 We got a tractor! Welcome back to our life in the woods, everyone, where we have been transforming this neglected land to the homestead of our dreams. The kicker? We have no idea what we're doing. I don't get this at all. Over these past few weeks with spring finally here, we have been pushing our limits to prepare for the gardening season. But after building more garden beds, hundreds of loads of soil, and some tired and sore bodies, it's time for a change. Welcome to the pack, little Kubota. I wore my orange hat to match my new child. This video is brought to you by Squarespace. I'm shocked. I can't believe it. It's really a dream. You've been talking about this for so, so, so, so, so long! For over a year, and the perfect opportunity came up. Our friend's brother was selling his tractor, and he knew the perfect two people to ask. Best day ever! Let me tell you that one. Us, and guess what? Oh my gosh. We are going to save our backs this summer. We got a lot of work, so let's put her to work! I can't wait to drive, and I have no idea how to drive a tractor. We're going to learn to drive it. Use the bucket, the backhoe, and the forklift. But first, let's introduce you to the tractor. This is a B26 Kubota tractor. This tractor can not only dig with its backhoe, but it has a huge loader in the front, as well as some forklifts. Hold up. Let's name this tractor. Together, leave your best names in the comments. I am going to dig sonotubes with this. I am going to move all of our firewood. I am going to level the area. I am never lifting a single thing with my two arms ever again in my life. So many of you have been telling us to get a tractor for so long, because you all know the benefits of having a machine like this. It is good at so many different things. Thanks for a tractor. You always said no. Are you ready to fire it up? Yeah, I can't wait. Do I get to do it first? Yeah, of course you do. That's so exciting. This is actually Jasmine's dream. You've been talking about this for too long, actually. Like, if I could even express how many times you talked about a tractor and I've rolled my eyes, here we are. So, when are you buying a tractor? Just a girl in her tractor. A tractor. All right, here's the tractor facts. It is a 2012 Kubota B26, and it has 1,800 hours on it, so it's a well-broken-in tractor. And well-maintained. And well-maintained, because we know the owner. And the owner's father-in-law is a mechanic, so it has been in the best hands ever, and that's basically why we bought it. Also, tractors, you have to put them in your wheel. This thing is probably gonna dig my grave and hoist me in. They look longer than us. Now time to learn how to operate the bucket. Ah, this is hard. I didn't get it. No, no. I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna pick up a load. You don't even know how happy I am right now, but I am honestly like a little kid in the McDonald's ball pit. Let me tell you that much. Stoked on life. Jasmine is so happy. I have not seen her this stoked about something in a long time. Telling you she's talking about tractors, it's actually been like a year and a half. She's been talking about this, and she's always telling me how it's gonna make everything we do so much easier, and I know she's right because she just dropped two loads of wood chips over near the hot tub, and it is amazing. Look at the dent we've made already. Okay, this is the biggest thing for me because I was like, wow, I love having material here, but I was picturing myself picking up every individual chip this summer. Like how was I gonna get it back to looking like the driveway when I was done? Without having to rent a machine, like this is so sick. We are gonna demolish this wood chip pile, and we are going to do all the landscaping. Call us, C and J Landscaping. Are you over the moon? Yeah, I can't even get over it. I can tell. It turns out in time, you're gonna be so excited in there. I was like, what is going on? We're gonna get that spire done in no time. No more looking at gravel. I can't get over the road. No more walking on rocks. Tractor life is the life for me. I want to be a farmer. Dabber driven. To be honest, Crystal is the better person with machines. She just has so much patience. Oh my gosh. She's already so good. She's like perfectly scraping. She just said, I love it. Oh my goodness. The biggest site in this household is who gets to drive the tractor and who has to do manual labor. Oh my gosh. We're gonna have some fights. She just yelled, I love it. This is going by so fast. I'm not gonna lie to you all, every single time before we'd have to start a job, I'd have to like, be like, come on Jasmine, let's go. Because my brain had so much power because it knew how big and long the job was gonna be. So I automatically kept thinking about that. This is called task paralysis. Instead of logically working through your to-do list or slowly chipping away at that behemoth task, your brain does anything to avoid starting. I never used to do that until Crystal and Colin one day said that that's what they do before Colin starts editing and before Crystal starts a job. Like the drywall. And now all of a sudden my brain thinks about these things. So when we were doing