 After three years living off grid, we have documented the hardest and the grossest parts to this lifestyle. What are we even getting ourselves into right now? Like negative 30 right now. The cabin is like almost underwater. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And like shearing about it in your backyard is very different. You don't know how good it is. Oh Christ, I'm lost. We have broke it down to eight categories and we are going to share all eight of those with you in this video. We have been told we're qualified to teach everything we've learned as we've gone through it all. Number one, waste. What no one wants to talk about. We have an incinerator toilet and an outhouse. Thank gosh because our incinerator toilet only likes to incinerate when it wants to. Have fun watching us try to fix our toilet. Today once and for all, we clean our toilet. It's not just any toilet. In this household, we burn our poop. Yep, you heard me right. From solid to ash. How? This is the off-grid Cinderella incinerating toilet. That means no septic and no water. Lift the lid. Wait yourself. Hi me. Grab yourself a liner. Insert the liner. Do the business. Now it's time to ignite the fire. Fire, did you see it? Within seconds, your poop is turned to ash. If you don't believe me, look at this. No owner, germ free and a save to touch. That's how it's supposed to work. It's still broken. You don't even want to imagine what it's like when an incinerator toilet breaks. The burner fan is here. And this wrecking ball. What even is this? What are we even getting ourselves into right now? Dirty math. It's time to make the best of a stinky situation. With the new parts in, let's finally fix this toilet once and for all. I'm actually excited. Don't want my toilet back. Step one, disconnect the toilet and the propane lines. Here's the vice grips. Need the right tools for the job. Are you scrubbing? She's scrubbing all right. Did you ever think you'd vacuum your toilet? Nope. Now for the worst part. Our video would get banned off YouTube. That's where all the burned waste goes. Doing a thorough clean here, y'all. I look like I'm enjoying myself. Toilets going in the shower? Yeah, girl. The exhaust pipe to clean the catalyst. Oh my goodness. Even crystals crossed out. Next is phase three as the Cinderella YouTube video maintenance. Instruction tutorial says, and that means we're going on the roof. Work? Sheesh. We're using this wrecking ball to go into the chimney because the toilet exhausts. There is soot and buildup within this pipe. I'm going to be at the bottom to pull it out. It's probably going to be really gross. On the exhaust pipe of the toilet. What? Did you drop it? Is it okay? It's fine. Is there a mark? No, you're f***ing lucky. Is it dirty? Would you look at that. Soot. Yeah, bring it down. How do we do this? I think we're done. Yeah? There we go. This is the best time I've ever been on the roof. It's nice. Welcome to the inside of our toilet. We're replacing our burner fan. This little baby came in the mail. And it should be a very simple install. As you can see, there's two wires. Hopefully this is a culprit. We'll look at it. You got what it looks like. It's wet. Ew, what's going on? I don't like this. I think we're done. Woo! Yeah. Well, don't cure yet. Let's see if it works. Yeah, here's hoping that that's the fix. We'll find out soon. Not crossing because I have to pee. Crossing because I hope it works. You hear that? Okay, well, time will only tell. Because last time it was fixed and then it wasn't. And then... Get back to you in a few days. The main toilets people choose while living. Are one, an incinerator toilet. Two, a composting toilet. Three, a septic. Four, an outhouse. Most people go through life not ever having to think about human waste. When you're living off-grid, this is probably the very first thing on your mind. Because if you don't own a shovel, you're gonna need an outhouse. The reason why flushing toilets and septics aren't the first option for people living off-grid is because you need a lot of water, like a well. You also need to be accessible so that you can get that septic pumped. It is the most expensive option, but let's all be real right now. There is nothing like a flushing toilet. And then there is the incinerating toilet. Pretty sure it's a dud because after all that work we just did and many, many maintenance jobs, it's still not working. This is a task we never like to do. Can't even shot the lid! What was living in this before? Yeah, we have had a rat before. You love that story, right? Never been back since. One time there was a rat living in this garbage house and Crystal caught the rat with her bare hands. It's quite the adventure. What can I say? I'm badass. Long story short, Jazzy is going to get the dump truck and all of this garbage has piled up from obviously garbage. One good thing, we compost out here. Compost is really good for your garden. So all of the food waste stays out of the trash. It's mostly just garbage and renovation and construction materials that really do pile up. But honestly, because we don't put any fresh food and things in there, we don't need to go as often as I think we need to go. It's fine. Let it fill up and then take care of it. Van, I hope none of your bags are over 40 pounds. I'm only putting the camera on right now because there literally might be something in this. We keep hearing something. I was just saying, does it really matter if it piles up? Clearly we have an issue on our hands. This is the thing though. Living out here, man, I just saw four deer like 10 minutes ago. You're just living amongst them. Yes, exterminator. I said, I'm really going to need your help with this. I got the camera. That's all I just need you to get your legs on the ground. Well, I put stuff in it. Okay. I know I'm probably