Off Grid Camp summer work trip

Good morning. Good morning, guys. I'm back to camp. A rare late summer trip that everything just worked out perfectly. So, I was able to get away. Got a ton of work to do up here. Got a whole list of things I want to do. And a lot of it's going to be made possible with that thing right out there. I got a 60 horse Kabota in tow with a dump trailer. So, I'm going to be able to haul in the septic sand that we need to complete the septic. I'm gonna be able to haul in a bunch of material to finish. Oh, just kind of growing the yad a little bit. And then I really want to work on the roads up here. The roads are just in complete disarray. Uh we're blocked off from like a 70 mi road system. We're actually more than 70 mi, but we're completely blocked off from a blowout that uh I don't I guess the the logging companies aren't going to do it unless they're cutting in there. But I still want to trap in there and I want people to be able to hunt moose in there and deer and other trappers to be able to get in that whole area, too. So, I'm gonna fix the road there. I'm going to probably end up fixing our road system in uh coming in. Might as well when you have the tractor and the trailer. Uh there was a blowout where the beavers blew out the area that I think I can also fix. If I'm going to be riding it every day trapping, why not fix it if you can, right? And make it better for yourself and for other people. That's just a small amount of things that I want to get done while I'm up here this week. I want to get some more firewood put up for this fall. I want to clean up around the north cabin, get that ready to go. I want to take some measurements of some things that I want to build for inside this cabin. Uh I think I might end up just buying cabinets for the kitchen for this year. And then we want to do a railing system up in the loft as well. Continue working on firewood, which is like a a non-stop thing, which is always fun. I love working on firewood actually and start to get ready for trapping season. I'm pretty excited about that. But I have a whole list of things that I want to accomplish up here and get done. I think I'm just going to work on the road today. Um I don't know why, but that's kind of what I'm feeling like. The other thing I'd like to do is finish the metal siding on the gable ends of the camp as well. And if I have time, even do some metal siding on the outhouse. the metal siding I'm not really looking forward to alone being up on that tall extension ladder. Um, yeah, we'll see. We'll see. But it's dangerous when you're up here alone. There's a lot of things. I'll be running a chainsaw. I'll be running a tractor. I'll be running a ladder. I'll be running an axe. I mean, there's a lot of dangers. So, I'll talk through safety as I'm doing it with you guys and and bring you along. And hopefully hopefully I'm able to accomplish it. Hopefully, I'm not going to get hurt too badly. So, there's no real order in how I got to get all this work done. I just got to get it done. So, I'm going to kind of pick it apart the way I feel like doing it. So, today, uh, I'm going to work on fixing those spots in the road that are blown out and also fixing a bunch of really bad spots in the road. So, I'm going to bring the tractor and the dump trailer. I'll probably fill up the dump trailer with some decent gravel and haul that a few times from the pit in those areas in the road. And then I'll just take the tractor up the road and push it around and fill in bad areas and see how we do. So, I got some really cool things I want to show you guys that are additions to camp. And uh I think you're really going to like it. I think Donniey's going to love them when he gets up here. He's going to be up in a couple weeks for a trip. Oh yeah, and the other thing I forgot to tell you guys, it's good news. It's not really that big a deal, but to some of you it'll be great news, is I saw three birds on the way in. Uh yesterday, last night when I was on my way in picking gravel in the road, there was one loan and then I saw two together and there could have been more. You know, the side to the road with the grass is pretty thick right now. But that's a great sign. We've had a a couple really really rough springs for the partridge or the grouse. Um so seeing those three bird just on the way in was was exciting for me. That means we're going to have some groceries. There's some groceries out there running around and hopefully it's a decent bird year. You know, it's I put I put some strong regulations on myself last year when I was trapping to not shoot, you know, more than x amount of birds because the they really they really took a beat in the last couple springs and uh with the moose hunts opening up for bird hunting too and the amount of moose hunters that the state has up here now, you know, the birds have taken a beating. There's always that little added drill if you don't load and unload equipment on trailers all the time when you go to unload them or load them. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat. That's a heavy load. All right, we got a pretty heavy load on there. Uh, this will be the first time I've ever dumped with this dump trailer. This is new to me. I picked it up this summer for uh for projects like this. And I had a trailer get stolen last year um that I was going to use for hauling equipment. It got stolen over the winter. I'll tell you guys more about that as we go. And maybe you guys know where it is. I don't know. But uh this will be the first dump of this one. So, I'm not 100% sure how much it can handle. I got to load it pretty hard towards the the back end to help for the dumping. And I picked up the biggest rocks I possibly could because I want to try to build a rock wall where it's actually where that stream is actually breaching to get into the road. I figure if I have a rock wall there, it's got a better chance to stay together if the water does hit it rather than just loose gravel. So, way bonier than we would normally do, but I'm going to run this. It's about a mile away. I'm going to run this down. Uh hopefully dump it right where it needs to go. And then I'll go back with the tractor after maybe a load or two more and and spread everything out and build that rock wall. All right. All right. This is one of the real bad wash out spots. Um pretty low. We've had a dry summer. They've they've been okay up here, I guess, but down home we're super super super dry. We're in a major drought down east, but this is where the water is coming out. The stream's usually full. That's the beaver dam right there. Um, it's not much of a dam right now. I might even try to get in there and break it up a little bit more. But I think if I get a couple big rocks right here where it's breaching, it's coming down the road right here. And then it's washed out this entire road down here. And it makes it pretty difficult to get through if it washes and if it washes anymore. So, I'm going to probably well, I'll definitely going to dump I'll come back with a tractor and move some of these bigger rocks and try to build a a rock wall there to shore it up. And then hopefully we won't have it washing down the road anymore. And and I'll uh when I get the tractor here, I'll flatten as much of this gravel out as I can. But for the fir for the first thing I want to do is get all these big rocks, you know, in there and kind of build a rock wall to to dam it up. Let's see if she'll dump. That's a lot of weight on there. Well, that's it for up. I'm going to shimmy her a little bit ahead. Hopefully, I left myself enough room to be able to get back around it. And then I think I'll probably bring in one more load of good gravel again. Uh you can never really have enough material for something like this in my opinion. So, see when I pull ahead, I'm hoping that's just going to slide on out. All right, it looks like I might have enough material here. I just noticed there's some uh gravel up on the side. I got to fix this whole road. This whole road's been a mess. But I'm going to go get the tractor, drag these rocks in, probably some by hand, some by tractor, and then um it looks like I have enough material here to be able to do something anyway, even if it's wrong. And then I'm going to try to leave a ditch if it ever does breach again, so it just rides a ditch and rather than eats out the road. But we got to get rid of this rock. This rock has caught my drill. Got my trailer twice now. That's not good. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up here. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. All right, first first goal accomplished. Got a got a little wet as you could see. I did a couple miles of road filling in all the potholes, smoothing it out, and uh had a couple other pretty bad areas and then it started raining. It is what it is. Um, so the next one's a little bit closer to the camp and maybe I'll go put some dry clothes on, grab something to eat first, or maybe I'll just go do it. We'll see. But I'm a little bit excited to drive over the road that I fixed and flatten it down with all this weight. You know, quite a bit of weight here. And uh, see if I can make it a little bit smoother for trapping season for the bear hunters and for the moose hunters and for the partridge hunters. So, off to the next one. Yeah, that road's a heck of a lot better now. That was quite a bit smoother. Uh, still got a couple miles that I wasn't able to hit. I got tired of getting wet. But here's the other really bad spot right here. And this is the one. Uh, some guys threw some stuff in there to drive through. It's actually passable right now. I had filled this in last year, too, with Donny's tractor. Um, as you can see, it just blows out. The coverts aren't really getting their use and then a lot of the materials down there. Um, I think the problem is this the stream comes down from over there and then it's got like a hard 90 to try to get to these culverts and the culverts are big enough. They just weren't putting them in the right place. It's all and it uh it breaches here and just flies right over the road and washes everything out. Oh, I don't know if I got a haul material. The question is Oh, there's probably brook trout in this this little hole right here, believe it or not. Yep. I just saw a couple running. Just saw a couple swimming around. That's cool. Um, the question is, can I salvage enough material on the side of the road in the ditch? Like last year, you could see where I dug out quite a bit of the material in that from that ditch right there with a lot smaller tractor that didn't have any power either. I probably can up in there and salvage enough material just to fill this thing in and make it passable for for the moose hunters, the bear hunters, and bird hunters. And then I'd like to run a trap line um up this road and you can make a loop all the way to camp. So, I definitely want to repair this. I probably should haul a couple loads down to it, but I'm going to see what I can do first with material just right here in the side of the road and stuff. