280. An update on our home build, saving money on organic groceries, how we spend our weekends, baby-led weaning, and more!

Summary

Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast - Episode 280 Summary

Release Date: March 11, 2025

Host: Lisa Bass
Title: An update on our home build, saving money on organic groceries, how we spend our weekends, baby-led weaning, and more!

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1. Home Build Update

Lisa Bass kicks off Episode 280 with a comprehensive update on her family's new homestead build. Moving away from their previous property with a restrictive HOA, Lisa and her husband are excited about building a custom home on a seven-acre farm that will serve both their current needs and future generations.

• Foundation Progress:
  "Currently the foundation is dug and it's all the forms are there. We're just waiting to actually pour the concrete." [04:50]
  Lisa shares that adverse weather delayed their initial plans, but with the foundation ready, construction is set to accelerate.

• Design and Planning:
  Lisa has been meticulously working on the house's design, including ordering windows, cabinets, and planning the kitchen and exterior layouts. Additionally, she's contemplating the placement of gardens and other outdoor features.

• Pool Installation:
  A significant part of their vision includes adding a pool to the farm. Inspired by Liz Marie's simple rectangular vinyl liner pool with a sun ledge, Lisa aims to create a beautiful and functional space for family gatherings.
  "I really want to host. I'm 40 this year. We're just in a different season of life, and I'm ready to host all the things and be the house where people come." [11:00]

• Future Plans:
  Lisa envisions the farm as a central hub for family and friends, fostering strong community ties as their children grow and expand their social circles.

2. Saving Money on Organic Groceries

Addressing budget-friendly strategies, Lisa discusses how to maintain an organic and healthy diet without breaking the bank.

• Meal Planning and Bulk Cooking:
  "Doing a bulk of your meals instead of centering them around maybe a more expensive cut of meat... Cooking a whole chicken as opposed to buying chicken breasts." [01:40]
  She emphasizes the importance of purchasing whole, less expensive protein sources and incorporating whole grains and sourdough to stretch the budget.

• Smart Swapping:
  Lisa suggests replacing costly pre-made items with homemade alternatives.
  "Things like pre-made chips or granola, taking each thing and thinking is there a cheaper protein source? Is there a cheaper carb source here? Is there a swap I could make?" [02:00]

• Local and Seasonal Shopping:
  Buying raw milk and meats from local farms at competitive prices can significantly reduce grocery expenses. Lisa notes her current rate of $7 per gallon for raw milk as an example of savvy local sourcing.

3. Weekend Activities and Family Time

Lisa highlights how her family spends weekends, balancing homestead responsibilities with quality family time.

• Regular Sister Gatherings:
  Maintaining strong family bonds is a priority. Lisa describes weekly meet-ups with her sisters, which include activities like sushi nights, attending farmer's markets, and seasonal outings such as ice skating and gym gatherings during colder months.
  "We have very regular times that we get together every single week... Tonight two of my sisters and I... we might meet up at my parents because they have a pond and it should be frozen, so we might ice skate." [10:00]

• Hosting and Socializing:
  Inspired by her recent family trip to Fort Lauderdale, Lisa plans to make their new homestead a welcoming place for extended family and friends, fostering a sense of community and togetherness.

4. Baby-Led Weaning and Cooking for Babies

In this segment, Lisa shares her approach to introducing solid foods to her children and how it integrates with her cooking routines.

• No Modifications Needed:
  "I don't modify anything. So I cook as I usually would. I give them the things that I'm more confident that they won't choke on." [25:30]
  Lisa believes in offering her children the same nutritious meals she prepares for the family, ensuring they receive the full benefits of fresh, whole foods.

• Safety Considerations:
  While she incorporates her children into family meals, Lisa remains cautious about certain foods like honey due to botulism risks.
  "The one thing I do change is until they're one... I'll just throw in some maple syrup instead." [28:00]

• Milling Fresh Grains:
  Preferring to mill grains as needed to preserve nutritional value, Lisa avoids storing large quantities of freshly milled grains.
  "There’s really almost no benefit of the grains after they're sitting there, I would rather just reach for all-purpose if I needed something in a quick pinch and mill as I go." [28:20]

5. Listener Questions and Insights

Lisa dedicates a substantial portion of the episode to answering listener-submitted questions, providing practical advice based on her experiences.

a. Maintaining Close Family Relationships

Question:
"Hi Lisa, I want to have a closer relationship with my sister. We live an hour away from each other and have families of our own. How do you stay in close contact with your sisters and manage your households?"

