322. Why We Chose a Big Family, Sourdough Troubleshooting, Baby/Toddler Sleep, and More Q&A

From the beginning, we kind of felt like we would just leave it up to God because we do believe that children are blessing. And so to turn it down just hasn't made much sense to us. With that being said, I do think that there's freedom in it. I don't think that you're any less of a Christian or whatever if you do not have a large family. But it also to us just feels like each and every child brings so much joy. Of course, also lots more work, but so much joy. Seeing how they interact with each other and just the whole big picture, why would I turn this down? My name is Lisa, mother of nine and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boon. On this podcast, I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses Simple Sourdough in the Simple Sewing series. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes in description box below. Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today, Mary, I'm an I are going to take some of your questions over in the question box. So this is something I like to do every third episode or so. I was threatening to shut this down a little bit sooner because I didn't know if guests were something that you all wanted to hear more, but a lot of you said that you like these kind of off the cuff just episodes where I answer some questions. So for now, we will keep them up. We'll see for how long? We'll be in 2026 soon. So I'll be thinking through what guests we're going to have on for the year and what the show will look like in these coming months. All right, let me scroll here to some of your questions. As always, we will leave a link down in the description box where the show notes below where you can ask these as well. They're located at bit.ly forward slash SFL questions. Okay, Hi Lisa. I'm almost 40 with five little kids hoping God gives us more. I just absolutely admire the way you've built your family in your life. Hoping it's not too late for us, even though it would take us years to save and get to land and this lifestyle and my kids will be older. I'm wondering if you think it's worth it or too late to try. I think that it's never too late. I've seen many people in their 40s by land. I actually, I mean, I grew up on land, but I watched my parents build a new place that they live on currently today when my dad, I thought back, I'm like, wait, my dad was in his early 40s. Like at the time, you know, he seemed old to me because all parents do. And so that's just the place that my kids call their grandparents house. They all kind of think I grew up there. I tell them that we didn't, but they think that I did because it's the only place they've ever known for for their grandparents. So even though your own children will only live there so long or maybe even not at all, my oldest is 17. So she won't be living at our new farm for nearly as many years as Miriam will be, but it will be the place that her grandkids only ever know as their grandparents. I think just thinking further into the future, a little bit longer term is something that I try to remind myself to do because I think when your whole life, you never imagine yourself, you imagine that like 40 plus is just so far away, 50 so far away, 60 so far away. But then when you're older, like, I'm not that I'm older, but I'm 40. And all of that seems close now, like 50, 60, it all just seems close because I saw how fast the last 40 years went or at least how far, how fast the last decade went. And I can be like, oh, well, 30 was only just like, just happened. So 50's not far away either. We're able to think about that more. But I think like, for some reason, when you're younger, you almost feel like it's so impossibly far away and like life just stops. Like you no longer are chasing towards goals at a certain age. And that's just so not true. Like you're still excited about those goals right now. You're still excited about possibly having more children. So you've just got a lot of family life ahead of you. I sometimes do that to myself. I'm like, oh, you know, remember back when I was 22. And here I am with a like very, very tiny baby. So I have so many years left of being a mom of young children. And we're excited for this next phase of life of building our farm out. There's so much we still want to do. Like even though we have the property, we're very underway with building the house. We don't have the fruit trees planted yet. And I know people told me to do it, but there was just like a million things on the list. And we should have, but we didn't yet. We don't have the roses planted yet. All the beds established. Like there's just so much. And I think that's part of life. Like that's part of what God gave us to enjoy is just always working towards something like content. Yes. But just being hard working and creative, I think that's all what we are meant to enjoy on this earth. One of the things, not all obviously. As a mom of four boys, I am just entering my cooking from scratch, home setting life. I find I want to start doing everything right away. But no, that's not possible. What items would you recommend starting with? Our cooking is about 60% from scratch. We have our own dairy cow, but don't make any byproducts. We don't have a lot of space to grow a garden, but have tried in the past. My biggest item is just wanted to make smarter healthier choices and have a simpler life. Also getting my boys to adjust to healthier from scratch foods. I would say start with making bread. I think that's such a great foundation because so much of our like our food revolves around grains and then getting it to be whole grain. Like master the bread, then start making it whole grain, start making whole grain waffles, pancakes, keep it simple, find a recipe that works for you, and then just keep doing it over and