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Simple Farmhouse Life
301. Design Decisions, Third Trimester Updates, and Finding Enjoyment in the Process + More Q&A!
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- [00:01]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone
it all come together now that the metal is on all the roofs, the chimneys are bricked, I'm seeing the proportions and I'm really appreciating the way that we've gone about this process, even though nothing about it has been fast or simple. It's all just been a ton of thought. But I truly am en the slower process of all of this. No part of this has been rushed, which I would have rushed if the builder would have been more able to go more quickly and things would have arrived faster and I would have known when to order things. So it was all sitting there. I would have gone faster. Honestly, it's helped me to catch up with the learning curve and to make sure that we are catching a lot of the details along the way. My name is Lisa, mother of eight and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boone. On this podcast I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses Simple Sourdough and the Simple Sewing Series. I also help people reach their goals from home through my business course YouTube Success Academy. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes and description box below. Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today I'm going to be doing another solo episode where I chat all things business building. Not business building necessarily, but maybe building houses, pregnancy, mom life, family life, food, all of that kind of stuff that is currently going on with us and finding ways that that can apply to you and how things are going and progressing in your own homes. Because I do think hearing how someone else is currently navigating whatever season they're in can help us right? So I have quite a few questions here that I'll take. I was going to start with a building update. So I feel like our build is just going phenomenally slow. I've had people say that it's going really fast, and someone said, is this like pregnancy where it goes fast for everybody else, but it's not going fast for you? And I do think it's like that because I share updates and usually I only share updates when there's things going on. But like this next two weeks, our builders are going on vacation, going out of town, which, you know, builders can go out of town, and they don't necessarily plan around who they're currently, like what clients they currently have. They still have to plan a vacation. So with that being said, there's just not going to be a whole lot of progress in the next couple of weeks on our home, which we go up there every single day and check on progress, meet with people. We are up there this morning talking with H Vac people, with a man who's going to run water lines out to the barn and the garage into the house and kind of make that all connect. And we met with the plumbers because they're finishing up roughing in all of the plumbing. So things are still happening at our home site. However, the a lot of the stuff that you'll see the progress on will not be. So that's discouraging for me, but also I'm trying to be really patient about this process, just knowing that one, the more time I have to think about things, the more hopefully intentional choices I am making. So one example of that is I had one sink picked out for. So when I told the plumbers how to plumb the house, I said I wanted a wall mount faucet for a certain sink in the guest bath. But then I since came across a different idea and changed my mind on that entirely. So if they had already done all of that work weeks ago, then I wouldn't have been able to make any changes on that. In some ways, it's almost freeing to have certain things just in place because there it is, it's done. Like when you move into a house that's already built, you just accept what's there and you might find a way to make it a little prettier, like maybe add a new faucet or a new vanity, but you're not necessarily re plumbing the whole thing to put a wall mount faucet on. So in a way, it's kind of nice when decisions are finally made whether you like them or not, because then you're just free to work within those parameters and not in the design phase anymore. And every single time that we've moved into just the phase of making it pretty with all of this, I've felt a sense of relief. So, like, the biggest thing was coming up with where everything should be, how the driveway should come into the property, and where we should put the garage and the house and the barn, and even setting up, like where the future garden will go and the fruit trees. And all of that is just established. And so it feels like a weight off of our shoulders knowing that those big pieces are in place and now we can just work within those parameters. Having this blank spreadsheet or having this blank canvas of a field to work within is quite overwhelming to me at least. And so now there's just like, it's set, everything's where it's supposed to be. And now we just make some of the more fun decisions. So all of that is happening. We are currently waiting on our windows still. And that's the biggest hold up with everything now because our builders are going out of town. I feel like it's fine because about the time they get back, the windows will be here and we can go full steam ahead. So I'm still really hoping that we will move in over the winter. I'd love to say by Christmas, but I'm in my head realistically saying it'll probably be more like February. One exciting thing, which I'm not really sure why this matters because I