09 The Truth Behind the Scenes of My Self Reliance - The Other 167 Hours

Throughout my time on YouTube over the past 8 years, I've shared glimpses of my life with my loyal audience. However, there are 167 hours of my week that still go unshared. Today, I'm clearing up some rumours and sharing what truly goes on in those remaining hours. 

Ever wonder what it would be like to pack up your life and embark on a journey towards complete self-reliance? Can you imagine selling your house, trading stocks for real estate, and building not just one, but two homesteads from the ground up? I'm Shawn James, and that's exactly what my family and I have done. Join us as we share our story of resilience, transformation and the extraordinary power of ordinary people. 

Shifting from the hustle and bustle of modern life to a self-sufficient lifestyle wasn't an easy task, especially with the challenge of maintaining our family's privacy while sharing the experience through YouTube. Yet, here we are, having constructed a rustic, 1400 square-foot house in rural Ontario, a thriving vegetable garden, an orchard, and even a solar power system. We've also dealt with the struggles and navigation of rumours due to gaps in our story – a necessary sacrifice to protect our privacy.

As we unmask our journey towards self-reliance, you'll discover how we moved from the stock market to real estate, built a house and a cabin on an 8½ acre property, and sold our home to move into the cabin for a more self-sufficient life. This episode isn't just a story about resilience; it's about the balance between openness and privacy, the strength of community, and the beauty of building a unique legacy. So come, step into our world, and see what it truly means to create a life of resilience and self-sufficiency.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Everybody, welcome back to the cabin. I'm Sean James and I'm the host of the my surveillance podcast and YouTube channels, where I share the story of how I'm withdrawing from modern society to pursue a natural, healthy, meaningful, satisfying life, and how you can, too, to join me as I build an off grid homestead in the wilderness, complete with log cabins and outdoor kitchen, loxana, lumber mill, vegetable garden, fruit orchard, food for us, wildlife haven and more. Now I'm going to share the story here of how I went from $750,000 in debt 13 years ago, from a failed business, to now living a self reliant life of my dreams financially independent, happy, healthy and free. So you can tune in several times a week to your hair how I'm doing it and how you can too. You'll find us on all of the major podcast platforms, as well as on YouTube, under my self reliance and Sean James. So this episode is going to be a little bit different, but also, I think, one that's been a long time coming and that a lot of people have been waiting for, especially long time. Viewers of the channels I think majority of my loyal audience on YouTube has noticed over the last four years kind of the, the, I would say the feeling of the channel or the type of content has changed a little bit, without real explanation, and there's been some videos with hints of what's going on, like the neighbor issues and the fact that we had to move from the old cabin property and so on. But I think it's clear, like the story has kind of changed.

Speaker 1: 1:29

When I started the YouTube channel seven or eight years ago I guess it's been now Um, it was kind of just my solo escapades, basically canoeing, fishing, hunting, and then decided to build a log cabin and then, from there, got pretty passionate about and excited about building that self reliant lifestyle or life that I had started back in my late teens and early twenties. I'm sort of getting back to that, but I gave the impression that, um, a lot of people, I think at first especially thought that I lived alone in the wilderness, especially because I titled videos that way just, but that was more to satisfy the algorithms and what you were seeing actually was me living alone in the wilderness and building a wilderness um homestead. But, um, my priorities have changed since then and, of course, with the recent events since early 2020, the world has changed and I think it's just the beginning of some major changes and my and my uh outlook, I think, has changed as a result of that and my my um sense of urgency for creating this self-reliant lifestyle, I guess, has increased. But anyway, starting in uh what? March 2020, when the pandemic hit and all the shutdowns occurred by family we really came back. We really came back together and decided to work on things, um, as a family, and that included me starting this new homestead build where I am doing it all alone, building that homestead alone, but, um, in the background, and you know, half my time or more spent, of course, with my family building a second homestead. So I think that's the big shock that um people weren't expecting is that while I was working on, first of all, still the old homestead, the old cabin property before we were kind of forced or convinced to sell it um started building this second homestead as a either a primary or secondary, but for the last four years it's been a primary because of the uh, the pandemic. Anyway, I tell that story a little bit more in the rest of this podcast and I'm going to continue it because it kind of got cut off.

