How a MODERN MOUNTAINMAN can earn REAL MONEY while LIVING IN THE WILDERNESS IN A REMOTE CABIN!

How a modern mountain man can earn real money while living in the wilderness....

There are SO MANY scams out there that target the stay at home person with "easy ways to make money" and they really are scams!!! ... But let me share a few not so easy, but successful, ways we and others produced income even while living in the wilderness. If you have a vehicle and access to a road system it improves your opportunities for earning cash but is not necessary.

When you live a wilderness or homesteading lifestyle you yourself are an item in demand in and of yourself. You possess something that is already in demand by others...knowledge, experience and information. You have already succeeded at something they wish to dream of or pursue. They will pay you for that information. Many folks homesteading remote areas of Alaska (Alaska has several publishing companies just for writers in alaska about alaska) writing books is an option.
   A. http://www.alaska.edu/uapress/authors/   - Poetry Fiction Non-Fict
   B.http://www.borealbooks.org/                          - Literature & Art
   C.http://www.epicenterpress.com/                    - Non-Fiction
   D.http://esterrepublic.com/republichome.html  -Childrens books
   E.http://www.northshorepressalaska.com/      - Poetry

You don't have to be a professional writer, many journal style books are very popular because of the content rather than the style. Many Wilderness Living diaries have been published with great success over the decades. It is the experiences themselves that are entertaining, informative, and interesting.  Alot like soda pop, its not the container it comes in thats so appealing, its whats in the bottle that is interesting.

We also use a lot of firewood for "projects" that pay by piece a whole lot more than firewood does.  We found there is a big available niche for simple hand made rustic furniture. No not log beds either. Not legs and post made with electric tools. Simple legs made from a hunk of log rounded to peg ends with a hatchet. Put into a slab of wood and called a garden bench, end table, patio tea tables and other stools and the like. Something you can not buy in a store. (See our homesteading pics) Farmers markets, Fairs, tourist stores etc are good places to sell these items. We happen to have internet at our homestead (we generate our own electricity and have satellite internet), so we have had good luck marketing these things on Craigslist.com . Ps. That big 'ol stump will make nice wide table tops when slabbed, or as itself. The quality and longevity of usefulness of hand made solid wood furniture is not available in stores dealing in cheap imports. So your hand made items are in demand with little competition for quality. The public is hungry for "real" and "genuine" wood furniture. They are sick of plywood, chipboard and laminates.

We also make money from our food sources....
We make maple syrup and sugar for ourselves, but have been offered money many times for the syrup. Check out the maple syrup guys

Honey & comb, raised or from natural wild hives can also be sold. Although Wild hives are getting hard to find and bees are becoming endangered in many ares due to diseases brought into our country. Great care should be taken in not over harvesting the honey or too late into the season toward fall when the bees need the honey to survive the winter.

Jams sell at the farmers markets, and the fruits & berries are free for the taking along boat landings, public forests, along ditches etc. This includes; blueberries, huckleberries, black berries, red raspberries, blackberries, wild grapes, currants, cherries, dewberries, mulberries, elderberries, strawberries, autumn olive berries, apple & crabapple, rose hips and plums. Check local laws in your locale.

From our meat harvest we make money selling unedible parts like antler carvings, antler buttons, antler knife handles, antler coat hooks, antler knobs and cupboard handles, antler lamps, antler gun racks etc. We also sell the tanned hides, use the leather to make clothing, boots, gun sleeves, gloves & mittens etc. The fur from rabbit, fox, mink, skunk, coyote can be used to decorate many leather items, and as insulation for slippers, boots, gloves, etc. or the pelts can be sold on the internet (www.ebay.com , www.etsy.com ) or to local fur buyers. The skulls, teeth, claws, feathers, hooves and bones are also sellable.

