homemaking on a farm is a lot of work....

today we are going to take a little stroll around my fifth generation Homestead talk about life on a homestead and the fact that it's not always all that it's cracked up to be on Instagram and then we're going to spend some time in the kitchen and I'll show you a little project that I worked on this past week as well [Music] I did not grow up living on a farm or on a homestead I grew up in somewhat of a rural area but we always lived more in in like subdivisions sometimes we would you know we moved a lot but in this within the same area um sometimes we would live in a subdivision that had like 5 acre lots or something so that's that's a lot of space but we never really did any gardening farming or anything like that but you know as long as I can remember I was always really attracted to this lifestyle probably because of all the Oregon Trail I played in fifth grade you know in computer class um I'm showing my age there if you have no idea what I'm talking about then you're younger than me you're probably a Zoomer but Oregon Trail was awesome and you know Little House on the Prairie I always just I I loved you know the Pioneer lifestyle and we've talked about this I I don't want want to be a Pioneer Woman myself I like modern luxuries but I've always been drawn to this lifestyle and you know while we're chatting about this I'm just showing you some more of the fence that we've been working on you guys over the last four or five videos you've gotten to see the process of my husband and his dad and my boys chopping down cedar trees having them hauling them in having them miled into boards and posts and now planting them so you know we can have new fence row that will hopefully last just a really long time so that's pretty cool um just to see the process of putting our land to use but anyway I've always been drawn to this lifestyle but but didn't grow up this way and when I met my husband I didn't know anything about him I I don't know if I've shared the story about how we met but it's just like your classic redneck Love Story we met at a bar I was home from college for the summer and my one of my friends said hey you need to come work with waitress with me over at this bar across the river across the Missouri River cuz I grew up along the Missouri River and she said um it's really good tip money and I'm like okay that sounds good so that's how my husband and I met I was working at a bar he came in and this sounds so cheesy I'm so sorry for how cheesy this is going to be but when when he walked in the door I thought I love loved him and I needed to marry him and so I when I got off I didn't I was too embarrassed to talk to him that night but when I got off work um you know closed the bar down cleaned up and everything it was like 2: a.m. and I called my mom and said I I met my future husband now hold that thought we will finish the story but I'm going to take a little break to show you something that I've been working on inside as you all know we are in our grandma era we have said goodbye to the sad beige ERA with generic abstract art and weird bringing back comfy cozy warm maybe even a little bit dare I say cheesy grandma style well I don't think it's cheesy at all I never did I've always loved homes with a lot of character and one way that you can bring a lot of character to a home is to display your own personal photos throughout your home and I do that a lot I have a lot of artwork we love I have a lot of our family photos displayed throughout our home but one thing that really bummed me out is that our big um fridge and freezer they are not magnetic so I can't put cute little magnets on my fridge with my kids pictures and that is definitely something you have to have if you want the grandma era touch so I have the perfect solution for not only having print versions of all your favorite moments from the photos on your phone and that is the lean photo printer this is a portable lightweight inkless solution tion for printing I have had this Leen photo printer for about a month now and I'm absolutely loving it we've used it for so many things um my kids have all printed their pictures and put them on their water bottles we are putting pictures from Aran photo printer everywhere because the photo paper like I said it's zinc based paper so it's inkless there's no ink involved it's water resistant it's tear resistant and they're stickers so you can actually peel the back off of your photos if you want you don't have to you can just have prints to put in your wallet or put wherever but you can peel the back off and they turn into stickers it is so cool and that is how I made my little fridge collage and I have room to add lots more rows of photos and then I have a whole other fridge on the other side that I can add more photos to as well so I'm really excited about that little project but like I said there are so many things that you can use your Leen photo printer for the Leen Pearl prints 2x3 photos and you can choose whether they have they're borderless whether they have a border you can even make them look like a Polaroid so it's such a cool concept and the photo quality is actually better than any of the other quick printers that I've seen my daughter has a Polaroid the quality is a lot better than that and I actually watched a few videos because there are a few uh printers like this on the market and this was by far the smallest one so it's the most compact I think it had the best quality and like I said I love that you can turn the photos into stickers the Leen photo system is a totally wireless system and it works using Bluetooth not Wi-Fi so you don't have to worry about having a bad connection it works for both Android it works for iPhones and it is so easy to set up and use you just take it out of the box charge it download the Leen photo app and then you print directly from your app to your photo printer it takes no time at all not only is the Leen Pearl the most compact and easy to ous wireless portable printer that I have found it's also the most affordable you can get the lean Pearl and 50 zinc photo papers for under $100 this is the perfect gift idea for someone else or for you if you're just wanting to await to get all of your photos that you have saved in your camera roll off your phone and actually display them Leen has given