Speaker 1: 3:42

Um, I think it was a good introduction just to explain the basics of what's going on and what's been going on. But I will be like I said, but I will be, of course, uh continuing that story uh in the future on podcasts, solo podcasts like this, and on my Sean James YouTube channel. But I think also it's just, I think just coming out with this information and making it a little bit more public allows me to to fill more of the other things that are going on, or to show both homesteads and a little bit more detail. So, first of all, two, um, two messages I would like to make about that is that building resilience is not a you know, it's not a show for me, it's not a, it's not sets that uh that I'm building, it's a complete homestead, off grid, self-reliant lifestyle that I'm building, not just for myself but for my family. So the fact that we're doing it in two locations just makes means it's double the work. You know all the people that have expressed how impressed they are with the amount of work that I do, the uh, my work ethic, when, what and what what person is able to accomplish. I've actually done double what I've shown on the channel. So, again, I'm nothing special, I'm just a regular guy with no talents and no real privileges that I haven't worked for, um. So my point being that you know you can do it too. In other words and I think people underestimate what they're capable of doing and I'd like to show that more or so on my channels, but also talk about it more on podcasts what I think people are able to accomplish if they set their minds to it and if they build community even more so, and, of course, with family involved, you can do an awful lot more than I think you think you can. Anyway, let's get into this podcast. Hope you enjoy it, I hope you get something out of it and I hope you tune in and you come back to see me at the cabin next time. So take care and see you then.

Speaker 1: 5:44

I got to talk a lot about a lot in the coming weeks about the family relationship and where this place fits in and what. What did I figure out? 186 hours, 188 hours in a week, and I show you about an hour of that. So like 187 hours is missing. So what I'd like to do, at least for you guys, my loyal patrons, which I really appreciate, you guys, and I feel like I haven't delivered value for what you're paying per month, but I'd really like to share with you guys, especially A lot more of my private life.

Speaker 1: 6:30

I said that in the beginning and I still struggle. I struggle with it not because because I don't know what to you know what I'd like to share and and I'm not. It's not that I'm not capturing it, it's just that I'm trying to respect the privacy of my family and what their wishes are. And especially my wife is just not interested at all, and having any kind of public image like it's already an issue when she goes out, she does get recognized in some places and she doesn't like that just makes her feel uncomfortable, which I fully understand. I'm a private person too, like the fact that I do.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Youtube is really at a character for someone like myself who prefers just to stay in the background and not seek attention, not looking for an ego boost or anything. If it wasn't for having a family and having to provide for them and to provide for their future and some security for our old age, my wife and I, and trying to give some advantages to my daughters, if it wasn't for that, youtube would probably be sharing very little on YouTube other than things that I think would help people. So rather than so. In other words, it would be hard to justify spending all the time that I do filming and uploading, editing and uploading and managing if it wasn't paying the bills as well. So, that being said, there's a kind of a parallel life that I've been leading. We've been leading for the last well for four years. So we had that struggle with the neighbor and the old cabins, which caused us to sell that place, but it was already getting to the point where we were looking for a better integration family-wise and my wife and I to be able to spend more time together again. So it meant two things. One is selling our place, that we raised our daughters and lived there for 20, I think it was exactly 20 years. I think 20, 20 is when we moved into the cabin. We bought that place and moved into it in March 1999, so almost 22 years no, 21 years, just shy of 21 years. So we sold that place January 2nd 2019, moved into the cabin, but in the meantime, I'd mentioned what. I pulled that video up. I'll share the link to it.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Four years ago, I think it was like four and a half years ago maybe would it be five years in January 2024, where I said, getting out of the stock market, just learned a lot about the stock market and my last business as we were selling that business and learned that hell corrupt it wasn't, it just wasn't interested in being involved in it and that real estate was what we were going to invest money we were making on this channel, but also from the selling the old place and that selling the business. So we bought a couple pieces of property back then. One was an eight to a half acre parcel that was sold here. It was kind of between the cabin, the old cabin and the town that would raise the kids in our old house. So in Hillsdale we sold that house.

