The Building Site for the Log Cabin Bathhouse | Wilderness Sauna

Description

#sauna #logcabin #bathhouse

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Tags: Self Reliance,off grid,log cabin,no talking,primitive,homestead,diy,alone,wilderness,asmr,inspirational,motivational,survival,cooking,bushcraft,forest,kitchen,cabin,solo,tiny home,woodworking,woods,My Self Reliance,Shawn James,building,site,building site,bathhouse,sauna,finnish sauna,banya,how to build a log cabin,building a cabin,building a sauna,canadian wilderness

Video Transcription

- So this is the future site of my vegetable garden. Get an appreciation for the settlers, especially of this area. Forget the name of the road but the road that comes through here, that was the original road for developing Northern Ontario and Canada. It was a road that was established in this date and it's been outta commission for a number of years, so the road now, and I looked at a couple of properties actually on that road that were just off of it, but the road kinda cuts through really thick bush. I don't know, I guess they kinda kept to the low areas back when they were building the road, so it's all through a lotta marshy areas, and really, really rugged terrain. And, as a result, it got abandoned over the years, because it wasn't worth developing. More of the developments happened on the lakes and then kinda spread out from there, so this road that went right through the thick, thick bush came through this kinda stuff. So you can imagine tryin' to create a farm on this kinda property. It's so rocky and hilly and acidic, really poor growing conditions. So I'm hackin' it outta the thick, thick bush here. This is the sunniest place on the property, except for down along the creek in the marsh, but it's actually too risky to put it down there, 'cause it gets so wet in the spring that it wouldn't dry up, and last year didn't dry up at all, but it wouldn't dry up typically until too late for planting season. So getting up on this higher ground, I'm going to need to spend more time watering, but the plants should survive or thrive. So what I need to do is enrich this soil. So next year, what I'll do is start bringing in lots and lots of moose droppings on the property, which pretty unusual fertilizer, and actually it's enough moose droppings that I considered making the cob out of it, mixing it with the clay, and I might do that still. Anyway, I'll enrich the soil with that, then I'll bring other types of compost probably in. So I'm thinkin' for at least another, I'm guessing two years, I'm gonna have to keep buying groceries from the outside, especially, and I probably always will have to buy grain, 'cause I'm not gonna be able to build, or grow enough on this little property in the thick bush. So I'll clear the site, grow vegetables, I can harvest my game and fish from the surrounding forest and fields and lakes, and get majority of my food from the land. This is going to be difficult to protect from wildlife, but Cali tends to keep most of it away from the cabin area, so I think it's gonna be successful. So, like I said, two-year plan I'm thinking. Get this cleared now, and then in the spring, I can probably just plant a smaller garden and try to enrich the soil, plant some stuff like clover that has deep roots, things that improve the soil on its own by fixing nitrogen. So I'll do a number of things like that and then look at a bunch of different permaculture principles that I can apply on this piece and then throughout the property. There's a few other somewhat sunny spots, and there's lots of raspberries and stuff, and then down in the meadow I might plant some things along the shoreline that I think can thrive down there. So that's the plan. This is the sunniest spot on the property. Other than that, like I said, clear out a few more trees. I'm takin' two and then one half-dead one down so far, and it is like two o'clock right now, 2:30, September, what, 12th, 13th? And I'm surprised and impressed that the sun's actually still hitting this clearing. Our growing season is essentially over, or it will be the next week or two. We'll get a first frost soon, usually first week of October-ish, but in these highlands, often it can come in September as well. So I'd be harvesting, typically right now, the last of my stuff and then preserving it. So that's the plan. Now, on the back here against the trees that I am gonna leave up, I'll probably put some kind of building, maybe like a chicken coop, or quail coop, or something like that, or just a garden shed, and I'll put permanent, fixed solar panels on there that I can use as my charging station. I never plan on having much of a demand for electricity here. My plan has always been, and it's gonna continue to be, to live as completely off-grid as possible with as little inputs as possible. So this year I will have to run a generator probably in the winter to power up that Goal Zero power bank and I've got this little fridge now in the cabin, but I'm going to try to use that as much as possible, just as an icebox, and not plug it in typically. And then, in the winter, what I'll do is just keep freezing stuff, ice outside, bringing it in. I planned on getting an icehouse built this year but it didn't happen, so that will be probably put off 'til next spring. I'll do a root cellar that will have an icehouse section in it that I can, that will be completely underground facing north, which this slopes down pretty steeply to the north, so it never gets sun on it. And I'll build a separate area that's insulated probably with straw bales or something like that, and then store my ice and sawdust, where I have a access not too far from here, if I can bring my trailer over there and fill up with sawdust, I can fill that icehouse pretty well. So that's the plan. Like I said, I'm happy with the sunshine here. I'll complete, finish clearing this out, getting this wood down, and then get the woodshed built down there so I can store this year's wood and keep the stuff out to dry. So my wife's been a very good sport about this outhouse. She's like me actually and finds that it's not bad in the winter or the summer. The winter, there's nothin' to worry about as far as bugs, and, for her, bears and stuff like that, and in the summer, the bugs don't seem to come in here, even though I don't have battens on the outside yet. But, with that mouse the other day, that kinda freaked her out, so she asked if I could make shelves here, and put cabinet doors on that are mouse-proof, so that mice aren't gonna pop out from nowhere. So, by keeping this area clean, there's nowhere for them to hide, so, of course, they're gonna come in here the odd time, but they're not gonna hide out and then pop out when you're sitting here. And it's a good bit of storage for my tools until I get a workshop built. Look.

