Giant Cheese Burger, Debt Free Living, Becoming More Self Reliant and Successful at the Log Cabin

Description

My goal is self reliant, debt free living at the log cabin, and to be successful l I need to learn how to live off the land, to use the forest sustainably to provide food, fuel and building materials and to make sacrifices today for my long term security and survival. In this episode, I delve deeper into the process of making maple syrup from trees and I cook two meals utilizing some of the syrup - a one-pound cheeseburger on homemade sourdough bread with maple caramelized onions for dinner and French toast and bacon with hot maple syrup for breakfast.

Cali, my golden retriever, does not leave my side all day. We walk along the river and she jumps in and swims and retrieves sticks for over an hour, oblivious to the freezing temperatures. We collect more balsam fir poles for the log furniture I'm making (next episode) before another snow storm rolls in. The days are comfortable, but the end of the video shows the storm moving in, eventually dumping almost a foot of fresh snow on the cabin. Next week's video shows a renewed winter wonderland even though it's spring.

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/

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

My Mailing Address:

P.O. Box 20042

Barrie, Ontario

L4M 6E9

Canada

Tags: Self Reliance,off grid,log cabin,wilderness,inspirational,motivational,survival,primitive,cabin,tiny home,My Self Reliance,debt free,debt free living,becoming self reliant,becoming successful,wild edibles,sourdough burger,woodstove cooking,cheeseburger,Burger,Giant burger,burgers,cooking

Video Transcription

it wasn't expecting to get to some dry weather to boil sup today into maple syrup we had some snow this morning but it's already melting it got up to ten degrees

believe it or not I couldn't believe the thermometer actually cuz it wasn't calling for that but it's warm enough that the SAP is running it looks like the snow is mostly moved south of here big band going across so I have the opportunity to get going on the maple syrup even though it's late in the day might as well boil it because I've got it now anyway the point I want to make was this fire I have to get it burning now I get some hot coals and then keep loading this greener wood that I cut down recently from that maple tree I can put that on there and it'll keep the fire going without going through good firewood point I want to make quickly those this piece right here was from an oak tree that I cut down from back here behind the outhouse back in I don't know what that was maybe in December or maybe even earlier in November possibly but it was still standing no bark left on it and it was so dry that it was actually too dry for in the in the cabin in the wood stove so that's the thing about heating with wood in a wood stove or fireplace is that it can be too green so too wet so it burns too cold and creates a lot of creosote just doesn't burn efficiently but on the other hand your wood can also be too dry if it's seasoned too long and it's standing like this oh cause it's so dry that it was putting out an immense amount of heat and I couldn't even damper that stove down even when the gaskets were better shape than they are now it was unbearably hot in there so I had to kind of balance out the pieces of oak with some slightly less seasoned maple and ash I think so so like I said to dry oak is already a very dense and creates a lot of BTUs per unit compared to other woods so it's already a very hot burning wood so it's already a very hot burning wood but when it's super dry it's actually a little bit too hot for the application that I had first three pack another small tea game just one to explain a couple of things that I did not explain in the last video if you want to watch the last week's video it's 25 minutes long and it's shows my wife and I here collecting all the SAP from the from the trees 25 trees and then boiling it down into about a liter and a half so less than half a gallon of maple syrup as a result well it's been a very poor season we first tapped the trees March third the trap started running started flowing because the temperatures were above zero during the day on March 2nd we tapped on March 3rd got a little bit in the pails and then the next day it just turned freezing cold again and didn't start running again till the 29th of March so then we we collected on the 29th and boiled on the 30th so yeah so we boiled on the 30th of March which was in last week's video we had not even that 20 gallon pail which is what these are I need to get something right now okay so what I'm trying to say is there's the smoke getting in my face again is the boiling SAP down into syrup maple is about 40 to 1 I think birch is about 60 to 1 but maple sugar maple in particular is the most concentrated form of sugar and the trees around here so about 40 to 1 which means I need 40 gallons of this maple sap pure maple sap to make pure maple syrup so I have these are 20 gallon pails I don't even have a full one I might have barely one phone so 20 gallons by the time I boil this down I'm gonna end up with half a gallon of syrup it's barely worth it but the way the seasons going I'd have no choice like I said March 3rd we tapped and it's today is April 3rd it's Tuesday April 3rd which means a month later I've only collected a boat but maybe 15 gallons the other day so maybe 35 gallons of sap total out of 25 buckets I should have 3/4 times that by now problem is being early April now it could turn warm and stay warm and the sap is gonna come up fast and it looks going to turn bitter it's no good after the temperatures including the nighttime temperatures stay up above freezing so zero or thirty zero Celsius of 32 fahrenheit so it's going to be a very short season for us here further set with like even an hour or two so I think the season is probably pretty good for them but here on this dome on this higher elevation around Algonquin Park the winter just holds on hangs on longer so lots of snow in the bush here further south zero snow on the ground so we're just in a little climate here that makes it a little bit more challenging but when it flows the SAP flows it flows well typically this is just an unusual year although it's been usual lately where we get these early you know fake spring thaws and then it turns cold again we end up with a late spring so I wouldn't be surprised to see that happen again where I say what on the lakes around here is early May again historically it's been in April like third week of April but on average but climate change whether you believe it or not it's changing around here so I'm gonna get this SAP on take advantage of the no snow and no rain and it's beautify can gets them some of this stuff boil break down to what did I say 20s so half a gallon till it's at two liters two measly leaders of SAP of syrup and the factor that Ison is leaving less than 20 gallons here you would not want to add big chunks of ice frozen sap into the tank if it was already heated because it would cool the sopra down again so typically if you had a bigger production here and I have than what you would do is have a separate tank or it can have a sort of a screen or a sieve that sits over top of this you can set the ice in that and let it melt down into the into the tank but I don't have enough taps out or they'll produce enough syrup to bother having all that equipment that exert equipment I do have this tank then I have the finishing tank that I use on the wood stove you would not want to boil this inside because the amount of moisture and the sticky moisture that you would fill the cabin with or your house if you're doing it at home would like peel the paint off the walls or the wallpaper is just too much moisture going up into the air too much steam so I boil it out here get it down to about the boiling point of well within a couple of degrees of the boiling point of maple syrup so the boiling point of maple syrup is seven degrees Fahrenheit above the boiling point of water so that thermometer that I just put in that has to be calibrated so I'll boil for because water boils at a little bit different temperature everywhere depending on your elevation and your air pressure and here I think it's above 212 degrees Fahrenheit so because water boils at that temperature put the thermometer into a boiling kettle of water and then I adjust it so that it reads zero and then I know the syrup is finished ready to store once it reaches seven degrees above what is set at zero so 219 degrees basically syrup boils it so I'll get that within a few degrees here and then I'll transfer it to the the finishing pot put it on the wood stove probably end up boiling every tool late tonight and then I'll store it in the jar so the reason that stuff that I made the other last week or on film till a few days ago I didn't boil that long enough so I didn't get it all the way up to that temperature the reason you need to get it to that temperature is for long-term storage it's too watery it'll actually go bad just stored in jars like I have it so typically what I would do and what I'm going to do with this batch is to get it right up to that boiling point maybe even higher up to like 220 221 so that it is warmer or so that is thicker and then when it's in that jar and that mason jar pop see that mason jar lid pops down it's going to be storable on a shelf for years I've got some probably from three years ago still a couple of things are just overlooked so the other reason I collected crying from all the smoke of my eyes the other reason I'm boiling today despite the risk of that snowstorm heading back north and coming across here there's a potential that we're supposed to get you know eight or ten inches like 25 centimeters of snow between tonight and tomorrow might be snowed in here but I need to collect that SAP because it's been so warm what happens it'll actually ferment in the in the pails on the tree and then it's no good so because it's height off relatively high in sugar it will ferment as it warms up so you can't just leave it for too long you how actually you have to boil it or discard it hey Kelly [Music]

