313. Can Homemakers Balance It All? Q&A on Motherhood, Home Birth, Babywearing, Farmhouse Updates, and More!

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CUI more than 3 million families have chosen K-12. Find a K-12 powered school near you today. Enrollment portals are now open. Go to k-12.com.slashfarmhouse to learn more. That's the letter K, the number 12.com.slashfarmhouse. K-12.com.slashfarmhouse. I heard this statement from a homeschooling mom on another podcast. I would love to hear your opinion on this. You can homeschool, have a clean house and cook from scratch, but you can only have two. Okay, there's so many factors to consider here. What ages are your kids? So do you have babies? Can your children read? Here's the thing. We don't have to put perfection expectations on ourselves. If today the house needs a ton of attention and we have leftovers or a simple meal, then that will be today's priority. You can't do all of it all the time. My name is Lisa, mother of nine and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boon. On this podcast, I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses, Simple Sourdough and the Simple Sewing series. I also help people reach their goals from home through my business courses, Create Your Blog Dream and YouTube Success Academy. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes in the description box below. Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today with Miriam here on my lap, I'll be doing another solo episode. So taking some of your questions from the Google sheet. So we have that over at bit.ly forward slash sfl questions. There's a lot of good ones here. I also thought about talking a little bit about the house right now. We're right in the middle of a build for those of you who follow along. You already know that because I share about it on Instagram, on YouTube, here on the podcast. And some questions I've had about building. I know I'm going to get a lot of specific questions once we're actually living in the house and I don't even know what we're doing with the interior yet, but we will address that as it comes. So in regards to the house build, where we are currently, which we're filming this in late October. And yes, I am still so hot. So I'm still wearing a tank top. I feel like postpartum. I get really hot. And we don't have the heat on in our house yet. And it's definitely cold outside. And I'm still wearing a tank top. But that is because I'm carrying around the baby all day long. But it is late October. And in about two weeks, we are finally going to get our casement windows. I don't think I have shared a whole lot about the the saga, not really saga, but it's been a little bit tricky with the type of house we are building. Things aren't always standard measurements. And so we're having a long wait for certain things. And though we have in half of our windows that we got back in August, we are still waiting on the other half of our windows. There are the casement windows. So instead of the ones that are double hung, where they open, you know, up and down, they will open out. They will go in the windowed in back porch, which is the narrative that Brent Hall and I came up with for our home. So if you haven't heard yet about my whole, we're building a new old house, and the narrative and the story, as Brent says, that we have designed for this house, I did share a YouTube video all about that, actually several. And I believe I have talked a lot about it on the podcast. But basically, it's supposed to look like an addition off the back, a porch that was windowed in. This will have our pantry, which I'm really excited about having a pantry that has a really beautiful view down to the barn with these windows that open out casement windows, and then a few other rooms as well. So we're still waiting on those, which means that we're kind of at a standstill with what we can do inside. So obviously, you can't put in insulation without, in drywall, without having all of your windows, because it could get wet. We are and have moved forward on plumbing, electrical, HVAC. So the moment those windows come in here in a couple weeks, we will be able to do insulation and all of the walls and the trim and all of that good stuff. Right now, the focus has been on the exterior. And once I heard how long the windows were going to take, I thought we would just be sitting around for months just simply waiting on the windows. But because we are doing a few things on the exterior that require a little bit more time, we actually have not yet been waiting on the windows. Now, there might end up being a week or so, but we're about two weeks out from windows or the rest of the windows. And we still aren't waiting for them. So at the most, it might be about a week, because I think we have about a week's worth of work left on the exterior before we're at a standstill. But with electrical and plumbing and all that, things have definitely been moving along slowly, but surely. So on the exterior, some of the things that we are doing that are taking tons of time, we are doing wood siding. And we did not even realize that we would need to paint both sides of the siding. So we chose cedar clapboard siding. It's five and a half inches wide. It comes in random lengths. And we're overlapping them so that we have a four inch exposure. So each piece of siding, you know, it'll overlap enough that you'll see four inches. This is a historic look. At first, I thought, oh, what is by siding? And then we'll put it up in local paint. And not that that's just because of course, that's a huge job too. But I didn't know that for longevity, even if it's cedar, you should technically paint both sides. Now, do you have to? No. But it's highly recommended. And I'm kind of in this mindset of we're doing this now so that when we are 75 years old, we're not worrying about, you know, replacing all of our siding because it rotted from behind. So we painted all sides. Now Luke was doing this all 100% himself, painting all the windows, painting all the window trim, all the crown molding, all the siding. We ended up for three weeks, bringing in help. So we brought in a painting crew for about three weeks. And now we have it done enough and caught up enough that Luke is finishing it up. So the reason that we had to get some help on this, well, one, because we don't have that much time, I did not realize how much painting and Luke has put in. I don't even know how many hours he's been staying late nights, going out early in the morning. So he's been putting in time for months now. But