← Simple Farmhouse Life
Simple Farmhouse Life
235. My daily work rhythm, sleep training babies, dairy cow update, and more Q&A!
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available in all jurisdictions. Check local regulations before trading restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. My big trick with the whole online business and the kids in the family is one Having some designated time. There's not like infinite hours stretched out before us, but there are a few hours that we have said this is what I'm going to need in order to make this certain content for our business. So we have those hours. But then whenever those hours come, I need to know ahead of time what I need to get done during those. And that is so key. If you have a block of time and you don't really know what you're going to do with it, you can start second guessing yourself. You can start overthinking it. My name is Lisa, mother of eight and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boone. Join me as I share with you my love for creating a handmade home from scratch, cooking, and a little mom and entrepreneur life along the way. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast. It is a rainy day. I hear thunder outside. I have a cup of coffee. I have a list of questions that you have asked over in the question box over@bitlysflquestions. I believe that is capital S, capital F, capital L lowercase questions. Also, some were submitted on YouTube, on Instagram. We tried to get it out everywhere so that everybody could have a chance to submit their questions again. If you have more, make sure to go put it there in that Google form@bitlysflquestions. It'll also be linked in the description box, the show notes. But I am going to just do a solo episode, a solo chat, and answer a lot of those questions the first one that comes up. I'm debating even talking about this because I don't feel like I have a super strong opinion on it, but I guess I'll share it briefly. Please talk about having your babies in church. They said that now that we're a family has talked about this and I have been on their podcast. I'm going to be on it again. I actually get to go see them in person because I'm heading out their way to be at the modern Homestead Expo. So anyways, love their podcast. So if I disagree with them, don't think it's because I don't like them because I definitely do and I respect them. They both came from large families. They both really are very intentional and very serious, which is admirable. But my parenting style is much more like yours. Feed on demand, go with baby's flow. I have a three and a half month old baby boy and our church has been so tricky. He also doesn't take a pacifier. I'm not leaving him in the nursery for a multitude of reasons, but I'd love to know what you do and all your practical tips for tiny babies in service. Okay. So I go to a Baptist church. It's a very small church and they're very baby friendly. So everybody in the church, you know, they'd be okay. It's not like the baby can't make a whimper and people be mad about it. That's not an issue at all at our church. However. However, of course, as a mother, you do feel guilty because, I mean, you know, you can't disrupt everybody else's church just because your baby is fussy. So I'm not saying my church would tell us to leave, they definitely would not. But also, I do leave to be respectful. And this is a battle that I got really excited about fighting whenever I was first a mom. So my first couple of kids, I was very, very serious. I'd keep them in church. If they acted up, I would take them out, deal with that and then bring them back. And it was such struggle. And then after lots of years of being a mom, so I have a 15 year old, a 13 year old, an 11 year old on down through eight kids, I learned that pretty much no matter what I did, whether I brought them out during service, brought them to nursery, disciplined them, made them stay in, took it very seriously no matter what. They all can sit through church at age six very easily just because by that time it's very easy. They, you know, they're old enough to understand that they should be quiet in a setting like that. And so I'm definitely in the camp now and this is right or wrong, I don't really know. I'm sure that people have strong opinions, but I guess for the mom who feels very overwhelmed and stressed by this whole thing, like gotta keep your kids in church, if you don't do that because you know, this is a young mom asking me this question. So you only have a three and a half month old. And so the very fact that you're thinking about this means you're already kind of worried about it. You're realizing it's kind of tough. Your baby's only three months old. And I just want to tell you, don't worry, they will eventually sit through church and it'll totally be okay. So I wish I had not stressed about that. I think I heard some very strong opinions on why that was so important. And it was very hard because as you said, little kids don't like to go to nursery. They don't like to sit through church. So you're left with this conundrum. And I can tell you that my sister, she has six kids, we compare notes nonstop, she does the same thing and we both think it's going to be okay. So for what I do right now in this current season of life, I just went to church this last Sunday and