Mountain Man - Is the Dream Dead?

Hi everybody, welcome back to the cabin. I noticed on the last several videos that I get a lot of comments, a lot of you guys are commenting on me learning to ignore the haters or don't pay attention to the trolls or a lot of people are commenting or I'm responding to people who don't understand this way of living or what it takes to homestead, all of these sort of negatives. And I realize after just reading the comments again and then considering what the basis of your comments are, that I have been conveying it wrong. What I'm actually responding to is a number of people who have either stopped watching or are disappointed with what they're seeing, not because they think they could do a better job, not because they're criticizing what I'm doing, but because they're disappointed that what they originally thought I was doing on this channel was a lifestyle that was sort of a dream lifestyle. And that being that you could go into the wilderness, build yourself a cabin and live off the land virtually for free and have no responsibilities. I mean, I think I'm getting this right because that's the way I feel and I have felt in the past, especially when I was younger. When I originally bought the property that I did, well, I bought a property when I was 17, just with money I made in construction and with some help from my parents and bought a little two and a half acre parcel on an island in this relative area, actually. And it was pretty cheap. On that island, I built a little cabin, not a log cabin, just a stick frame thing, like metal siding. Built that really cheaply and I would go up there and spend the weekends. But after that, I sold that property, bought a mainland property on the same lake, five and a half acres of mainland and built that log cabin with the intent of living in it and just moving, doing what I'm doing now, but doing it full time alone and permanently, I thought. Didn't quite work out that way, but again, the dream was that I could not have a job, not try to fit into typical society and live as cheaply as possible without responsibility. And what I discovered is that it's not really practical. It's probably never really been practical. And if you look at the people who have done that throughout history, that have been publicized, the men that go off and become hermits, it's not really that satisfying a life. So, and that's a really hard dose of reality that's hard to accept because I still wanna believe that a guy can do that. Just go off, live in the woods and not have any responsibilities and just immerse yourself fully in nature and live like a wild animal. And if you do a little bit of research in the backstory of most of those stories, you'll see that they're not really independent and completely self-reliant because there's always products that are necessary. There's always food that's required or equipment. And it's not to say that you can't get close to that ideal, but it's very, very difficult. And in this day and age, it's next to impossible. You know, in the past, there was way more resources, for example. There's way more game, fishing game. Anyway, when I set out on this place to do it, I was 47 when we bought this property. So I'm well on my way, or I lived a traditional, by today's standards, traditional lifestyle and raised a family for 20 years. So I got out of touch with doing this and sort of gave up on my dream. So when I bought the property three years ago, the dream, again, was to see how cheaply and how self-reliant I could live, despite the fact that I had a family back in the village that I still have to support or still had to support. Less so now, but I do still have obligations to them. So the dream, I guess the dream is still alive, but it's modified. It's not the dream of living in the mountains alone as a mountain man and thinking I can do that living off the land. So I set out to do it here as cheaply as possible, as self-reliant as possible. And I've been sort of discouraged along the way to discover how much help, how much outside help, or how many resources that you need that you can't produce yourself on one hand. But on the other hand, I realized that building a relatively reasonably priced infrastructure is possible, still, in this area, and in a lot of areas that are much cheaper to live than this, and be able to do it using savings or using the money made from any kind of menial labor or skilled labor job. So I do have a video on what it costs to build the place. I think I'll have to provide just a link in it. It was last year, last spring, I think, over a year ago, that I did the calculations. I think I figured it was $3,500 to build the cabin, including everything, windows, and wood stove, and all that kind of stuff, and I think it was, I said, $6,400 if you had to buy all those materials. The cost of living for this place is very low. The property taxes are less than $300 a year, which I don't get many services for that. Basically, maintenance of the road to get here, essentially, it's the main service that I get for those taxes, which I'm fine with. I do have to get into town, obviously, but to actually just stay on the property, if I didn't have to go into town, the living expenses are very low, except for food. So that brings me around to what I'm doing now. The food portion, I realized that when I did it when I was 21, when I tried to move to my property full time. I had rice, beans, oatmeal, and then some canned fish and canned vegetables and stuff like that. I wasn't able to even come close to catching enough fish or game to provide the rest of my calories. Could've got just any old labor job in the area, although I didn't have a car, but if I could've got picked up, I could've got a job that paid me just enough, even if it was part-time or just part of the year, to pay for the food. But here, here now, food... Well, I guess, first of all, this pandemic has changed the way people operate in society. And I feel I've been impacted less than most people, but I also feel that it's become such a nuisance to go shopping. And I've been doing very little shopping. We've been in town very infrequently since this started. It's so inconvenient that I don't want to go into town or I want to avoid it as much as possible. So beyond the practical reasons to live a cheap lifestyle, my goal here is to get the place to the point where it's functioning on its own or almost be able to provide all of my food, energy, and water for a year, if I had to, not going to town at all. And obviously I'm still gonna visit family and they're gonna visit me. So I would still have some ability to resupply, but I want to eliminate the necessity to resupply. And food production is paramount in order to achieve that. So this pond is gonna supply most of my water, whatever I don't get from the stream, or typically I can get enough for my basic needs, daily needs from rainwater. But this time of year is challenging too. Got real dry spell right now, for example. But food production means I need this pond to irrigate the crops. But also grow enough that I can put enough, that I can eat enough and then put away enough for winter that it can get me through to the next growing season. And also