over and over again. Even if you read a blog post or you watch the video where somebody does it, there are things that you're going to find out for yourself, little tricks that you can only learn by doing it. And so I think mastering the bread, I wouldn't worry so much about the garden because you can find or at least I can find good sources of organic produce, whether it's from Azure Standard or a farmers market. There's a lot of places to get it. I enjoy gardening and I love walking out there barefoot and bringing in stuff from the garden. That's all great, but I don't think that it's something I couldn't otherwise find. Whereas like dairy, that's excellent because a lot of times it's hard to find the quantity you want of good quality raw organic dairy, a to dairy. So if you can bring that into something that you do, I would say the things that you can't replace easily, like you can't replace healthy, freshly milled bread and raw dairy very easily. So just staying in that place would be good. Also probably some like basic firmance. It's hard to find high quality sourcrout for not like a million dollars. It's ridiculously expensive when all you're really doing is massaging salt into cabbage and pressing it into a jar. So getting those few things down, I think we'll take you really far and then just keeping your menu really simple. When all else fails, just cook meat and vegetables in a starch or a cart like chicken vegetables and some sourdough bread or a from scratch soup. It just has like meat and vegetables in broth with a little bit of barley in it. Just mixing it up in any way that you can, but just meat, vegetables and some kind of carburestarch like potatoes, whole grains, barley rice, that kind of thing. And don't go too far beyond that. Like flavor it up with some spices and salt and pepper, but don't think that you have to make every meal fancy. Sometimes I just have a bunch of different meats at the end of the week. Like I'll bring a whole bunch of meat in from the big freezer, put it in the fridge in a big bowl or a nine by 13 dish. Then at the end of the week, I have like one package of stew meat and a half a pound of sausage and one steak. And I'll just cook all that meat and call it dinner. Like okay, you get half a steak, you get a couple meatballs. You know, it doesn't have to be fancy. Being able to find like high quality is good. You don't have to do all the things. You do, you know, have to figure out where to source things, but a lot of things you can source without having to do it yourself. Have any of your kids gone through the no dad, only mom can do it phase. Oh, have they ever my three year old won't let his dad do anything for him to the point of big, huge feelings. Even if I'm busy cooking dinner cleaning or taking care of my other one and a half year old, it's not an accepted excuse. I'm sure that jealous he's part of it too. And the experience with this, how do you approach it? So I definitely have one like this and he's not the youngest one either. So and he's always been this way. A lot of my kids, they were kind of like that up until they were maybe like two. And then a lot of times they want dad. But this one never grew out of it. And he was always, he's just always been like that. And we just deal with it by just, I just do it. I know he'll grow out of it. That's the thing. Like it's not something I feel like I have to fix because I know when he's 12, he's not going to be like taking me to the bathroom mom helped me get dressed. So really to me, it's not a problem. It is annoying because there are times where I'm genuinely busy. Like right now, if that child has to go to the bathroom, he's definitely going to come in here and we're going to have to edit that part out because he won't just let somebody else take him to the bathroom. And honestly, he doesn't necessarily even need anybody to take him to the bathroom. But he will require me to do that. A lot of times it's just me going in there with him. Well, because he can already do it. So yes, we have that. And I know he'll grow out of it. And yes, very big huge feelings. This one. I don't know what kind of need that is. But I'm okay with it just because I know it won't last forever. And sometimes he'll just, you know, sometimes he does have to wait. Usually there are some big huge feelings during that. And so I try to just quickly go do whatever he needs. But just know it won't last forever. Do you take any daily vitamins? So currently I am taking needed. And I think that they're great. I think really honestly, there's a saying one of the YouTuber says like it's not in the potion, but the motion or something like that. Basically, I think that getting into a habit of taking a high quality vitamin is more the ticket. I really do enjoy the needed vitamins. You have to take several of them. The dosage is actually eight vitamins. So I take four in the morning and four before bed. Sometimes I miss, sometimes I only will take it one time a day. But it's better than I did in my previous children, post-partum, I kind of just forgot about them. But I feel like it's probably a good thing while I'm nursing full time. Highly, so I also wear my newborn in the wrap all the time. And of notice, she gets a lot of chafing within her little newborn neck rolls. She's almost seven weeks old. I keep it dry and put powder in there. But do you find that your kids get really warm in the wrap, sweat, and have this happen. I'm currently using my Snuggle Me Wrap, which is identical to the boba. I keep her in an organic cotton sleeper. And I'm usually in the tank top and buttoned on cartigan of some kind. Any experience with this, I make sure I alternate her head. It's just keeping it dry to allow it to heal. I'm peeking at Miriam's neck like, do you have that? She doesn't. I think, I don't know, partially, I think it's because where I