From Hollywood To Homesteading - The Harsh Reality Of Living Out Here

nearest neighbor is about uh two miles away and then after that it's about eight miles brought me my dog I lived in my car for about six months it was me and her then I met that guy so I'm out here on 80 acres of land in the middle of nowhere and I got people tell me I can't live out here so let me get this straight you've received death threats yeah several of them truthfully being off the grid you know one of the reasons I moved out here is cuz I really want to conserve nature and I hate to see anything being wasted so somebody's actually not only threaten you with bodily harm but they're threat threatening to burn down your cabin yeah people threaten to burn down my cabin cuz I closed the trail down real life is Harsh out here sometimes right it is you know the winners are tough up here you got to do everything yourself uh especially being as far out as I am you're walking back in time when you're doing this kind of Lifestyle so you went from Hollywood to this yeah people think I'm nuts out here you know there's two trains of thought I'm either living the dream or I'm completely insane filmed the Grammys in 2005 yeah James Brown Jimmy pagee s m Hayek Quinton Tarantino was there always knew that I was going to come back to Michigan and this is going to be my forever home I'm here with Perry and he's a homesteader out here his nearest neighbors are pretty far away and he's going to tell you about that and a whole lot of other things about homesteading life here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan many people romanticize the idea of homesteading how many of you would like to live in a cabin in the woods surrounded by the beauty of nature a piece of land with a creek flowing across it deer and other an animals as your companions and the peace and quiet of a seemingly stress-free lifestyle it's a lovely image but the reality of it is something else entirely just because you have no neighbors doesn't mean you have no problems with people Michigan native Perry and his girlfriend Lou Who was originally from Bulgaria have been living the homestead life for several years now a very large dog was the reason they met and they've been together ever since this is a story of love dogs and the harsh reality of living this type of life and it's also a tale about life's Joy so I'm out here on 80 acres of land in the middle of nowhere and I got people telling me I can't live out here I'm not allowed to live out here in my own land I pay taxes on and in the United States are saying that I can't live here I can't live off the land I can't I can't be out here because I do things differently than what everybody else does things because I don't have your atypical electric setup or your atypical water setup but we have everything that we need to get by so you live out here in the middle of nowhere no neighbors around and there's people trying to tell you what to do yeah yeah how many chickens I can have you know what I can do with my land you know it's ridiculous this is Lou Perry's girlfriend and she's going to tell us a little about these dogs uh they're Cent Asian Shepherds they come from Russia it takes 3 years to train them for their full capacity of their health and everything my prize dog got hit by a side by side and that's when they were side by sides were racing and they keep be bears away they keep Wolves Away that's why they TR uh crop their ears so because if they keep their ears the Wolves can just grab their ear and walk them to where they want them to be and I believe it takes just two of these dogs to put down a bear usually if they could smell them they just stay away that's why we needed the dogs for to be here CU we don't have we don't see any of anything around here because of them they keep the Predators away Predators away yeah I was in a bad relationship and my brother brought me my dog she protected me no matter where I went but she was good to everyone but she knew who was bad she um went everywhere I went she was a best friend she was good to my kids she was good to all kids I don't believe that anyone should own a dog like this she's very missed she was the alpha she made sure that everybody was having a good time that was her thing she liked having fun and we all miss her a lot and we think about her all the time she became your protector right yeah there was no after I got her there was no um raising your voice or anything like that because she didn't like it so it was great and then what happened you took the dog with you got out of that relationship yeah we uh I we broke up and um I lived in my car for about 6 months and uh it was me and her then I met that guy this guy right over here yeah yeah and then sadly the ATV or the side by side guys uh hit her ran her over right I think she thought I was coming back home cuz I wasn't here so she was running to greet me Central Asian Shepherds male and female um they call them wol Crushers over in Europe where did this dog come from the male was raised down in Flint and uh he was a a guard dog at a dispensary marijuana dispensary down in Flint for a while so we were lucky enough to get him up here and he's uh uh a a great Shepherd you know they they take care of the livestock and they keep everything at Bay you know we don't have any problems with wolves um before I got them we'd have coyote and fox and wolv tracks right in the yard going right around the chicken coup and after we got them the closest they'll come is literally 100 yards away so they can tell that the dogs are here and the dogs uh do a very good job at keeping all the Predators at Bay but how big do these dogs get I mean they look really large so our mail is right around 200 lb uh females run a little bit smaller this one here is probably about 135 but the one that we had hit by the side by side was closer to his size she was probably 160 so but they get upwards of 200 plus on uh uh when they stand on their hind legs they're basically as tall as the fences are hi guys when they're standing on their hind legs they're like how tall we probably about 8T there's videos of them online uh fighting bears and tigers and and and packs of wolves I mean they're they're a formidable breed they're probably one of the top five uh most most formidable or dangerous breeds in the in the world they're called Central Asian Shepherds or they're also known as aliis how far away are your nearest neighbors nearest Neighbors about uh 2 miles away there's just one couple and then after that it's about 8 miles to the next uh person and then everybody's in town pretty much so let me get this straight you've received death threats yeah I've had some different uh individuals threaten uh bodily harm about me to kill me as I closed down the road on my private land it's all qfr land which is uh legal their side by-side traffic was destroying the property went ahead put gates up and received quite a few threats because of that cost me my job and a lot of other things this is your chicken coup here yeah so what we did was we you know somebody was going to go ahead