We also enjoy auctions, book sales, flea markets, second hand stores where we often find resellable items for resale on ebay for profit. At book sales we have bought books for 50 cents that we sold on ebay for $260 or at yard sales we've picked up book sets for $15 that sold on ebay for $150. Popular name brand items purchased second hand almost always resell for a profit on ebay from companies like Cabelas, Ambercrombie, and USA MADE tool companies such as Stanley and Snap-on. Some folks still dont like or use the internet so garage sales are still great areas to find resale items.

We get paid for sawdust and wood chips -sold for gardening, animal pens and pathways (a left over by-product of our wood working and cutting wood for our wood stoves)

Boards and lumber can be sold that are cut with an Alaskan chainsaw mill (one can be purchased for about $165 at Baileys online) and all things buildable with lumber like dog houses, rabbit hutches, bird houses, butterfly houses, bat houses, porch furniture, trellises, arbors, fences, gates and more. 

Animals surplus offspring can be sold to purchase food for the animals you keep, such as selling the chicks to buy feed for your egg layers. It is nearly impossible at todays feed prices to make a profit on a homestead animal farm. You are privileged to "break even" when it comes to animals. Manure can sometimes be sold in the spring to organic gardeners if you are near a populous.

There are side jobs that are of a handy man/woman variety that can be done NOT on a regular basis that folks will pay you for such as; rototilling gardens for others in the spring, plowing snow from drives in winter, selling firewood, mowing lawns, housecleaning, farrier work on goats and horses. Leaf raking in the fall etc. Dont be shy, charge a fair price. ($30/hr) is what we generally make. If they wanted to do it themselves they wouldnt be asking you, and when a person does not want to do something they are willing to pay to not do it!  (equipment upkeep gas & oil etc come out of that $30/hr)

Never throw away anything metal! A truckload of old metal stuff...washing machines, dryers, grills, car parts, lawn mowers, refrigerators, wheel rims, old rakes and shovels, old rusty barrels, kitchen food tin cans, broken bikes, pots and pans, hangers,wire, door handles, coffee cans, anything metal, rusted or not... doesnt matter...about $250 a truck load right now. (prices vary due to season and locale)

Internet re-marketing, buying cheap in bulk or wholesale from one site and reselling individually on other sites like Ebay.com and Amazon.com.

Gunsmithing during the hunting season to hunters who are far away from home. Getting a license for this is not difficult. Word of mouth spreads quickly if you are honest and do good work. Guys that specialize in muzzle loaders have gotten overflow work from local gun shops during the seasonal rush.

There are traditionally feminine talents (and a few famous and not so famous men) who are talented in knitting and crocheting, pottery, weaving, spinning yarn, quilting, and painting that also pay well in specialty niches/markets. 

Gardening. Many small town and innercity groceries will pay for fresh produce organic or not. Usually you are paid by the pound and can find grocers who buy from you by making a simple phone call to the market or just showing up at their door with your produce. Cherry tomatoes, green beans, corn on the cob, green peppers, okra, melons, peaches, raspberries and blueberries are almost always sure sales. Expect $ per pound on small item, or by the piece for large items. The price is usually good since there is no middleman being paid.

Many of these activities involve "outings" which we also consider our "family entertainment", that produces money, rather than outings like movies,restaurants etc that "consume" money. These are the main ways we've known homesteaders to have made money through the years. Hopefully it will give you some ideas and be helpful in some way to you.

I'd love suggestions if any of you have had sure successes with other ideas, I'd love to hear about it!






 

Where to get wood for your WILDERNESS LIVING REMOTE or Country HOMESTEAD fires...

WHERE TO FIND YOUR WOOD SUPPLY for your homesteading needs...

The most convenient place to get wood is "on location". If you live on a wooded lot at least 10 acres in size you can select cut and maintain a healthy forest while still harvesting firewood. You will want to cut dead or fallen trees first. If dead or fallen trees are not available then you will want to choose trees that do not provide food to the local wildlife, such as; Ash, Maple, Aspen, Locus, Poplar, Ironwood, Elm, Sassafras, Pine, Birch among others. We recommend not cutting down trees that provide nuts or fruits to you or animals, unless the tree is damaged or diseased, as it is important to stop diseases from spreading and cutting becomes necessary. We try to avoid cutting Maple because we tap them in the spring which provides our family with enough syrup and sugar for our yearly needs.

