 I really have to find this. Come on, Jess. Let's see if we can find it. I think it's that box. Look at our story. One evening, six years ago, we wrote a note of what we wanted our life to look like. Now we will share it all with you. It's been 365 days of waking up in the middle of nowhere at our off-grid cabin. It's been six years since our world completely changed. In 2017, we made the most important decision of our lives without even knowing it. After reflecting, we now realize we were living each day intentionally. We left the life we knew behind and we set out to live differently. We moved into our self-converted Sprinter van and worked to save $20,000 to travel the world for a year with our two dogs, Bella and Izzy. Along the way, we picked up a camera and began documenting our journey. Every singular decision we made since that day led us here. It's been exactly one year since we bought 15 acres and an abandoned cabin. When we got here, it was overgrown, untouched, was not loved, but it had so much potential. And today, this is what it looks like. This story we're about to tell is a lot less about what we've built, but rather the intentions behind it all. When we pulled up in the van for the first time getting to the cabin, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I saw the listing online, as we did buy this property blind on the other side of Canada, all the way in BC, but when we arrived there, it was not the same at all. It was completely covered, not cleared, and we couldn't even really make it down the driveway. We couldn't get in our driveway last night. Well, I might be able to, but we didn't want to risk it in the dark. This is how far we made it. Showing up to the cabin with no plans and watching as the weeks and the months go on and now a year of how much it has evolved. It's evolved out of something that was essentially nothing, you know? Like an abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere that could have actually sat there like that for another few years and dilapidated eventually. And we're giving it new life. We're standing on the driveway, the very mouth of the driveway where everything began. This was really our first challenge, making a driveway to our home, our future cabin. Just the beginning of it all. So it feels right to kind of start here in a way because there was a time when we were walking down here and it was tall grass and there was ticks everywhere and we actually couldn't even get the van down and we were carrying supplies in and those days are long gone, but we'll never forget about them. Porter and Larry would drop off some stone. I'd start spreading it and they would tell me a new tip every time they would drop off another load and eventually a couple of days later, we got to the cabin and we were able to drive it up. It's amazing! It's just more than a driveway. We walk up and down here every single day with the girls as we go for nice trail walks around here and I don't know, I guess it just symbolizes the beginning. So it's more than a driveway. After a year off grid, we've settled to life here in the woods. The stillness of life is something we were always seeking. We can't help to reflect on the first experiences on this journey. I think all of the emotions that day were fueled by the absolute unknown and humans are terrified of the unknown and we absolutely were terrified of the unknown that day. As we had no idea what was to come, what we were going to do or learn, but I have to say after that first week at the cabin, learning what a clearing saw was that we didn't actually need a chainsaw and we went and we just cleared the entire area. That's the moment I knew. Okay, I think we got this. We can keep doing things and keep making it more our own and make it feel like a home. And that's what we did. That was the first step. That was the first step. Do you think there's a specific moment in your life that led you here? Well, if I really backtrack, it goes way before that. I truly feel like the life that I'm living is something that I've always wanted. I just remember sitting in the garden and being like, this is the feeling. Just admiring the flowers and seeing the bugs and playing with the frogs and the creek. That was such a special thing that I was able to experience that at such an early age, but I remember just feeling so right at home in nature. And so I think it started really young for me. And now look at you. Yeah. That's six-year-old Chris that would be happy. It's a dream. Aw. Welcome to our front entrance. Right now we're walking on the boardwalk that we learned how to build ourselves this summer. Turning a boardwalk is actually very challenging. Boardwalks are hard. We're trying to make a J. These amateurs, we're trying to make a J. I'm defeated. But it gives such a warm welcome to the cabin. And that's what we wanted this place to feel like. With the landscaping and the cedar wood, we really wanted it to be inviting. And welcome to the stairs where we built them ourselves. This was actually one of the projects that took us the longest as stringers are very hard to make. We made a stringer. It might not work, but it looks nice. Oh. I don't get this at all. So wrong. This is incredibly wrong. But I would say we did a great job. This is our first home. It is amazing to see what it looks like now as when we first got