Lisa's Response:
Lisa outlines her family's strategy for maintaining close ties despite busy schedules and geographical distances. Regular weekly gatherings, utilizing group texts for practical communication, and intentional planning are key.
"We have to find some intentional time to make that happen... We have very regular times that we get together every single week." [17:00]

b. Choosing Between Land and Living Close to Family

Question:
"If you had to choose either having land or living close to family, what would you choose?"

Lisa's Response:
Lisa emphatically prefers staying close to family over acquiring more land, highlighting the irreplaceable value of familial bonds.
"I would definitely just stay where family is... It has become more important the older I get." [22:00]

c. Cutting Down Grocery Spending on a Tight Budget

Question:
"New to motherhood and homesteading, we're on a tight budget and trying to buy organic. How can we save money on groceries?"

Lisa's Response:
Lisa offers actionable tips such as bulk cooking, choosing cost-effective protein sources like whole chickens over breast fillets, and prioritizing filling, inexpensive foods over pricier, less nutritious options.
"Doing a bulk of your meals instead of centering them around maybe a more expensive cut of meat... figuring out is there a cheaper protein source." [24:30]

d. Teaching Toddlers to Self-Soothe During Naps

Question:
"How can I teach my 18-month-old to put herself back to sleep during naps?"

Lisa's Response:
Acknowledging her limited expertise, Lisa shares her approach of offering patience and understanding, recognizing that each child develops at their own pace. She notes that by age two, children typically start managing longer naps independently.
"By age two, I find they grow out of that and it's usually not at 18 months." [26:30]

e. Managing Homestead Chores with Babies

Question:
"How do you get farm chores done with babies when you don't have an extra hand?"

Lisa's Response:
Lisa emphasizes the importance of containment and flexibility. Using strollers and baby wraps allows her to tend to chores while keeping her infants safe.
"As long as you can contain them so they're not, you know, running off to the pond or the road or whatever hazards, it's very manageable." [29:00]

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Conclusion

In Episode 280, Lisa Bass offers a heartfelt and practical glimpse into her life of homesteading, family management, and maintaining meaningful relationships. Her insights into budget-friendly organic living, the intricacies of building a new homestead, and navigating parenthood provide valuable lessons for listeners striving to lead a simple, intentional farmhouse life.

For more detailed insights and resources mentioned in this episode, visit farmhouse on Boone and explore Lisa's courses on Simple Sourdough and YouTube Success Academy.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Feeling like myself again. That's what women mention over and over in the reviews." – Lisa Bass [00:00] (Note: This quote is from an ad segment and is excluded from the main summary as per instructions.)

• "We have to find some intentional time to make that happen." – Lisa Bass [17:00]

• "I would definitely just stay where family is." – Lisa Bass [22:00]

• "Doing a bulk of your meals instead of centering them around maybe a more expensive cut of meat." – Unknown Speaker [01:40]

• "As long as you can contain them so they're not, you know, running off to the pond or the road or whatever hazards, it's very manageable." – Lisa Bass [29:00]

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Note: Timestamps correspond to the transcript provided and are used here to attribute quotes accurately.

Transcript

[Lisa]

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[Unknown]

Sometimes you do the best you can with the money you have and most likely everything will be fine. Doing a bulk of your meals instead of centering them around, maybe a more expensive cut of meat, doing a smaller amount of meat and doing a lot of whole grains and sourdough inexpensive protein sources. How could I get those macronutrients in for less money? Cooking a whole chicken as opposed to buying chicken breasts? What am I buying that is organic and healthy but isn't really filling us up pre made chips or granola? Taking each thing and thinking is there a cheaper protein source? Is there a cheaper carb source here? Is there a swap I could make?

[Lisa]

My name is Lisa, mother of eight and creator of the blog and YouTube.

[Unknown]

Channel Farmhouse on Boone.

[Lisa]

On this podcast I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can.

[Unknown]

Live out your priorities.

[Lisa]

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 course YouTube Success Academy. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes in Description box below.