and get rid of this old camper and so what we did was we took the camper and we basically took it apart and basically gutted it and we put nesting boxes inside there and uh our chickens uh come in here every night closes up nice and easy with the doors and uh you know instead of Us ending up in a landfill we went ahead and repurposed it it's all enclosed and it's mobile so you know we can go ahead and move it out the floor in there is actually lolium so we just clean out all our uh fertilizer from the chickens and we spread that out and then that's into our garden area here and we keep expanding uh as time goes by so but we try to repurpose everything and we've got several different chickens and we get farm fresh eggs every day so it's always a a benefit to being out here in the woods especially at the prices right now I'm just going to go in and have a little look at the chicken here so we're going in the little trailer here and hey there's a there's a big chicken right there and some up there yeah you guys doing you got the feed over there that's a pretty good little setup and like you say it keeps stuff out of the landfill tell me about your solar setup here so we have two Unique Systems for solar uh there's a company called gold zero and they're Innovative company they have a solar generator and we have three panels hooked up to that there a 3,000 W uh generator it's enclosed it's in the house and that generator Powers pretty much everything C EG coffee maker charges our iPad our tablets our computer our TV um and that runs off of three uh 100 watt Boulder uh solar panels and it's literally plug andplay so all you have to do is basically hook the panels up obviously make sure they're sun and then plug them into the generator and and that keeps the generator charged takes about 6 to 8 hours to do a full charge full sun then we have a second system in place which is a single panel and that runs our lighting and it's all LED DC lighting and it's a DC set up setup I wired that myself we have three uh marine batteries in this generator house here and those three marine batteries are hooked to that one panel and those that panel keeps those batteries charged and that runs our lighting system inside with our uh the lights are only 10 watts but they're extremely bright cuz they're LEDs and they're adustable so they're dimmable so we have uh three lights and that lights up the whole cabin so pretty unique system and then everything else is uh solar as well we've got some live feed cameras out here for security purposes just to keep an eye on things those are all solar generated cameras there's no they're completely wireless so they're hooked up those are by arol link uh another great company um and that's a live feed that goes to my phone so even when I'm not on property it'll send me alert if there's a vehicle or a person or anything going through the yard uh and then obviously our outdoor lights out here cu completely off the grid um everything's solar as well so all our lighting uh outside they'll all be individual Lighting systems uh with different panels and different settings and brightness and they go on and off throughout the night so this is a very simple and effective way of going yeah absolutely the go zero they are make it pretty easy with a plug and play you know what I mean you just basically plug it in and it's go good to go we have a Genera generator alsoo as well as a backup system we actually have two Genera that run parallel 6,500 Watts so in the winter time when we're not getting uh a ton of sun we can turn on one or both of those and that will charge the whole system inside the house if the solar panels can't go ahead and and get it done but the Goal Zero system is quite effective since 2017 so it's been just over 7even years now 7 years living out here cabin was built in 1927 and it was originally uh in another part of the up called the beaver Basin the system's actually down to zero right now but that's the Goal Zero generator right there just right down here yeah so okay so that's the Goal Zero right there you can see let me show you the so these are the LEDs that we were talking about kind of brighten it up in here a little bit oh yeah it does put some pretty good light in here yeah so we've got water purification systems so that's an ethal system you can put that right in a cck and it's portable and you turn it on and that'll go ahead and P your water probably about 3 gallons in about 30 minutes on a charge so you can get 3 gallons of purified water you can go to any any cck Pond puddle bucket of water rain water and it'll filter it completely out this is a aquatru system made more for um that one there is made more for um Municipal Water so if you want to take like bottled water and you want to filter out all the minerals and all that kind of stuff that's the aqua true system our oven's propane so the oven is an old 1930 Detroit Jewel out here we talk about replacing it but it it really is kind of a unique system everything works on it uh it doesn't have your typical burner um but it's uh it's a great little oven it's been out here for 40 years and then our refrigerator here this is our our propane fridge it's made by uh easy freeze it's company out of Colorado just a wonderful unit it's made also made off of propane 21 cub foot is the biggest one we could get which is great because we have all kinds of veggies and different stuff we've got you know we pick strawberries and raspberries and we've got fish in here and everything else so occasional Starbucks go to the city but not a very big place only 700 sare ft but this is the whole living area got a little TV by Mac set up place is obviously a mess right now but and then we have propane lights as well so we do have propane in here in case for whatever reason so the propane lights everything still works how it should but so that's pretty much uh lights everything up if uh for whatever reason the solar ever fails we've got backups for pretty much everything and then there's another Goal Zero system right there this is a Goal Zero this is another go zero generator this is the uh Yeti uh 500x this is 500 WTS and this is kind of like our bedside charges my Apple watch and our phones and our you know my iPad at night when I'm playing on the internet and then we've got another Goal Zero system over there that's the 400 that 400 runs our printer kind of our office space then we heat with firewood which you saw out the yard and then we have our propane back up here for our heat which also backs up in the winter time here so a little propane wall space heater there can turn the light on here so a little better but you know these are these LED lights are great they're dimable and they only take 10 watts so super bright and they'll go for hours um we've got three of them and it lights up the whole place and then we've got the propane as well so actually we've got four forget we got four now so what would you say your main source of heat is through the winter uh firewood for sure and we've got the chimney over here and the fireplace and that keeps this place I mean you get