A recovered addict is hand building his family home with his kids – and says moving to a remote homestead has made him a "better" husband and dad.
Andy Robert, 33, had always wanted to raise his family in the woods after growing up in a similar environment.
But he struggled so badly with alcohol and cannabis addiction, his wife, Carlos, 38, and three children moved from North Carolina to Northern Michigan without him.
Determined to become a “good man” Andy got himself sober and moved down to join them six months later and began to restore his marriage.
After saving up, he bought 20 acres of land and is now building a self-sufficient homestead himself and with the help of his young children.
Andy has spent less than $4,000 so far, building a four-bedroom home with scraps and timber from his land.
He says the move has made him a “better” husband and dad.
Andy, who served in the US coastguard, said: “I don’t like the guy I was.
“I grew up with the mentality as man and husband I provide and that’s it.
“I did that, but I realised that wasn’t good enough.
“I wasn’t present for my wife, I wasn’t helping with the kids.
“Now I don’t wake up hungover in the morning.
“I’m around to be present.
“I’m around to make a point intentionally to support my wife and with the boys.
“My relationship is better and stronger.”
Andy struggled with alcohol and would drink as soon as he got home from work and said he wasn’t “present” with his family.
He said: “I developed quite a serious drinking problem.
“I wasn’t a very good husband.”
Andy switched booze for cannabis before finally getting sober in 2019 after being hospitalised.
But with “damage done”, Carlos and their children moved to Northern Michigan at the beginning of 2020 – something they had already planned on doing.
He said: “I ended up with my wife telling me she didn’t love me anymore.
“After she left, I committed to myself.
“I thought ‘I’m going to be a good man, the man I’m supposed to be’.”
Andy continued to work on himself and moved down in September 2020 – buying five acres of land near his family.
He said: “A lot of damage was done.”
But Andy didn’t give up on his marriage and started to rebuild his relationship with his wife and children and saved up to buy 20 acres of land.
He said: “My marriage was slowly restored.”
Carlos put her ring back on in March 2021 and the family are now all helping out to build their “vision”.
The family have chickens, goats, a horse, a cow and two pigs and are growing crops so they can become self-sufficient.
Andy said: “I’m trying to save as much money on the process as possible.
“I have scavenged for materials. I have traded equipment for metal going on the roof.”
Andy’s children are also on board to help with the build.
He said: “They are heavily involved in the process.
“They have certain jobs on the farm - collecting the fire wood and they take care of the animals.”
Andy and Carlos had always dreamed of bringing up their family surrounded by nature.
Andy said: “So many kids live buried in a screen.
“We’re not raising our kids that way.
“I grew up in the woods.
“I’d like them to have that experience.”
Andy believes the homestead has improved his own wellbeing and his relationship with Carlos.
He said: “I believe my wife and I would have worked it out regardless.
“For my own mental health it has been fantastic.
“I’m present and I’m better.”
Andy Robert, 33, had always wanted to raise his family in the woods after growing up in a similar environment.
But he struggled so badly with alcohol and cannabis addiction, his wife, Carlos, 38, and three children moved from North Carolina to Northern Michigan without him.
Determined to become a “good man” Andy got himself sober and moved down to join them six months later and began to restore his marriage.
After saving up, he bought 20 acres of land and is now building a self-sufficient homestead himself and with the help of his young children.
Andy has spent less than $4,000 so far, building a four-bedroom home with scraps and timber from his land.
He says the move has made him a “better” husband and dad.
Andy, who served in the US coastguard, said: “I don’t like the guy I was.
“I grew up with the mentality as man and husband I provide and that’s it.
“I did that, but I realised that wasn’t good enough.
“I wasn’t present for my wife, I wasn’t helping with the kids.
“Now I don’t wake up hungover in the morning.
“I’m around to be present.
“I’m around to make a point intentionally to support my wife and with the boys.
“My relationship is better and stronger.”