Speaker 1: 10:09

So we bought this eight and a half acre parcel in order to build. Well, we weren't sure at the time whether it was going to be an investment. It's like kind of like a rental property or a legacy property or a house for the family or that we'd actually make that our primary residence. So we started building that, my wife and I in the summer of 2019, late summer of 2019, and I was clearing that lot and building the workshop on that property at that time. If you go back, you'll see the videos from that period. So I was clearing that lot and building that workshop I think building that workshop at that point or maybe it was a little bit later. Anyway, that's where all that was going in and then the garden area that we cleared in 2020. Let me jump in ahead here.

Speaker 1: 11:03

So we bought that property and then, a year later, bought the black cabin with these intent that that would be the girl's place, and so we bought that cabin and then we bought this parcel, this piece of hunting property. So it was quite a big life change at the point at that time. So we put the house up for sale in 2019, that house in the village of 900 people that we had lived in for 21 years put that up for sale. That sale closed in January, january 2nd 2020. My wife and I moved into the old cabin and it was then especially when Emily was visiting us up there that we realized that's when we started having the neighbor issues. We realized they were spying on us and spreading rumors all throughout the community, but not just the local community, but also the homesteading community online. So it became really apparent to us that that wasn't an option. Actually, we hadn't bought this property at that point yet we bought it later that year, so that wasn't going to be an option to live on that property. So now we're going to have to make the 8 1⁄2 acre parcel and house that we started building there our primary residence until we figured things out. So started building that and I'm working on the cabin, working on the workshop and digging the pond because it's still not 100% committed to getting rid of the place, just knowing it wasn't going to be a primary residence and started the workshop. And then, yeah, so we moved in, okay. So then that house sold January 2nd 2020, moved into the cabin while we were still working on that house. Yeah, on the 8 1⁄2 acre parcel.

Speaker 1: 12:53

So we're building away on that, just subcontracting out the things like electrical employment, because that was going to be an on-grid house with full off-grid capabilities, but our backup systems but an on-grid sort of on-grid had power, internet, like electricity internet, and then we got a propane tank installed and we have two wells on the property, or drilled wells, so it's water, off-grid water, self-sufficient, and the propane deliveries was for running the gas range in the kitchen as well as the furnace. Now, anyway, backup system, that's sort of, I guess, the primary system for insurance purposes. We heat, but that house is primarily heated with wood and has enough solar panels and backup solar batteries to run the house as well, and it's hooked up so that you can hook up a generator, so you have a 10,000 watt-pond generator, also a portable one, so it can be moved around up to here or stay there. That runs the most of all the things. That are all the critical components of the house as well. So that brings us to today. Oh, no, okay.

Speaker 1: 14:20

So then March 2020, covid hits, lockdown happens. I like to live in the cabin, emily's, living in Berry at the time. Yeah, working Now doing dental assisting down at Berry, living in apartment with another girl, another woman, and then my oldest daughter, erin, was at college down in Toronto. So COVID hits, everything gets shut down, the dental office is no longer operating for a while and Erin's school is halted and it was a big scare. So it was very overly dramatized, so it sounded like it was actually gonna be deaths in our family and we were very nervous.

Speaker 1: 15:07

So what we did? We all moved into that house in March of 2020 that we were working on, even though it was nowhere near finished. We moved into that and then just started working on it. Now at the same time again just kind of really highlighted the importance of self-reliance for our entire family. So that's where you saw Emily starting to clear that garden and make a vegetable garden with me On that property. It's where we started doing the workshop and the chicken coop. We started outlining it mostly me, but she was helping me with the gardening part of it so that was going to be the primary residence. So it cleared a quarter of an acre, started the Hugo culture melons, planted that all out the whole quarter acre of garden area. We continued working on the workshop to make that a livable space, even something I could sleep in, which I did before the house was finished what else? Cutting up firewood and stuff like that, and then working on this house which is all stone and wood. I think we put drywall in three rooms, just the three small bedrooms. So we wanted it to be.

