Welcome! I’m so happy you’re here!

Welcome to the Everyday Farmhouse. Here you will find all things homemaking and homesteading with a few homeschooling tips thrown in. I love to encourage women to embrace a simple, creative, and fulfilling life at home.

I’m Jennifer the writer of this blog, but there are lots of others here at the farm. I am wife to Ben and mom to 10 kiddos. Our oldest is 18 and our youngest is 1 year old. We have five boys and five girls! I am a very unlikely candidate for the job of mother to a large homeschooling family. I am neither naturally organized or incredibly patient! However, I am proof that if a person is willing to learn and submit to God that even the most unlikely can be shaped and molded into something usable.

We had a dream years ago to move from the city and raise our children on a farm. In 2011 we had an opportunity for my husband to take a job transfer to a small town in Central Missouri. Here we bought a house on 34 acres and began the learning process of raising our own food. Neither Ben or I had any experience raising animals for food. We had a garden when we lived in the city and had learned about vermi-composting and mulching. Otherwise we had no experience.

When we moved here we had five little ones and I was expecting our sixth. Since then we have had four more children. Our hope was to teach them to be able to live sustainably and to have a strong work ethic. As with most dreams, we were a bit idealistic…well I was anyway. The storybook pictures of the tidy little farm with the clean animals and the weedless garden filled my head. I would love to say that we have realized that dream, but the truth is it’s messy hard work! It took us six years before we could actually proclaim that we raised all of our own meat for the year! While it hasn’t been easy it has been incredibly rewarding and enjoyable. I hope you will find yourself welcome here and hopefully, you can learn alongside us as we enjoy new mercies everyday!