also, we got to a point where the builders were going to be waiting on us to get them primed on the back. Because of course, we could prime it on the house on the front. But the backs, once they're on, you can't do that. Also, I was worried about the overlap. So if there's a concern for moisture getting in and rotting it from the other side, of course, there's also that same concern where the boards overlap. So I really wanted them primed before going up on the front and the back. So we were at a point where the builders were going to have to be waiting to put the siding on. We didn't want that. So we brought in help for a little bit, got all caught up on the siding. And then now that it's up, Luke's doing the second and third coat of the linseed oil paint, now that it's in place. Because all we really needed for the overlap was a prime coat. We didn't need the top coat because that's really, of course, it further protects the wood, but it's also mostly for looks. And the priming should be enough to protect the wood. So that was a huge job. Another example of that is we are doing crown molding, which all of these details, they are what come together to make a house look old. And honestly, when I looked at the plans that Brent helped me design, I knew the house looked old, but I didn't exactly notice all the reasons why it looked old. And we're uncovering that layer by layer as we are working on this house, like, okay, that little detail we see up there, that's a piece of crown molding. Well, again, we primed the back and the front before it went on, which is just a huge job. But ultimately, now where we are right now, the house truly looks so historic that I'm glad we did it, but it is definitely delaying the whole project. So for example, my sister, she's building right now too, and they broke ground in July, and they are past us, they're already at drywall, we still aren't at drywall. And we started back in February. So it's taking a lot of extra time to do these details. But it does actually make the house look old, which was my big goal. That wasn't my sister's goal. So she's, she's on track with her goal too. But I really wanted the house to look old. I knew it was going to be more work. I don't know if I knew how much work. But that was one of the things I wanted to talk about on here, because I've had people say, well, how would you do this a bit more simply? Because there's definitely a way to do it more simply. And since, you know, I'm an observer of old houses, I've been an observer of old houses for so many years. I have personally lived in three old houses that are 100 plus years old. So I've had a lot of time to observe the details of an old house. And since kind of digging in deeper into the houses from different eras, I watch shows on this, I read books on this, my favorite show is Restored. That's a great one in Restoration Road. Those are really great shows that I've been enjoying several seasons of both. I'm just about through them. So that's no fun. If you guys know any more, let me know. But further observing everything and even driving around my town and just my area, I have been noticing styles of houses that are a lot more simple, but still look old. And so that's something that I want to talk about a bit because I've had people say, okay, what's the thing that makes the difference? I even asked Brent that question. And there are a few things that I think make a really big difference. One would be the proportions. And this is tricky to get right to the point where I was really hesitant to design the house myself, because there are so many little things that relate to each other, like the pitch of the roof and the placement of the windows, how close are they to the roof? How close are they to the porch below it? How wide is the house? How wide the chimney is compared to the width of the house and how far is the window from the chimney? These are important things that can really go wrong fast because people don't really build with proportions in mind anymore. And even back in the day, the simplest houses had a certain beauty because of paying attention to the form and the proportions and the dimensions of everything that we really don't do today. Now, today, we kind of design houses from the inside out. So we think, okay, do I want a window in this room? Not thinking, will this window line up with the window below it from the exterior? Now, I know there are people who think, yeah, why would that matter? Why would you ever design anything other than from the inside out? So I'm not saying there's a right or a wrong, but if you want a house to look historic and have that simple symmetry that I think we all appreciate when we see it, even if we don't realize why we're appreciating it, requires some of these thoughts. So I have been paying attention to houses that are very, very simple. They don't have that many windows. So we have a lot of windows, which means that there's a lot more work and expense that goes into that. I don't regret it. I think that they're going to be beautiful. But I think that if you could choose a house that's a bit smaller, has less windows, a more simple design, you can still totally achieve a historic look, but in a much simpler way, one that maybe doesn't require painting of just hundreds of feet of crown molding. So I've been collecting together pictures in my phone as I see homes like this in real life, and I plan to put together some kind of video. But looking at houses that I'm thinking, okay, now that I have gone through this process on the exterior of building a home that I want to look historic, I can see that that house there doesn't have all of the details, but yet still has a historic simplicity to it that could be replicated fairly easily. A good place, of course, is Colonial Williamsburg. We went there last May and took tons of photos and just dreamt about the project that we're doing now. A lot of it still hasn't come to fruition because I really paid attention to the gardens and I need to look back in my phone at those photos when we get to that point. Maybe we just need to go back to Colonial Williamsburg again. But there are houses there of all different design complexity. There are very simple ones that just have wood clapboard siding, but are just one story and have a simple porch. Maybe I forget all the names for things, and I'm so not an expert. But the observations that I've had over the last year, two years, as we've been dreaming about this project that we're doing now, has really led me to believe that this can be done with all different budgets and