Many remote homesteads are located on waterways, which conveniently bring wood to you in the way of drift wood. Particularly if you are on a rapid river, A SIGNIFICANT amount of wood may come to you....

 Breakup will bring whole trees down river as the ice grinds downstream.









or a large body of water such as the ocean or a bay.

 
If you are remote and plan to live there for many decades you may want to consider when you are young to get the dead timber from 5 to 8 miles away from your cabin and haul it in the winter on the snow. That way as you age you still have wood close to your dwelling when it is more difficult for you as you age. Many homesteaders do this backwards and end up having great difficulty in their senior years trying to get wood which is far away because all usable timber was used in prior years near the cabin site. Here is an example of deforestation of mature timber near a large homstead in AK.

The local lumber mill may have slat wood and scrap wood lumber ends available which usually can be taken for free or a nominal fee ($10-$30) per truck load which, of course, you usually have to load yourself. This is a real bargain though as a truckload is usually close to a rick and the wood is usually seasoned hardwoods such as; Oak, Maple, Walnut, and Cherry.

This wood would otherwise go to waste so this is a great way to recycle and save live trees you might otherwise needed to cut to meet your needs.

Talk to your local town or village maintenance or road commission to see about wood available after clean-up days or after storms. The city and county road commission generally have a local dumping site for wood that is removed and dumped at these times. It is also usually free for the taking with a permit from the city.

Throw away wooden pallets (usually hardwood) can sometimes be obtained for free to be cut up and used for firewood from local lawn & garden and equipment sales stores and dealerships. I don't recommend this option for those of you who plan to use the wood ash for other projects as it will contain nails from the burned pallets. You must also use caution not to cut into the nails with your chainsaw for obvious reasons.

Craigslist.com is a free website that offers a "free" category in which there can often be found folks who are offering for free, trees, brush or scrap lumber to be hauled away for use as firewood.

Local tree service companies may also be able to direct you to homeowners who want trees cut but can't afford to pay to have them removed, however private homeowners may desire that you be insured before cutting trees on their property.

The obvious place to look for wood is, of course, in the local newspaper. Wood is sold by the cord, rick, and truckload. A cord of wood when stacked measures a stack 4 ft wide - 4 ft tall - 8 ft long. A rick measures stacked 2 ft wide - 4 ft tall - 8 ft long. A truck load is a rick or less depending on the size of the truck. If you are receiving less than you are paying for and have a receipt you can call the local weights and measures office (the phone number can often be obtained off the local gas pump) and show them the stack you received and the receipt showing how much you purchased.

In rural areas you can expect to pay $30-$75/rick and $100-$180/cord. Soft wood and unseasoned or unsplit wood will be at the cheaper end with hardwood, seasoned and split wood at the higher end. Prices may also be higher in urban areas where wood may be less available. The benefit of buying wood this way is that it is often ready for use in the wood stove. Some folks who are selling the wood will also stack it for you as well.

To heat a 1000 sq ft home expect to use about 6 cords of wood per winter. A larger home 2000 sq ft should expect to use 6-10 cords of wood. If you choose to install a wood burning outdoor furnace expect to use considerably more wood - choosing the exact size for the sq ft of space you have to heat will help reduce wood use. Bigger is not necessarily better in this case. A outdoor wood furnace can use 8-15 cords per winter. The outdoor wood burning furnace is much safer and less messy but less efficient and versatile than the indoor wood burning stove.

Now, about those chainsaws.... 

CHAINSAWS & HOW TO USE THEM for homesteading needs...

Now if you are going GREEN then I want to take moment to mention that my wife and I as well as our boys have used "old fashioned" 2-person crosscut saws to cut firewood. This is not difficult if the saw is sharp and is both fun and invigorating as an activity for the two of you. If you start in the early fall it is not difficult to accumulate the necessary quantity needed for the winter.

