 Spring is here. The time of year between winter and summer where the temperature slowly rises. And our moods. The natural world revives after the cold winter months. And every single day gets better. Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. It's the season of new beginnings for us and the flowers. So happy to be outside. As you can see we're back in the garden and I've never been happier to say those words. We experienced one of the longest, loneliest winters we've ever had. Jasmine and I spent a lot of time in those four walls staring at each other's faces. And to be completely honest, we probably would have made it through if it weren't for all of you. But we made it through and we're making the most of every day by getting outside. Step one, rake out this entire area without Bella eating your rake. That's the hardest part. Give it out, Bella. No, I'm not. And there she is. We're finally putting our hands back in the dirt, preparing our homestead for the summer months by building our dream garden and talking all about what happened to our greenhouse. Last year I would say we didn't do too well in the garden area. I would say we failed. I don't think we failed because every gardener knows that takes time to learn. But this year is going to be different. Crystal's been taking a gardening course all winter long and we are going to be transforming this entire area into the garden of Crystal and I Dream. But she says it's her dream and it can't be my dream. So we'll just say Crystal's dream. Right, Crystal? Crystal's world. We're all living in it. Let's build our dream garden. Jasmine, great job. Great art. Some beautiful orange circles on the ground for markers. We have two beds going in to start. This entire area is 21 by 11 feet. It's quite large. Living out here we have big garden dreams to say the least. So we're going to start with two beds that are how big? Four by seven. Four by seven. So obviously our inspo is last year's garden bed. Only got two because we failed. We failed. There's a big difference between failure and getting started and that's what we did last year, I think. To be honest the first garden we ever grew was the most successful. But I think it has a lot to do with timing. The gardener's luck. No timing is everything. The gardener's luck. You realize we started planting in like July last year. That's a no-go. That's why I'm humble and I say I don't know how to garden but this year I'm going to learn how to garden. So you're going to watch my self-bloom. Once again, oh that's cute. And once again we will take all of your beautiful knowledge and tips if you are a gardener. You ready? Watch your ankle. We are building our first garden bed. These are six by six, true six by six, milled hemlock lumber that we got from the local mill last year. And that's our favorite thing to say when we're building anything. I'm ready. Come on little easy start. Dramatic! Easy start. For those ones where they took me a hot minute. These are a little angle. These are perfect. You're good chainsaw. What do you all think? Do you think Crystal needs a bigger chainsaw? I think you're you're moving up from the easy start. I like my little baby. Baby chainsaw. We carried two. Don't forget about us. Watch this. Here's proof. You ready? Do you drop it? One, two, three. Half a garden bed. I'm so excited. So bare. Are you excited? Mom's never went outside. When mom's walked me in the winter, they just went on the ATV and I had to do all the running today. Not only have we been on more walks lately but just being outside the dogs are so much happier. We're spending so many hours in the outdoors and they just sit here and observe and I don't know. I just they're so happy. They love it out here. Nature's just really good for you. I don't know if you all heard. They get kind of like water. You know, you should drink water. You should also go with nature and Canadians like that in the winter. So we're all blooming right now. I just want to say how happy I am that winter is gone and spring is here. I don't even know how to describe my feelings right now but I think I am the happiest little nutcracker out here because I just feel lighter and happier and this is only the start of the season of being outside for every second of the day. Anyways, I encourage you all to go outside even if it's for five minutes. Sit on your balcony. Sit on your deck. Just sit on the earth and just look up at the sky. We all made it through winter everyone. We all did it. How good does it feel to be outside? I've never been happier. I can't even explain like my whole body feels like like every nerve, every part of my everything is happy. Like happy, happy, happy. I feel happy. What about like he's just the best feeling. It was like it's so needed this pressure and the sunshine. So happy. This is a fun but you know we'll be out here literally all day today. So I said it's just the beginning and my mood is already yeah. I just appreciate this weather so much more than I did last year. All right we got all the pieces. The pieces of the Lincoln log. Step three. My favorite thing. Leveling. My step three. Sit in my garden chair. Tell me when it's done please. Ready. Listen up y'all because this is it. The garden that I'm building is delicious. It will be. Last year we gave a lot of wax through hammer. We're upgrading to the leg bolts. They're not leg screws. They're leg bolts. They're leg bolts. They're leg bolts. Leg bolts. I don't see the word. There's always one side. Literally two leg bolts broke. Are you singing the podcast song? I am. Did you all know we started a podcast? You should subscribe to the channel right here or right here. The Van Wives pack chat baby. New episodes every Wednesday. 