can't install it yet. But the ranges that we ordered for the home are both being shipped. Two very separate things, but both of them are done ahead of schedule. So they'll just sit in the garage at this point because we're not actually ready for them. But it's really nice knowing that when the house is done, I won't have to make some kind of makeshift range situation. And when I first ordered them way back ages ago, I thought that it would the house would be done and I would just have some spots where those would go. And we would plug in like a toaster oven for a while. That won't be a problem. It'll all be there. A lot of parts and pieces have been coming in. I finalized all the decisions on the trim profiles and the wall materials, like where we will put board and batten and where we will put bead board. And what kind of trim is going to go around the windows and the baseboards and the moldings to fit a historic vibe that we are going for. That is all finalized and on its way. I mean, not really it's not on its way, but at least the part where I'm supposed to order things, that's pretty much done. So that is really exciting for me again, because decisions have been made and soon it will come. And I keep saying if everything was just here and our builders were here every single day, I think this whole house would be done in less than three months. It's just a matter of getting all of the materials that you want, especially if not everything's just available at the local hardware store. Which, because I'm trying to do this old house thing, of course it's taking longer because I'm getting things that are antiques in use that have to be refurbished, and then I'm getting things from people who make certain profiles of trim that are across the country. And so it's not quite that simple to just acquire everything because you need the house, like somewhat built to get all of the measurements to order these things. So again, if you are building a house and you have all of your supplies sitting there and the builder is ready to go, I could see how this would be a much, much faster process. But honestly, we're enjoying it. Some recent updates that are done and very exciting is over the weekend, we have brick now on the chimneys. We hired someone who's a relative of mine, actually, and he works all through the week for someone, but he does side jobs on the weekend. So he came over the weekend with his crew. And the chimneys are almost entirely bricked. So beautiful. I just love how that is setting the whole place off. And when we are driving in and I can see the house and the barns, it does all have the shape and feel of an old homestead. So I feel like we've definitely made the right decisions with shapes and proportions and spacing. And so I'm really happy to see that. Also, the garage is fully roofed. We did a metal roof that is gavaloom color. I also ordered a cupola for that. So that will soon be coming in and make that look great as well. Now, the original plan for the garage barn, because it's a. We're calling it a car barn, but it is basically a garage that looks like a barn. It was supposed to have cedar shake shingles. We opted instead to do a metal roof. And once it's done, I'm actually really happy that we did because with the gambrel style roof, the way the metal fits, that roof style actually looks really beautiful. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I think that it looks very Authentic. And the style of metal that we got actually was kind of a happy surprise because I was telling Luke that I never really said much to the builder about it because I didn't realize that we were moving full steam ahead on that. And when we have purchased metal roofs in the past, like we did a metal roof on the cottage at our last proper. We went over so many things with the roofing guy, like the width and the color and so many specifications on the metal roof. Well, with this one, our builder was like, okay, you want a metal roof? He's like, well, what color? And I was like, well, I just want it to be like a regular barn would have, just metal color. He shows up with sheets of metal and he is just has this machine that is rolling and seaming it like very quickly after that. And it wasn't until I came out and saw piles of like the metal that will overlap on all the roofs. And when I say all the roofs, I mean both barns, the front porch, the back porch, and the sun porch and the dormer. So we're talking like a huge decision at this point because it's a lot of roofs. And when he rolled it out, I was like, I didn't even think about like specifying how wide it is or the color. Like, it wasn't like, we were like, oh, we'll take, you know, gray, ash, or like there's always a thousand choices, right? No, it was no more of a discussion than that. And I didn't really realize I was making such a drastic decision. And because of that, I was a little bit like, oh, oh no. Like this is a huge deal. And I haven't even thought about this at all. Like, literally all I said was we want a metal colored metal roof. But thankfully once it's all up there, because it's on two bar, it's on all the places that I just mentioned, it looks historic. And I don't really know how he nailed it so much. And I have repeatedly said that we're trying to do a new old house. So I know that he knows this. So maybe he actually took more into consideration than I thought. But I didn't make any decisions with this metal roof. And when I drive around now, because what I've noticed with this building process is as you are thinking about something currently, you notice everything pertaining to that thing. And then there's always a new detail for you to see, places that you drive by and think