Potty talk…

Whenever we have a visitor to the island for the first time, there is always the apprehensive question that goes something like this: “So, what is the bathroom situation like on the island?”.  Fair enough.

the original “loo”

We have had a few systems over the years for our island loo.  For a very short lived time in 2001 we had a plastic lawn chair with a hole cut into the seat.  You grabbed a roll of TP and the chair and off you went! The whole process wasn’t very discrete and it wasn’t a hit with anyone…it’s just wrong to be sitting in a lawn chair.

That same year we upgraded to a camping toilet…the kind you buy at Canadian Tire; basically a pail with a flimsy toilet seat for a lid.  It was very wobbly, especially perched on the uneven ground in the woods where we put it which, was especially treacherous during a bathroom trip in the dark.  Not good enough. I began researching other options.

Septic tank: who would come to the island to empty it?

Septic field: way too big and costly of a project for us in the beginning.

Outhouse: Most people have an outhouse, but I hated the idea of digging a deep hole and calling it your bathroom. I don’t like outhouses. Maybe it’s my mom’s stories growing up about using an outhouse crawling with spiders and snakes (have you seen my blog post I’m not always so brave off the grid? I’m a bit of a scaredy cat). I don’t care how nice of an outhouse it is, or how many hilarious outhouse books there are for my reading pleasure…there is always the threat of spiders and other creatures sharing this space with me, and I’m not fully comfortable with this.

Compost toilet: more along the lines of what I wanted, but I’d read some reviews that there could be problems with certain brands…messy problems that I had no interest in having. When you have more people using them, the problem gets worse, and in the early days we had large groups coming out to visit…so, I kept looking.

I finally came across a book called The Humanure Handbook (http://humanurehandbook.com). I bought it, got reading, and was sold that it was worth a try. It is a basic DIY compost toilet. Buck built a maple plywood box with a hole cut into the top and a proper toilet seat firmly attached to it, and we put a 5 gallon pail inside.

I’ll keep the information on how it works very basic: You go, then add compost mix on top until all is covered…everything getting covered is the important part in this system. The compost cover material is wood chip bedding used for hamster cages (not the version with cedar, as cedar does not break down quickly like pine), mixed with peat moss. Basically 60% wood shavings and 40% peat moss that I mix together in a big bin. You then empty the pail into a backyard variety compost bin and let it sit and do it’s composting thing.

In the spring, we lift up the compost bin, move it, and start all over.  We were pretty concerned about this part the first time. What if the contents were not composting…that could be one heck of a mess to deal with.  Turns out there was nothing to worry about…just dirt / compost with no resemblance to the original contents at all. Nothing.

We set up the compost toilet in a quiet place in the woods under a large cedar tree, and put a dining tent up around it. Screened in from the mosquitos, peaceful, with a view of the lake and trees all around you. I had reports from visitors that is was the nicest bathroom experience they have ever had! Success. When our dining tent broke, we decided to not replace it…turns out it was even nicer right out there in the woods.

Ready to go compost toilet with peat/wood chip mix

When we were planning our cabin we thought we may have to buy an expensive commercial compost toilet system…but, we successfully moved our $25 dollar maple plywood box compost toilet into the cabin. We designed the cabin with the back door through the bathroom so taking out the bucket is easy and you don’t have to trek through the cabin with it. The benefit over commercial compost toilets is that the more people using it does not impact it’s effectiveness…we just use more peat moss / wood chips compost material, and empty it sooner.

This system has little impact on our island, and has been a cheap, simple way to have an off the grid bathroom. Will we have a septic field some day with a traditional flushing toilet? Maybe, maybe not. No matter what we decide, I’ll keep the old patio chair turned potty as a reminder of days gone by…

Boat Docking for Dummies like us…

You know you are going to have a hard go of docking your boat on the island when a few days after you finish your brand new dock, your neighbour calls you to say,

“I have good news, and bad news. The good news is that your dock is still at the lake, but the bad news is that it isn’t where you left it”.

No one wants to hear that their new dock is anywhere except exactly where they left it.  Unfortunately, our lot faces the impressive Northwest wind…where our dock and anything parked at it takes a beating. That first year we had a small shitty boat and all it took was some nailed together cedar logs that we dragged our boat up onto to get it out of the water. When that boat died, we were back to square one when we bought the bigger boat. We traded in the problem of having a small death trap of a boat, for the problem of how to park a larger boat.