to be able to do the same for my wife. So I calculated, well, I guess it's fairly common knowledge if you do any research that you need living this way for me, for a man that builds the calories that I do, I need a million calories per year. So that is a lot of calories to produce. The hunting, so the animals that I can get can provide a lot of that. I'll very, very likely get a moose this year, which should be about 300 pounds of meat. I'll get a deer for sure. I always get at least one deer, depending on the tag allocation. I don't know whether I can get more than one, but I always get at least one. And even worst case is when I get a smaller deer, I get about 70,000 calories out of that animal. So it would take 14 deer. It would take 14 deer or more to provide enough calories just if I was only eating that, and it wouldn't be the right balance of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. But just to put that in perspective, that's how much food, how much meat you need. Now I can harvest moose, deer, bear, waterfowl, rabbits. I do have my trapping license, so I could trap raccoons in particular. And a few other things, muskrat and beaver if it's available or if I have access to private land in this territory. So I can provide a lot of my calories from game. Fish is abundant. I can probably get enough fish to survive actually if I really put my mind to it. But the bulk of the rest of it needs to come from what I can grow and what I can forage. Carbohydrates are difficult in nature to acquire enough of so growing them is much easier. The permaculture idea of growing perennials here that are gonna provide a lot of food such as berries and I've got the maple syrup of course, other fruit. What else? I've got lots of mushrooms here. I'm gonna plant things like I've got rhubarb already and asparagus and things like that. So a lot of vegetables that are providing more nutritious vitamins and minerals and calories. Potatoes are gonna have to grow which is something that's not, it's pretty easy to do actually. I've got the right acidity here in the soil and probably the right conditions especially with this pond to irrigate. So that's gonna be my focus is to grow enough starch and let nature provide most of the rest of my calories. But anyway, the point of all of this was that I think is what I'm talking about when I say people would be disappointed with what they've seen me do here. For a couple of reasons. One is it's not the mountain man idea of going into the wilderness and hacking a small wilderness camp or homestead out of the forest and doing that virtually for free and bringing in, getting my neighbor to help me. That's typical. Most people can't build their infrastructure without some assistance. So I don't think people are too disappointed with that but the fact that it actually does cost some money and it requires some equipment in order to authentically expect to build a place that you can survive on, be completely self-reliant on. It's much bigger footprint and financial investment than most young guys wanna believe is necessary. That to me is the disappointment. That would be my disappointment if I'm looking from a perspective of my young self wanting to do this, wanting to move into the wilderness, build a log cabin with all just materials that I've cut down, spend virtually no money and live free. This is disappointing. Now, living this way now and being a 50-year-old man and having lived 30 years of maneuvering through society and traditional roles, I'm very happy with where I'm at right now. I'm very happy with this property. I'm happy with what I've built. I'm happy with what I'm now about to continue to build and what the final result is gonna be. I'm not disappointed at all and it is still gonna be cheap. So back quickly just to cost. So $6,400 let's say for that cabin. I've spent more money on the sauna and the forest kitchen didn't cost much but even still a few hundred dollars here and there starts to add up. This, just so you know, I hired my neighbor who sold me this property who came in here with his equipment and did this for $1,350. To me, I'm so thankful that he did that for me. He was open to do that because he's like me, he wants to be, he's pretty independent and likes to keep to himself but the fact that, and he felt like they charged enough to do this work that $1,350 was reasonable, extremely reasonable to change the property and forward my objective, my goals in such a dramatic way. So I've got a lot of cleanup to do obviously. A few more trees to cut down, a lot of trees to cut into lumber and firewood which every stick will be used. I need to level it out with rake and shovel. Need to get my foundation built for the workshop here in the greenhouse there and then today what I'm gonna do is scrape out some of this ground, level it and get it planted in cover crops so that all this soil doesn't start eroding and that I start building up soil for growing food next year. So that's still part of my dream. It's a modified dream, it's a modified wilderness living ideal but it's one that I'm very happy with and I'm feeling very comfortable and excited actually about what this is gonna look like when I'm finished and how it's gonna function with my, you know, my objective and goal is always to be, get to a place where I'm as self-reliant as possible but when I have the money at the time and the strength and resources to build that infrastructure, something dramatic can happen and then I can live very cheaply, almost for free on, in this case, this homestead without feeling like I have to go into town or I have to get a job or I have obligations that I have to fulfill outside of this lifestyle. Yeah, just feel secure in my old age that the work is done, the bulk of the work is done and now I'm at the maintenance stage and I'm able to provide for myself while I'm lying. So the dream is still alive. So if you've ever been disappointed to see how this place has progressed, that it's become bigger than you initially thought it should be or that you dreamed it for yourself, then I think, I don't know, keep watching. I hope you're just as interested and I hope you think this is still within your grasp that it's possible for you and that it's worthwhile and that it's within your financial and your physical limitations, within your means. So anyway, I really wanted to explain that. I wanted to make sure that you understood that I'm not complaining about my detractors or that there's people who are overly critical of what I'm doing here or of me. It really is just that I don't want to kill the dream. I feel like sometimes it looks like I'm killing the dream of especially young men. But to me, it's not the case. To me, this is just as worthwhile, just as powerful a goal as it's ever been. Anyway, I better get back to work because it's gonna be really, really hot today, like 40 degrees Celsius with the humidex. And I've got shade right now, but it's gonna get blistering hot here and when it does, I'm gonna pack up the tools and go fishing. So appreciate everybody following along and listening to this long commentary, but I'm gonna get going, so thanks for watching and I look forward to seeing you at the cabin next time. Take care. Bye.