Off Grid Cabin in the Forest - Eliminating debt and trimming loose ends

Description

To build a log cabin in the woods - is it an escape from society and toxic people? This week, I finish the roof structure on the off-grid home, install the east window, trim the log ends and cook two hearty meals on the open campfire in front of the tiny house.

After witnessing a spectacular sunrise on Georgian Bay, I talk about toxic people and toxic debt, how they impact my life and how I deal with it.

The surrounding forest is alive with birds and animals preparing for winter in this Canadian wilderness, including the black bear, a regular visit to the log cabin. A light dusting of snow reminds me how close winter is now and that I need to finish the roof and install the wood-stove, a challenge when I'm working alone.

Next video includes installing the waterproofing on the roof of the cabin, installing the woodstove inside the tiny house, and chinking the log walls.

This part of Ontario Canada usually sees winter early, and it's just a matter of weeks now before the land is buried in snow. I need to build a woodshed and an outhouse before then, in addition to chinking and weatherproofing the cabin. Can I do it in time? I'm not sure, so I have to prioritize. The roof is going to be very unique and it's going to take some time to get the material ready to install.

Tags: bushcraft,camping,canoe,self-reliance,survival,log,cabin,inspiration,minecraft,motivation,carpentry,woodworking,forest,campfire,build,diy,home building,cottage,ontario,canada,lumberjack,gear,tiny house,off grid home

Video Transcription

good morning welcome back to the cabin it's October 16th today and we've just had our first snowfall it often comes in October and fortunately the ground is still warm so it doesn't stick but there was a couple fields in the area that completely blanketed in snow the bear is still here so I guess he's sticking around and I have decided I'm not going to harvest him unless he like I said he becomes an issue with my wife and and Kelly the dog but I kind of like having him around so I can let him stay if I'm going to harvest a bear moose deer I'm gonna try to do it off property back in the crown land behind here so he stays for now as long as you behave so I'm happy to have him around so I'm gonna get going on this it's cold it's zero Celsius 32 Fahrenheit right now gloves are soaking wet got to get warmed up get doing some work and get this cabin weather tight start checking filling in the gaps and get that wood stove installed hopefully probably next week so looking forward to getting that to that stage where everything all the work starts moving inside and they start setting this up as a as a proper home inside

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the only way to really work alone is to have little jigs and templates and stuff to help you out in this case this case I nailed this one by 208 they're in line with the rest of the wards on the bottom layer so that when I jam that in place I know it's great where it needs to go and I can just nail it in and see him at the top

handle doesn't look very good but the reason I did this this wool was more unstable than the other one the other one has that big window in it but on the other side and carried a 12 foot log right through here and that exercises the sill for that bigger window on this side I just left joints all the way down to this level so I needed to transfer the weight from the top all the way down to here or at least tie that log with the top log with this and then another one on the inside and then an insert in the middle of that just to hold the wall together hold the ends of the logs together well

