Off Grid Log Cabin: Alone with my Dog in an Ice Storm

Description

Cali, my Golden Retriever, spends a few days and nights with me in my off grid authentic log cabin in the forest - my dog doesn't always spend the night in the cabin with me so this was a treat for both of us. The weather was incredible, warm and sunny one day with deer coming out to dine on the acorns exposed by the melting snow, but the next day, rain ice pellets fell all night long before changing to snow the following day. It was not the worst ice storm I've witnessed, not like the ice storm of several years ago that shut the northeast down for a few days, but it did some damage.

If you are new to the channel, my three top videos are the ones worth watching and a good starting point. Check out the Playlist. Log Cabin: The Bear Den https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-UbUksm4nPmy72sCsMtEbyUOr4XojCsG

With our DJI Mavic Pro drone, my wife got some incredible aerial footage and photographs of raging rivers, pristine Canadian wilderness in the snow and the log cabin.

The rustic tiny house is extremely hygge right now, especially when my wife and dog are there and the fire in the woodstove is burning, the candles and lanterns are lit and the furs are piled high on the bed. It's extremely cozy now that the floor is insulated and the spaces between the logs have been filled. Woodworking and bushcrafting the structure was very rewarding, but the interior finishes are the icing on the cake. Whenever I'm inside with the fire burning and I look out through the windows and the winter storms raging, I'm inspired to finish the tiny log house as soon as possible so that I can get working on the front porch, the outdoor kitchen, the cellar, workshop, maple syrup shack and more.

I'm particularly excited to live off the land, foraging for wild plants and edibles, growing my own vegetables and becoming self reliant. I can use this off grid cabin as a shelter and base where I can practice living off the land and use primitive technology, learn bushcraft skills, improve my survival skills and my self reliance.

Of course, no video would be complete without the meals that I prepare on the wood stove over the fire with cast iron cookware. In this episode, I make stewed venison spiced with garam masala, with leeks, onions and broccoli. For breakfast, I have fresh chicken eggs from the nearby rural homestead where they raise chickens and turkeys. I will be showing how I put the eggs in long term storage, preserving the food for the future.

My dog and I fall asleep to the hooting of barred owls, and the wind through the trees and the falling rain were a big ASMR triggers for me. It's deep winter outside, but in the cabin was cosy and warm. Sometimes I think living off grid in a tiny house seems much easier, away from the daily stress of life.

In fact, dealing with my high blood pressure and becoming much healthier is my motivation for building this cabin and living the simple life. Not my only motivation of course, I'm also inspired by my wife and my parents, who are living long and happy lives. Inspiration is important in this crazy world, and of course I'm not the only one who wants to escape from society and retreat to a cabin in the woods.

To accomplish my goal of living off grid with as little money as possible, living cheap and saving money wherever possible, I need to continue to hone my woodworking and bushcraft skills, along with tree identifications, foraging, making maple syrup, harvesting chaga, catching fish and game, preserving food for long term storage (dehydrating, salting, curing, smoking, freezing, drying).

Links to Products Used:

Makers Mark Branding Iron - http://www.makersmarkbranding.com/product/electric-heated-branding-iron

Moka Pot - http://amzn.to/2ndmtw6

Bragg's Organic Sprinkle - http://amzn.to/2EdouzK

Camera Equipment:

Canon 6D Mark ii - http://amzn.to/2EdaZjs

DJI Mavic Pro - http://amzn.to/2DHuJib

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/

Mailing Address:

P.O. Box 20042

Barrie, Ontario

L4M 6E9

Canada

Tags: Self Reliance,alone with my dog,off grid,off-grid,log cabin,cabin,cabin living,home,My Self Reliance,diy,peter mckinnon,golden retriever,axe,alone,camping gadgets,ta outdoors,wilderness,zippo,inspirational,survival,primitive,bushcraft,camping,forest,woods,solo,tiny home,wood,how to build a log cabin,outdoors,pallet wood projects,canon 80D,canon 6D markii

Video Transcription

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thank you up I have a feeling I can't sleep up on this couch aren't you is that what you're planning [Music]

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let's roll that food [Music]

that's where two things for me one-third for you okay I'm done I'm having mine you've been very patient that's good girl

