WE WERE LIED TO About OFF GRID LIFE.

I can't show you this conversation oh this is not gonna be for YouTube oh no no this is about us quitting on this thing okay I can't show you the conversation because Kay told me to turn the camera off but we're going to talk about what she said when the camera was off it had just been a few weeks since we packed up our entire life drove cross country to Alaska and moved into the offgrid cabin and already she was talking about leaving why she was lied to there's someone spreading a lie about off-grid life and we're going to talk about it in this episode you're going to want to listen because they might be telling you the same lie oh and one other thing we're going to tell you why we left the cabin this episode of the Alaska off-grade challenge is called don't believe everything Kay told me to turn the camera off and I always respect that being a content creator there are times you just got to shut it down but I remember exactly what she said she started by saying Austin you are the most amazing man your biceps remind me of the mountain ranges which surround us and your mustache oh your mustache its Majesty can compete with Mount Denali well that's not exactly what I said I better help you narrate this one walking down that road with us I asked him to turn the camera off because I wanted to seriously talk about leaving the cabin after we had barely just arrived and it had nothing to do with the struggles we had already been through it's not like a nice place no it's rough the bad weather it is 40° beautiful summer no it had a lot more to do with being misled about this whole off-grid life we were now living a much big bigger storm was on the horizon and I'm not even talking about the actual storm that was on the horizon I think I can't read I think there's a storm rolling in the tarp slapping like crazy the smoke blown everywhere and yeah the mosquitoes are thriving you got to hand it to them they're not fair weather mosquitoes you can count on the Alaska mosquitoes to be there for you look at this wind look at this that's why my hair looks the way it does it's the wind got it this is a funny decision we have to make this tarp is protecting our whole outdoor kitchen and storage area from rain hold on there's wind all right we're trying to leave it up to protect our outdoor kitchen so we can cook but the wind's getting so bad it'll do more harm than good up time to back the Hat I guess that means we're abandoning cooking for now that means all our outdoor cooking space is going to be exposed to rain so we got to put stuff away storage we got to put stuff in the tiny house it's annoying but we had set up this out our kitchen space because all the kitchen appliances in the cabin they were broken there was a little off-grid refrigerator it was broke there was a sink yeah that leaked and there was even a little propane stove yeah that was broke too and those weren't the only things that were broken we showed up and supposedly there was an ouse functioning ouse and a working wood stove which were both things we were excited about and both of those things turned out to not be working the ouse is shot full and falling down the wood stove was shot so right away we had to solve both those problems so yeah a lot of the things that we thought were going to be working at the cabin were broken but let me be clear this is not the lie that we started off talking about in this episode the owner of the cabin doesn't live at the cabin it was actually closed up it hadn't been used for a long time and he thoroughly warned us about how rustic the cabin was he even mentioned he wasn't sure which things would be working and which wouldn't so when we arrived to find certain things not working well it was just a chance for us to learn more about setting up all of our offgrid systems from scratch and you can't get much more from scratch than pooping in a bucket you may remember from our biggest fears about going off grid video uh I talked about being afraid of the element of pooping in the woods pooping in a bucket and I got to say this has been one of the biggest like oh this isn't bad at all so yeah this is our toilet setup the tarp is a privacy screen the front is open to the wood it's actually under enough trees that even if it's raining you don't get too wet sit here on this nice platform that my dad the carpenter made with an actual toilet seat which because it is pretty much Sweater Weather all day and night here the toilet seat's really cold uh so I've been asking Austin all week to make me an insulated toilet seat you make it sound really good make you an insulated toilet seat you just it took him a week to do it though cut a hole in a piece of insulation because there's a lot of other priorities how long did that take you though okay it took me like 10 minutes but look I put a nice little Smiley heart in it you didn't even see my little Smiley heart there's a lot of love that went into the making of that toilet seat is that for a thumbnail guys believe me it makes a world of difference sitting down on that versus the cold toilet seat so I I honestly would skip the toilet seat insulated how dare you so dumping the bucket is not a big deal we have a pit we dump the bucket the crazy thing is it fills up the bucket why G okay hold on comment below take a guess how quickly do we fill a bucket so there's people the baby doesn't use it though so seven people using it um a 5 gallon bucket how long does it take to fill [Music] three days three I was going to say two it's