I mean it gets up to 100° it's like a sweat box in here sometimes in the winter so but that cast iron fireplace it's beautiful um sparkles in the winter time I mean we're I always joked um you know living off grid you know we got cast iron pots and pans it's like 100 years ago you know it's it's you're walking back in time when you're doing this kind of Lifestyle with obviously some modern technology to help make things a little easier um and we're always in the process of renovating we've put in new windows and we've got new flooring coming and those are brand new Anderson Windows behind you there and everybody asks about the chain link on the on the windows the chain Link's up uh keep the Bears out believe it or not like at some point in time we've had Bears try to get in the cabin so living out here in the woods you'd be surprised what tries again but no mice we haven't had any mice in here in almost seven years so yeah that's good cuz I occasionally get mice getting inside the dash of my car yeah they're they're they're destructive Little Creatures but once you find where they're getting in uh that's the key when you can find out where they're getting in and you block that hole you should have no problems so when I first came back here in 2017 the chinking and everything was gone the cabin was in pretty rough shape it was always our old hunting Shack it had been here since 76 and it was pretty well dilapitated so I had to put in all new chinking all new foam uh put new drywall up um just lots and lots of work um I did it all myself a little help some some friends but for the most part uh put everything together just lots of work like I said you know this cabin was originally built in 1927 it's the original Superior Lodge it was down in the beaver Basin which is now in the National Park Park Service came in and took over all the land and basically said you can move it or we're going to burn it to the ground so in 76 my grandfather took it apart log by log and numbered every single log and we moved it to this location uh in 1976 and put it together here it was the same year I was born so a lot of history inside this old cabin was it your father that acquired this property in 1949 it was my great uncle jack so Jack nelski um who came back from the war and he bought this 80 acre parcel uh originally I think he paid $99,000 for it so for 80 acres in 1949 so and I have the Deeds going back all the way to 1880 so the land has gone through quite a bit of uh price fluctuation I think originally the 80 acres in 1880 was $1,000 and then in the 1920s it was upwards of $120,000 because the logging companies were coming in here and they were taking out all the white pine so it used to be a huge Forest that big stump by the chicken coup is uh a remnant of the big white pine trees that uh used to fulfill this whole area and then after they logged it that same piece of land went from $120,000 down to $9,000 within 15 years so it's quite a bit uh I paid a little bit more than that when I bought it but wow that's an interesting history there yeah it's uh like I said it's been it's been in the family for a long time but we're making it work our well system's not set up yet so we have this little automated system you can get this on Amazon for about 20 bucks and it's just you know regular sink water we do all our dishes and everything here and uh it's just a nice little device for having water it comes with two batteries I think it was 20 bucks and we just purify the water and we put it in this little bucket and we do all our dishes right here in the sink and um we're just waiting for the we're in line there was 10 and something Wells ahead of us when we uh decided to get our well so we're hoping by the end of this year we'll have running water in here so but we'll see so right now everything is dependent on on a creek yeah on a creek yeah so which is the same aquafer that we're effectively using for our water right now so we get all our water for the animals we go down to the creek and we basically have another system where we put it like the ethal system but it's a little bit bigger it's a portable system and it comes with a pump and a battery and we just put the tube in the water with two filters and it filters everything out and then we filter that uh a third time for drinking or cooking or whatever other purposes that we have so and that's this system here this is the Poo system this is basically an electric water pump so and it comes with a battery and you just bring this down to the cck and you hook your hoses up to it and you turn it on and the batter is in the back here this is about 100 bucks for this thing and it's a high volume pump and the water filter system is in here that's your filter you put that inside and we have another cheesecloth filter that goes around there to keep all the big particles out and we run it through those other systems and that's how we get all our water we have a j close shower system I don't know if you heard of Juka that's in that back shed cuz I don't have it hooked up right now but it's um it's another system basically so we have everything we need out here so somebody's actually not only threatened you with bodily harm but they're threatening to burn down your cabin yeah people threaten to burn down my cabin cuz I closed the trail down um talking about buo and a trail right on the very edge of my property to get through with the side by sides so it's just it's been pretty sad and all this because you legally put a gate across an ATV trail uh yeah it's actually just a snowmobile trail which they signed a lease so they have access the problem is people can't discern the difference between being on a sled which doesn't do any damage to the natural environment in the winter time and being on an ORV which basically destroys the the land roads the gravel um Wildlife um we've had one of our chickens run over we've had uh uh uh I've got animals that have crossed the road that been killed Partridge rabbits turtles everything that they just destroy my girlfriend's dog was another Central Asian Shepherd um and she was our main breeding dog that we were going to have and uh uh over $5,000 and uh she got hit by a side by side two kids in a rented side by side out of Curtis coming through um racing and they hit her Square on the road and and killed her right on the spot it was a really rough day wow so homesteading has some rough times I mean it's it's not the romanticized thing that people try and make it out to be sometimes I mean real life is Harsh out here sometimes right it is you know the winners are tough up here in Upp in Peninsula and you know you got to do everything yourself uh especially being as far out as I am it's not easy to get any contractors out here to do anything so you're off basically figuring it out on your own whether whether it be putting in a well or cutting firewood or basically everything I mean I hooked up my own solar whatever it is um you got to figure it out on your own so this is the notorious gate that you put up huh this is causing you all the grief and problems with the yeah um you know