72 Logs for My Off Grid Cabin, a Friend Visits

everybody welcome back to the cabin uh today what i'm doing well first of all apologize for not being much on the channel lately but i've been pretty busy just doing all the typical late summer fall stuff other than the three-week trip out west just getting stuff down around done around here and stuff done with my family but i'm back and i need to get stuff done a certain number of things done before the snow falls so the focus today right now the focus before winter comes is to get all my materials right to the cabin site so all the logs out of the bush and as much uh lumber milled as possible before the logs start freezing um so what i'm doing right now is walking around and um inventorying all the logs that i have here all that are cut the size and the length of them so the diameter of the logs and the length of them to make sure that i've got all the materials i need to get the cabin finished so starting with this one for example that's the top of a log i have a longer log that i had cut earlier or taken off earlier i think i milled that one must have milled that into timbers for the basement or something the base of that so it was bigger diameter now this one's only down uh well i'll measure it now but i think it's about seven and a half inches at the top end maybe eight and a half at the butt and what maybe 15 feet long maybe not even that so the problem with that is that it's not really sufficiently big it's not big enough to use as like an actual cabin log but it could be good for maybe a support post or you know lumber or whatever i might mill that so that's the goal i'm going to run around and do that today and then start hauling them back in and get them a final limbing done on whichever one still have branches on them and get them debarked get the bugs out of them and and let them dry a little bit quicker so i'll take you around doing that and then we'll hopefully get around to actually getting the sill logs installed on the cabin um that's a big plan but got some pretty good stable weather right now so i hope i can get a lot of it done before the next rain comes i can't even throw it through here uh [Laughter] [Applause] [Applause] getting up there only got i don't know half a dozen left to count you can see there's a lot of trees that i've left up that are actually perfect log logs for log cabin like that big guy well a bunch of them in a row right there actually and a bunch in behind me this is sort of across the metal from the greenhouse a little bit difficult to access i actually have to create a have to cut a trail essentially across a narrow part of the creek because the other parts of the creek are too wide and too soft to get the four-wheeler across to pull these logs out unfortunately so even though i may do as a walking trail it's just not going to accommodate getting these logs back so that's my next step we're gonna have to do that before pulling all these out and there's i don't know 24 logs or something on this side of the the creek so it's gonna be important to get that done now so that i can start moving the logs now some big guys back here too that i have cut down like 16 one there's got a 20 inch base i'm gonna use the first eight or ten feet as a lumber log and cut that mill that on the on the mill saw it on the mill and then from there up it'll be a little bit more taper than i like but anyway long enough and fairly straight enough to use as one of the logs in the walls so actually you can see that you can see the where it's like a 20 inch base on that one look at that nice one right behind it uh that i'm leaving leaving a lot of the trees just so for the health of the forest also to you know for future if i needed it actually i can see the greenhouse through the thick stuff there um yeah if i need it in the future or for future generations or just to keep reseeding the forest and leaves leaving some mature trees for wildlife and just for the ecosystem they're also um if i leave clusters of them like that it stops the wind from blowing them over as well the only thing i'm creating some openings you can see it's really dense in here all these little saplings they're not getting any light so they're getting pretty old without growing up and they're getting unhealthy and then dying so hopefully i create enough openings that can start letting the next generation start to to grow up kelly's having a blast back here having fun chasing gross you going for walks go for a walk so [Music] [Applause] [Music] part of what i have to do with this trail going back to the logs is actually start right here at the cabin and the reason for that is the main trail my old trail goes up and gets kind of into rougher terrain almost immediately like right there a lot of rocks actually in the track in the trail which is so contrary to what this land and and soil type is right here it's all sand basically from here down but right there it rises immediately up into the hardwoods to the mixed forest with um more like soil sand clay and stone and that's where i'm going to grab the stones that i'm going to use on the foundation and the fireplace but anyway those stones make it difficult to drag stones and stumps and stuff make it difficult to drag the logs through there i'm going to make a clear path through this stay in the sand area until it gets down there and actually almost all the logs are still in sort of sandy ground and soft soft good draining ground and that's because that's where the conifers are growing the pine and spruce once they get up into here you get like sugar maples red maples uh silver birch the odd beach anyway more hardwood type trees and down here in the sand area it's basically some birch but mostly a large spruce pine hemlock throughout hemlock at the water and some red maples and you can see a couple of birches here so i'll clear a path straight through here and it'll probably be the one that i end up using mostly for the greenhouse later as well to go from the cabin down there got my work cut out for me today that's the reason i don't have a video on the other well that's one of the reasons i don't have a video on the other channels i've been doing this vlog stuff but also a good friend of mine came up and we spent three days almost four days just exploring the area with our bows and see if we can harvest some small game and scout for for deer season coming up