here, you literally could not see the cabin. But now, obviously, as Jasmine said, we put a lot of work into the entrance and we are starting to pick away at the inside and it's becoming more and more like a home every single week. Every month it leads to you. This is our tiny-ish cabin and there are two bedrooms, one bathroom, an open concept living room and kitchen with an attic. We had to pull everything back to the stud for a lot of reasons. It was pretty icky in there. Up here, it looks like we had a bird nesting. When we say abandoned cabin, this is what we're talking about. Oh my goodness. All right. Now that we've taken the walls off, we have done the rough-in electrical, rough-in plumbing and we have insulated. We now have temporary lighting and floors. Over the last year, we've spent most of our time maintaining the outside. Our land needed a lot of land management as well as we're starting from scratch here, meaning we had to trench all the lines, put up the solar, build different structures in order to even have electricity, as well as even drill a well to get water in here. As much as I wish it was as easy as just starting by putting up walls and building a kitchen, it's not. Also, a priority when you're living off grid is to be self-sufficient. That is why having gardens, fruit trees and even a greenhouse is super important. Sure, putting up walls would be really nice to look at. However, if we're really talking about priorities in life, that would be water and electricity, which is exactly what we're doing, which is why certain inside projects have been put on hold as we are putting all of our time and effort into getting us electricity this winter. We're super excited to tackle the inside of the cabin. It's coming up in the next couple of weeks as the colder weather sets in. We're gonna be moving inside and making it beautiful. So make sure you subscribe to see how we transform our cabin. As a whopping 50% of you who are watching currently aren't subscribed. I guess you can call it the homestead. We are new gardeners and I imagine every year we will yield a little bit more as we become more insightful and knowledgeable about planting and growing and harvesting your own food. We were able to harvest peppers, onions and tomatoes this year and we even finished our greenhouse build. Welcome to the greenhouse. This is our 18 foot geodesic growing dome by Arctic Acres. It feeds four to six people and it's a four season greenhouse, which means that we can grow food all year round, even in some of the harshest conditions. It truly is an ecosystem. There are a lot of components that make this greenhouse work. There is an intake and an outtake fan. The polycarbonate sheets that we have on the outside of the dome is what traps the heat inside. With the combination of the reflectics and the pond, we are able to maintain the heat throughout the night. For first time growers, we went a little ambitious. We even got a tangerine tree. So wish us luck this winter with this. However, it is going to get a lot easier as the days go on in here. We are going to have supplemental heat as sometimes we can reach negative 20 or even negative 30 Celsius in Canada, which means you're going to need more than just the pond if you want to grow tropical plants. One of my proudest moments is actually plumbing this greenhouse. It was super important that we had running water in here. So again, we trenched our water lines into the greenhouse, which is how we have this hose here. And since we have heat trace, obviously that means we're going to have electricity in here, meaning we can run an electric heater off of our solar array, which is amazing as it's free. I feel like when it comes to generating electricity, heating our home, growing our food, I feel so integrated into my life. And that is for me so wholesome it makes me feel really alive. This is something I have dreamt of since I was a wee little girl. Having a garden here at our fingertips is truly a dream. This year, we were able to build two garden beds outside. Next year, we have big plans for expansion. We want to grow underneath the solar array and we want to build more beds here so that we can grow even more. Nice shot. Can you imagine? I'm still eating my tomatoes, I'm growing. Wow, they're feeling, I just don't know how to describe it. Gardening is a very important skill and that brings me to the compost because it's a full cycle. We compost all of the organic material at our cabin right here in the cedar compost that we built. This is one of our first projects. And the coolest thing ever is that this compost is going to turn into soil. We're going to make our own soil and it's going to be exactly from the food that we've put in here. So we know what's in it and it's full of nutrients and that will go back into the gardens and that is a beautiful thing. Thank you to one of our long-term partners, AG1 by Athletic Greens, for sponsoring this week's video. It is an easy and convenient decision that you can make every day to care for yourself. It is one delicious scoop and one cup of water. We are proud to say AG1 by Athletic Greens has been with us long before but since we got to the cabin and has fueled so many of our projects and keeps us going. In this bottle, there are 75 vitamins, minerals, nutrients, superfoods, and much more to support your immune