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Would you like to know how to build a $500,000 home for $300,000?

**** This post was written to gage how much interest there would be in a blog documenting everything we did to build our own house. I had so much support that I set to work creating the website. That website has launched!

CLICK HERE to visit Farmhouse From Scratch- how to build your own custom dream home for a fraction of the price.

Feel free to keep reading this post, but visit the new site for the good stuff!

Ever since the day we got married, Farmer and I have dreamed of building our own custom home. Since your here reading this, I am assuming you have had similar feelings … or maybe you just saw the dollar signs and came running. That’s fine too!

What I am about to tell you will sound absolutely crazy and your gonna think I am a nut job, but I am okay with that.

I am a 25 year old, stay at home mom, with exactly one semester of college education. The only reason I attended one semester was so that I could play basketball at the college level. I have zero building experience beyond helping my dad nail some shingles to the roof of a shed and being the “wrench holder” occasionally. My husband is a farmer and therefore has almost no free time and very little extra income.

Are you ready for the crazy part? Here goes ….. inhale …. We are going to build our own custom, dream, farmhouse for $200,000 LESS then the estimated cost. And I know we can do it.

Are you thinking I sound like an over confident idiot right now? Give me a chance to change your mind.

We are in the middle of building permits right now which is the very beginning of the building process. We haven’t broke ground yet, and we haven’t purchased any materials yet. The majority of what has been done so far, has been done on the phone or on the computer. To date, I have already saved us $3,950.00! The average person only save %10 of what they make each year so how long does it take you to save $4,000? I just saved that much money by spending a few hours on the phone.

*UPDATE: The new house blog will be lauching on August 12th. I have written a new posts with FAR more information about how we have already saved thousands of dollars. CLICK HERE to read that post, and at the bottom there is a link so you can sign up for the new blog. All subscribers get access to my free check lists, sub contractor deals, and special articles. If you have ever considered building a home, you are not going to want to miss out on this!

I may not have any higher education, but I am an excellent researcher with a hunger for doing things myself. Anyone who has been reading my blog knows by now that I do my homework. I am not going to try and sell you on anything that I haven’t researched extensively and then tried myself. I have the time, as a stay at home mom, to hunt down the best product, the best deal, and the best man for the job. And I am literally not going to stop until I find exactly what I am looking for at a price that makes me jump up and down with glee.

I only have one shot at this. Farmer and I are building the home we are going to live in for the rest of our lives. I won’t settle for lesser quality. I am not going to let someone do anything to my house that won’t last. The other important part of this is that we have a strict budget. I HAVE to make it work for $300,000 because that’s all we have! If we get to $300,000 and it’s not finished, then we have to stop and wait until the next few paychecks come in. So trust me when I say the motivation is there!

You know when you do something for the first time and it takes three times as long as it should? You mess up and have to do things over, and you have to look up every little thing on the computer just to have the foggiest idea of how to do it? Why not let me be the guinea pig? Let me do all the research, and make all the mistakes. Then I can tell you exactly what I did, so that you don’t have to figure it out on your own.

This project is going to be an enormous undertaking. I understand exactly what I am getting into (like I said, I like to research, and I have been properly warned). The amount of work I have already been putting into it, is huge. But writing it all down in a way that is helpful for someone else would double the work load. Which is why I need to ask you what you want. I need you to tell me RIGHT NOW what your interest level would be in a blog that held your hand through every step of building your own custom home. Maybe you don’t care one bit, tell me. Maybe you are planning to build soon and you care a whole lot, I need to know! Maybe you just wanna stick around to see if I fail or not, that’s fine too but you have to tell me. And maybe, this is exactly what you have been searching for, please please please tell me if that is the case! I have to know what your thoughts are NOW, so that I know whether or not I should be starting this project.

I want to do this for you guys! I want to tell you how to be your own general contractor and how to save hundreds of thousands of dollars building a home! I want to let you in on every tiny little detail from where to buy your lumber, to what kind of sink you should be buying, clear down to what color of shoes you should wear. I would share the exact numbers, the time spent, and the feelings I have. And I am certain I will be able to share 100,972,640 things to NOT do when building a house.

So please, take two minutes of your precious time right now to tell me if you would read a blog that detailed every single thing you could ever want to know about how to build your dream home for a fraction of the price.