while allowing for a little bit of movement still I know the nails are not very strong so there'll Bend as the logs settle the nails will just bend down on it and it will still let these logs settle so that's the thinking behind it but because I was transferring the weight on both sides of the window all the way down instead of coming down to here and then another column there I brought these all the way down framed in that window which left this gap I was going to fill the gap back in with the logs the cut-offs that I cut out of this yeah but then I realized that the kitchen's going right here and it's probably a countertop right at this level so it's going to make sense I think to put the sink right here and drill out through here with an auger a hand auger put a pipe coming out here to drain the water from the sink and or put a sister in here buried in the ground that can have a little roof on top of it and that I could pump the water directly to the sink with a hand pump probably wondering why I didn't bring these windows in flush with the outside of the trim that's what you would normally do and then caulk that well first of all I'm only using clay for caulking and secondly which can wash away and secondly because that's actually sort of structural I don't really want the windows attached to that so I've attached it to the interior piece and just putted these up against it so that's not nailed into the frame of the window the windows sort of free-floating still I could let that move around so that's the plan here plate looks so ugly so the other reason I cut this all the way down to that level is that already there's some talk of putting a small addition on this side and if we did that's an ideal place sort of a chair chair facing the fireplace there kitchen over here so actually wouldn't have pain the interior space if we were to put a doorway through here not with an actual door on it but an up door opening and then here would be a washroom so that's what we're considering and you know if we had a chemical toilet or something like that and here in the future that doesn't stink then I'd be willing to do that probably even put a stand-up shower in here with a water catchment here we're having to heat some water in the wood stove and put it into a catch basin on top and the shower like that it's nice keeping your options open rather than just fill the space and then regret that you have nowhere to add on this whole slide is an ideal place to add on fact I can see it happening but next cabin first before we do anything else additional this one these things have been very distracting to me we're too long now the reason that left them is I wasn't sure how I was going to make the porch roof now that I have the overhang done it's just basically confirmed what I suspected that he's really aren't gonna work as part of the porch roof if I brought that out the full seven feet up top I could have just continued the same roof pitch all the way out but I felt it was too high and that the roof was already long enough and just too massive in my opinion the roof right now is 28 feet long and that would have added another look five feet so 32 to 33 feet long I just thought that was too much too much roof for this cabin I'm gonna cut these off and then I'm gonna build another pitch on this roof to give it a little bit more character I can make it any size that way too though and hesitating because now because once I do this that's final by scouring the underside here when I get close to all the way through this thing is going to want to break off right so if I didn't score that right there when that breaks off it would actually tear our chunk out of the wood all the way back to here so I'm just going to score it here and then I'll cut back down [Music]

since the video that I asked the question what kind of roof do you suggest soar what do you prefer metal or cedar shakes I've been trying to make a decision with my wife's help of course well a couple of days ago we came up here with some metal samples that we picked up at a local supplier and put them up on the roof trying to get a good visual to see what it would look like so this is what we ended up with we narrowed it down between these three and then my wife came up with a suggestion for the roof and that's it we made a decision together

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[Applause]

venison tenderloin baked potatoes are almost done I'm going to keep half for tomorrow morning's breakfast maybe for me that's a lot of food it's tenderloin is beautiful so tender and shinning pick it up off a little bit of sour cream it's also good on the venison

it's only 8:30 when I'm exhausted and it's getting really really cool it's already down to freezing for sure well I think what I'll do is read some of your comments from last week's video more entertaining than any of the books I have right now you start taking the taking the walls too is I can feel a little bit of a draft coming through there

lots of checking to do so I'm probably gonna get started on that this week as well anyway I will see you in the morning good night [Applause]

