← Simple Farmhouse Life
Simple Farmhouse Life
277. Chat with me! Large family bedtime routine, no-fuss laundry, kids using screens, new freshly-milled sourdough tips from my kitchen
00:57:17
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- [00:00]
Lisa
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- [00:41]
Luke
In there that I have personally used.
- [00:43]
Lisa
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- [01:35]
Luke
As a mother, I think it's always important I talk about this a lot, to not fully compare every little thing with someone else and take what advice will work for you. Of course, like take wisdom and be humble and all of that. But then there are just certain things that you know that won't work for my kid. And you're probably right. Another mom might say, oh, it absolutely works. It works for every child. But then you, you know, it would work on this one, but it wouldn't work on this one. You know, see how other households maybe do things that you can implement, but then it's ultimately not the same because you're working with a whole different set of kids. And if you know, you know. My name is Lisa, mother of eight and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boom. 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 and the Simple Sewing Series. I also help people reach their goals for from home through my business courses, Create your blog Dream and YouTube Success Academy. I will leave links to these resources in the show notes in description box below. Now let's get into the show. All right, welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today I'm going to be taking some of your questions from our question box over on the Google sheet. So if you aren't on Instagram and you miss submitting your questions or other social media, we've created this form so that it's easy for anybody to submit their questions. It just comes in like a big old spreadsheet for me to look through, ranging from motherhood to business, just anything and everything in between. I usually will pick out a handful of questions that take me about 30 to 30 minutes to an hour to answer. And so let's dive in. I haven't actually looked through any of these beforehand. Sometimes I look through them, pick some and think about them. And sometimes it's like, let's fly into this. Okay, first one. I see this is the most recently asked question. Curious what it's like living with so many personalities under one roof. Does everyone flow well together? Do you have some kids that are a little more sensitive or strong leaders or push back more introverted versus extroverted? Do you have kids that get singled out sometimes or are not as close to another sibling? What is important to you and Luke and keeping a good morale in the home? Are are some seasons tougher than others? Always enjoy listening to your podcast. Okay, so we absolutely do have very different personalities and I think personalities aren't something that moms talk about that much, but it needs to be discussed because I have this, you know, my own little data set, if you will, in my own children. Plus my sister has seven kids, so I'm very close to a lot of children. My other sister each have little ones, are not quite exhibiting all the signs of their personalities just yet, but my sister and I that I'm really close to that has seven kids. Our kids couldn't be more different in every way possible. And it was just so innate in them. And you might do one thing you know one way and for one kid that turns out this way and for another, it turns out this way. And it's just really interesting to me how quickly you start to see that. And you asked about different friendships. Throughout our family, we 100% have that. Some kids, it's not necessarily even for sure in age order on who really gets another kid and has the same personality as them. And we have sets like we have a couple that are, that are this way and then we have a couple that are very much this way. And it's interesting because like you mentioned, some seem to be more the leader type. And it really depends on if the kids that aren't are willing to fall in line with that, on how well that dynamic works. So sometimes it works really great, sometimes it doesn't work so great. And it really, it really just depends. But we've definitely learned by being around our kids a lot what we're working with, with each of them. And well, you know, we know like which kids maybe need to spend a little bit more time together or sometimes a little less time together. It's interesting to say the least because Luke and I are very different in our personalities. And some kids obviously take on my personality more, some kids take on his, and then some have a combination thereof. So it leads to just a very, very wide range. And what's interesting is some things I can tell from a very young age, like Victor, he's only one and a half right now, but I can already see that he's not like the two brothers right before him. He's like one of his older brothers, but he's not like the two right before him. So the two right before him were very, very sensitive and they remain that way. They, they sit on my lap every single morning for extended periods of time. They like me to read to them for an hour before bed whenever they were one and a half. If I said no, no to them, it really meant something. It was like the lip would go out Even when they were younger than one and a half, probably one. I have pictures of them with their little lip going out and it just made them so sad, it melted them. But then I've had kids where that doesn't even matter to them at all. They couldn't care less if you're displeased with them. And Victor's definitely more in that. And I've had kids like that as well. And you can see as they grow up how like, what that's going to lead to, personality wise. It's very interesting. And the More kids you have and the older they get, especially watching them from