Homesteading ISN'T as Hard as You Think.

Homesteading is generally viewed as extremely difficult. Most people don't even dip their toes in for fear of the sacrifice and grit that they believe this lifestyle will require of them. I'm not here to tell you that growing a garden and tending to the needs of animals is easy peasy, but I am here to tell you that humans were designed to be in nature to soak up the sun, to get their hands in the soil, and tend to the earth. And when we work within our design, we'll be happier and healthier and more fulfilled in life. We're modern homesteaders. We're not diehard and radical. We love shortcuts and hacks. We love doing things the easy way, but we also see the benefits that come from some of the more traditional or old ways of doing things. So we've married the two and we've found so much joy in living this way. Today I want to show you what a very typical day on our homestead looks like. My hope is that you'll see how doable this lifestyle can actually be. I had someone tell me the other day, Michelle, you work too hard, and it was kind of jarring, like it took me off guard. I wasn't offended, but I was like, it was someone who only knew me from videos. And I realized that people who only know me from our videos probably think I work the way I do in my videos every single day of the week. I save the highlights here in our homestead, like the interesting things that we do for video day. I will often save particular jobs for video day, just because I feel like you guys will find it interesting. Whereas you guys aren't going to find cleaning toilets and mopping floors and mowing the grass as interesting as working in the garden. There are definitely days where I am not highly productive. There's days where all that I do is cooking and the absolute barest necessities. There's days where I just work on our business. So I do some filming, I do Instagram, things like that just for the business. I don't even do a ton of garden work. There's also days where I take my kids to the river and we just play all afternoon and have quality family fun time. Today we don't have anything pressing, anything major. I just want to show you guys a normal day on the homestead. I usually get up around 6 45 to seven o'clock somewhere in there and I have some tea and I go on a walk and that is like me time before the kids get up. On film days, I often get up with the sun. I get up earlier than I generally would just simply because I hate filming in the heat. And so we like to just get things rolling because everything takes double as long when we are filming as it does if we're not filming. And so I just want you guys to see how a normal laid-back day is on the homestead because I don't want you guys to feel like you can't do this lifestyle and that you have to be some kind of superhuman to pull this off. In the words of one of my favorite YouTubers, good morning. Good morning. And by the way Nate, if you guys ever want to park your van at a quaint little homestead in Ohio, hit us up. After Michelle drinks her morning coffee, she goes on a walk. So while she's out on her walk, I'll tell you about my morning routine. My morning routine is not quite as aesthetic and cozy as Michelle's morning routine is. It's changed a lot in the last few years. So a few years ago when we had our milk cow and I had a regular day job, my morning routine was very consistent. I got up, I worked out, I went out and milked the cow and I was at my job by 7 30 every single morning. That has changed a lot now since I don't have a regular day job. I'm still working just as many or more hours than I was, but I don't have a regular day job with set times and I don't have a milk cow anymore. My mornings look different pretty much every day of the week depending on what I've got going on. Some mornings I'm out in the office early because I'm editing or I've got other computer work that needs to be done and sometimes I need to get a so I'll get out there extra early. I like to get a workout in or run my bike or run, but sometimes depending on what I've got going on, I'll wait until the afternoon to do that. This morning I wanted to go on a bike ride, but I hurt my foot yesterday. I'm kind of limping around today, so I'm going to do an upper body workout as soon as I'm done with my Greek yogurt bowl here. The other thing that makes my morning inconsistent is my morning chores. With the milk cow, I had something that had to get done every single morning at a certain time and that really kept me on track. Now the kids do a lot of the simpler chores and then some of the chores that I do, like giving the cows water, doesn't need to be done every single day. So that makes it a little bit inconsistent as well and I'm going to show you those chores in a little bit and show you how actually simple it can be to take care of animals on a homestead. That was a big chunk. Michelle made this granola. It is really good. She also made this Greek yogurt. It is not from our own cow, like I said, since we don't have a milk cow anymore, but it is made with raw milk that we get from the farm that has our cow that we used to have that I sold her to. Next is some peanut butter and I usually put bananas on next, but apparently we are out of bananas. So a little drizzle of honey on top here and then right now we've got fresh raspberries coming in. Michelle's been picking a lot of raspberries, so I get to put these on top. Depending on what's going on for the day, Michelle or I will make breakfast for the kids a little later on, but I like to have this earlier because I get up a lot earlier than they do and then I'll maybe eat some eggs, get some extra protein in once they're having their breakfast. We have lots of fresh raspberries right now, so the kids are allowed to have bottomless fresh raspberries. So Teresa made a raspberry smoothie and I am going to make some eggs just because I really like to front load our day with protein because we have a no snack between breakfast and lunch policy in this house. So I am just trying to make so that everybody is very full before we start our day. Homestead chores look different now that