what I did was I did actually bring my 4 year old and my 2 year old to nursery because at our church under age 5 can go to nursery. It's a tiny church, there's like four kids in the nursery. I also work nursery during Sunday school. So I take my youngest two into a nursery during Sunday school with me and then my 2 year old up until probably like the last 2 weeks never went to nursery. And so it was kind of a problem. Either I would go in there during service or one of my older two kids, he will be okay with one of us three being in there with him or Luke or I, one of us will go out of service. So I'm just telling you that that has been recent. This is not like he, he's been going to nursery that long. But I did take Victor with me. I've never left a baby under age one in the nursery. I'm not really saying that's bad. I just don't really feel like they would know what to do with them because they still nurse all the time, you know, all that. Also, Victor usually sleeps. So what I did this Last Sunday, my 4 year old and my 2 year old went to nursery. All the other kids went into church with us, no problem. They sit quietly, they listen, they can handle an hour like that. And Victor made it about halfway through. And then I had to leave to go to the lobby. I put him in my wrap, I got him to sleep. I listened to the sermon in the lobby while Luke was in the service with the other Five. So we had five in church, two in nursery, one in my wrap out in the foyer area. So all that to say, I don't think this is worth stressing over. It used to stress me out a lot. I think there are so many things in motherhood that are like this that if you just go with the flow at some point in life you're going to look back and it's not going to have been any big deal. And so don't, especially when you only have a three month old. Don't worry if your baby isn't going to be quiet in church, there's really nothing you can do about it. They're not, you're not going to be able to discipline them and make them sit in church. Also, if, you know, hopefully your church has some kind of system like ours where they have a speaker out in the lobby or the foyer or whatever where you can listen while also rocking the baby. I also bring a nursing cover and so if the baby's really young, like 3 months, 100 would just nurse them through the entire service. When they're nine months like Victor, they don't really nurse the whole service anymore. Now if they take a passy sometimes they'll do that. My sister's kids do that. So she a lot of times can keep all her kids in church. But if she does, if that doesn't work out, she and her husband just take turns going out in the lobby. However it works for your family, I say just do whatever works. It's really, I don't, I don't, don't feel like that's going to make like a really lasting impact. And that's just my personal opinion. And that's just coming from somebody who's five oldest kids sit through church no problem. And I'm actually pretty convinced the four year old just based on his personality and other settings he's been in, he would be 100% fine too. But there's a nursery, it's fun and I don't really feel like he's going to get a whole lot out of it. Next question. Hi Lisa. My question is, how do you structure your day? I'm a homeschool mom of three and my husband is finishing his PhD. I work part time as a fitness instructor and am working on building an online business to help postpartum women regain core strength. We plan on having more kids, but I feel like I can't spend the necessary time on the business in the midst of everyday meal prep, housework, homeschool. I would love to Hear how you structured your days early on and how you structure them now that some of your kids are older. How do you manage loving your family and giving them attention they need while also running a business? Thank you for your heart to share and for putting out so many inspiring and beautiful ideas. Well, thank you very much for that. So the way I currently structure my day and this rhythm has been probably with us for about the last six years. Luke has now been home from his job for six years this month. So we have gotten into a routine of how this all works. And when he first came home it was very different. But little parts of the day change, like whether we're spending time outside and so it's quieter in the house. Lately a lot more audio has been in my videos because there are kids just outside of my kitchen window. But inside the house it's not that loud. Whereas in the winter whenever I'm editing my videos, I just put them all to silent, all the clips straight to silent and then edit it from there and don't use any audio. So just little things like that change. Things change. Like when I have a baby, if there's a morning nap, an afternoon nap, you know, we start to kind of get into a flow of how all of that works and getting work done in times when they're not awake, that needs to be done when toddlers or babies aren't awake. So little things change. But the basic structure of the day and how it's working right now in April, May20,24 is in the morning. We're still doing school. So in the morning. Now I don't have a certain wake up time because I have not sleep trained Victor yet. And that's something that's very much on the horizon for me. Usually around somewhere between nine months and a year. Typically I