spend most of my time is in the kitchen. And in our current old house, there actually is not any venting or any duct work into it. So there is no heat, except for what, like, wasps in there. And our kitchen's kind of down like a narrow hallway. So it's actually really cold. And so that could be it. Like she's cozy. She's not cold. But she also is probably not hot. I find myself so hot with carrying her around all the time. So I actually am really glad that our kitchen is so cold. Plus, we only keep our furnace on 67. So it's even colder than that in the kitchen, which I love for sourdough. It's making for some like really nice flavor development because it's fermenting really slowly off topic. But I actually haven't dealt with that a whole lot. I think I would also try instead of just keeping it dry, maybe putting on like coconut oil. I have done that a few times because Miriam actually spits up a lot. My previous child didn't, but she does. And so I'm always like rubbing coconut oil into her neck creases just to make sure that it's like kind of disinfecting and also staying like nice and moisturized in there. You could try that. You could try tallow. That's another thing I put on her a few times. Okay, good morning, Lisa. I'm desperately looking for advice from a wise creative and experienced mom like you, even though I know you probably haven't dealt with this scenario. Our kids are almost five and almost three. We made the mistake of co-sleeping too long. We've recently gotten them to sleep in their own beds and their own shared bedroom, which is a, which is huge progress. But we are now stuck in the progress. They still refuse to fall asleep without me sitting in the room and worse yet. They come wake us up in the middle of the night and one of us has to go back to their room and sit there until they fall back asleep. We simply can't maintain this and we want more kids, but I think the stress of lack of sleep is affecting our fertility. Do you have any ideas for how to teach our almost five and three or all to self-sude themselves back to sleep overnight so they can sleep to the night in their own room? Okay, now as someone who hasn't dealt with this specifically, I'm going to tell you what I would tell my sister. Just do not go in. Don't go in. And I know that's probably controversial. It's my view you're going to come after me for that. But like, they will eventually fall asleep. I know what it's like to feel like your kids aren't because I've had sort of a trying three year old before who has really been difficult for that. But I just would, they just, they just simply have to learn to fall asleep on their own. Like, I would start by saying, and I talked about this on the last episode, I believe, because this is this is actually a question I get a lot. And I think, I don't know, I think people think they like have to do whatever their children demand of them. But I would say, okay, at the start of bedtime routine, and I have done this, even though mine don't wake up in the middle of the night and do all that, but they they have like tried to take bedtime to like make it as long as possible by saying, oh, now I want this, now I want this, now I want this. After several nights of that, I've learned, okay, you always want water. We have a few little random things like one is just silly, but my four year old likes to come get out my needed pills for me. And so he'll like after we've done everything else, he'll say, oh, did you have your pills yet? And I'll want to come like poor goes out. That's just like a stupid little part of our routine that he enjoys. So it's fine. So what I've did was after we've gone through several nights of all the same things, like I have to go to the bathroom, I will need water. I want to get you your pills. I want to read a book. We'll go in there with enough time to do all those things. And then I will say back to the child. All right, well, we had water. You got my pills. You went to the bathroom. We read your book. And that's it. There's nothing else that you need. You're tired. I know for sure you are. And now mommy is leaving. And you, you know, have to learn how to fall asleep on your own. So whether that requires some kind of measure to keep them in their bed, I have used the mesh tents for really little toddlers, but when they're a little bit older, you can reason with them a bit and say, this is just like you're not doing this. And so whatever method of discipline that you use, I would just kind of like lay down the law, so to speak. Yeah, you don't have to do that. People have to learn to fall asleep on their own. And also, make sure, you know, they get all the things that they need. They're cozy. They have their blanket. They have their favorite teddy bear. Whatever it is for your child, that would make them feel comfortable. Because at some point, they are calling all the shots. And I feel so weird saying all this because I don't feel like a parenting expert at all. But there are just some things that I'm like, I just simply wouldn't just wouldn't do that because I, you know, I want to be able to, like I have other things going on in the middle of the night. I have Miriam. And so I'm not going to be able to come in at your every, your every whim. What would you do if you just started saving and budgeting later in your life? I'm almost 40 with five small children. We live comfortably, but we haven't always been the best savers. We are debt-free minus a pretty large mortgage. But I do think we live pretty comfortably. So I would say whatever budgeting app or if you do like a paper budget, just make sure Dave Ramsey always says, every dollar has a name. I think that's what he says. Basically, nothing should come as a surprise if it's all accounted for. And you should be able to see if you write everything down like where you're wasting money. Because you