Off Grid Cabin: A Visitor, a New Door and Wood Floor

Description

My wife makes an appearance at the cabin, experiencing true Canadian winter with a warm fire inside and deep snow and frigid temperatures outside. Left on my own for the following few days, I change the door for a better one and I finish the wood plank flooring, the perfect compliment to the stone floor and all very appropriate for a log cabin in the forest. The challenges of living off grid in a tiny house are becoming apparent, as temperatures as low as -32C (-26F) with windchill freeze the waterways and dump a couple of feet of snow in the bush.

The video starts with my wife and Cali helping me remove snow and install a new custom branded fire pit and branded iron sign gifted to me by Kyle at Iron Arts in Barrie Ontario http://www.ironartsonline.com/ In the following days, I discover how warm I can keep the cabin in this cold weather despite the chinking not being completely done and a few gaps left unsealed.

I show a few of the meals that I'm cooking on the wood stove, including grilled cheese sandwich, Thai tom yum soup and wild goose confit with rice and kimchi, fermented cabbage.

Living off grid with no electricity or fuel other than wood makes it difficult to store food. I finish making the ice box in the floor to keep food from freezing or from spoiling when the cabin is heated.

The bears are hibernating and the deer have moved to their winter deer yards a few miles away, so there isn't as much wildlife around. Blue jays, ravens and squirrels keep me company, but that's about it.

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/

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My Self reliance, shawn james, winter camping, Bushcraft, Woodcraft, Survival, Primitive skills, Nature, EDC, Preparedness, Homesteading, Homestead, Camping, Fire, Self Reliance, Self Sufficiency, Living Off The Land, Off The Grid, Survival Kit, Feathersticks, Campfire, Campfire Cooking, Bushcraft Breakfast, Fjallraven, Friction Fire, Dehydrated Meals, Food Storage, Freeze Dried Foods, Wild Edibles, Foraging, Life Hacks, Camping Hacks, outdoors

Tags: Cabin,log cabin,off-grid,self-reliance,self reliance,tiny home,small home,shelter,bushcraft,survival,living off the land,homestead,woodcraft,woodworking,gransfors bruk,axe,dick proenneke,cabin living,alone in the wilderness,joe Robinet,hygge,shawn james,tiny house

Video Transcription

Kelly you really want you to jump at me [Music]

got a sequence that I have to kind of work here because this moss and the clay is frozen solid it's minus 19 celcius oh I need to block the cold from coming in and get the heat cranked up in here all that airspace around the door is letting too much cold air in so I need to trim the existing door which I know it's this door is basically the same thickness so that's fine so I can trim that existing door keep the cold air out and then I can decide if I have enough time tonight to get this door on before it gets too cold use our phone in the meantime I'm going to cut this trim this up get this installed and then see if I can get this clay and moss thought out so that I can pull it out of here so that I can get a floor in here then I need to insulate the floor with with sawdust because there's a lot of cold air that'll gets it's gonna continue to come in from the bottom logs and then come up or sit in the bottom I kind of make the whole cabin feel cold what I'll do though is leave one spot uninsulated right here near the door as a cold sump so the cold air comes in instead of spreading across the floor it drops into this cold area right here as a as a cold sink and then they everything a bomb floor the stove can keep heated up [Music]

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well my goose has not thought because it was so cool today so I'll eat through the rest of my camping pack and then I'll restock it the spring so the last of the things I've got some Tom Thai tom yum soup it's a spicy pace it's a hot soup I've got some rice and some coconut flakes got this sour go whole wheat loaf that didn't rise flavors nice and hard oh yeah sugar salt so ever no okay this is not good don't eat this this is a horrible meal do not make this meal [Music]

don't say afraid eat that soup on my love well I think you're gonna head up and go to bed I planned on reading these actually go up in bed but got a comfortable seat here is just the right temperature down here though +15 I would say Celsius in this little corner hotter near the stove and much much hotter up in the wall so I'd let it cool down a bit up there beforehand Oh [Applause]

