Building a Cabin with a Bowie Knife

I've been building a cabin with a Bowie knife. Really I've been using a chainsaw and a hammer and nails too. Not much more than that though it seems. It's been fun but very hard. I should've blogged the whole series of events, from how to get the parts and planning the structure to buying the parts (cutting down the trees, I really mean) and hammering it all together. But, I've been too tired everyday to think about blogging it all too. The most amazing part for me has been how expensive it is to just drink water and then to poop and pee. I tried digging a well myself and then gave up after one hour of pick-axe work, a two foot pile of rocks, and six inches deep of a "well".... I apparently live on all rocks.... (I really thought that, "Hey, this ground is moist here, maybe I can dig a little and find a spring.... heck, how'd they do it in the old days?"
I thought wrong.

I ended up paying $8,000 for a big truck to come in and drill straight down 300 feet and install a pump and a little tank.

Then someone had to rocksaw another 300 feet across the property just to lay the pipe to get the water from the well to the cabin.

To actually be able to "go to the bathroom" in anything close to a civilized manner is also very expensive. (Believe me, I tried building an "out-house" and my wife threw a fit. I also looked into the humanure concept and composting your own waste. But pooping and peeing into a bucket and covering it up with sawdust to later take outside to dump into a pile, just had a certain barrier of cultural overcoming that I couldn't bring myself to conquer.) A septic system is a big deal and it costs me another $9,000.

Then you've got to put it altogether. That takes another $500 worth of pvc pipe and valving and lots of hard, hard labor. My wife found the toilet at a Good-Will store for only one dollar (yes, that's right - $1.00 ! We were very excited about that.)
So, just getting water and then to excrete and rid myself of waste-water has cost me $17,500. It's just unbelieveable, that as incredible as it might sound, when you own your own land, you still can't even START to survive without taking out a major loan from a bank!
So now I can poop and pee and drink water. And I owe the bank. I still have to build my shelter. I have a bowie knife. I'm working on that part still.