For anyone taking on a dock project, my recommendation is to go about it nothing like we did. I have included the stages we went through so you can avoid them, and do it right the first time.

Stage 1: Build a basic crib and deck. Our first dock crib was made out of cedar logs held together with rebar (which is still holding some 12 years later!). A good friend of ours has a family cabin at Westhawk lake and we were at the Westhawk bar (R.I.P Westhawk bar…lots of people have mourned you).  I was telling her friend Derek about the crib we just built and how we had no idea how to build a deck on top of it. He offered to come out to the island to build it…and just like that he came out with my friends Sylvia and Mark, with a boat full of lumber, and we built our first deck! Thanks Derek!

Stage 2: Build a dock to park the boat.  We decided to attempt a floating dock attached to the deck by a ramp. We built the dock, attached the floaters, and then anchored down the floating dock with 4 large concrete filled tires. They were horribly heavy and my brother in law wrestled the monster anchors out of the boat and in the water until they secured our new dock in place…or so we thought.

Buck lying on the dock for the few days it was there…

Stage 3: This is the stage where we should be having a dock party to celebrate our hard work.  We left that weekend feeling pretty good…we had a dock. Then, the call from our neighbour about the windy day dragging our floating dock, anchors and all, and ripping the deck framing board right off the crib where it was attached with heavy docking hardware. When he first told me, I remember being almost amused…we JUST set up the dock! That’s ridiculous. All the anchors we put in…what happened? Then I got really irritated…docking the boat was going to be way harder than we thought. We were out of our league. 

Stage 4: Spend the next 5 years feeling ashamed at your inability to build a proper dock and park your boat at your neighbours lot.  We would have done something sooner, but we really didn’t know what to do. We also didn’t have money to throw at the problem even if we did know what to do. So, we waited and thought, talked about potential solutions with our neighbours, and did the walk (or canoe) of shame back to our lot after parking our boat safety at Jenny and Niall’s.

Stage 5: Build a deep water crib so your failure doesn’t seem so bad. We added a deep water crib and deck so we had more deck space, but it was in no way safe to park the boat at should the winds of Shoal Lake pick up. We could host a small dock party, but still could not park our boat at our lot.

Stage 6: Accept defeat, call in the professionals, and throw large sums of money at the problem until it goes away.  Finally, in 2009 we hired someone to come in and figure it out for us. We decided that getting the boat right out of the water was the safest thing to do, and a boat ramp was the best way to accomplish this on our lot.

Stage 7: Accept your dock isn’t great, but it does the trick.  Parking our boat safely became the highest priority the summer our boat sank. Yep, we sunk our boat (as have plenty of people on our island…Shoal Lake can get rather cranky). It was parked at our neighbours dock when a storm came in and rolling waves filled it up fast. Didn’t take long to submerge it.  We are happy knowing that our boat is up out of the water when the thunder and lightning start, and the wind picks up. Instead of getting on my rain coat and checking on the boat in the middle of the night (which used to be a regular occurrence) I now roll over and let the sound of the rain put me back to sleep.

Cabin creations…the good, sad and the fugly

I always have a project planned for our vacation at the cabin…something I want to make. We have 14 day stretches out there, and without city destinations or distractions to break up the day, you need to get creative when the weather isn’t cooperating.  I also just like to make things, and the pace at the cabin allows time for this.

One year I was obsessed with photo transfers. I probably would have put a photo on half the items in our cabin if I wasn’t stopped.  Thank God for the Portlandia sketch “Put a Bird On It!” for the timely embarrassment I felt over the number of bird related photo transfers I had already done….I reeled it in after that.

I transferred family photos from the cabin and magazine cut outs I liked onto Baltic birch plywood left over from the cabin build, as well as onto coffee mugs. The fun part was rubbing the paper off and getting a retro looking and personal image left behind on whatever you want. We can drink a cup of coffee and catch a glimpse into summers past at the cabin, and of our now big kids when they were little ones.