three cuz in six days we've emptied the bucket well we filled two buckets we've got one that needs emptied so the best part about pooping in a bucket out here is the view look at this ready imagine you got to go and uh well here you come and you sit down right here you're probably expecting to see like mountains bald eagles flying by okay now just quiet as the mo quiet as the Moose you're not going to be there when they're pooping just give them a second to be enjoy a quiet contemplation ASMR pooping in the woods here we go ready go home steady presents ASMR pooping in the woods I want you to take a nice deep breath and as you exhale I want you to start to squeeze out a nice big for me this has been honestly one of the pleasantest surprises of the whole trip this has been really nice I'm totally going to build us at our future Homestead an outdoor ouse with an open view make four sides and have a door that you can open okay so put it towards the view but make sure the door shuts maybe like one of those uh like uh bar bar doors that have thep top that opens but covers the bottom hide your your important business but you can enjoy the Beautiful cuz it's really peaceful you come out here I don't this was the whole point in coming to Alaska pooping in a bucket no it was to try firsthand living off- grid and learning about these different systems because obviously pooping in a bucket is not that complicated we could do that anywhere but some things like solar power are more complicated and we know the offgrid space can be full of a lot of different opinions some facts maybe some fiction and we figured it would be really good to get some handson experience to try to sort through instead of just believing whatever somebody wrote on the internet that might have been a lie I think everyone has their own definition of what offgrid means some people for them it means no electricity you're hauling buckets of water definition I think that we have leaned into is like you're not on any not tied into the public utilties there's no tied to public and here we are Miles cuz there would be no way no way you could hook up to Public Utilities here we have been using solar and we have our upz system and what we've been doing is we have our upz Solar Generator which is 2,400 Watts that's been a really wonderful thing to have yeah we have had zero problem powering our life with that 2,400 WTS we I've been able to run our computer we've been able to charge our cameras and get video there's not been a moment where we haven't actually because we're getting Sun till like 2 a.m. with solar power that thing has always been at 99% so zero problem I was really surprised by how much I was enjoying learning about all these different off-grid systems life back on the grid is so different so every day I was learning something new handson and it was a challenge but it was so much fun I'm going to be honest I think the happiest individual here so far who's been the happiest individual of our whole family it's kind of a trick question no I know exactly who it is who the dog the dog he loves Alaska it's cool there's bunnies and Chipmunks goes with us everywhere he's so happy yeah he loves Alaska he loves Alaska second to that um you're pretty high up the happy list I'm really enjoying this so out of the 11 of us so far two were really enjoying this how about the rest of us hold on all right you've been living off grid in Alaska what are your first impressions well the first days it was really rainy and that was pretty uh pretty hard to get through the rainy days are sad and it's even sadder when my siblings just want to stay inside all day instead of going fishing what do you think about being off- Grid in Alaska uh it's fine I kind of like it I don't like when it's rainy weather then we can't play outside me too the bugs I'm a bug magnet there on there there there we can't just like get water we have to go outside to get it so like it's to pool in rain we have to go in the rain to get water right there here here there's a couple on my face what do you like about C life off grid well did one not nice part about it because it's really small and we and we always want to play somewhere but like everywhere like oh they chair there oh there to oh the here they a boss of clothes and we only have a puny living room in a very small upstairs because we have to fit all the ginormous mattresses and all the beds so the cabin fine it was kind of a mixed bag some of us were having fun the kids not so much well except this guy do you like offgrid Alaska yeah how come cuz it great we had it fun up it and we have fun playing outside what has been your favorite part about off-grid Alaska the mountains the mountains [Music] yeah he's not wrong the mountains in Alaska they are amazing of the 20 highest peaks in the United States 17 of them can be found in Alaska it's funny because the mountains they can be a lot like off-grid life from far away in somebody's Instagram picture they look beautiful peaceful serene but while we were in Alaska we actually hiked a couple Mountain Trails can you say cheese [Music] cheese when you're actually there on the trail with the kids it looks a lot different than it does on Instagram the babies's crying you forgot the snack pack somebody lost a boot somewhere it doesn't take very long to start asking yourself what was I thinking and I was Finding off-grid life to be a lot like those Mountain hikes some something that looked so beautiful and peaceful and Serene on somebody else's snapshot up close while I