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Log Cabin Sauna Ep 6 | Canadian Wilderness Off Grid Living

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#logcabin #offgrid #canada

The ground and log cabin in the wilderness are blanketed in snow as I start building the walls up above the sill logs on the log bathhouse sauna. Wilderness living includes sourcing clean water for drinking and cleaning, and now that snow has arrived but with warm temperatures, I have many options for collecting it. I start the day off with a calorie rich breakfast of bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and sourdough rye toast before heading out in the cold to work craft the logs for the second course on the log cabin. The following morning, I talk about negativity and why it's important to overcome it and focus on making the best life you can without worrying about what other people are doing or what they think of you.

I start collecting moss for the roof of the sauna but cold temperature and snow is making it difficult. I end the day by sitting in front of the fire with a chaga tea, watching the fire in the woodstove burn for several minutes before ending the video.

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My Other Channel: Shawn James https://bit.ly/2xzZHpB

MERCHANDISE: https://teespring.com/stores/my-self-reliance

Watch the ENTIRE cabin and Forest Kitchen SERIES here:

HOW TO BUILD A LOG CABIN: https://bit.ly/2nbof06

SEASON 2 - The Interior: https://bit.ly/2CIjPqr

SEASON 3 - The Sauna/Bathhouse: https://bit.ly/2AskJWP

THE FOREST KITCHEN, Building It: https://bit.ly/2M3syZE

SEASON 2 - Outdoor Cooking: https://bit.ly/2CFgQPQ

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Website: http://myselfreliance.com/

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My Mailing Address:

P.O. Box 20042

Barrie, Ontario

L4M 6E9

Canada

Links to gear used at the cabin:

Solar Power - Goal Zero

Fjallraven Vidda Pro Pants - https://amzn.to/2rhEiMn

Tilley Endurables Airflo Hat - https://amzn.to/2Ia4xy1

Mora Knife - http://amzn.to/2BOiv35

Agawa Canyon Boreal 21 Saw - http://amzn.to/2BPV6OF

Axe - http://www.torontoblacksmith.com/

Moka Pot - http://amzn.to/2DEomvO Canada http://amzn.to/2ndmtw6 USA

Virtus Knife- http://www.virtusknives.com/

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

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

Solar LED light bulb 15W - http://amzn.to/2BQvSQ2

Copper Fairy lights - http://amzn.to/2BCmF0X

Solar String Lights - http://amzn.to/2DvgU2n

Lodge Dutch Oven - http://amzn.to/2kHuxDQ

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

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Video Transcription

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somebody asked me on the community tab I think it was last night just right up this morning how I regulate the heat when I'm trying to cook especially like multiple things at the same time specifically if I want a hot something cooked at high temperature compared to something slow-cooked and the answer is this center section here this cat this iron cast-iron unit that you lift it's actually the opening to put the to feed the logs in from the top but that's has solid steel where this is enamel cast a nap and it covered enamel so that's much cooler than the center section plus just being in the center gets so much more heat from the fire so when I want to cook something on a high temperature I'll put it in the metal on this yes we want to boil a kettle of water put it off to the side there if I want to slow down the cooking and this stove this is broken this is the damper that feeds air from the back and this these are the dampers for the chimney and further output but the input there's no way to really control the airflow except for this which you're not supposed to do but this is the ashtray you see when I open that a little bit what happens is that the air rushes in there and the fire really heats up quickly so if I want to boil a kettle of water especially a full one I'll put it right in the center on this steel and then I will open that dapper ups of the air rushes up and it creates a really really hot fire then I can just damp that down I can dim these down close these down and then it'll be a slower fire if I want to just a little roast something all day like I did yesterday Apple for eggs for frying these potatoes I want to get a little bit more heat in there so that's the answer so I do it getting the hang of it does take some practice of course I've been doing this for almost a year on this stove so getting pretty good at figure in there actually the second part of that equation is how hot it gets in here so it's only minus six I think outside right now Celsius and it's what 20 degrees in here is 68 inside the cabin and if I get this fire cracked which I'm about to do to get these things cooking faster it can get a little bit actually to warm in here so I usually prop the door open rather than open the windows although I do that sometimes too with the door she likes to go in and out anyway Kelly so as well crack the door open that she can decide if she wants in her room just have to keep an eye on the mobile situation once I get one in here and to get several and then what would I get rid of them it's good for a while typically I don't like I have a trapped one in here since a week you'd or something [Music]