Check out how to do it here:  http://blog.consumercrafts.com/decor-home/photo-to-wood-transfer/

Another year I bought a book of stencils, and decided to spray paint everything I could get my hands on. Most of them were blurry blobs as the spray paint bled around the edges, but it was lots of fun. Our lot was starting to look a rail yard covered in mediocre graffiti.  Thankfully the spray paint cans were empty fairly soon and only a few remnants of that phase remain, such as our kids bathroom step stool with the spray paint owl (a bird…I know).

This birch lamp I recently made is more regretsy than etsy destined…it looked so much better in my mind as I walked amongst the trees finding my perfect lamp.

That said, it gives off some awesome light from the tiny bright LED’s working on AA batteries, so no need to turn on our generator. For that reason alone it has not been sent back to the woods where I found it, yet.

 

Island visitors get creative on the island too…how about these hotdog and twig sunglasses by our awesome friend  Suzanne B. I love these!  Great part is after the sun goes down they are fully edible.

Buck, Rob and Kevin created seafaring vessels one afternoon that was to end in a race across the bay.  Buck never got his barrel chair launched long enough to enter the race; Rob never figured out a proper vessel and instead decided to tie a rope from him to a pink dinosaur, which slowed him down in the race; and Kev’s dock float with flippers on his hand for oars was the race winner (at least I think so…I was laughing too hard to pay attention to the official results).

Our neighbours get creative as well.  Jeff and Cindy set up “the door” on the property line between us on the back trail.  It’s surreal. One minute you are walking amongst the cedars and pines on a narrow back lot trail, and the next you pass through an old barn door. There have been many late night walks to and through “the door” with unsuspecting visitors. Island camp fire legend is that “the door” is a portal to another dimension…

Down the trail is Matthew’s cedar outdoor shower that he milled himself with island cedar trees. It’s such an awesome shower, and it smells great.

Finally, there was the night of the LEGO challenge.  We each got 2 big handfuls of random pieces to engineer our best LEGO creation. In the end, we skillfully merged them into a mega LEGO machine. Not bad. I think we can create something even more impressive now that our daughters have a growing pile of LEGO to add to the mix.

Sue, Patty, Rob and Kevin…let’s have a rematch! LEGO challenge reunion, summer 2016!

One last look at summer off the grid…

Summer is long gone. In it’s place is our busy family life of work, school, swimming lessons and dance class.  I feel like I need one last look at our easy-going summer before accepting all of this.

I think about the cabin pros and cons list we made after a tough start to the season. I have since added a lot of pros to my list. No matter how tough the situation gets at the lake, this place somehow always wins me over as the summer goes along.

the girls sunset watching with neighbours Lauren and Ellie

Love our island community…

 

The spontaneous long afternoon visits with the Renders’ on their dock, where us, the Edwards and about a dozen kids, visitors, dogs, and chaos tend to pass the beautiful sunny days; the campfires where the kids stay up way too late running around the trees with sparklers; the boat passing by our dock to invite the girls to go tubing; Christmas in July dinner at Jeff and Cindy’s with a full turkey dinner and presents for everyone; and the island wide Luau at Greg and Brenda’s and the “Beergarita’s” that put everyone in a good mood.

Family Time…

Completely uninterrupted from errands and obligations. I still check my emails a handful of times each day, but the pace of our life slows to a crawl…and we spend some serious quality time together. Coloring, crafts and books on rainydays…nature walks, swimming, and long canoe rides most other days…all of it together. Lots of time with our kids…like, a LOT of time.  I love that we can slow to a pace where this time together is the purpose of each day. When Tess and Molly are asked if they want to go home, they yell “NO!!”.  This focused family time is great for all of us.

Getting creative and learning new skills…

There are learning curves all the time for jobs you don’t know how to do on the island.  It really isn’t an option to call someone out to the island as you would in the city. These things still need to get done, so you spend hours and hours reading stuff online and you talk to many, people in many different stores until you feel sort of competent to do the job. This summer it was installing a propane freezer in 30 degree heat. It wasn’t pretty. We had just arrived for our holiday and I had 2 coolers full of meat and other perishables that needed to get into that freezer. After all, I had preplanned the hook up and it was only a 10 minute job to make a few connections and have it running! Instead there were two days of fighting and online trouble shooting, and our bacon, chicken and steak were spread across the island in various neighbours freezers. Then finally…I got it working. Turns out hooking the carbon monoxide detector to the back of the freezer is a big deal. It would have been nice if the instructions mentioned this step. We had home-made ice cream on our holidays thanks to the new freezer. Is this a good skill to have? Definitely debatable…but it’s another skill of questionable value that I would not have if wasn’t for the island.

