Hello and welcome back for part two of our current timing/housing plans! Part one ended with me switching plans for the outhouse and completing it. Now I needed to start taking down trees so I had space (and logs) to build the cabin. Let’s hop into the post and I hope you enjoy!
I didn’t need to clear the entire acre all at once, but I needed to take down enough for the cabin. That’s still a lot of trees to take down though. And if you have never taken down a tree let me tell you it is extremely terrifying. I didn’t appreciate this until I saw it first hand and then tried to pick up the log. Key word here is “tried” 🙂 In a perfect situation you take down a tree in an open area. This reduces the risk of the log hitting something when it falls. If it does hit something when it falls it can change the direction it is falling and cause unexpected an kickback. In an open space you also have more options for running away from the tree when it starts to fall. You need lots of options for directions in case the tree falls in a direction you had not planned for. I had read that regardless of where you make your cuts, the tree will fall in the direction the tree wants to fall. Once again I did not realize how true this was until I experienced it. So I had this large and very dangerous task in front of me that needed to be done slowly. This was directly competing with the fact that I wanted to get this done quickly so that the logs could begin to dry. One mistake though and all this goes away if I get crushed by a tree. If that happens then I wouldn’t have actually retired early 😀
For reference, I left the corporate world in February of 2021. We didn’t pivot on the outhouse until late in that summer. By the time we had a semi-functional outhouse (three walls and a roof) it was August of 2021. With one year down, and no progress on the cabin, we had some decisions to make. The logs needed years to dry (ideally 5+), and every year that I didn’t get them down pushed our timeline back at least a year. I also needed to start being honest with myself. Of course I wanted to be up there all the time making progress, but I also wanted to spend time with my now wife and dog. That was one of the biggest reasons for early retirement: to spend as much time as I could with them since our time together is finite.
I’ve always told people that I plan to do as much of this work by myself and without the use of power tools. I’ve also always followed that up with the statement that ‘I know my limits (or at least hope to recognize them) and will not hesitate to use extra power when it makes sense.’ Extra power is very accessible, but it is very expensive. What it does do is speed up work when there is a lot to do. This saves you a lot of time, but time is also incredibly valuable and in a sense expensive. Hence, there is always a trade off in my mind when I have to sacrifice my time for something 🙂 All of these things together really pushed our plans away from me taking down the trees myself and instead hiring someone else to do it. One thing that had been keeping me from this is that I found it difficult to find a company that would do it. I even talked with the DNR to get their take and see if they had information about companies for hire. They informed me that a large part of the problem is that I only wanted one acre cleared. They said that a lot of the jobs these companies take is for clearing large portions of forests. Since the equipment needed for this is hard/expensive to transport/use it makes sense they would take those larger more profitable jobs over mine. I had looked for companies in the past, but really didn’t try too hard. Now that we had made the decision to hire someone, I spent much more time looking and calling around. Well I still struggled, and I think part of the issue was that we were not living up in the area. I think a lot of these smaller companies are known by word of mouth and without these connections it made it rather hard. Hard but not impossible 🙂 We ended up finding a small company that was willing to do it, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how quickly things would move forward. The owner agreed to meet us at the property one Saturday to talk through our plan. We discussed clearing an acre of the wooded area, and decided we might as well put in a driveway while they were there. I was thinking we would just get a rough quote, and I could keep collecting other quotes from different companies through the fall/winter. I also figured the company would be booked through the rest of the year. Nope. They had an opening before the snow came, it was the perfect time of year to complete the work, it was a very reasonable price, and I was struggling to have other companies even return my phone calls. It moved faster than I was mentally prepared for, but everything seemed to line up. We decided to hire them for the job, and I think it was the right call. I could not have been happier with the work, and it was a really neat experience!
The real problem with the quick turnaround was making sure all the proper paperwork for the driveway was completed with the county/township. First I needed to get a mailing address created so the county could come out and check to see if a culvert was needed. It was a bit of a mad scramble, but we got it done in a couple of days. I also caught a huge break in that the previous owner had already installed a culvert! It was still good to run through the process as the county official was able to come out and confirm the original culvert was present and still in great condition.
With the paper work in place we were able to green light the work. The driveway essentially consisted of three layers. A landscaping material was placed first, This would hopefully let the water drain through while keeping the upper layers from sinking into the ground too quickly.
