Barndominiums and Homesteading: Lessons from a Self-Reliant Mother

Buckle up folks, today we're diving into the world of barndominiums with the incredible, self-reliant Natalie, a mamma of 3 sharing her journey of building a barndominium home with her husband. She's got some insightful stories to share about the pros and cons of this unique type of construction - think the strength and speed of the build versus the high costs and hunt for experienced builders. Natalie also opens up about her family's homesteading lifestyle, their mission to protect and lengthen their children's childhood, and even shares a few snapshots from her refreshingly uncommercial Instagram account.

Now, we couldn't discuss homesteading without touching on our own experiences, could we? Join us as we reminisce about the unexpected hurdles they faced while constructing a guest-house-turned-home. From the  hurdles in raising farm animals to the unanticipated  costs of building a barndominium to the decision to relocate to the countryside in Utah.

We discuss  adaptations like automating chores and setting up a corral for bovines and she emphasizes the necessity of honesty and adjustments to avoid burnout.

Natalie ends the episode by sharing wisdom around having a clear vision for the future and the faith and hardworking it takes to make that vision come to life.

So tune in and get inspired to take action and be prepared to face whatever comes your way!

Instagram: @nataliecacao

Chapters

• 0:05 Barndominiums
• 10:20 Homesteading and Animal Care Challenges
• 20:40 Investing With Vision and Tools

Transcript

Cicily: 0:05

Welcome guys. I am so excited to be here with Natalie. She is a mama of three and she is building Barnedominiums, so we're going to hop into Barnedominiums. Country Life, Homesteading, Homebuilding and Life with Kids is always really fun. Natalie, thank you so much for joining me.

Natalie: 0:27

Thank you for having me, so it's real honor to talk to you in a privilege, so thank you.

Cicily: 0:34

I'm personally very excited for the topics we're going to dive into and what you're an expert on through your experience. What's new?

Natalie: 0:44

Well, I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but there's definitely a lot of experiences going on, one of them being that last week I had my first solo trip ever since I got married and had kids and oh, it's been eight years since I traveled anywhere by myself and it felt really good.

Natalie: 1:09

But it was also very refreshing to gain a new perspective, away from the kids, from the home life. But I came back and my five year old. The first thing he said was mom, I missed you for a thousand tomorrows, but I did not miss your food because dad cooked. So much better-ish. He is a good cook and he's a good baker, so when I'm down he wins in the kitchen department, but I'm really glad to just be home.

Cicily: 1:43

Yeah, mom, I missed you, but dad is a good cook. So you run the Catholic account, which is your real last name and my favorite flavor, and I know you kind of base everything off of your homesteading journey. This was less to sell, something which we see a lot on social media platforms, and more to just share and encourage. And could you go a little bit into what your mission statement would be on your social media? What people can expect to find?

Natalie: 2:23

Sure, yes, so yes, casita Kau is really our home life. I tell people we're not a brand, I don't sell anything. I'm probably one of the last accounts on Instagram that don't sell anything. We're not a product. We're just a normal family whose story is unfolding and I share little bits and pieces of it as it's unfolding. But I would say that our mission on Instagram would just be to share our homesteading, our home building, our home schooling, our home life as we're living it. Nothing is staged and that's what the fun part for me is that we just share as we live it. But I would say that our life mission as a family would be to preserve, to protect, to extend our kids' childhood. That's one of the reasons why we decided to move away from the city and into a childhood where they could really just take off their shoes and be close to nature and have them here at home with us, with my husband and I being their primary caretakers and teachers, and I would say that that would be our family mission.

Cicily: 3:46

Amazing. Can you go a little bit into what a barn dominium is, and some positives, some unforeseen pros and cons? Sure sure.

