to go outside with you don't you I know what you're like thugs of sacrifice dogs of compromise right yes they give companionship devotion but they limit you as well there's things you can't do there's a food you need to provide time and space and yeah you could be careful where you take them what they're getting into keep an eye on them yeah girl but and they actually don't really fit into a this lifestyle really because you can't believe I can't believe for I can't go on a canoe trip I can't go somewhere with my wife and leave her here obviously so she has to be accommodated and that it's either leaving her with friends and family or taking her with us so that's adding another complication but we felt at this time in her life it was worthwhile but they can add certainly a lot of expense if you're trying to live off-grid and it's one more animal to feed that doesn't really give you much back it's first as a Productivity at least so I'm gonna turn off the camera now I think I've got a lot of work to do around here today checking the cabinet's laid in the floor

I need that pile of clay and moss out of here so they can start building the benches and stools around that dining table what the chinking and insulating the floor is not very exciting so I think what I'll do is maybe include some clips in next week's video no stop this one right here hope you have a great week can I look forward to seeing up here at the cabin next week take care