a young age all the way until they're teenagers, it's kind of interesting to make those patterns and connections. And I love personalities. I love observing them. I sometimes think, okay, don't lean too hard into personalities because you want to almost excuse things somehow or in some ways when you realize how strong and innate personalities are in yourself and others in your children. And that's not good. There's definitely things that you can improve despite your personality and work with your personality. But as a mother, just, I think it's always important. I talk about this a lot, but to not fully compare every little thing with someone else and take what advice will work for you. And then also, and of course, like, take wisdom and be humble and all of that. But then there are just certain things that, you know, that won't work for my kid. And you're probably right. And another mom who maybe has all kids of this certain personality might say, oh, it absolutely works. It works for every child. But then, you know, yeah, it would work on this one, but it wouldn't work on this one. I think it's important to pay attention to and to use what you can and, you know, see how other households maybe do things that you could implement and all of that. But then it's ultimately not the same because you're working with a whole different set of kids. And if, you know, you know, when I had my first, I was reading all the parenting books, and also, she's the easiest child still to this day. Like, she always was. I didn't realize that. So I definitely thought, okay, this is like, you do certain things, they turn out a certain way. It's all good. And now looking back, like, she was so easy. She was always easy. She was hard like sleeping wise when she was a baby because I didn't know what I was doing. But that aside, as far as how she acted when she was a toddler, like she was two and she'd sit down and she'd color and she didn't, like, pull stuff off shelves. She. She'd like to put it back on the shelf. And into this day, she's just never been a. A problem child. Like, she's always very easy, compliant. She's 16, but, you know, she does what she's told. Of course, you know, whatever. There's. Everybody has their moments, but she's a very easy child. And it, it took lots of personalities for me to realize that they're not all the same. They're just not all the same and every. They have their strengths and they have their weaknesses and I think it's a, a really fun thing to observe that keep really interesting. So I enjoy them. But I think that was a really long way to answer. Yes, we do. I don't share absolutely everything here. So people see like just kids like pop in and grab a little piece of sourdough bread and they're like, your kids are so good. And I'm like, I don't share everything about my kids and I wouldn't. So yeah, they're, they're all very different. Can you explain more about your laundry system? If you're doing one load per day, are you washing everything together? Towels, light starts, etc? I'd love to know more about your no fuss laundry system. So for the most part, yes. Now if it's a heavy wash day, like say I'm washing a bunch of blankets and quilts and comforters too and I have enough stuff to sort, I will like I'll throw a white towel in with a comforter and all of that. But I don't wait until I get to that point. So if all I have is say I have like one white towel, a pair of jeans, not if they're brand new jeans. So if they've never been washed before, that is the one time I will definitely sort because they will, you know, bleed out that dye into everything. So I wouldn't do like one of my husband's really dark wash jeans, probably even after several washes. But other than that I just throw it all together. We don't have fancy clothing. We have, you know, just like a lot of cotton and denim and I'm okay with washing a towel and with that. That's my preference, I think this day and age and I know there's people who will disagree with me for sure. And especially if you are the person who is buying like very quality clothing that you plan to last for the next 10 years and so you do laundry a little different. If you're a person who is buying like just the cheap clothing of today that your kids will wear out by the end of this season, I can't see much benefit. Again, me personally, I know people will disagree with this in taking each item all that seriously. Now if I say I splurged and bought like a 200 sweater, like a 200 wool sweater that I want to last me forever, I'm sure I would take that item, I would set it aside and I would do something very special with it. We just don't have clothing like that in our home. Now one thing that we all do is when we do sort clothes from the the washer into the dryer, we don't throw sweaters like this sweater. I'm not. This doesn't get thrown into the dryer. Every once in a while something will get missed. But as a general rule we will hang or lay flat to dry all sweaters. And so there's a lot more of that right now. But I would wash this with my jeans. But my jeans are, they're faded at this point so they're not going to bleed on anything. I'd wash it with a towel. We just throw it all in. So yes, I am very casual with it. But that is also because I'm not buying like fancy clothes. I'm not spending tons of money on clothing. And so I don't feel super worried about it. And that that's just because of the sheer quantity of the people in this house. I have to simplify everything to the point of, you know, like we, we just aren't in a place in life to have fancy clothes with the amount I would have to consider each item. Now if you have bandwidth for that, bandwidth for really nice toys that you can take care of or really nice clothing that you can take care of, that's something you can certainly do. But I do not. So I just have to make it to where the clothing we have does lend itself to my very laid back, non sorting laundry routine. Now