I put this up uh you know we're part of a stewardship program through the Department of Agriculture uh my family and myself have been part of this for almost 40 years we started it in the '90s the plans run about 10 years you have to get it renewed every 10 years and the purpose of that is to go ahead and maintain your forest and that's to protect the wildlife protect the natural um beauty of what's what's out here and you know I put this gate up because um the side by sides uh sales went up 600% during Co and uh unfortunately those machines are quite destructive machines and they've completely destroyed uh the road they erode um because we're down here in the swamp area uh I've come down here in the springtime where they've killed uh a mother and there's baby rabbits on the road that don't have a mother anymore cuz the mother was killed cuz they're going too fast and they don't stop uh one spring I came down here and there was a little tiny puff ball Partridge that they don't fly when they're first born and they couldn't get out of the way and there's three or four of them that were crushed on the road um just recently there was a turtle up here in a puddle that was crushed and broken uh his shell was broken and killed they don't slow down they're going through here the aler County ordinance is 25 M hour and they drive through at 40 50 mes an hour and have no respect for any signs I've put up posted slow um and as a process of putting this gate up you know we started out with the signs and then we went ahead and put up these big piles of gravel and rock on each side then we put up the post and then finally we put up the gates and not one of those steps got anyone to slow down everybody came through here I won't say everybody but a lot of people came through at really high amounts of speed and really it was quite destructive um you know the last STW was when our our prize dog got killed and uh you know because I put this up I've you know had people threatened to burn down my cabin people threatened my life and it's sad because all we're trying to do out here is preserve this Natural Area and the beauty that it is it's unfortunate that people don't respect um this you know pristine environment and the limited resources that we have up here and I I feel it's important to keep those things uh around for future Generations so tell me uh this is your sign for the stewardship forest and that's exactly what you're talking about trying to keep this area nice and natural right yeah the stewardship program is uh through the Department of Agriculture um every 10 years they come through with a forestry plan and they look at your forest and and they come up with a plan on how to maintain your Forest how to make sure that you're cutting out temp that's old growth that needs to be um trimmed in order to make for New Growth and to keep your Forest healthy so when there's a uh instance for example the beach bark disease they want to make sure that all those trees are removed so you don't have any disease trees that are passing that to UND diseased trees so it's about keeping forests healthy keeping the environment healthy uh making a place for animals to be you know safe where they have uh undisturbed homes and areas and you know unfortunately you know you know the noise from the side by sides and just the dust and the destruction that they do uh you know it's not a a great environment so you know I went ahead and put this gate up make this a place for future generations to be able to come down here and enjoy um nature so you've had a lot of Destruction on the road from at ATVs and side by sides and such is that true yeah they erode the road the way the the tires are torqued on the vehicles is they completely uh they'll kick rocks up um they create holes I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars uh having uh professional grade equipment come down here to try to go ahead and and and flatten it out and within a period of several weeks um the side by sides going by have basically uh destroyed the road there's logs coming out of the road um this was originally a two rut Logging Road and they put corduroy logs across this road and uh those logs are sticking up now which has become an extreme hazard we've had side by sides four-wheelers flip end over end uh people ended up in the hospital because they're going too fast on this road and have hit this these these logs uh got flat tires from the broken coverts that are sticking out of the road that were in place and all of this has been uh based on the side by-side traffic and the erosion that they've done to the Natural uh road that was put in place here back in the 1980s and uh the destruction is awful do you have any examples you could show me of the torn up road yeah absolutely I can show you down here so what what's going on here so because we're down here in the swamp uh when the logging companies came through here 40 years ago what they did was they put this corduroy log down across the road then they put dirt on top of it so the logging trucks could come through but what's happened because of the sidebyside use is the Corduroy has come right out of the road and uh it's actually become very dangerous in fact last year we had a a gentleman with a a four-wheeler come through here and he hit this hole right here and he went end and over end and his machine ended up over there he broke the front axle he ended up going to the hospital had a concussion uh almost killed him um so it's been uh extremely uh destructive and the road is is no longer even drivable uh unless you've got a uh four-wheel four-wheel drive vehicle or um you know something similar to that you can't get down here with the car anymore because it's so bad so this road right here we're seeing right here this was all level and flat yeah and now with all these huge ruts and all this wood showing this is what it's become in just a matter of months yep so it's it's heavily yeah it's got some serious ruts and and dips and things like that yeah Rocks coming out you know these things coming out of the ground you can see where the coverts that were put on the road here been run over and boat broken pieces everywhere uh you know flatten your tire with that and uh just dangerous you know I mean even an animal stepping on something like this is not good I'm originally from Marquette which is uh about an hour and a half from here I was born and raised up in the up of Michigan went to Arizona I lived out in Phoenix and uh Scottsdale for about 17 years for the most part out there I managed a lot of uh high-end restaurants and different venues in Scottdale Arizona and uh I did a lot of Media stuff so for a while I uh produced a magazine that I did myself and I worked for another magazine called 944 magazine worked for Runway magazine which is international publication for 9 years I was their uh West Coast sales manager and also uh produced a television show uh we were on abc5 uh it was a destination show we did uh big time events film The Grammys in 2005 sponsored by Heineken on the Green carpet um out in La at the Staple Center used to do