about a new aspect of them. So what's been on my mind the last month or so has been roofs. And what I've noticed is that all the new metal roofs are really skinny. I don't really know what the exact measurement is, but they are really close together and ours are really wide. And when I see old barns and buildings, they are wide. And when I see newer ones, they are skinny. And now that it's all up, it just looks perfect, like it fits the vibe perfectly. So I'm really happy I was spared overthinking that one and still somehow magically made the right decision, which I don't think is always going to be the case, but I think that that happened in this case and ultimately it was kind of a big decision. Now we are going to do some cedar shake. We're going to do cedar shake on the main house. And when I say main house, I mean that basically the house that we are building and then all of the porches, which there are three, are supposed to look like add ons. So there's the front porch that is just a regular porch, that will be, you know, open air porch. And then there's the back porch. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see I just did that in quotation marks. That will actually be square footage with a pantry, a couple bathrooms, a laundry room and a mudroom. So that is mirror image to the front porch. They're each 500 square feet. And so when you pull up to the side of the house, you will see these two matching porches. One is a, they have the exact same roof line, the exact same footprint. One's a real porch, one's a back porch that got like windowed in at some point. And then the side porch, so those are all metal. And the dormers that were quote unquote added later are also metal roof. But the main house that was the original farmhouse 100 years ago is going to have a cedar shake roof. So that's how we're going to create that story, which Brent hall helped me to create a lot of this. And I just think now that it's coming together. I was telling Luke on the way home today from the farm. I just love how the proportions are turning out. And I think I would have messed it up in some way if I tried to do it 100% myself because I had a really good idea of the vibe I was trying to go for. But today, now that the chimneys are bricked, I was noticing the spacing between the windows and the different parts of the chimney because the chimney starts at the bottom around six feet wide. And then it tapers in and I think it's around 4ft wide on the next level. And then it tapers in again. Well, the windows on the lower level are larger. The windows upstairs are a little smaller and the chimney tapers in perfectly with that so that the spacing between the bottom windows and the chimney and the spacing between the smaller top windows and the smaller chimney are the exact same. And I can really see all that coming together. And then also I really appreciate how the main house is quite skinny. It's not. The proportions of it really feel historic because it's only 25ft wide. And then we added some square footage with the additions and. And I love when you pull up just seeing those mirror image porches and the skinny house. It really does have the feel that it was an old farmhouse that got added onto. And then the roofs further tell that story by being different. So we are doing the cedar shingles just that basically 1250 square feet, the 25 by 50 main house upstairs. And then the. And then all of the additions were at some point roofed with metal. And so I think that that's really cool way to emphasize that story. And I'm seeing it all come together now that the metal is on all the roofs, the chimneys are bricked. I'm seeing the proportions and I'm really appreciating the way that we've gone about this process, even though nothing about it has been fast or simple. It's all just been a ton of thought. But I truly am enjoying the slower process of all of this. I really am. Like, I'm so excited to get out there, but I also feel like no part of this has been rushed, which I would have rushed if the. The builder would have been more able to go more quickly and things would have arrived faster and I would have known when to order things. So it was all sitting there. I would have gone faster. But because we're new at this and it's a very different style of house than our builders are used to or, you know, it's just quite a unique home. It's gone slowly and honestly it's helped me to catch up with the learning curve that comes with this and to make sure that we are catching a lot of the details along the way. I'm sure there are plenty of details we aren't catching, but I do feel the slower, the more likely that's happening on the pregnancy front. So I am, I believe at this time of recording around 34 weeks pregnant. So baby is going to be coming soon. I Think I've had like three midwife appointments total, which is just something that, you know, that's the thing about having and hiring a midwife is you can be as hands on as you want or not hands on. And we live about an hour from the midwife. And so this is something that I, I mean we definitely she would be more than willing to meet more often but personally I just do not see the need right now. I've been through this so much and I know the things to look out for. We did do the glucose monitor. So on I believe my second appointment she sent me home with a glucose monitor that I was to in between my second and third appointment, take three days where throughout the day you measure your glucose levels. So you do one right in the morning so it's your fasting glucose level and then an hour after each meal throughout that day. So I ended up only doing it two days because I realized my levels were totally fine