It should be noted that at the time this blog post was written, no reported injuries have occurred on our play structure.

Buck added some monkey bars to the kids play structure. I’ll be the first to admit I was skeptical of the project…it’s not the safest play structure by 2015 standards. “Sharpish” sticks at eye level; and a slide angled much too steep that ends up shooting kids off the end; and in my eyes a few other potential trip to the hospital like features. But, the kids LOVE it. It has come to remind me of a time of thrown together tree forts built when I was a kid, and I love that my kids get to experience this and build it with their dad.

The girls got creative and made some kick ass Modge Podge nature art on Baltic birch ply we had lying around. They had a blast collecting their nature items and gluing them permanently with the goo onto the plywood. I’m proud of our little nature girls.

Just being in a beautiful place…

Mountains and ocean expanses are impressive (though this prairie girl actually feels a bit claustrophobic in the mountains and overwhelmed by the ocean after a while)…there is something about the Canadian Shield, with it’s scraggly white pines poking out over the islands with the lake in between that just feels…right. Even after all these years…I watch the sunset most nights unobstructed from my dock and still get that feeling that this place is somewhere incredibly special.

The cabin owners dilemma…

We started lake season late this year for a variety of reasons, but finally arrive for a week long stay and have a wonderful Canada day.  We spend it canoeing and kayaking with the kids, following 2 loons and a blue heron around the bay and watching fish swim under our boats to the girls delight. We end the day with island friends around the campfire.  Good times.

In fact, I write this post sitting happily with a drink beside me in the screened in porch.  Owning a cabin is all wonderful all the time, right?  It’s a bit more complicated than this though…

Its been a rough start to the season.  We discovered the Lund boat trailer was set up completely unbalanced and dangerous for towing on our new Mitsubishi Outlander. It took way too many hours of my life to sort this problem out, and I may be one of a small global population of unfortunate people to know how to calculate trailer tongue weights and know what percentage it should be relative to the boat motor and trailer weight.

We had a burst pipe in our on demand propane water heater that I have spent 4 days trying to resin seal closed.  We also had ice take out the footings on our boat ramp.  Thankfully this was repaired yesterday by a welding / repair crew we brought out to the island and our boat is once again safely out of the water.

These types of issues start what I think most cabin owners ask themselves at least now and again:  to SELL or STAY.  This year Buck started a list on the fridge chalk board…we are waiting to see which side of the list is longer.

boats get us off the grid part 2

I had proven my boating incompetence when buying the Sea Hag and The Relic, and was determined to do a better job boat shopping this time round. Captain Splashy is an 18 foot Sylvan deep hull aluminum boat with 120 Evinrude outboard motor and was bought after a full inspection from a mechanic. It was a great boat, but still old…from the early 80’s. It usually started and it did its job of getting us to and from the island…most of the time. It carried over all the supplies for the mini cabin, the BBQ, futon, mattresses and our fridge…this boat was a work horse for us.  I can visualize the dining room table, chairs and the mattresses jammed across the seats and hanging over the windshield bobbing up and down in the waves; or the tools and 2 x 4 stacked high between the boat seats weighing it down nice and low in the water. Fun times.  It cost around $5000, and we drove it for over 8 years. We even sunk this boat once in a storm when parked at the dock and the waves came up and into the back of the boat too quickly.  A few friends with bailing buckets and our lovely lake neighbours with a water pump and up it came to float again.  One neighbour played around with the motor until it fired up again. When we had our kids and it would occasionally not start, we sold Captain Splashy to this same mechanically inclined neighbour…he was still happily driving it as of last summer.

The Lund Alaskan DC has been amazing. Only 2 years old when we bought it off someone who also used it to access their island property, it was a great buy.  It was expensive (like new car expensive), but good boats cost money apparently.  I wish we could have afforded to start our island adventure with a boat like this. It starts every time we turn the key, and I know that if we have to leave the island in rough water, we’d be okay. We still avoid boating in the really big waves, and it’s still a challenge at times to get to and from the cabin, but this boat has made a big difference in island living. There have been several times when docking the boat that a random fisherman will come up to check out the boat and tell me all the specs on the Alaskan. I think I’ve seen actual drool. Fisherman like this boat and would probably be offended by our lack of use of it. We pretty much park it and trade the Alaskan in for the canoe for our time at the lake. Much more our pace. Thankfully the Alaskan waits patiently and gets us home safely…and that is all I want from a boat.

boats get us off the grid part 1

We are on an island 6 miles off the nearest mainland boat landing. I had no boating experience to speak of before buying this property.  It’s been BY FAR the most challenging part of this adventure.

