Welcome to our second monthly newsletter! (See the first Newsletter here!)
Where we send our amazing followers extra snippets of our homestead, coming plans, and exciting news before the world of social media hears it!
Cabin Updates
We are getting there on the little cabin! As I write this, Sam is sleeping on me, Henry is playing, and Levi is prepping to start the roof metal! By the time this email is sent out, the roof metal will be on.
Then comes the big BREAK! Yep, we have decided to take a break from the cabin build. We are running ourselves ragged trying to meet unrealistic, self-imposed deadlines. This summer has been extra rainy making work drag on and we keep running around trying to catch up, to our own detriment.
So, once the roof is officially keeping everything (somewhat) dry, we are going to catch up on some homestead chores that have fallen behind and then enjoy our next visitors.
The build itself is going very smooth still. We even got a pressure washer that will give the logs one final wash before we stain. That is hoping we get warm and dry enough to stain again! It would not be the end of the world if it gets stained in the spring but I think we will get to it before then.
All of that being said, the work won't be a total halt, we just need a break to enjoy summer while we can. We will probably tackle the door and windows in early August, then slowly begin work on the inside as we can afford it.
Levi reported the other day that we will have plenty of logs and log screws left over for my spring greenhouse build too!
Homestead Visitors
If you have been watching the cabin build videos, you know that my (Becca's) parents just came for a visit! We had a ton of fun and they were able to bring my niece/the boys' older cousin again this year.
Not only did we have a lot of fun boating, four-wheeling, and swimming, but their help is always so needed in the summer. The three of them can keep the boys entertained for hours on end while Levi and I tackle projects uninhibited.
The visitations don't end there either! Levi's younger brother will be here before this email sends out and that is always so good for Levi. The two of them are going to take the boat into some new areas and they are both so good at safely pushing new boundaries together. I'm hoping they can scout out new places for moose hunting! Then Levi and his Dad will be able to return this moose season and hopefully bring home meat.
Then we have some Aunts & Uncles of our own swinging by, and Levi's younger sister is bringing her family up! There will be no shortage of cousins to play with this month!
Schedule Change
I touched on this in the "Cabin Updates" but I think it deserves it's own discussion because we want to change more than just the cabin trajectory.
A very common phrase in our house right now is, "something's gotta give". So, we are slowing down across the board! We just can't keep up the current pace and I am worried that we are driving ourselves to the bottom of the burnout barrel.
YouTube videos will continue to post every Saturday morning! The amount of progress or big projects in each video is going to lessen though. This new cabin build has turned into a repeat of the main cabin RUSH and we're just not enjoying it.
When we worked from dawn to dusk on the big cabin, we needed a home. This time around there is no need for this stressful rush.
Our cabin focus has caused us to fall behind on other homestead chores. The chicken coop desperately needs cleaned, the garden needs fertilized, my strawberries need bird netting, the list goes on.
This summer/fall, we want to slowly finish the cabin and maybe the new garden. Next summer, we want to build the final greehouse. Past that, we want to go camping, catch up projects that haven't been finished, and splash with the boys more!
If something doesn't get done as quickly as we planned, so be it! We left the rat race of work just to build a homemade rat race. It's time to enjoy ourselves again.
Snail Mail Club Note:
I was originally going to launch the official snail mail club, "Letters From Alaska", at the end of July. Obviously, that did not happen. Along with over-booking ourselves on the homestead, I decided to delay the mail launch. I am planning to launch at the end of this month. There are a surprising amount of logistics that go into it. As excited as I am to launch, I am not going to miss out on cousin fun this summer to be on hold with my postcard printer for hours. We are 1000% still doing the club. I just shouldn't have picked our busiest months to attack the workload of it.
Thank you for your patience with me!
YouTube Forecast
Oh, the excitement! With our new slower workload, I honestly am not completely sure of the YouTube forecast. I am hoping to do lots of gardening, hopefully at least one camping trip, and still working on the cabin! Just a bit slower.
Something I am curious about and plan to ask in a video that I am filming this week..
Which style of video do you prefer?
Homestead vlogs with mixed in building updates
OR
Withholding build videos until we have a lot of progress to show
For example, I could do weekly vlogs where we touch base on the projects like the cabin build and show some here-there work. Then post the start to finish build in one big video.
Or I could not show any project progress until I have a good 40+ minute film to share but then I probably wouldn't share a full start to finish video at risk of feeling like a "re-run".
Anyway, I am curious what our viewers prefer! I will have to trickle in cabin progress now that we are to the tedious and pricey end of the work. But for future builds, like the greenhouse, I'd love feedback!
Weather Journal
This morning (July 23rd), we woke up to an extra 2" of rain overnight! Neighbors have been reporting anywhere from 5"-9" of rain in the past 7-10 days. Levi's Mom just stopped by after she decided NOT to cross some of the flooding on our road to get to the Post Office.
Overall, we have had an incredibly wet July. The Anchorage Weather Service is calling for this to be the wettest July in Anchorage's history! Luckily, we have also had some very nice days but we also have never seen our pond so high.
Flooding footage will be shared in one of August's YouTube videos! But I realized it would also be fun to add a weather journal in my monthly newsletter since Alaska can be so crazy.
Tonight we will go get some drone shots of the creek. It has come up FEET higher than we have ever seen. Luckily, the bridges around us are built to outlast the rising water.
Alaska never ceases to amaze us though. I hope my garden isn't rotting out but it is always fun to watch the extreme weather from the comfort of our cabin.
So far we've seen high winds that hit the cabin loft like a freight train, feet of snowfall in a matter of hours, trees falling like flies from one or both of those events!
Temperatures even in peak summer rarely hit 80F for us but our coldest so far was somewhere south of -40F. And for Alaska, all of that is relatively mild! Areas north of us see 100+F in the summer and -60F in the winter.
Unfortunately, August is usually our monsoon season. Despite less rain in the forecast, it is unlikely we will have much of a summer from here. I am sure we'll have some nice days but so far we have been a bit robbed of our nicest weather month!
Crossed fingers my garden survived!
Some photos of a rising creek near us!
Watch our upcoming Homestead Flooding YouTube video for footage of the creeks and rain.
Thanks for reading! We'll see you Saturday on YouTube.
Sincerely,
Becca