will sleep train them because babies really take advantage of the fact that you will get them anytime they cry. So I'm currently in a season of not being able to sleep very well at night. So Luke will usually get up in the morning with the earliest risers, which are the baby and the toddler. So around 6, I'd say on average, sometimes earlier. Every once in a while they'll give us a little bit more time. He will take them into the kitchen and there's a double French door. And so I just keep sleeping until I wake up, which I think works really great for us. It gives me peace of mind overnight knowing that if the baby does really, really bad, at least I don't have somewhere I have to be or do like right away in the morning. So I like the no alarm clock life. Then we will do breakfast. So this morning I made my eggy oatmeal, which I shared recently over on my YouTube channel. Basically it's like half oatmeal, half eggs. It tastes like oatmeal, it's sweetened. The kids basically think they're eating oatmeal, but yet they're getting the protein addition of eggs. Clean that up. And then while that's getting cleaned up and I'm starting to prep lunch, the kids will work on school. So two of their kids do math on the computer. And then Luke sits down with one of our kids that needs more one on one help with a workbook for math. We basically are tag teaming school all the way until noon when we eat lunch. So usually I prepped it throughout the morning while the kids are all around. While we're doing school, I will do lunch as well. We eat at noon, then after noon the baby and the toddler go down for a nap. Victor already woke up, so I'm actually in the room where he would sleep. But he already woke up from his nap, so that didn't last long. So again, there's a variable there. But Luke can take him. He's working in the garden at this exact moment. And I can get a quiet moment to shoot a podcast. Typically the way I structure my work hours are between 1 and 4, Monday through Thursday. So those are the times that I'll take a podcast interview, I'll meet with somebody on my team, I will photograph something, I'll film something. Now sometimes I'll get my camera out and film while I'm just making lunch or something, while the kids are doing school and all that. I'll set my camera up. But a lot of times I like to reserve that filming for the afternoon. And then I'll also spend that 1 to 4 working on edits, doing photography, interviews, solo episodes, all the stuff that I need for it to be quiet. After that we Sometime in that one to four, the toddler wakes up from his nap. I'll usually bring him out to Luke. Right now it's outside time, so that makes it really easy. In the winter it's kind of hard because we won't have kids sleeping, but yet I'll still need a quiet moment and that's really difficult to find inside. So it's a lot easier, a lot more gentle in the summer for our schedule. So basically the way that our day is structured is we do school, we have a Work block, a lot of outside time for kids during that slash, naps. And then we have evening time where we'll do chores, we will make dinner, clean up, and then we start working on bedtime routine around seven. So I think to sum it up, it sounds like you are very, very busy right now. So not only is your husband finishing up his degree, a PhD, so that's difficult. You already have outside commitments with your online. No, not your only business, your fitness instructor. You're trying to do the online business. Honestly, I feel like it's too much. And so if you, if it feels like you don't have another hour in your day, that probably is true. Now if you're home and you can't figure out how to get things done while you're at home, while the kids are there, that's a different challenge entirely. But it sounds to me like there probably just aren't that many hours where you're home where you have time to work on something and that that's a challenge. So I think with a lot of things there has to be something has to go. So in your situation and you know, obviously you can do whatever you want, but I think I would probably pick between any of the outside of home things and the online business because as long as we're home, we, we can make all of it work with the situation that we're currently in. But as soon as we leave, like we have plans tomorrow, we have things we have to do, we have to be out of the house and already there. I'm making my work day way lighter. So I make a list every single day of the things I need to accomplish during that afternoon work block. Like today's block said record solo podcast episode. That's what I need to accomplish sometime between 1 and 4. That has to happen. But tomorrow I can already see that I don't. I can't put very many things in that afternoon slot because we're already going to be out of the house for the day, it's going to get chaotic. We have to do lunch, we're not going to be home to make the lunch. We'll probably mess up nap time because kids will fall asleep on the way home from the thing. So with that, it just might be that this isn't the time to start an online business unless there are some outside obligations that you could lighten up. Also, like with your husband getting his PhD, that's not something that you can really change. So not having that support probably makes it difficult. Now, if there's a certain Time that you can