On top of this a layer of sand was used. Same idea of letting the water through and trying to keep the top layer in place.
The final layer was many dump trucks full of class 5 gravel.
After the driveway was installed, the tree clearing could begin. The process was pretty straight forward, but the skill this person had was incredible to witness. First they would take down about five trees with a bulldozer. Then they would hop out with a chainsaw, and separate the root ball from the rest of the tree. They knew I wanted to use the logs, so we decided to keep the root balls piled up separately from the logs. In the end, we had two piles of root balls (one on each side of the clearing), and three piles of logs that were large/straight enough to be used for building the cabin. There was one pile of logs that were either too small or not straight enough for building with. I’ll use these for fires in the future, so they won’t go to waste. They suggested to have the root ball piles buried when we get the septic system installed since digging equipment will be needed for that job. They honestly create some nice barriers at two edges of the cleared space, so I will probably keep them were they are. I also don’t find them to be an eyesore like they did. Getting the driveway installed and the trees cleared took one week. Having witnessed it, I figure it saved me a minimum of two years of full time work if I had tried to do it by hand. Money well spent indeed 🙂
We had this work completed at the end of 2021. By the spring of 2022 my parents had both retired and decided to sell their house/downsize. This meant that I was quite busy going through and cleaning out all the stuff (mostly junk) that I had accumulated there over the years. I had put off going through it earlier, so I had no one to blame except myself. This ate up my entire spring. Thanks past Will 🙁 Once again very quickly the garden was in full swing and required a lot of my attention. As I’ve detailed in the past, it is dreadful to work up on the homestead in the open space baking in the sun in the summer. When we are living up there I will have a space to take breaks and cool down. For now though, most of the intense work needs to happen in the spring and fall. Another thing standing in my way from working on the log piles was the need to protect the sides of our sleeping shack from rain/snow. I’ve come to appreciate a safe shelter out of the sun so this took priority. It didn’t offer much protection from the heat, but it sure was better than baking in the sun in a tent. I got it completed before winter, but once again it came at the expense of some of time where I could have been working on the log piles in the cooler fall weather.
With the sleeping shack in a good spot I was finally able to start working on the log piles in the late fall of 2022. I dedicated a good chunk of time up there, and was able to get through one of the piles. It was a good thing I did this as a major unforeseen (as they usually are) health issue hit my father-in-law. It was so big that in the winter we already knew that I would be busy through the spring of 2023 getting him healthy. Given the choice between helping him and working on the log piles wasn’t even close. He was far more important, and the logs would still sort of dry even in their stacked state. It also gave me an opportunity to reflect on the power of early retirement. I didn’t have to choose between earning money and being there for him. I got to choose between helping him and something that needs to be done in the future but not immediately. Thanks past Will!! 🙂 Not having to worry about money makes your life so much easier it isn’t even funny. I cannot recommend enough taking the time now to learn about your finances, money management, and planning for the unpredictable future. I’ll get a short post up here soon with my favorite resources. If you don’t want to wait for that, leave a comment below and I can try to message you directly.
It was looking like another year would go by without much work towards the cabin. It was time to take stock of where we were, and where we wanted to go from here. Time was going by with little progress on the property which was disrupting our current plans. The wonderful thing though about time and our passive investments/frugal lifestyle meant that our wealth was skyrocketing. It was time for that flexibility to come into play again! At this rate, by the time I got the logs just sorted we would probably have enough money saved/invested for my wife to retire as well. We started discussing the possibility of purchasing a prefab/modular home instead of me building the main house. This had a lot of advantages. There is the obvious advantage of speed. We would also know the house was built properly to last our lifetimes. We could move up there comfortably knowing we would have plenty of space to accommodate guests. This also meant I didn’t need to rush building the cabin before the logs were completely dry. Everything seemed to be fitting nicely into place even if it wasn’t how we originally planned it. I think The Rolling Stones summed it up perfectly, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you just might find you get what you need” 🙂
I had intended to get all the way through our current plans with just the two posts. Turns out I tell long stories 😀 I’ll need one more to get you fully up to speed, so come back in a week or two for part three. I hope you enjoyed my tale so far, and take care out there!