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Tomiko

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Hana's it ever bright out here the snow which is not gonna last long snow is gonna be gone by the time we wake up tomorrow morning so what i'm doing here is scoring that line all the way around that so that when i knock out that there's chunks the pieces that I that I'm leaving in after I cut with the saw cuts down to the line when I knocked those out that it doesn't rip past that line

I don't want little tear oats all the way around the edges of that saddle notch so bitin but yeah cutting cutting through the wood cutting through the fiber is right at the edge of the wood yeah when I can knock those out like I said it'll knock out flush with the wine not passed along [Music]

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[Laughter]

[Applause]

this is one of the reasons I keep hesitating that put a porch on here besides the fact that it's not the easiest thing to do now getting a sloped roof from high enough because it gets narrower but was high enough to get a slope in other words it's only 10 feet wide here right so at a time I went up say three loves it's only about eight and a half eight feet wide which is awkward then the gonna have to flare the roof early or something but anyway the main reason is this it's so sunny right here that if I had a overhang first of all no light would get in this window and it wouldn't be able to sit out here at this time of year and enjoy the sunshine

it's well even in the summer I guess it's cool enough oh it's nice to sit here the sun's actually high enough to peek through the clouds of course that's how I charge the solar panels as well or charge thee the power back with the solar panels but right now put the Sun lower it comes in nicely just above the kitchen and to here missus late October so the Solstice is still another month and a half away which means the sun's gonna be even lower but it still wouldn't clear this roof and shine in that window so adds lots of degrees to the comfort in here but having this south facing wall I'll be honest it in here sit out here and have lunch which I do almost every day if the weather's nice this is very brief period of sunshine vote to get to storm move in and get some heavy rain tonight tomorrow which will melt all of this and make a big mess

look Street so you start picking them out to put the next course on you realize somebody are curved so in this cabin I'm going to instead of putting full logs across everywhere and then cutting out the openings I'm going to cut the logs shorter so they so the openings are pre-installed that way I can take this tree just part of some of the logs and use that and then use the curved part for something else [Music]

for a bit an hour and a half I'm gonna shut the camera off I try to get these things knocks before again for dinner temperatures start to drop before Sun goes as fast as I can some reason I want to get it done tonight it's because that rains coming in I won't be able to work out here at all tomorrow it looks into what forecast so what I'll do is just collect all that moss and maybe do a little bit of work in some

all right I made it just before dark so I thought so that's a course done in a good part of a day I have five logs so once I get down to four logs and now that I have a system going it's gonna go quicker so I think it probably can get two courses done in a day eight logs that's what I was thinking before I saw I can do that that'll be good now it's gonna come down to decent weather and shorter days so whether I keep this pace up or not Kelly don't do that here then of course I've got other chores to do and projects to do so any bad weather days I'll try to either work inside when I'm not editing or what else I've got a few other things to do outside nothing major though