didn't really say in this that you don't have quite enough income to like, you know, make ends meet or pay for groceries. You're mostly saying it sounds to me like you're saying, you think you're probably wasting money in some way. And so just identifying where that is and then figuring out how you could rein it back in. It might be something as like it might be something simple. Like you just need to cancel a few things or not go to a certain store that you like where you end up, you know, buying something. I'm not saying that that's what you're doing. But I think it's as simple as just like seeing where the money is going. It's great that your debt-free accept a mortgage because that means you don't have a bunch of car debt or student loans or credit card debt. And so it's probably a fairly easy equation to solve since there's not tonn outgoing. Highly said, I look forward to each of your podcasts and YouTube videos every week. I bought your sourdough course in January of 2024 and love it. In your YouTube videos, I've noticed that you don't measure your starter for your recipes, but rather just pour in some. Is it just by experience or can you not go wrong with the amount of starter? I'm very precise and not using measurements makes me afraid the baked goods won't turn out correctly. Thanks so much for sharing your life in wisdom with us from scratch, home-setting newbies. So it's truly, it's just not that serious when it comes to sourdough starter. Because most of the liquid and the flour is in the recipe and then since sourdough is usually about equal parts of flour and water, it's kind of like a net, that's not the right word. Like I was going to say net zero because you're not like as much flour as you're adding. You're also adding that much liquid so it's kind of like cancels each other out so you almost can't go wrong. That's been my experience. I have never had something not work out from not measuring starter. Also like say your recipe calls for half a cup of starter and you want to quadruple the recipe. This happened the other day. We wanted to make like 16 pizzas for a birthday party and we had like a cup and a quarter of sourdough starter left. So we just poured in what we had. Like technically it should have had two cups of sourdough starter. Just poured in a cup. It's fine. It'll just take those yeast a little bit longer to move through that dough potentially but also so what a colder kitchen. So would, I don't know, there's a lot of factors that would like how active your starter is that would also make it move slower. And so there's no part of sourdough unless you are like precision when it comes to temperature of your house. How recently you fed it. Those, if those aren't super precise, well then neither is the measuring of the starter. So you can totally just pour in the starter. You do not have to measure. I still measure the other parts of the recipe but never the starter. Okay, I get this question a lot too. Lots of repeat questions. I've probably already answered them but oh well. Hey Lisa, I love your YouTube videos and podcasts. I especially am loving all of the old new house content as I am an old farmhouse lover myself. I'm sure you've talked about this in past videos but I'm semi new here. And wanted to hear your take on big families and how slash why you all decided on it. Is it from a biblical standpoint purely just personal choice? I'd love to hear about how it came to be and if you ever had a certain number in your head, I currently have three under four and I'd love to have at least one more if not more than that because I love the thought of growing old and being surrounded by kids and growing kids. However, my husband says he's done. Sorry of this too personal but I love hearing you talk through the things because you're very practical and talk through things. Well, well thank you very much. I feel like sometimes I'm more chatty than others but from the beginning, we kind of felt like we would just leave it up to God because we do believe that children are blessing and so to turn it down just hasn't made much sense to us but with that being said, I do think that there's freedom in it. I don't think that like you're any less of a Christian or whatever if you do not have a large family but it also to us just feels like it's each and every child brings so much joy. Of course, also lots more work but so much joy. I can truly feel like seeing how they interact with each other and just the whole big picture. It feels like something that why would I turn this down? That's just been our very like use and like our very practical approach to it from the beginning of our marriage. There was maybe a short time after baby number six where I was like I don't know. I think I was more scared of how it looked to be honest. There is definitely a stigma with having a large family and you can feel a bit like a spectacle everywhere you go and I don't love that but I thought like after realizing that that was kind of the problem was I didn't want to be such a spectacle. I didn't want to be the people in the big huge homeschool van which we are. After thinking through and realizing that was the reason I didn't really want more because I wanted more. I just was afraid of I didn't like how it looked. I was like well that's a stupid reason not have more kids. That would just be that would make no sense. After that brief phase but Luke never said it. He never thought oh this is it. He's always been very open-handed about it. I know a lot of people that is the case. I actually said that to Luke and he was like actually I know a lot of men where it's the other way around. I think I've always heard I want more but my husband doesn't but apparently it can go both ways. For us just each one is such a blessing. It's like why would we not accept it if God's going to give it? And that's just been our