different styles. I hope to go more in depth on that at some point, but it's been a really fun process. I do think one of the details that makes a huge difference, and I know people don't want to hear it, is the wood siding. Now, do you need to have a house that is essentially three stories like ours because we ended up finishing the attic and have a very tall house that's hard to get to all the siding and as much siding as us know? But I do think a simple home with wood siding really does make a huge, huge difference. If you can do a lot of the painting yourself that can definitely cut down on cost, we actually ended up ordering too much siding, which is frustrating because I'm like, now what are we going to do? We talked about building Miriam a playhouse. We talked about who knows what we'll do with it. But I think that matters as long as the sizes are correct on the windows and where they are on the building in relationship to the roof line, to the ground, you can get inexpensive, you can get less expensive windows and trim them out with some nice thick moldings. I think the proportions are the most important aspect and then a lot of salvage. If you can get salvage porch posts, of course, if you have less of them, that'll make that a little bit easier. So again, with a smaller, more simple design, it's a lot more doable. If you want to see an update on our home, just go watch my latest YouTube video, I think. I'm trying to think of which video will coincide with this episode. I try to do little updates in all of my videos. So likely it is in a recent video, but I'll just tell you where we are right now. And also I do share real-time updates over on Instagram. So our house is cited. One detail I absolutely love is the Gable End Returns. So this is on the, again, I don't know all the technical terms. And my builder calls them bird boxes. He's like, what do you call those Gable End Returns? Built them beautifully. Didn't know what they were called. I don't think he's ever really done them before because he actually kind of finished them off how, and my builder does this, he likes to move. And so he will just do something and then hope that it's, you know, what we wanted. And so he kind of finished them how he thought and put a little like roof on them. And once I saw it, I was like, oh no, I remember seeing on one of Brent's videos how to do Gable End Returns and how to do them right. Again, this is a simple thing. It's not that expensive to add these Gable End Returns on your house. It's a fairly simple detail. It's just not done anymore. Therefore, builders don't necessarily know how to do them. So I watched the video again, and he said, the one thing you don't do is you do not put a little roof on the Gable End Return. So I had to go break the news to my builder. Like, I know that probably took you forever to lay out the roof like that, but that's not what we want. But anyways, he did a beautiful job. Like it looks like historic houses in our area. So I went around and took pictures of all the Gable End Returns of old homes in our area and showed him, and then he nailed it. So basically, they come in, you know, from the Gable, and they are wrapped with crown molding, and they're just gorgeous. So those are there, the crown's on them. Luke today is out finishing the porch. So painting it with linseed oil paint. We had to wait until we got everything done on the porch. So all of the columns from Chad's Worth Columns, the bead board from Windsor One along the top, we wanted to make sure they mostly had the porch all buttoned up before we finished it so that we could stay off of it for several days, because linseed oil paint takes a while to dry. So the exterior is almost fully done. Our building crew is working on a couple of stoops, as we're calling them. So basically off the sunroom and off the fake back porch, there are these little decks, basically. And once they get those done, and the rest of the trim on, then we're basically at a stopping point until we get those windows. So more updates on that coming very soon. And it'll be on YouTube, it'll be on Instagram. That's a good visual place to see it. Okay, what kind of oven are you putting in the new house? I did share this on a podcast episode, but I'll share it again. We are getting the La Conch, the smaller La Conch, not the massive one. What's it called? The Clooney, I think. I ordered that just so many months ago. At this point, it came in too early. And so we're actually having it stored, and we haven't even gotten it yet, because we don't have room for it, because we're painting so much in the garage. We don't have space for it. We also are doing a wood cook stove from Thornhill Ranges. So I was able to talk to the owner of Thornhill Ranges and told them about my project, and it's sitting in the garage right now. I'm super excited. I really, really hoped that all winter, I would be, you know, there'd be a fire in it. We'd be sitting in the kitchen with a little fire, because they actually have a glass window in the part where the fire is. So you can see it and be baking sourdough bread in that. So half the year, we will have two ovens. And then in the summer, we will have one, which is just so exciting. I mean, not that we need to. We make it just fine on one, but I'm designing the dream kitchen right now. So that is what we went with, and I'm really looking forward to it. Would love to hear from your sister about running a farming business, currently putting plans in place for raising and butchering cows, goats, and pigs for sale. Her guidance would be much appreciated. I know she supplies your family with meat, so she should be knowledgeable. Okay, my sister, the one you're talking about, actually started posting on YouTube. So if you go over on YouTube and search New Hartford Farm Co., she has a YouTube channel, and she is sharing what it's like farming with kids, because she truly does farm. It's not like a cutesy little homestead, kind of like I like to do, where, yeah, you know, it's, it's fun, and it's a good experience for the kids, and we will, you know, milk a cow and not really sell the milk and not really do much meat. It's mostly, you know, it's a hobby. Hers is not. Hers is a real farm. She really sells meat. That's what she does for a job. And now she has two kids, and they are two, and the other one is nine months. I need to do my math here. Yes, he's nine months. And so she is doing this, running an 80 acre farm that she purchased when she was 21, with a baby on her back and a little toddler by her side, and she's sharing about it over on