How To Do It All On Your Homestead

Hey everyone. And welcome to the homestead education podcast. Oh my gosh, I have so much to share with you guys this week. For starters, I had a booth at our local swap meet this weekend, and I absolutely love doing these sales and shows. It’s where I sell my curriculum a lot. I used to do them all the time for my dad’s hunting guide business. Now, of course, that was talking to hundreds. If not thousands of people in one day at outdoor expos. These local sales are tiny in comparison, but I think that I love them even more. It is so great to be able to just have long, meaningful conversations with members of our community. I love being able to share my message face to face, hear the questions that people have about my curriculum and homesteading locally. I’ll be a vendor at the October homesteaders of America conference this year and doing these shows gets me so excited to connect with so many like-minded people.

I absolutely loved going last year and the people I met. So this year it’ll be even better with having the opportunity to chat with so many more that are in attendance. Finally, we got our bent and dent cedar that I’ve been talking about for our raised beds. So in between the massive rainstorms in north Idaho, we’re going to be getting on building those this week and I am so excited. The plants ready to go in my garden are huge. They’re touching my grow lights. I can’t raise them anymore, but I’ve actually been kind of thankful that everything’s gotten pushed out because otherwise the rain would’ve, I’m sure, pushed out my seedlings. Another thing we’ve been working on a lot this week is our pigs. So I’ve mentioned my pigs before. I’ve mentioned that we’re changing our breeding stock. We have about nine sows and rotate about three breeding times a year.

Recently, we got this little eight week old boar. We call him Red because he’s a red, Hereford just a cute little guy. Sometimes our smaller pigs can get out and kind of hang out in the barnyard. We let them do it because they don’t go anywhere. They really just want all the grain that my kids drop walking back and forth, but we have this one. Annie, we call her Annie, because my husband got her for my anniversary, or got her for me for our anniversary. And because I’m the nerd that I am, I call her Annie Freezer Meat. Anyways she gets out all the time and she was due to farrow, which is having her babies. When she gets really close to having her babies, she gets kind of aggressive. It only lasts for about a week and then she’s a great mom and lets us mess with the babies and stuff.

But she was out at the same time that Red, our boar was out and you know, he’s not eight weeks old anymore. He’s, I don’t know, he is probably four or five months at this point. So he’s bigger. He’s 100, 150 pounds, but she is 500 pounds and she attacked him really bad. I found him hunkered down behind some hay bales. He had cuts. I was sure he had broken his leg. His ear was ripped. He wouldn’t even get up. It was horrible. I was so worried about him. We put him in solitary confinement. He’s been there for six weeks now. He’s had a really slow recovery. We’ve given him antibiotics. We’ve doctored his wounds. He ended up getting a lot of abscesses from where he was gouged. So we’ve had to doctor those. He’s had a limp in one shoulder and we were really afraid that maybe he had permanent damage, but now that the abscesses are starting to go down and we’ve given him some antibiotics, that’s starting to lighten up.

So I really think that maybe he possibly had an infection in his shoulder or something, but I’m glad to hear that he’s doing better and see that he’s doing better. My boys give me an update every morning when they feed, but I go check him every day or so. Last weekend we delivered three piglets out of one of our litters and picked up two brand new Hereford guilts. So we are really excited to start our Hereford herd. And then, of course, Red will be our boar for all of our sows, even our Hampshires and Berkshires and Yorkshires. So, really excited to see what we have going on in the future with that. So this is just a piece of our lives. The next question that a lot of people ask is how do I do it all?

I’m going to admit my daily routine includes a lot. When I tell people that we homestead and have a homestead business, that I’m a realtor, run a website, have written a couple of curriculums and homeschool my kids, I always get overwhelmed, “how do I do it all?” Here’s my secret. I don’t. I have put into place routines and systems in our home over the years that we build on gradually as we add new layers to our lives, and the kids get older and can handle additional responsibilities. I’m not saying it’s always easy. I know not every family or person could accomplish what we do, but it’s not impossible. I have the ability to multitask like you wouldn’t believe so I can manage a large number of moving parts at the same time. However, here’s something that not everybody knows about us. We are a blended family, the oldest boys aren’t mine and the twins are not my husband’s.

However, we are a single core family unit and we don’t see it as yours and mine. They are all ours, but I was a single mom to the twins for a long time when they were little. In fact, I became a single mom when they were three months old. I have talked about that in some of my previous episodes. I started teaching them independence very early. When they were little I was a single mom in college and I was up late studying. I had to get out the door early in the morning and I lived hours away from any family members. I was doing this on my own. I put into place little routines that started building independence in them. One thing is I would lay their clothes out for them before I went to bed at night.