the garden beds, I was like, oh no, I was thinking how long this is gonna take. But now that we have a tractor, I just know we're gonna be able to get so much more done. Like we have plans to build a lot of different structures out here. And every structure obviously starts with leveling. And that's really hard to do with a pickaxe. Wish I had a tractor. Especially with how rocky our area is. So having that backhoe to pick up rocks and move everything and then having the bucket to flatten out material is just, it's a game changer everyone. Okay, back to shoveling. Getting done, incredibly fast. I am alone away. This would have taken easily a day or two for us to do. And it's been like an hour. I just, wow, I'm relieved in so many ways. There's just so much tidying up and little things to do everywhere. And it's a lot of physical labor to get it done. And knowing that these mounds of material and piles of logs and all these tremendous jobs will be done with the tractor. The wood chips against the pine and the fir and the spruce trees and the moss is just, it looks so beautiful. I love it. This is coming to life. And now since we've mastered the bucket or the loader, I'm not really sure what it is. So let me know what it's called. I think it's a bucket. We are going to learn how to master the backhoe. And that is, it looks like an excavator bucket and thumb. How does this, this right here, it's very different than an excavator. Different controls looks like two Mickey Mouse ears right here. But it goes nothing. The first step is to swivel your chair and release the backhoe. Or at least try to. You got it? It's really easy. What? It's really easy. I am going to need a lot of hours practicing with the backhoe. Backhoe mode is different. The opposite. It's opposite of the excavator. Literally everything's opposite. And you know when you're just so, your brain is so trained to doing something one way. My brain literally cannot think of going the other way. Get the shovel. Chris is going to give it an attempt now. Watch her just smash it out of the park. I have a feeling she's going to. You're doing it. Yeah girl. So good. Yeah. How did you get a first try? One hit wonder over there. I better get benched now. That's right. I'm a digger. That's right. Some may call it beginner's luck, but I think I'm a natural. And just like that, we have our first Cedar tree planted. Hello. Cedar tree. Cute. Looks very nice. So how is the backhoe? I need to learn more. More. It's kind of cool though, eh? Yeah. I have some rocks you need to move. You want to come help me? We were going around the house. That way. And that area needs a lot of fill and a lot of maintenance. And there's a propane line there and electrical lines. And propane's only dug two feet down. So there's already a huge indent from the weight of the tractor and constantly going over it to bring the wood chips here. So I think a much smarter route would be to go around the greenhouse. But there's a couple rocks we need to move out of the way just a little bit. And same with some lumber from our last project of building our yoga duck in the greenhouse. It's going to be tight. I don't know if it's going to work. But we're going to try it out. And we're going to get better at this backhoe because I am determined to learn right now. It's hard. Imagine a video game just you're playing Super Smash Bros and A was in A and B was in B. Oh my goodness. Or if you don't play video games imagine you texting keyboard change. Like that's what it's like. I'm taking my tractor now. I want the buggy here. I just want to throw all this in the bucket and bring it over it. Uh-oh. So any experience today? We need practice. No pick it up rocks yet. Well we can pick them up but not very well I should say. On the excavators there's a setting that you can do backhoe mode or excavating mode. And I wonder if there's that on the tractor because I would love to go back to excavating mode. Let me tell you that much. Moment of truth. Will the tractor get through this path? Ready? Oh yeah we're doing it. That is very slow and steady so we will definitely be building up that road. Tractor life. Tractor wives. Tractor wives. This is the life for me. Let me tell ya. Oh my goodness. I can't wait to make like tractor paths though now so that way we can get everywhere. It is really important that you have access to get basically everywhere. Porter always talks about talks about building us a separate driveway and a road. Well not building we spread. A lot of people do it for safety. Yeah forest fires everything as well or just like two ways to get out. I don't get it. Dang it. You can just pull on this but like look how flimsy that is. Zach suggested we use a mallet which I think is smart. But I think we're missing a step. There we go. I'll hold in a mallet. Simple. All right next greenhouse duty. You just can't avoid it. The plants need water. There are little babies and they are growing big. What's up Jess? She doesn't like how I left the bucket. Fix it up lady and I'll see you in the greenhouse. That's better for the bucket. Welcome back to the greenhouse where everything is thriving and we gave it a full makeover over the last few weeks and it was such an amazing space. We