 What is the truth about off-grid living? The one and only Google says, living off the grid is a lifestyle without reliance on one or more public utilities. But is this true? Do you need to cook on a fire? Build your own log cabin and use minimal tools? I think we can all say that now more than ever, the meaning of living off the grid has evolved and it's up for interpretation. We're changing the narrative and we're proving Google wrong. Take that, Google! Everyone seems to leave the most important truth about off-grid living out, but we're not and the truth will surprise you. Gotta bundle up for the birthday. Layers on layers. Hey, I look cute. I'd say this is the first year we had some proper gear for the elements. Gotta make sure these are mine. This is about winter birthday. Clunky and they never look good, but these are the best. We have so many layers. Anytime we even touch our snow pants, Bella knows we're going outside. She gets stoked, like she's never seen the outside before. And you're getting so good at being patient. Yes, girl. How did it get up? Good day for it, eh? Oh yeah, hopefully it's not ice. It is being outside no matter what the weather because you need to clear your solar panels in order to have power. And do so much more, eh? So much more. We have 400 watts of solar on our roof, which powers our portable power station, which is how we power everything right now. Pretty soon, you see those nice 10,000 watts behind us that will be in use and let me tell you, they're a little bit easier to clean off. She okay? That's enough, girl. That's enough. So a lot of you asked why don't you just put your solar panels on your roof? This is why. It is very hard to get the snow off of your roof. It's also very dangerous if they go down. Where that, that's a dream. So this is a Jasmine job. I'm going to give it a go because it looks super fun. It is. This is a nice one, eh? Where'd you pick this up? Oh, good old Amazon.ca. Amazon? Amazon in the woods? In 2023? Wow, when you put your mailbox four kilometers down the road and you bag them to come, they come. And Bella, I know. This temporary system has been actually super good for us. It's been really helpful as we work towards building our main system. This is very satisfying. You look like you're having way too much fun. I am. I'm almost halfway through the panel. I... Yeah! Panel! And today is a great day. We're catching all the rays. I'm going to plug that baby in right now. I don't want to take my boots off. And Crystal doesn't like that. She's going to find out when the video gets posted. But here's the solar cable. So I'm just going to plug it in to our portable power station. And that way we can catch some rays because we have a lot charging on here right now. We are taking 312 watts but the sun is giving us 141. So we're taking about double which means it's still going to die. But hopefully when the batteries are all done it will start to charge even faster because we won't be taking more energy than we're getting. And that's the thing about off-grid living is you have to constantly be thinking about your power. Crystal calls me the battery police because I am on her. Like duck soup. Don't ask me why I said duck soup. I got it cleared. It's all cleared. Thanks. Time for the fun part. Come on, Bella. We have a flat tire. Bam! Sorry, Bella. I got to wait a little bit, girl. How are we going to fix this? I have an idea. Don't you know, pump it up. You got to pump it up. It's a good tire inflation business song. Don't you know, pump it up. Oh my god. You got to pump it up. Don't you know, pump it up. You got to pump it up. When your business explodes, stinking. While living so far out in the woods you have to be self-sufficient meaning things are going to go wrong and break all the time. So you need to have the right tools and just the right tools, I think, right? An attitude to take on the day. And to be honest, it can get very expensive on your initial startup. Buying all of these things. However, it's even more expensive if I drove this or had to tow it. You know what I mean? You have to be proactive. It's a big one. Don't bear it up. We meet again, jazz and crystal versus the lemon of a microphone. Turns out we lost all our fun audio. Here goes our best attempt at dubbing. I hope this starts. This I wish you could all hear. The snow being wiped away off the windshield. Three, two, one, start your engines. That's my best engine noise. Just kidding, I can do better. Peeling it with my gal Bella. Oops, gas is touchy. All right, switching toys. Let's warm it up. So much snow. You can't even see the ignition. I might have to get my de-icer. Woo, two for two. Start up like a charm. The snowy roads meet the ATV for the first time in a while. Look at as you go. She's a speedy girl. Wanna climb her's now or I think she's running. We've been driving for about seven minutes at a very slow pace. Taking in the views and getting the girls out for a walk if you wanna call it that. At last, the treasure box. We made it. Listen up. What I said here was really important. This is our mailbox that we worked really, really hard to get. They wouldn't come down our road, understandably, but this is the next best thing. It's only four kilometers away from the cabin. We love coming down as it's a good walk or it's simply fun on the ATV One Wheels or the bikes. For as remote as we live, we can get any sort of package from anywhere to our doorstep and that's a great feeling. You can get mail if you live off grid. Debonked. Debonked! Yay, we have a package. This reminds us of the treasure chest at Eastside Marriott's every time. Right now you'd think you'd hear the ATV but all you could really hear is Bella barking. Ha ha ha. Time to bring it home. I was just gonna say ha ha ha or la. Oh wow. Oh my God. Every time we make the drive to the treasure box I remind myself that it would take four hours to get this package if I didn't have it. I am shamelessly grateful that we begged the post office for this. Tire's still full of