was going through it oh it all was starting to feel really different yeah all right everything is harder here everything doing dishes is harder cooking is harder making sure all the kids are comfortable is harder which just means there is not a moment to rest yesterday I wasn't feeling well felt sick and I wanted to crawl into bed but the bed's the couch in the middle of the cabin so I had to make the bed and then kids were sitting on me and then the cleanup making sure everything gets put inside the towels brought inside because it's going to rain all well feeling sick so that is so hard it's hard to see the kids be uncomfortable um with the bugs it is a really hard hard cabin and hard there are hard lots of Hard Days right now it's not to say it's awful every single day in every single moment but I feel like for me it's more hard and unpleasant now than enjoyable was that positive enough I actually was trying hard to put on a positive spin so the cabin's fine but more and more I could feel that I did not want to be here I was ready to leave this cabin because because it turns out I had fallen for a bait and switch and I realized this doing laundry believe it or not I was actually excited to try doing the laundry for my family off- grid by hand should have taken a before and after picture I had even went on to Amazon and ordered a handwashing plunger so I would be prepared to do this and never came I don't know what ever happened to it so I bought a couple of scrub brushes and we had in a pot oh hey can you put the water on for me so I'm going to soak these a little bit get the sand and everything off and then see see how we do washing by hand so I'm going to let this just soak for a little bit got it so much sand on it I probably soaked this a couple times I've got the detergent in there of course keeping how house involved more than just doing the laundry I was always trying to do a couple of things at once and on this particular day it meant juggling the laundry with cooking dinner we did a lot today so I'm a little behind just trying to throw something together really quick fried potatoes and uh some chicken little cluttered but I want to get everything cooking before before I clean what's it like having to cook outside for every meal as long as the weather's nice which actually it turned nice it was raining but now it's switched over I don't mind it it's just inconvenient so let's take all these little Twigs break them and pile them on top just like this so they're in a nice big pile that's perfect is that what cooking and laundry were a lot of work off grid so was cleaning especially in a tiny cabin that meant we Tred to eat as many meals as we could outside of course it was pretty cold as we've talked about extensively so for each meal we would try to get the kids together and light a fire so we could sit around the fire outside keeping the mess down and the temperature up mommy look at the fire wow that was fast lighting the fire was burning good and dinner was all done so we sat around we ate dinner as a family and afterward the kids decided they wanted to make [Music] s'mores Austin oversaw the s'mores while I was still doing chores all right that's our Sandy pot now I'm going to rinse I washed kind of scrubbed her clothes got all the sand off it's one of those moments where you think isn't it easier to just have a washing machine then I could be out making sores too doing I think there's a reason people who grew up with this way of life really embraced more modern communes so what are we looking for right what are we looking for that we a lot of us this is the life we want to go back to know give us another month maybe we'll figure it out preparing for life in offg Alaska I had this image in my head about what laundry day was going to look like it was going to look like something out of Little House on the Prairie I would get all the kids together we'd stand around the the wash basins we'd be scrubbing clothes clean from all the dirt that we've got on them after playing in the woods together and I would be telling them stories about my childhood and we'd laugh and we'd get our chores done together around the Basin and growing closer as a family yeah I know right this is not what happened why did I think that washing clothes by hand would be better than using a washing machine an invention that's considered by some to be the greatest invention of the entire Industrial Revolution for how it liberated women ah I guess for me it started with the Little House books Laura Eng Les Wilder's books were my favorite series to read when I was 6 years old how she described life on the homestead it had such a powerful influence over me and it made me want to have that life I had been dreaming of this simple Homestead Prairie life and now decades later as a mother and a wife I'd taken my whole family off- grid to Alaska to try to experience this and it turns out I'm not alone a lot of people are inspired right off the grid our neighbor John the guy who wrote the practical guide to off- grid living in Alaska he told us that back in his day everyone came to Alaska because of dick you know back at that time everybody wants to be dick preni and good Lord does that make it look appealing alone in the wilderness that was the name of the documentary it was good to be back in the wilderness again I was alone just me and the Animals it shared the story of Dick preni a man who decided to retire early head to the mountains of Alaska to build a cabin and film himself doing it which makes him I