one thing I do also do, I do spot treat. So I just keep oxiclean and if there's like a stain on something, I do spot treat things like that before going in and that usually takes care of it. All right. Hey Lisa. I've done a similar sleep approach with my littles, but now we're hitting a bump. Could you talk about sleep and bedtime with children five or so and under sharing a room? We currently have a three and five year old sharing a room. Our house is tiny, 450 square feet and that's the only option. Lately it's been all giggles and no play. We end up going in multiple times until taking one out to the couch around 8 to 9. Bedtimes at 7. Because of our tiny space, it means my husband and I don't have any privacy for even just talking. And of course it's wearing on our nerves. Any tips would be appreciated. Thank you. So we are currently in a situation with this house where we have five boys sharing a room. And that to me is significantly more challenging than a five Year old and a three year old. I mean of course like this sounds like what you have going on right now. It's not working out too well. But what I find challenging with that is when I only have like say the, a rare time where the older kids. Actually that's not rare at all. Once a week I take our older five to Awana. It's far away. I have to drive like an hour. So Luke is home with the three littles and because of that we can get the them to sleep a lot earlier because there's not as much chaos in the room as when there is you know, basically six boys because Victor's. It's kind of connected but it's, it's sort of separate. So really it's five boys. But I understand what you're saying. The, the eight to nine because that tends to be kind of what happens with us as well. And I think my approach might just be something that like okay, over the years I've learned I'm not going to worry too much about this. Especially with having older kids come in at a later time which means the younger ones kind of wait for the older one. Whereas when the just the younger two, the five, the five year old, the three year old and the one year old, when they go to bed they know they're not waiting for somebody to come in there which is what mostly keeps them awake, which is like the biggest challenge. I've kind of just embraced it. They just go to bed later. Now, now usually what we'll do like our routine right now and this changes, you know, it changes by season. So when it's light out late and there's things to do outside, it'll change. But right now I put Victor down around 7 and he, his room is a little bit separate but it's kind of connected. But I have a noise maker in there and so he, that works for him and he actually goes to sleep when I lay him down. He might fuss for max five minutes but he goes to sleep. And then after I do that whole routine which usually just involves me singing him a song, putting on his little sleep sack, kind of let him know that that's what we're going to do. I will take up the three year old and the five year old, sometimes a seven year old, but he's kind of bouncing between wanting to do what's downstairs and then wanting to read the books that we repeatedly read. So from about 7 to 8 I will, or you know, however long it took me to do Victor's bedtime routine. So 7:15 to 8:ish. I will read them several chapters from the book that they have three long Pilgrim's Progress books. There's a green one, a blue one and an orange one. We love them. We read them over and over and over. The covers are falling off. But little kids love repetition. But I will read them usually like four or five chapters of one of those. And then around eight, we put on Adventures in Odyssey. We're part of the Adventures in Odyssey club. It's kind of an app where there's, I mean, there's hundreds of episodes and then the big boys come up and we let that play until kids fall asleep. So the older kids, they don't fall asleep till they listen a long time. They don't fall asleep till 9, sometimes 10. But then the little kids sometimes will fall asleep a little bit sooner than that. I guess what I'm saying is I'm allowing that to play. I'm not worrying too much about when they're actually falling asleep. And I haven't been fighting that battle. Been times where I fought the battle. Like I wait outside the room, every time they get out of their bed, I jump in there. I'm like, we're not getting out of our beds. I'm not currently fighting that battle. So even though they're not really sleeping, it still feels like bedtime. Whether at some point I'll decide, okay, this is a battle that we need to fight is yet to be determined. But I'm not currently worrying about it. And then usually like the, the young, the three year old, he will still take a nap during the day to make up for that. And the five year old, he actually just sleeps in more to make up for it. So yeah, in a perfect ideal situation, if the kids that needed to sleep more around like seven or eight were in a separate room, I think that they would fall asleep sooner. Not waiting for the older kids to come in there. But since they're not, and there's not really a way to do that in the house that we're currently in, I'm kind of just like, okay, we'll put on Adventures in Odyssey. You'll fall asleep when you fall asleep, you'll make up for the sleep another time. And that's where I currently am. I don't know if that's really a good tip except for just to say, I'm with you. We start working on bed at 7 and people aren't necessarily sleeping until, you know, much, much later. But currently it's working out just fine. I'M like, you know what, Even if they're not sleeping. It is challenging though, to find alone time with your husband. We are definitely feeling that as well. I mean, that, that happens when you have older kids regardless, because early bedtime goes out the window. Like you have to find a way to still have alone time with your husband. But there will never be a time when