air. It's holding up nice. All right everyone, this next task is gonna be difficult but before we get into the next task we'd like to thank the sponsor of today's video, Surfshark. I know what you're all thinking. Crystal, you're alone in the woods. Why would you need a VPN all the way out there? Well, let me tell you. Surfshark is an app and a browser extension that allows you to change your IP address. It's a tool for online privacy protection that allows us to encrypt all data being uploaded and downloaded while using the internet. This is especially good for us because we do leave the woods. We find ourselves in the city, traveling in airports, cafes, on public wifi. And I'm sure a lot of you find yourself in the same situation. This is where Surfshark comes in acting as a barrier between you and potential hackers. Jasmine can be protected on her laptop and on her cell phone and so can I across multiple devices with one account. Sometimes your IP address doesn't allow you to watch blocked content in your country. With a simple switch of your IP address and a refresh you have access to a whole new library. This is our favorite feature because we cuddled up on the couch and we brought friends together. We love Surfshark. We know you're gonna love Surfshark and now your evenings are going to expand to new horizons. Join us and watch friends. Get yourself a Surfshark VPN. Click on the link in the description. You're going to get 83% off and three months free with a 30 day money back guarantee. Use code VanWives to directly support our channel. Happy surfing. How close? All right everyone, this is something we probably should have done, you know, when it was warm out. This is our beautiful snowplow which is gonna help us get in and out of the property when we need to. And it's gonna be awesome to put the Honda to work all throughout the winter. And this is important for a ton of reasons. So you know that road we just drove all the way down to get mail. We need to plow that and some more on a regular. This isn't true for everyone that lives off grid but for us it is because for us we wanted to be as remote as we possibly could. Do I regret that? No, I think I'm gonna have fun plowing with Bella. It's gonna be fun. All right, we're gonna start by attaching this plow to the UTV by putting it on on one side. Hopefully successfully getting the clip in and then we'll move to the next. The plow is attached but there's one more step. This is super exciting everyone. We've never had an off grid property where we have to maintain these types of things and take responsibility for these things. And it's really just in time for the real winter weather because we're really getting a lot to snow now. Are we up for the challenge girls? Challenge accepted. Let's try it. Is he coming? Jasmine's absolutely crushing the first plow and looks like she's having the best time doing it. Ready? Ready. Part of my right foot is frozen. Life, I literally kind of have to feel it. Oh yeah. Taking the sock off is definitely the answer. Bella has a nice pillow and a fire as a blanket. Doesn't get much better than this is everyone. It does get better. Everyone meet our stove. How we cook off grid is propane. Even when we have our main system set up we are going to be sticking to cooking with propane because we live in Canada which means we never really get the sun. I don't know if anyone knows how much ovens and stoves take but it is a lot of watts. That looks great. Thanks, you made it. I'm just doing the kale. Crystal overcooks kale. Along with brunch today, we're going to have a smoothie and that's because we have done so much exercise already today. We need protein and some bloobs. Bloobs. What we're trying to say here is if you want to live off grid but you're scared of power consumption there are so many different ways to do things. Having a stove like this really makes it feel homey out here. Magic! How'd you know? I cannot wait for this. Crystal didn't even care for me to set up the shop. She literally just poured everyone because she said, I don't care, I need my smoothie. Mmm. You're facial. Oh! Thanks. Cheers, everyone. Cheers. We'd share with you. Okay, let's serve this up. It's brunch time, baby. Found this hot sauce in the van. It is the best ever. Someone's got into your bucket. We have a lot of wood. Our main source of heat is a wood stove. You wish you had a new heat source? Me too. Would you choose me or a bark? Oh, got it, bark. Wow. English is cool. But who are you gonna choose? Me or bark? Here, take it. Take it, Bella. You just want to give me a kiss or do you want the bark? Okay, you chose me, good girl. The thing we do most while living off grid in the winter is cut, stack, and make kindling. Keep up the good work! To be honest, I just sit here and watch Chris fall. To be honest, you don't get your s*** up and get to work. This is something we do at least once a week and as it gets colder, probably more. We love it. It's like our little gym workout. One hoax, the other stack. Kindling underneath, logs on top. So one wheelbarrow does about a quarter of this wood rack. We hold three fourths of a quart of wood. A lot of breath. Nice moves. But ball player, two, four, two, three, what? For falls, off grid living is this easy. I wish! She's not, baby! My last review didn't go too good. Normally it doesn't take this long, I swear. It's because the camera's on. But this review is gonna go a lot different. I'm taking all your advice. Let's make some kindling. Oh yeah. Intermediate logs. They give you a bit of a challenge. Oh, baby. Me down for this! Really coming down now. What are you talking about? The leather? Got nothing better. I dropped my phone. When the sun sets and the day is done, the four of us always retreat to this area, the living room, where we curl up on the couch, call our loved ones. Because luckily for us in 2023, there's a thing called Starlink. And it makes it super easy to get connected to the outside world. Not to be internet. We're so remote that we wouldn't