YouTube. So I think that that would be a good place as she shares more and more for you to learn, because we were talking about her YouTube channel and trying to figure out like what she should share. And she wants to share a lot about incorporating, you know, how she gets this done with kids around, first of all, and then also more of the nuts and bolts of it. Because even I don't quite fully understand everything and how it works. And I grew up around farming. I grew up on a farm. But as a kid, you know, I didn't pay that much attention. And so there's still certain things that we really don't know. Now we plan on our farm, we're actually working currently on the pasture. We just planted a pasture blend on the acreage that's right in front of our house, because we want to raise some cattle as well. But there's just so much I don't know. And I've been asking her and her husband, like, hey, what should we plant? How do we convert this pasture, you know, from what it was before into a pasture? And they they're very, very knowledgeable. She ended up marrying someone who studied this in college and who works in agriculture. So between the two of them, they really know what they're doing. And they're incorporating a lot of regenerative practices. And it's very interesting. So if you want to know more about that, yes, new Hartford Farm Co over on YouTube. Do you have any suggestions on how to use raw milk once your cream is skimmed? Our family gets raw milk each week from a local farm. And with one of the half gallons, I skim off the cream to make butter, but I'm not sure how to use the rest of that half gallon once the cream is gone. We have enough whole milk gallons to drink. Do you feed skim milk to your animals? Any good fermenting uses? I've been tossing it lately and hate to do that. Okay, so I just drink it. That's not something I would worry about. Because for us, the milk is still very rich and creamy, even without the cream that's on top. So we typically skim that cream off. I mean, I script skim some off for my coffee. I don't usually make much butter with it right now, since we don't have that much milk, since we're not milking our own cow. And the milk that we get right now only has a cream line that's maybe like three or four inches. It's not huge. And so I wouldn't have enough to make butter, but I do skim off for coffee. And then what's left is still really delicious and sweet. So the kids drink it. I make a lot of chocolate milk. So I'll put some cocoa powder, some honey, a protein powder, some colostrum in it, blend that up, give it to the kids. For myself, I'll even add like a raw egg or something to give it more protein. Because I'm not great at sitting down in the morning and eating breakfast. So I like to make myself like a protein type of shake. And that works great for me. So yeah, we drink it. I don't worry about that. I would not... We don't have the quantity right now to give it to any animals. Now, if we were milking our own cow, there's definitely situations where you end up with just way too much milk. But buying it from a farm, like we don't have that kind of milk. We just drink it all. You could also make it into yogurt, into kefir, but I use it just like any other milk. Lots of questions I've been getting about my wrap over on YouTube, on Instagram. So I do baby wear all the time when I have a baby of this age. Of course, babies don't enjoy being in a wrap when they're sitting down. So that's why Miriam is out of the wrap. But I'm trying to get anything done around the house. She is always in it. And this person says, do you have a woven wrap brand you like? I just have my fourth baby can barely wear her because it hurts my back. My body is so weak. I also think it's overstretched from wearing it so much with other babies so it doesn't hold as tight. Thinking of trying a woven wrap to see if having more structured wrap helps. Okay. And then somebody else said, is your wrap different from the wrap you wore years ago when I did a wrap tutorial over on YouTube? So still to this day, my number one most viewed video on YouTube is my video where I was wrapping my fifth child. So this was eight years ago now. Well, he's almost eight. And I was using, I believe, a Sally Baby Wrap in that one. And the Sally Baby Wrap, it's great. No complaints. It's lightweight. It fits really easily in your bag. Whereas a woven wrap takes up more space. It's heavier. It's more expensive. However, if I were to be choosing one wrap and one wrap only and say I am pregnant with my first baby and I'm going to have 10 kids, let's just say, which you never know how many kids you're going to have. But you know, you want a large family. I would 100% invest in a woven wrap. Now, the first woven wrap I purchased, I think it was with my sixth child. I had never tried one until then. I got it over on Poshmark. I still have it to this day. I do like to keep two. You could definitely get by with one because they are expensive, but they are cheaper on Poshmark. However, Miriam spits up a lot. Not all of my kids spit up a lot. Several of them did. And so we get it dirty. Plus I wear it in the kitchen. And so if she falls asleep and we're eating dinner, I'm leaving her in there. So you're eating food over top of this wrap. They just get very dirty. Babies poop out of their diapers. Things happen. And so it's nice to have two because one will be in the laundry and the other one will be with me. I cannot live without a wrap with a newborn. Even if I didn't have more kids, we were talking about this the other day, my sister and I was like, I don't get how people do it without a wrap because most of the time, she's being very content right now, content little baby, just sitting here on my lap. But a lot of times, unless the baby's nursing or unless you're, you know, bouncing them and giving them your absolute full attention, you can't just hold them like this and expect to go about your day doing things. They're not super settled. They're not happy. Whereas when I put her in the wrap, get her very snug and secure. If she's tired especially, it settles her in a matter of moments. It's just so easy to get her to sleep that way. All my babies have been this way. So I don't know how anybody would live without a wrap. Wraps are so crucial to me, which is why if one's in the laundry, I can't really make it until it's done. Like it's got to get out of the laundry. If I did only have one, I guess I would wash it and dry it before bed so that I had it in the morning. I don't use it overnight, of course. But my current wrap, if you search on