When I think back on the boats I’ve bought and thought were reasonable purchases, it is quite embarrassing. I do sometimes think that I needed to make these mistakes so that I could learn about boats the hard way…by having them break down and leave us stranded, and causing lots of tears and stress. These lessons have let us learn how to get it right, and make a go of an island property. In the end, it really comes down to the fact that buying a cheap crappy boat when you have an island property is a really, really bad idea. Unfortunately we could only afford old, beat up boats in the early days.  Here’s the history of our boats to date:

This is the trip to the cabin…all smiles. It was the return boat ride 2 days later that ended in tears!

I bought the Sea Hag in a rush to get out to the cabin, doing no research on it’s suitability, and without a mechanic looking it over. I paid $1000, which seemed like a decent amount of money to spend on a boat. It was a 16 foot flat bottom aluminum boat with a 25 hp outboard engine. It felt like you were crawling across the water to get to the island…especially loaded with too many people and camping supplies. These were the days of grilling people on what they were bringing to decrease the weight in the boat. “No, you cannot bring a hair dryer…it takes up space and there is no where to plug it in!” This boat would have been a great on a puddle of a lake, where you could take it out on a nice day to cast a line in the water…but it had no business being on Shoal Lake. It felt like you were in a large bathtub on the ocean. There were many weekends that I would wake in the tent to the wind picking up and panic, demanding everyone get up so we could leave.  I had a friend cry on one of those boat trips home (sorry Marianne!) and my dad, fearing for is life, demand to be turned around and brought back to shore. Not good. There have been many times when friends attempting to visit us would not get it when I told them it was too rough to come get them. It’s just water and you have a boat…what’s the big deal? Actually I have a tin can on a giant lake. I’ve always felt great responsibility for boating people safely across the lake and this boat did a terrible job of letting me have any confidence in this task.

The Sea Hag lasted about a season and a half, until the bottom end died…probably for the best.  It stopped running with 10 people stuffed into it on the way for another weekend adventure. A nice neighbour dragged us back to shore.

In an attempt to get back to the island quickly after the Sea Hag died, I felt rushed to buy another boat. I had learned that we needed a deep hull boat. So, enter The Relic. It was crazy looking, which we found amusing. Of course, I did not have a mechanic have a look at it first, and this boat lasted all of  2 weekends!  We hauled it back to a repair shop. I’ll never forget the pity the owner showed me as he didn’t charge me for the time they had put in, and said to “get rid of it.” Bottom end of motor was toast; transom a wreck; not worth it. The guy I bought it from, I am convinced, knew it was on it’s very last legs. He didn’t even stop chewing on his dinner when I called him to inform him of the shape of the boat he just sold me. Shame on him. I was heartbroken over the $3000 that I lost.

The one blessing was that I had finally learned my lesson…buyer beware.  That experience was so tough on me that I have become ruthless at shopping for big ticket items…research, research, research, and don’t jump into any purchase. Buck finds it painful to watch me shop for something!  I ended up dumping The Relic at a consignment yard as open to offers. Good riddance. Someone offered $1000 knowing about all the problems it had…I hope it worked out for them better than it did for us. I keep thinking that I see it in the yard where I left it when driving by….maybe it destroyed the new owner and was sent back to the boat graveyard.

Thankfully, our boating life gets better after this. To be continued…

I’m not always so tough off the grid…

I’m afraid of mice.  I never used to be…until the incident in the little cabin.  There was a time when I thought mice were cute. They would run around the fire pit and we’d throw them marshmallows, thinking it was funny to see a mouse carry off a giant ball of sugar its own size. I’m certain there are generations of diabetic mice running around our island.

