 We are about to disclose some of the spiciest details you've been eager to know. How much did your homestead cost initially? Everyone wants to know this. This is a really big question that we've had since we moved here that we actually haven't ever answered. And it's going to be the biggest number you ever did see. To be honest, one of the reasons that we chose to live in Nova Scotia is because it's probably the last affordable province to live in Canada. Anywhere else you're starting at a million, and we bought our cabin with all the acreage for $50,000 Canadian dollars. Yes, if we bought this property in Ontario, just the land without the cabin, it would cost $750,000. Approximately. Yeah, give or take, you know. I'm not a real estate agent here. You sound like one. Well, I've been on a house sigma. So in all realness, the cabin and the price of the land costed less than a used pickup truck these days. We're super grateful we were able to find something within our budget. Yes, even though we had to borrow money from my grandma. From G-ma. Thanks G-ma. We obviously paid her back. Just no banks would loan us money. Makes sense. Would you start an only fans page? Are you legally married? Have you guys not noticed my wedding ban? Just kidding. Not yet. We are common law, says Canada. They made us. Do we want to get married? Yes and no. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. Being married or not will not change our relationship or characterize it in any other sense. We are happily together, married or not in love. We very well may get married in the next few years. Stay tuned, but we may not. So when we figure that out, we'll let you all know. I would say that only fans question and how much your cabin cost deserves a spicy bite. Cheers. Cheers. To spicy questions. They get spicier. Not as spicy. Just be prepared, it comes at the end. Oh yeah, when you start to swallow, you feel the... Oh yeah, my mouth is on fire. Oh yeah, we're done. I'm a dragon. Come on people, do you have spicier questions than not? Yeah, we can do better than that. Okay, next. Here we go. How do you afford all the upgrades to the cabin? Good question. Great question. A lot of people ask this in the comments. YouTube is our job. We are full-time YouTubers now. We've had an amazing opportunity to grow our community on YouTube. And since we've done that, we've put more time into our YouTube channel. And therefore, it's kind of like a full cycle where we've put more time and we've become more successful in this space. And that goes hand in hand with how we're able to reinvest into our business, into the cabin, into our homestead. It obviously didn't start off like this. We were one time making 17 cents a month on YouTube. However, with hard work and dedication and literally working seven days a week, which doesn't feel like work because I absolutely love this job, it is the best job ever. Please keep watching us. We have been able to make this our full-time job. Job. I put job in quotations because it doesn't feel like a job. It's a gift. Yes. We always say we feel like we won the lottery in our career because we get to share it with all of you. Yeah, there's nothing we love more than being here. Okay, it's getting pretty spicy. I think I need... Isn't it hot in here though? I think it's because we're answering spicy questions. I need to roll the sleeves. Does that look like a juice box? Yeah, you do. I think it'll look like a juice box like that. Do I have parents? Yes, I absolutely do. This is something I want to talk a lot more about. Maybe not on a YouTube video, maybe on a podcast? Maybe. But yeah, I love my mom. She's the sweetest lady. She's a huge part of my life. Team Irene. But there's obviously a lot more to that dynamic and my childhood that we'll get into on a later day. Keep you curious. You didn't ask that question. Now you wish you did. Except you might have. Do you have dads? Great question, because I know we always show momager. And my dad actually passed away when I was four. So I have been raised by my mother as a single mom my whole life. Shout out to Lori for crushing it, for Cam and I. Go Lori, go. But also same, my father passed away when I was young as well. These questions are a big question. I know. I'm actually like... I feel like maybe I should like... I just kind of like threw it out. Like yeah, my dad died. Like you know what I mean? Then my dad passed away when I was young. I feel like I just like said that nonchalantly. I was four. I don't really have any memories. I also have worked through that a lot, which is why I think I'm able to just say it. But for a long time, I used to at school tell everyone he was like a pilot and I wasn't okay with it, because he's never around. So it's hard. But yeah. Good for you for talking about that. I might cry now. Bye. Here we go. Wow, we are delivering. We are delivering. You're welcome. This is what you wanted from us. This is a gift. Okay, I'm really going for it. Anyways, the reason I wanted to share that is because I know if anyone is younger or anyone who has lost a parent, we can all relate a lot of how it feels, especially growing up, when you don't really understand anything. It's a very relatable