Speaker 1: 16:26

My wife has the same aesthetic as me, by the way, so this is not me imposing on this. She had a lot to do with the decorating in here. Even, for example, she doesn't really like the dark or the burned wood, but she does like the dark ambiance in here. But the house is similar. So you'll see, when my podcast, for example, I set up a little podcasting office where I can edit my videos and it's all dark wood and no drywall or anything. In there as well, wood floors and so on. It's quite rustic. The house is 1400 square feet, so three small bedrooms, an office for my wife, one living room area but the fireplace it had to eat the house and then a kitchen with a dining table. So that's it, pretty basic house, but it's cool. I really like it. It's quite rustic and very warm as well and great ambiance, and it's in the forest as well. That's the other thing.

Speaker 1: 17:26

People that are criticizing, maybe behind the scenes and spreading rumors, keep saying that living in some estate and living in the city and that property I've actually been hunting on, like I've been shooting my deer on that property, a lot of deer on the property, turkey bear, a grouse, what else? Squirrels, black squirrels and it's got and it's basically surrounded with background land as well. So it's almost as if it wasn't. Could probably well, not probably could, actually almost well could almost live off that property as well. We could definitely.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Although it's got, a topography doesn't really make for great gardening, as you've noticed. So we did build those raised beds, filled them with as much soil and compost and stuff as that we could scrounge up. So it's growing a decent amount of food. It's going to keep improving and it produced pretty good this year. Plus we've got all the orchard trees, a lot of blueberry bushes that I've only shown you close-ups of, but it's actually quite a big area too, probably another eighth to a quarter of an acre of fruit trees and buried plants and stuff as well around that house.

Speaker 1: 18:43

So it's set up as a complete and being set up as a completely self-sufficient homestead as well. So if we lose power, which happens a lot up in this area in the winter, doesn't really impact us at all. We just cook on wood, cook with wood, heat with wood, run the electrical, critical electrical components off. The solar power got freezer there in that shed that Emily and I built freezer in there full of meat. That's all completely solar powered solar panels on the roof and that solar power bank from Renegy that actually powers the house as well. Got the cellar underneath, although I'm not using it this year because this cellar is ready. So it's probably called a completely, completely self-sufficient homestead, including wild game and walking distance to Lake that fish and catch do quite well with fishing on Anyway.

Speaker 1: 19:43

So why this place then? Well, we still don't like what's happening in the world. We still don't trust that we're a stable period and that we can just survive fine on that property. So this is kind of our should hits the fan place and could easily become our primary residence as well. So that's the way I'm approaching this, this cabin, so it's not just a man cave. Although I spent a lot of time here without my wife, it's not too far like. I can get here within an hour and a half so I can actually go back and forth.

Speaker 1: 20:20

Now, when we're spending a lot of time together, I want to spend the evenings and weekends together still as well. She can come up here, does come up here quite often, so I'm getting, but it's not completely comfortable for her. Like. Nothing against her, she just doesn't like things as rustic as I do when many women actually do. This is like a really cool man cave and hunt camp and primary residence, like consider even my primary residence. But for a man this is awesome. Nor a couple who's completely maybe younger and into the really rustic off grid experience, which is not many Anyway.

Speaker 1: 21:01

So it's a backup system for that. So the place I'm setting it up completely for us to live in it, which is why it's bigger, it's why I have a full solar power system now as well. It's why I'm going to have the water system set up to collect fresh rainwater to keep in the tank and have that available at all times. I've got stream down there. I do have the sand point. Well, that I unfortunately was not able to drill or drive down into the sand because it's so hard packed in the cellar. But what I will do is do it in the metal and then run a hose or pipe up from there into here. So I've got that backup system and then we can just well. The other thing I guess I'll show you in the next video. I haven't been showing the spring where I collect the water, so I will do that. I'll show you the spring where I fill up these water jugs from as well.