It was our first trip spring visit and I was cleaning up. I opened a drawer and realized that I had left a sweatshirt over the winter. I pulled it out and with it an entire nest of baby mice spread out across the cabin floor. Tiny, pink, baby mice. Everywhere. They scattered across the floor in all directions and I was beside myself in shock and fear. I started screaming and woke Buck up from a mid afternoon nap to lay his sleepy eyes on the scene. I was frozen in place screaming, so Buck jumped to his feet and began sweeping them up into the dustpan. We didn’t know what to do with them so made a rash decision to throw them into the lake. If only we would have put them in the woods for mom to find. The mama mouse returned all day long to try locate her kids.

Night came and she continuously broke into the cabin. We found the hole she chewed into the screen and covered it. Again she found a way in. All night she woke me up…I’d see her on top of the dining table or the cupboard staring at me.  It’s like she was saying “what the *%$#@!@ did you do with my kids!” Fair enough. It was only a matter of time before she was running across my head and so there was no way I was sleeping until that mouse was caught. Poor Buck could have slept through it, but I insisted we go into battle mode.

It was around 4 in the morning when I devised a plan to have Buck catch her in a Rubbermaid container since we didn’t have any mouse traps. This seemed logical given our sleep deprivation (in hindsight, it was the kind of pre-babies sleep deprivation that is actually being extremely well rested, you just don’t know this yet…). I laid down in the loft and watched her walk through the hole in the screen and yelled “she’s in!” Buck slammed the lid on her.  Success! I couldn’t wait to sleep!  After a quick discussion of what to do with her, we decided to throw her in the lake too. Sorry Minnie Mouse, but we couldn’t risk you finding your way back to the cabin again.

I felt extremely relieved that this whole event was over and I settled back into bed. Buck returned to the cabin and said,  “You are not going to believe this. I threw her out as far as I could, and she just swam back!” He tried to throw rocks to keep her from returning to shore, but she maneuvered around them and was back on land.  We learned that night that mice can swim really well.  She never did find her way back to the cabin, or else she decided not to join us again, thank God.

There are lots of fights with nature on the island that fall into the “make me squeamish” realm. The nest of giant carpenter ants that made a home in one of the foam mattresses. Buck swept what seemed like thousands of them into a pail. The enormous dock spider that filled the margarine container when Buck captured it. Horrifying. Every time Buck went to scoop it into the container I screamed and he jumped a foot in the air. I finally had to leave and let him capture it in peace. Or the bat that decided to join us in the screened in porch. This time it was Buck screaming like a 5-year-old girl, and I laughed at him from the safety of the cabin. Then there are the giant moths that seem more like something that should only exist in a tropical rain forest. I have been terrified of moths since I was a kid so these are very troubling for me!

There is also all the really awesome parts of spending time in the middle of the woods. Like the time when we were canoeing behind a family of ducks for half an hour and watched the mom nab a crayfish for dinner.

There was the time we were walking the path and happened upon a garter snake swallowing an entire frog. Gross, but interesting too.

There was also one evening on the dock that we watched a sky full of dragon flies dive bombing fish flies, filling the lake with little corpses to then be devoured by fish snapping them up form underneath the water. All things that in the city you have no exposure to. I’m happy to have these experiences. Except mice. I don’t want anything to do with them anymore.

Many hours under the cabin mouse proofing it with metal mesh sheets. Bones the dog walking amongst them in the cramped space made for a terrible job.

 

When we built the cabin, I insisted metal screen on the underside so mice couldn’t chew through. I envisioned a roll of metal window screen, but messages were crossed and diamond steel mesh sheets were sent. It was a lot of work to install under the cabin. The guys were on their backs for nearly a day nailing it between the floor joists. I would also stuff steel wool into any little gap each time a cabin wall came up. The guys thought I was crazy, analyzing each wall for any spaces or light coming through and stuffing the wool in.  But you know what? 8 years in and not a single mouse, dock spider, snake or giant moth has broke into the cabin. That makes me happy 🙂

We’ve come a long way off the grid…

Let’s jump forward to the present…lots has happened in 13 years.  We have been busy.  So have all our neighbours…a determined group of islanders starting from scratch. I don’t know what we’ll do when we are “done”. I’ve heard you never are.

The timeline of what we did each year:

2002: Our first summer spending time on the property. Clearing brush, and  tent living with cooking over the camp fire.  Dishes washed with lake water, and all supplies stored in Rubbermaid containers.

