 Welcome to what our life is really like in the woods. Good morning girls. Can you help me? Oh, we're still living with the black flies. Please, please, please, down a little. Oh, you got bites, girl. After briefly checking the weather. Wow. We get dressed and say good morning to the family. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Love you. We head outside for our morning dose of sunshine. Give me some more of this sort of feeling. Sunshine! With the warmth of the sun on our skin, we put our barista skills to the test. Because every morning here at our cabin in the woods starts with coffee. One espresso for Jasmine and one on ice for me. I'm not going to lie. Every morning we find one of these at Tech. Life in the woods. Life in the woods. So guess what I carry now, everyone? That's your cue. Oh. All the way to get rid of them. Not every day here is construction and renovations. Many mornings we slow down and enjoy nature. On route to our favorite place in the woods. See how far we can go. Give me some more. Give me some more of this sort of feeling. Can't get enough of this good, good, good, good thing. As much as we love renovating and sharing it all, there is much more to our life than just building. We need to remind ourselves that it's OK to slow down and just enjoy the fruits of our labor. Black bean wraps for breakfast. You're already done. Great view, eh? Great breakfast. The glorious morning is done. Back to work, ladies. Joking. Breakfast number two. Pasta salad. Is it salty? Oh, nothing like a cold meal, though. On a hot day. We're bringing you along on our date today. This is what we do together when we have free time. My favorite feeling is driving into the trails in our backyard and seeing Jasmine's smiling face ripping past mine. It's a little big for Crystal, but this is your clutch. So you're going to not the brake. No, front brake. Brake? Back brake. Like just actually feel the bike. Let's go catch up. All right, pretend drinking hand. Yummy. It was about time that Jasmine and I picked up a new pair of gloves because I had, at one point, been wearing two lefts. And it's hard to find even a left and a right. And if you've seen the state of our garage, you'll know why. Got to keep the hands nice. It's about time they came up with gloves that fit us. Yeah, and check these out. They fit like a glove. Good one. I could perform surgery with these. They're so tight. Oh my, you marry the crazy. No, I like to be easy. Or jail. It's go time. Well, Paak, thank you so much for saving our beloved tree that we didn't want to cut down in the first place, which is why we put it in our garden bed. Thanks to everyone who allowed us to become knowledgeable that the tree trunk does not like to be suffocated. You'd think we'd know that, but we didn't. So we are going to build a box and let us know if you think this is going to be successful or not because from the comments and what we read, should work, don't you think? You're kind of like a tractor. You are what you ride. How are we going to do with a hoop holder? We've got to get, remove the dirt. Yeah, but there's sticks. Someone said it looks like a tornado hit our lumber yard. I would have to agree. It's pretty spooky back here. OK, well, after we've undug the tree, we're inspecting it more and realizing that the tree is damaged here and here. As you can see, a lot of the bark is gone and it's also going to take up a lot of space in our bed, the box, which means we get to grow less food. We are very attached to this tree, as you can see. We lost it right here. But sometimes things don't last forever. And out here, you kind of have to decide you want more room for growing. Like, we clearly have a lot of trees out here. We are also going to utilize the tree for either firewood or building something back there. We kind of have to figure it out out here, you know? First of all, obviously a little bit sad because we are attached to it. That's why we tried to keep it. But it is severely damaged. Yeah. And honestly, it's going to take up a lot of our garden square footage here and shade. So what's the point of keeping it? I think I would rather food than another pine tree or spruce. It's a cutie, but. It's really cute. But I'm going to make use of it some other way, my little pergola. Is that what they call it, pergola? What's a weird name? Pergola. I'd like to know more about that. Who the heck named that? Where did that come from? Let's name pergola something different because it's kind of silly. So RIP to our favorite garden tree. No, not favorite. Just came to Mabel's the favorite. But RIP. That's the Mabel, by the way, if you're wondering right there. So everyone, we're going to get geared up here. We're going to fell this tree and we're going to junk it up. Go little chainsaw, go. So here's to hoping it falls that way. Here we go. I have to say I'm much more confident doing everything than I was about falling a tree. But I'm definitely more confident than I ever have been. Winning. Winning. Why are they doing that? No, something's wrong. Something's very wrong with that chainsaw. Let's try this again. I'm going to cut the tree side off. I'm not much of a chainsaw, but I can repeat what Crystal just told me. The chainsaw lets the oil out to get to the chain and the blade. Was blocked. Was blocked. It's also very dull. We can't find the sharpener. Maybe I shouldn't be speaking right now. Holy. What? Is that its head? What's going on? This is the weirdest thing. Oh my God, it's growing a new self. It's going to lose its old