Andy struggled with alcohol and would drink as soon as he got home from work and said he wasn’t “present” with his family.
He said: “I developed quite a serious drinking problem.
“I wasn’t a very good husband.”
Andy switched booze for cannabis before finally getting sober in 2019 after being hospitalised.
But with “damage done”, Carlos and their children moved to Northern Michigan at the beginning of 2020 – something they had already planned on doing.
He said: “I ended up with my wife telling me she didn’t love me anymore.
“After she left, I committed to myself.
“I thought ‘I’m going to be a good man, the man I’m supposed to be’.”
Andy continued to work on himself and moved down in September 2020 – buying five acres of land near his family.
He said: “A lot of damage was done.”
But Andy didn’t give up on his marriage and started to rebuild his relationship with his wife and children and saved up to buy 20 acres of land.
He said: “My marriage was slowly restored.”
Carlos put her ring back on in March 2021 and the family are now all helping out to build their “vision”.
The family have chickens, goats, a horse, a cow and two pigs and are growing crops so they can become self-sufficient.
Andy said: “I’m trying to save as much money on the process as possible.
“I have scavenged for materials. I have traded equipment for metal going on the roof.”
Andy’s children are also on board to help with the build.
He said: “They are heavily involved in the process.
“They have certain jobs on the farm - collecting the fire wood and they take care of the animals.”
Andy and Carlos had always dreamed of bringing up their family surrounded by nature.
Andy said: “So many kids live buried in a screen.
“We’re not raising our kids that way.
“I grew up in the woods.
“I’d like them to have that experience.”
Andy believes the homestead has improved his own wellbeing and his relationship with Carlos.
He said: “I believe my wife and I would have worked it out regardless.
“For my own mental health it has been fantastic.
“I’m present and I’m better.”
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FunTranscript
00:00 Today we're gonna continue work on the barn.
00:01 So the next thing on the list for this
00:03 is we've got to cut and install the rafters.
00:05 We're gonna use these two by eights along with,
00:07 well, what I'm using as the walk boards as our rafters.
00:10 Our first step, we need to get a measurement
00:12 from the inside of that header to the outside of that one.
00:16 My tape measure does not stand out
00:18 as far as I'd like it to.
00:20 So I took this two by four
00:22 and I laid it across the span and marked it.
00:25 So on these rafters, we've got two cuts to make.
00:27 We have to make what's called the ridge cut,
00:29 which is going to be at the high side
00:31 and we need to make the bird's mouth cut,
00:32 which is at the bottom side of it.
00:34 To measure and mark these cuts,
00:35 we're gonna use this magical little tool
00:37 called a speed square.
00:38 So now at the bottom side,
00:39 we need to cut out our notch or our bird's mouth.
00:41 Make a line.
00:44 So that line matches that line.
00:46 And now we need to cut a 90 degree angle
00:49 to make a little notch for that header to sit in.
00:51 So now we're gonna take that first one up,
00:56 we're gonna dry fit it in place.
00:58 We wanna make sure that we got it right
00:59 because from here, we're gonna use it as a template.
01:02 That way I don't have to measure and mark every single time.
01:05 All right, so we got the rafters up,
01:11 at least where the posts are.
01:12 This side, however, she got a little wobble to it.
01:15 So we're gonna pull those bracings
01:17 that are holding these poles up.
01:18 We're gonna knock it into place
01:19 and then toenail out off the rafter.
01:21 (silence)
01:23 So we got a grand total of five nails in each side
01:34 to hold that bracing in place.
01:35 So that's about it.
01:36 It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward process.
01:38 We're gonna add the overhang
01:39 and we'll go ahead and add all the additional rafters
01:41 in there and then purlins and metal
01:43 will be in pretty good shape.
01:44 So let's get started with all the things
01:46 that I've done wrong so far.
01:47 As you can see, I have no sort of foundation whatsoever.
01:51 Concrete costs money, I ain't got it.