[Unknown]

Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast. We're going to do a solo episode today. I have a lot of things to chat about now. Most of my inspiration for this comes from the Q and A form that you all can fill out. I will leave a link down in the show notes or the description box depending on if you are listening to this on one of your favorite podcast players or if you are watching this recording on YouTube for you to be able to submit your questions. I know a lot of you aren't on social media and this gives you an opportunity to weigh into the podcast and give whatever questions you want to hear about or guest suggestions. I really appreciate those. As we're planning out the rest of 2025 and who's going to come on and the topics that we'll discuss, I love the listener feedback. The first thing, before diving into some of the questions, I want to give you a little update on the build process. So as many of you know, if you've been following along a while, like our story in a nutshell, six years ago we moved to a little homestead on seven acres with an old house, an old barn, and a few years ago we started getting the idea that we wanted a bit more acreage. We wanted to be a little further out of town, out of an hoa. So I didn't really talk about that a ton throughout the years that we lived at our last property, but we did have a fairly restrictive hoa. So we wanted a place just a bit further out into the country, a bit more freedom and basically we could be able to build out whatever we want for our family and where we will likely live, barring any weird circumstances, forever. Most likely it's probably the farm that our grandchildren will come to and we really wanted to set that into motion. So long story short, we are currently in an in between house while working on our build. We sold our last homestead. That all went through back in December and we were we're happy with how all that went. It was actually pretty simple, straightforward process. I think we found the perfect buyers for our home. Seems like a couple that's really going to enjoy it for a really long time. A young family, but we really hoped we'd be a little further along in the build process. By now we were supposed to break ground back in November, but there are a few things that held that up. And then by the time we actually were able to do that, the weather this year, I know for many of you across the country, it's been a rough winter. I think some people who are in like completely different climates on the coast and like the northwest and all that might not have experienced a different winter this year. But anybody in like the general middle of the country likely experienced what we did, which was a much harder winter than we've had the last several years. So we'd hoped that we could sometime during the winter, pour our foundation and get started on the framing, but there were not any weeks that allowed for that. Thankfully, there are some coming up. So currently the foundation is dug and it's. All the forms are there. We're just waiting to actually pour the concrete. I think things will move pretty quickly once that happens. We've been really busy working on the design behind the scenes. So even though there's not technically much there yet, We've been working on the design for the house. I'm already working on ordering the windows, the cabinets, the kitchen design, Working on the exterior design. So where the garden will go. I haven't shared this much just because I don't know if it feels applicable for a lot of the content I share. But we also want a pool on our farm. Now, whether that can happen this year or next year, you know, is possibly unrealistic. I don't know to think that we could get something like that accomplished already, Especially with the house not built yet. But we really had a vision for this property, this farm, to be one where we could host a ton as our kids get older. You know, we're about to have at some point eight teenagers. We currently have two teenagers. Not obviously, not all the same time. But we are having children grow up, they'll eventually be moving out of our house. We are thinking about all of the people that will come in our lives through all of that. So their friends, their spouses, their kids, all the friends that they have right now. We really want to be the house that people come to. I love to host and I started realizing all the random places I've been in my life because that person had a pool. So like, I've been to someone from my homeschool co ops, mother in law's house. I've been to a friend's mom's house. I've been to somebody I met through homeschool's neighbor's house, all because they had a pool. And it got me thinking that that is something that brings people together throughout the summer months. You know, in the. In Missouri, we might be looking at four or five months out of the year. But it really is something that I have become more and more convinced. I thought for a while, well back in my early motherhood years, I was like, no water of any kind. That's scary. And I still have a healthy caution for that. But as my older kids get older, there becomes this time where it's like you have to balance out, like things that they can do and then also how to protect your younger ones. So we're going to put all the safety measures in place and all that. But my friend Sarah from our tribe of many first kind of planted this idea in my head