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this is one of the days and one of the parts of the project that starts to wonder about help and whether it's worth the getting a little bit of assistance on something that's challenging is putting the roof on this building from this angle just looks so steep and it's a pretty long run so I'm going to be spending a fair bit of time up there but it's so quiet today listening to the sounds around me it's basically the snow melting off the leaves off the trees a couple of chipmunks and squirrels and flocks of geese that are flying that are migrating south from James Bay Area so got a lot of time to think as usual up here which I like but this is a stretch I'm tying all this together so a couple of days ago two of my sisters and my wife spent the day up here with me I just walk in the property and sightseeing around the area checking out all the fall colors and just spending some time together up in the nice part of Ontario on a beautiful day and there's of course this time here there's a lot of mushrooms coming out of the ground so we're looking at all rows and trying to identify them separate the edible ones from the toxic ones as I'm sitting here on this ladder working on the roof thinking about toxicity and the things that keep popping into my mind are toxic people and toxic debt and it really does tie into what I'm doing here and why I'm doing it alone so toxic people first of all I'm sure you have talked to people in your life just like I have them in my life toxic people are people that just bring you down they don't add Betty or or much benefit to your life Raven now squawky must have heard me saying it's too quiet you know when I had a lot of employees and over the years I had at peak in 2008 when that financial crisis hit I actually had 93 employees working for me and over the course of 35 years with high turnover probably had I don't know let's say 400 different employees and a lot of them had issues you know problems with alcohol and drugs and mental disorders and and so on mental illness and and I didn't hold any of that against so I never judged anybody for that but there was lots of times that that actually started to impact me imagine showing up to work still drunk from the night before or high that you're smoking up on the way to work or at breaks at lunch and then getting up on a roof and doing some work it's very dangerous of course and as an employer you're actually responsible for the actions of those employees so if one of the employees fell off the roof and got injured even if I provided all the safety gear and the training and everything if they fall off the roof I still get blamed for that so to have toxic people working for me put me and my family at risk but again I actually was dealt with that and I was willing to take that risk on for the most part I used to try to help people you know by giving them employment giving him a decent living wage and it often didn't work out for either one of us but I thought I owed it to them at least to give them a chance and glad I did but toxic people have a way of bringing you down there's a saying that your income is likely an average of the five people that you hang around with the most so for example you hang around five people that have an average income of say thirty thousand dollars chances are that your average income as well and there's a lot of reasons for that first of all you're more likely to hang around people that you feel close to or have similar jobs or similar places that you live because of your income level but the other thing is typically those people have the same habits as you so the reason I mentioned that's not just that I believe that that's true I would take that a step further and say it's likely that your happiness and your general outlook on life is probably an average of those five people as well so if you hang around people that are addicted to drugs or alcoholics or or people that are you know criminals or maybe the opposite maybe people that are super successful then it's likely that you are similar to those people and that they brought you down or brought you up so if you're hanging around people that are always depressed they're always negative and it's quite likely that they're bringing you down and you can make a choice you can choose to keep people in your lives like that and just develop a mindset that has empathy and sympathy for those people but you're able to overcome the what they try to impose on you but a lot of cases you either have to cut them completely out of your life or you have to limit your exposure to them and I've learned that I've had to cut people out of my life that I otherwise liked and still do you know it's not that I hate those people or dislike those people so much that I have written them completely off 'we can't let them be part of my daily life because they take me down they drag me down and their negativity has an effect and there's a lot of guilt associated with that for many people and I've felt guilty as well in the past especially if it's family member that's toxic and I have to limit my exposure to them and it's not an easy thing to do to say to a family member or not even say to them but just start pulling away and then maybe just choosing to spend holidays together for example and of course this is a common thing in families is that you don't see to the rest of the year and and quite often quite possibly there's a good reason for that because they're not adding much to your life they're maybe taking away from your life and if that's the case then it is only fair to you and your family and the people that are close to you to cut them out of your life for a limit the exposure trust me I know how horrible this sounds this doesn't seem very kind to say that that we should be cutting people out of our lives because they have an issue or they have a problem that they're dealing with and that they're toxic but not talking about abandoning people that need help I'm just saying that I I found that I cannot take on their problems and I cannot solve them for the most part I can always give advice I can always give some time and some possibly financial assistance but I cannot change their like cannot change their personality and I cannot do things for them that they aren't willing to do for themselves and of course a lot of my philosophy and a lot of what I do is I teach self-reliance or I encourage people to be more self-reliant that's my little way I guess of giving some of myself because I don't often have time to spend actually physically do something for somebody else so I'm like I said it does sound bad I guess that I'm just saying that you should leave people but I've had to remember that that I can't change people I mean I can try to set a good example and hope that they are able to change over time and evolve and improve themselves and I'm not saying I'm the what they're to strive for they just aren't fitting into