Pick one, or do all three if you want!

scroll down and leave me a comment on this post
shoot me an email at farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com
Pin the image at the top and leave a comment there (This would be extremely helpful to spread the word around so I could get more input)

If you are interested in this new blog, please subscribe to The Real Farmhouse so your on my email list. The only way for me to let you know if and when this new venture is going to start, is through my email list. As soon as I get some feedback, I will email my subscribers to let you know when the new blog would be launching.

I appreciate your feedback no matter what it is! Thanks again for keeping it real with me.

~Farmer’s Wife

*Again, the new blog is launching August 12th. CLICK HERE to real more about it, and to subscribe early for your first freebie!

Family Life Farmhouse Garden Farmhouse Life Gardening How To's

How much time does it REALLY take to maintain a 3000 square foot garden

People always want to know how much time I actually put into my large garden. I think because they are trying to decide if they can realistically carve out enough time in their week to raise their own. That being said, each persons definition of “maintain a garden” is SOOO far in every direction that it’s hard to say an exact amount of time required. One person might only want to keep a plant alive and have it produce food for them to eat, while another person might have an anxiety attack if they can’t keep their garden free of weeds and looking beautiful all the time. No one is right or wrong, their personalities are just different.

I happen to fall right about in the middle. I have high hopes and big dreams of a perfectly kept garden space, so large that I can feed my family from it year round. But realistically, between helping Farmer in the fields, and four mini farmers needing to be fed and cleaned, my garden falls short of that by about a mile. There are always weeds needing to be pulled, and veggies waiting to be harvested, but I do grow a boat load of garden fresh, healthy, organic food for my growing family. My garden may not always look perfect, but I do take care of my plants, and it benefits us over $2400 each year. And that, my friends, is okay with me!

So first, let me give you an idea of how big my garden is. I would just take a picture of it so you could see, but it is EXTREMELY long and skinny. So long, that I can’t take a picture of the entire thing. When we moved into this house, the yard was already established and the best place I could find to grow a garden, without removing grass or gravel, was on a narrow strip of our property inbetween an irrigation ditch and our neighbors property. Each grow box, made out of railroad ties, is approximately 6-12 feet long. There are 3 foot pathways in between almost all of the boxes. And on the very east end of my garden is a 75 foot long raspberry patch. From the tip of the western most grow box to the last raspberry plant, my garden is roughly 300 feet long. That’s a football field guys. When I said long, you didn’t picture that long did you? But here is the funny part …. at no point in that entire football field is my garden WIDER then 10 feet. Do you understand now why I can’t get a decent picture for you guys? So instead of the actual thing, here is a picture of my rough garden plan drawing for this year because I CAN fit that on a single sheet of paper.

If you are trying to compare the size with yours, my garden is about 3000 square feet. I estimate that about 300 square feet of that is gravel pathways, so we are looking at 2700 square feet of dirt needing to be churned, planted, watered, composted, and weeded 9 months out of the year.

Now, let me show you what a “normal” week looks like in the middle of the summer in my garden …. if there actually is such a thing as normal.

Monday is usually my most productive day. I am feeling energized after a day off and ready to get some things accomplished! Usually I spend a good amount of time watering since I don’t water anything on Sunday. There is always weeding to be done, so I will spend half an hour or so weeding whatever needs it the most (usually the onions …. come on wimpy plants!). Then I move on to my projects. I am a project STARTER …. I struggle with the FINISHING part. On Monday, it’s not uncommon for me to start 2 or 3 NEW garden projects that I discovered on Pinterest over the weekend. So …. most Mondays I spend 2 hours in the garden.

Tuesday we generally have a lot of things going on …. sports for the kids, grocery runs, visiting family. I don’t know why, but it always seems to fall on Tuesday, weird. Usually I find some time in the afternoon during the kids rest time to check on the water and get a little bit weeded. Tuesdays- 1/2 hour in the garden.

Wednesday we are often home all day, in and out of the house. If it’s hot, I turn on the sprinkler and the kids play in the water while I scurry around doing dishes, then outside to water, then inside to do laundry, then outside to weed, then inside to make meals, then outside to harvest veggies for dinner …. you get the picture, inside, outside, inside, outside, all day long! I no longer wonder why my floor is covered in dirt ALL THE TIME. Wednesdays I spend about 1.5 hours in the garden.