back when we met up at our first YouTube thing that we met up at. She was saying that the best thing that they ever bought was a pool. She has 11 kids and was basically saying that it's the house that all the friends come to, they host things. Just everybody flocks to their house because it's the fun house with the pool that got me thinking. But at that time, I think this was maybe four or five years ago, my older kids weren't as old. I had a lot of non swimmers. I'm now at the point we have six swimmers, two who can't swim. But that eventually will and Sarah encouraged me that when you have a pool, kids learn to swim a lot younger just from exposure to the water. And I've had lots of other friends say the same thing, like, yeah, they can swim at 2 or 3 when you put them in the water every day. So anyways, we probably will be doing some kind of pool. And so we're thinking through, like where that should go. Should it be further from the house so that maybe I'm less nervous about it closer to the house so I can see it better. We're weighing all of that out. That's something that we are behind the scenes planning. One pool that I've been very inspired by for many years. I just think it's beautiful and simple. Is Liz Marie from Liz Marie Blog or Liz Marie Galvin over on Instagram. She has. It's just a vinyl liner pool, but it has a tanning ledge or a sun ledge where she has some, like, lawn chairs. It's not really the right word for them, but you know, lounging chairs in there. And it's just a basic rectangular shape with a concrete deck around it. And it's beautiful. And it kind of inspired me because I. I sometimes think of pools as you want them because they're really fun. And I probably would take one regardless of how beautiful it was, because of how fun I know my kids will have with it, but not really thinking. It could also add to the beauty and charm of a property that I want to look historic. You know, it's a pocket pool. It's something new. It's not like a beautiful pond or something like that, but hers actually looks really beautiful. And I started looking at different images on Pinterest, and I realized that what I like is just a simple rectangular shape, not a whole lot of slides and diving boards. And I'm pretty convinced that we want a pool. One thing that was suggested to me, and I remember being very excited about this years ago when I watched Danelle from Weed Em and Reap put in a swimming pond, which was very beautiful because it. It's like a. It looks very natural, like a real pond, but she put in different plants and things, and I need to look more into it. But basically it had a natural ecosystem that kept the water pure. The reason that we opted that we aren't going to do that is mostly for the safety reason of it. A basic rectangular pool can have covers installed that something very heavy could actually walk on. So I really want that to be installed. And I also want to put a nice fence around the pool. And with a pond, I feel like that would kind of lose the charm of that. It's natural. It's just. It was just there in nature, yet there's a, you know, a cover on it and a fence around it. So I decided we'd just embrace it and do, like, a rectangular pool. I think it's going to be beautiful. And even if it isn't, I really want to host. I'm 40 this year. We have. We're just in a different season of life, and I'm ready to host all the things and be the house where people come. Recently, my sisters and I got a pretty quick random idea because we saw really cheap flights down to the Fort Lauderdale airport on Spirit Airlines. It was like $70 round trip to head down there for four days just to be warm. And so we did that in February and we stayed at an Airbnb that we all split. Wasn't even that huge, but it totally worked out. One of my sisters and I brought several of our kids, but not the little two, just to make it really easy. I brought my six swimmers and left home my two non swimmers and it is amazing to me how that many children do not get sick of swimming in a pool. We just hung out at this house and they swam from morning until late at night. There was hardly a time where there wasn't someone in the pool and that further confirmed to me that this would be a really fun thing. So we're meeting with a pool guy this weekend to see if we could start working on where that would go because it's kind of tricky not having all of the pieces in place of our homestead and trying to figure out what has to come first so that it can all integrate together. And I think at some point we just have to pick locations for things and then eventually start filling in the spaces after that. Because, yeah, it can be a little bit overwhelming, but mostly just very, very excited, mostly excited that the weather is going to not be so cold soon. And even if the pool's not in, we have a creek on our property and start enjoying some more of that outside fun. It's been a very, very cold one. So there's just a little update on the build and some of the plans. There's a lot of design going into it right now, but not a whole lot on the ground. Once this episode comes out, I do think that we're going to have our foundation poured and maybe that means we're going to be moving into framing. I think at some point things will move really quickly. I do plan to share on my main YouTube channel, Farmhouse on Boone, the whole like plans and design specifically of the house and so stay tuned for that.