your kids are asleep before you after a certain age. And that just gets more challenging. But you'll figure it out. Like there's, there's still a way to do that. It's just not, it's not what it was. When you have all kids that are like five and under and it's okay, we're close the door at 7:00, it all, it all changes. Oh, and I forgot to mention what the younger or the older kids do downstairs. Luke has been in a routine lately of playing some kind of game with them, whether it's card games or some kind of board game. While I'm upstairs with the little boys, kind of, you know, getting them settled down, whether they fall asleep or not, or at least doing the whole thing lately too, since we live in town right now, there'll be neighbor kids over. So he just hosts like this big game thing going on, which bless him for that. I think that's great. I think it's great memories for them. I, I would rather be upstairs reading to the little ones, to be honest. So it's all, it all changes season by season. If you'd have asked me a year ago, I'd have been like, okay, this is what we're doing and this is working great, and this kid's in this room and that room. But right now I'm in the same position as you where, yeah, kids don't go to bed on time. And still we're, we're finding ways like you find creative ways to, to talk and to debrief, even if it isn't like you're not fully alone because once your kid's a little older, you just, you just won't be okay. What do you think about WordPress vs. Substack when starting a blog and trying to build an audience? I know substack is newer, but newer is not necessarily better. What do you think? So I'm a 100% WordPress person. It's still the industry standard for having a successful blog. Now, to be honest, I'm not fully familiar. I thought Substack More was like paid newsletters, but I do hang out in a lot of blogging groups and I don't know anybody who is monetizing blogs in the traditional sense with display ads with like an RPM type of situation with a any other host other than or any other platform other than WordPress. Not host. You don't want to use WordPress for your host. People get confused on that all the time. But a self hosted WordPress site is still the gold standard. That's what I do and my blog remains the most profitable part of my business so I recommend it now in today's world, monetizing and putting content behind a paid wall, I can also see the benefit in that as well. But yeah, I'm still WordPress.
- [22:18]
Lisa
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- [23:59]
Luke
Of five kids, seven years and younger, currently pregnant with number six. I love homemaking, homeschooling, cooking from scratch and the things that come with the of being A stay at home mother. My question to you is, how do you work through going through seasons of feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, burnt out and exhausted? I go through seasons where I feel on top of the world, accomplishing all my goals and seasons of weariness. What do you do in times like these? I definitely have times like these and I kind of have like running goals or like baseline things that I need to get done to kind of keep things rolling. And how inspired I'm feeling will determine how above and beyond I go on that. I can tell you that in the last several years I haven't really gone above and beyond that. So when I want to do something else, say for my business, I'll have to bring on more help. Like I'll have to hire more people, you know, make a new team for something. In order to go beyond like my just stuff that I'm doing, which my, my everyday goals. Actually as far as the business and the house and the school, I currently have them set to a very manageable amount. Like I'm not staying up working till 10:30 at night. I pretty much put my computer away at 4pm I usually have it out from 1pm to 4pm Monday through Thursday. And I have to be able to fit what I need to get done in those hours so that after that, yeah, I could sit in the bathtub and answer a couple emails, but for the most part I'm not counting on that time to get the work done. And I think that's just been the last several years. Having more kids, it's. It's pretty much just where I want to be. I'm not in a like build, build, let's go kind of phase. I think that also goes just with my business. I kind of already did that and I'm just not really interested in doing like too much more beyond that. I'm. I don't want to be stretched then. I don't want my life to feel like when I wake up in the morning, okay, like this is going to be impossible. I can't actually like I'm have to move and run and go at like a 100mph all day long to get done what I, what I need to accomplish. I definitely have steady motion in my life that feels manageable. Even through seasons that are more difficult, like first trimesters of pregnancy or postpartum seasons, I, I have like this steady rhythm and sometimes because of an upcoming season, like say I'm going to have a baby, I will work a little faster than study to make up for that, but it's still not a pace that I can't keep up with. Even if I have to double up for a little while. Hope that makes sense. I think it's okay to go through those times and you'll know, like if you've, you know, if you've been in them too long, like, okay, maybe, maybe I'm just making excuses for myself or maybe you're just in a really hard season and it's, it's just a pace thing. Like, how fast do I need to go to reach the goals that we have, the priorities we have, yet not feel like there's no way I can actually do this. I hate feeling like that. Like I don't like seasons where there's just no chance I can get it all done and still, you know, go out to dinner with my sisters or go to my parents on a Sunday. If I can't do that still, then it's too much. And I think it's normal to go through seasons of weariness and seasons where you feel like, boom, boom, boom, I'm getting it all done and