count on him being home, like on a Saturday or whatever. You could plan to get a whole bunch of stuff done on that day for your online business. My big trick with the whole online business and the kids and the family is one, having some designated time. We set out expectations. Everybody knows mom has the house during these hours. There's not a lot of those hours. So it's not like I get it all day. I think whenever Luke was going to quit his job, it felt like, oh, you know, I'll have all this time. But still, there just isn't. There's so many family obligations, there's homeschool. There's so many things that both parents need to be involved in. And so there's not like infinite hours stretched out before us, but there are a few hours that we have said, this is what I'm going to need in order to make this certain content for our business. So we have those hours. But then whenever those hours come, I need to know ahead of time what I need to get done during those. So if you have, maybe it won't be like my schedule. Maybe you won't get some afternoon hours, or maybe if your kids are little, you will because you'll have nap time. That's what I did whenever I was first starting my business. I knew I had nap time, but before that time came, I knew what I was going to work on. And that is so key because if you have a block of time and you don't really know what you're going to do with it, you can start second guessing yourself. You can start overthinking it. This can happen so easily because just like for today, whenever I was sitting out to do the podcast, I knew I had to do that. I didn't yet know what questions I was going to answer. And sometimes I think, what more do I have to say? I've already done this podcast a million times. I've already shared basically everything. But this is what is on my to do list. And in order to check it off, I'm just gonna do it. I'm not gonna be able to overthink the action I'm gonna take. I'm not going to be able to second guess it with this is what has to get done today. I know it. It's been in my schedule for since Sunday. Whenever I lay out my week, I knew that I needed to do this. And so it makes it to where the action you take is very direct, it's very quick. It can get done without you having to throw in any fears or doubts, I totally know how. A lot of times, a lot of times with a lot of things that you want to do, it's not so much not having the time to do it because we actually do have a lot of time, especially if we're home all the time, it's really figuring out the how and the what. Like what am I going to do with my time and then how am I going to accomplish it? Where can I fit that in? And I have been very good about detailing that out so that I'm not caught off guard. And I have a little block of time where everybody's sleeping and all the stars align and I think, oh, what am I going to do now with my time? I know what to do with my time. I think you also asked how did I do it back when I had three kids. So back when I had three kids, I had very structured days with the afternoon naps because they were all little and that made it so much easier. So we had room time slash nap time. So when I had three kids, which I didn't actually start my business Till I had four kids, but at that time I believe they were 6, 42 and newborn. No. Yes, that's what they were when I started my business, they were 6, 4, 2 in newborn. So I had the newborn in the wrap, the two year old napped and the six and four year old just did quiet time in their room during the afternoon. And so I made sure to work on that during that time. I made sure to get dishes and lunch and laundry all done outside of that block. And then during that block, I had a plan for what I was going to do and then I just worked on it, no questions asked. And so that's how I always structured it. Hopefully that helps. I mean, we all have such different situations that it's difficult to assess what yours is because in a lot of ways your life, even though I do have eight kids, does sound like it has a lot more moving parts because we are just all home all the time. And when that happens, it's actually fairly laid back. People know what they need to do, where they need to be, what they need to work on. And that's not to say there's not challenges with it at all, but it's not, go, go, go. We gotta be here, we gotta be there, this person's here. We're kind of just all home. And so it makes it really simple. And to your question about wanting to have another child, but I feel like I can't spend the necessary time on the business. And this I'm just gonna give my opinion. I guess this is my show so I can do that. I personally would not overthink that. And I'm just sitting here as someone who is approaching age 40 and I spent all of my 20s, all of my 30s having babies. I'm just really glad that I did that even in the imperfect life situations that happened throughout that time. So, you know, I could have overthought the workload, the homeschool, the financial situation of it all. And really we didn't. We kind of just kept putting one foot in front of the other and looking back, I'm so glad so that to say if I were you, I would just. If you are planning to have another child, I'd probably just have the child and figure that out later. But that's just me. I know some of you are going to completely disagree with that, but that is