you're a mess to brush you okay morning man is that ever renewed there of

the four inches of snow that was on the ground start and it disappeared quickly now it started raining but no 1 or 2 in the morning I think it's supposed to continue most of today so Kelly what are you doing we're both tired this morning Kelly's still laying in front of the fire yeah I was throwing the logs around all day yesterday putting the second course of logs on the sauna and she had her training dummy with her and she drove me nuts with bringing it up to me every couple of minutes so he's throwing that for her all day so she's exhausted think she went to sleep died at 7 o'clock last night so today's not gonna be very productive outside at least I need to collect all the moss so I will be doing that the Dillon the valley here it was still covered in snow but now that it's going to be melted off I can get in there take all the moss that I need star pilot I think I might actually put it in the cabin like I did this cabin so that I can thought it with the wood stove once I get a roof on problem is I've put it outside in a heap or something it'll just freeze all it I can't even get any part pieces off of it and I need enough to cover the entire roof so I need quite a quite a bit of it so anyway well I'm sitting here waiting for breakfast to cook on the stove I'm just reading your comments on the latest video I just uploaded which is the tool video and within probably a minute or two of me uploading I've got two thumbs down on the on the video and of course people notice that and commented and said who would do that you couldn't even watch the thing yet and it's a couple people or there's a bunch of people that I know for sure that do that and basically they're they called it would consider themselves competitors on the YouTube scene you know or they just don't like what I'm doing or don't or think they do a better job they're not getting recognition for it and it's such a weak way to go through life to instead of doing something productive with your own way

to try to take others down a couple in particular they have YouTube channels and they talk about all the things they're going to do and the things that they do better and the things that they're more authentic about and all these things and you know instead of just talking about it won't you just do it and do it with high quality and consistency dedication and authenticity and and you'll have what you might consider success and stop focusing on the negative and stop focusing on trying to take other people down instead of improving your own skills and becoming a better person yourself it's such a good life lesson I think for anybody in any situation is to just to focus on what you're doing that's why I say become self-reliant more Kelly hairs in my face just become self-reliant and stop worrying what other people think and do just do your thing and become good at it so you're confident and then you care less about what people think about you and you care less about what other people think and then you can start looking at people that are successful in whatever they're doing or have an viewable lifestyle or whatever it is that you envy or that you're jealous about and create it yourself and then maybe just look at that person that somebody to learn from work to be friends with or business partners with comrades whatever just try to focus on that instead the negative side of it I guess be inspired or be motivated to do something better with your life we're all capable you know there's a lot of literature out there that says that the number one predictor of success is intelligence but number two is conscientiousness and and work ethic and I think we're all closer in our abilities that most people think I think a lot of people think that they're incapable of doing something therefore they don't

I've seen so many times and so many people in my life that are so close to having a great life and just make a few bad decisions or make a bunch of little bad decisions that don't seem like much at the time and they stack up and become a miserable or unhappy life I think if they just worked on each one of those individual things and put more thought into every action every decision and then started stacking up good decisions and and productive decisions on top of one another that becomes a great life got a you know question here probably a young guy asking why guys like me aren't super built with big massive body building type muscles and and I think the simplest answer is a body building and building mass is typically very strategic and focused you need to work on one thing work will work on on building strength so lifting heavier and heavy weight every day with great nutrition to build muscle back up and long recovery times it's a good sleep and an adequate rest so that your muscles can rebuild themselves that's very focused but it's also very one-dimensional so you need to have enough time to really dedicate to doing that thing where guys like me or guys that work in construction or do any physical work every single day first of all you don't have incremental increases in in load typically so even other what you do the same job every day so these logs I haven't been doing this type of work for a while throwing logs around all day I'll go back to being more muscular than I have in for the last year or so let's say because I'll be lifting heavier in every loads for a while especially as I get closer to the top of the cabin start lifting things higher so I'll be doing more repetitions and breaking my muscles down even more and I'm feeling it this morning it's fun still sitting here in front of the fire and then if I eat properly and get good rest I'll start building bulk back up well Eccles has it's a basically something it's a principle that works at everything in life if you focus on one thing and become very good at it what takes that focus takes focus and dedication to become good at something at anything really and that's one thing I've never been good at is focusing on just doing one thing I've always had the mindset that rather live a full life and do a whole bunch of things and dedicate myself to one thing I did like bodybuilding when I was a teenager and it was early 20s I stopped doing that I've always lifted weights a little bit but it wasn't focused on building massive body because I had too many other things I wanted to do and strength training helped me do those things because you know most of the things I like to do a physical I did play a hockey and soccer at camión kept me in shape ended up being decent sheet metal worker and and quit that to become an office worker essentially business and entrepreneur against so a lot of things that I've started I haven't finished or I've just left those as a piece of my life instead of the focus of my life and that's the way I like to live rather do that than becoming great at anything I'm not a great carpenter I'm not a great log cabin builder I always say if you want to learn how to look build a log cabin and watch the log cabin home builder not a guy like me so there's a lot of things that do cook a decent cook because I don't like to eat that's really the only reason started cooking when I was a teenager because I wanted to feed myself and feed myself big healthy meals especially back then when I was working out a lot and I needed healthy meals that the rest of my family wasn't eating um so yeah I'm pretty good a bunch of things I'm not great at really anything I would say and that's the reason but like I said I wouldn't have it any other way this is the life that I like to live but when you do something or when I do something I like to do it to the best of my ability with the experience and the knowledge that I have so if I am doing work out so if I'm working on a cabin I'll do some research and I'll focus and dedicate myself to that but a YouTube video why not do the best YouTube video I can do so I and I enjoy that and I enjoyed trying to increase my skill none whatever I'm doing and YouTube videos are one of those things that put a lot of effort into filming put a lot of effort into trying to show you my life and show you the beautiful place that I live in and then the editing I spend as much time as I have to spend to get that done if it's not ready in time that I don't uploaded at that time I put that off so sometimes takes two days to make one video sometimes it takes four hours depending on the type of content and the way that I filmed it but that's you know for all those people that are hitting the thumbs down