it could eb and flow from one week to the next for me. And so if I feel all, you know, extra motivated, extra inspired, I might do a little extra. But then I can. But just my normal pace isn't going to be that crazy. Okay. How do you keep your hands from getting dry and cracked from the amount of time you spend in the kitchen washing dishes, cooking, cleaning? I don't feel like I do. I feel like I have the most old lady looking hands ever. People have told me so. It's true, they do. They're, they're old lady looking hands. They don't dry and crack, but they're dry. Like they're, they're not cracked and bleeding. When I was younger, like in like high school, they did that. So I don't know what's changed about that, but I don't really have to do much. If I think of it, I'll put on lotion and stuff like that, but it's not an everyday thing. So I don't know if I have really any tips except to say mine are probably dry. I should put on lotion more often. I will say when I was a teenager and I would have actual cracking that really was painful, I would put this deep moisturizing stuff on and then put gloves on and wear them at night so it kind of soaked in. I should do that still to this day. It'd probably help with my old lady hands. But so if you're really struggling with that, Google it. I bet there's something like that to this day. Okay, what is it like running a YouTube channel as a stay at home mom with a business? How does it fit into your weekly workflow and how many hours do you put into it per week? So people ask me how many hours? And I find it really challenging because sometimes I'll just put the camera up while I'm actually making breakfast, lunch or dinner. I'm not doing it during like a designated work time. I have done that in the past. I have said, okay, I am not getting out my camera unless it is, you know, a designated work time. I'm not going to blur the work life balance thing. But then I found like I was already cooking it. It just, to me, it did make life a little bit easier. That's of course when I embraced not worrying about the noise. Like I'll just silence it if the kids are too loud and do a voiceover. So it fits in really seamlessly when I do it like that because I can literally just record what I'm making for dinner and then silence it if people are being loud. Every once in a while, I'll get, you know, it'll get. It'll be like a. Just a time where everybody's happily doing things. I can keep some of the audio in there, but I am not being a perfectionist about it because otherwise I could never get it all done. My weekly workflow, it really just depends on what kind of thing I'm filming. So if I'm doing something where I'm doing like a whole day in the life type of thing, I will. Those are actually a lot more demanding because I feel like I need to film everything in that one day. It's demanding, but I get it all done in one day. Whereas when I'm doing like a, what we. In a week, it's very simple because I'll just film one meal, you know, each day for the week. So it's very incremental. It's not like I'm trying to like bang out all this work in one day. My daughter is currently helping me edit, so she stitches the, you know, the content all together, takes out any, you know, as I'm like moving the camera and things like that. And then I spend an hour or two voicing it over. So it actually feels very, very manageable right now. It doesn't feel overwhelming. There was a few times last couple weeks where we took a trip. Now I'm not planning to take any more trips. For quite a while. Well, well, not till June, but I had a few things come up and so two short, like five day trips. So I actually had to get ahead a couple of videos because usually I will film like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. She'll edit that stuff together. I'll voice it over Thursday and then submit it to the brand. So that's kind of how the workflow works. If I'm going to be gone Monday through Thursday, I need to figure out how to get an extra video filmed ahead of that trip. And so I actually had to do that twice and it was very manageable. I'm like, I must have my schedule built in such a way right now that if I needed to, I could do two videos a week. I'm not going to because I like how it feels. I like that it's not overly crazy. But even getting ahead two videos didn't feel all that crazy. And I had one extra sponsor, so I actually had to get three videos ahead. And that didn't even feel too crazy. So I'm like, maybe I could do two, but I'm not going to. Hopefully that answered your question. I kind of film like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. She stitches that together throughout the week. I voice it over Thursday and then submit it to the brand and then it will go live the following Friday. So it gives the brand a whole week to say, hey, we should have added the QR code right here. Or can you add this certain hashtag to Minute452? So that's going typically how that works on your blog. It does not show the full notes of your podcast. Could you please add the full notes? So we ended up stopping that. I used to have the full transcript. It was almost like a whole blog post. But those just simply don't do well. So they are not worth the all of the time that it takes to do them. So we did unfortunately just stop that part of of the podcast production. Do you follow Dave Ramsey financial advice? I just discovered him being from Europe and I'm so glad I'm listening to podcasts from people like you actually buy their homes with cash. So I do. We never actually went through like the baby steps officially, but I listened to a lot of Dave Ramsey on YouTube. I find him entertaining and we definitely agree on many, many of his financial principles. And I think that if you're brand new to trying to, to get a hold of your finances, I think he's a great resource. How do you keep your kitchen knife sharp? Is that a skill you learned growing up or do you