Google, Farmhouse on Boone Diddymos, D-I-D-D-D-Y-M-O-S, I'm going to see if that result. Yeah, the first thing that comes up and the reason that that is, because I actually purchased this wrap, I don't believe they sent it to me. No, I definitely purchased it. They ended up seeing my reel or something. And so it says as featured on Farmhouse on Boone, which is why I knew that if I searched it, it would come up. But it's the Prima Natural Woven Wrap by Diddymos. And I could be saying that wrong. That is my favorite wrap. It's soft. It gets softer with time. It lasts forever because it's not a thin little fabric. It just gets better with age and it would last through all children. It's, you know, if you don't mind, it has a burn hole in it because my daughter had it one time with one of our kids by a campfire. And anyways, I'm still, it's still fine. It probably has a few stains on it, but it is just the nicest wrap. And like you said, it doesn't stretch out. So you can get it very tight and secure and it won't loosen throughout the day. Now, I wrap in that from newborn. The first time Miriam was in it was probably a little bit before she was even two weeks old. I have the size six for reference. I'm five, five, I don't know how many pounds I've weighed myself in forever. But anyways, that is what I would buy if you want to buy something new. My other one is called, I just was looking this up for my younger sister. It's called Pavo, P-A-V-O. And they're no longer in business we discovered, but you can still find it on like Poshmark or eBay. And because they are so thick and nice, even getting it used is totally fine because they don't get holes and stretched out. They, they last. It's a high quality fabric. And when I say thick, I don't mean like cumbersome thick, but make sure you get the right fabric because I do also have a wool one that I never use because it's just way too heavy. It's beautiful, but I never use it. My favorites are definitely my Pavo and then this Prima Natural Woven Wrap by Denimose. So if you even want to search something else, you could look at the fabric content of that one and then see if you can find one similar, a similar weight and fabric on like Poshmark or something. But size six is great to have a lot of extra tie room in the back. And as the baby grows, my green one from Pavo is a size five. It works well also, but I definitely prefer the size six. It, it just gives me more leeway. And over the years, I've discovered ways of wrapping it better for when they're awake, wrapping it better for when they're asleep. If you feel like you can't get it tight enough, just give it time because you can get them so cozy and tight in that thing. And I need to do a tutorial on just one of my YouTube videos, one of these days, because there are tricks for how to get the baby in there really secure. It's something that I've worked on over the years. The thing about a woven wrap too, is you can also do a back carry. So that's really nice. Basically, you can do everything with it. You can do toddlers, you can do newborns, you can do back, you can do front. That's what is so great about it, where it's like a stretchy wrap, a knit wrap. That's not the case. You can really only do little babies and on the front. So if you're trying to think, okay, what's the one wrap I should buy, that would be what I would say. Have you ever considered a water berth? Honestly, no. And I know people swear by them. And I've talked about this on here before, I'm sure. But that Bradley method works so well for me. And you can't do it in the water. I know people say they can. But I really don't think you can because the position that Bradley prescribes is so specific. And it works so incredibly well when you get the hang of it. And I preach this. And you know, it's one of those things again, I know how humans are. We all have the thing that works for us. And then we want everybody to do it just like that, because it's the only way. And so I'm not saying that. Like, I can understand that water berth is awesome. But I have practiced my Bradley method, I've gotten to that Bradley method position. And I know how deeply relaxed and pain free I can make, I can get and make the berth, because I've done it for eight children. Now I've done the Bradley method, that I just would never want to try something else. I will say that I with one of my berths got into the bathtub during like, I don't know, not like the hard part of labor, like I was, I didn't, I wasn't checked yet, but I'm sure I never really am checked. But I'm sure I was very far into labor. And the contractions I had in there were absolutely awful, because I couldn't get fully relaxed as in the Bradley method. Now I will say, and somebody told me, you cannot compare that, because that was a claw foot tub that wasn't like a squishy, comfortable birthing pool. You're right, it wasn't. And so I've never actually tried it. So I really can't knock it, because I've never tried it. However, I watch birth stories, and I see women in those berth pools, and they're leaning against the side, and they're like swaying, and they look very much in pain. And I can tell you, when I get in my relaxed, very, very, very relaxed position, I look like I'm sleeping because truly, I'm so relaxed that I'm not even experiencing that pain. And I just, I just wouldn't want to, wouldn't want to mess with that. Plus it sounds like a lot of work, like you're in the middle of labor. And then at some point, you're like, all right, we got to like get this pull out and fill it all up. And I'm trying to, one, deny that I'm in labor, because that's a really good coping strategy for me, is to, until it's like really strong, and it's undeniable, just go along with the day. And then also, it's making it to where when you're in this hard part of labor, there's like something to worry about. Whereas at this point, for me, I'm always in the bed in my super relaxed position, just basically like writing out every wave, so relaxed. And so I'm very biased about the Bradley method, though I know people have wonderful experiences with water births. So I'm sure they're awesome. I'm sure there are some of you who feel as strongly about water births as I do about Bradley. It's where you're like, oh, I would never, ever consider a natural birth without being in a water tub. So I understand we all have our things. And because of that, no, I once I did my first Bradley method birth, which was 15 years ago with my second, I never switched back after that. Oh, this is a good idea, which I've never done. Okay, first off, I attribute 