system, your gut health, your nervous system, your recovery levels, energy levels, aging, the list goes on. It's an all-in-one, your everyday go-to. That way you don't have to worry about the rest. We have never felt better than how we feel since having AG1 in our life. We highly recommend you give it a try and see how you feel. And the best part is Athletic Greens is going to be giving you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs to go with your first purchase. To do this, click in the link in the description of this video, head to their website, but be sure to come back here and let us know all the benefits that your body is feeling and how much you love it. Welcome to the solar field. It's the perfect place to bask in the sun and warm up on a cold fall day. But not only that, it is the absolute best place to capture the sun's energy and use it to power all of our needs at our off-grid homestead. Where we live is fairly remote and we do not have access to grid. Nor do we want access to grid. That is why we chose to live here. So our plan here is to be as self-sufficient as possible. And that means generating our own clean, sustainable energy for our own use. This is 10.8 kilowatts of solar. Each panel is 445 watts. We have 12 panels on each pole mount. Which gives us 24 panels total. And that's how we get the 10.8 kilowatts. This system is extremely cool. What we have going on here is a schedule 80 pipe pole. Pipe pole? Pole? Schedule 80 pole? It is absolutely massive. And that is sitting in a 30 inch sonotube. It took a lot of concrete and a lot of determination that day, but this is quite a beauty. And sitting on top of that pole, holding all of those solar panels is a fast-racking system. We decided to go with pole mounts as we are in a very, very wooded area. As you can see, there are trees surrounding us everywhere you look. These pole mounts actually sit six feet off the ground, letting us harness all of the sun's energy in the early morning. The install for these pole mounts was actually very challenging. If you watch the video on this, you'll know there was blood, sweat, and tears. Every single one on the job site that day, literally gave it 113%. And now we have the arrays. What might not look like a lot of work, but was one of the most challenging things about this entire process was the electrical lines. We actually had to trench all around our property. Because we wanted to have power in all of the buildings on the land, we needed to trench everywhere. For example, these lines right here go all the way from our battery house to our solar arrays. That way, the solar can charge the batteries. That right there is the memory of all of our teammates this day when we put this system in. I love seeing those handprints in there. It makes me so happy. For whatever reason, the day the solar panels went up, it was a milestone. It really felt like a full year's worth of work had pulled together. Although they aren't connected today, that was, for me, such a special moment. There were so many challenges and setbacks, even failures, but in the end, it all happened for a reason. And that's what we call a happy accident over here. And it's such a critical part to our homestead, like it really is such a big puzzle piece. It's what's going to charge the heart of the entire system, our batteries, and allow us that freedom of being off grid. Crystal and I are very outdoorsy people. No matter where we are in the world, we're always spending most of our times in nature. And that's why we are able to spend three plus years living in a van, which is around 60 square feet. Our hopes and dreams for this cabin is to make the exact feeling that our van gave us, having the doors wide open and feeling like you have an outdoor indoor living space. We plan on connecting the inside living room with the outside living room, which is this deck that we're standing on. Whenever friends and family come over, this is the perfect place to host. And we love hosting everyone. So when these two spaces connect, it is going to be just such a flow and going to transform this place. We spend every moment possible when we're not working on this deck. For a lot of reasons. It's doubled up as our kitchen this year. We did a lot of our cooking out here on the barbecue and we would sit down and eat all of our meals here. We would even brainstorm projects and do research from the deck. And I just love having this space. I love you, perhaps I starved here, for too long, babe, who's to say? Relaxation Nation, this area has been such a treat for us. It's like a little spa in the woods. And who says you have to lack all of the comforts while living off grid? After all of the long and hard work days, we're able to come out here to our little spa in the woods and relax in the sauna or the wood-fired hot tub. Both the sauna and the hot tub are heated with wood heat and it's a really nice feeling, stoking the fire, smelling that wood burn and being able to relax in all of it. The mental and the physical benefits of both have been such a treat after long days. A hot tub in the sauna weren't necessarily in our plans this early on at our cabin. However, Backcountry Rec, which is a small local company on the west side of Canada, watched our videos and noticed how much hard work we were putting in. They explained the benefits of having both these items at your property and especially when you're doing manual labor. Anytime I come out of either of these, I feel rejuvenated, rested, and like I'm ready to tackle the next project. The sauna's nice for manual labor. This is life. Welcome to a not as luxurious item, but amazing. This is our outhouse. It's the first building we've ever created top to bottom in our lives and I'm very proud of it. It's run on rainwater so we connected the roof to some gutters and a rain barrel and that way you can wash your hands on the vanity outside. The hole that we've dug is six feet deep which should last a family of five, about five to 10 years, isn't it? It really depends on your flow or... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. The idea was to make it cutesy, like it fits it in the woods, but we can try and convince, you know, our grandparents to come and use it if they had to. You know, we want to get everyone out here and we want everyone to be comfortable. Can't have everyone digging holes. I love it. I don't have to think about it anymore. You wake up, you go to the bathroom and tada, you know? Yeah. I don't love it. I love it. I love it too. The outhouse is not insulated. We do plan on building our indoor bathroom as soon as we can. However, we are obviously still using it and we will use it in the winter as long as we need to. It is a good place to go no matter what. You really can't complain when you're out in the woods. This is an awesome space for the summer, for guests too who are camped up. You know, there's lights here, there's a mirror, place to wash your hands, brush your teeth, et cetera, and typically some wildflowers here just to make it look a little bit beautiful. After quite a few months having this outhouse and the rainwater collection system, I have to say, I am entirely impressed. This bucket is always full and we've never had a problem with washing our hands. This is our drilled well. The process of drilling this was extremely fascinating. It was the first time we had ever seen it happen and it was really cool to be here and be a part of it. Jogging from my memory, it's about 250 feet into the earth and it is full of water. We really lucked out with this drilled well as you never know what you can get sometimes and it has about 1.8 gallons per minute. Our drilled well is temporarily set up as we are still waiting for our entire system as this pump takes 240 volts. In order for us to get water out of here right now, we just have to pull a generator and use it as we need it. It's not constantly running, we only use it for specific things, whether that's showering, watering the greenhouse or filling up the hot tub. However, when our electrical system is set up very soon, this is going to be one of the most exciting things. Not hearing a generator and being able to just open the tap and water comes rushing through. However, it's taken a long time to get here. We had a trench from this well to the cabin, all the way to the greenhouse and to the garage. So there are water lines everywhere but it's all gonna be worth it. This is our off-grid rain barrel water collection system that takes the water that falls from the sky, hits the roof and pours into these IBC totes behind me. This is an extremely important process living off-grid. Having your own backup water supply can come in handy in many situations. In times of drought or for some reason, your well runs dry. For example, before we had the ability to power our 240 volt well pump with our beast of a generator, we were using this rain water to water our greenhouse and not only that, one time Bella got sprayed by a skunk and we had to bathe her and before we could access the water in our well, this is the water that we were using. If we ever have a problem powering our well, this is a power free way to get water. Welcome to our garage. This building has been such a help. We were living with all of our tools and everything you're about to see in here inside the cabin. Let me tell you, waking up and looking at a table saw isn't the best thing to wake up to. Come on in. As you can see, there is a lot of stuff in here because we are building everything with our own two. We had to get tools in order to do certain jobs. Recently in this garage, we have insulated and wired it. That's going to make sure that this building also has power. It also has water as well. The most important reason for this garage is actually this room back here. This is where we are going to house our off grid electrical system. You're not allowed to have your batteries or other components to make your electrical system in your dwelling in Canada as it's against the law. So we framed out this beautiful room that I'm super proud of to house all of their components in our electrical system. This is the battery house. This is what we are currently working on. It's super current. We just put these batteries in here behind me. This is the battery wall. When we were standing under the solar panels and we talked about where all that electricity was going while it's coming here to the battery house. These are 100 amp hour battle-borne lithium batteries and they are going to be the heart, as Jasmine says, to the land as this is where all the electricity will be stored that we generate from the sun and will be dispersed to the buildings on our property where