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Shopify.com farmhouse let's jump into some of the questions. Okay, this is a fun one since I just talked about my sisters and I hi Lisa, I want to have a closer relationship with my sister. We live an hour away from each other and have families of our own. How do you stay in close contact with your sisters and manage your households? Do you regularly get together, talk or text on phones? Any tips would be appreciated. So this has been it has been different based on what season of life we are in. So when we were first married and had a couple kids, so I actually got married four years before her. By the time she got married I had two little kids and then I ended up having my third about six weeks after she had her first. So the early parts of our marriage did overlap quite a bit and we would spend so much time on the phone. I remember when she was first married and I had a couple of little children, we would Just put the phone to our ear and just go about all of our morning stuff for hours. I don't even know if we necessarily even talked the whole time. We didn't even live that far apart from each other at that time. But we just talked about anything and everything. And we repeated and rehashed out, like, all the same things every single day. Now, as our kids got older and there were more of them, you can't really get away with that. Like, when there's just toddlers at your feet, you just have to kind of watch them and make sure they're not getting into anything. You can talk on the phone. You can. What do people do these days? Marco Polo. You can't really do that when there's a lot of children in a small space. It would just be chaotic. Plus, there's lots of things you need to do. Like you need to interact with those children a lot more than just the occasional, like, oh, or do so sweet kind of thing. Like you actually have conversations with them. So we don't do that anymore. But we do have regular times that we get together every single week and the days where we don't. So usually the way this works out for us is we usually see each other. And I'm speaking, I have three sisters right now. So I'm talking about my sister that's just two years younger than me because my younger sisters were so much younger. They were living at home during that early phase of our marriage. But now they're all married and have children. And so now I'm speaking about all three of them. We have very regular times that we get together every single week. And the days that we don't have that we really don't end up talking very much because we're so busy. We are so involved in all the things that we have to do to make it to where we can see each other on those other days. So for an example, today's Thursday. And tonight two of my sisters and I, one of them can't make it to this get together while our older kids are at Awanas and we have sushi. So that's something we do on Thursday nights. And then usually on Friday, we find some way to get together. It's been really tricky during the winter. Last couple Fridays ago, actually, a couple Fridays ago, we were all four in Miami. But then the Friday before that, it was freezing. And since I can't currently really host people where I live right now, we crashed my mom's house. So we all four went there, we bundled up the big kids, they went outside and wrote a side by side with our dad. I had my boys have dirt bikes. They did that. And then we kept a lot of little kids inside. Tomorrow we're getting together and we're all meeting in a gym. We found that there was a gym that we could come and hang out in because it's still really cold. When it gets a little bit warmer, we'll meet at a park. And then every other Friday, I have homeschool co op. But the Fridays that we can. We all will get together. Saturday is kind of random. We don't always have plans. During the farmers market months. We do all four go to the same farmer's market and just let the kids run around. You know, we shop. One of my sisters sells her beef and pork there. So she will stand in her booth a lot of times. My other sisters and I will kind of hang around her booth and maybe take the kids on a walk for a little while. Right now that's not going on because it's still winter, but we do usually still, in some capacity, get together. I feel like this Saturday we might meet up at my parents because they have a pond and it should be frozen, so we might ice skate. So Saturday is not a set thing. But we usually do end up doing something. And then on Sundays, we all go to my parents for lunch and dinner and just hang out there. And we've been doing that for years. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Other than our family group texts where we might send something funny our kids said or a picture, we really don't end up talking hardly at all. Like, we send maybe texts, like, of things that are practical, like, hey, did you get this? Or should I bring this? But not really much communication during those days. Those days we are very focused on getting our work done around the house, homeschool stuff, business stuff. And then usually by like Thursday night, we're starting to get together a little bit more. So that's kind of how we do it. We have had phases of life where we've lived an hour apart and we still have done that. So it just really depends, you know, if you have somewhere you can meet halfway or if half the time she drives toward you or half the time you drive toward her. We don't really like, all of my family is kind of like this, where a drive is not really enough to deter us. If we want to do something fun, we're just like, oh, well, like, we'll just jump in the car and do it. We've all been this way, and I Think the reason is mostly because we've lived in very rural areas a lot of our lives, and so there's just been very few things that have been convenient. And so when I talk to someone who lives more toward the city, they'll say something like, oh, well, that's 15 minutes away, you know, Whereas for us, we might say it more like, well, that's only 45 minutes away, you know, so it's really a perspective thing. Ideally, you'd live closer, you know, if you could. But we've been in the situation where we haven't always too. But we've had, like, halfway points. So there was a town when we did live that far apart, halfway in between, where we just find all the amenities there. Like, we meet at that town's parks, we meet at that town's pool, our kids. The cousin relationship is also really important for us, more so now than ever, because we have. We have children that are best friends. You know, they miss each other, they want to see each other. And so it's motivated by, you know, not only having a community to hang out in, but also just, like, the kids want to see each other. And so we. We have to find some intentional time to make that happen. I know not every family is like this, but it's the bright spots that I look forward to when I'm trying to, like, get all this stuff done and we're in our house grinding it out. I'm like, well, at least on Friday we're going to go to that gym and we're going to get together and hang out and bring sandwiches and. Yeah, that's. We're all very extroverted, though, as far as our personalities go. And so we have to have these regular times of getting together. Okay, on that same note, I had another question that said. Hey, Lisa, I was wondering, if you had to choose either having land or living close to family, what would you choose? We want land. But housing here in Utah is so expensive. One million plus for five acres. That's very expensive if you knew the prices here. Oh, boy. So we're thinking of moving to Texas away from families, so we can get land. If you had to choose, what would you choose? So I can say without a doubt, and this probably won't surprise you after my last answer, that I would definitely just stay where family is. Love having land. In fact, I don't even know, like, there you'd have to find in Utah. And I don't know if this is possible, but just. Okay, just a real quick example. The house we Live in right now in town is a lot harder with little kids and homesteading than the house that we lived in town, our first home on Boone Street. So the, the home where I named the blog farm house on Boom. It was right on a busy street. It was only a quarter acre lot, so it wasn't. You didn't have a whole lot to offer. However, it bordered a public park, so it wasn't like there was houses all around like there is here, there's tons of houses and we had a nice open green backyard where I did a huge garden. We had chickens. Now of course we couldn't do a dairy cow, we couldn't do dairy goats. But I definitely lived that homestead lifestyle. Made bread from scratch, sewed my own clothes, all that kind of stuff on that property. Even though it was just in a busy part of town and not super private and not on land. But during that time at that public park, I met up with my sister, I met up with friends and I don't think I would trade that. Now. It's hard having a ton of kids in a house in town, but I still think I would choose that. Yes, ideally you would have grown up in Texas. Like I always think that. Like, man, where would, where would I be, you know, if my family just. If we grew up somewhere else, obviously maybe somewhere with nicer weather in the wintertime, that would be nice. But I wouldn't leave just for that because family and getting together with family and having that sense of place and all of that is really important to me. It's become more important the older I get. And I just wouldn't trade it. I mean, I would look for, like I said, somewhere with a bit more privacy. Sometimes places are only a quarter acre, a half acre, but they're tucked at the end of a cul de sac or they border land that isn't privately owned. And there's, you know, opportunities like that if at all possible. I try to find that, but I would totally stay. That's just me personally. But it also depends on how close you are with your family. For some people, they're not, you know, getting together with their family all the time. And so it wouldn't change a whole lot about their living situation. But if you're close to your family, which I kind of imagine you are, if you are choosing between those two. So that's something to factor in. Now if you asked 10 other homesteaders, you know, self sufficient type people, which I don't really consider myself that I enjoy it for, I just find it lovely. I find it all very enjoyable, but you know, we're not like growing our year's worth of produce. But if you talk to other people with that same desire, I don't know, 9 out of 10 might give you a different answer. I really don't know. So you can ask other people as well. But I'm just saying that's what I would choose.