I mean legitimately I'm sure people just don't like me and they're giving me a thumbs down for that reason but for people that are literally just jealous or envious and think they can maybe get me down a notch or take I don't know just add the negative thought into the into the channel it doesn't work on me first of all and second of all it's not the good use of your time you should focus on just becoming a better person yourself or a better youtuber filmmaker or whatever it is that you're envious over Joseph well it's starting to get lighter up there and apparent the rains not gonna stop so I better finish up breakfast here and get outside and collect that moss and get it into that cabin

see if I can dig up one of my Terps here off of something else off a wood pile maybe cover that as well so anyway thanks for watching this video I don't really appreciate it and I'll see you up in the cabin next time take care ooh buddy

[Applause]

[Applause]

not as good as I thought it was going to be thought we would have had more of the snow melted overnight but it's still enough to make it unpleasant at the very least collect moss but some of it I can't even find I think what I'll do is wait another day hope that all of it goes and all the snow goes and then I can see all of the moss that I want to collect and collect it before the snow comes back or freezing temperatures come back that's worse actually because once it freezes to the ground I can't lift it up without just breaking apart if I can get it up at all now worst case scenario is I have to wait till spring and I end up with a cool Sun over the winter because I don't have insulation on the roof plan is to get I don't know maybe a foot of moss growing on the roof not just placed up there dying I will have to replace it as it dies if it gets too warm next next summer like during the summer but there is some pretty decent shade on the cabin so I think it'll be fine but the other thing is I'm thinking it I might need to wait till spring and use a shovel Spade to get underneath and actually lift some of the sod up essentially so with the roots of the grass and the and the dirt the mud itself soil so that it can actually have somewhere to grow on the roof something to grow in so that's worst-case scenario best-case scenario is that we get a another week or two of warm weather and each day I can go around collecting some moss to stockpile inside the cabin we're inside the sauna at least on the floor so that can heat it up later it's covered in burrs from running around here again hey Marie

alright I will take up what I have and see if I can find a little bit more and then find something else to do to edit I got I said it some videos [Applause]

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About the Author

My Self Reliance

My Self Reliance

Shawn James Canadian outdoorsman, photographer, guide and self-reliance educator. Writer for Ontario Tourism. myselfreliance.com Outdoor adventures, including survival, bushcraft, canoeing, kayaking, hiking, snowshoeing, fishing and camping.

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