approach. I don't think we've really overthought it. Even early in marriage just right away the baby started coming and it wasn't something that we made this big decision on. People like well how do you know when it's time to have another one or when it's time to stop? There's never been a decision on that. It's just been just how our marriage has unfolded pretty much from the beginning. I've always been very hesitant to say a number because it just feels so arbitrary too. There's an acceptable amount. We all kind of have what we consider a large family or a small large family, a large family, a massive large family. It's all just very made up by cultural standards and so we kind of let that dictate things which also feels a little funny to me. So I think there's a different answer for a lot of people and a lot of people stand have like different thoughts on this. I will say someone who has eloquently spoken on this and she speaks very well. She's a word person on everything is Abby. M is for Mama. So if you check out her podcast she has shared extensively on her thoughts on this subject and she even I believe in I hope I'm not making this up. She talked about this with her pastor and they did a podcast episode about it because he did not come to the same conclusion at all not saying like the conclusion of like what does the Bible say about this? He definitely like they had four kids I believe and were done and so he came to a different conclusion than Abby did and so I think that is some good like reasoning back and forth that I think you'll appreciate if this is something you want to hear more about like a conversation when you hear more about. Highly so I'm expecting our third baby in March and this time around I want to co-sleep my question is we have a queen size bed and I'm wondering if that's too small to co-sleep I figured that somehow baby could roll off the side in the bed since it's a smaller bed probably an irrational favorite wondering if you could speak into this. So here's what I will say we just got a king size bed. So I did not co-sleep my first baby because I didn't it was something that I was told you weren't supposed to do I was 23 I just did not know. I co-slept every other baby after that so up until Miriam so that would be seven children I co-slept in a queen size bed and I only upgraded to the king because I had an opportunity to do so and so it made sense but I'm not saying that I wouldn't have just kept co-sleeping in a queen because I totally would have you definitely have to take proper precautions like I wouldn't put the baby in between myself and my husband and lester with some kind of like barrier in between that as well and then I would scoot in closer to my husband so the baby is not super close to the edge but I have found that a queen is plenty of space. Highly I'm curious what you do with breastfeeding at home while around your older children do you use a cover or not bother I have a 14-month old who is still very attached to nursing so it would be a pain to use a cover all the time while at home but I also have a three-year-old and wondering what breastfeeding any future children will look like as he gets older I'm the first in my family to breastfeed so I haven't thought about this issue until now and I'm wondering what other moms do so this is something that I think when my like I think many years ago when my oldest son was a baby I thought that would be like something but then now I have six sons and they're 12 and under almost 13 so they're like you know every other I have a we have a whole bunch of boys and it's just not something that has like been a like something I've even thought about so no I do not cover up like I I'm not always just like you know usually like if I pull my shirt down to nurse the baby is on so it's not like I'm just hanging out everywhere my husband's never said anything to me about it I think we both just don't feel like it's a big deal I think I think you'll know you know nobody cares like nobody's like looking at me and worried about it it's just like you said babies need to nurse constantly like we're sitting at dinner and if I'm not nursing her she's going to be upset and so in order for us not to have a crying baby at dinner time I'm nursing while eating and everybody's just eating their food nobody's worried about it nobody's ever said anything I'm not you know I'm as discreet as possible but at the same time I'm definitely not carrying a cover around with me everywhere. Highly said I've enjoyed your content for many years and love your layback approach to topics of motherhood that us young moms often stress about my question is this I have three soon to be four young children we live next to their grandparents who love to spoil them my children always want to go over to grandma and grandpa's to do all the things that they know I don't allow them to do at home which normally amounts to watching TV and eating foods that I don't keep in our home candy fruit snacks etc I would like to get your take on this is this something that you would worry about and enforce clear boundaries or would you let it go and let the kids enjoy their time at grandma and grandpa's my kids know I don't like the screen time and excessive snacks as do their grandparents but they think it's okay to spoil them when they're at grandma grandpa's and have that's just what grandparents do type of mentality because we're neighbors it makes it hard to enforce clear boundaries and my kids will often just pop in their house up for a bit here and there but this ends up happening at least four or five times a week and I worry about the long-term effects that these bad habits are having on them so normally I would say when they're at their grandparents just do not worry because I used to worry so much about this stuff and I realized like they're mostly just home