our kids are a little older. I still have to check up on things, make sure everything is getting done right, and do all the bigger tasks like moving the chickens or getting feed, but the kids are really good at taking care of the everyday simple chores. They're learning responsibility and they get to make a little spending money. I always knew in my head that having chores for my kids to do would be good for them. That's one of the biggest reasons we started homesteading in the first place, but in the last year or so I've really been seeing the positive fruit of it. I can't say exactly what it is, but it's the things they say every once in a while or the things they notice that I know no other kid would notice. They also have a deep appreciation for the food we eat because they know how much work went into getting it to the table. It's also very grounding for them to have chores to do first thing in the morning. They get out of bed and get going because they know that the animals are depending on them. And don't kid yourself, they complain, they get out of bed late, they forget things, they drop the egg basket, they leave the fence unplugged, but they're learning and they're growing and they're getting a lot of experience that's setting them up to be successful later in life. Is the cost of a dozen eggs we raise on our homestead much cheaper than buying them from the grocery store? Probably not when it's all said and done, but the returns beyond just the eggs themselves are priceless. After breakfast I really like to come out here and just, I don't know, piddle around in my garden. It's so funny because I came up with the title for this video when I came out here the other day and there was just nothing to do in the garden. And I was like, I want to do something in the garden, but there's literally nothing to do. I did so much mulching. I was meticulous with my mulching this year. The main thing that there is to do every single day is take the squash bugs off of the squash plants. I'm not kidding you, those bugs lay eggs every single day. Once or twice a week I'll clip up some long vines or something on my tomatoes and squash, but like there's no weeds, it's peaceful, it's beautiful, it's lush and green and there really is not that much to do. And so here on the homestead it just feels like, yes it's a lot of work, but the work comes in waves. Spring is definitely really really busy because I'm getting all of my seedlings out and we're having to get the soil prepped and everything. Everything happens in the spring, but then during the summer it's just, there's not that much to do in the garden. Preserving season is also definitely a busy time, especially when I'm canning tomatoes and stuff, but a lot of our crops like potatoes, there's like one really big day of harvesting those and then we have a year's worth of potatoes in our basement. And so it's more just like little bursts of busy, but it's not just like every single day I'm working my butt off and I really want people to see that. I want this to be an encouragement that if you really want this lifestyle, it's very very doable. You can live a very very normal life and grow a ton of food. I'm pretty sure this plant has some squash vine borers because there's parts of it that really wilt when the sun is hot and I am definitely seeing that on the like the base of the plant, there's something eating it. So I just basically take what I can get until they die. There's quite a few on here and we don't eat just a ton of these and this is not my year to have to can zucchini relish. So I'm just, we're just eating these fresh and brownies. And brownies, yes. We had a bunch of thunderstorms last night which is annoying because I just sprayed these tomatoes yesterday. I did notice that a bunch of these branches are starting to fall down and so I'm going to hook them up. This sun gold cherry tomato is struggling with blight. That almost always happens for some reason the sun gold cherry tomatoes go down first but everything else is looking really good. I just started harvesting the very first tomatoes. Definitely not enough yet to can but for fresh eating, so exciting. These tomatoes are getting taller than the cattle panels. I think it would be fun sometime to like stack another cattle panel on top and see how far up I can make them go. But usually what I do is I just let them grow up until they start falling over and then I just trim the tops off because I just don't have the space for that amount of tomatoes anyways and it would be hard to pick them all the way up there anyhow. Last summer we had a drought and I did not have to worry nearly as much about blight on my tomatoes but this year I'm definitely noticing that they are fighting the blight more. I've been cutting off the bottom. I mean I don't mind if my tomatoes get a little bit of blight. It's just one of my like I just don't like it to take over because then I know it's going to be worse the next year. I just like to really stay on top of it. This year it's been wet which is nice because then I'm not having to water my garden but the tomatoes are definitely feeling it a little bit more but I'm not concerned. We're going to take a quick break to show you what we got in this week's Thrive box. Thrive Market is the sponsor of today's video. Thrive Market is an online membership-based grocery store with a mission to make healthy living affordable for everyone. Another thing that's really cool about Thrive Market is for every membership that is purchased they also sponsor a family in need with a membership. Let's see what we got in this bag here that I think is meant to keep something cold. That's what I figured. Hue chocolate for Michelle. This is her absolute favorite chocolate so every once in a while when I'm the one in charge of getting the Thrive Market order together I'll throw some in here. Everything is packaged very nicely in this box. I'm gonna have to open some of this stuff here. All right first of all we've got a few essentials in here. Michelle got a bunch of organic tomato paste. This is what she uses in canning her tomato sauces. She could make her own but you have to