Trail Blazing 101

Real men live off the grid, step lightly, and carry a Husqvarna… right?

HOLD IT… My wife would totally disagree with me on that one.

She’s the one holding the chainsaw!

Here’s a glimpse into our very first day handling our new chainsaw.

Notice I’m behind the lens and not the saw?

It’s for a pretty embarrassing reason.

I’ve never used a chainsaw before.

So what’s a good off gridder to do?

Watch a bunch of YouTube videos and… let my wife go first. 

If you’ve wielded an axe, chainsaw, hatchet or buck saw in the past then this post is for you.

If you’ve never used any of those before… this post is for you.

We've Got An Axe To Grind!

OK, Make That A Chainsaw.

FACT:  Everything looks way easier on TV than it actually is in real life. 

Our new favorite show Building Off Grid is helping inspire a new generation of folks to build their own off grid home.

Want To See The Entire Cabin Build Instructions & Costs?

YES, Show me it all!

Whether it’s a tiny house, cottage, weekend getaway or a cabin like ours this show will definitely get you motivated!

Building_Off_The_Grid_Tv_Series_on_DIYNetwork

And it’s not just about building the homes either.

We’ve seen several episodes that begin with folks purchasing virgin ground and walk you through the process of clearing the land overnight and putting in access roads over a weekend. Heck it almost looks fun and easy.

We laughed about how we were going to blaze our own trail through the woods, 650ft, with our axe and buck saw during commercial breaks.

Let me preface this post by saying…

Who ever said trailblazing was fun and easy has either never done it before or paid someone else a lot of money to do it!

It’s official, we’ve started cutting a 650ft path though our 3.5 acres of dense Canadian Boreal Forest. And of course we did it by hand. 

It’s been months in the planning and finally we’re ready to begin.

Getting Started Trail Blazing!

Well, the morning arrived and spent the first few hours chopping at trees, hacking away at brush with our hand tools and ungracefully tripping over every root and fallen log we came across. 

I can hear the Paul Bunyan’s of the world right now…paul-bunyan

Psssffft… silly city slickers!

Did you know that we originally thought hey… “Let’s do this by hand. Let’s grab some gloves, a buck saw, some bear spray and a hatchet and blaze a trail!”

We lasted all of two and a half hours, went through four liters of water, had a long lasting argument with a tree stump and used up three band-aids from our new first aid kit.

We need to really rethink this whole trailblazing by hand thing!

The Trail We Need To Trailblaze

Lots of people have asked us to share the details of where we’re building the off grid cabin as well as what kind of wooded property we’re dealing with.

So here you can see the trail in purple that we need to blaze. Our property is a total of 3.5 acres and is really quite an awkward layout to work with. 

It is a total length of 664ft from the top of Hidden Lane (that’s the “L” shaped 574ft dirt road that comes with our property) all the way down to the cabin build site.

Trail_Blazing_From_Hidden_Lane

Below is a panoramic view of the off grid cabin build site BEFORE we started trail blazing.

Click the photos for a closer look.

The-off-gird-cabin-build-site-BEFORE-trail-blazing-2
The off grid cabin build site BEFORE trail blazing 1

We ended up having to clear all the trees out by hand as there was no way to get an excavator down to the build site.

We’ll explain why we couldn’t get one to “just drive down there” shortly, keep reading.

We wandered through approximately 12 acres, all of which led down to the waterfront. We really wanted a lakeside cabin and these four properties all had lakefront access. However each property had pros and cons.

TIP: Orientation is critical if you’re thinking of putting up a roof-top solar system like us.

The best part about the 3.5 acres we eventually bought was that we got it for half price.

This was all because of a ridiculous typo the selling real estate agent made in the online write up for the property.

You can learn more about how we got our cheap off grid land here

Cheap Off Grid Land

Here's Our Plan For Trail Blazing

We wanted to take full advantage of the waterfront are of our property.

But to get there we needed to thread our way through the narrow property lines and ensure that an excavator could get through it as well without touching the adjacent property lines.

TIP: Google earth makes it incredibly simple to map out your property. Provided the satellites have done a recent fly by over your property. Chances nowadays are good that they have.