overreacting, but like my grandma has a baby. He got her toe bitten off in her crib by a rat. I just, just can't. You know? Is it in there? Probably be literally in the cabin. Please write in the comments what you would be doing. Would you be crystal? You don't know how good it is. Where the hell did I go? You believe we're like, oh yeah. Let's talk about our garbage and our rats. I can't even believe it. This is not planned, y'all. This is, first of all, how the hell do you plan a rat? I average, but like, this is just our life out here in the woods. Someone's coming down our driveway. Maybe they'll catch the rat for us. Well, I have a question. Sure. We have a rat in our garbage. You want to get it? No. Absolutely not. We're freaking out. Is she the rat forever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's got her bucket. She's ready to go. Bye. Come on, Gris. Let's go catch some rats. Okay, back to business. That has left. I hope you enjoyed that sequence of us cleaning our garbage house. It was quite eventful. We're now a couple months later. Let's see if we stuck to our words of keeping our garbage house clean. But first, a quick break. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. And all it takes is 15 minutes in the morning, in between meetings, or during your commute to learn a new language with Rosetta Stone. I am so, so proud to be partnering with Rosetta Stone. Once again, I have always been a lover of travel and languages and culture since a very young age. And when I was in grade nine, this is a really cute story. My brother gifted me a CD-ROM of Rosetta Stone to learn Spanish before I took off on my first solo trip to Spain. I recently told you a little bit about this story, and when I was on this trip, it just clicked. Finally, I was able to take everything that I had learned and apply it to real-life situations. I could communicate with new friends. I could better figure out where I was going and travel confidently and communicate effectively. Instead of memorizing translations, Rosetta Stone helps you learn naturally with its unique engaging learning approach, where you're immersed in the language through pictures, audio from native speakers, and interactive activities. I'm currently learning Portuguese. Jasmine is learning Spanish because she will be putting it to good use soon. Rosetta Stone is offering our viewers a lifetime subscription, meaning no renewal fees, one and done access to all languages. From Spanish to Dutch to Japanese, the world is yours. And it's yours if you use the link in the description. I'd say it's an A-OK job. Just a couple of bags. Garbage is something that you typically have to take care of completely on your own, because we do not have garbage pickup, driving to and from the dump is very far. So doing things to prevent the amount of waste that you're getting rid of, like composting, is essential. But that doesn't mean that you're not going to have those icky critters in your stuff. That's the cutest dog. And when we drove in here, we drove into a absolute jungle of trees. We had a lot of land management to do. That included clearing the land in front of the cabin so that we could even see it, maintaining the forest floor, and picking up all the debris and brush and burning it to prevent things like wildfires and all of that. Today, we are digging a French drain using perforated pipe and rock. There is going to be a lot of digging, a lot of rock and a lot of pipe. And as you can see, our land goes this way and it slowly slants that way. And because of that, water gathers here along the driveway where it meets the grass. We don't want water in the driveway. Water management is super important and it may not look like there's much here right now, but the reality is, is when there are storms and it's raining, it is not a good look. And there's actually quite a bit of mud piling up here. We don't love that. Let's fuel the machine. My tractor is a B-26 Kubota and it takes one jargon of diesel. Gotta say, I love the color diesel. So pretty. This has been a long time coming. It's taken us many years to get to the point where this is the only place where water is and I'm very, very happy to announce that we've finally mastered it. That was a literal time lapse of me hating being in the tractor and wishing I was in an excavator. I am an excavator girl through and through. Okay, as you can see, I am actually following a line of water. The water naturally flows in this direction. We are very close to the finish line, my friends. Tractor is off. We all know what that means. Made it to the forest line. This, well, this is perforated pipe, everyone. This is what we're using. There are a lot of things you can use. I did choose the less economical option and I do that sometimes on certain things because these are going to last a lot longer. Our ground is very wet and we want to drive over top of it. So it seems like a no-brainer. Go back or go home. Won't have to think about it for a very long time. Can't forget the shovel. The sun just came out and it's a heck of a lot warmer. I have made it almost halfway down the trench with my shovel and the water is moving. That is huge. I'm very, very happy to see that. Look at it go. Look at the water go. You'll be the gluer. I'll be the holder. Yeah. Just kind of, and we'll just fly through this. All of these little holes that you're seeing on them is where the water will go be perforated through the rock into this tube and carry it away. Landscaping fabric. I almost got ahead of myself there but Jasmine reminded me that this on top, the perforated pipe will stop the dirt and all of the small granular material from getting inside. So I'm going to roll this out and we're going to fill this up with stones. You may not know but beneath my feet is a French strain and although I just showed you that