99% of my sourdough skill and confidence to you. But I recently heard somewhere to use sourdough starter in place of adding flour to make a roux. I love the idea of adding already fermented flour, but the flavor it adds to dishes is incredible. If you haven't tried it, 10 out of 10 recommend. I have not tried that, and I will definitely have to try that. So instead of to like a soup that you're trying to thicken up or a gravy adding in starter, never thought of that. That's a good tip. Highly said in the process of buying a small home, what tips do you have for adding character to a home on a very tight budget? I'd also love to know what books you recommend for country cottage home and decor inspiration, which I had all my books sitting here, I put them back on the shelves because it was taking up too much space in my room. I have so many country farmhouse type books. So one is country house living. I have a few books by Gil Schaefer. They're not as country style, but I get a lot of inspiration from them. Actually, there's quite a bit of country style, a lot of high end stuff, but you can still take from it and apply it to a more simple house, which is what I'll be doing. My house is supposed to feel very country, very lived in, relaxed, and that is definitely what I'm going to be going for. No matter what, no matter if I decorated it fancy, it couldn't stay that way if I tried. In the kitchen, we're doing bead board on the ceilings and the walls, and so that's something that we did in our last house too, which adds so much country character. My younger sister just built the one that has the farm, and she just added bead board to her kitchen and added so much character. So wall stuff like that, like bead board, v-groove, that really helps a time. In our first house, I was working on a super tight budget, and so it was just tons of paint and sewing. So I did slip covers for old couches that we inherited, made pillows, made curtains from fabric I found at the thrift shop, or like old sheets, that kind of stuff. So lots of sewing, lots of DIY, lots of painting, that just can make all the difference in the world. Okay, I have no clue how I'm going to answer this one. It's one of those things I'm like, okay, shall I even read this out loud? I heard this statement from a homeschooling mom on another podcast, and would love to hear your opinion on this. You can homeschool, have a clean house, and cook from scratch, but you can only have two. Okay, there's so many factors to consider here. What ages are your kids? So do you have babies? Can your children read? Because if all of your kids are readers, then you can be around them to answer all their questions, but you don't have to spoon feed them every part of homeschool, which is nice, and they can be independent learners. I'm not at that point yet. Not all of my kids can read, obviously. So homeschool is quite demanding, and actually, Luke and I do it together, which is such a blessing. So this is coming from somebody who does have Luke home with me. Now, today, Luke actually left early to paint, which we're in a weird season of life where we actually don't have this going on right now, and I'm having to handle a lot of things solo. And I'd say the thing that didn't happen today is a clean house. So maybe I do agree with this. We did have a very simple from scratch meal. We did not have, I mean, it was just chili. So we have sausage from a local farm. We actually know it wasn't. We were going to do chili, and then realized we had no canned tomatoes. That's not what we had. We had sausage from a local farm, cut up potatoes, cut up carrots, and I already had some homemade bone broth in the refrigerator, topped it with cheese. We made sort of like a cheeseburger soup, except for with sausage. And my 14-year-old made that completely by herself, so I did not have to do it. So I did homeschool. Nobody cleaned the house, and my daughter made lunch. So it's probably true, but here's the thing. We don't have to put perfection expectations on ourselves. Like, if today the house needs a ton of attention, and we have leftovers or a simple meal, then that will be today's priority. You can't do all of it all the time, and sometimes it requires like everybody pulling together on a Saturday and cleaning it back up. So yeah, the house can be clean that day, but all week it being perfectly clean? No. I would say that that is definitely true. It also depends on how many kids you have. If you have a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old that you're homeschooling, you could do all three of those things for sure. Like, I want to say that you could have a clean house, homeschool and cook from scratch for sure. If you can't, there's too many other outside obligations. If you have little children who are running around while you're trying to help your 10-year-old with their math, which is what I currently have, of course they're going to throw whatever toys you have out. Now, do we keep things extremely minimal so the mess isn't overwhelming? Yes, but do we still have some Duplo Legos that they're playing with and a puzzle that they got out this morning and it's chilly outside so they got into the gloves and the hats and ran outside? Of course. Like, that's no matter how minimal you keep it, you still have items like those items are all, we've decluttered a lot, but we still do have a puzzle. We still do have Duplo's and we still do have hats and gloves. So yes, I don't know if it's really that cut and dry. Like, there are families, my sister's family actually, they're organized and because both husband and wife, my sister and brother-in-law are also organized people, they birthed organized people. They just came out that way. Like, their two-year-old sees shoes over by our trampoline and he's like, why are these shoes by the trampoline? Like, he can't believe that there's a child that would leave their shoes whereas every single one of my kids would leave shoes by the trampoline. It's like an ongoing joke that we have that one time one of her kids was like, mom, there was a toothbrush by the trampoline. I'm like, I'm not surprised. Like, my kids are always doing things that just unthinkable at their house and so her house is clean. She does cook from scratch and she does homeschool and she does it all very, very well. And it's again, it's like a thing we talk about in our family. My mom, we were talking about this the other day, my sister wasn't even there. My mom and dad were talking, we were all talking about it. And my dad was like, I just don't get it. Everything's so easy for