a lot of celebrity events charity events uh multi media and uh high-end fashion shows and always knew that I was going to come back to Michigan and this is going to be my forever home I guess and retire here and uh this is kind of where I grew up and this is where I was happiest so when the time came for me to come back I always knew I was going to be out here so you're out there filming the Grammys celebrities and all these yeah yeah James Brown Jimmy paage uh you know the Grammys is unique uh Selma hyek uh lots of different celebrities Quinton Tarantino was there that day uh we were right down from MTV we were ABC CBS affiliate so uh we're literally right there in the midst of everything so yeah I used to do a lot of different events uh met lots of celebrities Hulk Hogan Jonathan Bennett uh my host on the show was Danielle dempy she's uh does the Vegas minute right now she does uh she's uh lets make a deal with Wayne Brady on television right now she's in the latest Toyota commercial you'll see her on TV good friends of mine people probably wouldn't think somebody out here homesteading would have had that life no it was a definitely unique experience you know what feels like a whole another lifetime ago I've been here almost 10 years now I'm 48 this is where I want to be this is where I'm happiest I think being in nature and being out here uh living off the land to the best of my ability is really what most people should do um I feel that it's healthier and uh it's more beneficial to your mental health right so you feel a real connection just being out here to the land and the animals absolutely and you feel better mentally yeah mentally physically the Clean Air you know living in Phoenix lots of smog dirt dust just dirty out here it's pristine you know everything's clean air is clean so it's beautiful out here and I think people go on vacation they come to a place like this and some people appreciate it and some people don't and uh I think there's a reason they come here you know they want to enjoy it and uh I just want to keep that around for everybody so that people will be able to enjoy it uh generations and generations to come so what's going on with the roof so the roof you know uh it's about 40 years old right now I just had these these Amish guys come out here and they're going to go ahead and uh uh put a new roof on next summer um you know the roof is uh the cabin like I said is almost 100 years old um so we've got these guys that come from an Amish community uh you know horse and buggy with the beards and everything and uh you know they they do really good work and they're a uh excellent Craftsman and they uh they came out here and took a look at it just the other day and we'll have a new roof on here next year putting a metal roof on which is uh a lot more beneficial for uh the snow in the winter time and uh uh it it needed to be done one of uh about a million projects out here that I'm working on I'm always doing stuff had to clear this tree to get the star link to work uh cuz it was an obstruction and uh you got a root Celler there and a leano there and you know it's uh always always something out here lots of hard work lots of firewood to split right here we heat with we heat we put a new chimney in uh two years ago so we're you know heat with heat with firewood and uh always something so always keep them busy so never a dull moment when you're trying to survive in the woods huh no absolutely not you know like I said there's there's so many benefits of being out here you know with the chickens we get eggs you know with uh the stream there's fish you know there's you know natural plants you've got Mullen and chaga and different things that you can use to you know uh benefit your life and and and live a healthy lifestyle so that's what we're trying to do out here so this is chaga this is um very healthy it's like a bacterium a lot of people consider it to be a mushroom but you can cut this off of the tree it's on yellow and uh white birch trees and you can take this up and you can grind it into a powder you can put it in with your coffee it's got a ton of health benefits you can make a tincture out of it you can make tea out of it um the best time to harvest this is anytime the weather is below 40° and you just cut it off you want to leave a little bit it actually kills the tree as you can see it's kind of so you want to cut it but you want to cut it so it'll grow back so you can reh Harvest it uh and then you can go ahead and and continue to reuse it and you get your chaga so but it's got anti radicals in it and helps uh with preventing cancer and and all kinds of different health benefits that's Garfield right there how you doing buddy hey what you up to Bud yeah you could say hi come on over hi buddy they're waiting on the food they're waiting on the food yeah L's coming out with the feed for the Ducks all right this should be fun hungry ducks you got to put it by the water cuz they like to eat the water then uh food and then drink water because they mash it up so the reality of living out here is uh it can be harsh right especially in the winter so in the winter time uh they don't plow out here so the closest County Road is uh you know almost a mile and the closest Cloud County Road is 8 Miles so in the winter time our only way to get in out of here uh is via snowmobile so we've got two they're both two ups and they both have hitches on them for our toe sleds and uh we uh basically ride a sled and we put everything on our on our toe sled here or on the hitch here and uh it's about 16 Mi round trip so you know to get groceries or anything that we need in the winter time um you know it's a it's a production put on all your gear and and hop on the sled and sometimes you're coming back at night in the middle of a blizzard and uh yeah it's definitely uh a little bit different but uh you know the snow bill crowd out here is is a they're a wonderful group of people and we appreciate them and uh um these sleds are essential to our way of life out here especially in the winter time so it might be 20 below and youve just got to do what you got to do huh got to do I had Co a few years ago and was very sick and we had to sled I had 10 14 degree fever and I had to hop on a sled and we had to go to the hospital cuz there's no ambulance coming out here so yeah that's the reality of being out here yeah no those are the things that you have to when you live off grid there's certain luxuries that you have to give up and uh you know when you're this far away when something happens you just you got to just accept it and you've got to have your wits about you too yeah absolutely you got to you got to not panic be smart and uh you know make sure that you're prepared you know I like to think I'm a a boy scout out here you know I've got first aid and and pretty much everything I need out here in case something happens I try to um you know be self-sufficient as much as I can so if you're going to live in Michigan you got to have a lot of firewood yeah we go through about 16 face cores so about two and a half more rows and then that over there is all kiding so this is Cedar that you use to this is a a lot drier and it is a great fire starter instead of having to buy or burn paper or something like that you just cut up some cedar and that whole row back there is full of Cedar and then this is all back here this is all Maple that's got to be split and this is all the firewood that will burn through and that'll fill this whole so you're going to fill this up completely yeah it'll be completely full this big shed right here that's a lot of wood yeah got your own splitter to take care of this wood here yeah yeah there's a 28 ton log splitter right there and split up all these logs for fire where there's about six face cord right here once this is all said and done that'll be me about a row and a half inside the Woodshed there so and then I've got some trees that we felled uh making room for the starlink on top of the roof there uh so no obstruction so we had to drop one big Maple and another smaller Maple and we'll cut that up as well and use that as firewood as well so you burn most of your trash yeah for the most part uh we we try not to let anything go to waste out here so we've got a burn barrel over there that we used used for a lot of stuff and uh uh obviously our cans uh we have got a container there that we use for most of our canned goods and then you know as far as food scrap goes um you know the dogs get a lot of food scraps and uh obviously our chickens you'll see occasionally you might find an avocado seed on the ground for when avocado scraps came out here and the chickens went ahead and cleaned up all our veggie scraps what did they get the dogs got a we had some bears so I got woke up this morning at 7:00 we had uh uh a a group of bear dogs in here and uh they had treat a bear about uh 75 feet away from the kennel and the hunters came and they uh shot the bear and uh they G the hunters were kind enough to go ahead they gave us the bear heart and they gave us the liver of the bear and uh we fed those to the we gave those to the dogs and they were very happy to have that fresh meat so they like smell to yeah they eat fish too we get fish we we dip smelt in the springtime so if you're not familiar with smelt it's a little sardine type of fish about this big and you can go down you get 2 and2 gallons of a smelt every day per person and uh they make an excellent meal there's also plenty of lakes around here fish for perch brook trout plenty of streams do a lot of fishing Pike Northern Pike um and uh we hunt Partridge which is basically like a wild chicken so we you know and then we have our chickens for eggs and we have meat chickens as well and we have Ducks so we have our ducks for eggs and we have ducks for meat and did he catch his buddies yeah we've got rabbits so a little bit of everything out here so we live we live literally off the off the grid as much as possible so there's one of our toe sleds for the winter time there's another one right there that I just repainted on top of the picnic table there there's another toe sled that's a little mushing sled so we've got three different sleds that we use depending on what we're hauling in the winter time in and out you know what the chickens are they mostly forg mostly layers but we do have a couple of meat chickens so if we decide uh that we want to go ahead and do a a soup stock or something like that or have roast chicken we we have them available but they're mostly layers tomatoes and cucumbers and strawberries yeah we didn't grow much this year um we grew Ducks this year yeah so we utilized the garden space for ducks uh this year which is good for fertilizer for next year but normally on a given year we'll have tomatoes and cucumbers and we'll do green peppers and jalapeno peppers and we had strawberries and onions and potatoes and uh we had squash and watermelon watermelon we we do quite a bit uh a garding this year this this year just we just a million other projects and uh just didn't get quite get around to it this year which was unfortunate because everything kind of went through the roof this year as far as cost so and we've got all the seeds and the seeds you know they stay good forever pretty much and uh uh you know it saves a ton of money when you can grow your own food jar your own food can your own food um it's nice to be able to have that stuff available cook your own food yeah yeah so normally you would have a really abundant Garden yeah yeah absolutely so tons of tomatoes we have tomatoes left over I mean tons of tomatoes we don't even use all our Tomatoes I mean there's so many of them typically but chickens will eat them or we give them one yeah or we get we do give a lot of veggies away to to neighbors and friends so just like we gave you some eggs yeah thanks for those yeah no problem the deer are not afraid of the dogs they come in for your vegetables right they're hungry that's why yeah we came home one day in the and the there was a dough standing right the literally the the dough and the our female were literally almost nose to nose between the fences sniffing each other so it's Unique that they come around here which is nice because the dogs keeps the Wolves Away and protects the deer so and then you know we're you know we can hunt the deer if we want to so but but they like to play yeah they like to play the deer and the dogs like to play yeah yeah that sounds really cute yeah well Raven she played with a horse when we were in Tennessee she'd run with the on the fence with the horse so they yeah they like to play with big animals too yeah tell me what's going on with all this stuff here Perry well uh a lot of people like to think that it's uh sord and Sun out here um kind of like a junkyard but truthfully being off the grid you know one of the reasons I moved out here is cuz I really want to conserve nature and I hate to see anything being wasted so a lot of the stuff that is around here I went ahead and repurposed it was things that people were either throwing away uh for example the greenhouse behind me was built with windows that were donated uh basically people in town that were getting rid of the stuff that would have ended up in a landfill that I went ahead and repurposed and used to build the greenhouse um another thing is with beds Springs old bed mattress and stuff went ahead and took all the the foam off the bed springs and we went ahead and put the bed springs up as the fencing for our garden so we repurpose as much as we can to try to uh conserve so these things don't end up in a in a landfill yeah it makes sense you know keep stuff out of the landfill yeah that's good for everybody yeah absolutely so the tires are going to eventually be turned into a root Celler there was a one over there that little box the seven on it is actually a a bathtub that my grandfather uh put together with a uh and that's a little root seller right there but we're going to expand that and dig it out and make it a lot bigger so you know you got all these hotels and different places and they have mattresses and you know after so many years they'll replace the mattresses and all those end up in