Thursdays are my hump day. I usually feel like being inside after spending all day Wednesday running around. I fill my time with inside chores and homeschooling the kids. Not a lot of garden work gets done on Thursdays, unless it’s desperate for water. Thursday- 1/2 hour

Friday we usually have something going on with family or friends. We have people over for a BBQ, or we head to Farmer’s mom’s house for a few hours. Since it is the weekend, I am usually feeling like I want the garden to look better over Sunday. Fridays I usually spend about 1 hour harvesting, weeding, and cleaning up tools.

Saturdays are the big one. It’s the one day of the week that Farmer has the possibility of being home before 6. So during the day, the kids and I work hard to get as much done as possible, and then in the evening we do garden work as a family. A lot more gets done when we have Farmer’s help! I try to get EVERYTHING watered on Saturday because we don’t work out in the yard on Sundays. We spend plenty of time weeding and cleaning up. And anything that needs to be harvested is taken care of today so that we can relax and chill out the next day. Most Saturdays we spend about 3 hours in the garden.

Sundays we take off completely to go to church and be with family. Farmer doesn’t go to work, and we don’t do any yard or garden work outside. I love Sundays because I get one day every single week to hang out with Farmer and the kids, and recharge for the next 6 days. Sunday – 0 hours in the garden.

Total for the week = 8.5 hours

8.5 divided into seven days = 1.2 hours every day

Here is the deal though, my circumstance is different than yours, and yours is different than your neighbors, and his is different than the lady down the street. For example: I have four kids “helping me”, I LOVE to work in the garden, I am a stay at home mom, I am 25 years old …. All of these things affect the way I garden, the amount that I can accomplish in an hour, and what I am willing to do, or not do, to keep my garden alive. Each person has a different set of things that make it harder for them to garden, and easier. Maybe you have a health condition that prevents you from exerting yourself physically. Maybe you have twin 2 year olds that follow you around and undo everything you do. Or maybe you are a marathon runner and weight lifter that can work twice as fast as anyone around. Maybe you have three teenagers that can get the work done in half the time. (Can I borrow them for a summer if you do??)

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What I am trying to say is that it is very difficult to compare yourself to the next gardener and think that you should be accomplishing the same thing in the same amount of time. But we all do it don’t we? We all want to know, so that we can be reassured that we are ALRIGHT.

Would it help you feel better if I told you …. YOU ARE ALRIGHT! You’re great! If you are gardening at all, even if it’s just an herb in the window, give yourself a high five from me cuz I think that’s pretty great.

Now I have to tell you that I really hate it when people leave things that way …. You came here to find out exactly how much time it takes to maintain a large garden, and I won’t leave you with “it depends”.

So here are my official numbers:

After taking into consideration the fact that having four very young kids “helping me” is a SERIOUS time disadvantage, I believe you can maintain a 3000 square foot garden, in the middle of summer (not planting time and not harvesting time because those demand more work) on 1 hour a day -or- 7 hours a week.

And there you have it! MAKE the time for it, because it is totally worth it! Wanna know how worth it? Click here to see what we plant to save over $2,4oo every year.

How much time do you spend in your garden? And how big is it? We all want to know so leave a comment!

~Farmer’s Wife

Farmhouse Garden Gardening How To's

DIY Beefy tomato cage for only $6

The first year I grew my own garden, I planted three tomato plants and they were all Roma’s. I took care of them, and I loved them, and I spent money on shiny new tomato cages for them from the home improvement store. They were so happy! They grew and grew and started to put on little green tomatoes. And then they grew and grew some more, like tomatoes do. Several weeks before the end of the season, my tomato plants, which were now heavy with fruit, started to flop over on the ground. They began to BEND the tomato cages that I had so lovingly purchased for them, and then lay their pretty leaves down in the dirt. I lost a lot of tomatoes that year, all because of some flimsy store bought tomato cages.

Then silly me, I tried them again the next year. The year after that, I didn’t know WHAT to do, so I tried tying my tomatoes to a stake. Nope that didn’t work either.

I decided it had to stop. I couldn’t lose another tomato to improper caging! And so, Farmer and I hatched a plan. We needed something taller, stronger, and sturdier to hold up our tomatoes. By this point, I knew I needed something that could support the 8 foot tall INDETERMINATE ONES, not just our little romas.

And here is what we came up with.