her. And my mom said, which I had never heard her say this before, but she said when she was a young mom and she had four daughters, people would say to her, I just don't get how you get everything done. And she's like, and I told them, I don't, I have Lara. Like, that's my sister. And so some people can do all three of those things and do it without being stressed out and have a large family. And that's just there a lot in life. And we can't always compare ourselves because we're not all the same people. And also another thing I do want to say is there are people online who will, if they see someone doing things well, and know that they personally struggle with getting certain things done, who will say, that's not real. There's just no way I tried it. It's not possible. Well, for some people it is. And it really depends on a lot of things. And so in our family, we can manage pretty well. Like I wouldn't say it's chaos. My house is decent right now. Like if people came over, I wouldn't be embarrassed. But it's by no means perfect for a lot of people. It might not even be considered clean. Like I don't know your standards. But we can't do all of the things, all of the time, all at the same time. And you just have to consider, you know, what obligations you have. Like if you have some kind of obligation that another person doesn't have, and you're not factoring that in, then, you know, it's just so hard to say. But I don't think that statement is true for everyone. And it depends on so many factors. Has it been worth it for you guys to have Luke do so much behind the scenes work for the new house? Has it saved you much money? Is it more rewarding to know that your family members have worked on your home with their own hands rather than have someone else do it all? So of course it has saved us money. Because when we hired painters for a couple weeks, it was very pricey. That saved us money. It is rewarding knowing that you had a hand in it. We're very involved with the build because we have a very specific vision and it's not normal. And so we have to stay on top of things to achieve what we want. I think it's really working. Like I think it's really coming together. And that's been because we've been so involved. Like we've been there all day or not all day, but we've been there every day, at least once or twice. We never just, you know, let it go for a week and then see what happened. Like we're very, very involved. And we see this as a short season. So we won't be building a house forever. So we're kind of doing like almost survival mode in a way right now, knowing that it won't be like this next year, this time. Like we won't have to endure, you know, two trips out to our farm every single day. Luke having to be there to coordinate with the guy that's putting in the HVAC and the guy that's doing the septic system. Even if you aren't like doing the work yourself, you're still going to be really involved, at least I think if you're building any kind of custom home, that's definitely going to be the case on raw property where it needs all the infrastructure. You're going to be pretty involved in it. So I don't know if there's really an option to not be involved in it. I don't think it's the kind of house we could just hand over to someone and expect them to understand the whole goal behind it, the vision. So yes, I think that all of those things, we wanted to be involved, we knew we would be. Also it comes down to like, even if you want to hire someone for everything, there's not always somebody available right when you need them. Like, okay, we found out that we needed to paint both sides of the siding. There was no guy that was just like, oh, let me just jump to it and come over and do that for you. Now, after a little while, we were able to find someone, but you have to jump in and do what you need to do to keep the project moving. And that is what we knew we'd be willing to do. If, by the way, I forgot to mention this, and I'm sure if you're a longtime listener, you already know this, but my sister, Laura, does have a YouTube channel at our oily house. And then my youngest sister, Andrea, she has a YouTube channel at our sweet sunny days. So now all four of us girls have a YouTube channel. You can get different perspectives. You have the farm mom, that's Ashley, the Hartford Farm Co. You have the super organized mom, even though we probably look the same. I don't know, any of you were to tell me that. Like, you maybe wouldn't know which of us is more organized, but then again, you probably are like, yeah, yeah, we knew. Over at our oily house. And then my sister Andrea, she's also super organized, super neat. She has one little girl, she's expecting a second one in December, but she is 11 years younger than me. So she has like a fun, bright, mid-century modern house that she's decorated on a budget. So she shares like budget decorating. She's done a fabulous, fabulous job with her home and on a budget, just making it a beautiful family home. So she's our sweet sunny days. So if you didn't yet know that all my sisters also have YouTube channels, there you go. We all are similar, of course, but we have our own little different perspectives and projects and priorities and talents that we show on our channels. Okay, this is a long one. This is probably the last one I'll answer for today, but there are so many other great ones. And so we'll be doing another solo episode. I try to do these once every three episodes just to jump in and hear what the audience wants to hear about. Also, you all give me really good guest suggestions, which we use because it helps us to know who to bring on and we reach out to those people. So I appreciate everything you guys submit over at bit.ly forward slash sfl, which the s, the f and l are capital and then lowercase questions will also leave that link below. Hey, Lisa, love your content. My husband and I are just getting started with a YouTube channel called Our Home Era. We live in a very similar life to you guys with addition of me being a retired nurse. So most of my content is geared towards holistic remedies, homeopathy, health related things. My question is how do you and your husband manage the business, life, farm, et cetera together? I know right now you're not on a farm, but soon we'll be again. My husband and I have five kids homeschool, cook from scratch, all the things in addition to a flourishing homestead. He handles all the farm things, but really it's only about an hour to two a day mats. He does my video editing and other than that, I'm doing most of the content