me a special discount code for Hope will Heights subscribers just click the more button below this video and you will see my discount code where you can follow the link to learn more about lean wireless inkless photo printing okay back to our little chat about homesteading and let's take a quick peek at my chicken run this is my my chicken run uh that's a 5ot tall fence and they can fly that fence if I want them to stay inside of it I have to clip their wings we do that sometimes uh in the winter we'll clip and clip their wings and Coop them up the chicken run that we have is on the back side of a Ferro house this that red building was a Ferro house and this other white building here that needs a paint job it's also a farrowing house we have two farrowing houses Ferro means you know when pigs give birth so those are pig houses essentially because my in-laws used to have lots of pigs on this Farm but we don't keep that many so these buildings are mostly unused right now um but we do keep we do keep our pigs in there we keep our cows in the pasture that's behind the fairing houses and we have chickens free ranging everywhere but you know as far as how I got to this lifestyle I like I I was always drawn to it but never really had a plan on how to get here when I met John I knew nothing about him I didn't even know his name I just saw him and I loved him and I needed to marry him so I had to devise a plan on how to make him mine so I found out that he liked to drink Miller Light and the next time he came to the bar well I saw the group he was with pull in to the bar cuz the front was like all windows and so I just iced up a bucket of Miller Light I went and stood in the doorway and you know I just shot my shot and the rest is history so I did make the first move there but um I didn't learn or I didn't know he had a farm or anything like that and he he wasn't living on his family farm at that time so I was really excited when I found out that he grew up on a farm he wanted to eventually live on a farm and um I think it was like the first couple weeks you know we just put our cards on the table said we were going to have babies and get married and that was just understood that this is is what we would do someday so for us it was always pretty easy we knew we both wanted to live this life as far as the like how that would look we haven't always agreed on those details by the way look how pretty these cedar boards are and they smell so good I love seeing new fence go up because as I'm getting ready to show you a lot of the fence really needs to be replaced you can see in the background of this video um a fence row on the left there very back behind the barn a fence row that they recently replaced and it just looks so good but the first thing that I wanted to talk about is as far as like do you really want to live this life is I think since 2020 since you all know what went down in 2020 a lot of people have been turned on to homesteading or having land having a farm but with that comes a lot of work it's not all just frolicking in fields like we see on Instagram in fact that's very little of it or dare I say that's like almost 0% of it it's mostly work it is a lot of work a lot of Maintenance and if you want to live this life if you want to live on a homestead and a farm you need to be okay with that as a wife because what that means is that either your husband or you and your husband together are going to be working mostly on projects outside of your home so if your dream is to have a perfect home that is perfectly manicured and perfectly spotless and your honeydew list is is filled out and that's what you spend all your Saturdays on homesteading and farming is not for you that's something that I've had to learn and I've mostly been okay with that because you know I always wanted this and when John and I were dating his mom would kind of tell me stories like you know I still don't have the back step off of my house and it's 40 years later or whatever and she'd just laugh about it and so I just kind of got I gather that that's just how it was um so you know yeah I've just been okay with it but I I've seen a lot of stories of people who in 2020 they did the whole thing where they sold their house bought some land and ended up hating it um because they they just weren't warned about the amount of work and maintenance that goes into having a homestead and now now we're kind of walking around the house so I'm just showing you the layout of everything um behind our house is the garden you can see the garden off to the left there and we have all the farm buildings like right here with us so everything's kind of located all the buildings are located in the center of our farm we have a lot more land ground that I'm not going to I'm not going to show you and cover all the ground today but all the buildings are on probably 5 acres and that's what I would call the homestead that's if you look up the definition of a homestead it's like a home and its buildings you know that's on land so I mostly kind of stick around these 5 Acres whereas the rest of the land is farmed and cattle or run on that by the way this is this is our puppy Bonnie that we got a few I showed you her a few weeks ago and she's growing so fast she's so sweet I just love her but back to that first point about considering if you really want to live on a homesteader or Farm you just need to be okay like look you know this is my back porch it's comfy and cozy and we enjoy sitting back here but you guys this is not going to be like on the cover of Southern Living I mean there's stuff everywhere like dog food and just stuff and I could have cleaned it up and styled it to show you this video but I'm trying to show you what things really are when you have a lot of kids and like okay this needs to be painted you can see it needs to be stained there's stuff I would like to do we haven't landscaped our house and it's been 7 years but my list of wants comes after the farm period um that's just the way that it has to be because things that I want aren't as important as the animals that we've committed to care for that need fencing and need structures if if I'm making sense so I think have we talked about that in a recent video like needs versus wants that can be applied to farm life too your animals when you commit to children and animals they