and decided that like I did not need to do a third day of that. Plus I think it was the 4th of July on that third day and we were going to be out and about all day and I didn't want to have to worry about it. So everything was really good there. She measured my iron, I think it was around 28 weeks, which is usually when it tends to be the lowest and everything was really good with that. So I typically do end up having lower than average iron but I take the, what's it called, iron repair plus I've been taking that the whole pregnancy. I also do take grass fed blood on occasion. It's the, what is it called, Ancestral supplements I think, grass fed blood or grass fed beef liver. I've done both. I haven't been too diligent about that lately but I can personally feel it when my iron is dipping too low. And it was actually really good. I think it was maybe 13, around 28 weeks. And I know that if your levels are below 10, you really can't do a home birth for risk that you would lose too much blood and your iron stores would be too low. So we're good, we're well above that. So everything seems to be going well. Last time she was able to find the heartbeat with her fetoscope which can be a little difficult. But when you can find the position, usually if they're good at finding position, which my midwife is, she knows exactly where to find the heartbeat with the fetus scope. So baby is already head down, which minor. Always the same every single time. And I of course Am understanding and prepared that things could be different. And that's why I have a midwife and that's why I do monitor some of these things. However, my babies have always been in the same position. So typically babies are what's called loa, and I honestly forget what that stands for. But I know the L stands for left, but my babies are always roa, which means that they're on the right. They are head down. And I don't know why that is. My sister is the exact same way. It doesn't seem to be a problem at all. They don't come out any worse or slower because of that, but it's just always what happens. So I know with every single baby that I will feel the, the round part up here at the top of my belly and that's their butt. And then I feel, every time that butt moves, I feel something across my belly that goes with that and that's their feet. So I think if my baby was breech, I would know it. Because you don't feel. Even though the head and the butt really feel the same from the outside. Like, when I go to feel and try to like palpate and figure out where my baby is, that butt feels really, really round. However, usually the head will move independently of other appendages. You can kind of picture why that would be. Like if you pushed your head around, you're not going to automatically kick out your arm or throw out your arm. Whereas if you were to push on the baby's butt, you could picture how the leg would connect to that and would respond to that. And so just like all of my babies, I feel the exact same round part up here on the right, little feet over here on the left. And she's just where they all have been. Now, my only two girl pregnancies have been posterior, so that is face up. Whereas every single boy pregnancy, which is the other six, have all been face down. I am not worried that this baby is going to be face up just because it's my third girl, my only girl since the two posterior girls, because those were also my first two pregnancies. And so it's really hard to say if, if it had anything to do with gender, which I highly doubt, or if it had more to do with being a first time and second time mom. And also those two were both born in the hospital and there was some form of induction involved with both of theirs. So with my first, I was actually already in labor, but they wanted to speed it up with Pitocin. I didn't know better. So we did that. And so she maybe would have gotten into a better position naturally if I would have given her the time. And then my second baby was full blown induced for iugr, which if you heard my other episodes about babies and birth stories, you'll know that I highly question that with her. I think I talked about it on my last solo episodes, that was about three weeks ago. I touched on that. But I highly question that IUGR status with her. She was full blown induced. So it could just be that she was not ready to be forced out because once we started the induction, she was born so incredibly fast. And that's one thing I've noticed about my body is it responds really well to any kind of like induction method because I've even tried with a couple of my sons and I wouldn't necessarily do this again, but the two sons after the two girls. So my third and my fourth, I used a breast pump to not induce labor because it was already sort of going, but to strongly encourage it. And it just works so incredibly well. So the four times I've tried to sort of manipulate labor, which I haven't on the four after that, and I won't, you know, unless I go to 42 weeks, I won't be doing that this time. But my body seems to respond extremely well to anything like that. And so with her, she was only 38 weeks and all they had to do was cervidil and she was born within like less than seven hours. So if she wasn't in the right position, I just think that there probably wasn't a chance for her to get in the right position because I think sometimes the earlier phases of labor that drag on really work on getting the baby in the right position. And so that's why interfering can really make that not as great. So I'm hoping this baby isn't posterior, but my midwife hasn't mentioned anything like that. And she feels like how my other ones have felt at this stage of the game. So hoping that