01:53 So for my base logs,
01:55 I use these old creosote telephone poles.
01:57 It'll be subject to frost heave.
01:59 The ground's gonna expand and contract.
02:01 It's gonna sink and it's probably
02:03 not gonna sink that evenly.
02:04 The second thing wrong with this bad boy
02:06 is that all these logs are green.
02:08 They've all been cut within the last two months or so.
02:10 So they're not dried out, they're not done shrinking.
02:13 Because of that, to join them together,
02:14 I use the Scandinavian saddle notch.
02:17 As the logs dry out and shrink,
02:19 they'll more or less pull together kinda tightly.
02:23 Or they won't, I don't really know.
02:25 I'm not as worried about it sinking as you might think.
02:28 Total weight of the structure comes out
02:30 to about 30,000 pounds or 500 pounds per log.
02:33 The fact that the dirt underneath this is sand,
02:35 it's able to carry a good amount of that weight.
02:38 I've never made maple syrup before,
02:39 but what I lack in actual knowledge and experience,
02:42 I make up for with a unshakable
02:44 and unearned American confidence
02:46 that I can make it work because I want to.
02:48 We got our fire rolling pretty good,
02:50 so we're gonna stick the cauldron on,
02:51 start adding sap to it.
02:52 In theory, it's just as simple
02:58 as boil the water out of the sap
03:00 until there's a whole lot of sugar and not a lot of water.
03:02 We're gonna bring this fire up to full wobble
03:09 and let it get to a nice rolling boil.
03:11 All right, y'all, we're getting pretty close
03:17 to the finish line here.
03:18 We boiled off about maybe 90 gallons of sap.
03:21 Don't need that in our final product.
03:23 Finally, we fill the first bottle.
03:37 You wanna turn them upside down when you fill them up.
03:46 That way, the entire 190 degrees
03:48 reaches every part of the bottle
03:49 and it'll help seal it up.
03:51 But after like a minute
03:52 or however long pasteurization takes,
03:54 you can turn it back over.
03:55 That is the sexiest thing I've ever seen.
03:59 This one's for me.
04:03 Sweet, sweet tree-based diabetes.
04:13 Stuff is awesome.
04:15 As I've mentioned in several of the other videos,
04:17 I'm an alcoholic.
04:18 I got sober the day before my 29th birthday
04:22 and I wasn't present.
04:26 I thought that I was doing my job if I provided
04:30 and that was part of my job,
04:32 but there's more to it than that
04:36 as far as being a husband goes.
04:39 A lot of people with addiction issues
04:41 have plenty of reasons for why they landed where they did.
04:45 It doesn't absolve you from your behavior.
04:48 I went from drinking to just smoking weed
04:51 and initially it was just to kind of take the edge off
04:54 and then it became like a constant thing,
04:57 just escaping my own reality.
05:00 It didn't really solve any problems.
05:03 Been sober and quit drinking for about
05:07 maybe seven or eight months
05:08 when she came to me and she then told me
05:13 that she didn't love me anymore.
05:15 My brain went from I'm gonna kill myself
05:19 to I'm gonna light this house on fire to watch it burn
05:23 or it was uncontrolled and it was constant.
05:26 It was just going and going and going.
05:27 It didn't make any sense.
05:29 And I told her to call 911.
05:34 Ended up talking to the psychiatrist there
05:37 and he said something that struck me, it hit me.
05:40 Dude, you're an addict.
05:42 He said, it doesn't matter what it is.
05:44 He said, the way you're wired,
05:46 if something gives you happy chemicals,
05:49 you're gonna go a hundred miles an hour towards it.
05:52 I never thought of myself like that before.
05:53 I guess I may consider myself an alcoholic,
05:56 but so from there I made the decision to try and rebuild.
06:01 Just remember it ain't too late.
06:03 Today, take a deep breath, throw yourself into it
06:11 with everything you got.
06:12 It's great to be alive.
06:14 I love y'all.