the landfill so you know we see uh people throwing them out in town and you know we'll take the mattress and we'll basically rip the material off the mattress and we'll keep the springs and we've went ahead and repurposed this as our fencing for our garden and obviously we covered it in chicken chicken wire this year uh we grew these ducks in in our garden but uh normally we've got a full Garden in here with tomatoes and cucumbers and a little bit of everything strawberries raspberries you name it went ahead and repurpose and all these are all these are different Siz mattresses you know we went ahead and utilize this for a door and you know we took all this stuff and we tried to repurpose as much as we can been grateful for the people that have ated stuff to us and try to use as much as we can instead of this stuff going in a landfill it's serving a purpose it may not necessarily look pretty but it's completely functional and it gets the job done kepts the deer out of our garden and uh raccoons and any other small small Critters it's great because you can not only repurpose which keeps things out of the landfill like you say but it also saves you a lot of money yeah absolutely absolutely instead of buying fencing you know it was just as easy to go ahead and take this it's a little bit more work but you know that's what you you expect to do when you're living out here out the grid you know nothing nothing ever comes easy uh but you can get creative you know yeah we can make it pretty yeah and yeah she can yeah you can do anything with it yeah you can you can pretty much do anything with it so yeah and Lou over here will be the artist yeah who will make it all pretty tractor supplied Ducks tractor supplied Ducks so you use these guys for eggs or what yeah that's the goal um you know when they're little you you can't really tell which ones are male and female so you don't really get a choice but uh you can obviously tell that we've got some females and we've also got some males the with the malards and the the hens there we got the Drakes with the green heads so the goal is this coming spring is to have duck eggs um so we might end up uh having that guy for Thanksgiving dinner that guy maybe for Christmas dinner the goal is to get us some we're we're really more about the eggs out here more than anything else with the chickens and the Ducks don't really particularly like to harvest them um if I don't have to what's great about the Ducks is they're Pest Control um you know the chickens and Ducks especially you know up here in upper Michigan we've got a lot more ticks now that the weather's been a lot warmer so the Ducks do a great job they'll pluck uh you know insects right out of the sky flies um you know ticks uh they eat beetles off the ground they're they really are natural pest repellent so and you know they're great you know like I said we put them in this part of the garden this year and uh they're great for uh fertilizer so this will all be tilled next year and it'll be great soil for uh for growing our garden next year and if you wanted to keep your garden free of destructive insects these ducks would eat them right up these ducks will eat them right up and keep the Ducks out of the garden now so yeah yeah this is the greenhouse that uh they're building it's in progress right now so all the windows were Dona here's some shelves here we got tools in here I'm working on it it's coming it's coming along yeah over there you got the shelves back there on the backside over there on the outside okay I got to finish more construction on it but we used all repurposed stuff for this except for the roof um we put obviously those are new 2x4s but everything else was all these logs were from a cabin that somebody decided to tear down and we took all the the the studs out put those in the ground and the rest of this Lumber was from an old 100-year-old shed that somebody uh decided to tear down like I said there's a few new 2x4s but all this all this old wood and then this plastic here and the kettle Kettle cages up top there for the roof still got a little bit of work to do before it's ready for winter so repurposing is a big part of off-grid and Homestead type living yeah absolutely you know you don't ever want to see anything go to waste if you can help it you know try to repurpose as much as we possibly can and get an idea of how big this thing is Perry standing there so it's a you know it's a not a bad sized Greenhouse so this is a 40ft conx container that I bought and uh obviously living off grid you got to have some type of income so I went ahead and bought pallets from uh Amazon and Target and what we've gone ahead and done is we basically inventory everything here and keep stock everything in here and uh we sell everything on e-commerce marketplaces like uh Facebook Marketplace and eBay and Amazon and wherever we can go ahead and sell it so that helps pay for everything out here you've got a big storage container filled with stuff that you sell on eBay and anywhere else online maybe yeah everything that we can sell online I mean it's a little bit of miscellaneous you don't really pick what's on the pallets when you get them but FedEx brings them to you and then you just basically go through and you organize it so it's a 40ft container and it's just full of uh inventory so you do you just get random stuff uh yeah a little bit of everything you know we'll get everything from uh iPads to phone cases to clothing we've got lots of stuff from Target cat and Jack stuff and uh up Liquidators uh up liquidations sales.com on or do on eBay up liquidation sales on eBay so sometimes you don't even know what you're getting uh pretty much most of the time we don't know what we're getting but we make it work let's have a look around here and see what's in here that you might want to be selling to people all kinds of stuff I guess yeah I mean there's literally everything from books I mean I've got hair dryers I've got DVDs um toys uh I mean little waffle makers I mean it's just it's just a a plethora everything we just turned the generator on we've got lights here and it's just boxes and boxes of pallets and all kinds of different uh phone cases uh masks we got quite a few masks obviously from Co but um a little bit of everything so CD players purifiers uh you name it so just a whole lot of stuff yep so all the stuff on the wall there we can all that stuff's for sale all this phone cases coasters I mean that's Warrior tape I mean we get I mean there's wasp killer spider killer I mean I try to organize stuff the best I can but it you open a box and you list 50 things and the next day you sold 20 of them and you just uh keep it's like a vicious cycle so but it go was on and on but like I said it does it does pay the bills so that helps quite a bit but we've been doing it for a while you have bigger stuff like Furniture how do you sell that so some of the bigger pallets that we get uh from Target and Amazon they'll have reclining chairs they'll have coffee tables uh bar stools that kind of stuff because it's too expensive to go ahead and ship uh via e-commerce