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here. Heat up here. All right, we're passable now for another season. I did about a half mile up that road, too. It was getting pretty worn out, but checking them off the list. Another one done. I dried out a little bit. It stopped raining. I think I'm going to head back and get a late lunch and maybe start on some firewood or something. All right. All right. I'm back at the camp. Uh just cooked up a really nice looking dinner. I hope it's as good as it looks and smells. Um went through some memory cards on some of the trail cameras I had out one at the feeding station and just got some amazing footage of Fisher Martin and uh a little bit of raccoon as well. Some of those were at the boxes that I had stored with no traps in them and no bait in them for the most part. And some were at the feeding station. I think I had some apple slices for oh couple weeks while I was gone. Some frozen apple slices in there. A lot of skin that the fish are devoured. And then I think I put like sausage and some fish and whatever leftovers I had before leaving for the for the uh spring. So, dinner tonight is going to be some sweet peas in butter and then a big old slab of salmon that one of my customers at the ice cream shop trades for ice cream. So, pretty good trade for both of us. I think they uh they get some really nice silver sides and that has been cooking in Cary Gold butter with some seasoning from Catch and Cook. I Let me see which one. I pretty much used mostly allterrain on that one and then a little bit of citrus kick because they say citrus and fish go well together. So, that's going to be dinner. I'll let you guys know how that turns out probably in the morning. I'm going to edit some video tonight and uh and I really look forward to tomorrow. Uh the rest of the work I'm going to do should be on the property here for the rest of the the time that I'm up here this trip. So, it'll be doing some firewood and moving some dirt. And then the only thing I have to do is run out to a gravel pit and get some sand for the septic and hole a couple that couple loads of that in. So, road should be in pretty good shape after after what I did today. All right, changing plans a little bit today. I got quite a bit of earth moved. Um, made a really good base and I'm going to run to town now. I got I talked to the guy that owns the pit and he's got some T33 washed septic sand septic systems or concrete sand I guess they call it made for gray water septic systems like this one. I only got like a three elgen system. Um we don't have any water at all. We're carrying only on water. So we really don't create much for for gray water or anything. But Lur or what? Lurp or whoever they are now is making us put in this gray water system. So we got to do it. So I got like an hour and a half ride anyways to go out to town and get I'll probably haul maybe 3 4 yards of this sand. I want to keep her under 8,000 lbs I think with the uh I don't want to blow any tires or or uh put too much stress on the truck or anything like that. So, all right. I got a bunch of new fill hauled in through here. All this is all new fill for the driveway and got a road built all the way to the septic so we can get the machine right in there. I hauled in that washed septic sand right here. This is all four yards of washed septic sand. Believe it or not, that's four yards. And that's going to go there where the gray water system is going to go. But today's project, uh, before I could do firewood, because I want I want to stack the firewood right here, get it covered kind of close to home where I could carry it in in the winter pretty easy. Um, but before I do that, I got to finish this gable end. So, going to be working on metal today, metal siding. Um, I got a buddy and his wife are coming in tonight. I'd like to get all this done. He wanted to work on some firewood tomorrow with me. So, as much as I can get done to this before he gets in, then probably finish it off with him. It's a little tricky, you know, with the angled cuts and the and putting the Z channel in and maybe even do J channel around the whole perimeter. I haven't decided yet if I want to do J channel or not. I might just try to go tight. We'll see. All right. So, I didn't get much done on the the side end. I just got those two little pieces on the end there cuz I only found one piece of Z channel. I have all sorts of other stuff, J channel, stuff like that. But I need the Z channel before I put the next level on. So I reached out to my buddy Jay who's coming up tonight to see if he can pick some up. And I don't know if if he's going to be able to by some miracle or not. But in the meantime, I'm going to do some chainsawing. Uh start on that wood pile that's down below. Stuff's been down for over a year now. Um got some dead standing stuff kicking around, too. And Yeah. Heat. All right, we got some new additions to camp. My good friends Jason and Lorie just made it up and uh Jason brought a wood splitter that he just bought for $100 off some bum on the side of the road and thing was right full of mice. Couldn't get it running. So we ran up and um my buddy Tate's got one that he's going to let us borrow. So we got a big wood splitter. Got a bunch of stuff to split. I'm all done hauling gravel I think for now. Got a pile of gravel hold in. Pile of gravel hold in to where the gray water system's going to be. So I got wash sand. I got a dozen yards of gravel there and uh we're looking pretty good. So Lori called us in. She said, "Smell what's inside." And and uh come in for a coffee break. So usually when somebody says, "Smell what's in my trapper shed." It's not usually a good thing, but Oh, this one smells a lot different. But Lori from scratch made this crust and everything. Can't even believe it. What is it, Lori? >> It's a deep dish apple pie. deep dish cast iron, apple pie, homemade crust, used flour and lard and whatever you could find. >> That's right. >> And you're loving the cast iron