have a Good sharpener. I don't. And people tell me all the time, like, you need to sharpen those knives. I do need to sharpen my knives. So I don't know. I know there are mail in services. I do have a knife sharpener, but I feel like it doesn't do that great of a job. So no, I don't know anything about that. And I just like push harder. People say that you are more likely to cut yourself with a doll knife. I fully, fully disagree. My mother would as well because she sends hers to get sharpened and as soon as she does the next week, she's like covered in band aids. I hardly. And I hopefully I'm not saying this and I'm gonna do it tomorrow, but I hardly ever cut myself really badly. I have. I cut like basically the whole tip of my finger off one time. Did grow back, but I still think that you cut yourself worse with sharp knives. However, they're very nice to cook with, so I won't disagree with that. They're really nice for that. But I get by with subpar knives just fine. Okay. Would you be able to talk about screen time and your older girls? I want my 11 year old to learn all the skills I wish I learned before I got married, but it's hard to teach what I'm learning myself. We try to watch a few of your videos together and she gets inspired seeing what your girls can do, but gets discouraged at the same time feeling she's behind. I feel like there are so many good resources on YouTube and she could learn a lot faster if she wasn't going at my pace. But we're a limited screens family and I don't want to start down the slope of consuming too many videos all day. I've already been through the struggle with too much media consumption and don't want to pass that down. Any suggestions? So I know there are many different schools of thought when it comes to this, but at a certain age, and Your daughter is 11, so she is still quite a bit younger. My daughters are 16 and 14 and one of them is very interested in sewing and one of them is very interested in the kitchen and baking and cooking. And so where one of them, you might think, oh, they're both so good at sewing and cooking. One of them is very good at one of those things, one of them is very good at the other one and they aren't necessarily the same and they do also have different learning styles. So the, the one in the kitchen she doesn't worry as much about. She doesn't watch a whole lot of videos. She's kind of like a hands on experimentation type of person. Like I'm not going to follow the recipe, I'm just going to try it. And that's how she has learned to advance. And there's plenty of times where I'm like, hey, look at a recipe. You don't know how to make this thing. Just so she learns just by looking at recipes, trying and sometimes not looking at recipes at all. The one who does sewing and she's very into it and she's made some pretty impressive things. I do let her have access to certain channels and I don't really worry about it. But again remember that she's 16. So there, there comes a time where we will all, you know, release our kids into the world with, with the things that they've learned in our homes and they will have access to, to whatever I will say one thing that we do is we are all logged into the same YouTube and so and it's not my, my main like YouTube channel YouTube but I can check history and I do check history all the time and I can be like, hey, too many shorts. Like let's watch some long form instructional things. I feel like we're leaning a little too far into. There'll be sewing channels but they'll be like all the shorts content sometimes. So you know, being able to check the history is really important. But she's with sewing definitely advanced far beyond what I can do. So I don't feel like I could have taught her or necessarily even had the time to learn everything alongside her because her passion led her much further than mine ever did. And so I think that there's a place for that. Now what you could do if you're worried about like jumping around, scrolling around, which at age 11 that kind of makes sense. Like I think there's a certain age where you're like okay, you know, I, I trust you. I know that at some point you're going to go find information on your own. That's a good thing. But for a younger child and what we did some back then with some other things is find like an online course, you know, find some kind of maybe like one of the big young girls sewing youtubers has a course where they could just log into that and look through those lessons and, and get a lot of inspiration there instead of scrolling around. I think that could be a good idea because most likely there will be things that your daughter will latch onto and be better at in a few years than you are at them. And so at some point they surpass the, the guide. And there'll be things that they know that I don't know at all. And they have to have access to that information, you know, in the supplies and the tools, but the information to do that. And so we're comfortable with it. We definitely do on screen learning. And it has worked for certain things. Certain things, you're like, wait a minute, I don't think this is really helping you. I think you're just kind of watching stuff. That's when you need to like, pay attention and pull back. But not necessarily, you know, write it off from the beginning as, okay, well, that's not a way that we can learn. We're definitely utilizing those tools with nudity.
- [38:19]
Lisa
From ever reaching your child's phone in the first place. In fact, Gab's phones and watches are built with smart filtration that proactively blocks harmful content before it ever reaches your kid.
- [38:28]
Luke
It's so nice having an extra phone.
- [38:30]
Lisa
Around, especially one that isn't a smartphone. When we used to go on a.
- [38:33]
Luke
Date night, we would just give the kids one of our phones.
- [38:36]
Lisa
Now we leave them with the Gab. So we are very comfortable that we can reach them. They can reach us.