message. And I also want to just pull together kind of both of those questions. Growing up and my childhood was not always easy, which is why it's hard for me to talk about if you could sense my awkwardness in the last question is because I don't talk about it enough. But here I am opening up about it for the first time, so. On YouTube.com. It feels good because it is relatable. And these are important things to talk about. And our hopes is that with us talking about it, it will encourage your child or yourself to talk about it. Yeah, love to encourage the conversation. And I think it's also important for us to show another side of us. Good job, girl. Next. Next. Next. Okay. Someone asked if we were interested in having children or getting pregnant. This is like hand in hand with marriage. We just don't know. No, I mean, I would love to have little kids running around. I think it'd be so fun. It'd be so fun. I think we would be awesome moms. Right now, like dogs, they make me happy. But in the future, maybe. The most spicy question in this Q&A. We got to have a hot sauce before this. Some habanero before we answer this one. This is so spicy. You aren't even ready. I would get a glass of milk if I were all of you because you're going to feel the spice. You go for the little one. What did I do to myself? Oh my goodness. It's called a habanero day. I have like warmed right up to that hot sauce. I'll put a lot of mine. Do you plan on getting any more dogs? I love this question. So we've actually been looking at getting another dog and then I said, why don't we get two more dogs? And then we backtracked. Completely retracted to cloning Bella and Izzy. No, it's not what we came to. We actually just decided that we are chilling with Bella and Izzy for now. And we don't think we are going to get any more dogs anymore. However, I do want to get two more dogs because I want Bella and Izzy to live on. And Crystal, let me clone them. So I need them to live on by training other dogs their behaviors. And the reason that's spicy is because they are babies. I think though, the reason why we put a pause on getting another dog is because we want to see the whole world. We do. We want to travel a lot and see places that maybe you buy plane. It wouldn't be fair for a dog to experience that. You have to think of the dog before you think of yourself, right? Like, we can't just get a dog if we plan on doing this huge year traveling in a plane. That doesn't make sense. Dog first, then you. Capiche capache, everyone? How did you come out? To be honest, I don't know why I was so scared to come out, but basically I was dating someone at the time and I remember their friend being like, they asked me if I was out to my family and my friends. And I was like, oh, friends, like some friends, but not my family yet. And they were like, I would never date a girl that wasn't home. And I was like, oh my gosh, am I bad? So I was like, okay, I'm going to come out. But I wasn't ready. And I realized that I wasn't ready. So I didn't do it. I was like, it should be on my own time. For two years, I was dating a woman and I didn't tell anyone except for friends, which was a great support. And then one night I was like, enough is enough. I need to tell my mom like, mom, I have a girlfriend. And she was like, oh, what's your name? And that's literally how it went. Yeah. It was just that simple. I think I made it more awkward, but that's not everyone's case. You are working through the motions though. Like you were trying to figure out like who and what you were and what you wanted. Oh, I knew. It's just society. Yeah, there's a reason why you didn't share it right away. Yeah. And I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that too. Yeah. I guess for me, I just never really put myself in a category or said like, this is what I like. Yeah, I guess I was just always just attracted to humans, anyone, people. And so I identify as being pansexual. So I was just always attracted to people. And so when Jasmine, I got together, she was the first woman I'd ever been with. But for me, I didn't really actually put a lot of thought into it. I told my mom and my friends almost immediately, everyone was supportive. And I'm really grateful that I had that support system and that it was a loving process and a supportive process for me. Hey, mom, this is my girlfriend. Imagine? Yeah. Incredible. What do you like to do when you're not renovating or working? I like to sit on my couch and watch TV or I like to be literally buzzing around everywhere. I'm either full throttle or nothing. One of my favorite things to do when we're not renovating is play June's Journey. It's a free mobile game that you can play from anywhere. And I know you want to know more. It's a hidden object mystery game. You want to never guess, eh? I feel like I'm on my own little adventure when I play it and it takes me into my own world. It's like my me time. I zone in and I get so into it. Do you remember we're filming a Q&A? I just unlocked a new level, the old garden gate. I'm going to play that one. As you're playing, you'll discover that there's a fun mystery storyline to follow. And with a little practice, you can master each level. There's