Morning: cleanse, hydrate, protect
Start with a clean face. Whatever cleanser you already trust — bar, oil, milk — works. The skin tallow is going to meet should be damp, not dripping, and not bone-dry either. Think "fresh out of the shower."
Press in a pea-sized amount of our Day Cream while the skin is still slightly damp. The cream is oat-, honey-, and chamomile-forward, with grass-fed tallow as the lipid backbone. It absorbs in seconds and leaves no film. Give it thirty seconds before sunscreen.
Then, if you'll see the sun: a thin layer of our Sun Balm. Warm a fingertip against the tin, press onto the high points — cheekbones, nose, brow, ears, the tops of shoulders — fifteen minutes before you go outside. Reapply every two hours. The beeswax grip is what makes it stay on through sweat.
Evening: cleanse, hydrate, listen
Same cleanse. Same cream — but here's where the routine gets personal. If your skin tends to feel tight or papery by bedtime, use a slightly more generous layer of Day Cream on the dry areas (cheeks, around the eyes) and let it sit for a minute before anything else touches your face.
If your skin leans oily in the T-zone, a thin layer is plenty. The cream is tallow-based, but it's been formulated with lighter oils and a chamomile infusion, so it shouldn't trigger shine the way a pure balm would. Sleep on it. Wash in the morning.
Weekly: tune, don't overhaul
Skin is not static. It changes with weather, hormones, sleep, and stress. Rather than building a dozen-step routine for every contingency, just adjust the amount.
Dry winter week in Michigan? An extra layer of Day Cream on the cheeks before bed. Humid August? Skip the cream in the morning, just Sun Balm after cleansing. Reaction to a new product? Cut back to cleanser-only for two days, then re-add Day Cream and watch.
The point of a tallow-based routine is that the ingredients are simple enough that you can read your own skin without having to debug a long ingredient list. If something breaks your face out, you'll know which jar did it.
What this routine isn't
It isn't a 12-step system. It isn't a subscription to a decision tree. It isn't a quiz that decides whether you should be using Vitamin C today. (Though if you'd like a prompt to think about what your skin actually needs right now, Take the routine finder →.)
It's three products — a Day Cream and a Sun Balm, plus whatever you already use to wash your face — used sensibly. That's the whole farm-fresh approach. Less to apply, more to consider.