- [38:40]
Luke
Yet I don't have to worry about.
- [38:42]
Lisa
All the things they could get into and scroll. I can't recommend Gab enough. It's the most responsible way that I've found for parents and kids to embrace technology together. Right now, GAB is offering $25 off any device with no contract required. Just go to gab.comsfl to get started. That's gabgabb.comsfl gab.comsfl terms and conditions apply. Here's a fact that may not surprise you. 66% of men are investing in the stock market, compared to just 48% of women. I started investing many years ago. Actually when I was a teenager. I learned the very basics of investing and started putting some of my pennies in there. Investing can sometimes feel overwhelming. With all the fancy jargon that makes it seem more complicated than it really is. Acorns believes that anyone can be an investor. That's why they make it easy to stick to basic time tested principles that give your money a chance to grow. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now. Even if all you've got is spare change, you don't need a ton of time. You can create your Acorns account and start investing in just five minutes. Basically, Acorns does the hard part so you can give your money a chance to grow. I do sometimes think that there are so many options. Especially today with the Internet we see differing opinions. It can make it feel like why do anything because it is all so confusing. But that attitude will not serve you well in the future. I think it's really important to start where you can right now. Sign up now and join over 13 million altogether customers who have already saved and invested over $22 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.comfarmhouse or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures@acorns.com farmhouse so many questions.
- [40:51]
Luke
About swapping fresh milled flour for all purpose or all purpose flour for fresh milk. I've talked about this at length and I'm showing a lot of it over on the YouTube channel. So this, this question says can you please do more detailed video on how you're swapping all purpose to freshly milled? You mentioned here and there in your videos how you swap it one for one, how you mix everything and just let it stand and then you do some stretch and folds and you let it bulk from overnight. I get overwhelmed when I don't know the exact steps and I know you're not into exact steps. I know my personality is like ah, like, like how do I explain this? Because I'm like, you can feel it, you know. But if you could lay out a framework of how to do a recipe from start to finish, that would be so helpful. You were saying you don't use your mixer anymore but just do stretch and folds. I get overwhelmed with all the information. I guess I just need it simplified. I guess what I'm trying to ask is how do I know when I can just ignore the mixer step in the recipe and do stretch and folds? How do I know when I've done enough stretch and folds? How do I know when to shape, when to bake? Okay, so you can always, always and there might be some exception that I'm like oh, except for. But I have not found a recipe yet that I've done in the last several months that you can't just do stretch and folds instead of a mixer. Even brioche or. Somebody corrected me. Somebody corrected me. Brioche? Is that what you said? I got a long email from somebody French who told me how to pronounce it. I think it's. Anyways, I'm not going to take the time right now to look it up, but I know that it's not really pronounced brioche. I think it's brioche. Even that which has, I mean, eight tablespoons of butter, four eggs, it has, you know, it's a very wet dough that's enriched with so much fat. So even that can be stretched and folded. So I think my encouragement to you is. And maybe I'm. Maybe I'm wrong, because I get people who say, no, no, no, I need an exact frame. I had a friend once who I was trying to explain to her how to, like, go rogue with Sourdough, and she came back to me and she was like, it did not work like it. I can't do that. It turned out very, very bad. So I think the more that you. You work with it, the more that you will find. So what you could do if you feel like, okay, I'm not ready to, like, go rogue on this thing. And just basically, like, I'm at the point where all I need is ingredients, and I can just do the rest without having to worry about hours and how many stretch and folds and how long to need it. I don't need any of that. I just need ingredients at this point because I know what developed gluten feels like. I don't need to time how many stretch and folds I do and count them. I know what it feels like. But if you're not at that stage, then just take the recipe exactly as it is and swap it one for one with whole grain and do that for a really long time. And once you feel so comfortable with that, then maybe say, hey, you know, I'm going to try this one time, like keeping everything else same. We're going to do the rise times the same. We're going to do the shaping the same. We're going to, you know, do the whole grain that we're now comfortable with. But now I'm going to stretch and fold this one time and maybe only change one variable and just see, you know, if you. If you're. If you're feeling it, if it's working, and then if that fails, you'll know that one variable that was the isolated thing, you know, you don't want to introduce a whole bunch of new things at once. So you can't say, oh, that's where it went wrong. And then, you know, maybe like, just change one thing at a time. And I've told people on my channel before, if this overwhelms you and you're like, okay, I just got used to sourdough. Now you're telling me to stretch and fold and to