always one object I can't find at first. It's way too fun to find everything. I get so into it. Where's the stool? I thought that was a stool. Koi. Frog, frog. I saw that frog. Every single time Crystal starts to play this game, I can never get her attention. Very happy she's found a game she loves because it's really important to take a break sometimes. I just completely zone into something else that's for fun, that makes you feel like a kid again. Your turn. Try to find the purse or the fan. I love June's Journey. Click the link in the description and you can download it for free and play too. Are you in debt? No, we are not in debt. We have no debt, to be honest. This was always a game plan because when we bought the van, we were working full-time as we built it so that way when we moved in, we would have a little bit of money saved and then we continued to work while we lived in the van. Our van, we bought a 2006 van. We didn't buy a fancy new sprinter. We bought a sprinter that we could afford with cash. We could have got a loan for $60,000. Well, probably we get denied. But you can get a $60,000 loan for a sprinter or $100,000 loan for a sprinter but we decided let's get an older vehicle and learn how to do the maintenance and all the checkups ourselves. Yes. So our focus with the van was to slash our living costs and be able to live a life that we wanted to. We had one phone bill that we split. Yeah, we actually had one phone bill. One phone bill that we split. I think that drove our friends of family crazy. We eliminated rent and we worked full-time while living in a van which allowed us to save money to go travel the world. I got something to say and this is a talk for everyone. I always looked at money as in if I go out for lunch or I go out for dinner how many hours of work is that? And that's how I would price out my life. And I remember when I met Crystal Wistel she loved going out. I was like, you just worked two hours for that hour experience by yourself eating out. What are you doing? Anyways. And yes, treat yourself. Go out for a nice meal. But the reality is is how we were able to become debt-free is that we were very cautious and very careful and we planned things out and it actually took a long time. It was consistency that got us to a point where we were living in the van and we were able to save money. Disclaimer. We are not able to tell you how to get out of debt. You could buy a lemon of a van and you could have $30,000 of breakdowns. We are just sharing the reason why we're debt-free and it's because it was very much strategic that we wanted to live within our means. Intentional living. Are you starting a podcast? That would be so awesome. Very soon we're so excited. The launch date is the end of March. Keep your eyes peeled. Welcome to the pack chat. What was your first date? Our first date was when we went to Toblomori which is a really beautiful place in Ontario. Funny story actually. We got there a bit late because we have dilly-dally disorder. So we were dilly-dallying before we even got in the car and then we're hiking the trail and then I'm getting so dark. Our phones died. Classic. They're never alive. But the trail is on a cliff and there's tons of really deep crevices. It's quite dangerous to be walking it in the dark and then we just got so lost. So we decided to strip. We took off our clothes and put them on fire, held them on a stick and walked through the trails, ran through the trails in order to get back home. I had no idea where it was. That was the long for the ride. Yes, we lit our clothes on fire, put them on sticks and ran back to the vehicle. And that's how we knew we were going to be together forever. It's that exact day. R.I.P. to my Green Roots track pants. I miss you every day. What is the one thing that you love about each other and the one that drives you crazy? Crystal cleans way too much. It drives me crazy. She'll just mop the front and she'll mop it again and it looks the same. Sorry, my hair is driving freaking nuts. That also drives me crazy is how she fixed her hair 20 million times and it looks the exact same. Is it anything you love? Ah, she actually fixed it. Is it? What I love about Crystal the most is obviously her heart. If anyone meets her, you know. I've said this before, but you know that she is never judging anyone and she will help any human being on this planet no matter what. These are always so hard to hear. You're going to cry again. It can't not get emotional. It's such a cute little message. But it is true. Anyone comes over, you go anywhere, you are literally all hands on deck. One thing I also really love about Crystal is how she can't get asked questions because she doesn't like talking about herself. She just is so inquisitive about other people and I just think it's such a beautiful thing because she literally listens and just wants to learn about everyone else. And that's one thing I have learned in the last six months, I think. How much? I've learned this. I literally have. True. Try to top that, girl. Yeah, that's hard to top. Okay, what drives me crazy is actually how you eat. That drives me crazy for sure. Especially when people are around. Like, I can try and put it