Believe it or not, Farmer and I thought of this one BEFORE I discovered pinterest! So, although I am sure other people have done the same thing, I have no one to give the credit to but my genius hubby, the Farmer.

Since that first year, I have never, and I mean NEVER, felt like I lost tomatoes to improper caging. With these cages, the only tomatoes that can reach the ground are the ones on the very bottom branches. Everything is held up wonderfully, and I can actually SEE the tomatoes. They aren’t bulky, in fact, once the plants get big enough you can hardly see the cages.

Now I am not actually sure what one of the tomato cages from the store costs nowadays, but I do know they have lots of different sizes and styles. I can’t imagine finding one as sturdy as this one ….. but even if you did, I know it didn’t cost $6. One single cattle panel that cost us $23, cuts up into four tomato cages. Not too bad for something that’s gonna last forever if you ask me.

One more thing …. Although it’s Farmer putting it together in this video, I have made some of them myself. It may look like you have to be super strong to muscle these things together, but you don’t! With a little elbow grease and maybe a few hard rock songs to get you pumped up, you can do it too!

All you need is:

One 50 inch by 16 feet cattle panel
bolt cutters
crescent wrench

Enjoy the video!

Couple tips to remember:

Take your bolt cutters to the store with you. Cut the cattle panel while you are there so you can actually fit it in your vehicle.
If you live in a windy area, like we do, pound a stake or bean pole into the ground on the windy side of your tomato cage. Use twine or rope to tie the cage to the bean pole so when you get huge wind storms they don’t act like a giant sail and topple over.
Loop the drip/soaker hose through your cage so the water gets right to the roots. (buy soaker here)

If you missed my post 3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GROWING TOMATOES THAT NOBODY EVER TELLS YOU make sure to read that and keep scrolling to see all the comments. There are a lot of great suggestions and ideas from all you guys!

Now one last thing… If you are serious about your tomatoes, you need to know this. Tomatofest.com has the largest and most impressive selection of organic and heirloom tomatoes I have ever seen. They have over 600 beautiful, unique, and rare varieties of all different colors, sizes, shapes, and flavors. In fact, this year I am trying out a blue tomato for the first time. Yes, blue! You can’t believe some of the stuff they have until you see it with your own eyes. CLICK HERE to visit this incredible organic and heirloom tomato seed supplier that is run by a couple who harvest their own seeds. If you aren’t buying your seeds through these guys, you are truly missing out on some great tomatoes.

~Farmer’s Wife

Farmhouse Garden Gardening How To's

How to get your baby seedlings to come up 24 hours earlier

This happens every year guys. It is absolute TORTURE waiting the 7-14 days for my seeds to peek through the soil. You can’t SEE what is happening underneath the dirt, you just have to wonder if it’s actually growing. You agonize over whether or not you gave it the right amount of water, or if it was the one seed in the packet that won’t sprout. Or what if, heaven forbid, an animal came up from underneath and ate your tiny seed without you even knowing! If you’re like me, you have even considered digging up the seedling carefully to see if it’s growing. And when your babies don’t show their tiny green leaves after day 7 you want to go replant everything because you are sure you did something wrong….. Ahhh it’s awful!!

Does this sound familiar to any of you or am I the only crazy one? Maybe next year I will buy one of those nanny cams and point it at my garden, so I can watch the dirt from my air conditioned house without running back and forth to my garden 20 times.

But, after careful testing, I am pleased to announce that I have discovered a way to get my seeds to come up 24-48 hours earlier then they would have. Like I said, I tested it out so I KNOW it works. If you don’t believe me, try it with your seeds and see what happens.

There are two steps to this process. The first step can be done with any seeds, but in order to do the second part, only larger seeds will work. You will see why in a minute.

These are the lemon cucumber seeds I am using in the pictures.

And as you can see, on the back of the packet it tells us that they will germinate in about one week if it’s warm, and up to two weeks if it’s not.

Well, currently it is NOT very warm at our house. It’s been in the 60’s during the day and the 40’s at night. So we can predict that it will take roughly 10-14 days for my seeds to germinate when planted outside.

I planted 6 seeds with no special treatment, in the ground, and watered them with cold hose water. Then I got another 6 seeds and gave them the special treatment to compare.

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1. Get two paper towels and fold them up inside a Tupperware or dish.