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When you have a newborn, do you put them down for any of their daytime naps or do you wear them in the wrap for all their naps? So I totally wear the newborn for every single nap. I don't start transitioning to naps down till probably about seven months or so. Hey Lisa, you may have answered already in a previous episode, but I'm curious. When you mill your fresh greens, do you mill just enough for what you need for that recipe and and or for the day? Or do you ever mill enough to fill a canister and then use when needed? New to all this and ready to jump into freshly milled grains, but still have questions. So I try to only mill for what I am baking because as you might remember if you listen to the Sue Becker episode, she talked about the nutritional value that's lost within just hours, a day, two days of milling freshly whole grains. So it loses the benefits that you're trying to gain. So usually if I mill too much, I will right away roll that into making another recipe or I'll just feed my sourdough starter a bunch and then I'll have fed sourdough starter for the next day to make pancakes or something. Because Sue Becker also did say that the nutritional breakdown ends when you either bake it or when you put it into something fermenting like sourdough or something. So you're stopping that process when you use them. And so I do try to use them all up. I don't make a separate canister. I used to do that more. But now that I know that there's really almost no benefit of the grains after they're sitting there, I would rather just reach for all purpose if I needed something in a quick pinch and mill as I go. So that's why I like having a mill that you can leave out on your counter at all times. Something a little bit larger like the the ones with the bucket that's contained in the mill are a little large for most kitchen countertops. And so having one of the freestanding ones where you add the bowl instead of, you know, there's a separate. You just would use a separate bowl to mill the grains into. I do find that those are a little bit more accessible for you just to leave out all the time and mill the grains as needed. Okay. Hi. I'm new to motherhood and homesteading. I have a one year old boy. So far we're on a tight budget right now as my husband can't get a better paying job until he graduates college next year. We try to buy everything organic and we buy raw milk, meats from local farms, etc. Etc. It seems like we're always spending more than 600amonth on groceries for our little family of three. I'm not sure if this is normal or not. I make all our meals from scratch, especially sourdough breads. Could there be a podcast on practical tips for new moms for cutting down grocery spending when buying organic produce, raw milk, meats from local farms, etc. Like, what can we do to save money each month on groceries when trying to prioritize our health? This would be a great episode and I should trying to think of who I could have on to talk about something like that I am having on Frugal Fit Mom. Write this down because this could be a good topic to discuss with her, but I'll share some of my quick thoughts. And just to be completely transparent, I don't really know if 600amonth is a lot or not because having 10 people in our family, I don't know how to compare that to having three. However, there was a time when I had three, but of course that was back in 0809 and so everything about everything was way different. I think I paid $4 a gallon for raw milk at that time, so it's really hard to compare. And also there's other factors, like where do you live? Because I know some people pay $25 a gallon for raw milk. I'm in a position right now where I pay around $7 a gallon for raw milk, which I know is very, very inexpensive compared to most areas in the country. So it really just depends on a lot of factors of if I could say that's a lot or that's not a lot, right off hand, it doesn't seem like a whole lot, but on a very like on a limited budget, I could see why you'd want to consider, you know, is this normal? Am I on the right track? And there are definitely people who have content that focus more on like taking each line item and figuring out where you could cut down. So my quick initial thoughts are, and this isn't maybe necessarily always the best health concern, but sometimes you do the best you can with the money you have and most likely everything will be fine. So I would say doing a bulk of your meals instead of like centering them around, maybe a more expensive cut of meat, doing a smaller amount of meat and doing a lot of whole grains and sourdough and inexpensive protein sources like, well, I was going to say eggs, but I don't think that's the case anymore. For a long time to me, in my area, one of the cheapest ways to pack a lot of protein was just doing eggs. Like if you take the grams of protein and if you're a math person, you could sit down sometime and figure this out. How many grams of protein per dollar are eggs versus, you know, what I'm currently paying for ground beef or a roast where I'm doing shredded meat and just thinking, how could I get those macronutrients in for less money? There's certain things to maybe cut all together. I mean, sadly, like bacon. Like I believe I did not run the math on this, but I'm pretty sure that's a higher amount of money per gram of protein than something like ground beef. Cooking a whole chicken. As opposed to buying chicken breast, I'd stay away from chicken breasts, especially organic pasture raised chicken breasts. Those are really pricey and if you can afford them in your budget and convenience is more of like, if time is more of your problem, then that balance changes and you start buying things like that, like chicken breast and different cuts of meat that might lend themselves more to convenience if, if budget is less of the problem and time is more of the problem. But you weigh those things out and figuring out what's my cheapest source of protein, what am I buying that is organic and healthy, but isn't really filling us up? So it's just fun to eat, but it's not actually, you know, keeping us alive and contributing to our health. Like things like pre made, anything like pre made chips or granola. Just buying oatmeal, organic oatmeal is going to nourish your body so much more and you're going to be spending a lot less per ounce. So kind of taking each thing and thinking, is there a cheaper protein source? Is there a cheaper carb source here? Is there a swap I can make where, you know, I'm not buying anything pre made? Of course you're saying you make everything from scratch. So like this might just be what it costs. And maybe you could cut the budget in other areas. But those are just some of my quick thoughts on potential ways to cut the grocery budget. There are cheaper foods that are more filling and so weighing the balance of like, maybe we're going to eat more of those filling cheap foods and less of the more expensive ones, we're going to add them in, you know, for nutritional and whatnot. But like, sometimes I think we watch too. Like I watch people on Instagram who are eating in a certain way and they're piling their plates with all of these things that are possibly very expensive that you could find a similar nutritional profile for by finding something local and fresh and closer to the source and not like putting blueberries on every plate. That's just a really small example. But you know, I think there, there could be some wiggle room there. But it also could just be that groceries are really expensive and I know that they are. Okay, another baby sleep question. We've co slept till about 14 months. My toddler is still needing help during nap times to get through sleep cycles. How can I teach her to put herself back to sleep? She doesn't take a passy. It's getting old