Natalie: 4:00

So we decided to, based on this mission that we have with our kids. We do live in a little small desert town but it's very crowded to us now and we decided to purchase property out in the countryside in Utah and decided to build a barn dominium. A barn dominium is essentially just a metal house. It's got metal siding and the pillars. Everything inside is just metal. We found that the benefit of barn dominions when they are truly essentially simple, just shops or squares or rectangles, they're very, very cheap, very fast to build. However, we did not know that it's going into building a barn dominion and we went in with height. I mean ours is about 30 feet high and it's costing us a little bit more and also financially and with time. So I would say that the benefits of the barn dominion in general when you do it well and when you do it resourcefully, it is very quick to build. Usually a wood stick house would take about seven months, but an actual barn dominion can take up to six weeks to have the bones and the siding up and everything inside. So that is a huge benefit to building a barn dominion. Also, the elements, the durability of it. It's metal so you won't have any termite. You won't have any mold or rot. I mean it's a very good option if you are not into maintenance for a regular house. It is fire resistant, so that's another huge pro to it, and you can choose open work plants. So they're really an open book. They're structurally sound so you don't need load bearing walls and you can play with it. That's why a lot of people have a corner for their home and then the rest of it is an actual shop. So it's really good for guys that have their mechanic shops or woodworking anything like that. And then some of the cons is that, like I mentioned, if you do more of a creative house with a barn dominion, it's not a shop, it's not anything practical. The price triples when it comes to height, it just jumps drastically Again. We didn't know that. So instead of paying maybe 60,000 for us, we added a second story in a basement and we ended up paying 120,000 just for the metal kit and bones, which is pretty steep.

Natalie: 6:55

Also, another issue that we have found is that not everyone is experienced with building barn dominions. These buildings are promoted as DIY-able. They are not always DIY-able. My husband and I had no experience with construction and there's no way we could have lifted those huge columns and raft. There's no way, and it was hard for us to find people who were confident enough to say we can put this metal kit together, especially in a remote town like the one that we are moving to, that we only have two companies that could do it, two contractors, and they still run into issues. So instead of having it built in six weeks, we are a year and a half in it, in building just the barn dominion without doing the inside of it.

Natalie: 7:52

Also, another thing would be financing. Not every bank is willing to lend you because it's not a traditional loan, it's not a traditional home. So that might be a problem. For us. It wasn't. We are building debt-free, so as we go, we put together the amount of money and then we pay for it all at once, and so we have little gold here and there, which is another reason why it's taken us a lot longer than we expected. So those are the pros and cons of barn dominions. This was supposed to be our guest house. It was supposed to be a small 30 by 50 barn dominion. We were going to live there for a year and then build our main house.

Natalie: 8:38

But due to the fact that we are way over budget and time, it's looking more like a permanent home for us.

Cicily: 8:47

And I know you've thrown it out because I've answered a couple questions what are the most common questions that you get from those joining in on your journey?

Natalie: 8:58

Well, for those who are building a barn dominion, they do ask us what is the real cost breakdown? Because they are advertised as cheaper to build and faster to build and there's a lot of hidden costs in there that people don't know and they will be surprised, like we were. We thought that once you bought a barn dominion it was the entire kit and we were surprised to realize which. Now, looking back, we're like why didn't we just look it up? We have to buy doors separately and windows and you still have to frame the inside of this metal building with wood. And we thought we were skipping out on the wood part and that's why it was cheaper. It's not. We're just paying double now for the outdoor metal and for all the wood framing that goes on the inside, and I mean, like all the wood framing around the actual barn dominion, not the indoor walls outside, Wow yeah.

Natalie: 9:57

So we knew like we were going to build walls with wood sticks and all that, but we didn't think that the metal building itself around that would need wood. It does, because where does the sheet rock? You know, where do they nail that to? So it can't be nailed or screwed on to directly the metal. And then another huge surprise that we had was the actual insulation. Your traditional insulation wouldn't work very well with this metal building. You need something really, really good, which would be foam, and foam insulation is pricey.

Natalie: 10:35

We are looking at an additional $23,000 just to insulate a 30x55 building and it is super important. We don't have another choice but to insulate with foam Due to the fact that it's the only thing that will really reach. You know, every nook and cranny in the metal and number two, metal buildings could be very noisy. Try rain or metal raindrops Sound just transferred very quickly and very well. So the foam insulation is the most helpful with that type of building. So anybody who buys a building like this will be surprised to know that they have an additional high ticket price for insulation with this building. So that's the the most common question that we get. You know what is a real cost breakdown and I've done and I've shared a lot of that on my stories and I've also created small videos just to share you know how much we've spent so far on this small little guest house.