up with it. When we're in a room full of people, like freaking shut the mouth. Okay. The one thing I love about Jasmine is that no matter where she is, no matter who it is, whether it's, you know, someone, an old friend, a brand new stranger, she's exactly herself with everyone all of the time. 100% true blue all the time. And it is the best feeling ever to be around someone who is just so confident and so genuine. And she inspires me. She is such a go-getter. She inspires me in every faucet of my life to do it bigger and better and dream big, bigger than I've ever imagined. And that's transformed my life. She's truly a... Shining star. She just means the most to me. So, just love ya. Yeah, me too. It's better to get even more wild and fast. Start your engines. What are your favorite YouTube channels? Ryan Trehan for his personality. Michelle Kare for her storytelling. Emma Chamberlain, Johnny Harris, Colin and Smyr. Do you ever think you'll go back to full-time van life? Part-time, yes. Who made the first move in the relationship? Crystal. Are you okay with gifts from your fans? Yes, thank you so much. We have a PLO box that's out in the description. That's very kind. How often do you leave the cabin? Once every two weeks? I don't go, though. How warm is it in the cabin? 23. I would say that's what we keep it at. I love the insulation and the wood heat and my fire master. Hardest project you've ever done at the cabin? Metal roof. The metal roof. How did you and your homestead fare during the polar vortex? Well, we had fun and the video's here. What is the first place you travel to together? Thailand. The zodiac signs. Leo. Scorpio. What are you scared of? Horse radish. Clowns. What brings you joy? My family. People. Belenity. What sport did you play in high school? Nothing. Basketball hockey, soccer, volleyball, any sport, flake football, whatever you want to... sports. The team! The team! Go team! Go sports! Sports! Are you going to sell the van? Maybe. We don't know. What's your favorite hangout spot in the cabin? The couch. The greenhouse. That's not in the cabin. The kitchen. Where are you originally from? Bury, Ontario. Retweet. How old are you both? Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. We often forget. How old is Belenity? Nine and ten. Are we scared of bears? They're just black bears out here. They're basically dogs. Grizzlies I am scared of. But they're amazing creatures. What is your favorite vegan recipe? Chicken lettuce wraps for me. Anything with tofu? How did you find your cabin? Online. Viewpoint.ca. Are you going to let your bangs grow out? Yes. After I stop sincing them. Will you always be van wives? Yes. I look at van wives like a tattoo. It is a part of our lives that we are going to be forever. Should we get tattooed? Maybe. Off-track. How about a pool for a summer project? You are reading our minds. Whoever commented this. Do you know how to build a pool? Anyone know how to build a pool? Who wants to build a pool with me? Us. I really want to. What type of music do we listen to? Everything. And he's blue, funk. Love it all. Everything. Any thoughts of doing an addition to the cabin? Yes. I want to so bad. If we have kids, we need more space. Or more dogs. Hee hee. And that is the end of the speed round everyone. We will see you for the next round. Get your popcorn. Okay, this one really excites us because. We're obsessed with YouTube. And it's fun. How did you know you wanted to get into content creation and how did you get started? We didn't know we wanted to get into content creation. We have, before YouTube, neither of us had cameras or picked up a camera or edited a video before. We had no plan to be here. And we got started by simply picking up a camera. We decided that we were going to try our best. We picked up a book a couple of weeks later to go with that. We had a lot of encouragement from our good friend, Max and Lee, and bought a camera in Vegas. And then we just became super obsessed and passionate with filmmaking and it was destiny. Is that cliche? It really felt like that though because. It still does. It does, yeah. It just. Every shot I take, I am so stoked taking it. Yeah. We get told our content's beautiful and I think proud of that. Yeah, that's a really nice thing. By getting started, we just had to start because there is so much to learn. We're still learning so much every day. And. You'll never learn it all. You could edit a video for the rest of your life, but just putting it out there is the first step. How do you know when to record and when not to? This took practice for sure. We used to record way too much. We used to overshoot. Yeah, and I think now that we have an idea of what the video is going to be about, let's say that's traveling our ceiling or traveling to an off-grid camp spot, we now know what the video is going to be about and we are better at talking to the camera now. It took us a while, but we understand what makes the story what's more important. So now we do it and we do not really talk about it because we kind of have an idea of what needs to be left in. But in the beginning, we filmed everything and it actually was. And nothing at the same time. Yes, well said. If YouTube were