cook tomatoes way way way way down and it takes a long time, a lot of work. So she gets this and she found this organic stuff at Thrive which is really cool. Michelle also got her avocado oil, some lemon essential oil. What we really like about Thrive Market is they make it really easy to find healthy products and then if you find the same product somewhere else like say this avocado oil if you find it somewhere else for a cheaper price Thrive Market will price match it. She also got some vitamin c and some orange essential oil and now for a few fun things she got Thrive Market dates. These are the best dates that we have ever had. We also got a couple snacks. These organic applesauce packs and these cheese balls here. We make most of the food that we eat here on our homestead but when it comes to going on adventures and stuff we like to get a couple things like this. It's just really easy, really handy and we love that Thrive Market makes it easy to find it again. And right now they're having their back-to-school blowout sale so if you're looking for quality healthy snacks for your kids to put in their lunches when they get back to school this is the place to shop. So go to thrivemarket.com slash more than farmers while they're having their big sale and if you're a first-time customer you'll also get twenty dollars off your first three orders. My bean patch is actually recovering very nicely. The beans that got stamped down or something came and rolled in this bean patch while we were on vacation definitely look a little rough but I mean they're just bouncing back. They're covered in flowers. I'm really happy with this. The green beans that we planted in the rainstorm last Monday are actually looking really nice. They're starting to pop up. A bunch of them germinated last night with the thunderstorm. Looks like my green beans need to be picked really bad. The third picking of green beans never looks as nice. They're often a little bit bent a little bit wonky but they taste the same. I will probably just eat these fresh. I don't know if they'll be enough to actually get the canner out but there's a lot of beans on here so I'm definitely gonna have to pick these. I'm going to just address the comment that I know will be coming. Of course I could do all that gardening and homesteading if my husband was at home all day every day to help me. The days that you see us working together like this is like what a Saturday could be for most people. Most days I'm in my office editing. I'm doing stuff. I mean there's homesteading stuff that I do and all the things but when you see us out here harvesting together and stuff like that that doesn't nearly happen every day. Michelle is the one that does most of the work in the garden and then on video days and some other times as well I'm out here helping her. So yes we do get a lot stuff done on our video day but that video day is just one day a week and the stuff that we get done takes like twice as long as it would if we weren't using a camera. Our online business with YouTube and Instagram and our course that is very much like a full-time job. We actually both work on it so before when I had a day job I was out working away from home and Michelle was here all day every day just taking care of the homestead and the kids. I say just I don't mean that to say it's not a lot of work. I'm saying that's the only thing she had to do. Now we're working together on our business and on the homestead so if you put all of our hours together that we worked on our business it would be well over a 40 hour work week. So that felt like the long way around to say that this lifestyle this homestead lifestyle is 100% doable even if you have a full-time job. I have a feeling some of these red beets are very ready to be picked. Yes they are. Probably take these in and eat some of them fresh and then freeze some of the rest. So I noticed that the cucumber beetles have officially found my cucumbers now. This netting has some little holes in it that like it just very easily separates and I noticed the other day that there's a whole bunch of cucumber beetles all over the net trying to get in and now they have officially figured out how to get in which is annoying but these cucumbers are established enough that I will get a harvest from these. It's definitely deterring the cucumber beetles so I'm just going to leave it on until I see the first flowers and then I'll take it off. I even noticed that stupid squash bug laid eggs like along the outside of this net. It's like they know what's in here and they're just like chomping at the bit to get in there. I tried canning a to not be mushy and none of us liked them pickled and mushy and so what I actually ended up doing was just pickling them normally and storing them in the refrigerator. I just threw a jar of pickled banana peppers from last year away like two weeks ago. They were still crunchy and nice but it was just time for a fresh batch and so I'm certainly going to do that again this time. I'm not going to mess with canning them because they just store in the fridge really well. Another thing that I like to do is keep my basil bush snipped back. I just take the ends off and this will make so that the basil bush gets huge. Oh there's some big red beets in here. These cowpeas crack me up. I've never actually grown cowpeas before but they have these beautiful vining flowers. The leaves are shiny and then all of a sudden they get all weird and they push off these like long bean pods. I don't know why they just amuse me so much. They look so weird. There are definitely days when I have big projects that need to get done. Sometimes days on end like this big compost pile that's happening right here was the manure and bedding from last winter for the cows. That was a most of the day job to use a tractor to get it out of the corral and put it on a pile but most days like today I really honestly don't have about anything to do out here. I'm giving the cows some water right now. They wouldn't even really need it. They've got a big tank here that would last them for a couple more days but I'm just topping it off and other than that that's