all is good now, I expect to have the baby within two or three days of my due date just because I typically always do. Typically it's more like two or three days after the due date. And you know, of course one of these days I'm going to be completely thrown and I'm going to have a baby at a weird time, either really late or really early. But as of right now, that is what I'm expecting because this really feels textbook. I have had people say, you know, in a lot of people, their pregnancies are all so different from one pregnancy to the next. And my children are all extremely different. So the personalities are just, you know, all over the map. Like, I have such different children, but my pregnancies. So the way my body handles the child has been pretty much the exact same when it comes to first trimester tiredness and morning sickness, when it comes to how long I carry the babies, to the labors, to the problems I have during pregnancy, which are honestly few, except for that I get really bad varicose veins and I have very painful feet. So if I stand on my feet too much and actually doing the kind of work I do in the afternoon, sitting down, recording a podcast, doing a little bit computer editing for a few hours in the afternoon is apparently makes a huge difference because there's plenty of days where I don't do that. And I notice a significant difference. I just have to sit down a little bit throughout the day or my feet will hurt. So those are my issues, but they're the same every time. I never have glucose issues. I always have low blood pressure. I always have low iron. Just everything about all my pregnancies and my labors and my morning sickness, it's just all been the exact same. So I feel like I have this confidence of what to expect again. I know things can go differently, but I've witnessed with some of my sisters just wildly different pregnancies. Like one where she's so sick and then one where she's just 100% fine. Might haven't been like that. Like, it's just been pretty predictable. So that's how pregnancy is going. Not a ton to report. Do I think pregnancy's harder at 39 versus all the other ages I've been pregnant, which has been every two years. So 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39. Honestly, it hasn't been. I know it can be. And also, I'm only only 39, so I know possibly if I were to have one in my 40s, it could be different. But this pregnancy has been fine. Like, my energy levels have been just like they usually are. I don't feel like I'm unable to do my normal life. I've been so focused on other things, which, honestly, I will say it's because of the build. I'm gonna blame the build, but really, there's always a lot going on when you have a large family. And so even though last time we weren't building, I still will say I was so focused on other things because I just have so much going on with all of the kids. There's always a lot more that my brain is doing and so I'm usually forgetting how many weeks pregnant I am and not super focused on what's going on with the pregnancy. I am trying to eat enough protein and I take my magnesium and my iron and stay on top of all of that. But the pregnancy hasn't interfered with being able to get all that I need to get done done. Like I said, I do just have to sit down for at least a few hours every day. And then when I get the little ones in bed at night, usually the older kids stay up well past, but I will get the youngest four in bed around 7:30ish or 8. And then I will kick back right here in this bed with my feet up and make sure to you do minimal stuff on my feet after that point as well. So I am focusing on trying not to overdo standing up because I think it is my circulation issues. I think it's related to the same reason why I have varicose veins, why my feet get so incredibly sore if I don't take a break. And people ask me all the time, how do you ever get a break? And I do, I can get the stuff done during the day, so the meals may that my family needs to eat. You know, in the morning I usually prep lunch and then in the afternoon I'll prep dinner. But then beyond that we don't have a whole lot of other obligations. So other than heading out to the build usually once a day and a lot of mental obligations. But a lot lately has just been me sitting on the computer, trying to figure out what to order for the build, communicating with some of the brands that I'm working with on the build and doing Zoom meetings with them and trying to figure out the amounts and the profiles and the different things that we're doing. But as far as up and like lots of active work, it's really not too bad. And I also try to keep our home really minimal. And I'm actually planning to do a minimal home tour, which I don't know what all I'm going to necessarily even show, but it is something that I shared a few years ago at our last farmhouse, just how I keep our home minimal and constantly decluttered. So it doesn't feel like I'm just constantly cleaning and staying on top of things. So it doesn't feel so difficult in seasons like this where I need to be sitting down a little more often.
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Progressive Insurance Announcer
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Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone
That's a whole new pair of writing gloves.
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Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [32:03]
Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone
savings of $197 by new customers surveyed
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Progressive Insurance Announcer
who saved with Progressive between October 2024 and September 2025.