my life and they have to strive for whatever's the best life that they can live so that also brings me to another point that's that's debt and dad also is toxic we all know the financial debt of course financial debt has a way of bringing us down it creates stress it changes our lives when we can't get that under control and it's just a horrible way to live and we you know we acquire things and we spend money that we don't have with debt that we maybe can never repay so we're really we're just stealing from our future so it's one of the most important financial advice I can ever give anybody is to try to stay out of debt and if you take on debt take on good debt but that's not just financial and that's one of the thoughts that keeps popping to my head as I'm working on this roof alone so many people have offered to help and I really really appreciate that and I would love to have the help and this is not the reason I didn't accept your help but what I'm about to say is one of the philosophies I've lived my life by and that said debt is often time as much as money and if somebody helps me with something in my life and spend some time doing that there is a debt whether they say there is not a debt or not many people say I just want to help or I just want to help you out with it with whatever situation you're in and you don't owe me anything which they truly believe I do that too I've often I love helping people and I always say there's no debt at some point and you've been accepting that help that person subconsciously or maybe even consciously is starting to track that debt and they're starting to keep a ledger of you know I've done this for this person and they haven't repaid me they've repaid that time data that no emotional debt or whatever it is but I do understand there's certain things about human nature and this idea of debt is one of those things so let's say I accept one person's help who comes here and and helps me out every weekend throughout the summer to get this cabin finished or to come and help me with the roof in this case let's say it's just somebody who wants to help but of the goodness of their heart and they truly believe that if they've got ten days into this and then all of a sudden something happens where they have a project that they need help on and I can't commit my time to that because I've overbooked myself doing this and other things in my life I can't repay that debt now how is that person gonna feel about me when they think well I just helped this guy I've just spent ten days helping him build something that benefits his life and he's not willing to repay that debt again I know that sounds horrible but it's just the reality of this day and age almost everybody is over scheduled we're all so busy doing what we have to do and we all have this sense of and we all have these different priorities in our heads and some of them are legitimate and some of them are things that we've just created as we think you're being priority we don't typically want to set aside time based on somebody else's needs at their time this is saying that your lack of planning it does not make it my emergency so if somebody's got something going on they postpone something and procrastinate and all of a sudden they need help to get something done like me needing this out has put in or this roof in before the next no fall now because I didn't dedicate enough time to it before now to get it done knowing this was coming and then I call up somebody and say look I'm calling in that personal time debt that you owe me because I helped you out five or ten days and now I need you to come and help me with this well that's creating conflict in that case I've required an asset in contributing my time to somebody else now I'm calling in the debt as soon as you call in that debt on your timeline you've offended maybe that person and that's toxic that destroys relationships I've seen it time and time again in my life and I'm sure you have as well its debt its debt whether its financials debt whether it's time and it's so hard to manage that debt and but there is a balance of course there is a way and maybe you have different ways of dealing with it in your life but it's basically like a barter system and if you can't if you don't have a product a barter whether that be time financial resources or knowledge whatever it is if you don't have enough of that to contribute and you're taking too much from other people and then they're pushing you out of their lives so maybe that's the reason because you're becoming toxic to them that's happened a lot in my life and it continues to happen and it will continue to happen and I understand that that's just human nature I don't I don't harbor ill-will I don't harbor resentment towards those people anymore I did when I was younger but now I know if that's my human nature if that's their human nature and everyone's human nature that's just common characteristics or coming behavior of people then how can I resent them for it rather than resent them for it I'm better to control that and never get into that situation to begin with or to at least limit it and try to find that balance so it's a very difficult thing to do but I've learned that I have much happier life and much better relationships when I then when I consider that and I consider them and I don't put them in that awkward position and sometimes that awkward position is not me imposing myself on them but not letting them impose themselves on me or help me where I don't truly need it so in this case buildings cabman alone you know when I go out on a canoe trip or winter camping trip so many things that I do alone a lot of times I'm doing something so well because plans fell apart with somebody else and I could resent them for that again if I start relying on those people and they let me down then I'd start to resent them I found it's better for me that if I just become self-reliant

I just outfit my entirely with food gear skills and time and then I just plan to do that thing whether they join me or not it just becomes a bonus or an added benefit if they join me and and the next rewarding experience or whatever comes of it but on the other hand I don't resent them if they have to drop out for personal reasons so that's why I don't accept help anymore with many things in my life and including this cabin it's one of the reasons of course there's also you know many other reasons I just want to do this for myself again long-winded but it's just the way I'm feeling today and I yeah and I hope you understand and maybe you can apply some of that principle to your own life and identify some of these things that are maybe affecting your happiness or affecting your relationships with other people yeah so that's it I better get back to work again so thanks for watching again really appreciate it look forward to seeing you up at the cabin next week have a great week and take care

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