in our home with how we eat and how we do screens and all this kind of stuff which is also 80-20 like we're not like super strict or anything but if we lived next door to grandparents that would definitely change things because like you said if that's happening four or five times a week then you aren't being able to prioritize what you as a family have established are your priorities because most not most of the time but like if it's four or five times a week that's more days per week than not and so then that becomes the family culture and so I think we'd have to set some boundaries in place it sounds like a very tough situation to be honest with you I think it would be such a blessing to live next to grandparents however I think that hopefully they're the type who would understand that was something happening so frequently which is awesome but you would have to be able to enforce some boundaries and I'm honestly not 100% sure how I would do that we haven't had that situation we go to grandparents like once or twice a week and also the times that we do usually it's a small enough time that one of the times that we go on a regular basis my mom makes two times actually very like from scratch food and unless it's wintertime there's always something going on outside so there's not like TV to watch so that's not even happening but there are definitely times where at certain family members houses they're getting things I would never buy they are watching more screens and I would ever do but it's just so infrequent that I'm like it's okay like this is a great memory spending time with grandparents but yeah if they're close I would have a discussion about it because that would be so hard like I would want them to be able to pop over when they wanted but just say hey like can we just keep the screens and the certain snacks to Fridays like can we maybe put all of those snacks up in a certain cabinet so they can't get to them but on Fridays they get it so they can pop over play with their toys do all like the fun things that grandparents do but can we hide the remote and hide the snacks except for xyz like whether it's Friday and Saturday or whatever you want to determine I think it's great to let them have some spoiling time I thought they could just kind of hurt them but if it's every day no I would definitely be like can we please work together on this like don't don't make it to where I can't bring these kids over ever like we don't want to make a hard and fast rule grandparents so please help me here highly so although I hate waste I find it's difficult to use up all my sourdough discard where a family of three two adults in a 16 month old toddler my husband has insulin resistance and so we can't eat much in the way of breads and sweets so while we love the health benefits and flavor of sourdough I only bake once or twice a week and often don't need a discard for anything so I recently catch you can't remember whether it was in a video or something on your blog that you sometimes use to start or straight from the fridge without it being active and bubbly and bread recipes and such or did I misunderstand that if that's accurate how does this work would I need to allow more rise time if using the discard for a bread recipe instead of back to the bubbly would it make the flavor sour and tangy thank you to advance for explaining so absolutely like discard honestly this is the funny thing I've been doing sourdough since 2011 I believe and I didn't even know discard was a thing until 2020 when like like everybody started doing sourdough and there was all these people talking about sourdough and I was like oh wait we're not just using sourdough starter from the fridge like I thought I was just making a yeast kind of like a packet of yeast you know how you keep a packet of yeast in the cabinet and you use it when you want to use it I did the exact same thing with starter so until it was reduced down by using up all the yeast I never fed it again and then once I used all the yeast so to speak like by pouring it in a different recipes I'd feed it again and use it again so you can absolutely do that nothing with sourdough is hard and fast like it's not like okay set your timer for eight hours we're gonna let it rise for eight hours it's so dependent on the weather it's dependent on the recipe certain recipes you almost cannot over ferment certain ones will over ferment very quickly um right now with the temperature of our kitchen I can start a dough and let it sit for a full 24 hours at room temperature before shaping rising and baking so it's just to say like well I have to let it rise longer I mean I'm just watching stuff anyways like I'm never setting a timer and so I haven't really noticed that it's necessarily longer to be honest with you like it almost seems the exact same I don't really know why we you know and it's funny because on my blog and in my book I say act of imbubbly because I try to keep things all very very cut and dry and beginner friendly so that somebody who is brand new they get confused they don't want to just say like they don't they want to express instructions they don't want me to say you know just give it out of the fridge and see how it goes they don't like that and so I I do all of this to make everything consistent across the blog across the the book so that you know everything is kind of the same in uniform but in reality those are just all things I don't worry about like I don't worry if it's straight from the fridge if it was fed three or four hours ago measuring the starter measuring how much flour and water goes in the starter those are all things that they totally work out either way so I haven't said a timer to see like okay if I'm using active and bubbly and the exact same recipe and the exact same temperature versus something straight from the fridge do I need to let this