Thank God for Sweden and Swedish forests. They can be as gnarly as Canada’s in the early summer. You need constant protection and refuge from the bugs. But if you have an adequate supply of netting and a comfortable cabin, building a small dream nest in the forest is a doable thing. Or if you live in a desert area or on a river, you can also do these just fine.
Another name for tiny home?
Now that we are isolating from each other it might be time to think about gearing down a bit and building a new future reality.
Cabin Porn’s founder Zach Klein built a small community for his high-tech and media friends in Upstate New York that they call Beaver Brook. Check them out. They are idealistic in their cooking, building, and DIY approach. They had the call of the wild.
If you are renting in a big city or stuck with a mortgage, I am sure you have heard the call of the wild. Now might be the time to start building a nook in the woods, and I have the perfect plan for you. I was searching for a perfect and low cost A frame cabin blueprint for years. Then I saw the lifestyle and cabins of the folks at Stedsans in the Woods in Sweden. They run a forest to table restaurant and getaway deep in the woods.
I love the off centered, non conforming, off centered placement of the panels and the frame of their cabin. This gives it a “super human” in the woods feeling, that I can only compare to a revered Japanese ceramic tea cup used in a tea ceremony. It just gives you that feeling of perfect harmony in all its off centeredness.
I have a property in Canada, some 200 acres of thick and intelligent forest and although there is an old farmhouse on it, I have been dreaming about building a smaller cabin, like the one I found at Mette’s Swedish forest retreat.
Stedsans In The Woods is built by couple Mette Helbæk and Flemming Hansen, who sold their Copenhagen home and rooftop restaurant, Stedsans ØsterGRO (Stedsans in the Woods), and moved their family just across the water to an 18-acre plot of forest beside Lake Halla in West Sweden.
The focus of Stedsans ØsterGRO is to make guest experience hyperlocal fresh ingredients and simplified forest cooking. Visitors there find an idyllic, food-centred experience. Kickstarter helped make it happen.
Beyond the food one of the big attractions at Stedsans is the floating sauna. That’s what first found me on Instagram. I was looking for simple A frame cabins for building a writing retreat and everything they did at Stedsans in the Woods caught my attention and made me say, wow: I want to be there. For isolation, and maybe even forever?
In Swedish Stedsans means “a sense of location” and at their retreat guests eat in tents and sleep in simple A frame cabins and tents under the stars.
Among the activities you can do there is foraging expeditions. Find mushrooms like gigantic ceps (get our forest mushroom vegan cookie recipe here) and taste the food from their small permaculture farm, which includes a healthy insect hotel and a range of medicinal plants.
Chefs prepare you food from what you see, with meat roasting on the fire, or herbs ground in a mortar and pestle.
We all need a lot more going back to the roots right now. Don’t you feel it too?
