Arnold, CA…There is snow on the ground and there is a pile of logs in the backyard and the goal is to have the first small cabin/office built on a 5 acres piece of property across town.  The whole goal for this project is to see if anyone including a 57 year old somewhat broken down middle aged man can turn a bare piece of land into a productive, livable little homestead and do it for total costs of less than $500 per month.

Escrow closed on this parcel in August of last year and I have spent 200-300 hours just clearing, raking, trimming & hoeing out paths and an initial driveway. When purchased the property was so overgrown that for the first 20-30 hours my tool of choice was actually just pruning shears following deer and animal trails just to be able to actually see the property.

I turn 58 on July 22 so starting today the plan is to do something each and everyday to get closer to the goal. There are 164 days left to get the first small log cabin done.

There are lots of off grid, build a cabin in the woods type of projects. This will be similar to them in some ways bur different in many. Right now it seems like Canada and Alaska are the destinations of choice for many of these.

We hope to show that you don’t need to move to the edge of the civilized world to make this happen. We hope to do this in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. We know there will be more regulatory, licensing, permit and other issues to mitigate.

We will find out together if we can make this happen.

This will be a kind of daily diary as well. We hope to just show what we get done everyday and our first project milestone is in 165 Days.

I run a local news business so there are many days I work well over 12 hours per day. We hope to show that if a broken down middle aged man that works 80 or 90 hours a week can do this literally anyone can.

This is also a kind of lifestyle reset for me. Starting two months ago I have been cooking and heating my home with 100% wood that I have cut and processed myself. The wood has also been basically scrap from dead or downed trees and brush.