personally what I would do. If you were my sister, I would tell you have the baby. That's what I'm saying. Someone says this is a simple question. Can you use a bread machine to knead slash rise sourdough instead of doing stretch and folds? Yes, you can. So you can head over to farmhousonboone.com that's my blog, if you're not familiar and search bread machine sourdough and it's there. And my sister, I ended up giving her my bread machine because I actually prefer the stretch and folds. But she has worked that thing to death. She has done the recipe hundreds of times in that bread machine. It's just very straightforward. You pour the ingredients in, press a couple buttons and it's very hands off. So yes, absolutely. Someone says have Roots and Refuge on the podcast and have Amy Fuel on the podcast. Those are two separate questions or recommendations. They've both been on there. So make sure to go over to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast on either your favorite podcast player or on YouTube and search for those names. Or if you just put up in the YouTube search bar, simple Farmhouse Life Amy Fuel Simple Farmhouse Life Roots and Refuge. You will find those. Okay, I always get so many baby sleep questions and honestly you all should go somewhere else for that. Currently have a nine month old who wakes up about eight to ten times per night. And I know what I typically do so I usually just deal with it, spoil them rotten, put them in my bed, latch them on all night long or put them in their crib, nurse them every time they wake up all night long until I feel like it's Time, we're approaching that for sure. But I never want to do it too early because if I do it too early, it doesn't work. I have to try it again. But I usually do end up doing some form of cry it out. I know that people hate that. But I have never had a child magically sleep through the night at any age. So I've gone much longer. They still never do it. They just want to nurse literally the entire night. And so for me, at some point it just has to happen. They need the sleep, I need the sleep. We haven't gotten there yet. Now for naps, it's the same. So Victor has been in a very good nap pattern for a while. Usually somewhere around seven or eight months, probably maybe a little bit earlier. Sometimes I think Victor was a little bit earlier because he just would not sleep in my wrap for very long periods of time. I realized that they need a nap schedule and so I will nurse them, I will lay them down. If their eyes pop open, they start crying, I just walk away. And usually it's not too long before they fall asleep. And then after several times of doing, not even several, after a few times of doing that, they know the whole routine. I put his little sleep sack on him, nurse him, lay him down and I walk away. He might fuss for five to 10 seconds or he might not fuss at all. Typically at this point he doesn't fuss at all. So the nap thing is wonderful. But we have not tackled the night and for some reason those are very separate for my kids and probably for all kids if it's like that for all of mine. So I usually will do the nap for a while and then it's a while before I will do the night thing. I have plans and thoughts about how I might do it this time. I might actually put them somewhere else in the house because I think having him right next to me, even though I have a curtain around his crib still, they know that you're right there. And that's been a bit of a challenge. Cuz we've never had a separate room for the baby and we've done like the bathroom and things like that. But currently where we are, we don't have a separate space, we don't have a closet or anything or a bathroom. And so it's a bit of a challenge. But I, I know that once I do it it takes like one or two nights and that's it. And then the baby sleeps the 12 hours. And my babies always ultimately are great sleepers. From about one on, but it's just getting there and we're at the tail end of it now. So. Yeah, I'm probably not your sleep person. I will tell you that several friends of mine use and recommend taking care of babies. I have never tried those actually. My husband and oldest two boys recently went to a comedy show and this comedian made a joke about his wife paying for sleep programs. And the joke Luke tried to relate to me. I didn't actually hear the comedian. All I heard was his relaying the joke to me. But he said that his wife basically paid for someone to tell them to put the baby to bed earlier and to not get them and let them cry. And if that's not the truth, all the sleep stuff that I've ever read, they always are telling you to put the baby to bed earlier, you're getting the baby over tired. That's the problem. And I definitely have figured that out. I feel like as long as our nap last nap and the bedtime are close together, they sleep later in the morning, they sleep better. And then ultimately at some point you have to teach them that you're not gonna get them and so you can pay the big bucks for a course. But I really don't know that there's a magical solution. I know we want to believe there's something that we can do that doesn't cause the stress of having to sleep train. And I just personally have not found it. Now, if you start really early and you create all of these patterns, it might be a little bit of a gentler tie severed at the whole