Creating an Off-Grid Homestead Life
Nine Bean Rows is an off-grid cabin/homestead. Located on a major migration route for lots of bird species from Canada Geese to Golden Eagles. As a result the Spring and Fall are particularly busy times with the exciting possibility of spotting a wide verity of birds. Some birds like the Great Horned Owl and a […]
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There is a wide variety of wildlife to see at Nine Bean Rows, but even though they leave signs of their presence, spotting them is sometimes very difficult. We do pick them up on the wildlife cameras but when we are around they tend to make themselves scares. Here are some animals we have managed […]
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We are absolutely not experts on what is, and more importantly what is not edible growing wild at Nine Bean Rows. We try our best to identify berries and nuts nut the mushrooms are the scariest ones. You would not want to get them wrong! The raspberries and Saskatoon berries are the most prolific, but […]
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With all the roof trusses finished and moved out of the way, it was time to start the cabin framing. We started with the front wall. For the cabin framing we used 2×6 material, ten feet tall. This would give us extra headroom in the loft, even if it will be harder to get the […]
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With the roof trusses done for the main part of the cabin, it was time to build the loft roof trusses. We had incorporated an upper deck off the loft, so we needed dormers added to the loft. Following the same procedure as building the main roof trusses, we laid out the first truss. Using […]
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One of the biggest challenges we have had so far in building the cabin, was not having a flat surface to work on. With the cabin sub-floor built this was now solved. Even though we weren’t going to be needing them for some time we figured it was time for building the roof trusses. Using […]
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With the cabin floor joists in, it was time for laying the sub-floor. We could use OSD board which would have been cheaper, but we decided to go with 3/4 inch plywood. OSD is fine for builders, but we knew it was going to take longer for us to build. The sub-floor would be exposed […]
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With the cabin beams in place, it was time to install the cabin floor joists. With only a ten foot span between the beams, we didn’t need to use engineered joists. We then discovered that engineered joist was cheaper and easier to work with than dimensional lumber. So that’s what we decided to go with. […]
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With a huge stack of building material we were now ready to start the real cabin building! We have three rows of concrete footings, five per row. Now we have to build the beams for the cabin. Even though the beams for the cabin were not going to be exposed to the weather, we decided […]
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With the cabin building footings in place, it was time to start building the cabin. Fortunately the cabin plans came with a materials list. Unfortunately we had made enough changes to the plans. We now needed to go through them again and come up with our own list for cabin building material. Once we compiled […]
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With the Sonotubes in place, it was time! Pouring concrete for the foundation. We originally considered mixing the concrete by hand from bags, but the number of bags required made this impractical. Cold seams were also a concern. If we didn’t mix the bags fast enough there could be a cold seam in a critical […]
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So now we have the plans, it’s time to figure out how to go about digging a foundation by hand. First I checked local building codes to see what options I had for foundations. Not wanting to hire a builder we needed to be able to dig a foundation by hand. The inspector would accept […]
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After clearing the land with a Bobcat and building our outhouse it’s time to choose the perfect cabin plans. Having never built anything before I figured around ten feet by sixteen feet would be perfect. Large enough to be comfortable but not too large for us to build without special equipment or a large group […]
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