when she can't sleep for two hours straight on her own at 18 months. So this is the part where I'm going to tell you I'm completely unqualified. My 18 month old also does not sleep 2 hours and when he wakes up in the middle of a nap, there are some times where I'm like I'm just going to give you a few minutes. But he almost never falls back asleep. I know some people's like my sister's baby, she's 18 months, she does, she said okay if she wakes up, you know, an hour in, don't get her because she'll cry for five minutes and then she'll go right back to sleep for another hour. So she's learned that about her baby. But she does take a paci. I forgot that part. And mine doesn't. So that could be the reason they're not easily self soothing now because my 18 month old doesn't take long naps. We are still doing two naps. So that way he is getting his sleep. It just isn't all at one time. Usually around age 2 I find they grow out of that and Sometime around age 2 almost all of my kids take that solid 2 hour nap. But it's a little bit dicey younger than that. So I guess I just don't know. I don't know. But I know at some point all of my kids go through that like two hour nap phase and it's usually not at 18 months. How do you modify your cooking for your family? When baby's old enough to start baby led weaning, for example, do you stop adding salt if you know baby will be eating the food? Is there anything else you consider if you do modify for cooking, at what age do you stop worrying about these things? So I don't worry about those things at all. When my babies start picking up a little bit of food from, you know, whatever we're eating, usually around seven months, that's just small amounts, they start eating a little bit more, you know, as they get closer to one that they start adding more and more. And then I'd say by one they're eating quite a bit. That varies from kid to kid. One of my sister's kids doesn't eat. They just do not do that at all till they're closer to one. They all just gag. They have no interest. My kids do get interested in picking up little bits of food somewhere around seven months usually. And I don't modify anything. So I cook as I usually would. I give them the things that I'm more confident that they won't choke on. So that's one thing I wouldn't give them, something I think they're going to choke on. But anything that they could pick up and eat. I don't worry about salt, butter, I mean nothing. I don't worry about any of it. I will say there have been kids where I worried more about the honey thing. I guess I still worry about the honey thing. And that's a contra. Not controversial. That's a questionable thing because I've read so many moms that give their kids, you know, honey from a very young age, six months, nine months. I still don't. It's one of those things that I still worry about. Maybe I just am uneducated on it. There's, you know, the botulism risk with honey. I've definitely gotten more laid back about it because there's been times like with previous kids where I was like, oh no, that had honey. And I get so worried. And now I'm like, I know they're gonna be fine, like if they ate a piece of pancake. So that's like the one thing, the one thing I do change is until they're one. If, say I make pancakes and I usually throw honey in it, I'll just throw in some maple syrup instead. Just because if you're gonna Be worried about it. And you're gonna, it's gonna keep you up at night for whatever reason. Even if it's not true, even if it's one of those stupid things that we don't have to really worry about. It's easy enough to just throw in the maple syrup and I'll do that. Because if as soon as I don't do that, somebody else will give the baby some pancakes, not knowing that, you know, I had honey in it again, I'm, I'm not near as worried as I used to be. But I'll make it with syrup instead. But other than that, like salt, I think that's all good. Okay. Homesteading with little kids and a husband with a full time job. My family is moving on to, to our homestead in one month. Ooh, that's exciting. I can't wait to move back to our homestead. To be honest, I am not made for in down. We have an infant and a one and a half year old. We will just start with garden and chickens. My husband works all day, so as a stay at home mom, this will be mostly my responsibility. How do you get farm chores done with babies when you don't have an extra hand? I'm thinking of logistics like getting out to feed the chickens in the morning. I know your husband is home with you now and helps you, but before he quit his job, how are you able to keep animals with little babies to watch? So just things like strollers, you know, containment, baby wearing. So for the infant, you could have the baby in a wrap, you could have the other one in like a jogging stroller strapped in so you can kind of go around your homestead and your yard with those big tires. Honestly, when I had two little kids, we didn't live on a homestead, but we definitely had a garden and chickens. And as long as you can contain them so they're not, you know, running off to the pond or the road or whatever hazards, it's, it's very manageable. Especially things like chickens. Like chickens are really, really easy to care for. They require almost no effort. You can get a big water that hangs up that you only have to refill like once a week. Very, very simple to do. That's not going to be a problem at all. The garden would be a little bit more active work and so you might want to get out, you know, in the earlier morning so the babies aren't super hot or getting sunburned. But chickens won't be a concern now. It gets a little trickier when you have a dairy cow and you need to milk while caring for young ones. I've totally done it. There have been times when Luke and the older kids have been out of town and I have little kids and need to manage, you know, doing the dairy cow and all the homestead stuff with the little ones. And that's totally my, my, my method is containment. Long as you have that, even if they're not happy, a lot of times they are. Like, if you kind of turn the stroller towards the chickens, towards the gardening and they're watching, they find that fun. And then if, you know, you only need to, if you can only work in small doses and then you need to go inside for a little while. That's the beauty of having really young kids, is your days are really flexible because you don't really need to worry about school of any kind. You know, there's, there's really a wide open day when you have little kids and then also they nap. So if you can get a baby monitor for the one and a half year old, put that in their room so you can head out to the garden while you have the one month old in the wrap, you can cover a lot of ground that way. I mean, you could even save all of your chores for just nap time and having, you know, throughout the day. Maybe it's a morning and an afternoon nap or something like that. Two hours to work on, you won't even need that. You won't even need 30 minutes to deal with a garden and chickens. So it's totally, totally doable. All right, well, my children have all decided that my work time is up. I will say I do have 15 minutes left, but I. It's getting a little loud, so I don't want to distract you with that. There are plenty more questions I'll be answering on the next episode and I hope that you will join me. 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 cook cooks and homesteaders with practical recipes and daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmhouse on Boone.com and to dig deeper, we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at Bitvit. Ly forward/farmhousesourdo course. That's all one word. Bit. Ly Farmhousesourdo course. If you're looking to learn how we earn an income online, check out my future YouTube course at Bit Ly Farmhouse youtubecourse All one word.