nighttime thing, but that requires a lot of work on that end. And for me personally, it's not worth it because I enjoy baby wearing, I enjoy co sleeping and nursing on demand and all of that stuff. And so I'd rather do all of that and then have one or two nights where I sleep train them when they're much older. So that's just been my style. And I don't know, I think the reason we buy Sleep coaches is because we want someone to tell us it's okay. And I feel that I want one of my friends to say, or my sister, just somebody to say, okay, age nine months. Just don't get him, don't get him. Because I'm still trying to back out. But I think that's why we buy Sleep coaches is just tell us it's going to be okay. I know the advice is obvious, I know what needs to happen, but I want someone to come alongside me and say this is okay. So we'll see. My sister says, the one who has a baby 10 days apart from me, that she's going to do it at nine months as well. So maybe we'll just like hold hands and do it together. But I know it'll be fine. It always is. I'm not worried about it. I get asked this all the time and I don't really know. I don't know. Somebody says, why are the beds in your house floating away from the walls? I've never seen that before. Honestly, I don't know. I thought, is that weird? I guess that is weird. It seems to me like you need to get. I know why. Sorry. I'm looking at my bed right now and realizing why that's the case. There's windows in our house behind every single bed because it's an old house and there's tons of windows. And I don't think you would put the bed right up on a window. Right. That doesn't really make sense because there's curtains. So then you'd smash the curtains. Also, our house, it has oddly big bedrooms. I feel like all the bedrooms could be a lot smaller, but it just. The bedrooms are so big. So if they're up against the wall, you'd have 10ft, probably between the end of the bed and the other wall. So I think whenever you aren't in a house, even when you just see it on camera, I know this because I've been to so many different people's houses who I first saw on the Internet. It just feels different. And I think that's probably the reason. So I think it just, it just feels better in this house because of the windows, because of the size of the rooms. So it's not like some big decision. Like this is the reason I have these big opinions on this. It's just, I guess what works best in this particular home. Oh, how do you keep your van clean? With a fan. With a big family. We're a family of seven and we have a 12 passenger van and I have a hard time keeping it clean. She says, I give myself grace knowing that and then it cut off. I don't know how to get this spreadsheet to show the rest of this question. We don't. So if you were to go in our van and go under all the seats, it'd probably be horrific. That's just something that I feel like I used to worry about all the time now. That's not to say we don't clean it out. We, we try like every time we get home from somewhere I tell every kid, come in with full hands. Nobody's allowed to come in the house with just nothing. You have to bring stuff in. Shoes, socks, trash, all the things. So, okay, it's not destroyed, but it can be. I wouldn't put it past us. That can happen. We don't have like a cleaning schedule or, you know, every Saturday we clean the van. We. It's kind of on the fly. Like everybody bring a bunch of stuff in. And then usually sometime after a while, I'll realize that little bits of things got left here and there when you do like a full cleanup. But it's not. It's not all that clean at all. I love the beige stoneware bowl that you use all the time where you got it or was wondering where you got it. So I get those at antique shops. I try not to pay more than 20 or $30 for them because they are very breakable. We have a cast iron sink and we have quartz countertops. So at some point, every bowl that enters this house will break. It's just a matter of time. So I buy them every time I see them at an antique shop. I'll. Even if I have too many, I'll still grab more because they will at some point get broken. I don't really baby them, but I also just don't pay a whole lot for them so that it doesn't break my heart whenever they break. Cause we use them for compost, we use them for mixing. We have kids everywhere, so that does happen. Okay, at the last question I want to take, because this is probably going to be a long winded one, is on the dairy cow. So I got an email and I told her that that was a really good idea for an episode and that I would love to address it. So here's the email. Hi Lisa. I don't have any social media, so I wasn't sure how to throw this out there and hope that maybe you will see this again. If you do want to ask questions, don't forget bit ly sfl. Those are capital questions. You can enter them there. This lady did email me and that's totally fine too. Lisa farmhousemboon.com if you want to do that. Okay. I was wondering if you would consider doing a podcast episode on your family milk cow journey. You haven't said a lot, but I know you've occasionally mentioned struggles with your Guernsey cow's milk flavor and then your Jersey cow now being dry. I would love to hear your journey and compare and contrast to my own. We also have a few Milk cows and a large family. I had grand ideas of raw milk and