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ready for dinner don't you be getting out there you know better that 20 no - would you like some okay not the table oh boy your dish please

my new dish that's a lot give you too much you almost as much as me you deserve that you deserve all this all right give me five give me five good girl okay go ahead go ahead yeah it's true it's all yours so nice good girl

is that good you're welcome thank you stay out of the way okay okay it's my turn eat

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to the second to cool down okay we five good girl okay careful that's hot all right thank you going please burden leave it

thank you we gonna go we're going for a walk

want your backpack on [Applause]

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she just chose to go out and sleep outside by her itself on the front porch and watch for squirrels when they see if I can get her to command you want to sleep inside and step you just stay up in the rain staying there are you coming in okay

hungry chili up don't get a good girl yeah

one more time you smell good girl double check a good girl yeah yeah you're right alright one more okay give me five give me five

oh I have heard [Applause]

nice warm bed in here [Music]

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it's the beginning of this cabin builder had a lot of funny questions people being sarcastic but asking how many slippers I got for injuries that I kept hearing this kevinville and there was one incident when I was lifting them ridge beams up on to the roof into position I was climbing up this ladder actually with the heavy heavy 6x6 hemlock beam and it just shifted on me and it came down on my thigh and gave me a bruise but I kept working it wasn't sick it wasn't enough to stop me so it was not good but that was literally the only minor injury I've had in the last nine months working on this cabin little slivers no walk nails from hitting with a hammer no Lube falls know whether fall and I think the reason for that is a couple of reasons I think one of them is that it's not a job so I'm able to take my time it's one thing about our no fee in the work force and make money's that you need to do things quickly that certainly not the case here I think the other thing is that I'm just in the moment when I'm working here you listen to the lack of noise listen to the silence outside and the fresh air I think maybe makes a difference too I'm just able to really really focus on what I'm doing no distractions team what I'm deep in thought okay and what when I'm working with them right now still doesn't just distract you from the work itself I'm able to pay attention now I do have a cellphone here with me and I have a first aid kit and answering other questions with safety I do have a carbon monoxide alarm and also a fire extinguisher so

that's screws later once I get to a hardware store

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yeah it's gonna be favorable la mode here clearing the snow off and getting out more materials to finish that bench and put some shelves and stuff in visible answer a couple of your questions since so many new people came to the channel as a result of that viral video last week but noticed on some of the bigger social media pages like lad Bible and NBC Good Morning America and the dot do I live here full-time answer's no not yet I don't have the place righty first of all for my wife and I and because I am married my kids are still with us but they're just about to move out and move on with their lives so just just gonna be my wife and I and my dog our dog so once the cabin rolled in his homestead is ready she and I can move up here at least for a year and see what it's like there's just too many things I need to add to make this place comfortable for a couple rather than just for myself including a bathhouse in addition to this a house somewhere to clean year-round just like laundry facilities somewhere to do wash clothing the outdoor kitchen something out to cook in there all the time and we can bake bread and stuff out here in the oven a workshop I can't keep working inside doing construction inside the building you need a woodshed and I need to keep cutting wood and have that in at least a year or two ahead now before moving in here full-time and needing to heat it full-time sauna like I said more bathhouse storage for food is probably my biggest challenge now if I lived alone if I was single 100% I'd be here right now this is more than comfortable enough for me if you want to stay tuned near the end of almost all of my videos I have a section I call myself reflections where I talk about my feelings for the week and some habits and things that I use to live my life in just observations on people and events