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Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone
Potential savings will vary okay, let's take a few questions here over on the question sheet. Another issue I have is I injured my tailbone in one of my births and so I do have a bit of a tailbone injury and so I do have trouble sitting long term, at least sitting up. Like if I lay back, I'm good, but that ends up coming every single pregnancy. I have a little bit of issues with that. Okay, so again, if you want to enter in any questions for some of these solo episodes, some of these live chats, you can put those in the Google sheet over at Bit Ly SFLQuestions that stands for Simple Farmhouse Life. Capitalize the SFL. All the rest is lowercase. And lots of great questions on here. Everything, usually from motherhood to cooking, sourdough pregnancy, birth building right now is something people are asking questions about and I will take the ones I can. I also really do appreciate guest suggestions. I had lots of guest suggestions. There's always a lot of repeat guest suggestions from a lot of you, and a lot of these people have been on. So someone says Lana Sullivan from Girl Teach Me. I did interview her and that episode is actually already out. So if you're, if you're seeing this, that episode is out. So she's been on another person, said Jennifer Pepito from Peaceful Press and the Restoration Home podcast she's been on. I get lots of requests for Ballerina Farm and I've mentioned this before, but I tried. I even tried years ago before she was super famous and wasn't able to get her on. So I don't think I'm going to be able to get her on at this point because she's a lot more famous now and I asked her a bunch of years ago before that. I understand she's busy and when you have a following of that magnitude, like I can only speak from my much smaller following, you get a lot of invites. And so she probably, if I had to guess, has just a like I don't do them policy in general, which would be a good way to have some work life balance because she's probably presented with a lot of opportunities, like significant ones to the point where it's just a decision of which ones will I take. And yeah, she's getting invited on like big, big things. Someone says Ginger and Jeremy Vuolo. That would be fun. I have not asked them. I've seen them on a lot of podcasts, so I think they make their rounds on podcasts to promote her book. So that would make me think she'd probably possibly do that. Okay. All right, here's a build one hi Lisa, I'm loving following along with your home build. I live at a beautiful 1850 Cream City BR Italianate farmhouse. That sounds lovely with my original or with many original features, including original doors and windows. We have six kids and have had to replace many panes of glass. We have two in the last few years. We are going to be replacing all of the doors and windows in the house with custom ones that match the style exactly but are more efficient and less prone to breaking. I'm curious what you are doing about storm doors and windows on your new house. So we actually aren't doing any storm doors or windows at all. In our last house we had storm windows. And maybe I'm mistaken on what this exactly means. Actually, I think what I'm thinking of is screens. But in our original when you have original windows in a house, I think the storm windows correct me if I'm wrong, I could be actually just make it to where there's another layer of weatherproofing for wind and drafts and all of that. So we're doing new windows. So therefore I think the glass is more substantial and you don't necessarily need a separate pane of glass. But what a lot of people do, even with the windows that we are getting, is they get a screen so that you can open the windows and get the breeze without the flies coming into the house. I personally don't enjoy screens. So the few windows in our house that we were able to open in our last house because if you've lived in an old house, you know that most of them are painted shut. And this current house we're living in, they are so painted shut, and you could take the time to actually get them open. But most of them are very painted shut. I can't actually even open a window in my kitchen at all. So I always just open the back door. But I like to fully open them. So in our last house, we replaced one of the windows. Actually, we made it larger. And so we got a new window, and it came with screens, and we never put them on. I did keep them because I thought if we ever want to put these on, they perfectly go with the window, so why would I throw them away? So we stored them in the garage. And for years, I would open the windows and just put a fly strip up, so if flies come in, they stick to my fly strip. But I love the open air and the breeze, and I love being able to reach my hand out and get herbs out of my window boxes. And so because of that, I decided that I really don't want to even have screens. Another example was near our front porch. So if you remember my old house, if you watch my old videos, I had my 1949 caloric gas range next to a window. We took that screen out because I like passing things through there. Like, the kids would be on the front porch, and I would pass them something through the window or that I could hear them. Not that a screen would keep you from hearing them, because it wouldn't. But they'd be on the porch and I'd be cooking, and they'd just be right there on the porch, and I could see them, hear them literally reach my hand out and give them something. And so I actually. The windows I actually ended up using, we didn't use any screens. Now, if you're going to open every window in your house at one time, and you know, there'd be flies coming in all over the place, I could see how that would be useful to have screens, because then you'd have the breeze without all the flies. But on a practical level, the ones that I actually open, and, you know, maybe this will be different, because now that I have all these