CHAINSAW SELECTION:

Chainsaws are like cars, a good name brand is still your best bet since you will be using it alot! The cheaper brands now usually last only about 1 season of regular use. A good name brand saw should be able to be purchased used and have a good deal of life still in it. Look for brands such as McCulloch, Poulan, Homelite, these are light to medium duty saws, very economical and can get you by. They are also very popular and common making other saws easily available on the used market for parts and replacement. For heavy duty saws for everyday use or if you plan to cut wood to sell in addition to your own heating wood, you may want to look for brands such as; Husqvarna, Stihl or Solo.

If you decide you can not afford to buy a brand new saw and decide to look for a good used saw, here are a few helpful suggestions...

* Ask to hear the saw run AND see it cut 3 or 4 pieces of average sized firewood. (Some saws run well at an idle but are wore-out and stall or die when they are put into the wood because the compression is weak. A saw that does this either needs the fuel filter changed or is too used up to be of any good anymore).

* Check for wear on the nose (end of the bar) look for roundness, it should not have dips in it.

* Flip the saw upsidedown and look into the housing or casing where the chain goes in, the sprocket is there that drives the chain. The area should be clean (if the saw has been well-kept, and not full of caked sawdust etc) and the sprocket should not have medium or deep grooves where the chain runs. The grooves should be absent or light. It should not be seriously wore or grooved.

* The chain should be sharp to the touch, if it is not, it will need to be sharpened, if the cutting teeth have already been sharpened too many times the cutting teeth will be shorter than the guide teeth. If this is the case the chain will need to be replaced.

* Expect to pay 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of a new saw for a good used saw. You should also expect, and I recommend, to change the fuel line filter and the air filter, both very easy and will improve the performance of your saw immensely and keep it running well.

* For those of you with an alternative energy source such as solar or wind power, or if you have never used a chainsaw before... you may want to consider an electric chainsaw.

ELECTRIC CHAINSAWS

Electric chainsaws are for light to moderate use, is generally a secondary or back-up saw. These are a great way to learn to use a chainsaw as the come with safety features not usually found on economical gas powered chainsaws. They are not quite as powerful as a gas powered saw, but they get the job done. Both my wife and my sons learned how to use a chainsaw using an electric chainsaw first. It doesn't take long to gain the confidence you need to move on to bigger saws. Electric chainsaws are much lighter than their gas powered counterparts, they also shut off immediately when the trigger is released whereas the gas saw continues to idle after the release of the trigger and takes more time for the chain to stop moving. If you plan to purchase an electric chainsaw, you will be glad to know that they are reasonably priced even brand new, so I recommend buying the highest quality electric chainsaw you can afford. As I said earlier the electric chainsaw is an excellent choice for women, youth and small light framed men.

SAW MAINTENANCE

Proper maintenance of your saw is very important. With good maintenance your saw can last for years. You must keep it cleaned out of the accumulating sawdust and bar oil that collects near the sprocket. Be sure to grease the nose, fill your bar oil reservoir before each use, and remember to push the bar oil button to release oil onto the bar regularly during cutting. If you are using a gas saw, be sure to measure your oil and gas precisely to obtain the proper mixture...DO NOT guess! Make sure that you keep the mixed gas in your can clearly labeled as mixed gas, keep away from flame, and keep the gas free from debris such as sawdust, sand and dirt. Keep the nozzle of your gas can capped.Never cut all the way through the wood if it is laying on the ground, as your bar and chain will cut into the dirt which acts as a sandpaper on all of your parts ruining your saw. You should cut part way through then roll the log over to finish the cut or cut only logs that are on top of the pile to ensure against cutting into the dirt.

How to COOK ON/USE A WOOD COOK STOVE ~The BEST part of WILDERNESS LIVING!

There are a variety of kitchen wood cook stoves, there is one for every decor or price range.  Ebay  is an excellent source for finding these old stoves.  I bought mine off a site called Craigslist.com for $400 it is a working class average housewife stove sold in the early 1800's.  It was in working order when I bought it but it did have a few welded repairs.  It is not UL listed of course due to its age, so if you plan to install one you should check you local ordinances.  I LOVE my stove and I find it very simple to use, although I had to really search the web to find info on how the dampers all work (there are 3 of them). The process is very simple once you understand their purposes, just like turning on the knobs on your gas range! 