stuff up here. >> Oh, yeah. >> There's a new one. So, yeah, I wanted to show the folks at home some of the new stuff. So, we got I don't know if they can see this one. I'll get it in the light, but we got a new Smoky Bear. I don't know if you guys can see that or not, Jay. Yeah, you can dig in. I know you're I know you've been patient for for video. >> That's as big as a spatula. >> We're going to need a bigger spatula. We're going to have to run down to Spatula City and get one. >> Which one are you taking? That one or the the rest of it? >> Oh. Oh. Is there an option? >> Holy cow. You're going to need sideboards on that plate when Brandon sees this video. >> Now, Jay, you're allowed to scoop what fell. You can't go in. You can't go in on the sides of the next person. >> You saw that? >> I saw it last night. All there was was crust left with one apple under it. >> But yeah, we got a bunch of new stuff in camp. Obviously, Jay and Lori are new in camp, but they've been here enough times already to call it home, I'd say. Right. But I want I want to show you guys this bear trap. We got a bear trap here. Probably going to put that on the wall. Um we got a bobcat. That's a new addition right there. That that one's a new one that a that a subscriber had sent to us. So we're pretty stoked to have that cuz I've never trapped a bobcat. But just the pelt on that is amazing. That's right next to that Canada links. And we got a bunch of pelts there. Um oh, I got something else in the truck. I haven't even showed you that. Uh, we got plenty of artwork. That's pretty cool that Joe Goodman drew that metal side. Bunch of uh signs there. No. No. I got something wicked cool in the truck. But I do need a hand carrying it. >> You know what? Yeah. If if you don't mind, Jay, you give me a hand carrying it. We'll surprise Lori with this. >> All right. We're going to put it over here cuz this has to cool. >> Yeah. I'm going to set this camera up. You're going to like this. This is going to be cool. So, that'll look pretty cool up here on the steps. I think Donny's gonna like that. He hasn't seen it yet. He hasn't seen a lot of this new stuff, and he's coming up next, so I think he's going to be pleasantly surprised. How's the pie? Edible. >> It's edible. >> All right. But yeah, other than that, new stuff at camp. Oh, yeah. And we got a couple jars that um that a sub a subscriber had sent to us and they were hoping we would open No, these ones aren't empty. >> Oh, >> they were hoping we'd we'd open these on camera. >> On camera? >> Yep. So, what's it? Kick ass pickles. I don't know if it goes with apple pie, but man, you are going to need sideboards for that plate. I like the pop. How do they smell? >> Bread and butter. >> They look like bread and butter. >> Wow. >> They are good. >> Well, you've opened them. We We We can't put the top back on. >> That's true. Yep. >> Do we have to open them both? That looks like relish. >> Salsa or relish? >> Salsa. bad ass sounds outside. >> Yep. We don't allow swears on the channel. So, but but yeah, that's about it, guys, for for new stuff. I know I'm missing something else, but we'll think of it eventually. I'll think of it eventually. But we got a lot We got a couple more things I want to do to camp and then we could call it finished. We got an amazing idea that Lori had or Jason. I don't know who had the idea, but I know who's Lori had the idea, right? Um and that's going to just have to be a secret till we reveal it. But yep, other than that, that's about it. We're going to drive some of this apple pie into us, some coffee, and then Jay and I are going to go out and hammer on that wood pile and maybe get a piece of siden up so I can at least see the angle that we're going to be working with. And uh we saw Jay and I were lucky enough to see a moose and they might be on a moose cruise later this afternoon. Maybe some brook trout. Uh Lori, how'd you guys do brook trout fishing? >> Did good. >> Caught a pile, didn't you? >> We we we did a good bunch. I never did get the final count. >> Well, we got so many we stopped counting. >> Who got most of them? >> Jason, >> I thought I was just the baiter. I just baited the hooks for Lori >> and caught the most fish. >> I just want to show the folks at home how much white they can see on the bottom of my plate. How much white you can see on Lor's plate. He likes his apple pie and I don't blame him. >> All right, guys. Next time you see us, we should be on the wood pile. Heat. Heat up here. What you got there, bub? >> Well, you got a few couple of steaks. >> That's quite a spatula you got. God, that I don't know if I touched the meat with that shovel. I know. I know. We've >> We've cleaned up some stuff with that shovel before. >> Doug. Yeah. Well, guys, with the help from Jason and Lori, we got a ton of firewood done. It did not split easy. It was super super stringy. A lot of decent amount of yellow birch in there. Good amount of maple. Uh a little bit of beach, so it should burn all right. Uh got a nice pile of cedar still over here. We got that area all cleaned up out back there and can get down to the old snake bit. Got this road put in so I can get to the gray water system. Got the four yards of wash sand right there holed in, ready to go. 12 yards of gravel. I think it's going to call for nine to cover it. I got to take a couple trees. I I guess there's no there can't be any trees within 15 ft of it. But I got a guy that's coming in uh hopefully next week to help me put that system together correctly. But we did good. We got we got a couple months worth of firewood up on the deck here. Um lot of cedar. Lot of cedar. So that'll smell nice anyway. And that's going to do it for this trip.