Extreme Homesteading//Choosing The Hard Path//Rejecting The World's Way

This video is not meant to tell anyone they have to live the way we did/do. In fact, one of the biggest messages I hope people take away from this is that you do NOT have to do everything exactly like someone tells you to, especially our culture. Sometimes the first step toward freedom is simply learning to think differently than culture teaches us to think and follow your heart.

Ten years ago, we pulled an RV onto 20 acres of raw forest in the far north and began building a homestead from almost nothing. No tractor. No fancy equipment. No new house waiting for us. No blueprint except the determination to try.

What started as overgrown forest land slowly became the place we carved into home — one sacrifice, one hard winter, one hand-carried board at a time.

In today’s world, homesteading is often presented as a trend filled with expensive equipment, debt, sponsorships, polished perfection, and lifestyles that honestly do not look much different than the regular world. But our story was never about building the “perfect” homestead. It was about figuring out how to survive outside the system as much as possible, raising our family differently, and learning to live with less instead of financing more.

We moved 600 miles away to a place where our dream was still possible. We hauled creek water. Washed laundry by hand. Built shelters before we even knew what predators lived in the woods around us. We cooked outside. Lived through brutal winters. Built with almost entirely hand tools because that was what we could afford.

This was not trendy homesteading, and at times it felt insane.

This was sacrifice. This was uncertainty. This was learning as we went. This was what I would consider true extreme homesteading in today’s world.

And yet, looking back now, the most important thing is not how hard it was. The real focus is not how far we had to go, but how far we have come.

When we first pulled onto this land, there was absolutely nothing here except forest, old logging roads, and a dream we hoped would somehow work. We were not moving to a finished house. We were bringing our work with us, trying to build a life while simultaneously trying to survive financially and physically. Every system had to be created from scratch. Water. Shelter. Animal housing. Storage. Heat. Laundry. Everything.

We built during one of the snowiest winters this area had seen in years, in a place that regularly gets around 270 inches of snow a season. Much of the building was done with hand tools because we simply could not afford anything else. Every board for the cabin had to be carried back by hand through mud, snow, and forest trails.

But what I hope people see through all of this is not simply the struggle. I hope they see that there are still other ways to live.

You may not move 600 miles into the woods. You may never build a cabin in deep snow with hand tools. But maybe our story encourages you to rethink what you truly need. Maybe it encourages you to get out of debt, learn old skills, cook from scratch, simplify your life, or stop buying into the endless marketing that tells people happiness is always one more purchase away.

This is the beginning of a series looking back at our journey settling raw land in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — the struggles, the victories, the mistakes, the winters, the building, and the reality of trying to create a homestead when you do not have much except determination, sacrifice, and faith.

I hope our story encourages you to bloom where you are planted and maybe think outside the box a little more than this world tells us to.