think technically the very first Alaska off- grid YouTuber unfortunately it was the 1960s and he was using a film camera so his only chance of going viral is if he drink the water without boiling it I know that would be bacteria it's just a joke guys I'm a dad I had to make it I watched that in like somebody's basement and he's like oh you're going to love this this is a great this is a great like documentary I'm like hm like this already sounds suspicious like it's it's not often you meet some random stranger who's super excited about a documentary that they like you have to sit down and watch this you have to see this documentary yeah and and it it was wow this is amazing this is really cool folks say that axman ship is a lost AR but I like to think I found it again in these cool Spruce Woods although dick filmed all his footage in the 1960s it was edited and released as a documentary in 2004 and it kind of sparked all the Alaska off-grid content that we have today because shortly thereafter a lot of the Alaska reality TV shows started popping up Life Below Zero new season starts Thursday on the brand new season of Alaskan Bush People the new season series of building Alaska this season on Alaska the Last Frontier over 20 years me and my best friend Bart have been walking on ice literally it's cold and it's dangerous okay ice guys is a Joel Haver joke it's pretty funny but when it comes to reality TV sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between what is reality and what is a joke John explained I I'll tell you one thing the one one reality show that I've seen one and a half half episodes of is the the Kure one now on an all new season of Alaska the lap Frontier here go and that's funny like actually one of them Jane I used to work with her and I didn't even know that like she has like fan clubs and stuff like I didn't know that she's like famous I did watch like an episode and a half of that show and I and and it was this whole like oh we've got to go go out and ice fish on Caribou Lake and it's always the time when you run out of fish and it's what we predominantly eat so it's a big deal so I'm really hoping we go home with some TR BBE this whole like oh we've got to go go out and ice fish on Caribou Lake because we need winter food and it's just like well you can just drive 9 miles on a maintained Road West to Safeway or you can snow machine 15 miles out across open country most half of the way and get a couple of fish through the ice where you spend far more in gas than you get from the fish right where it's like you should have just gone the Safeway Austin I really need to catch a lot of fish on this trip and if we don't get a lot of fish on this trip it would just would not be good in the winter time at all they still must race the clock to ensure that they have the meat they need to survive the winter oh two fish oh four fish Eve is counting on this protein to feed her growing family throughout the winter and now their family will have food for the winter that's a joke I heard a lot of alaskans make kind of riffing on the fact that reality TV doesn't really show the reality which is alaskans they're just like us they go to the grocery store a lot of people like to pick on reality TV for doing this but honestly it's not just reality TV who edits this stuff out again back to the example of dick preni like he had plane deliveries all the time right and you don't really see that the documentary and like for the most part editing these stories can seem pretty harmless right they're not showing you deliveries that dick got on a plane they're not showing you the kilter's going to the grocery store it's like an ouse the stuff it's not showing you nobody wants to see it [Music] anyway but just take a moment step into an off-grid ouse take a deep breath and you'll know just because you can't see the stuff that stinks doesn't mean it's not there and this is how people people get into trouble when they get inspired they head off to live a life like they saw on the TV forgetting the stuff that stinks everybody thinks they're going to come live off the land which can add more stress when you find out it's not what it was portrayed to be that's not the the reality that's not the reality right even if you saw it in reality TV right so often it's people that they don't really desire what's here if that makes makes sense the binocular I they desire some mythical ideal related to it but that's not what's actually here if if you know what I mean I so know what you mean we knew exactly what John meant he called it mythical the definition of that word mythical idealized especially with reference to the Past Alaskan reality TV definitely idealizes the Alaska offgrid life but it's not just reality TV the Little House series is based on Laura's life but it is considered historical fiction because some things are embellished and some things are taken out completely the PBS special about Dick preni it's called alone in the wilderness but dick wasn't alone he was getting regular shipments from Planes spending time in Native communities these stories that Inspire us these stories that were told they don't include all of the facts I think Laura Les herself says at best she's famously quoted as saying all I have told is true but it is not the whole truth and so that brings us to this uncomfortable question are they lying no these stories are exciting and inspirational and it's their right to share whatever part of their life that they want to with us I'm so glad they do so who lied to me