Speaker 1: 21:55

What else Like a game? Like to be able to produce enough food or harvest enough food? This property has it all. As far as that's concerned, I don't have moose tags, but eventually we will get moose tags for this area. Now I got a calf tag so I was able to hunt calf here this year. But anyway it's hard to get an adult moose tag for this area. So if that's going to happen, just occasionally but infrequently, with three or four or five of us family members applying for moose tags here, so that means I still have to drive much further north where I can get tags to harvest moose, but in a pinch I mean an emergency situation. There's so many moose on this property are using this area that come through the property that we could easily harvest one or two without even noticing that in the population. Not that I'm recommending that, it's just I'm talking about survival situation, emergency situation, a deer there's enough deer that we can definitely harvest probably family-wise, I would say three or four and not impact the population too badly in the area because it's not heavily hunted for deer. It's mostly moose hunters in the area because it's challenging.

Speaker 1: 23:04

I've got figured out, I've got the acreage, I've got a prime acreage for for a deer, so we're doing pretty good for that. I've got bear here. I've been harvesting so I'm gonna get the one bear this year Now. There's lots of growth, there's rabbits. It's going to end up being more rabbits as I do more of this habitat improvement, forest management, create more food for things like that and squirrels and growth. So I keep working on that.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Again, I can walk or it's not long walk. I can easily ATV or snowmobile to bakes, with good fishing right around us here. So that's good Public land. Ground land goes on for miles in every direction, so I've got lots of room to roam. It's not like we're just stuck on this. 100 acres Food storage in the basement garden area that's again improving steadily this winter. Start clearing a spot back in the forest that will be planting a lot of wild foods that will attract the deer so it'll make hunting even easier and increase the population for deer and just improve the habitat for all wild animals on the property. So that's going in. Start working on that next year. That'll keep improving over time as well.

Speaker 1: 24:20

So fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, all kinds of succulents, things that all the animals like but also that we can get food from. I know I'm freeing up the oak trees that are on the property so you'll have you know, I'll have some nice big oaks that are not producing as many acorns as they would if I was to cut down some of the trees around them, let more sunlight get to it, let more nutrients and water come up from the roots that aren't being stolen by the other trees, firewood and with supply of firewood, so always have heat and cooking, yeah. So water, abundant water, abundant food, clean air, fresh air. Of course, lots of exercise. I'm a real believer in mid, medium to high intensity or even low intensity activity. So exercise, so chopping wood, all those things that I do manually, or big part of it, is for health. I just believe that humans are meant to keep moving. Sitting at any like a desk job is just horrible for us. So try to maintain or try to continue with as many manually operated things as possible.

Speaker 1: 25:34

So that probably answers a lot of the questions you answer. Ask me more in the question, in the description, of course, or semi-comments, or private emails or whatever. I'll answer whatever I can. But just thought it was time to let people know that we still are trying to protect our privacy, which is why I haven't shared this with you before. Still having people reach out and say we know where that property is, we know where this property is.

Speaker 1: 26:00

It's it's concerning still have people spreading rumors you know the divorce rumors, for example, and the you know how much money you go, what a financially worth and all that kind of garbage. That's untrue. But anyway, like I said before, if the more gaps, the more holes or more gaps I leave, like 187 or whatever I said, hours that are missing per week that I'm showing you. People are going to fill in that with their own information, their own guesses, their own storylines. So what if you don't like me at all or, you know, don't like me a lot, or jealous or whatever lots of reasons to dislike somebody or to wish them ill will I know you're going to fill those gaps in the story with the furious things, unfair things.

Speaker 1: 26:51

So that's what's happening, a lot anyway. So I'm sharing that with you guys. So probably I will be sharing that on my podcast and, and probably the Least Ishawn James channel as well, maybe even this video. We'll see how I feel about her after I edit it, but um, either way. So tell the complete story, continue to tell the complete story, show more of both you know sides of my life and how good my family life is, and it's because of the sacrifices and compromises we both make, or we all make, the four of us, and then, yeah, hope you still find it interesting enough what I'm doing and what we're doing to want to follow along.