 A Dedicated housewife jumps out of her nice warm cozy featherbed and plops her feet down on that COLD wooden floor, makes a dash for her slippers, opens the door to grab some frosty kindling to get that first crackling warm breakfast/morning coffee fire going,....

 NO, I'm just kidding, its not really like that, you don't have a featherbed, most likely its a straw stuffed futon.  You really dont plop your feet down on that COLD wooden floor, most likely there's an old wore out braided rug there but you sure are thankful for it on those cold mornings.  Your slippers are probably already on your feet because you wore them to bed the night before because the wooodstove burned out early due to a lack of firewood that wasnt brought into the house before dark and no one wanted to go out to fetch more. And hopefully you did stuff a few pieces of kindling into the corner for mornings just as this and your fire is already poppin' and crackling.  You can hear the steam rising in the coffee pot and it will be purculating any moment.  You're wondering if the hens have thawed out enough to lay a few eggs yet, as you toss another piece of wood on the fire and sit down in your rocking chair.  You prop your feet up on the open oven door to warm them as the first streams of sunlight wander in the window and the birds outside begin to flit about. Yeah. life is Good.

HOW To USE A WOOD COOKSTOVE

 I have more info I've written about cooking on a wood cookstove at:

Infobarrel - How to cook on wood cookstoves

There are generally 3 dampers on a wood cook stove...

I believe most folks think these dampers are the most intimidating part of using a wood cook stove.  There seems to be little information available on the world wide web on how to use these vintage stoves and their multiple dampers.   It seems that when the women of the late 1800's passed on, that their daughters, enthralled with the  new cooking technologies of gas ranges, deemed the knowledge of using wood cookstoves unnecessary to "modern" life.  So it seems in one generation, or maybe two, this practical self -sufficient knowledge was lost to future generations.

Now, about those dampers... There are generally 3 on most wood cookstoves.

 1st damper...There is a damper on the side of the firebox, this damper is generally left wide open (unless you are just wanting to keep a pot of dinner warm for a long period of time and want to keep the temperature very low.) For most all normal cooking situations you will want a hot fire so the firebox damper is left open to provide for good oxygen ventilation onto your fire. This damper should always be wide open when starting your fires.

 2nd damper...There is usually also a damper on your stove/range top or on the pipe near the range top.  This works just like the pipe damper on a regular wood burning stove, (if you already have experience with those this will be easy for you). This damper controls the temperature and rate of burn for your fire.  With this damper full open your fire will burn very hot and very quickly.  This damper is generally full open whenever you are starting your fire but is closed half to 3/4 of the way after the fire is going well and a few red coals are seen on the  fire grate below the fire. At this point the heat will begin building underneath your range top and around your oven.

3rd damper...Some wood cookstoves may only have the 2 dampers we already discussed, but many have a 3rd damper which controls the heat flowing around your oven and helps to regulate the temperature inside the oven.  This damper is usually found on the backside of the cookstove, sometimes behind the firebox.  When this damper is closed ALL of the heat from your fire circulates around the oven.  This heats up the interior of the oven. The more open this damper is the cooler your oven temperature becomes.  You must note however that regardless of this damper, if you have a rip-roaring fire going using high btu wood such as cherry, maple, or oak your oven is going to heat up very hot.  

DEALING WITH A TOO HOT OVEN...

There are several ways to deal with an overheating oven, first you will want to open the damper on the back of your cook stove to draw cool air into circulation around your oven. This will reduce the temperature slowly or help you maintain the desired temperature even as your fire increases if you are also cooking on the stove top.  Second, if you are only baking and don't have anything else cooking on the range top you can close the side firebox damper partway to reduce the flame and heat source, (you would be doing this in addition to opening the back damper for the oven) and this will make a moderate change in temperature or reduce the temperature to the desired temp needed if the preheated oven has become too hot.  Should you need to change the temp very quickly (your rolls are already turning brown but the inside dough is still gooey) if it got out of hand when you weren't looking, the obvious thing to do is open the oven door allowing the heat to escape quickly. Then work on adjusting your dampers.  