have needs and those needs must be met before your wants of you know um little touches to your home that you need your husband's help with so one thing I've done is I've just tried to focus on what I can do in our home there's a lot I can do it scares my husband when he sees me with power tools trying to do things myself so I do it when he's not home because he has anxiety watching me try to do projects but you get the point there's a lot that I can do to work on our home um you know I am not going to get too crazy with that I just with five kids that I'm homeschooling I don't have time to do any major like building construction projects or anything like that but a little coat of paint here and there some home decor hanging pictures adding Furniture I can do all that kind of stuff and then I just I just don't worry about the rest the stuff I need my husband's help with um that's on my wish list like landscaping or whatever I just don't worry about it he's aware that that's something I would like to do at some point but I don't give him a timeline I don't nag I just don't bring it up to be honest and um that that's how it has to be like if you're watching this and you're a farm wife you know exactly what I mean you you can't nag your husband about those like honeydew things because like I said it then you know the farm is going to be sacrificed which it just that's just not how this operation can work so that is something that you really need to decide if you're okay with if you have dreams of homesteading and farming now maybe you have the resources to hire a lot of help and then that everything I said might just go out the window because if you can hire things out then no problem I mean by all means do that I think that's awesome if you've got the time and resources to hire things out amazing go for it get it done but if you're doing things yourself then you just have to learn to prioritize and to be okay with the farm coming before the house and before your list of things you need your husband's help with the other thing that I would consider you know if you're wanting to live on a homestead live on a farm is are you ready to make some adjustments in your social life in last week's video I kind of covered that dilemma that I had when we first moved out to the farm and I wanted to Homestead is I didn't make those adjustments so I was still saying yes all the coffee dates all the girls things and also trying to start Gardens and you know tend to animals and it it wasn't working it was chaos so um my husband and I you know had to have that heart tohe heart there where he was like um no you can't you can't do all this stuff and I was like I know I can't do all this stuff I just needed to hear that but anyway do consider that if if you're a person to where you know your social life is really really important to you and you feel that you're called to that then and you're currently like living in the suburbs living in the city or whatever maybe you're that's the life for you I mean not everybody's called to live on a farm I love it I prefer it I think it's great but for all of time there have been cities um there have been Villages where people lived in closer proximity and that's just fine not everybody has to live on a homestead not everybody has to live on a farm I think for a lot of people City living or you know suburb style living is great that that's great so really do take some time to consider that if you're Homestead dreaming are you you know socially willing to make some adjustments that doesn't mean you have to live if you you know if you choose a homestead you don't have to live in isolation we are certainly not isolated we do a lot of stuff but I've talked with this before as well we mostly keep friends who also live this lifestyle because it's just easier they understand you have things that you can relate to them about and yeah they just get it you know my friends know that I can't just drop everything and go do this or that and they're not going to you know be offended if if I can't and and vice versa the last thing that I would say to consider if you want to live on a homestead want to live on a farm and this kind of ties in with that first point of like you know not having time to focus on your personal to-do list is money it's a expensive these days um you know maybe you think you're going to save money you're probably going to spend money more than anything especially if you're just getting started and you don't have structures you don't have your buildings your fences um any equipment you might need so that's definitely something to think about those would be my three points but let's talk about what I'm doing in the kitchen here I am inside now going to make some dinner and we're going to whip something up from leftovers so I have some corn I've got some rice I've got some cooked chicken breast and pulled out some potatoes and we're just going to make like a skillet with all this going to make myself a nice coffee here um and power through this meal so sometimes when I'm just not really feeling it you know as far as cooking dinner I have to do it have to do it anyway so I just make myself a drink whether that's a nice coffee or just I don't know something something like that a little afternoon pick me up and I'll find like a podcast or YouTube video to put on and just make it enjoyable for myself and then just just do it because the family has to eat and pouting about that is not uh it's just not something I'm going to do because that's not going to make it any better and I I try to be very practical like that as far as my attitude is I just try to think like if how am I you know how I'm feeling is it going to make it better if I just brood on that no it it usually never is so I try to like you know switch things up and ch change my mood and get it done but um while I'm cooking here let's just go back to that conversation we were having got to do some nursing and cooking here cuz you know the baby does not wait we don't make baby wait to eat in this house because babies don't have wants they have needs when they're hungry they don't understand like you know five oh you have to wait five minutes or whatever they just need to eat so the littlest people in the house have their needs met first that's that's just how we operate here but anyway you know if you can get