2. Thoroughly wet the paper towels with WARM water.

3. Put your seeds inside the paper towels and close it.

4.Place the lid on top but leave it open so you don’t cook your seeds.

5. Put your container in a warm sunny spot outside. Keep them warm inside if it’s really cold out that day.

6. Check them often to make sure they don’t dry out. Bring them inside over night and give them a little more warm water.

7. The following day, when you are ready to plant, open the paper towel to inspect your seeds. If you are planting small seeds, go ahead and plant them like normal. The soaking will have jump started the germination process. If you are planting larger seeds, take a close look at them and find the end where the plant will grow out of. The seed comes to a point, and that is where it will open up, it might be opening just a tiny bit after 24 hours of soaking in warm water.

8. Normally when you drop a seed in its hole, it lands on its side or sometimes upside down because of its shape. This causes the plant to have to grow in the wrong direction first, all the way around the seed, causing it to take LONGER to get to the top of the soil. To fix this problem, all you have to do is place your seed facing the right direction …. up! The easiest way to do this is to set it on your finger, and then push it into the side of your hole so it stays in the right spot while you cover it with dirt. Am I making any sense here??

9. Finally, top your newly planted seeds with more WARM water. They need to be tricked into thinking they live in the Bahamas.

Now for the results! The first “warm” seed popped up on the 9th day, a full 36 hours earlier then any of the “cold” ones. All but one of the warm seeds were up before any of the cold ones were. And the difference between the first warm seed and the last cold seed was 4 days! That’s a lot of time to not have to spend watching the dirt carefully for baby seedlings!

How about you guys? You got any secrets to getting your seeds up earlier?

~Farmer’s Wife

Family Life Farmhouse Life

DIY trampoline pad from scrap fabric

You know when something gets SO beat up and old that it’s embarrassing whenever anyone comes over. You see that tiny change in expression on your guests face when they have noticed something truly awful but don’t want to say anything? Ya …. that’s how our trampoline pad has been for the last ….. oh 6 months or so. I actually can’t believe it hung on to our trampoline for so long, it was just a shred of it’s former self. Clearly not doing us any favors.

We live in a very windy area, but I had still hoped that our pad would last longer then it did. Especially since we buried our trampoline. Which, by the way, was the BEST thing we could have done! I LOVE LOVE LOVE having our trampoline in the ground ….. another time, another post.

Today I am going to share with you how I replaced our old shredded up trampoline pad with an incredibly good looking DIY version that is sturdy enough for the kids to stand on.

It’s made out of nothing more then scrap fabric! I seem to have this problem where whenever I go into a thrift store my cart magically fills up fabric scraps, so everything I used was old fabric that I already had. It made for a pretty cheap DIY project. If your not a fabric hoarder like I am, just make a trip to the thrift store and clean them out of everything they got. The one by my house sells their fabric for like 25 cents a yard. Your going to need a lot but luckily they can be any size.

First, I removed the old pad. All it took was a few snips with the scissors and it was all set for the burn pile.
I gathered all my scrap fabric together that I wanted to use. I kind of like to stick to blues, greens, and purples in my yard …. just personal preference, but you can do anything you want. I would recommend darker fabrics over light ones simply because it’s outside and they will get dirty.
I hauled all my fabric plus some scissors and four kids outside to the trampoline and got to work. I grabbed a piece of fabric and snipped it every three inches or so (you could do any width you like) and passed it to the first kiddo. Ripping the fabric made it much faster and the kids had a blast helping me tear something. We all tore fabric for a few minutes until we had a good pile built up. Our fabric was all different lengths so don’t worry if you have different sizes too.
Now your gonna grab a strip of fabric and double knot it to the trampoline frame.
Pull your fabric tight and take it over the top of two springs. Now take it underneath the next two springs. I chose to cover the springs in groups of four because if I needed to remove it to get underneath the trampoline, I didn’t want to have to undo a huge section.
Next your going to pull it back the other direction and do the same thing. Over the first two springs, and under the next two. This creates a tight weaving pattern so when the kids step on it they won’t fall through.
When you get near the end of your fabric strip, just tie on the next strip. Alternate the colors so you get a good mix.
Keep weaving over two and under two until you have covered the springs completely. Then double knot it again, this time to the trampoline hook.
Now keep going and going and going and going …… It took me a few days since I can’t finish anything around here in one sit down.