legs. Do they do that? I don't know. It's literally pushing out its new self, of its own self. This is called spider molting. This allows the spider to grow and replace its exoskeleton with a fresher model. I definitely have a whole new appreciation for spiders. I'm not a huge fan, but that was really cool. I think it really needs its eyes and its head back. Cause it literally shed that too. What? It literally shed its head. And it's fangs, it's old fangs. It doesn't even fangs right now. It probably feels so weak and scared that we're like, it's being reborn and we're like showing it to the whole world. I bet they do this in closets and stuff, you know? Made a fort for Spidey. Okay, well, I'll try this again. Okay, wedge is cut. Okay. Now we don't just have to look out for things. We need to look out for Spidey. I don't think that's a healthy amount of smoke. My chainsaw is toast really right now. It's like black sludgy oil pouring out of it. I've given up on the chainsaw today. It needs a full clean. I probably should just strap in my blade and just drive me nuts. And yes, the oil is filled and the gas and the oil is filled and, you know, I just tried to clean it. And I don't think it's that dull because I just used it. Anyways, back up. That says it all. This is dumb. That's it. It's not? You don't do it that far, man. I think what's gonna make us get through this tree is a positive attitude. Go coach. Positive attitude leaves as soon as you start sawing. Yeah. Ah, I need my chainsaw. Go, Krista, go. This is not meant to cut a tree. I know, it's dumb. All right. Looks like falling the tree was a fail. We'll have to come back to it. But onto the next. Laundry. Is there anything better than fresh towels? Fresh clean sheets. You spend one third of your life in sheets. Don't you want them to be insanely comfortable? Brooklyn Inn is a luxury sheets company creating high quality home goods to elevate your home at a fair price. These sheets are not only gonna last a long time, but they get softer with each wash. Give yourself your best sleep. 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Yeah, yeah, no. I'm trying so hard right now to bite my tongue. I can't do it. Chris, go in. That's not good. You're going like this. You have like a nice slow motion while you're curling your bucket in. You don't want to go dunk, dunk, dunk. Do you know what I mean? Well, turn back on. That's all you can ask for, right? This is our berry garden. If you remember from last year, we planted one and we ended up doing two more rows at the end of the season and they're not looking so hot. Okay, so see these rows that we have? Like that. I really hope we made them wadden up so that way the tractor can fit in because then every year that we need to add soil, we can just drive the tractor right through. Dum, dum, dum as we reverse and then it's easy peasy, very squeezy. Okay, as you can see, Jasmine had a vision. She drove the tractor right through and is dumping the dirt gradually as we work our way forward. This area needs major love. It needs a lot of fertilizer and good soil and compost. So that's the goal. Jasmine is so confident with the tractor. I'm so proud of her for just rocking it and using it whenever she can because she's learned very quickly. This massive amount of soil is probably like a thousand pounds and here we are bringing it all over. One little bucket at a time. I love it. I really need to show you all the conditions that these berries are living in because you're gonna laugh. They look like they're growing in a desert currently. Like this is a desert. This is sand. It's like dry. As you can see, it's desert-like conditions for these berries over here. You know what? I'm just so sorry. I think that's all you gotta do sometimes. Just in life, you just gotta say sorry. We neglected them and they weren't our priority. Really crossing our fingers that they'll make a good comeback. Just another day out here in the woods. Ripping our pants as we come out of the tractor. It's official. You can never have too many wood chips in life. I see a raspberry mojito in my future sitting right here, basking in the sun. She's strong like Dracda. I'm excited to announce that we are finally at the stage with the berries that we are going to fertilize them, which we will continue to do every four to five weeks, and water them finally. Okay. Getting these berries back to life. This is the first time we've ever used fertilizer. We've always grown without it, which I don't think is very good, to be honest. Smells like. It says odorless and it kind of doesn't really smell, but it kind of does. You need less for tomatoes and stuff, but berries require a lot. With the dirt and wood chips now, in we move to rebuilding the berry trellis. I'm excited to build what you want to build with these over there now. You are? No, I know how they go on the ground. It's gonna be so fun. Yay. These trellis were found at our local farm store. They're both affordable and aesthetic and will support the plants as they grow. This is a trust exercise. I'm covered in bites. Like we're gonna be so itchy tonight. I know. And of course, no gardening task would be complete without playing Bella's favorite game. Woo! Oh, there. This is Bella's favorite mode. Yes. She doesn't like showers. Shower's okay. Get the whole hose. Too much, very. Now put that on. Now put that on. Whoa! With the posts now secure, we fasten eye hooks and run string between them and our trellis is ready for the season. The trellis is beautiful and it's done. And