BAKING IN A WOOD COOK STOVE...

The joy of cooking on the stove top of a wood cookstove is that the oven is perpetually heated while cooking on top of the range, so there is virtually unlimited opportunity to bake during everyday cooking and meal preparation operations. Because most wood cook stove ovens are smaller than modern day gas/electric ovens there are a few techniques that you will find helpful in making your baking a success.  First, since the firebox is generally located to the side of the oven box you will find that this side of your oven gets hotter than the other.  This necessitates the "turning" of your baking pan or baking sheet halfway through the baking process to ensure even baking.  (If you are baking rolls or biscuits and want to avoid the hassle of "turning" the pan, you can make the rolls and biscuits smaller on the cool side of your pan and larger on the hot side to accommodate the temperature differences and still be finished baking at about the same time. Although the hot side biscuits and rolls will still be browned more than the cool side.) Cakes and pies MUST be turned 1/2 way through, (very gently to prevent your cake from "falling" in the center if using store bought cake mixes.) If I am baking casseroles and am using dishes or pans smaller than the average 11x13 cake pan I just make sure the dish is all the way over to the side of the oven opposite the fire box.  I also have found that I generally use the lowest rack in my oven as the top of the oven is quite a bit hotter than the bottom.  I find that cast iron baking pans help to have more even baking.

One last word on the oven... you will notice there is a tiny small thin door beneath your oven that generally has to be popped open/out with a flat tip screw driver or butter knife.  The purpose of this little door is to give you access to the airspace where the flame and hot air goes around your oven.  As the flame and hot air circulates it carries a small amount of ash with it.  This ash can build up underneath your oven as well as on top and along the sides which eventually build up and prevent your oven from heating evenly (at least as evenly as possible).  You open this little door to remove this ash from beneath your oven.  You remove the lids and range top pieces to gain access to the top and sides around your oven to clean the ash build-up from those areas.  

WHY DOES MY COOKSTOVE "SMOKE" SO BAD, IS THIS NORMAL?

Typically woodstoves smoke for a few reasons... If you have recently bought a brand new stove or recently re-blued or re-blacked an old one, the first fire you make in the stove will "cure" the black coating.  This curing should be done outside or with all the windows open and fans exhausting the fumes.  The occupants of the home should not be inside during the curing.  

There are some more common reasons wood stoves smoke, if they have not been used in a very long time (since last winter, or even years or decades) the stove may smoke terrible at first until soot builds up in the burner seams which effectively seals them in a short time (about an hour of good pine fire, similar to a smudge fire) after which they will not usually smoke anymore as the stove is in use regularly.  

An antique or vintage stove may smoke because time has warped the rangetop pieces so that they no longer fit tightly together.  (or perhaps they are not all the original pieces, but a collection of pieces that appear to fit together) Sooting may cure this as with the seasonal stove, but if the warping is too severe for sooting to seal the seams adequately then applying stove cement to the seam areas and then pressing the lids (oil the lid edges first) into the soft cement and letting the cement dry will give you a tight fit, then soot and use normally.  

A poor draft also can cause a stove to smoke.  There are a couple of reasons why your stove may have a poor draft... Check to make sure the pipe is not plugged with leaves, bird nests, or other debris. Make sure your pipe damper on your pipe or range top is open fully.   The other reason the stove may draft improperly may be because you have an antique cast iron stove whose body seams are not tight enough and you will see smoke billowing from these seams all around the oven, from underneath the range top etc.  You will need to fill these loose seams with stove putty or stove cement.  Once these seams are filled and dried the stove when relit should begin drafting properly with the stove pipe damper full open and the firebox damper full open.  