get a service with any other cell phone provider. Gets the best service there. Can you imagine living here and not having something like Starlink? Off grid living is just so different than it used to be. Well, it can be different. The way that we're doing it is different. This is our big screen TV. Just me. Memorized it. What started out as friendship has grown strong. Good morning from an iceberg cabin. We were both so exhausted last night and had such a deep sleep that neither of us woke up to stoke the fires. I'm pretty lucky. Okay, but honestly, I need to get up because I wonder what the low temperature was. 15 in here right now. It was 13. Another beautiful day. Almost every morning starts with the outhouse and your cheek is getting a little cold. Still using it in the winter. Most mornings, I don't really wanna leave the warm cabin and come out here for this little walk, but once you actually get out here, it feels super good to get some fresh air and to take in what the day is gonna look like, evaluate the sky and the weather and, you know, stop and say good morning to our friends. We've made friends with the chickadees. I'm so glad we kept this tree nice and close to the cabin because all kinds of birds are feeding here this winter. I think there's about five or six and flying in now at all morning. Makes going to the bathroom not too bad, eh? This will be our indoor toilet. Just a little bit complex to install. There you are. Thank you. Thank you. We've been brushing our teeth on this porch for over a year now, and it's gonna be really funny to look back on this one day because that one day is coming soon. Very soon. That we are going to have an indoor sink. It's gonna be really funny though, because we'll have it and I'm guaranteed you're gonna walk outside and brush my teeth every time. Honestly, I think I might miss it. Brushing your teeth, looking at a blue sky. What are the stars? Chickadee, the stars? I can't beat it. Five star brushing. Two minutes, Dr. O, I did it. We used to shower in a bunch of different places, as you know. We've since said goodbye to the hose and have a beautiful indoor shower, but there's still a few steps to get that water running. It's not as simple as turning on the faucet yet. 240 volt plug on choke. Which powers are electrical panel? Wall pump. Water lines. Our propane water heater. Because electric takes a lot of power. This is how we decide who gets to go first. I do all rock, paper, scissors. Woo! Wow, all of those steps are so worth it. I feel amazing. I don't know what I would do without the shower. I know, imagine if we were still showering in there or on this deck. I would not shower. Me either. No. We talked about a lot of truths about off-grid living and we will talk about more. But I wanna chat about the most challenging part of living off-grid. And it's not anything we've already talked about. And what I'm about to get into will likely surprise you. The definition for isolation is lack of social connections. And for some people, that can cause loneliness. Humans thrive on connection. And back in the day, when we lived without modern day luxuries, we lived with a group of people. However, more than ever now, people live in the same area, cities. Leaving the woods empty. And while there's so much to love about that, it is definitely the most challenging part about this lifestyle. I know a lot of people can relate to loneliness. And that's exactly why I had to share this. It wouldn't feel right continuing the video without addressing this point. If I've talked to anyone who has lived off-grid before or any alternative way of living, this is most of their answers. Although I realize I'm not completely alone, I am so grateful to have Crystal, Bella and Izzy always by my side. And that's one of the great things about off-grid living nowadays is there's a spectrum. You can locate yourself anywhere on that and make the off-grid living right for you. And I choose to be connected to the online world. And I'm also so grateful for all 300K plus of you. Every Sunday connecting, I feel like I know you. I feel like you know us. So thank you for letting us share our lives with you. You make each day so much less lonely. We have tons of these, which don't even work for our gun. They're 15 gauge FN. We need the 15 gauge DA. More FN. More. More! But not the ones we need at all. Oh man. Last spot. Oh yeah, that's like outdoor hardware, right? No one make fun of our truck. It's a work truck, remember? All right. Could be buried in any of these supplies. Big nails. We have every nail except for the ones we need. All right, we just cleared out this room, our bedroom, because we were gonna put the roof up. But we have every nail except for the nails we need for our angled finishing nailer, which means it's a two hour drive. What we love so much about being remote is the remoteness, being way out there all on our own. But at the same time, when it comes to needing materials for projects and anything we're doing, it also includes a two hour drive to town, which is not always convenient and takes actually a lot of time. And when we make these trips, we make sure to get everything on the list. Because there's a lot on the list. And funny enough, it's something we really don't show in our videos all that often, but we spend a lot of time doing it. Is that fine? Yeah, I'm just pausing the whole mickey awkward. Oh. All of this to choose from. Outside corner. Do you have any outside corners? Outside corner. Okay, probably this one always seems to be good. 10 inch seems like the best seller. Awkward living is a spectrum and it can look any way you want. I think we're right here. If you wanna start living off-grid and do it from the bottom up like us, be prepared for it to take some time and have backup systems while the whole puzzle is being connected. Isolation and feeling lonely can be a part of this lifestyle. Thank you all for making it a little less lonely. Create your own definition of off-grid. We are. Take that. Woo, woo, woo.