on eBay what we'll do that is we'll take those on locally on Marketplace and we'll put those stuff on Marketplace lots of lamps lots of lighting equipment um couches recliners dining room tables um we've gone through quite the plethora of stuff from Amazon and uh Target those are all Overstock items that we get so uh a little bit of everything so you're going to do what with these tires so all these tires are going to be um turned into a root seller so the original root seller that was here is right here this was something that my grandfather had made uh just from some SE blocks and then there's a uh bathtub so this was actually our root Celler but I'm going to dig this all out and then what we're going to do is we're going to basically have the root Celler here you're going to be able to walk down into it and those tires are going to be the basic of the foundation for that root cell and then it'll be covered with dirt so and you'll walk down you'll walk down right here this is all going to be dug out but this is the original root Celler ice cold you can put a can of soda or something in there and it's 40° wow yeah pretty neat all year round year round yeah year round middle of the summer you can pull a a can of soda out of here and it'll be ice cold this is how they did it 50 years ago you know this is how they you know this is a cast iron bathtub that he's got for the backing on this and it's just covered in dirt so you got your your your old claw foot tubs so those are where the legs would hook up and then this is your old drain which you use for an air vent so and then that's your container and this was all basically covered with dirt I started to shovel out a little bit so it's going to be a lot bigger and those tires are going to be the base of the foundation which will go basically through this area right here and this will be the root Celler where we'll keep all our food stored Perry's opening up the root Celler here and uh let's have a look inside so got insulated door obviously we haven't used this in a while so the mice have been chewing up the chewing it but this was styrofoam insulation styrofoam insulation and this was uh this was it now this is okay it's just a little thing but uh very efficient huh yeah and then uh this down here oh there's a little dead mouse right there but this here so this sand down here used to be able to keep vegetables in here and they all be cold in this this sand if you feel that it's that's ice cold yeah so this isn't all right let me just have a feel in here so you keep that down there in that sand yeah potatoes carrots and then you keep all your Jarred stuff up here but we haven't used this in in years but the basic concept is there so the dirt line was originally up to here so this is all dug out now cuz I'm obviously removing it replacing it but um this is all underneath ground so this is all covered with dirt this is a big Mound right here all the way back here and this is all covered and that allowed it to keep everything nice and cold inside so it was it was literally like ice cold yeah like ice cold y like just a few degrees above freezing maybe 5 40 40 42 maybe it would be the warmest it would get in the swamp I went down and I cut these cedar posts and got them cemented in the ground here and these old car hoods that I re repres refurbished refurbished these car hoods and I'm basically building a deck here around this fire pit um uh so this is kind of the start of that project and that's one of the hoods and there's three more hoods over there and then I've got posts over over here uh it's just uh always a project out here there's something going on in probably about a year it's going to look a lot different than what it did this year every year it's always expanding and growing so so what's this thing going to look like when it's totally completed so there'll be four car hoods around on the top and those would probably have ended up in dump somewhere or a landfill and they're going to be basically a covered deck that's going to go all the way around this fire pit right here okay and that's a nice fire pit there by the way yeah all those rocks came out of the ground so I pulled them up and moved them so it's just lots of lots of Hard physical labor right there those aren't small stones there it is the ouse yeah that's where all the magic happens indeed and and we have a little bit of garden lime there in the corner that we put in every time we go ahead and use it we just put a little cup down there and so and that does the trick that does the trick it's a pretty fancy ouse as ouses go yeah as far as ouses go and with five rolls of toilet paper in here if you run out you have a serious problem lot of magazines up there look at that uh bunch of antlers right there old rabbit snare yeah you take this and you basically hang this from a tree you find a run line where the rabbits are running and you tie this to a branch and the rabbits they'll put their head through there and it'll tighten up and it's rabbit SN my grandfather used to use piano wire he said it was the best but I didn't have any piano so you went from Hollywood to this yeah people think I'm nuts out here you know there's two trains of thought I'm either living the dream or I'm completely insane uh you know it's a different lifestyle you know from celebrities to uh you know squirrels yeah but you're um living the Facebook dream yeah I wish I had this cabin yeah everybody wants to know if they want to live in a cabin in the woods and get paid $5,000 I'm doing it it cost more than $5,000 yeah yeah not as easy as it looks no lots of lots of lots of projects all the time right yeah so don't try this at home oh wait we are at home yeah yeah this is home so yeah millions of projects Greenhouse lean to deck Zebo firewood you have to build your dream yeah you have to build your dream got to build your dream I'll tell I'll give one piece of advice to everybody out there if you're thinking about doing this do your res research and just pull the trigger um you know there's no time in the present we only have one go around and uh it's a lot of hard work but it's the most rewarding work you can do um you know everything that I build out here there's a sense of accomplishment that I didn't get from any other job that I ever had and uh I think that you know that does a lot for your personal well-being like I said if if you're thinking about that you want to do this just go ahead and do it and at the same time don't fool yourself no it's it's a lot of hard work it's not you know picture life 100 years ago is what I told her once she first moved here I said uh you know think about 100 years back and you know obviously we have a few modern luxuries but for the most part we live our life out here like it was 100 years ago well I hope you learned a thing or two about homesteading up here in the up of Michigan thanks for joining me and meeting Lou and Perry and I thank them for all their good knowledge that they shared with us so uh don't forget to give me a like on the video share and subscribe till next time this is rock hopper I'll see you