Cicily: 11:43

Sure, and you guys are busy with three little ones and animals. Are those coming with you guys? What do chores look like?

Natalie: 11:53

Yes, of course, and one of the reasons why we're moving out to even more country is so that we can grow our homestead. We realize that we've been homesteading for eight years now and there's no way we could go back to, you know, depending fully on the, just the stores and all of that, this way of life that grows on you, and I think it'd be hard for people to let go of it once you're in it. So one of the reasons why we're moving is because we want to grow our farm. We are bringing our cows with us. We have a bowl of full grown bull that keeps us awake at night. How are we going to transport him? You know, all the way through canyons and mountains from California all the way down to Utah, but it is something that we want to do.

Natalie: 12:48

We not only raise cows for meat, but we also have sheep, we've had goats at some point, we have turkeys and chickens and alpacas, and all of them play a key role in our homestead and our farm and we hope to only expand out there in Utah. One of the reasons why Utah was a good place for us is because we found the property with water and the animals will have access to that 24 seven and also a lot of green grass and wildflowers that they can feed off of, and we don't have the you know the constant schedule of feeding them three times a day and filling up their waters, and in the winter, you know, doing it through snowstorms, and we're hoping that this will help us as well and ease up our routine here at home.

Cicily: 13:44

You shared with me. One of the hurdles recently was you know, we want to be free range, we want all of our animals to you know, kind of graze as they want. And then you're, you're telling me fences actually became really crucial. Can you go into that a little bit?

Natalie: 14:02

Yes, I did. I shared a little bit about the homestead cycle, which a lot of people don't realize. But going into homesteading we all get super excited and we want to just collect all the animals. Right, and the first two years it talks about just collecting animals and the next two years is like that slow realization. It's sinking in that you just created a job for yourself that is 24 seven, there's no weekends off and there's no sleeping in, and then the last few years that that is, either you burn out and you quit, or you burn out and you adjust.

Natalie: 14:40

And we just had our seventh year, which was really tough, and my husband and I had conversations of should we, you know, should we sell all the animals and just focus on the house build? But it just took adjusting and being super honest with ourselves. That one there's some animals that we just don't enjoy racing, and that's okay. You can be honest with yourself and let go of those. For us it was pits and it was goats. They were extremely noisy and extremely messy and committing every weekend to clean up their pens was just not feasible for us anymore. And then another thing was realizing that a lot of things could be automated. We can have their water automated. If we could just invest in that, it'll free us the time, even though it does have an upfront cost. And so we don't check on the animals twice, or, you know, like we used to. We know that we can just automate their water and their water will be full. Their food will also be automated. We can hire help, and we have, and that's okay. We don't have to do it all ourselves.

Natalie: 15:55

And the third adjustment that we did that was huge for us was to, for the first time ever, put our cows in a corral. We loved having them free range, we loved having all of our animals free range. But it got to a point where at night, they just took up this routine, and cows have routines where they would come over to our side and around our windows at two o'clock in the morning. They just move by our windows. And we had enough.

Natalie: 16:26

We were like this is nice during the day, it is horrible at night, and so when we would chase them back to their side of the fence, they would jump the wrong fence, it would end up in our neighbor's yards, and this was at two, three in the morning and we. It's just so stressful. So I finally build a corral for them, and it's been so nice. We have slept through the night. The cows are not something we worry about. Even traveling to Utah, when we would get phone calls from the person who was taking care of our homestead, our hearts would drop because we knew, oh God, the cows got out and he's calling us to tell us. And so, if you can eliminate all of those worries and just adjust, you don't have to have the perfect looking homestead, you just have to create what works for you and what serves you. So that's a huge adjustment that we did, and we've been so much peas without letting go of all of our animals in our homestead, which is something that we do enjoy.

Cicily: 17:31

Is that feasible for just anybody to get into, or what kind of helped you start out?