footage so you do know, if you drove up here you would never know. And on a much broader scale, I think it's just very important no matter where you are to get to know the locals, see what other people around you are doing with their land and what they have found in the past to be problematic. There's certain floodplains, marshes, things like that to think about that you may not even know exist. For example, like our cabin down by the river, it has experienced tons and tons of flooding and this is something we probably wouldn't have known about right away had we not taken the time to observe the area. So take your time and find out what your area is like. I just want to jump on here and say if you are enjoying this video and it's giving you any knowledge or you know of someone who wants to start off-grid living, please consider sharing this video, subscribing and commenting as we really hope to add value to anyone looking to live an alternative lifestyle. We are living with nature and honestly we weren't going to talk about this because we are so immune to it and we are so used to what it's like living out here but when we have guests here they often say things like there's a slug on our lettuce or there's a bug in my room but this is the reality of living out here. You are in harmonization with nature and that can be hard sometimes. When you're growing food you have to think about your deer out here eating away at your fruit trees and your vegetables and yes we are past the honeymoon stage and they do wander into our yard now. What is the honeymoon stage? The honeymoon stage is when you first arrived to your land and the pests and the bugs and the animals have not found you yet. But they do. This year we had aphids in the greenhouse which were such a pest. So I bought ladybugs and introduced them to the greenhouse to eat the aphids so we could eat our kale. They are going to be gone by the morning it's eating so fast. Your eyes, they have pure happiness in them. I'm happy. And you're probably wondering what about all the bears? Actually that's one of our most asked questions, eh? Yeah. Is are you scared of the bears? Yeah. No. Aren't we scared of them? No, we are not scared of the bears. They are out here and we see pictures and videos of them all the time. They are black bears and they are very scared of humans. We haven't seen them on our property but we've seen them near here. That being said recently I had the most spectacular experience less than a kilometer down from our cabin. I saw my very first bobcat and it was a small cat but I was blown away and I know that this is very rare and very special so I'm trying to treat it as that. I know that might scare some of you and yes we are taking good care of the girls and we have our eyes on them. We haven't seen it since so I'm treating it as if I am special. There are so warms of black flies and it lasts over a month. You have to dress properly and prepare yourself because it truly truly takes such a strong soul to get through that season. If you were coming out here to visit you'd probably turn around and go home. Clearly. And to be honest we've had so many black fly bites they actually feel good now. It's a weird feeling and I can't believe I'm sharing it online. Lastly something very very important to talk about that's becoming more common all across Canada is ticks. Ticks have gone very very bad out here in Nova Scotia over the last few years and honestly with the dogs and living in the woods it is something we truly can't avoid. They carry diseases like Lyme disease and it's really quite scary so we constantly check ourselves and make sure you know that we haven't been bitten and you gotta look everywhere including your armpits and maybe you're something we didn't think about when we purchased this land was how far out we were. We just saw all the benefits that came with being so far out I think instead of being like oh wow I'm 18 hours from friends and family we are completely isolated. No one's gonna come down our road in the winter or visit us at all or really come to our place what we're missing out here and this isn't the case for every off-grid community but a lot of them and something that I think we all can relate to and even people that live in cities can relate to this too I think all humans can is isolation and loneliness yes whether you're living in a city with millions of people you could feel more alone than we could we have each other and our dogs but there's something with just living so far that we can't just go grocery shopping for a simple thing or we can't just go to our mom's for dinner meet a friend at a restaurant go to a club if that was our thing or like a fitness class that's what Christoph misses those don't exist and yes we have created a lot of those things here like the yoga deck for you to do yoga because that's something that you genuinely genuinely miss and yes this year has been truly the best year here because we've had the most visitors come out because we've gotten to a place where they have a place to rest their head and to wash their bodies in a shower or go to the bathroom without digging a hole however that being said it is something to think about and it's something to consider because it's super hard to go through some of the challenges of living off-grid when you are alone and isolated community is everything and that's why we are so grateful and we say it all the time that we do have our online community to talk to and to show up for each week while we live all the way out here definitely makes us way less lonely and that's why we think heavily about winter when it comes around because we know that we could go months without having people here it doesn't make it less real no matter how happy we are here and how much we love and adore every ounce of our life out here in the woods