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at dinnertime let's crank the stove up I've had the heat down kinda cool in here it's about 12 degrees Celsius well I was working it was actually perfect working temperature but need to get to some water boiled I'm making confit wild goose with short cream brown rice and kimchi so that's been on the stove all day just simmering and duck fat that's what confit is actually confit I think the proper term is is you cook it in the duck fat and then you preserve it that way as well so you just let it harden with with the fat congealed or the fat to harden on top so everything is inside the fat can take fully contain with no air getting to it and it actually will last quite a while like like that you can store store or meat in that fat so that's going to be fall-off-the-bone tender awesome I've cooked other things like that like squirrel duck rabbit all tastes amazing amazing cook like that problem is I don't have as many pots as I thought I had up here of the right size so gonna figure out wedding that cook well Grayson

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that's crazy good [Music]

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here here there [Music]

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you know I have to say that this may be most rewarding couple of days for me of this whole project soul cabin build it's still below minus 20 Celsius out there so below zero Fahrenheit you know those temperatures outside and to be that warm inside I was very very happy and very impressed with this with the temperature differential between inside and inside that's just you know speaks for the thermal mass efficiency of a log cabin thick logs the stone floor the heavy cast a fireplace wood stove and just everything in here that heats up and then retains the heat and slowly releases it's real tonight so I'm very happy with it you know I was thinking about where this adventure started and I'm not even sure I look back at that first video I did back in February I think it was February March where I said I was gonna set out to build a free log cabin in the woods things changed so dramatically from that video and like I said I can't remember call why I did that just one day got up and it's gonna go for a walk in the woods and look around and find a place to build a cabin and do it you know sometimes when you have a dream you have a wish that's all it ever becomes it's word stays stays that that that dream or that by want stage never is a good time to start something especially something of this magnitude I've been dreaming about doing since I sold my property back in must have been 2001 year after my second daughter was born and we needed the money I had to sell the property that I built our last cow

and never felt right you know it wasn't that big a dollar amount but we had made the decision that my wife was going to stay home and look after the kids and quit her job rather than have a career she would do the right thing and raise the kid kids but being home for them so the property was one of the sacrifices I had to make to to allow her financially to be able to stay home and of course never regret that that that was the best decision so glad we did that I guess over the last 15 years I've kind of been missing that property missing that cabin instigated me to get up off my both my butt and do something about it and you know 9 10 months later Here I am sitting in a cabin warm protected from the elements you know fulfilling a dream that I had and being able to share this time with my wife and create this thing together you know it's a very emotional experience for me all the hard work that I've been putting into this thing you know all the planning and all the late nights thinking about how I'm going to take that next step how am I going to overcome these challenges I kept coming at me throughout the project everywhere from were mining to get the materials to know where am I gonna build this thing how am I gonna buy a property to put the put the cabin on how am I gonna find property where I'm allowed to build a cabin like this and then getting those materials back here into the bush that's been an ongoing challenge as you saw earlier in this video the the walk I need to do to carry each and every piece of lumber and every log water bringing that up and collecting that just to keep me going just so so many challenges and you know they don't always come across on video my wife tells me I tend to make things look maybe too easy on film no until the hardships but to me that just I don't even look at them as hardships I just look at them as necessary steps in achieving my dream keeping this goal and then I think you know every time I got into a place of complacency or time that I've given up in my life I've taken that first step to change my situation you know that first step is the hardest but you know once you get up off that couch you get up out of this chair and you put your mind to it's amazing what you can accomplish and we all have that in us it's not unique to me by any means and you know it's amazing time time passes quickly and you think well I'm going to start that tomorrow or Monday or in the new year that will be my new year's resolution and before you know it life has passed you by and you just haven't taken those steps yet I'm taking that first step and all the steps that follow it to achieve your dreams to achieve your goals and for me like I said today in particular last few days up here in the cabin overcoming the challenges now of extreme cold you know some things still aren't done but they're getting they're getting to that point where I can sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor taking a leisurely breakfast here this morning waiting for the Sun to rise over the trees there and warm up the forest a little bit before I go do some work inside and I'm glad I took that first step back in February well I'm gonna wrap this one up right here it's been a great week for me here at the cabin I hope you had a great week as well and I hope you have another great week coming up so thanks for watching

take care

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