to end tomorrow, what's your next step? You should never say that out loud. However, if it did end, I'm going to answer your silly question, I would probably, I'd probably edit videos for a YouTuber. Not going to lie, I'd love it. It'd be fun. When did we quit our jobs to do YouTube full-time? We quit well before YouTube. We didn't quit our job for YouTube. We didn't have any jobs. And we were just living off of how much we saved after working and living in a van for a year and a half. And then eventually we started to make a little bit of money. I remember we were making like maybe $300 a month at that point and we decided, should we go back to work or should we continue making YouTube videos full-time? And we just decided we were having way too much fun to ever look in a different direction. And that's how that went. How many hours does it take to put your YouTube videos together? So shooting them three to four days, I would say. One of the most important things while we're on the road and at the cabin alike is research, planning, getting materials. All of that background work also takes many hours that we haven't really kept track of. However, we have scaled up and what we are currently doing for our YouTube videos we could not do alone. And we have a team behind us now. Shout out to Magic Man, Colin! Shout out to the Magic Man! We love Colin. He's literally a third vanwife, not literally, but like he is us. He taught me how to edit our videos. One time we edited a piece, like he edited it, I edited it. We did it the exact same way. Because he trained me and he is Magic Man. Anyways, you all know Colin because he's come to the cabin and he's lived in the van with us before. He's not an editor. He's not an editor. He's not an editor. He's more than that. He is so much more than that, yeah. And like- We couldn't do it without him. On cabin life season one and a little bit of van life we were doing it without an editor. We struggled. We struggled. We were working all night. All day. Till like three, four in the morning and I was hitting publish. We were hitting a wall like in our relationship where we were like we needed help. And the coolest thing ever is that we were working closely with Colin. He was teaching us a lot. I grew up with him. Having a team has improved our lives. And makes better videos for you. I don't know if anyone realized but Crystal was ending all the vlogs by herself and that's because I was doing this. There's no eye and team, right? Everything's better with a team. What has been the most rewarding projects you have got to work on? I feel like every project is so rewarding. I agree. It's taught us so much about every little step. And I think what we're doing out here is we're creating a puzzle and every single piece matters. Without one piece your puzzle isn't complete. From the trenching to laying a roof to doing inside renails to the batteries to the greenhouse. I think the solar foundation install was like a huge milestone though for me. That was hard. Yeah. It was a great feeling getting that in the ground. It was just like... I think the people that were around too during that, like the community it just felt so amazing to share it with others too. Because we couldn't do it on our own. It was something we really needed a good team for and watching that come together was great. We could have used more hands too. Has there been a time during the cabin build where enough is enough? For sure. 100% Like I'm not going to lie like probably a week and a half ago things were just felt like they were falling apart at that time. Like we had nowhere to wash the dishes. We were running out of power. The generator wasn't working. We had a lot of work to do and the hose was flying in the air. There wasn't water everywhere and we were stressed. And I mean that's life. But not necessarily when we're building. I would say it's more so just how we're living. Right yeah exactly. We're camping right now. Yeah it's more like the day to day like the lifestyle that we're choosing to like live until we get to a place that is comfortable. And then we're gonna laugh at those days. What is one thing that building your cabin has taught you guys? It's taught me that if you are passionate about anything you can achieve it. What is the toughest part of living off grid? I've talked about this before. For me it's isolation. And something I have figured out lately too is also being a YouTuber living off grid in the state that we are. Sure when we have our like whole power system set up it's going to be a lot easier but for in the meantime we're trying to run a business a videography business which means we are constantly needing the internet upload download camera batteries. This battery we use more than the average person. It's a lot of power. And we're doing it with 400 amp hours and 300 amp hours which is nothing. The toughest part for me is definitely just the modern day luxuries that we're lacking. Sometimes it's easy breezy but when it is hard it feels like everything is like not working at the same time and that can be really hard for me because I genuinely enjoy like a clean fresh space and like feeling good and like clean and shower myself and like if