the bugs are brutal worse than ever. I think it's this corner because our whole land is kind of sloping. And on this side, which is like the furthest away from like the structures, the water runs into that woods. And I think that for sure, the black flies are living there. So we're very close to there. We're in their neighborhood. This is stunning. It looks so good. It's such a simple design and I'm feeling really good and really confident that these berries are gonna make a humongous comeback this season. I'm proud of us. And I love our tractor. I'm gonna say that every time I use it because I'm never gonna take it for granted because this took us two days just to do this one here last year. And now this just took us a couple hours. Not even, and like we finished it. We finished all three. So anyways, I wanted to show you all these. It's not in the Montec talk, but see these things? They are really good for your plant. You can reuse them every year too. They kind of just look like little fish, you know? Boom, boom, boom. And you clamp it to your trellis as well as your plant. And it leaves room, as you can see, for your plant stem to grow. So it's not smothering it because you've learned that. Not the smother things. And then Crystal's fertilizer, it's really interesting. Let's say we go to a farm thing and you wanna feed the goats. Looks like goat food. And then slowly it's going to continue to go into the soil every time it rains. So they're gonna be getting... Crystal is fertilizing all the gardens now. We're supposed to get rain tomorrow. So it's a good thing to do. And then that way it just seeps into the soil and it makes everyone super happy. Plants and us. Because we are going to be eating like queens. That's good, babe. As you all know, we build a lot around here. So we have three materials. I would hope only once, but Jasmine Crystal style, we end up moving them like 10 times. It's a good workout. Ready? 15 sheets of ply going right here. And hopefully the only time we have to move them. Not like that. I meant like rust. Oh yeah, the plywood blended in some dog shit. Yo, is that camera even on? I don't think it is. Yeah, it's on the way. Are you sure? We got dog on our plywood. Who puts dog in the back of the cap? Dog shit. Let's go. Oh my God. Dog poo. Yes. Dog poo. Dog poo. Look at that chocolate. That's really brutal. I can't. How long does it have kids? I can't even do this. Oh my God. This is like the worst thing I've ever seen. We need to cut the plywood. You hear the birds? I wonder what they're saying to each other. Me too. They're saying, look at that stupid human clean poo on our plywood. Probably. Look at the dogs. Just look at us too. I can't. Look at the dogs. Look at me like that. They're like, you think you're in charge? You're cleaning my shit right now, mom. I hate puppies. Today is another long gorgeous day. Full of sunshine and outdoor work. And lots of tractor time. Yeah. There's Starlink. Okay, gotta move Starlink. It's been useful for every job today. I just can't believe how much we could have used it before in a way when I think about it sometimes. It's just one of the best things that's ever happened. Moving back by the lumber would take a long time. This is a lot of lumber. We filled up the forklift with that. And it's all mill lumber. It's all incredibly heavy. Oh, I love the evening when the sun is still shining. With some very necessary chores behind us, we decide to soak up everything the beautiful evening is giving us and plant some of our very first seedlings. Nifty little find on the interweb. Izzy, what are you doing? We have to build Izzy a sandbox. Everyone talks about building a deterrent from animals, like a garden that they can eat from. We need to literally build Izzy her own bed so that we should stop sleeping on ours. Because it's time for our baby seedlings to go in the beds. Yay. Not all of them, but the beans. Many of our days at the cabin look just like this. We mosey around, completing little unseen tasks, preparing for the next big video. But often, many evenings when the chores are done, we get to slow down and just enjoy being. So you know you got a healthy, healthy plant. Yeah, it's like it was time to come out. That is so good. That's ridiculous. That's a perfect hole. Literally highly recommend, highly recommend. Okay, where? Amazon got to you. I'm putting that in the description because people are who love, people are gonna love that. It's so nice. You can get bigger ones too. Like I have a bigger one as well, but I don't think I need it for this application. Oh my gosh. Look at these roots. Oh my gosh. Do I need all this? No, really not. You want to try it? Yeah. Everybody can guess what time it is. fertilizer time. Most importantly important at the beginning and the end of the season. We have to watch Bella because she's been eating them everywhere. This is why we need a fence around our garden. Yeah, from this big bear. From Bella before anything else. Our life in the woods is a delicate balance. Most weeks we work tirelessly on building projects while documenting the journey. But there is much more that goes unseen. We remind ourselves, it's okay to slow down, be present and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us and show you what it's like to live here. Oh, oh. Came for the non-existent sunset. And the cold breeze. It's freezing right down here by the lake. Honestly, it was like a two minute walk from the cabin and it's how many degrees difference? That wind. Oh, so cold. But the sunsets are always magical at the lake. Those chairs look like they want to be sat in. Those chairs look like they want to get painted by Jasmine. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. My paint gun, because a year ago today. We'll hold you to it tomorrow. It's raining tomorrow. On the next day. So I would have done it today. But my life really looks like sweeping 10 times a day. And we can't even blame it on you two. We can blame it on one. And two. Because of the shoes. Come on, Thomas, please. This is real life. I love this. It's pasta. Don't even have any tomato sauce. All right, off to the grocery store I go. Yeah, look at these lights, everyone. I had a vision. Your vision came to life. How was the grocery store? Good. Basil. Thyme. What else do I get? Parsley. Oregano. I hope. Oregano. We in Italy or something? That looks so good. Well deserved. That worked today. Wow. What's in there, chef? Honestly, you don't know. What do you call it? Pasta. Are they good? Pasta. Spaghetti. This is a serious cooking job. Lentils. See, this is the problem. We just don't know. Do you know what's in here? Pasta. No spaghetti. Homemade tomato sauce. Fresh herbs. Parmesan with lentil bolognese. Lentil bolognese with some veggies I found in the fridge. I just don't even know. We transported to Italy. How drooling. Wow. Sorry if you're Italian. You make way better spaghetti than me. I already know that. You don't get it out of a bag. They don't put celery in it. I love celery in it. Okay, Bo, who likes celery and pasta? I think it makes you the best. Crystal hates it, but I put it in. That's possibly better made together. Wow, we deserve this. The next morning came early for Crystal. Love you. She woke up early to catch a flight to see family back home. The girls and I were left to enjoy the quiet. That well didn't last long. Our neighbor came over to help us, fell that stubborn tree. I returned the favor by helping him level an area for our future project. He even gave the tractor a test drive. Go, Peter, go! After making some great meals, a few too many coffees, and some lake swims, Crystal was on route home. But then the unthinkable happened. Okay, so there's two forest fires happening right now in Nova Scotia. And it is so scary and devastating. I just, I can't even explain it, but Crystal's flying in right now. Obviously she's in an airplane looking down on the fires that are happening in Nova Scotia right now. I'm incredibly emotional landing in Nova Scotia today. There has been a few wildfires here over the last week or so. I can see a massive one in my mirror right now. It is moving in the direction of Halifax right now, which is so scary. There's just so many homes and so many people. And I just, I've never experienced a forest fire or anything like this before. I've just been researching on what to do, how to prepare for it. They are having such a difficult time stopping this fire because it's just been so hot and we've had no rain this spring and we've hardly had any snow this winter. And it's so windy and it's just, it was like 30 degrees today, Celsius. And the wind goes and just the fires just, they can't stop. And the person speaking for Nova Scotia literally said they need Mother Nature on their side for this. They don't know what's going to happen. Humans are evacuating their homes right now. It's so scary and I'm so sad for everyone. And I'm going to be so excited when Crystal gets home at least, just so I know that I have her. And we have each other. But I've started making a list of everything that we, personal belongings that like you can't replace, that we need to pack up, put in a box. So it's, we're able to just grab and go because it's minutes, seconds that you, you have to make a split decision. You know, like seeing like pictures of the wildfires and like seeing like videos and stuff. It's like, okay. But like seeing it in real life and like hearing about it in your backyard is very different. Yeah. Because at any time it can literally turn in any which direction. I don't think Nova Scotia is prepared for this either. Wow. Who's here? Hello. Are you shaking my hand? Welcome home. I was on the water. You're both? Holy. Oh. Oh. There you go, Burger Queen. Oh, the Burger Queen gets a burger on National Burger Day. Thanks, Vicki. You think this is the candy shop, eh? Oh my gosh, Izzy. Morning, everyone. We realized we had absolutely no gasoline in our truck and that's the first mistake living up here is not having a full vehicle. Because you never know when you might need to jet. So, the tank is now full. We had a lot of thinking and reflection last night about forest fires and just how fast they go. Woke up to the radio this morning. Still not controlled. I don't really have any words to be honest. It just got wrenching to see what's happening so close to home. Roads that you drive on every week. Just dried people's homes. Wildlife. Everything, you know? 288 hectares in size. For the 200 people on the ground battling the fire along with 30 homes have been evacuated. Officials say Andrew's New Brunswick that has more than doubled in size New Brunswick now? A Halifax area man says he's lucky to have made it out of his subdivision alive. Larry Walker was at his Yankee Town home scrambling to save what he could from approaching fires. There's only one way out of here. And if there's trees falling down or anything, you need to have a way to remove them so you can literally get out. So now the truck has fallen down. We have a working chainsaw. And peace of mind. Let me tell you that