Natalie: 17:38

You know what? I would say that if you are wanting to start on a homestead If I can just throw this out there first figure out what animals you want, why you want them and really look into why not just because everybody else has them. We go into this thinking, well, it's not a farm we don't have cows. It's not a farm If we don't have turkeys. And I can say it is a homestead if it's serving you the way that you need it to serve you. So I would first say what animals do you really need? What food do you really enjoy eating? Don't go wild in your garden planting you know, zucchini if your family hates them, because you're not going to know what to do with them and you just spent a lot of water and time in for them. So I would say, once you have that figured out, then I would start building pens before you bring the animals in.

Natalie: 18:31

We made a huge rookie mistake of bringing the animals before we had the pens. I promise my husband brought two piglets home and let them lose on five acres to catch those things. I promise we've provided so much entertainment around, you know, to our neighbors because we have just done so many mistakes like that. It was hard to catch them. And then, when we did build pens for them, we didn't know that pigs could break through anything literally anything and so we built the wrong pens for them. We thought we could have cows in wood. You know fences that were right below, like, let's say, right at my chest. Cows can jump through anything. I promise they can. They are really good at doing that. So you have to find the right containment for the right animal, and I hope you have that before you bring them onto your property.

Natalie: 19:29

But I would say, start with that if you are home studying, and also make sure that you have a good shelter for the food that you're going to bring in for your animals, because we didn't have a barn, we didn't have any shelter and we made the mistake of buying tons of hay I mean tons at a time. At one point we invested $8,000 and it was going to feed all of our animals for six months. We just put them out there in our yard and we didn't realize this was August and we had a rainstorm, we had a hurricane go through and it just created so much mold and anybody with experience would say, yeah, you need to cover all that hay out if you're going to bring it in. We did it. We just thought it's California, it never rains.

Natalie: 20:19

Here we're in the desert, it never rains. It's December and it's like 73 outside right now. So yeah, those are little mistakes, little things that we've done that I'm pretty sure are so avoidable If you just do a little bit of research first and figure out what it is that you really want to do.

Cicily: 20:40

Is there any one tool that you've invested in that's been a game changer?

Natalie: 20:45

I would say that we use very basic. You know, there's always scissors in my pocket and there's always kitchen knives in my pocket, and that's because when we go out, we just, you know, we break the hay, what is it, the ties that go around it and we just like use our hands to throw over the hay. We don't have any tool. I wouldn't know how to answer, except for invest in a lot of kitchen knives, because you're going to lose a ton.

Cicily: 21:18

They might not stay in your kitchen for very long. I think your your face journey is very inspiring as well. Do you have any favorite verses that you stand on my?

Natalie: 21:28

favorite proverbs would be 28 19, and it's where there is no vision, my people perish. My husband and I constantly talk about okay, well, what's our goal as a family? What's our vision? Why does it look like? Before we made the huge decision of moving out of state, we asked ourselves you know, why are we doing this and what's the vision?

Natalie: 21:55

And through this verse, we just we've come to understand that maybe we don't die physically, but there is a spiritual death in when, when you have a goal, there is an emotional death, when you're just dependent on your, your, the system, the routine, the stores, the convenience. And if anything were to go bad, you know how would we react? And a lot of people think that they would react in faith and that they would fully trust in God. And they mistake the fact that God, when he called people from the Bible, he asked them to prepare first. Right, we have, like, we have the prophet Elijah, and we have so many people, um Daniel and who prepared for famines and um, yes, they trusted God, but they also had a vision and they prepared for that vision.

Natalie: 22:53

And that I would say would be proverbs that we live by, um just because we want to have our full faith on God and dependency on God, but we also trust that he's given us this time and these resources to prepare, and so that's where our faith in God comes from that he will provide so that we can prepare, and our vision is that, whatever happens in this fallen world, that we would be prepared and that we would be able to not only sustain our family, but also sustain those that are directly close to us. So if we can do that in this lifetime, I think that we have accomplished our mission and our calling.

Cicily: 23:38

Amazing. Natalie, thank you so much. I think you're super inspiring. I you know, I think that a lot of people share this calling and you know we're. You know we're sharing homesteading best practices and recipes and you know this is what I found and this is this is the pitfall in my feelings. And you know, I think it's great to have your story out there and it's been an honor to have you. Thank you so much.