The last thing that causes cookstoves to smoke is backdraft on high windy days. The smoke is pushed back down the pipe and out the firebox damper into the room by the force of the wind.  The best way to deal with this situation is to build a very hot fire ...oak, cherry etc full open firebox damper and 1/3 closed pipe damper. It's not perfect but its tolerable.

FIRE SAFETY... Please check with your local fire marshall and township home heating inspector for their regulations and suggestions on properly installing your cookstove.  (Some antique cookstoves may not be allowed by your  local government due to a lack of UL Listing stamp...[they didnt have UL listing back in the 1800's] so they may not be permitted for installation.

We use a 3 foot empty circumference space around our wood stoves, with fireproof wall and floor materials, brick, stone, concrete etc. Pipes going through walls or ceilings should be in double insulated pipes...as per local regulation.  I've seen some folks also who installed a large square of sheet metal through which the pipe passes rather than directly through a regular wall or roof.  This seems like a well thought out idea as well.  Be sure your pipe is higher than the highest part of your roof. Also, if you have a choice, it seems that having your pipe on the downwind end of your home of the most typical prevailing wind in your area would also be a good idea so that the predominant amount of sparks are carried away from your dwelling by the wind.  A 1/2"x1/2" cage wire screen should be put around the space between the opening of your pipe and the hood at the end/top of your stove pipe to both keep birds out and sparks in for safety reasons. I hope you found this interesting and helpful.  I welcome your comments and stories relating to your experience with your cookstove!

What Do you DO up there? Gearing up for FISHING at Our wilderness living homestead!!!

When discussing wilderness living, Alot of people ask, 
           "WHAT do you DO up there?" 

That was a question we too were asking before we were "Up there".  I think the thing that goes unsaid or maybe unnoticed by those who are "up there" is that we dont "DO"  things in the sense that urban dwellers do. When we were urbanly sequestered, we often "planned" our days to "do" this or "do" that, be it grocery shopping, retail shopping, mowing the yard, going out for dinner, seeing movies or other such happenings that are planned in day to day living in an urban environment. ...But, what does a person do when they live in a remote location where there are no shopping malls, no restaurants, no lawns, no bowling, etc?  Well, let's see...

When we arrived in our wilderness living remote location, we greeted alot of trees. We found ourselves standing on a large acreage parcel that was never developed in any way. It was a piece of raw land of towering trees, thick underbrush, swamp and wildlife galore.  We stood there with a chainsaw in hand and a gas can in the other and wondered, "where do we start?" It was quite overwhelming! Alot of green and nothing else besides mosquitoes and blue sky.

Since we had no place to stay we left for the nearest town and rented the cheapest motel room we could find to sleep for the first 2 nights. We could only afford 2 nights so had to have a building up in 3 days, ready to sleep in on the third night. It quickly became obvious, that cutting wood was going to be one of those things we "DO" up here.  My husband had brought along a small Alaskan chainsaw mill and got right to work cutting fallen trees into boards for the "cabin" we had set a small goal of an 8'x8' "cabin" 

that we would add onto in 8'x8' sections. Bears were a big worry since they weren't very shy, none of the wildlife was, as they rarely encountered humans in this location and didnt mind strolling into camp as usual. We wanted to get 4 walls and a door up as quickly as possible, worry about the roof later. :)
Little did we know the bears were the least of our troubles, the mosquitoes were going to be our biggest adversary!  Which brings me to one of the other things we "do", " we war against mosquitoes!" There's the smudge fire, the deet, the swatter, the screens (that are questionable in their usefulness as there are so many cracks in the rustic boards, doorways, and window frames that must all have "welcome signs" posted at each of the openings, which allow the little buggars to enter uninhibited!). 
                             
