Welcome
We’re Jelger and Tanja, a Vancouver based couple with a dream of living closer to nature. In August 2020, we bought a piece of raw land in the rugged wilderness of Horsefly in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada.
At this time, Jelger didn’t own a single power tool. Unless the most basic Ikea kit counts. But he embarked on a construction journey, fueled by YouTube and books.
As “city people” we had absolutely no idea what we were getting into. But that’s all part of the adventure of course. We quickly received a “real life crash course” in country living when we started the construction of our outhouse and cabin.
Follow along as we develop our property from a forested mountain slope into the home of our dreams.
Building our home in the wilderness of beautiful British Columbia
Building our pier and beam foundation
A pier and beam foundation seemed like our only viable option in the location we chose for our cabin. We didn't want to go completely overboard on resources with an actual concrete basement. But we…
Building our outhouse on a slope
We quickly learned that we weren't as well prepared as we thought when building our outhouse. Our biggest challenges happened with our camping setup. Little did we know that spring is "mud…
A long winter of planning and the first move
I can say without a doubt that the winter of 2020 felt like the longest winter EVER. ;) Not only was our business still severely impacted by the Covid restrictions, we also couldn't go to Horsefly…
Developing raw land: glad we hired experts
The process of clearing our newly acquired land was far beyond what we could do ourselves. It's one thing to learn how to build a cabin, but we figured we'd skip the crash course in tree falling,…
How we bought land in Horsefly
It's fun to look back at this part of the journey, 1.5 years later. In August 2020, as many people during the pandemic did, we decided to make a life altering choice: we bought a piece of raw land.…