well I'm going to quote a modern-day poet here and say it's me hi I'm the problem it's me can we do the thing nope I'm not going to do it come on I am not doing that just do it for me okay one [Music] time the problem I had lied to myself I took inspiration from Little House books and things I read and things I heard and I had built this reality that offgrid life would make everything bettery I thought it would make me a better version of myself I would be a better mom a better wife a better homekeeper because I would be off- grid and it would be an adventure and I would enjoy it but it turns out usually the opposite happens the struggles bring out somebody's true nature that maybe they've been hiding for a long time it might you and and we've seen it bring out alcoholism in neighbors and things like that or things that like they just they try but they like they get pushed beyond their limit and and then and then think you know once once it once it starts to spiral in that direction you it's very difficult to come back from I didn't realize it at the time but this spiral was just beginning for me okay so everything all our systems everything we're used to doing is different uh today was the first morning I actually made coffee and uh I have zero idea how good this is going to be one of two it's really good I was not expecting [Music] that can your coffee are you done no I still hav nice we've been so busy like settling in and setting up our cabin and you know moving in and getting things set up and working and setting up our kitchen outdoors and our water system we've not yet had had our morning coffee how's yours cold is it decaf it's de oh dang it do you think it's like what you said it's your same life but harder and more uncomfortable it feels like scarily accurate my life is so different every day it was true coming to Alaska to live off grid my life was so so [Music] different I was learning about solar power how to run our life in this cabin just from the sun's Rays I was busy trying to set up a perimeter fence to keep the bears away and as you know our family would need food to survive the winter so of course we went salmon fishing [Music] these Waters were full of salmon I couldn't believe it I'd never seen anything like it look at them jumping out there oh look at all them in the water right in front of me look at how many fish are in there swimming oh man look at them I can see like three or four right there I got a fish it was unbelievable I have never seen so many fish in my life we didn't catch any salmon yet but I knew it was only a matter of time as a father as a protector as a provider every day I was getting more and more confident learning more little bit by little bit becoming this hardcore off- grid Alaskan dad the days were never too [Music] long you the end of my but for Kay the Alaska offgrid challenge was the complete opposite and I was starting to worry about her like what is there anything we can do my life is so different every day but yours is very similar well I guess my struggles here are the same as they are at home it's keeping everything clean except it's harder to keep it all clean keeping it all organized except it's harder to keep it all organized feeding everybody which is harder to do much harder laundry which is harder to do everything's harder so yeah it's just it's it's a different experience we're still doing stuff together you are actually helping out more than you do at home which is nice so it's just harder work in a different [Music] place I love being a mom and a wife but my biggest struggle has always been dealing with the daytoday monotony of what I have to do so the everyday dishes the everyday laundry the everyday constant cleaning up of a house that's just going to get messy again I thought running to Alaska an adventure off grid would change this but I was running away from something that I couldn't actually run away from sometimes quite literally we have had people that are running from yes it's are you running from something or are you running from something that you're afraid of or want to avoid or are you running towards something that you desire which brings us back to where we started with this episode Austin and I walking down the dirt road I was talking about quitting oh this is not going to be for YouTube oh no no this is about us quitting on this thing okay so there I was feeling disappointed that all of my little house cabin Last Frontier dreams weren't coming true and even when laundry and washing dishes were were harder I still didn't like doing them in that moment I just wasn't in the mood to see the good so I went back to the cabin to feel sorry for [Music] myself so Austin held down the fort for an hour or so until the Sun finally came back out and I I decided I wanted to finish the walk that we had started earlier [Music] daddy daddy where I'm like a pig who loves to wallow in the mud when he's sad K's more like a cow she heads out to the field and ruminates on what's bugging her she's not one to feel sorry for herself very long this was a path that was always full of surprises we would see bear prins or moose tracks what do we got bear track show me Point put your hand down in here here you see [Music] that air tracks we keep going on this walk and it takes us to an Overlook we saw something that we had actually never seen we'd been Alaska for 2 weeks and yet out in the Horizon with the clouds clearing for the very first time we saw a beautiful snowcapped volcano for the first two weeks in Alaska the sky had