homemade dairy products and cheese, and honestly, it feels like a big flop. I don't love my cheeses. I. I now have two cows with subclinical mastitis and a third who doesn't want to give milk. Calf sharing. It started out so lovely and has become quite overwhelming. I may be reading a dear situation all wrong, but you always hear the lovely milk cow scenarios online, and I'm finding my reality to be a bit different four years into the process. Okay, so. So I have had a similar experience to this email, to be completely honest. So I've talked about the whole dairy cow journey on here a lot and on my YouTube channel, and I don't feel like I have it completely figured out. We have been milking animals between goats and cows for five years now. And although I didn't really enjoy milking goats, and I do like milking a dairy cow so much better. And I love the milk and I love the abundance of it. In this current season, we are not milking cows. The reason? Well, there's a few reasons. One is, and I have not shared this on YouTube. I know this is YouTube if you're watching the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast on YouTube, but on my much larger channel, Farmhouse on Boone, I just anticipate the backlash of certain things. So our dairy cow actually did pass away. So we do not currently have a cow at all. The Guernsey is at my sister's farm, and she's bred out there. I don't think we're gonna really milk her, though, anymore. And our Jersey was doing great. She started to dwindle on her milk production. We noticed she was losing weight and she was also declining in her production. And so we dried her off. We made the decision that we're going to dry her off, give her lots of alfalfa, lots of grain. We started feeding her extra grain per the vet's recommendation. Well, she ended up taking a turn for the worst. And we think the vet believes. We did not actually conduct an autopsy or anything, but the vet believes that she got something called hardware disease, which means that they find somewhere on the farm something metal, and it gets down into their rumen sac and it can cause, like, a cascade of so many different issues, and they ultimately do die. So that is what we believe happened. We do not know how she got that. And our vet did try to put a magnet that's. That's actually something they do. And some people, some larger dairy operations, we've learned since, put a Magnet down in their cow's stomach just to attract the metal in case that would happen. Because it's actually fairly common. Our vet said he sees this. I thought he said 30 times a year. That would be crazy, that what he said. It was a lot. It was a lot of times per year that he sees this. So it's not out of the realm of normal. But that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with this topic. Because we can get another dairy cow, should we choose. I still have a lot to share about it, and that's not actually why we aren't currently milking. We dried her off before we knew that this was happening. So we did not. She did not die. And then that's why we stopped getting milk. We dried her off and then she died shortly after. It was not mastitis. If that's. It wasn't that, we dried her off properly. This is why I hate this subject, because I know that no matter what I say about this, somehow people are going to think this is our fault. It's not. We did all the things with the vet. We, you know, we did not neglect her health. Something happened and we think it was that hardware disease. Either way, as far as the milk situation goes, you can calf share, and that means that the calf and the cow stay together. You can separate them at night, milk in the morning, and that gives you an amount of milk that's very appropriate for a normal family. Something like a gallon to two gallons per day. We did that for a long time. We did that for 18 months with our cow's first calf, ginger. That worked really well for our family. It's a bit of a deal at night, separating the cow and the calf, so that makes for a lot of extra work. So the second time she had a calf, I thought it'll be a lot better if we don't calf share, because then at night, instead of separating the cow and the calf, which also takes 20 minutes of time, if we just milk, then we get double the milk. But you're still doing that same amount of work, which actually does make a lot of sense. But the amount of milk you get is overwhelming. And so then enter cheese making. I took on that because that actually is a great way to preserve milk. Loved the process. I love doing it. But once the cheese is aged to the proper amount, we did not like the cheese. And I really don't think. I don't really feel like I did it wrong because it didn't mold, it didn't get. There's a lot of things that you can see along through the process. Like it can get gassy and airy and it can like blow up. And that means that something went way wrong and we ate it. So we didn't get sick, but we just didn't like the taste of the cheese. And so that solution for a large amount of milk kind of went away. So with calf sharing, the downside is that you spend a lot of time separating the cow and the calf every single night. You don't get anything from that. All you get is the couple gallons of milk. But you also have to milk in the morning, so there's 20 minutes of work at night, 20 minutes of work in the