MAY 2020 - Update !

Been slacking off on the blog, and for those of you who follow the blog, I do apologize. Making videos on youtube, or vlogs as they sometimes get called, has been front and center of my 'blogging' activities for the past several months. 

I have been creating weekly update videos, which you can access here. 

There are already over 70 update videos alone there. Most are well under 10 minutes, so you could binge watch them all and see my progress from moving from the old place, buying the new place, and doing renos, and moving in, and progress from there setting up. Still have lots to do, of course. Had to get a living space built from scratch, and technically it still isn't 100% complete, but I am living in the building now.

 Was hoping to monetize them eventually, but now youtube has announced changes that may make that a pipe dream. You used to have to have 1000 subscribers (which is daunting enough to get to), and a few thousand viewing hours on your channel in order to get access to the monetization point, where they put ads and such on your videos, and give you a cut. It is not big money by any stretch (not until you hit a million subscribers, really), but also by that level you do get some perks and features not otherwise available to you.   But, now, if you don;t hit that threshold by June 1st, you won't be grandfathered into the new levels, which apparently will be something like 4000 subscribers and many more viewing hours than before.  With my videos being so short, and with people's attention spans being even shorter, it would have been tough enough to get to the old levels, but now it seems even tougher, almost insurmountable.....Would pretty much need a video to go viral in order to accomplish what seems to be the impossible at this point. I have maybe 75 subscribers now, which has taken many months to get to, so to get another 925 before June 1st seems like an utter impossibility.  

It makes me now doubt the value of the YouTube platform. It is like the "AirMiles" program where they kept downgrading the value of the mileage points you have earned. Just when you think you could afford that toaster with your mileage points, suddenly they  downgraded the points/miles to a level that you could only afford to buy the ballpoint pen with your "miles". 

So, what I am doing may or may not change in the coming few months, as far as blogging and vlogging goes.  We shall see.

One Old House Full To The Brim

When I am out picking the countryside, I get talking with people. It is part of the business, and a component with which leads are found. 

Plus, stories of all kinds tend to pop up. 

Some are funny, others are drama packed, a few are life enriching, and there are many that are highly educational.

Then there are some that are like this one.

On one of my trips, I was travelling in a remote area, and to my dismay hit drizzling rain. However, I ended up doing some scouting, and door knocking, and after very little success, I stopped at one farm yard. After a some conversation with the owners, and a tour about their property, I ended up spending much of a day some great folks. I hope to also reconnect with them in the future.

They happen to own what had been originally multiple smaller properties. They accumulated and put them together into one larger land holding over their some years in the area. This plain, but quaint little cottage was on one of them.

 Any old structure I see, in my mind, contains potential for treasure....

So I inquired about it, and got to see inside it.

This one was chock full...

But not of treasure.

What follows is the "Cole's Notes" version of the story related to me:
It was built in the early-ish 1900s by a young man..

A young man in love.

He constructed it entirely by hand, with walls built of logs chopped from the bush land around it. He carved out a yard site for a future homestead for he and his bride-to-be, in the remote backwoods, but part of a tiny community of like minded people carving out an existence in the woods.

View of the home's log wall structure, visible in the back of closet/pantry.

 As I said, it was full...but not of treasure.

Then what was it full of, you ask?

Actually, it is not "full," per se...

It is overflowing.... 

With a million pieces of one man's heart.
 
You see, when the home was finished, and the couple were soon to be wed, the woman deserted the young man, and left the community, all to be with another man.


A house built with love was never occupied. 

A heart had shattered.

A house never made into a home. 

A window that no one would ever gaze out with their partner at the life they built together.

One of the many quaint window details that would never be admired by a resident.

A view of the kitchen from the living room. The living room would hear no music, nor laughter; and the kitchen would never fill with mouth watering aromas of home-cooked meals and giggles of  a flirting, playful young couple. (The liquor bottle on the left and can on the floor is a contribution by a squatter/transient.)

What happened to the heartbroken groom-to-be?

He went to live with his brother. 

Neither he, nor his brother, ever married. 

Both remained bachelors their entire lifetimes. 

However, they stayed in the community.

They lived their entire lives within a country mile of this building.

It is a hand hewn testament of love, carved out of a tiny piece of the Canadian wilderness...

Which became only a little known monument to heartbreak.

A Down & Dirty Picker Pictorial

Ok, unlike my usual posts, this one is going to be long......

Um, ok, yes, I know some......well, ok, ok, ok...I stand corrected......MANY of my posts ARE long...but this one isn't going to be long in a wordy sort of way....

This one is full of photos....action shots, if you will.

I tend to get pretty dirty, cobweb covered, dust coated, etc, etc in many places I pick, and I do search through quite a few "sketchy" places, as far as their overall condition goes.......Yep, I tend to get Down 'n' Dirty.....

And here we go!

This barn looks relatively safe and intact, right?

  

Ok, maybe not!

  This wall waved back and forth when a breeze started....

  Yes, I walked around on this...that is the LOFT, by the way...it is a good story and a half up. I do not recommend you do something similar, tho! I do have over 20 years of this sort of thing under my belt!

 

To say that the structure of this place was not the best was an understatement.....beams were cracked and breaking, etc. All the time I was working here I kept my ears wide open for creaking, cracking, etc!

I have an affinity for old cellars...Why? Curiosity! That is where I always think the GOOD STUFF IS.....! I admit, that is not always the case, but I like to check everything out thoroughly. 

Unfortunately, there was no way to find the trap door to access this house's cellar...too many leaves, debris, etc....access wasn't through the normal trap door...The cast iron cook stove, gravity and mother nature co-operated to create access to this one.

This was a picking a building that was quite clean, and in use...but the crawlspace had not been used since the 1950s...and the access to is was moved to a part of the building that only had a 2 foot space between the floor joists and the ground...then you back crawled/shimmied under the floor, and within a couple feet dropped down into the deeper portion of the cellar. It is an all dirt floor...quite dry, but that also means quite dusty..Each movement you make on the floor, or shifting something created a cloud of dust.

Respirator time!

 REALLY dark! No lights in here!

I feel far more grungy than I look....

Sorry for the dark photo....per usual, there was no electricity in this building. What you see here is an estate that was stored in a barn for about 15+ years.  This was a hog barn...and became infested with rats, mice raccoons, and who knows what else. Roof also leaked.  I saw this stuff 15 or so years prior, but the family that owned the stuff was still hemming and hawing about what to do with it. At that time, I saw that there was about a few thousand dollars worth of stuff.  When I obtained the opportunity to sort through it, many years later, this is what the pile looked like (above & below)

After diggin' through the pile a couple hours.

Some items rescued....most of the furniture was destroyed by rot, mice, and rats....in the end, the grand total realized from this mess was under $400!   There were a few pieces of furniture here that WERE $500- $1500 pieces when I looked at them years back...and they were reduced to nothing more than glorified FIREWOOD...and not even that, with some of the parts so rotten that you could squeeze water out of them. THAT is what happens to items when they are left in uncontrolled conditions.

That is enough grunge, dirt, and dust for today....will post more photos of some of the stuff I have encountered soon!