stuff like that so if you want to stick around to that for help talk about in this episode hypocrisy and how I'm a hypocrite but just about everybody's a hypocrite and you need to just decide at what level we want to be and Cali don't lock that tripod over something yeah just in this day and age it's hard to be one of any one thing so even though I'm building this wilderness off-grid homestead there's things that I have to compromise on which leads me to another question and that's the roof boards and the floorboards no I did not mill those myself I don't have a mill and I don't have power equipment or generator up here to do that I have a chicken chainsaw mill that I've never used before maybe that's my compromise I start doing that that's the one power equipment or power process that I use to build the rest of the things up here at the cabin so I did get these things milled locally though extremely cheaply the rough sawn lumber not from a lumber store but it fit into my model into my plan my plan was to build this thing as cheaply as possible I wanted to see if I could build a place free essentially and almost live for free that's not quite possible I'm doing my best to accomplish that but there's compromises at every turn lighting for example now that's one of the other main questions I get is at the end of that short time lapse video and then the longer video I show me up in the loft with lights in behind me Doris that's my wife's touch not mine this little twinkling lights and the in the loft in the bedroom but actually they're functional so I'll turn those on at night before going to bed and that's enough light to get ready for bed bye those are powered by little just double-a batteries that I recharged using this goal zero solar charger I because again this is a mix of modern and and old traditional whatever you want to deemed traditional if you can call anything traditional and when you call something traditional what period and you referring back to but you know I have to run these batteries the camera run the lighting for the camera and I need some kind of lighting even if it wasn't for camera which would mean either bringing it fuel or finding a place that I can collect enough beeswax I guess to make my own candles which is not really practical I've never found anything like that in fact honeybees aren't even native to to Canada and that would not have been a traditional method of use of lighting anyway I digress but basically the point is that everything's a compromise I need power here so it means I'm probably gonna have to install a solar system which answers another question that a lot of people have what am I going to do for power right now I have to go back and charge my batteries back in my truck at the roads I've got high co2 here right now

plug my batteries in keep the truck on I need to bring materials up from the road anyway so that's going to take some time and while that's happening the batteries are charging but that's just not practical I need to get a charging station close to the cabin that I can you know charge a couple of deep-cycle batteries full-size a car battery size and I can charge everything off of that and then we got address the things like Wi-Fi right now it's just cellular and surprisingly I have cellular service here right here at the higher part of the property if I go down even to the back of the cabin sometimes or down into the valley certainly or on most of the property I have no self service um so it's expensive of course to just keep doing cellular so I need a satellite Wi-Fi system here eventually again completely against the green of completely being off-grid but that's the compromise and I'm just going I'm going to continue doing this that I'm going to continue sharing all my experiences up here with you guys so I need to have that Wi-Fi to be able to do that right now most the time I have to run into town even though I'm not up here full-time like I said my Internet's not much better at my house so I need to run into town to a library or a Starbucks or something like that what you get is just so opposite of what I'm doing here it feels odd to sit there Starbucks watching uh listen to the sounds well while I upload a video of this tranquillity here but those again that's the compromises that's the hypocrisy of the age that we live in and what I'm doing here so am i 100% off grid you know doing something that hasn't been done in 50 years 400 years no I would love to do that but the practicality isn't probably not going to because I'm going to have to have some modern conveniences I will have to continue to bring in batteries or you know even kerosene or lamp oil trying to reduce my inputs as much as possible if is that dedicated very serious about reducing my living expenses to as close to zero as possible and that was my dream twenty six seven years ago and when I was a teenager I'm getting back to that now and I want to try to fulfill that now that I'm almost 48 I want to be able to get to that point in my life where I could be totally self-reliant or as close to self-reliance as is possible in this day and age yeah and in the past that wasn't really possible either typically communities helped each other there's always barter there's always a importing and trading I mean break down to the spices that I use for my cooking I can't draw those locally so they're traded in and they would have been for the last thousand years or more um we are in a global with globalization things are easier to get they're cheaper but my goal is to reduce my footprint ecologically as well live a more sustainable lifestyle which means trying to limit the inputs or the imports I guess from you know far off and that includes things like soybeans that are just not growing and corn for that matter not growing organically or sustainably and we have to import a lot of that stuff here so I'm trying to reduce that as much as possible while also having a clean healthy diet so a lot of compromises and a lot of contradictions and a lot of hypocrisy that's uh that's the way it is that's the channel that's who I am so what I'm setting out to do here is there just reduce that hypocrisy as much as possible so if you are new to the videos this is typically the way they're structured that I'll build or do no fishing or

something productive at the beginning of the video most of the time it's silent because I'm not a big talker I'd rather just go do my stuff in the outdoors and and enjoy the peace and quiet and the solitude the serenity and then at the end of the videos I tend to talk and ramble on because it's so quiet for so long so this is what I'm doing right now so thanks everybody for watching this video I really appreciate it look forward to seeing up the cabin next week take care and have a great week [Music]

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