morning, you get about 2 gallons of milk, but you get no cream. Then you have where you don't cash air, you have to milk at night, you have to milk in the morning, you get tons of cream, tons of milk. I love that feeling. In the spring of abundance, you have eggs from all of your hens because it's daylight. Later you have all of this milk and cream, making butter, making yogurt and kefir and ricotta. And I love all of that. But still we end up with so much milk. And I give it to my sisters, but then I have to remember to. To bring the cooler and like find spaces in all of our fridge for all this milk. And it just gets to be way too much because in our fridge it Sometimes we have 10 gallons of milk, which we should just get another fridge. But it's dealing with all of the milk, all of the shuttling of milk around. And ultimately I have local farms that I can get raw milk. So the same product from at any time without having to waste, not really waste. I end up giving it to people or making cheese. I never really wasted it, but it's a lot of work. And so I guess I haven't thought of a particular solution. We have talked about getting another dairy cow. It's not that we're never going to do it again. Kind of thinking later this fall. So this summer we have three different trips planned. I'm speaking at the modern Homestead Expo, which by the way, which by the way, the Melissa Norris who is doing the Homestead Expo, she gave me a coupon code. So this would be a really good time to share that. So you can use code farmhouse on Boone 10 if you want to go to the modern homesteading conference, it is up in Idaho. So if you live somewhere in that vicinity, I will be speaking lots of great speakers. So it's going to be a Great conference. I'm looking forward to it. That's end of June, early July. No, I think it's just end of June. But so we have that planned. We have a trip to Colonial Williamsburg planned. We have a trip to Michigan planned. And so we have a lot going on this summer. And so I thought this would be a good time just to not have a dairy cow. I am and have been looking at farms. I want a dairy cow who would potentially calve after all of those trips. So if we bought a dairy cow, she calved after that, we could have a milk cow for, you know, starting this fall until forever and I think next time around. So my solution for this, I do believe that we will calf share again. It definitely was overwhelming without having any break at all. If you don't have a calf share, you have to milk morning and night. No exceptions. There's no just, you know, skipping a milking. Whereas if you do calf share, as long as you don't pluck the calf and wait 12 hours to milk, you don't have to milk. So if you go on a little weekend trip, just leave the cow and calf together. The downside is you don't get much cream. So it's. There's really no like fabulous solution. I think the best solution is if you are interested in selling raw milk. So a friend of mine where we get our milk locally, she has I believe, three dairy cows. She milks them all twice a day and she gets $15 a gallon for the milk. So if you are interested in selling milk or even just having one family dairy cow, not calf sharing, milking twice a day and then selling the extra, that would be a really good little side business to get into. I didn't really have any interest in selling it because I have so much other businessy things going on that I didn't really want to get into all of that. And so it just left us with too much extra. And even, you know, even cheese making, it's a lot of work. Like that's what I spent a lot of mornings and pretty much half the day doing was dealing with all the dairy. It's fun, it's satisfying work, to be honest. I really like it. I like that the kids have the experience of making something like that from farm all the way to finish Butter, yogurt, kefir, ricotta, mozzarella. I'm. I'm still into it. It's not that I'm not. It has been a little bit hard having the dairy cow die, having too much excess. And I to be completely honest, I am enjoying the break of the dairy cow and we're still drinking raw milk because a local friend has it. So that's currently what's happening. It's not that we won't get back into it. It's some point, but it isn't all sunshine and rainbows with the dairy cow thing. I think anybody would know that going in. It's not beyond doable. I did enjoy it. We did it for a really long time. But it has its pros and its cons. And so there's. That's what I'm sharing about that. All right, well, I hope that you enjoyed this episode of the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. I sometimes forget that there are people on here who maybe found this podcast through Spotify Spotify or Apple podcasts or Amazon Music and don't know anything about my brand. So if you don't follow along, I have this podcast, Simple Farmhouse Life, of course, but I also have a YouTube channel, my main YouTube channel and blog called Farmhouse on Boone. So you can follow along with our daily life with new recipes on Farmhouse on Boone.com or by heading over to YouTube and searching Farmhouse on Boon, you can follow along there and I would love to have you following along. All right, well, don't forget to submit more questions if you have them, and I will see you in the next episode of the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast.