Welcome to the Building Heroes podcast, where we learn to build heroes in our homes to help our kids be prepared for their life journeys. Hi, I'm your host, Molly Christensen, and I love to encourage and mentor you on your path. Hi everyone, welcome to the Building Heroes podcast. This is episode 109, and I am so excited that I have a special guest for you today. This is Laura Swain, and she is a homeschool mom of 4, and I am excited to hear what she has to share with us today. So welcome, Laura, and why don't you just jump right in and just tell us your story.

Sure thing. Thanks so much for having me, Molly. I'm a homeschool, like you said, I'm a homeschool mom of 4 kids. At the time of this recording, they're ages 5 to 10. And we live in Southwest Ohio, where I've spent almost my entire life in this pocket of the world. And, um, we just recently, 2 years ago, moved on to a little bit of acreage. So we spend a lot of time outside. We're aspiring homesteaders, but maybe it's stage 0 of that journey. Just working on it. We have some really rocky clay soil, so we're figuring out the garden stuff right now, maybe layering in some animals in the future, but fortunately we have some amazing neighbors who are pros at all this and showing us the ropes. So that is really helpful.

Oh, that is super cool. I think a lot of homeschoolers have the dream of being homesteaders. Are you finding it a lot of work?

Oh my goodness. Way. Yes, way more than we anticipated and we were we're actually looking we were in the suburbs and we spent almost 5 years looking for property and like a house on some land. And, you know, the housing market has just been crazy. And so we finally found a place that would work for us. And so we already had to be super patient with that. And so I think that prepared us to be patient, actually living here, knowing that all of our dreams are going to crystallize in, you know, in a few months or even a year. So we're just taking it bit by bit. And I've just been enjoying like I think my favorite time of the year is spring now as an adult, because I love seeing green things coming up. I love planting flowers and vegetables and watching them grow. And so, you know, pulling out those dang weeds and making spaces beautiful, just little by little, very gradually. We grew some huge some flowers last year, like only a few of them, but they were giant. And so like stuff like that. It's just so fun to see it to see the fruit like literal fruit and blooms happen because of your work.

Yeah, I love that too. I have a garden too that I've got going. And, you know, something about gardening just really teaches you about life because, you know, we kind of live in the drive-through world. I know you just want everything instantly, you know, right away. And When we see where our food comes from and we see that it takes time and effort and consistency, ah, that's like most things in life, except our brains are like, no, I just want it right now.

Absolutely. And I just today actually went out and like all these weeds popping up right where I decimated them a few a couple weeks ago. So I yanked them back out and like my little flower seedlings are still so tiny. Remember, like, just so you just today I was thinking, oh my goodness, I know like in a few months I'm going to look at this and everything's going to be full and like, you know, these crazy tall plants everywhere I look. But right now it's just a bunch of dirt. So it's you, it helps me to, I think it helps me that I've experienced it before. You know, I think the more time both in parenting, in homeschooling and gardening, once you have experienced a fruitful season and seen the whole process from, you know, plant to seedling to strong, you know, delicious vegetable or bloom, then it like reminding yourself of that. That's what, what helps me be a little more patient with the process.

Yeah, for sure. I know I was going to say, I mean, gardening is a lot like homeschooling because sometimes we get into homeschooling and we expect it all to be, you know, we think of all this stuff and we think, oh yeah, it's going to be perfect right away. Not so much. You know, there is that whole process of planting the seeds and nurturing and, and creating the environment for the kids. And, and it's a process for sure.