Another thing that makes it hard to narrow down what we "DO" is that you can't plan what you are going to "do". When you live remotely you invariably never have all the things you need to do a project. So you are constantly having to "make do", or figure out how to "do without". So much time is used up trying to compensate for a lack of needed tools, supplies, parts, daylight, sunshine, etc. So just the "doing" is what we "do".  EVERYTHING we do takes so much more time than in urban settings. In town, in a garage, your tools are all handy, along with electricity,  and the hardware store is just down the street. In a remote location though, Your husband, wife, or child, may be using your hammer just when you need it or have used it and left it "who knows where" and it might take an hour just to find the hammer! Likely you will bend over and grab a large hunk of branch or log to pound with, which will be effective, but will take longer (as usual) than using above mentioned hammer. In variably you will run out of nails or screws in the middle of a project (like the roof) and will require unforeseen trips to town many miles away, eating up precious daylight hours.

Another thing we "DO", is try to get everything done during daylight, since there is no electricity. Candle power or lumens take on new meaning when it is applied to real candles and not electric lighting. Trying to do detailed work in 4 or 6 candle power is challenging and time consuming!

When all the building is finally completed and the big fluffy flakes of snow start to gently fall from the sky, there is something else we "DO", we pour hot coffee from the pot on the woodstove, into our mugs, we prop up our weary feet under a quilt on the bed/sofa that we built with our own hands, We watch the flakes fall in a dizzying array of wonder and beauty, while soaking up the warm heat from the fire crackling in the stove and reflect on the satisfaction of all we have accomplished in the proceeding months. So these are some of the things we "DO" up here!

Getting to be time to think about tapping trees. As the weather warms during the day and freezes at night there is a brief window of time that the tree pushes sugar filled sap up from the roots to the top of the tree to create energy for the tree to bloom. It generally happens when the days are 35f degrees to 40f degrees  during the day, and when the nights fall below freezing 32f degrees. This is the ideal time to draw off sap to make Maple or Birch syrup or sugar.  After the nights warm to above freezing the tree will bloom and the sap will cease to flow adequately for syruping and the season ends. Here are some pics of trees we've tapped... 

We put out about 60-100 taps each spring.  Each tree gives about 15 gallons of sap in a good year.  It will take approximately 40-50 gallons of sap to boil down into 1 gallon of pure maple syrup. No sugar is added! All the sugar comes straight from the tree! *********************************     NATIVE AMERICANS have a legend .....that says that the maple tree used to give forth straight pure syrup right from the tree. But the men would all tap the trees and lay beneath them all day drinking the sweet candy syrup, and they got fat and lazy.  So the Great Spirit got angry and opened the tops off all the trees and filled them with water...And that is why men must now work to evaporate off 50 gallons of water to get 1 gallon of the sweet pure syrup!

When the sap comes from the tree it is clear as shown here...

When the sap is heated over the fires the sugars concentrate as evaporation of the water occurs... as the sugars begin to roast over the flames it turns golden just like marshmallows do when you roast them...

.... See how the sap that is roasting in the pan above is turning golden compared to the sap just warming in the pan to the left of it in the picture above?

Below is the finished syrup.  We keep the fires burning about 20 hours a day for about 2 weeks straight! We are really tired, literally exhausted by the end of the run.  We usually make about 15 -20 finished gallons of syrup about a year's supply for our family of 4.

With Syruping Season finished... We are moving on to FISHING SEASON!!!

The weather has been pretty cold, there is still about a foot of snow on the ground but there have been some intermittent warm days, and a few sprinkles so spring is about to SPRING, I hope!!! We are anxiously awaiting ICE OUT ...(but ITS STILL A FOOT DEEP) !

The kids and hubby have taken up the lure making hobby as of late to help assuage  the "fishin' itch".

They are in different stages of carving some wooden lures

as well as in the process of tying up some flies.

This isnt anything my husband or young sons have done before, nor have they any prior experience, and no one to give them instructions, so please forgive their learning curve, but I was impressed with their progress and cant wait to try them out myself. They have started quite a variety so far, poppers, lures and hope to use them for PIKE, WALLEYE, TROUT, PANFISH....These lures aren't Cabela's or Bass Pro, but they are our own made with our own hands that we hope will provide fun and food in the very near future! We'll keep you posted on how well they worked! They are proud of their first production! Its been a good time for dad and sons!