in Nova Scotia it doesn't make it less real that we miss our friends our family and our community modern day amenities running water the ability to heat your home electricity and a bathroom when you buy a house it's included when you start from scratch off-grid it's something that you need to think about and that you need to plan and while that's the whole idea sometimes living without them while you're working towards them can be super challenging especially in the winter in order to get all these modern day amenities that Crystal just listed you're going to have to put a lot of temporary systems in place which not gonna lie was very hard for me at the beginning as I just wanted to do every system right as soon as I started off with but that's just not the case so being okay with putting in temporary systems is half the battle before you have running water you may need to build yourself something to collect rainwater if that isn't an option for you or it's not something you want to do you could have water brought in for us we didn't have that option as it was extremely expensive $500 to haul in an IBC tow worth of water in some areas you may have access to a spring or you can take water from rivers or lakes don't quote me it's different everywhere for a good chunk of the time that we've been living here we didn't have a well now we have a drilled well which we love so much and has been an absolute game changer but before that we were driving an hour to our local spring to fill up water for drinking washing and cleaning and then in the winter that started to trickle and we really didn't have a lot of water coming out so we went to the good old so we's grocery store to get some water fill up those blue jugs yep power having reliable power is really the start of absolutely everything here we wouldn't have some of our heat sources we wouldn't have water showers all of these things without power and honestly it also was some of the hardest times when we didn't have our full off grid system we went through some of the most challenging times including living in the dark and not having lights in the cabin we started with portable power stations we had a lot of temporary fixes like generators and then eventually we got to having our full off the grid solar array and battery bank extreme weather severe weather it's everywhere wildfires hurricanes polar vortexes some of these events can be truly heightened when you live far out because the responsibility is yours if trees are falling and there's no one there to pick them up that is something that you need to take responsibility for and that can include stalking up for storms getting things like gas and groceries ahead of time because the cities might be busy far out there's all types of circumstances that may be unknown and if you don't have neighbors and help of your community in your city to help you you need to think about these things on your own a few examples of this is in a snowstorm we need to plow our way out of here and if the road is ice we may not be able to leave so we need to have enough food stocked here for quite a few weeks this year there was a lot of tragic events in Nova Scotia one being wildfires we learned a lot during that time that having a packing list and having a route out of here is super super important we also learned during the hurricane that having a chainsaw in the cabin throughout the storm is really helpful if trees fall on the house or on your vehicle you can actually remove the trees with the chainsaw to sum it up it's very important to think into the future so that you are prepared for events like those number eight tied and this might be an us problem but you're thinking tied what? tied to the homestead tied to go sorry it's a real thing when you have this much responsibility out here every little thing needs to be taken care of and that includes when you're not here and by this might just be an us problem is because we definitely are wanderlust people if you've been watching us from the beginning so it is very hard to leave this place because we love it so much but also because there are a lot of systems that need to be monitored by the pros our batteries they need to be at a constant temperature so that way they stay happy so in the winter we need to make sure that that building is always warm which includes stoking the fire using a heat pump or using a propane heater depending on what the weather is and if we're not here things could get ugly just like everything else gardens need a lot of maintenance leaving them is really difficult as you have to think about pruning them caring for them making sure pests haven't got to them and watering them or your food goes rotten in all your hard work it's just down the soil sometimes I say it's like we have a kid out here however you can bring a kid on an airplane I can't bring my homestead on an airplane so what we're trying to say is there is just a lot of responsibility out here over these three years we've learned so much about what it means to be out here and we knew that after everything we've learned we had to share all of the hardest and the grossest parts with you because I know so many of you will find this information helpful if you're thinking about living off grid although we just talked about the grossest and the hardest things about living out here there are so many beautiful things and we try to deliver that each and every week to all of you and we wouldn't change living out here for the world really we have become such better stronger resilient humans from everything that we've endured and learned out here and we are so happy that we can share it with you each and every week life often throws curveballs at you and I believe we're better suited to catch those ones now I like it that's my metaphor see you Sunday close by jesse joy love you bye