I can't do those things for whatever reason because sometimes it's unknown what's going on the weather blah blah blah that can be really hard for me. Why do you want to live off grid? I think I've reframed my thinking of this. It's not necessarily that I want to live off grid but I want to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining in life. I love the idea of living alternatively rather than traditionally. It just provides so many extra challenges and like through everything that we've done here we've learned so much. So I feel like I'm self-sufficient in the way that I am so able bodied and I have so much new knowledge that I can carry through life and do so much with. I feel like if something is to go wrong or there's something we need to deal with or fix or whatever it is I feel almost a little bit more prepared than I was before. That feels good and I really love painting my own life and I feel like out here I'm doing that. It's just very customized. It feels very... And it just feels true to me and the life I want to live. I love being out here in the woods where it's peaceful, it's quiet. You have your own space truly and that feels good. Nothing more we can ask for. How much goes wrong that you don't show? I would say we actually take pride in showing everything that goes wrong. I think it's so much more relatable. So it's important to show those things that don't go right especially because a lot of you want to live off-grader. You want to live in a van. And it's just human. Like I think that's what makes a video is the mistakes and the rawness and the mess-ups. Like that's my favorite type of video. Yeah, exactly. And it feels good to share it because it's genuine to what's actually happening. I think the best thing that we ever did was gravitate more towards sharing our vulnerability and like the mistakes we make in our mess-ups because in the beginning we didn't actually know how to share that. We didn't even know how to use a camera. And so we've grown into these people that like we share almost essentially everything now and that includes all of the mess-ups. What is your favorite part of the cabin routine? Getting up, taking either the bikes of the one wheel or two feet and walking down to the river, having a river bath and watching Bella and Izzy run through the moss. Exactly that. But also just waking up to a ton of space inside and outside and feeling in my own space. Love that. We've never really had anything that's been ours. So it's a good feeling. Which project are you most excited for? This one so that it doesn't look like this anymore. We're going to have a kitchen soon. Why do you use a generator? We use a generator because obviously we live off-grid and we are running on portable power stations and these portable power stations need to be charged in order to work. So they can run off the sun however we don't get much of that right now so we use a generator in order to top up our battery banks. We also need a generator to run our 240 volt well pump until our main system is connected. Explain your water situation. So we have two ways to get water at the cabin the first being this drilled well. Right below me. In order to get water from it there is a pump that is all the way down there and it runs on 240 volts. Hence why we need the generator right now and we're waiting for the main system to be connected. Second way to get water is through rainwater. That's not happening much right now. Obviously they would freeze but it's glorious to know you can get water from your rainwater collection system. It's a good backup. What is the first thing you're going to do in the spring besides garden? After staying this winter we have realized that this yard definitely needs some french drains and now let me know how to do those. That will be fun and I think it's probably more of a priority than in our dark kitchen at that moment. What's going on there's solar setup ladies. So the solar system is a massive undertaking it is more than just panels and batteries and it actually is a lot of panels and a lot of batteries and a lot of other components. And a lot of supply and demand issues. We're waiting on some wire. We're also just we need a tradesperson to help us with this because like Crystal said it is a big big system. Is there anything about the Renault you've regret so far? Is I wish we built a bigger shower? It's pretty small. Do you plan on doing the exterior siding of your cabin? Yes we cannot wait to do the siding. As you can see our siding desperately needs to be replaced and we have the siding in our shed. Maybe we'll do that first. Screw drainage. And for the absolute biggest question anyone has ever asked what is next after cabin life? To be completely honest we didn't even know cabin life was going to be a thing. Zero idea. No idea. So thinking about what's next I don't know if it's fair to say something. We have had a lot of ideas that change every five minutes but what I can say is whatever we do we will be bringing you all with us for the journey and we hope that it's meaningful and it impacts all of you. We're living in the moment as you can see. Thank you all for listening to our Q&A. The second one ever on our channel.