so that uh took some time and we thought we were gonna get some work done during the day but we literally ended up spending most of the time if not eating then uh hiking through all the forest and surrounding area for miles and miles i don't know how many miles we put on each day but a lot got to really know the area i got to know the a little bit more about the game patterns and just enjoying the time in the outdoors or in the forest during what's about to become peak fall autumn uh colors well probably later this week but anyway beautiful week but now i'm a little bit behind so that's why no video on the other channel this week and i'm gonna uh try to get videos up on this channel each week i'm gonna get some help doing the editing or some of the editing i'll do it like a rough edit on my footage and that's a guy named kyle it's helping me out with the final edits on this on these videos so i can just focus on work all right so i'll check back in with you once i get a little bit done that's the fire burning there that you're hearing cracking in the background i need to get lunch on and dinner on while i'm doing this [Applause] i don't know how much that mic is picking up the sound of the waterfall it's funny the uh there's so much water from the rain heavy rain we had last week that every all the ponds and streams are high this actually dropped quite a bit it was a lot higher in fact the bridge actually washed out like it did in the spring when the whole field was flooded and there was water well beyond the banks what reason i'm bringing that up is that on a really calm day there's this noise in the background and it almost sounds like traffic far away and i actually was thinking um a couple times that i heard it because it seemed fairly loud and i was thinking how's that even possible like there's no roadway major roadway or highways even close to here so how am i hearing this noise is it a train really far off but then i realized it actually is just the water flowing there's so many ponds and streams around here and rivers that have significant drops all the way through it that that water sound is the the main the predominant sound in the forest when it's gone it's pretty cool like it is relaxing but this one's pretty well it's quite loud right now but like i said it was louder last week and the rain was high but it's uh just far enough away i don't really like i don't really like spending too much time right out of waterfall or especially like camping or overnighting at a at a waterfall because i just find the noise actually stressful because when it's too loud and also i'd like to hear what's going on in the forest around me and a lot of times the the water is too loud to hear anything else this is just the right distance i like this um ambiance the ambient sound being the water flowing and then when the leaves are rustling that's the main sound and of course his wildlife like the squirrel and the birds and stuff and actually cal moose i could hear calling to a bull yesterday yesterday morning so that's it i got my trail almost raped well got my trail across the creek and to a few of the logs probably maybe even say a dozen logs have got uh trails cleared or a pathway cleared for the atv and a log to come back in and out so the only thing i need to do is fill in it's a really narrow creek and the bank's actually pretty solid sand um see how it holds up but i do need to put some more logs and maybe some planks that i've cut over top of that and other than that i'm right i think i'm ready to pull the logs out and i did it full inventory i have 72 logs ready to go in the forest spread around i've got several here right now at the at the cabin site got about a dozen down this way say another dozen maybe more say two dozen probably between here and to the left of the greenhouse and on this side of the creek and then another whatever the difference is say 25 or 30 on the other side of the creek so it's going to take me a few days to get these in probably i'm gonna guess three or four days to get all those back to the to the cabin right here and the reason like i said i want to do that so i don't want these logs back in the bush when the snow falls plus i'd like to get them more into this clearing so they dry out a little bit more a lot of them are still like in pretty dense forest they're elevated i kept them off the ground but just left the branches on on the bottom half of the logs in particular and that kept them up or if some were hung up or um landed on other branches and stuff um i left them like that because they were elevated enough off the ground so pretty good air flow i think the damage is or they won't be damaged by moisture a few of them have bugs in them under the bark but that's not bothering me i think it gives the logs character actually i kind of think that's pretty neat so that's what i'm going to focus on next several days i'm going to get all these logs back here get them the final debarking done get the whatever limbing needs to be done like you can see well you'll see i guess in next week's video or one of the upcoming videos on this channel the sill logs here there's still some uneven spots in there like where a knot is kind of high because i'm just cutting them out in the forest that don't really make them that flush so i'm going to take the draw knife and make them all flush fairly round logs that then the next one can come down and sit pretty tight on it so anyway that's it for this video and that's it for a video for both channels this week unfortunately um but like i said tune in to this channel if you're not subscribed to this channel you might want to subscribe to it or at least check in on it regularly i'll start uploading regular videos on this one again um probably several a week actually because they're easy to film and they're easy to to edit and upload um that'll get back to the regular schedule program on the other channel next friday that'll be what it's already october october 5th or something like that all right that's it check out so thanks for watching appreciate it and i look forward to seeing you at the cabin next time take care

Channel: Shawn James

Views: 208,477

Rating: 4.947299 out of 5

Keywords: self reliance, my self reliance, log cabin, off grid, ontario, canada, bushcraft, survival, dog, golden retriever, cali

Id: vwfE_sEZC7s

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021