930 EST baby. It's so fun. Sing it balance. Oh brother. First garden bed is done. What month are we in? Month. I don't know. I'm just saying we're doing good this year. Oh we're in April or something. I don't even know the year. Yeah yeah yeah. We actually I would say we're on time this year so we're gonna be planting in no time and we're gonna have a beautiful vibrant garden. Green thumb. Very soon. Catch a green thumb. Sun's going down. Temperature's going down. The second garden bed is going up. All right let's try and bang this out. Not try. Let's bang it out. Still have like an hour and a half sunlight props. Maybe? I don't know. You're the tree. Let us know. What kind of tree? Kind of probably a pine tree. You're a seeder. That's real. You're high maintenance. With limited sunlight and the drive to complete the task we get started on the second garden bed. All right good job seeder. Bingo bingo bongo. Everyone knows that the first sound of spring is a Robin. That's the first Robin we've seen this year. Welcome back little Robin. But it's beautiful out the temperature. The sun is just setting. It's a beautiful thing. Okay well basically today we built two beds. Last year we built two. We're gonna make this symmetrical. There's gonna be pathways. I have big dreams outside of the beds. It's going to be an enclosed garden area. It's gonna be pretty. Pinterest worthy. Yeah. We're gonna get number one on the pin board. And we're gonna have tons of growing space. Tons. And you're gonna be happy as come be. We're gonna need a seller next. A what? Seller. Don't give our video ideas away. We are exhausted. Full day of sun. Full day of fresh air. Zonked. Zoinked. What's the word zonked? Zoinked. So tired. I'm good kind of tired though. Look at this gal. Feeling inspired but all so tired. Really can't move. Two of building the dream garden. And I have to say we're really looking out because if we get this done that'll mean it will be ready to go before a black fly season. Getting as much done as we can out here before a black fly season is gonna make a huge difference because they do all to our life quite a bit to be honest. They last for a few weeks and standing outside is a task in itself. Black flies. Flies are coming out. Black flies. We have been living in these days before we're in the full suits. Will we make it? We have been making moves in the garden bed. So now what's the game plan today there? Game plan? Game plan is we want to mirror that side to this side so that means we're building a giant garden bed the size of that one right here. First we need to get all of the material out of the way because we will be building with it all and kind of level up this area a little bit. That way we can get started with building the next beds. Which is pretty exciting which means we are moving our way back. Oh my god big spider. Don't want to see my big spider pet. That's my Molly. Oh bloody. You would be so fast and blurry. I love lifting stuff. It's been forever since we've just been lifting stuff all day and it feels good. We all know what's next. Sing sing sing. Just kidding what sound does a chainsaw make? I don't even know. I like this little guy because it's easy to lift while you're pouring in such a small reservoir. As you can see it's got this really fancy mechanism. Put your fingers here and this is like an on-off and you pour it. It's nice. You can take it with you. It's better than a handbag. Where are you going? Better than a handbag? I just clued it inside. Oh my goodness. That's a designer handbag girl. I know and I'm messing around. You can only get that at special shops. Louboutin in the woods. I'm in my zone. I love it. I could do this all day. Some tunes and some yard work. Best feeling ever. I challenge you. Can you hear me? What? After over an hour of raking, moving dirt and creating a stable base for our garden beds, we are so excited that we are getting close to planting. But first we decided to take a little intermission. Intermission for what? Shop put. Remember the flow? Like how you throw it? Yeah. One, two, three. It's like a side truffle. It's not one of them. Okay, ready? No, I need more steps. Huh? What am I doing? I don't know. What is that? Nice. Okay, mark your spot right here. A little competition for who has to keep raking and who gets to go make. You're having some antioxidants? Lucky. Wow. On a day like today? Family breaker. You got to get it. Yesterday when we were building the garden beds, I forgot the trick you all taught me last year about using leg bolts. Here we go. Leg bolts. Feel your bolts. It's like a cooking show. All you need is a box, leg bolts, and olive oil. Success. High protein meal. We figured olive oil was better than chain oil. Did it the fact we're growing some stuff in here. We've never tried this before. Yeah, let's see how it works. See if you're all right in the comments. You always are. Leg bolts are hard to get in. They were smoking yesterday. The leg bolts also made three of our batteries lose charge really fast. Even with pre-drilling. So, Bella wants to eat this meal in our cup. Love's olive oil. You can lick the bottom. No. Good girl. What a week, mom. No, I give it to her. I love her. Jealous. What are they doing? What are they cooking over there? Hot day. Cool enough. This is so fun. I was getting annoyed at the bolts last night. I said, Crystal, you're on drilling. Wow, that's so fast. So fast. Damn, we're flying now. The adrenaline. First swim of the season. I love spring. I'm so excited for what this year has in store. I love spring. It just gives you so much energy. I'm so ready. I need this in my life every day and hold you to it then. When the cold rolls around again, we will remember this feeling. That spring warmth will come. That the days will be longer and brighter. And we will appreciate it all the more because of the long, cold months that came before it. Garden. We lost you all for a couple seconds there. And that's because, one, we built another garden bed with all the leftover wood. And two, you want to tell them the best news ever? We had the first neighbors of the year come back out to the woods. And it was so fun to see their faces and have a little cheers and some little chats and talk about the long winter and get ready for an awesome summer. Oh, maybe so happy. Spring is really here. When the neighbors are coming up that use their caudges as a getaway, that's when you know spring is here. I understand I'm in a two greenhouse for reason, everyone. And we got burnt today. However, I just have to say I'm on cloud nine. I'm so happy to see those faces and to be, I mean, it's like a 30 right