The Three Year Mark of the Cabin Project

When dreams meet reality...

I started writing this newsletter on my birthday in 2020. There are about a hundred of you lovely subscribers now and it means so much to me that you’re interested in this project.

This November marks the two year anniversary of this newsletter. This past June was also the three year mark of owning this cabin. We’ve done enough work to keep it standing but there is a ton more work to do.

I was up there last week and so I have some clear idea of what’s next and some thoughts about when dreams meet reality.

Year Three from Afar

The main objective this year was to get electricity connected and start an orchard. That all happened in June. The rest of the year, I was busy in Colorado and this newsletter was quiet.

I mostly interacted with the cabin by getting updates when animals walked by my remote camera.

A family of deer munching on by in August

When there’s movement detected, I get a push notification and can open the app to see who is wandering by. Sometimes it’s my family. Most of the time it’s deer. One time it was the hindquarters of a BEAR!

Is that or is that not a bear butt?

It’s a wild place up there. No humans have accidentally wandered far enough down the road to see the cabin, which is reassuring, though the cabin is locked and sort of just sitting there, waiting for the next project.

DIY Gutters

I spent the week after Thanksgiving in New York. My goal was to install gutters before the winter comes. When it rains or the snow melts, the water rolls off the roof and splashes up on the logs, which will eventually cause them to rot. I just had the logs repaired last year, so adding gutters is a hedge against decay. I also plan to use them to start collecting rain water to use in the garden.

The short version of the story here is that I wasn’t able to get the gutters up.

I was also working remotely that week and only took one day off. I spent a few days gathering the supplies and assembling some of the parts before work. When I could finally work with my dad to put them up, we simply ran out of time.

So the gutters are sitting inside the cabin, partially assembled and waiting for the next time I can get up there. That feels like a good symbolic summary of this year.

A Dream Meets Reality

This past week was different. I mostly felt frustrated. Disheartened, even. I’ve had this cabin for three years and it still isn’t close to being livable. Because I can’t stay up there, progress on everything is slower.

After flying across the country, it’s about a 40 minute round trip to get up to the cabin and back home to my parent’s house. When I’m in New York, I want to spend time with family, not just work.

This is the hodgepodge reality of the cabin interior…

As I was walking around my land last week, I saw how much work there is to do to build a decent road, to clear the brush I’ve been battling for years and to fence in an orchard. I still have to replace the subfloors, lay floors and replace all the windows. I need to build a kitchen, dig a well and build an outhouse, all while living a flight away.

At year three, this frustration is a reality check. If I want to make progress, I can’t do it alone, nor can I continue to enlist the generous help of friends and family. It simply isn’t sustainable to continue committing the time required to first learn how to do, and then do all this work.

For big projects like stripping and staining the cabin, I lived in New York for two months and spent so many hours before and after work up there, exhausting myself, my partner and my family in the process. Even then, that work isn’t complete.

… but this is the dream!

Reframing

I think keeping a dream alive requires reframing. So far, I’ve thought about this project as a DIY renovation. If I’m going to keep on schedule to be able to live there at the five year mark, I’ve got to hire people to do this work in big bursts. I want things to be done well, so I will be hiring professionals to move things along. That’s the reality.

I think I just heard the collective sigh of relief from all my friends and family reading this. Love you all.

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Hey! If you’re new here, this is West Bluff Food Forest. I'm building a permaculture orchard and home in the Finger Lakes region of New York. I write about the lessons I'm learning and update you along the way.