(bird squawking)

So I have a leaning tree issue that I should've dealt with earlier, and I'm only really becoming fully aware of it now that I'm getting ready to build the bathrooms over here. There's a tree behind me that's leaning, it's sort of in this direction. I thought, I've always looked at it from different angles and thought it was, you know, lined up to land like here somewhere, and I see now that the trunk comes up on different leans, and different angles, so it kinda leans this way, and then that way, and then sorta that way. I'm looking closer to the top thinking the tree's naturally gonna fall in this direction, and it's safe to fall, but I see now that, if I was to cut that down close to the ground, that it's likely to fall actually onto the forest kitchen. So I need to get up maybe six feet to where there's a bend, and where the tree starts leaning this way, so that there's enough of the mass above that that's leaning in this direction, because I'm just wondering if there's that much more trunk with that weight leaning in that direction that's going to influence the fall of the tree. So this is a challenge, so I need to figure out how exactly I'm going to fell this thing to make sure it lands right here basically where the sauna's going without destroying anything else. So I have to do that now before I put in the footings for this bathhouse. (leaves rustling)

See, if I can sort of cut it right around this height, which is what, eight feet off the ground, maybe, I can get this to fall right down the path between the kitchen, the cabin, and the outhouse. And this is just tall enough that, if I cut it from the base, it would hit the outhouse, if it falls to the right of those yellow birch trees that are standin' there. I've got another issue right now though. The wind picking up and it's blowing from the east, 'cause we have a storm system coming in, or rain system coming in for the next few days, cold front coming in. So an unsettled weather pattern. So what I'll have to do probably is I'll go ahead and dig the footings and build the columns, the pillars for the bathhouse. And I'm gonna do four corners, four pillars 10 feet apart in a square, and then I'll build the log cabin on top of that so this is not gonna damage those if it falls in that direction. So I'll have to wait. Hopefully, tomorrow or the following day I get more favorable winds. And it'd be awesome if I got some fairly strong winds blowing in this direction from the west, northwest. So, put this off for another day and hope for the best. (wood thumping)

(tarp rasping)

(hammer thumping)

(brush and branches rustling) (tree roots crunching) (brush and branches rustling) You look sleepy, wanna go have a nap while I do this? (brush and branches rustling) (measuring tape squealing) (tool thumping)

(measuring tape squeaking) What did you hear? Squirrel?

(Cali growls)

(Cali barks)

(Cali growling and barking) (tool thumping)

You wanna take this one? Dig, dig here. Dig right here. Here.

Get this.

Here.

Dig it out. Dig it out. Wanna dig?

(tool thumping)

(tree roots crunching) (shovel thumping and rasping) (tree roots crunching) Well, that's the best digging I've had yet on this property. (tree roots crunching) (shovel rasping)

Could almost use a post-hole shovel on this one, the ground's soft, at least for the first foot. Lots of deep soil. Lots of nice, rich soil here. But it's unlikely it's going to continue much further. Is that, (chuckling) yeah. (chuckling)

Hopefully they're just small stones. (shovel thumping)

(shovel rasping)

(tree roots crunching) A wood thrush. Oh, no, it was a chickadee or something. (tool thumping)

What do you think? At least you're a dog, right? (ax thumping)

(metal clanging hollowly) (hammer thumping)

(metal clanging hollowly) (hammer thumping)

Well, at least now I know what it looks like and it doesn't look good. So I will not be leavin' it, but it'll do for this fall at least. I think, like I said, in a prior video, that it's evident I'm not crazy about metal. Like I said in a prior video, I think what I'll do is change this roof, raise this up, or take this apart, reuse the materials and put a shed roof goin' that way, but I'll wait 'til spring to do that. I think this metal will be fine to protect this wood for this year. I left a little air gap between, on this, like underneath here, and this is that two by four, and then lots of air, 2 1/2 inches up underneath, and then more than that up here, so lots of cover, or lots of clearance. But this doesn't fit with the look of the thing, the whole kitchen, it needs some work, but, like I said, it's functional for this year. So I'll revisit the whole thing again in the spring. (dog toy squeaking) For now, Cali, will you not do that, please? Oh, no, here, leave it. Thank you.

So, for this year, my urgent project is to get the first couple of rows, at least, of logs on the bathhouse, and whatever stone work I need to do for the fireplace for that woodstove that I'm using to heat the rocks that creating the heat in the sauna. So that will be my priority before the snow flies in the next month and a half. And then I've got some more work to do inside, and then I can finish the sauna or the bathhouse over the course of the winter. But, right now, I'm feelin' pretty good about bein' prepared for winter this year. Last year was such a panic thing, didn't even have the roof on the cabin, but this year, I feel pretty comfortable. I've got lots of firewood, I just have to keep bringin' it in, keep stacking it into the woodshed, and to get a metal roof on that woodshed. And that's pretty well it for the majority of the projects, so spring next year will end up bein' the woodshop, the root cellar, for sure, and then, if I have time, I'll get on to the guest house. So that's it for this video. Thanks for watching. I look forward to seeing you up the cabin next time. Take care.

(leaves rustling)

(bird chirping)

(footsteps thumping)

(animal howling)