over those are just my I'm sure there are more things to think about if you're thinking about far you know farming and homesteading but those three things just as a woman at least you know if you get past those things like not being insistent about your to-do list being done and focusing on the needs of the farm and Homestead if you can get past making some adjustments in your social life and if you can get past the fact that you're probably going to spend money before you save money at first then you know it might be for you and there are a lot of amazing things about living this life style one thing that I would highly recommend is not doing it alone if you can do this with family or even it could work like you know buying land with friends if they share your your religious values I'm a big believer in that when you're going to partner with somebody you got to be equally yolked and you have to be equally yolked in your religious values otherwise eventually you're not going to see eye to eye but um yeah don't do it alone we live here on my in-law's property so this is their farm this has been in my husband's family my kids will be the fifth generation now and it's just such a gift that my my kids get to grow up in such close proximity to their grandparents that they can just run over to Grandma and Grandpa's house or that you know my sons are learning from their grandpa and from their dad you know they're all working side by side it's it's truly Priceless like you you just can't put a price tag on intergenerational living like this we don't all live in the same house you know they they live in their house which is right across from ours and um that's nice i' I've never done the intergenerational living thing as far as like living with grandparents I know it can be done but I like having having our separate house that's not to say that I wouldn't like I actually wouldn't be opposed to my adult kids living here if they were just getting started like newly married wanted to live in our house for about a year and then get out on their own that'd be fine with me but um yeah living in close proximity ideally with family it's great like the the idea of the family compound or whatever that's actually I think I've showed you guys that's how my my mom and dad live so my mom and dad have all of my grandparents living there with them on one piece of land and my sister and her husband are going to be living there as well and I just have one sister so um the family is basically taken care of you know and I I do think that's how it's that's ideal it's not for everybody but it is ideal if you're going to be living rurally all right we're just out in the garden picking some herbs for our leftover kitchen sink Skillet I've got chives here chives are a perennial they'll come back every year so go go plant you some chives and then low maintenance you don't have to do anything they just come back every year so I pick some chives picking some parsley and this is oregano here this all came back from last year going to take this in and yeah spice up my uh my my Skillet so in in the skillet I've got let's see what what do we have chicken rice corn potatoes and herbs yeah anyway there are so many benefits to this lifestyle of course like I was saying but I I do think it's good not not to do it alone it would be I think it would be we have we haven't done it alone we've always lived here you know with my in-laws but I think it would be very easy to become lonely and get really overwhelmed if you didn't have anybody not necessarily even living you know on the same property but just living this lifestyle alongside of you so if you didn't have friends living the same lifestyle and I do think that that's one benefit of social media a lot of people that are newly homesteading have turned to the homesteading community on social media just yeah to find Community to find encouragement to learn I've certainly learned a lot from the online homesteading community although it can be a little bit dogmatic you know you have people who can get a little bit crazy and like police you on your level of homesteading this I I don't that's not a word but you all know what I mean um and you know I'm not like I like my my modern conveniences but I really do love this life I found a lot of joy and peace and contentedness and living a homesteading you know lifestyle here on our farm I shared with you all last week it it hasn't always been an easy transition you know leaving I didn't grow up this way I and plus I I had a successful career at one point so even though this is what I was attracted to and what I wanted it it hasn't been easy getting to this place of being very content here but I found that just you know accepting my station in life as a woman who lives on a farm and has all these things to take care of like really accepting and embracing that um it's it's just been yeah been the key to being content because we hop online and we within 10 seconds I can scroll and I can see women living all sorts of Lifestyles women living in the city women living living in the suburbs um you know women doing all living all kinds of Lifestyles and it's easy to think oh I want to do a little bit of all of that I want it all we talked about this last week you can't do it all and that's okay all right we have our leftover kitchen sink Skillet here the potatoes the corn the chicken what else do we put in here the rice topped it with some cheese the herbs this turned out really really good everybody liked it it was is a crowd pleaser so that would be a tip that I have for you guys learn this is this aside from the potatoes um and the cheese this was all leftovers so it's really good skill to learn is just how to not let your leftovers in your fridge go to waste you can almost if you have meat you can almost always come up with something delicious this wraps up our chat for the day don't forget to check out my discount code and link for the Leen Wireless L photo printer that will be in the description just tap the more button and I will see you all next week [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Hopewell Heights

Views: 12,456

Keywords: homestead dreaming, homemaking inspiration, homemaker, biblical womanhood, traditional wife

Id: aLCf8WMP_Y0

Length: 26min 57sec (1617 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2024