When they got up in the morning, they would get themselves dressed to the best of their ability. They were 2, 3, 4 years old. And then when they were done with that, I had everything for their lunch laid out. Well, I had it on a shelf. I had a box with snacks, a box with juices and a box with chips or crackers or something like that. They could go pick one from each box and put them in their lunch pails. Then they’d get all the stuff for me to make a sandwich while they were doing this. I would go ahead and get my shower and get dressed. Then I would come out and do any of the corrections, get their shoes on, make their sandwiches and get them in their, lunch pails. So by the time I met my husband, we had a really good routine going on where our mornings went really smoothly.

I had other routines laid out for our evening routines, for dinner, for chores, so we were a pretty well oiled machine. When I met my husband, he was transitioning from losing his first wife. I kind of helped him learn family routines, helped bring some order back into his life. He had his boys and it was just kind of a bachelor thing going on. They’d moved to a new state to start over and I started adding these layers of responsibilities to the core family unit for all of us. I did this as we added kids’ activities. We also scheduled free time. I know scheduling free time sounds horrible, but it wasn’t like we can only have free time from two to four on Wednesdays. I mean, I wasn’t that locked in. It was more like we don’t do school on certain days.

We don’t schedule appointments on certain days or sign up for activities Friday through Sunday, unless it’s a short term sport like baseball season, but I would never schedule a weekly writing lesson on a Friday. This made it where we could plan for fun and uninterrupted work days on our homestead. As I started to work again, this is where the years of my rule that everyone helps has really kicked in. So of course my husband helps, but I do have to give the disclaimer that he’s a disabled veteran so he is home to help. And even on the days he drives me crazy, mainly because he doesn’t have the entrepreneurial mindset that I do, and we aren’t always on the same speed, he is a very hand-on dad with our kids. He helps with homeschool. In fact, we do this thing where I teach the kids math in the morning on the whiteboard and my husband sits there and has his coffee and listens, and he gets a little bit of a refresher at the same time. Then I can go about my workday or do school with our four-year-old, and my husband can help with the lessons and do any corrections, things like that. So we both aren’t having to be there for the entire school day.

Something else is, for example, when we’re staying on top of baking bread, I make Ziploc bags with all the dry ingredients and then the kids just have to dump it in the bread maker on dough setting, and then pull out the loaves and let them rise one more time before lunch and bake. Currently, as far as our homestead chores, the boys feed in the morning and evenings, our 13 year-old daughter gets the babies up and does their breakfast. This allows me to get in a shower. If I need to go into the office, or sometimes I stay up really late writing and I can get an extra hour in the morning or just wake up slowly so that I’m a little bit more functional with the family. As far as meals, I plan a week or more at a time, instead of planning it by the day, which I know is really overwhelming for a lot of people.

I hear so much about “how do you meal plan? How do you keep to that schedule?” I don’t keep a schedule. I plan a week or two weeks or a month at a time, depending on our pay periods. Then I make a list, and I go grocery shopping. I shop our pantry first. Then I go grocery shopping at the store and make sure I have everything for those meals. Then I put a list on the fridge and make sure I have everything in the house ready to go. Whoever is cooking that night can just pick what they want to cook and mark it off the list. This makes it where if my husband or my teenagers or myself are cooking dinner, it’s all there. We can pick what we want to do based on how our day went. I hate it when I plan that I’m going to do a crock pot meal, and then I get a call that I have to go meet with a client and I don’t get to start the meal and I come home and there’s no dinner. Then we end up doing pizza or something like that. Having it this way is, “Hey, our schedule changed. Somebody else will do dinner and pick something that you know how to cook.” If it’s the kids, it’s a lot of tacos. If it’s my husband, it’s a lot of barbecue, but at least I know that a meal is going to get made and we’re not having to spend a lot of extra money on takeout. As far as keeping my house running, the kids have rotating evening chores where one night they do dishes. The next they unload the dishes and then the next night they do floors. That way it’s getting done regularly. No one gets burned out. Then once a week or so my husband or I will go into the kitchen and do a better clean than teenagers do. Occasionally, if it’s been a really busy week with work or we’re having a get together or something, I have a gal that I pay to come and do some of the deep cleaning.