it. I was actually gonna mow out in the pasture with the bush hog but my foot is hurting bad enough that I don't think I would be able to constantly push the clutch in and out so I'm gonna leave that for today. That doesn't have to get done. While we're out here I wanted to show you the pasture what I was gonna do with the mowing because obviously the cows are out here. Why would I be mowing the pasture? I don't know if you can really see right there but the weeds mostly are really tall. This was the cow's winter sacrifice area so there is a lot of weeds in here but I had the chickens over that spot right there so it grew up really tall. I mowed around it so it looks really nice around it and where I moved the chickens to just a couple days ago is shorter but right there I was gonna mow the weeds down to give the grass a chance to grow so the weeds aren't choking it out and then you can see right here I'm hoping you can see anyways this grass right here is looking really nice because I just mowed that but then I left that section over there uncut so that I'd have a place to put the cows because they hadn't eaten in there in a while and I wanted them to have some good grass so once they've been in there for a couple days in that paddock then I'm gonna come back through and I'm gonna mow that down. What I found with my pastures is that the grass will grow really nice in the spring but the weeds will catch up and then what happens is the cows go into a paddock and they eat the good grass down the weeds keep growing and if that happens over a few times it feels like the weeds just totally take over they shade the grass out and then the grass isn't growing as nice so what I'm trying to stay on top of now is once the cows have been in there maybe over a couple different times and the weeds are starting to grow is I take the bush hog behind the tractor and cut everything down and that gives the grass a chance to catch up and take over again. So you can see the cows right here behind me with their water this section right here is like a little sacrifice lane where all of the different paddocks connect to so if I want them to be in this paddock right here I would open this gate and leave it open and they could get into that section of grass and still get to their water and then when I'm to move them to another section I would close this gate and then open the next one. You could definitely maximize your pasture if you used retractable wires and made new paddocks every time you wanted to move the cows you can make different sizes depending on what time of year it is and how fast the grass is growing but for us on the scale we're at with just a couple cows here and the size of pasture we had it just made a lot of sense to me to make permanent paddocks with just single strands of electric and then it's attached to the lane with the water in it so that I don't ever even have to move their water their water's in the same spot every time I can just have a hose going right to it and then all I gotta do is open a gate and close a gate to move them to a new section and that also makes so like we were talking about in a previous video if we get somebody to come here and do chores for us while we're on vacation it's really really simple for them as well. Hey! I've got a little bit extra work since we're raising two batches of chickens right now these are the replacement layers those are getting a little old I don't have to move these chickens every day but about every other day or so but it's really simple and really fast this is the second day now that I've seen that they started laying an egg look at this little peanut m&m so exciting so we are almost ready to put them into that pen and then get rid of those chickens since there's only about a dozen chickens in this pen I don't have to move this fence very often maybe once every week every other week or so and then this egg wagon needs to get moved every couple days just because they hang out under there for shade they dig it up but this thing is so easy to move that Izzy can move it every couple days or so when he comes out here to give the chickens their water and then once this actually does need to be moved I'm the one that does that but like I said not very often I just moved it a couple days ago so they'll be in here for a little while yet there are obviously other projects that I could try to get done today we never run out of work on our homestead but the point being is that it's not always every day go go go trying to get all kinds of stuff done on the homestead because we've streamlined things and we've figured out how to make things more simple the other thing is there are some new things that I'd want to try there are some things that I'd want to add and want to do some of that stuff is being held off until we find another property because I don't feel like going to a whole lot of bother and say switching out all of our fences for a completely new fence so that we could have sheep if we might move in a couple months we just don't know and so we're holding off on some of that stuff but for now with our beef and our chicken and the vegetables that we grow we do all that and we can have days like this where there's not just a ton of work to do and we're not overloaded with homestead work that has to be done I had my sun nap and my matcha break which is what I do every single day and my kids just got up from their rest time one of my little hacks for homeschooling is to have them read for an hour every single afternoon seven days a week it really really helps to keep their brain stimulated while I'm not doing actual book work with them because I only do book work from like May to October or October through May I guess you could say around this time in the afternoon after my rest time and my matcha break I usually just do random housework I don't usually work in the garden in the afternoon I usually do housework around here and then I will get started with dinner and then often after dinner I'll go outside again dabble in the garden or go on a long walk or something if this lifestyle is something that you want I hope this just comes across as very