one sit longer I've never like done that like double blind study or whatever it's fine at the right word and instead of timer to see but I imagine it probably does take a little bit longer to rise but the result like the end result is just is wonderful and tasty and I have it notice it being more sour so just my advice is don't be your starter unless it's reduced down and just keep using it so don't leave it out on the counter that whole time like put it in the fridge because that's where the yeast will stay alive because they are being kept at a lower temperature and then just keep putting it back in the fridge adding a little bit to your bake goods back in the fridge adding it a little bit to your baked goods until it's been reduced on quite a bit and then feed it and one problem I see happening over and over again with sourdough is when somebody feeds it too much and they have too much starter it's not getting enough food so you're better off reducing it down to a very small amount and then feeding it a ton of flour and water then you are feeding it when it's like when there's too much so just use it until it's gone or almost gone and then feed it again okay lately my husband and I have been watching church online because our almost one-year-old daughter's nap time is from 930 to 11 and our church starts at 10 we know going in person is very important but she won't nap anywhere else but her crib what would you do in this situation I remember this so well like my younger like no my older kids when I was a younger mom when they were little thinking about this so much because yes church is always right in the middle of morning nap but it's funny because as my older kids have gotten older it's something that I don't even think about with the babies because of course we have to go to church now we have older kids like the baby just comes along what we did and what we've always done is although I was always annoyed that the baby missed their nap even though like if they're a certain age I just put them in the rap but after like 12 to 12 months to two when they're still taking that morning nap you know it's hit her miss after like 18 months we just skip it you know it's just a priority for us to go to church and it's funny because you skip the nap to go to church and sit in the cry room because the baby is cranky but I think it's a really good habit to set and I understand when you only have one baby how that seems so counterintuitive like why would I even do that but there are conversations that happen before church that happen after church being a part of a community is important and you do miss that with online church and so our approach to that has been kind of like yeah you know I don't a lot of times what I do at church is I'm sitting in the cry room where we have like a speaker that you can hear the service but it's in the cry room with the four year old two year old in the baby so would it make more sense for me to stay home technically probably yes however as a family and all the other children Luke and the other six are all sitting in church they know that it's a priority for our family it's something that we've always done from before we even had kids we've always been in a church going on a Sunday and I think just setting that priority no matter what you know it's only one day a week so it's not like you're missing nap and missing the schedule every single week it's really just that one special day so that's my take on it I think even when it doesn't make sense you just do it it's just part of a habit it's just something that you you set as a priority and a habit for your family okay I will take one more question and then pick up the rest of these at a different time this is just kind of a fun one I guess how many of your children are left handed I noticed your son seem to be a lefty in the last video notice with one of your daughters before two is your husband left handed just wondering for fun so you are correct one son and one daughter are left handed all the rest well I say all the rest but like I don't feel like I would even know with the two year old in the baby but all the rest appear to be right handed my husband's grandpa was left handed and then there's a little bit of left handedness on my side as well and then my sister has one left handed child as well so I think it's genetic I heard once that there's been an increase in left handedness since we've had more ultrasounds however one of those children that's left handed had zero ultrasounds I did have a couple maybe one I think just one with my oldest daughter and she's left handed but my son that has left handedness zero ultrasounds and I'm pretty sure zero doppler too so I don't know I I know that there's probably going to be somebody in the comments saying that however anecdotally that was not the case for these lefties all right well thank you so much for listening to this episode the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast if you would like to submit a question you can do so over at bit.ly forward slash capital S capital F capital L lowercase questions it's case sensitive and I will see you in the new year thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast my husband Luke and I and our kids work together side by side on our farm and Missouri and use our blog podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers home cooks and home stutters with practical recipes in daily family life for everyday sourdough recipes make sure to check out our blog farmhouse on boon.com and to dig deeper we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at bit.ly forward slash farmhouse sourdough course all one word we also teach people how to ferment vegetables and mill their own grains through our courses fresh firments and freshly milled grains we will leave links for all of that down in the show notes below