THE HEARTHSIDE DISPATCH Issue No. 1 — July 2025

THE HEARTHSIDE DISPATCH
Issue No. 1 — July 2025

Good morning, and welcome to the first Hearthside dispatch.

If you're reading this, you're one of the founding members of something I've been thinking about building for a long time. Every month I'll sit down and write you something from up here — what's happening on the land, what I'm eating, what I'm building, what I'm noticing. Not a newsletter in the way most people think of newsletters. Closer to a letter. The kind you used to get from someone who lived somewhere interesting and took the time to write it down.

This is the first one. I'm glad you're here.

Summer has arrived.

After a moderate spring with a good mix of sunshine and rain, the humidity and heat came in with July. The kind of heat that changes how you move through the day — earlier mornings, slower afternoons, evenings that finally cool down enough to sit outside with something cold.

The wildlife has shifted with the season. I've been seeing moose regularly in the open, which always means the bugs are bad enough in the bush that they'd rather take their chances where the breeze can find them. They're feeding in the beaver ponds this time of year — aquatic plants are high in sodium and other minerals they've been depleted of over the winter, and they know it. The cow moose have their calves close right now and they're not patient about it. Their main threats up here are wolves and bears, but even those animals think twice about a mother moose with something to protect. I give them their space.

The deer have their fawns too. Red summer coats, still a little unsteady, staying tight to their mothers at the wood's edge in the early morning. A few families of robins were raised around the cabin this spring — two nests tucked into the eaves, one phoebe nest right on the cabin wall. They seem to understand that Cali and I are not a threat. Maybe they've figured out that we keep the area quieter than it would otherwise be.

From the garden.

The strawberries came in first, the way they always do. Warm off the plant in the morning before the day gets going — that's the best way to eat them, no preparation required. We've been making a strawberry rhubarb compote with fresh cream alongside our morning coffee, which has become something of a spring ritual. It's not how I eat most of the year, but we embrace seasonality and right now strawberries are here and the cows are producing milk with lots of cream on fresh green pasture. Breakfast most mornings is ground venison and eggs from our own chickens. Dinner is usually bear, deer, or grass-fed beef with sauerkraut or kimchi on the side.

My eating through the day is simple. Tea with honey when I wake up. Breakfast an hour or two later, depending on what the day calls for. Organic coffee with raw milk mid-morning. If I eat lunch at all — which I usually don't — it's a few pieces of jerky or some hard boiled eggs. Water throughout the day. In the evening, my wife and I will occasionally sit by the pond or on the porch with a glass of bold red wine. I can't have it often — it affects my blood pressure and causes other problems over time — but on the right evening it's worth it.

What I'm building.

The exterior of the cabin is nearly done. Before it makes it onto the YouTube channel, you'll see the last few interior touches here first — that's one of the things the Hearthside is for.

What's keeping me busy outside right now is the sugar shack. For too many years I've been storing my maple syrup equipment outside, which means digging it out of the snow every February when the daytime temperatures finally start to climb. This will be the first sugaring season in forty years where my setup is inside an actual building. I've been waiting a long time to say that.

Later in the summer, once the garden and fishing ease up a little, there are a couple of other projects I want to get to — things that will make life here more productive and more enjoyable. I'll tell you more about those when the time comes.

It was nice to have Anthony, a local young man from our community, helping out around the homestead for a couple of weeks. He helped me raise the timberframes on this one.

From the family.

Our daughters Emily and Erin are busy with their own lives. They both live farther away than we'd like, and summers go fast.

Emily got married in May. She and her husband bought a small house on half an acre, and they've asked me to help build a fence in the backyard — something for privacy and to contain the dog they're planning on getting. She mentioned maybe a golden retriever. Like Cali. That would be something.

Cali, for her part, is doing what she does every July — finding shade, following me from one end of the property to the other, and sleeping hard at the end of the day. She's earned it.

One thing to try this month.

If you've never made a strawberry rhubarb compote, this is the week. Equal parts strawberries and rhubarb, a little honey, twenty minutes on low heat. Serve it warm over yogurt or cold with cream. It keeps for a week in the fridge and it tastes like summer in a jar.

That's the first dispatch from the cabin. Next month I'll have more to report — on the sugar shack, on what the garden did in July, on whatever the land decided to do that I didn't plan for.

Thanks for being here from the beginning. It means something.

I'll see you at the cabin next time. Take care.

Shawn
My Self Reliance