encouraging so for myself even with this lifestyle which can be demanding at times but not all the time I get eight to nine hours of sleep every single night even during our busy seasons I walk two miles every single day of course there's days where I'm like oh I'm too tired or something but as a norm I get my two miles in I also take my kids to the river we go kayaking all the time we go backpacking all the time someone told me something one time and it totally changed the trajectory of my life they told me that my priorities are not the things that I say my priorities are my priorities are the things that I do on a daily everyday basis so if I say that going on adventures is a priority for me yet I don't actually do it and then it's not actually a priority if I say that my kids and my husband my family is my priority but then I don't actually take like intentional time to hang out with them they're not actually my priority when I actually stopped and looked at my life I recognized there was things that I was doing that were not priorities and they were keeping me from priorities I know everybody picks on iPhones but honestly we're just kind of in a day and age where that is one of the main time stealers that there is short form content can really like pull you in I just have these little parameters set to make so that I actually get my stuff done and don't waste a bunch of time and that creates tons of space in my day to actually do things that bring me life motivate me my drying rack desperately needs to be emptied because I can't even fit the basil on it and so I'm going to get these dried herbs into jars so that I have room for new stuff coming in this here is oregano I'm not sure if I have time to do all of these so I might get my girls to do them for me tonight I am going to town to hang out with a girlfriend and Cody is going to be making dinner and taking care of the kids tonight and so I only have about half an hour yet and I have one more thing that I need to get done today please notice that I once again have a ninja blender I finally just gave up and I gave my Vitamix to my mom and I got me another ninja I just I just did not like the Vitamix it was not kid-friendly my kids couldn't use it and I got I just got super frustrated with it so I'm very happy to have my ninja back I do not like to powder my herbs so I just pulse them very gently a couple times I left my parsley in the basement on the drying rack for too long and we have led lights downstairs and so some of it got yellow parsley is especially fragile and I do not like to put herbs in my cupboard that have lost color and so I am picking out the yellow leaves I don't go through very much parsley anyways so I'm not going to miss this I'll just compost it so pardon me I've been writing 25 on all these lids and it's actually 2026 what year is it so I had to cross it out made it look ugly it's okay I like to keep all of my herbs that I so carefully grow and dry and all the things I like to keep them in a dark cupboard I used to keep them downstairs on my canning shelves but we have led lights down there and it will fade herbs like none other and so keeping these in a dark cupboard will make so that the nutrition in them will last much much better this is the basil that I trimmed this morning I use a lot of basil and so I like to I don't like to waste any of my basil because I use a ton of dried basil during the winter time this stuff over here I just put on like a week ago and it's not as dry as I want it yet so I'm gonna put this back down on the drying rack the only thing that I have left to do is this apple mint and this is for tea I just like for the girls to just strip it off like that and throw the stem away I don't have time to do this whole big pile myself and so I'm gonna leave this for my girls and I have one more thing that I want to get done today just a little thing that I do every single day and that is switch over my milk kefir grains milk kefir is one of my new little obsessions I just got the grains and so I'm still just doing a small amount but I think I might actually keep just doing a small amount because I don't want like massive amounts of this coming in because I also make yogurt milk kefir has got to be one of the simplest fermented foods ever you don't have to heat anything you literally just strain the grains off you're supposed to use a non-metal strainer but I don't have one right there are just the grains left just take these grains bop them in the middle and I'm gonna put about a cup of fresh milk over top and I let this set until tomorrow around this time and I have plenty of milk kefir I listen to a podcast by Wise Traditions it's put out by the Weston A. Price Foundation and they talked about fermented foods and milk kefir is one of the absolute best ones it has like the most beneficial bacteria in it of basically any ferment do your own research that's just a statistic that I heard I haven't researched it myself so I got these and I'm just taking a little bit of this every day because I don't do dairy that well I don't tolerate dairy that well and this is supposed to help heal your gut and so far I've been feeling really good on it Michelle is gone for the evening the girls are back there working on getting those tea leaves taken care of I'm gonna make supper I brought up what we consider our convenience foods to make it simple for me this is green beans that Michelle just canned and we've got some sweet corn here out of the freezer from last summer and then some zucchini brownies I figured we might as well eat these for dessert since we've got more zucchinis coming in and it's time for Michelle to make some fresh zucchini brownies and then I'm gonna just fry up some burgers maybe put some cheese on top and that'll be a meal every day is a little different on the homestead and that's part of what makes it exciting I hope you enjoyed hanging out with us today thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one until then you can watch this video next to see what another kind of day on the homestead looks like I think she's camera shy she doesn't want to eat in front of the camera