2003: Expanded tent city so there was room for guest tents. Built boat crib and deck. Added our version of a compost toilet system.  The question I get asked most about our off grid property is what we do for a little ladies room…another blog post on that later.

2004: Built the Monica 1…our 12ft x 12ft mini cabin. I love this little cabin and it has served us well.  Thank you Marianne Amodio for designing this little beauty!

2005 – 2007: Set up the mini cabin, including an outdoor rain fed sink system; and a loft to stuff 2 more people in. It was a small loft, more like a coffin really. Lots of good times (like my stagette weekend) were spent here.

Life in the mini cabin:
2008: Built the shell of the main cabin. I cannot thank Rina Ricci enough for the time she put into the design. We adore it.  Also, Kevin Stevens and crew (Derek, Rob and Rob) of KJS and Son builders….you are amazing. It was such an experience being out there for 13 days working with you. I think we were all feeling crazy near the end, and I think I can trace the start of Buck’s obsessive compulsive organizing habit to this time. Buck “The Recyclor” came to life around mid build, amongst the chaos, and started organizing scraps of wood into their piles before they even hit the ground. I think he also started organizing your tools in alphabetical order at night! We persevered, and the cabin still stands strong.

2009-current:

Insulated cabin top to bottom; wired the cabin and set up generator power; painstakingly clad walls with baltic birch plywood sheets; added cedar siding; installed kitchen with propane fridge and stove; installed bathroom; built screened in porch; installed cabin wood stove; added cabin plumbing and roof fed water supply, and an on demand propane hot water tank and outdoor shower.

Looking at this list makes me exhausted. Our existence in the new cabin is almost unrecognizable from the early years. I am certain we would not fully appreciate the wood stove making a cozy warm cabin had we not had to dress our small daughter in 3 pairs of fleece pyjamas on chilly nights pre wood stove. I would not have grinned from ear to ear when hot water came pouring out of the outdoor shower that first time had I not forced myself to jump into a freezing cold lake to get clean many, many times before. These are luxuries well earned.

 

Six months after buying the property, Buck and I were together and it was quite clear to us that this was a long term relationship. Our lake neighbour Jenny recently told us that back in those first years, she didn’t think Buck would make the cuts! She questioned his lake living suitability I guess (he was more musician that lumberjack)…but we married in 2006. When I first told Buck about the island and my grand plans, he seemed…interested.  Curious.  Maybe a little unsure. He had no experience boating, or building, and he didn’t grow up with a cabin either.  It was going to be the blind leading the blind.

I didn’t expect Buck to take over the plan I had envisioned on the island. I wanted to do this. I did have lots of interactions with men as I consulted on cabin or boat related tasks that would remark that my husband could get in touch with them to discuss. I would inform them that I was the contact, and then watch them back pedal…it was irritating. Buck is a machine out there…no project would have been completed without him. I plan it out, and then we both tackle it. I have to practically force him to take breaks and just hang out on the dock. Even though I bought the island when I was on my own, it was our place right away…we are a great team.  It’s also an important place for our kids now too.

 

That first summer was all about trying to get set up…it took several weekends to just clear a spot for a tent. I can’t emphasize enough how untouched the land was. Giant fallen white pines on top of cedars, and junipers with roots than ran underground for meters and seemed to refuse to be torn from the ground. Once we had a bit of room to move in, that’s where the fire pit went, and we slowly burned our forming piles of branches during camp fires. There were days where our work seemed futile….like we barely made a dent in the woods. We did not have a chainsaw at the time, so an axe and hand saw were our only weapon. I had horrible thoughts of one of us sawing off a limb that kept me from even considering a chain saw at this point. We were constantly covered in scratches, and battered and bruised. We also had visits by black bears to keep us on our toes. Apparently bears will taste test rubbermaid containers and all their contents, including cans of mosquito spray.

They were also really fun years. We felt tough out there, and excited to get camp set up. We did not have a BBQ so the fire pit was it for cooking.  No BBQ.  What were we thinking? Apparently our priority was filling the boat with people and beer, as we spent many weekends with a dozen friends hauled over in our small boat to camp, cook over the fire and drink more alcoholic beverages than likely wise. There are weekends that are amazing from those years. Some of you will remember the ones I’m talking about.

Good. Times.