been so gray we never realized there was this gorgeous Mountain View right outside our door my disappointments were a lot like those gray clouds blocking an amazing Mountain View I was so discouraged when offgrid Alaska wasn't perfect that I couldn't see the amazing things right in front of me I had made this dream of someone else's story and I was so busy chasing that that I was missing out on my reality which when I finally looked up and pushed aside the disappointment and saw it it [Music] was [Music] incredible the reality is I I don't even know I I should have thought of this ahead of time the reality is that if it's it's great in a lot of ways that you might not expect living off grid in Alaska had thrown a lot at us that we didn't expect we didn't expect life in the tiny cabin to be so hard we didn't expect the weather to be so bad we didn't expect most of the things we'd experienc these first two weeks but we also didn't expect a guy who literally wrote a book about living off grid to be one of our neighbors who else was around us who else can we learn from when you go to a place where people have been living successfully for decades they've been living there successfully for decades and everything they do this is especially true if you go to like a native village where they've been doing it for literally thousands of years everything they do has been refined over all that time there's a reason people do things the way that they do them and it's because they probably tried a lot of things that didn't work and that's the natural process they refine they throw out what doesn't work they keep what does and so when you come to a place where there are established ways of doing things you want to ask people about those ways you don't want to just try that thing that you saw on Pinterest that maybe worked for somebody in Missouri or maybe worked for somebody in Texas and it was cute as hell but it's not going to work here so I would would say ease into it move to the Community First make friends learn skills find out who the oldtimers are we knew now what we needed to do we needed to find our own community and so we did you can you can take all the advice you want from someone living in a different state but when it comes down to it someone who's right in your local area really will have the best knowledge so I learned a ton from those guys is it confidence is it stupidness is it a little bit of yeah for sure both yeah yeah you know we started getting invitations from others in the offgrid community to come and see their setups come on over to Tiny land you can see walk through um the space here so you can see what this feels like we could learn from them these people wanted to help us yeah that wasn't fun no and I when I think of that I'm like I could be legit if I wash my laundry by hand and it makes me like break out in a cold sweat I don't even like laundry in a washing machine I really not going to like it in a bucket they wanted to share their mistakes and their successes their experience even their fishing spots nice job how about that first rainbow it started with a tent yeah people go camping and they're willing to give up like 90% of everything for a week or 2 weeks and my thought is like well what if I could do that for a year and then like save a million dollars yeah and that's what we did there's just one problem Alaska it's a big big place so to learn from these experts get better at off-grid Living ourselves and hopefully catch a couple salmon we needed to pack up our stuff and go to a different cabin in a different part of Alaska but don't you worry because of course this cabin too was off [Music] grid an he sounded so happy that there was actually an out house [Music] it's the Mir oh mosquito neck great idea guys coming up in the rest of the Alaska offgrid series we travel all throughout Alaska St in multiple offgrid cabins learning more about off-grid setups and [Music] systems daddy fire and that was so calm Miss so nice I got but more importantly learning from the experts who have been living this lifestyle to answer the question of not how we can go off grid but even what became a more overwhelming concern did we even want to be off-grid if I don't have water plumbed in my cabin I'm going to have a better life if I don't have laundry in my cabin I'm going going to have a better life this is all all things I thought and I don't think that's true any [Music] anymore this was the second big lesson we learned in the Alaska offgrid challenge if you're going to build an offgrid life become a part of the offgrid community get help from real people who have real experience don't just Google it or look on Pinterest go find people who've been doing this a long time become their friend and learn from them if you missed the first lesson from the Alaska offgrid challenge you better just go back and start from the beginning it's a big reason why people fail in off-grid dreams you don't want to miss that so click here to go back and start this journey from the very beginning and if you love our Channel and want to help us keep making Taylor Swift impression videos you can take advantage of our homestudy Pioneer Black Friday sale it is a huge discount on our monthly membership click here to become a Pioneer help us keep making these videos that was good

Channel: Homesteady

Views: 988,260

Keywords: farm, farming, homesteading, homesteady, homesteaders, backyard farming

Id: TX1f5x8_O1o

Length: 41min 50sec (2510 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 14 2023