That takes me into my next topic which is struggling with that mom guilt. I think everybody knows about it. It’s that moms are supposed to handle everything. I have struggled with it on a few things where, for example, I hired the housekeeper who comes in once in a while. I look at that as I am trading my time where I do get to be home with my kids and bond with them and teach them and build my business at the same time while I’m still able to watch my kids learn and play. So what if I spend a hundred bucks and have somebody else clean up the kitchen. I’m still getting to interact with my kids. and to me, that’s worth it. But there’s been people in our lives who think that I should do it all because I am the wife or mom. I’m sorry if my husband is home all day and the kids only do school three days a week, and I’m running a couple of different businesses. I’ll be damned if I’m going to do all the cooking and cleaning.

There’s also this stigma that, as a woman, I’m supposed to be some power hitter that also does it all. And in fact, I do a lot, but I believe in working smarter, not harder. I have taught my kids independence from an early age so that I don’t have to make them a sandwich at 13, unless I want to. I sometimes make some really good sandwiches for the kids because they do get burned out on their basic ones. In fact, my four-year-old makes his own lunch most days. My daughter makes his breakfast. The family makes his dinners, but he enjoys making his own lunch. Now my two-year-old, on the other hand, he’s not like the others. When my others were his age, they were already learning some basic independence skills, but this little guy is in his own world.

He was early and a little behind developmentally. He’s not behind one bit when it comes to intelligence or curiosity, but this kid is a full-time job. I want to circle back to the part with kids and chores. I want to really reiterate, preach to you. It does not hurt them to help. Our culture has changed so much where they don’t believe that kids should have to do anything. I can’t say it enough that they need to be learning these skills. Kids learning to cook or clean or do laundry is not because you are not capable of doing it. It is making sure that they are capable of doing it one day when they are no longer living with you. And when kids work hard, often, they’re really proud of themselves for that. It builds character and responsibility and it makes them way more prepared for adulthood.

I say all the time that I’m raising men and not boys, because when they reach adulthood, I want them to not be reliant on someone else. Now, I guess I should figure out what I’m saying for my daughter, but she’s super responsible, so I guess I don’t have to come up with a little phrase for her. Sometimes I think boys are a little harder to raise once they get to those teenage years. Now, I want to just take a minute to discuss husbands and chores, and I’m not completely joking at this point. I feel like with the same stigma that women need to be power hitters, men have been encouraged to act like children, which I don’t understand. I suppose I could go on a whole political or sociological rant, but for now I think I’m just going to stick with the fact that men should be men.

To me, a man is a partner who builds with their spouse and empowers their kids, who is caring when they need to be and strong when they have to be. So, yes, this also means they have to take out the trash, but you know, pick your chores. Now, I’m not only speaking to women here. Men, you’re building your empires too, and you can build whatever you want, but you don’t have to do it alone. Build together, include the kids, layer these responsibilities on until they become routine. Don’t expect to be able to do this all overnight. It takes time. It takes layer building and yeah, it takes working together. I want to talk to you a little bit about my coaching services. I have opened the waitlist for my homestead business membership that I will be launching this fall. So check out the link in the show notes to make sure that you’re the first to know when this goes live and even catch some early bird specials.

For those of you that are ready to start or expand your homestead business, I offer a two-hour strategy session call to gain clarity in your homestead business or business ideas. This service also includes a follow up email with a business map and resources, a one month accountability email, and a free month code to the homestead business membership once it launches. I have over 20 years experience in business consulting, management, accounting, and outside the box ingenuity with our heaviest focus being in agriculture and small farms, including food safety. But you don’t have to want to start a business for this strategy call to have value to you. I can help with homestead management. I can help with household management and time management. In just a short conversation with some of my friends over this weekend, they let me know that they’re interested in starting a homestead business to supplement their income.

We came up with an idea that essentially has no startup costs and could easily explode. I’m excited to see what they do with it and it has my brain racing with so many great ideas for you guys to mold into profitable homestead businesses. So follow the link to see if a strategy call is right for you and be sure to download the free homestead money making guide with this. I’ve also decided to start a group on Facebook for all the followers of the homestead education podcast. I’m hoping to have threads on homestead topics that also allow for fellow homesteaders, bloggers and podcaster follow-up questions that some of the other forums don’t facilitate. So I’m excited to start sharing information. Be sure to head over to Facebook and join the homestead education group.

I’ll also link that in the show notes and, oh, wow! Just so much information I’ve shared with you guys this week, but remember that empires don’t build themselves. You’ve got to hustle. Well, thank you for joining me today at the homestead education. And I hope that I have given you something to think about this week to help others find me, please comment, and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. You can also follow me on Facebook and Instagram at homemade revelation. Do you have questions that you’d like answered or just want to say hi, please email me@helloatthehomesteadeducation.com until next time keep growing.