windows that open, I might be like, man, I wish I could open them all at once, but I doubt I'll go around the whole house. Usually what happens is there's not a ton of time where it's so nice outside that you want to open every single window in the house. Usually what happens for me is even when it's cold or even when it's super hot. I just want a little bit of air where I am. And so I'll open the few windows. Say in the kitchen is the most common place that I'll want to open a window while I'm working throughout the day. Right now, because I can't open any of those windows, I leave the back door open, prop it open. I'd say 90% of the time I'm working in the kitchen just to have that indoor outdoor feel. Because I just love it. Like I hate being stuffed in a room and just in there I want to hear what's going on outside. I have a fenced in yard right now so I can have that door open, have kids playing right there. And when that's the case, I don't mind if flies come in. I just have fly strips hanging in my house right now. I always had them at the last house and we just handle it that way. So we're gonna do the same thing. We opted to not put any screens on the windows. Now maybe someday we'll change our mind and we'll get screens on them, which we can still just order them later and put them on. But we aren't putting any storm windows either. So in our last house, because it was an old house, there was regular double hung old windows. And then on the exterior of the house there was thinner glass, but still glass double hung windows that didn't have the frame around them, just storm windows. And I, we won't be doing that in this house simply because I feel like this modern day glass is going to be insulated and nice enough to not need that for energy efficiency. Now storm doors, I assume it's just like screen doors. We ended up in our last house taking those off again, it just felt like one more thing in the way between us and the outdoors. Like right now, the kitchen I'm talking about has a storm door on it. And I'm always. It's in the way because the little thingy that holds them up at the top, you know how they have the little storm door things where you push the thing over and they say open? Well, one of the kids broke that and so Luke got me a wire and kind of rigged it up and we just, we just prop it open with this wire against a little trellis thing that's outside. And I just put the little wire around it and keep it propped open. So even though we have that storm door, I never want it shut because then I feel like I'm still not getting that inside, outside feel. And at Our last house, the biggest problem with the storm door was we had beautiful exterior doors or at least 1, 2, 2 very beautiful exterior doors and they were just covered by an ugly storm door. Now if you could possibly not have as beautiful of an exterior door, if you're replacing doors and I don't really know why you would do that, why would anybody buy a less pretty door? But if you somehow didn't have very pretty exterior doors, you could just source and find really beautiful storm doors and then just use those and have a good way of propping them open. But for me, I just don't use them. I don't mind stuff coming in my house, you know, cats, chickens, dogs, kids, flies. That's typically what's happening. And it's honestly a annoyance I'm willing to deal with. I have definitely had all of those things in my house and have to shoo them back out with a farm dog. Usually unless he is off doing other things, he keeps chickens and cats out and he's the worst thing that comes in, which is fine. And that's how it is here too. So when I leave that door propped open, that's totally fine. As long as the dog is sitting there, which he usually is. Every once in a while he's somewhere else. And then I have cats in my house. So I guess get a good guard dog that will not allow other things in your house. Get a fly strip and that's how I handle it. It's probably the wrong answer. I'm sure it is. But we are not getting any storm doors or windows. But we do have new windows and I think if you have old windows I could see why you'd want them. Like this house right now, it has storm windows everywhere. And I mean is it because of their energy efficient or is there another reason? Maybe there is. Maybe it's to keep the water out of the wood. See here I'm just showing how little I know. Maybe, maybe we are getting storm windows. I have no idea. I don't think we are though. So far we're not. I know that we haven't ordered any.
- [43:45]
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- [44:40]
Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone
Okay, I'll take one more question and then I'll check these questions again for the next solo episode. Okay. Do you let your midwife use a Doppler to check your baby's heartbeat during delivery? So the last two times I had a baby, I was pushing when the midwife got there, so that really wasn't necessary because the baby was born in less than 10 minutes. The babies I've had where it was more of a labor process where the midwife was there and monitoring things while I'm going through all the centimeters. We did use the Doppler. Now, I know the Doppler is controversial, and if you don't know that, I mean, some of you are kind of like, why is the Doppler controversial? You can definitely overuse a Doppler. And there have been pregnancies that I have done zero ultrasound, zero Doppler, only fetoscope. And I've totally lightened and lessened on how much I'm worried about that to the point where I would rather take any kind of risk associated with the Doppler, especially because I don't ever use it. We don't. I think I have this pregnancy. We done one ultrasound and we did that at 20 weeks. And then we've done the Doppler one time because I wanted to hear the heartbeat before she was able to find it with the fetoscope. So they the babies had two exposures to if there's anything bad about Doppler and ultrasound, two exposures total during labor. A lot of what you can figure out about