now, by the way. You can't wipe the smile off this girl's face. Spring, baby. It's a sign. It's here finally. We promised coffee in the garden area. Delivering. Here we are. Morning. This is perfect. This is what we want. I saw a flower this morning. New garden bed one, new garden bed two, garden bed three, my favorite because the tree four. And with all the spare wood we had left, we built this one. And I think it completes the space. It just kind of rectangles it all off, you know? I love it. And then back here, we'll have a nice little seating area. Love. If you've made it this far, we want to tell you our vision here. Giant green trellis, maybe growing cucumbers, beans, flowers. It's going to be beautiful. You can walk underneath of it. I envision a place to sit down, enjoy a cup of tea, admire the garden, the pollinators, all of the birds. Hopefully they're not going to be eating our veggies, but maybe back here. All around the garden, I want to have a fence. So that way, there is an entrance at the front and the side. And it feels very much contained. That way, we can keep the deer and the animals out. And finally, if you can imagine all of that with all the greenery and all the beautiful vegetables, we're going to have light strung through and it's going to be magic. And this area, we kept quite large for wheelbarrows, but also just for activities. This is going to be an interactive garden. So you can come out here, do yoga, enjoy the space for more than just growing. But you've all been waiting for and asking all winter long. Let's do it. Welcome back to the greenhouse. Here's the lowdown on what happened in here this winter. The greenhouse is empty. We had to shut it down and I'm going to tell you why. We planted a nearly tropical greenhouse for our very first winter, living off grid with no electricity or running water out here. Not a good plan. The game plan is, is to learn how to grow a successful garden in Canada during our optimal growing season, which will be this spring and summer and then come the winter. We'll test it then. We'll have a little bit of experience. There's spiders everywhere. I don't know if you just saw me flinch. Did you? Yeah. This may be frozen. It's not. We did good. It doesn't sound like it is. Well, we have water and it's running off our off grid system. This is amazing. Let it go. Yeah, it's got it. It's got a heart. Yeah. This is the first time we've had water in the greenhouse without having a generator on your face. I just saw it. I was looking at the leak. Not going to lie. I think we're a little bit too optimistic in life or naive to think that we could make it through here because there's more to this list on why our greenhouse was not successful this winter. And it's not just because these two don't have the green thumbs. We only had one source of heat, propane, which got very expensive. We realized that after two weeks of testing and trialing the propane heater in a greenhouse next year, we will definitely have three ways to heat this greenhouse. That way we are offloading our load from our off grid electrical system, heat pump and the propane heater, as well as only hearty vegetables will mean we don't need to keep it 20 degrees in here, but a good seven to 10. And we should be able to do that. No problem. Also, we didn't even have electricity for most of this winter. So we couldn't set those other heat sources up. Something else we've learned is a greenhouse is like a child. You really have to tend to it. And we went home for Christmas for around 30 days, meaning that if we didn't harvest everything before it would have died from neglect. Something else we've learned is there's a thing called timers. So you hook them up to your water and your lights and every day they will go on. However, this requires to have power, which we have now. So that will be super helpful. And we'll see if it will work next winter. Well, it's frigid cold. We have a little bit of everything here. I'm so excited. This organization is unreal. We cannot take credit for this. No, we showed up to Ross fellow Nova Scotian and I'd call him part of the pack. I call him my neighbor. And now we're in a half neighbor. Yeah, part of our pack is subscribed to actually watches our channel helped us get started on our garden last year. And now we have seeds to start this year. I'm so excited. I can tell. Well, if you take a look here, we have all different types of tomatoes, all different types of peppers. There's everything in here from, you know, carrots to flowers. It's gonna be awesome. I'm super pumped up. I've been dreaming of this day all winter, thinking, envisioning, planning, drawing up in my mind and on paper, what the greenhouse and the outdoor gardens are gonna look like. And although it's all trial and error, and I know that there's so much room for mistakes, I'm just so excited to be in here and in the soil, you know, looking at these seeds and I'm just happy, happy as could be to be sharing this process with you. And it's gonna be awesome over the next six months to watch everything grow from seed to fruit and vegetables on the table. It's gonna be a beautiful process and super rewarding. So I'm happy, very, very happy to be in here. And that spring is here. It's a breath of fresh air, honestly, after such a long winter. It's a good feeling. Spring is a time of renewal. It's a chance to let go of the past and embrace the new season with all its possibilities and opportunities. As the world awakens from its winter slumber, take a moment to appreciate the beauty and wonder of spring and let it inspire you to begin again. We love you, spring. We welcome you with open arms. Listen up, y'all. Well, please listen up. Everyone these days needs a website and you can get your website up and running with Squarespace in just a few hours. We're working with Squarespace to give you 10% off your website or a domain. All you need to do is go to vanwaves.com. No, you go to squarespace.com forward slash vanwives. And the best part is it's super user friendly. I can even do it, which means you can do it. You don't need any experience or skills in website design or making. Can't wait to see all your websites.