got power in our greenhouse. Yeah and we made a deck. If you missed last week here it is. These little seedlings are happy as can be. We're working very hard to bring them to life. They are a lot of work let me tell you. They honestly are little babies. They need heat. They need water. They need caring for. They need light. We've been turning the lights on turning the fan on to make sure they have ventilation keeping them warm and making sure that they have adequate water. It's so nice that now we are running off solar we're able to use our grow lights turn the fans on in here. Growing this year is going to look so different from last year and we are both absolutely over the moon. All we talk about is gardening, growing, propagating. Jasmine's got a little celery here. I mean we're doing everything. Every little table scrap too like all these green onions they came right out of our kitchen and we're growing new ones. So it feels good and it's going good. But that being said these beds need some water. Okay I got Crystal this gift for gardening. I don't know if she's gonna like it. It's kind of weird but here we go. Would you like a gift? What are those? What am I? Like a bear claw. Why did you do this one? Is this for digging? Weird? I got claws. Oh my god give her an itch. Oh my goodness not only are they oh my god yeah look at that face. Look at that face. She lied like that. Yeah baby. Head rubs. Forget the garden. Oh my gosh we need another pair. Okay let's try laying in the garden. Get your hand in there. I have a real digger. Wow. Oh my goodness. They're so good. People are genius making these. The creation? These are finger shovels. Literally. It's the coolest gift ever I got today. You're welcome. You're always thinking of me. You've got to be funny again. Because it's fun. So the girl lights have been on all day. I'm just checking your batteries to see what they're at because it's been so cloudy. We need to give them some sun today. 100% incredibly. That is amazing. In the summer we obviously won't need these and they're really great for the seedlings that are growing up because once we start to see some greenery there we want to make sure they're getting light and the plants are very happy to have that little bit of extra sunshine. And I'm very happy that we have the power to run them now. I honestly feel like we live a real-life homestead now. We've got a tractor. We've got some gardens, greenhouse, power kitchen. Just need some chickens. Time to make some jam. Not us learning how to drive our tractor at nine o'clock at night after driving it all day. This is what nights look like here at the cabin. Whatever project we're doing or going to do. We're researching. I had a shower. I had grease all my hair. She's a tractor girl. A tractor girl. You had grease all the way down. I got to grease up my tractor tomorrow. He gave us extra grease too. And the gun. Love you sweets. They're so nice. A sweet. So awesome. Out of business he had a small little major at true real back. That's my lovely reminder that I need to do the ceiling still. Maybe it won't make me do it. Maybe it won't. We'll find out. But for now I'm going outside. Just kidding. I heard a cereal bag. What's going on over here? I love cereal. I love cereal. Just like I love my tractor. Who are you? I'm a tractor girl. All right. Who's still in car hard on? Is there anything better? What's up? Yeah. I literally stopped in my tracks when I heard that bag. Rainy day. I'm going to be like finger gloves. Umbrella. You're not going to know who we are. Are you ready? Ready for your spring? She's a walking umbrella. And the cameras don't get wet. Paddle panel. Hey. It was. This is paddle panel. It took me a half an hour in torrential rain to get it in the back of the truck. Damn. Shower time. Wow. Look at that muscle. What's going on? Are you lifting six by six lumbers on? All the soil in the yard. You're funny looking. Step one. Clean up all Izzy's poo in the garden area because she thinks we built her a litter box. She never went in here though before. No. I literally think she built. She thinks that we built this for her. Well Izzy, you're wrong. Oh my gosh. It's so pretty already. You don't think that's tall enough? Crystal, we have to think about big people at this cabin. We never do. Tyler and Todd would hit their head. What guy bring? That's it. Inks Instagram? Arches are in your thing. We're unsure if we were going to like the arch or if we were going to build more of a rectangle to go with our rectangle vibe here. However, I think arches and rectangles go super well together. Let's go get some clamps and clamp this to the inside of the garden bed, like right at the top. Yeah, because we need the height. Stunning. Well, we can fix that. With a plan in place to install our trellis arches, we prepare by measuring and cutting some hemlock wood and dig up some dirt for mounting. Seems counterproductive, eh? Digging out your garden beds? I know. With a few screws later, we have an arch. Wow. It's amazing. Oh, beauty. I love it. No better way than... I mean, hurricanes are stronger than me but we'll figure that out. The wind goes through it. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Hello. It's perfect. I think we could open up a wedding venue here. I just love it. And I'm trying to imagine it covered in greenery. Like you're at the front of the garden and it just draws you to the back here so you're like forced to walk through the space because it's going to be beautiful and green and flower covered. Flower covered? Yeah, flowers. Being covered. Everything flowers. Yeah, but I want food. Both. That's the glory. You're right. These are fruit trees. I love our fruit trees. We planted two apple, two pear, and two plum. We are on the year that we are probably going to be getting fruit this year. And the reason we have double of each is because they need to make in order to produce fruit. They go all the way from our garden area to the spa area. And what we've always dreamed of is creating a pathway through here so you can harvest all of your fruit with a beautiful path. Like why not? It is a big job. It's probably going to take a long time especially if we were just using our gorilla. Gorilla. Gorilla. Gorilla. Go, go. Gorilla. Got it. We're going to transform this area to give us the most beautiful zigzag walking path throughout our orchard. This tractor has been a back saver. I mean a life saver. After a quick top up of diesel. You ran that over, right? A full load of wood chips and a few failed attempts to maneuver around the greenhouse. It's tractor time, baby. Halfway down the trail it's looking phenomenal. I love how it zigzags around the fruits. The fruits. I need to show you a close up why we're just putting a small foot trail through here because the biodiversity in this area is amazing. We have beautiful moss here all along the trail. We have some native wild Nova Scotian blueberry plants growing up. I am smiling ear to ear because we are officially done while Crystal's just raking it out the trail over there. I love our tractor so much that would have taken us probably four to eight hours depending on how many breaks we needed to take. We just did that in like 30 to 45 minutes not even. I can't even get over it and we're going the long way around right now still too. I'm really happy we watched that YouTube video on how to work the tractor because it just gave me so much more clarity when loading up my loader. It's called a loader bucket. How it's all in the movement so when you pull your joystick in it curls your bucket and then you pull it towards you and by doing that I was able to scoop up bigger piles and the machine sounded happier now that I know all the sounds. It's working well. Is it raked out? Damn! Let's go for a tour in the orchard. I just love it. I love it so much. I know. It's so easy to walk on like this ground is extremely uneven and there's lots of rocks and everything underneath the woodchip so the woodchips just make it so like you could just... You did a nice wide path there. Yeah. Which I appreciate. Well why is the gorilla card? Can anyone say gorilla without singing the song because we definitely can't. It's so catchy. Gorilla, gorilla. Gorilla, gorilla. Out of the garden. The first apple tree. The second apple tree. It's me. Come around the U. I love that we turned it. By passing the third apple tree. No. Pear, pear, plum, plum. Wait, what? Are you kidding me? I forgot we had pear trees. I thought they were all apples and plums. No, girl. We haven't seen any fruit from the... I can't wait for a pear. My name is Crystal and I'm reporting to you from a cabin in the woods. Life just got a heck of a lot easier around here and we've never been happier to see a tractor on our land. Wow. Yeah, I love it. This has changed my life. It's the best thing ever. Oh my gosh. I just can't get over it, everyone. Honestly. It's so funny. Justin's been talking about it forever. Some people are like, why don't you have a freaking tractor? That was easy. Right? My back feels great. Holy. This is the best. For first week with our tractor has been a success. We really need to name this tractor. This big orange cabota needs a good name. Leave your bests in the comments. We're going to be going through them all and we're going to pick a winner. We're going to name this tractor by next week. We got it. We are so happy and over the moon. We are committed to rewiring our brain and learning how to run this tractor like a real pro. So you'll probably see us on this tractor next Sunday. We're going to spend the next few hours learning how to use the backhoe because is it ever different than what we're used to? After years of trial and error, learning from our mistakes and embracing new and unique challenges, there is nothing stopping us from conquering what lies ahead. Thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. Most people and business owners alike need a website. You need absolutely no experience to get started with Squarespace. They give you the tools to get a website up and running within just a few hours. A few of the new things that you can do on your website is showcase your services, sell your goods, accept appointments for online and in-person workshops, classes and more, as well as send reminders and secure payments. Maybe you have some new tractor skills you'd like to advertise on your new website. 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