much. I've been basically silent about the wildfires just because it's so close. It's just so small here and we chose to live in the middle of the woods, you know? Gosh, it's just scary and the wind has just been so wild here. You just don't really know. It's the uneasiness of not knowing. So I think for peace of mind the best thing that we could do right now is prepare just the basic necessities so that way if there is a scenario where we feel like we need to leave or we have to leave that we have the necessities I'm more so nervous as to what the summer is going to bring if this is spring. It's just something that Jasmine and I have thought about but we had never really put a lot of action into. And I think like the next few months we're really going to work on you know, making sure that this list is something that we have in our back pocket keeping an eye on these things and thinning out the woods. Three gallons, it's 11 liters per person. That is not enough for you. We need one each. So now you need one. Four. No, like this is enough for like this is just you and I and we need one for Bell and Izzy. You're just having it out. Okay, go fetch your water. We're just going to get like the most necessities, necessities and put them on the front porch. Jasmine keeps saying bringing. I'm like, we're not bringing anything. We're just packing things. Yes, they're going to be left at the door. I'm sorry, honey. For obvious reasons. Can never have too many beans. Obvious. Can't forget a brush cycle. Very important. And very important for the dogs in case they eat anything. We never go without it. Obvious reasons as well. Yes, you can replace this but you can't replace what's on it. Our entire life. Footage from the last three years. And more. Bella, don't worry. We're not going anywhere. Yeah, that's confusing, mom. That's just in case. Don't worry. We have just spent the last two hours on the couch. Scrolling the news, the Twitter. You know, all those things where you get your updates. But then all of a sudden as you're scrolling you just keep scrolling on the same thing. And I don't think that's too healthy. All right, now that we're fairly prepped for the just in case we're going to just pot around the homestead. All of the machines are currently sitting at the forest line in that worst case scenario you wouldn't want to be thinking about moving those machines somewhere else. Our stove and back up heaters run off propane here and obviously propane's very flammable. I think everything's very flammable, to be honest. This one's off. Update, it's been 24 hours and we've just been potting around the cabin, doing our thing. And obviously keeping updated with everything. We started hearing sirens about ten minutes ago and that is a very uneasy feeling. We've heard three. And now there's currently three blazing wildfires in Nova Scotia and I truly have had a hard time talking about it because it's it makes me so uncomfortable. Like it's and I laugh, but I'm not laughing. It's just it's scary. Yeah, that's it. It's really heartbreaking to see all of the families that are displaced all the people that are evacuated the animals, the pets, everything that's happening right now and the people that are working tirelessly to try and stop the fire. All of that to consume and just like be so close to is just it's really heartbreaking and like really there's not a lot you can do in this situation except try and be prepared. And fly the drone to see what the heck's going on here. Yeah, Jasmine just flew the drone hundreds of feet into the air and did a complete 360 of the area. We are so remote that it is concerning to think that if something came through here that we actually could be stuck because there aren't very many roads. And so by throwing it up those a few hundred feet you now have a full aerial of this you know how many kilometers do you think away like really far away. Yeah. And we can see that there's just blue sky currently and there's no smoke or anything we need to worry about in our close proximity so that is a huge relief especially after hearing those firetruck sirens for ten minutes. Just like bringing the drone up like with that I was like if I see something like everything's going to change right now you know what I mean like panic mode. Well I have to stay calm I can't panic I've been telling myself this but. I'm really not good at I'm learning but you're right if you stay calm I can tell myself that that's scary though just to put it up you know I can imagine like seeing it. Just like it's scary to be using it as a tool right now you know not like not for fun you're just like putting it up to be like what's going on yeah is there something I need to worry about. It's been a little while now and we wanted some time to pass before we update you to let you all know that our area went unaffected by the fires thankfully however a lot of the province a lot of the country and various regions around the world have been seeing a very bad start to the wildfire season. As Jazza and I continue to learn how to prepare and prevent wildfires we've also left some links in the description for you if you'd like to check them out. Thank you all for joining us for another week out here in the woods and if you enjoyed this longer format video please let us know in the description because this is by far the longest video we've ever posted. Thank you to Brooklyn and for sponsoring this week's video. You can get $20 off purchases over $100 by clicking the link in the description and using Code VanWives.