creation, homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, et cetera. He's so helpful, but it's not his natural gifting to homemade like it is mine. We want to make this full time thing selling my guide and creating content, but we want to do it in a way where we find some natural flow in our days. What does Luke do today? Does he find genuine joy in some of the things that are more traditionally the wife roles? Thanks for all the tips to help set us up for success. So first of all, this was something that took us a while to figure out. One thing you have to remember is Luke has been home now for seven and a half years. That's a long time. We've added four children since then. Everything about our life, our business, our living situation has changed twice since then. So we've already moved. It'll be the third move coming up here when we move to our new house since he's been home and we've been doing this business full time. We've had a farm. We've not had a farm. Right now we do have a farm. I mean, we're not, obviously, we don't have any animals on it, but working on the pasture there and building a barn. So we're setting up the infrastructure for our future farm. So it looks a little different right now because obviously, like I mentioned, Luke is spending a ton of time on that project, which puts me back in doing all the things a lot of times myself. But as far as like does he do the traditional wife roles? I wonder if that means like does he cook, does he clean? Those are still like my thing. And I know that you see that on my YouTube videos and you might wonder, is it really like that? Like does he like to cook? He doesn't. Like those are still my things are the things that I love. I've always been the one to manage the home. And so I'm still doing that. Where Luke really shines, like something he's really good at other than of course, like managing all the things with the build right now and the farm is in leading our children and homeschooling. So he helps a ton with homeschool. There have been seasons where it worked best for us for him to mostly handle the homeschool and for me to get the little kids out of his hair and work on lunch and work on cleaning and like managing the home with the little kids while he does the older kids. Right now we're kind of in a season of we both do it. So even on a day when he's not working at the house, we will both homeschool. One of us will take this kid aside to do their reading lesson. One of us will help these two kids with their math. One of us will, you know, kind of tag team on the little kids. My responsibilities still are always making lunch and keeping the home. Now he does grab the vacuum, swap laundry. He does all that kind of stuff, help the, you know, if he sees that like a little kid wet the bed, like taking the sheets off, bringing them downstairs. We tag team all of that. I'm still primarily on the food, the inventory. Like I'm the one placing the, which, you know, I don't go to the grocery store anymore. I do it all online, but placing the orders for our groceries, making sure that we have toilet paper and diapers and all that kind of stuff. Like that's still something that I manage. And we, you know, we found a sweet spot with how things work for us. So it's a, it's, it changes by the season. So right now we're in a season of building a house and that's where he's putting a lot of his focus, but when that's not the case, he is reading the Bible to the kids and helping them with their math lessons and chopping wood and milking the cow. Like there's been seasons where that's been most of his responsibilities. And then we have a lot of children that are older now too. So like my almost 17 year old, she edits the videos for me. And then I have kids that like to help cook. So we're, as a family, it's, it's really changing based on what is going on. So that's how we do it. I still totally am a manager of the home. And I am also the one who likes the business stuff. Like I'm the one planning the content, thinking through like what types of videos I'm going to make, communicating with my team. That's all me. Like I'm answering the emails from my team who helps me put together blog posts and new courses and things like that. So I feel like we've worked it out pretty well. There needs to be a lot of communication, making sure that both partners feel like they have a role and that it suits their giftings. So for me, even though typically it's usually a male that is better at like entrepreneur stuff, for us, that's me. But then he has so many things with the farm and things like that that he is so much better at. And then I'm, I'm better at cooking and inventory and managing a home. I am definitely the better partner when it comes to that. And then he's awesome at leading our family, leading our kids. He gets really excited about literature and buying these certain books for the kids and doing read alouds. Like he's, he's definitely better at that than I am and curating that type of thing. So again, it has not always been perfect. There have been times where one of us felt like we were the more overburdened of the partners and we'd have to say like, Hey, I feel like I've got too much on my plate. Like, could you do this? Could you do this? And making sure we both feel like we have plenty to do, but not too much to do. Do we need to find balance and how many things are on our plate? Is this even a possible amount of stuff? Like what needs to come off? We have to regularly revisit that conversation. All right, there are so many more good questions. I'm tempted to take more, but I need to, like I said today, I told the kids, I'm going to go up, record one podcast and we're heading out to the farm to see what dad's doing, to meet with the builders. So that is what we are going to do. Are you smiling? Well, as always, thank you so much for listening. And I will see you in the next episode of the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. My husband, Luke and I and our eight kids work together side by side on our little homestead and use our blog, podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks and home setters with practical recipes in daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmhousehombun.com and to dig deeper. We do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at bitbit.ly forward slash farmhouse sourdough course. That's all one word, bit.ly forward slash farmhouse sourdough course. If you're looking to learn how we earn an income online, check out my YouTube course at bit.ly forward slash farmhouse YouTube course, all one word.