we'll then be able to have electricity. In the next coming weeks, we're gonna be making lots of connections and bringing this to life. It's a very exciting milestone for us and we can't wait to share it all with you. From the beginning, battle-borne batteries has believed in our dreams. They are a long-term partner of our channel and they sponsored our van build way back when we had 20,000 subscribers and now they are sponsoring our cabin build. Thanks, battle-borne! Thank you, battle-borne! Battle-borne team! We live in the northern hemisphere in Canada where we experience all four seasons and one of those being extremely frigid cold temperatures. So we need to have a way to heat all of the buildings on our property. Because we endure cold weather here at the cabin, we need to think about how to heat all three spaces, the cabin, the garage and the greenhouse. And ideally, we would have three ways to heat those three spaces. The first would be wood heat and this will be primarily our main source of heat all winter, as we'll have a wood stove in all three buildings. We have six quart of wood currently being stacked behind me that will get us through the upcoming winter season. The second way we're gonna heat all of our buildings is an off-grid solar heat pump. This is a very unique product and it's going to help us so much even in the warmer months as it has AC. And the third way we're going to heat all the buildings is propane heat. This is a very reliable way to heat any space as when you're gone, it is still heating. Let's say something goes down with our electrical system, those heat pumps will no longer work. And wood heat, obviously, you need somewhere to feed your fire. Behind me is a bunch of green lumber that has just been chopped and needs to be split. This is from the clearing for the solar array and so it's kind of a full circle moment because now we will split it, season it and we will use it to heat our home next year. We cannot forget about our beloved van. We built it with our very own two hands and we have a mountain of memories in it. Our van has also been the heart at this cabin and simply why we've been comfortable living here. It has a kitchen. It has a bathroom, a bed, and even has heat. Not only has this van believed in us on the road traveling from Canada, almost to Argentina, we got to Guatemala, but it has believed in us as we got to the cabin. It's probably the reason why we are able to take the step into taking on such a big project. After living on the road and facing the challenges and also the challenges with building it, it really taught us a lot about life. It's true, it gave us the courage to get here. And it also made us very resilient. I love our van from the bottom of our heart and it really truly is our first home together. Six years ago, we embarked on a journey that would change our lives forever. Our self-converted sprinter van was the vessel to explore our own curiosity. To challenge ourselves and discover the meaning in this short life. Every single decision from then led us here to this cabin in the woods. One year off-grid has been quite the challenge, but we knew we could get through it as long as we have each other. Learning things on your own or trying something new for the first time is empowering, but for me, and maybe for you, it's also a little bit scary because you have room for failure. And the truth is, is there's been many times where we haven't done something correctly the first time and I think that's the only way to learn. But it makes you feel like you could accomplish anything. And how we feel each week when we accomplish something is what we hope to put out to our audience. We hope that the message that we're sharing each week inspires people to do things too and to try new things. You can do anything. Anything. That scares you or challenges you. Hey. But we hope that our videos inspire you to tackle those things. Yes. And after reflecting on our life the last six years, I've come to realize that every scary and challenging step that we have taken has actually been the best reward. I remember the first day we left in our van, I was bawling. I was so upset and so scared. And you would think that that moment would have been like the best, most glorious moment leaving on the van for the first time. I was so scared. So scared. And I was so sad. And I felt so little. Sometimes it's not even just like the big scary things, but it's just any little decision that you're making on a daily basis or on a weekly basis throughout your life can really lead you to where you're supposed to be. It does. We've been really slowing down and thinking about everything. And so we hope that through this video, we've been able to share with you not just a tour of our property and of the cabin, but why we've done the things that we've done and how it makes us feel. And maybe you can take little bits of this and you can be re-inspired like us and maybe it'll challenge you to do something you've been wanting to do. Yeah. And that two young 20 year olds fell in love and just without fear at the same time, just went for it. I love you. Love you. This van is the first line on our note of dreams that we shared with you in the beginning of this video. We encourage you to write down your dreams and your aspirations and to check back up on them in six years. Go, go, go! Go!