how baby is tolerating labor and delivery is by checking the heart rate. And it's quite difficult, can totally be done, but it is a lot more difficult to find a heartbeat with the fetoscope than with the Doppler. Like in my experience, she has to first find the position which during labor and delivery, you know, the baby could be shifting and moving. You're having contractions. It's also good to sometimes monitor the heart rate during contractions to see how the baby is handling contractions. And it can for you to stay in the right position long enough to find the heartbeat while you're trying to relax and get through labor is possibly a little bit more difficult. So I've opted to just. And pretty much all the pregnancies, I believe if the midwife made it there early enough to monitor the labor, we do quick, intermittent checks just to make sure that baby is handling labor fine. And one time my baby really wasn't, and not in a scary way, but we'll keep an eye on this, and if it gets lower, do something about it kind of way, because he had a knot in his cord. So we've had two babies that have had what's called a true knot, which means that at some point during the pregnancy, they flipped through their cord and it. It's an actual knot. And so when they are coming down through the birth canal and, you know, you're laboring down or whatever, it can tug and pull that knot tighter. And my midwife was able to figure out something to that effect was going on. She wasn't sure what was happening, but she could tell that something was causing some decelerations in the heart rate by using the Doppler. Again, it didn't turn into an emergency, emergency situation. He was born pretty quickly, but it was something to keep an eye on because I. I do also have experience with one of my sisters having significant issues during labor, and that was found out by using a Doppler. And we're very glad that she transferred and had her baby at the hospital because everything wasn't fine. And so that's one of those risks that I, with the risk benefit analysis that I weighed in my own head, you know, and you can discuss this with your own midwife, find it just to not be a big enough risk to not have to worry about monitoring the baby through the labor in a really easy way. Now we don't do continuous fetal monitoring. I did that with my first. Just because I didn't know I wouldn't do that now. It was my first. It was the thing where they, like, put the little thing on their head and you. You literally are hooked up to basically like a Doppler the entire entire labor and delivery, which is a long time. It's a lot of exposure. So, you know what's funny is she's 100, fine. She's 16 years old. Super smart. Like, she's fine. So if you've done that, that's another thing. We get these things on the Internet nowadays where we hear the risks of things that without the Internet, we probably would have regarded as safe. We hear them and we're like, oh, I did that. Oh, no. Like, it's the worst thing. My child's gonna have all these things wrong with them. And I think when you have a lot of children or your children are a little bit older, you're. And I know it's a small sample set, like, I only have eight children, so I can't be like, well, but this one turned out like this and this didn't have this, and this one did this. I understand that. But it does give you confidence to realize that, like this one little tiny decision isn't probably going to make or break anything. And you don't need to worry that, like, you've messed everything up. If you did continual fetal monitoring, I would not. If looking back, like, I wouldn't worry about that, but just, I don't necessarily think it helps because if you can monitor throughout, you can assess the situation, it can be done where you check in throughout the labor. And that is a good solution, sort of a best of both worlds solution where you're not exposing if there is any kind of risk versus also knowing that you are monitoring if something comes up and you need to either transfer or, you know, the hospital, if you're there, needs to make some other kind of consideration for how your child is doing. So with all that being said, I would do it the last two babies, I don't think, I don't think she even got that Doppler on there in time, but I would do it. I even did listen to the baby on the Doppler once this pregnancy because I think I was like, maybe it was before we did an ultrasound because we did an ultrasound at 20 weeks. So, you know when you're like 18 weeks pregnant, haven't heard the heartbeat, haven't seen the baby, you're there with your midwife and you're like, let's just take a quick listen. You know, like, I have no evidence that there's a child doing well in there. Except for I had a positive pregnancy test some 14 weeks ago. And so we did that and I would, I would do it again. All right, well, as always, thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed. Maybe an experienced mom who definitely doesn't know everything about anything, ramble on about building comma, business, comma, babies and everything in between. If you have any questions or guest suggestions, we'll leave a link down to that Google sheet in the show notes below. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you in the next episode of the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast. Thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast. My husband Luke and I and our eight kids work together side by side on our little homestead and use our blog, podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks and homesteaders with practical recipes and daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmassomboon.com and to dig deeper, we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at Bitbit Ly Farmhouses. That's all one word. Bit Ly Farmhouse Sourdough Course. If you're looking to learn how we earn an income online, check out my YouTube course at Bit Ly Farmhouse YouTube Course all one Word.
- [53:30]
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