[Applause]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

wait are you killing holy that's good I heard you like hamburgers too I'll give you a little bit

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Applause]

thanks for watching that video that's a good example of what I do up here at the cabin every week I get a lot of questions about success and happiness and fulfillment everything else and I think a lot of people get from my channel and from my lifestyle that I am pretty happy person I feel fulfilled I have feel like I have a lot of meaning in my life and I feel like I've had a successful life so far I turned 48 this week actually and you know I've had some success in business and failures in business and you know financially I'm doing well I have great family happy marriage married for 22 years this year and I'm just generally living the life that I want to feel free I feel fulfilled and I'm passionate about what I'm doing here and I don't feel like I'm making too many sacrifices but I don't want to give the impression that I don't sacrifice one of our greatest challenges is dealing with that self-awareness and knowing that we have a limited lifespan we have a limited period of good health and and probably a limited period of of happiness and stability we tend to have major ups and downs and some people have a lot more downs and ups and other people are fortunate there have ups but there's still this lack of fulfillment I think and deep happiness and security and so on so to me what I do up here at the cabinets that I tried to in this whole lifestyle really I try to kind of offset some of that insecure feeling by creating a lifestyle of security which includes debt free living as much as possible putting things away for the future and having some kind of financial stability that's what gives me security and it reduces the anxiety and it reduces the stress that I carry with me everyday because I feel like if I have my future taken care of I can really focus more on the present and I don't have to make quite as many sacrifices in the present so the more I develop these systems or get my life into a secure position get debt paid off and deal with all those little things that nag at you every day like tests or chores after that you've been putting all for relationships that you have maintaining I feel like when I do that when I put that little extra effort in today and it might be just a small little extra effort a small period of time each day to take care of those things that my future feels more secure and reduces into the stress and anxiety I'm at that point finally right now or I'm kind of doing the finishing touches but things that don't absolutely need to be done like these chairs are more of let's reward myself by spending some time making something comfortable even though these chairs might take me a day or two or three to make each one and the benefit of course is that that when I'm finished building these chairs I get to sit around comfortably with my wife around the fire and enjoy the fruits of my labor

so sacrificing my time and effort today building these chairs that I could just go buy somewhere and you know I'd rather just put in the extra effort and do it myself and be fulfilled and created some kind of confidence that I'm able to build something else and be more self-reliant so that's it for this video really appreciate you watching take care have a great week and I'll see you up at the cabin next week you

you