throw in whole grain. Just ignore and do what you know until you're ready to change one variable. Because I want to say, like, okay, stretching and folding replaces kneading because you're developing gluten, but in a much slower way. You could do three stretch and folds. You could do six. Honestly, they're pretty much always fully developed after about three. But it's not going to hurt to do six. You know, it's not going to. It's only going to make it better to a certain extent. So you can, you know, you can continue stretching and folding, but three is fine. I think what I'm trying to encourage you is there is so much flexibility in sourdough. It's not like if you don't do it this way, it's gonna turn out terribly. There's. There's like a million ways to do it, and they all turn out fine. So it's okay. Just pick one. And if you're really overwhelmed with that, then just stick with what you know. And at some point when it starts to feel more comfortable, you can add a little, little change in there. But that's what I've learned after lots of years of sourdough and, who knows? Thousands and thousands and thousands of loaves of. I made what today? I made six, which isn't normal, but I did it. You'll. You'll see that, like, this is a forgiving process. It's not that. It's not that scientific. I think we. There's so many opinions around sourdough. We, you know, we weigh it in grams and we, we stretch it and fold it and we coil, fold, whatever that means. You know, we. We put it in a mixer and I think you need to break it down. Like your taking flour and water, water and starter, maybe sometimes some eggs and some butter, and you are developing the gluten, whether it's a coil fold, whether it's a stretch and fold, whether it's kneading. Yes, there are probably certain things that would do it a little bit better, but ultimately it'll do it fine. You're letting it Do a bulk rise, which again, you can do it in the fridge, you can do it at room temperature, you can do it in front of your wood stove, you could do it over in a cold corner of your kitchen. It'll take longer this way, it'll be shorter that way. But again, there's this like, there's this process that no matter which way you do it and whether you add a little time because it's a little colder or whatever, understanding the overview of what's happening and how it's all pretty much the same will help you see that there's a lot of ways to accomplish the same goal. So maybe I've confused you further. I don't know. I hope not. Will you be updating your sourdough recipes on your website or cookbook with any modifications you've made us using freshly milled flour? I began my sourdough journey shortly before your cookbook came out and have been working through the recipes. Then I received a grain mill for Christmas and beginning to incorporate that into baking. Because I'm still so new to both processes, any modification notes would be extremely helpful at this time. I'm reserving that for my YouTube channel just because it really is simple to make the swap. It doesn't. There's not a whole lot of changes to be made and I'm not gonna like, I don't want to go through and change everything just because most people who are googling recipes are looking for just like an all purpose thing. Like they're, they're wanting to see these big beautiful loaves of bread which you can't really accomplish with whole grain. They're delicious, they're wonderful. But. And it's ultimately not what is gaining the traction on Google, but that's why I'm taking these very same recipes and just explaining how to do whole grain on my YouTube channel. Because ultimately it's really very, very simple. It's not, it doesn't need a whole new recipe or new rise times or really, you know, a whole bunch of specifications. Okay, sorry, this is turning into sort of a sourdough Q and A. But, but I do try to address these questions so that I think a lot of people have the same questions. So you might be wondering, and I've answered them before, but where, I mean, you know, I don't know how you could dig back through and find this exact answer, but someone says, I have extra starter in the fridge, can I just let it come to room temp and warm up, use it and not feed it before I Use it. So, yes, absolutely. This is another rule I break all the time. I made bread, so I got it going, let's see, yesterday afternoon, and my starter had been in the fridge for over a week because I. We were going out of town. We went out of town for six days, and we. Before that, like, I didn't bake the day before, so I don't even know when it was fed last. I have no clue. However, I knew that in that jar was yeast that was just kind of asleep, right? I didn't have to get it out, feed it, wait four or five hours. I just simply took what was in there, and it was almost gone, too. So I had to pour, like, almost all of it out. So what's like, on the side of the jar, in the bottom of the jar, there's enough yeast left in there to feed flour and water and make it an active starter again. But I didn't do that first. First, I dumped out what I could that wasn't just stuck to the sides and the bottom and put that in my bread. It wasn't even 200 grams. But I did my usual bread recipe because my daughter, she's having a little sewing, so she wanted bread for it. So I took that directly out of the fridge, put it in as usual, and I have beautiful loaves. Today we completely skipped the fridge rice. So yesterday, I don't know, probably late afternoon, maybe like 5ish, did my 950 grams of flour, 650 grams of water, 20 grams of salt, and whatever grams of starter, because I didn't have enough to even do that. There was enough yeast in that to make some very big, beautiful loaves. So I do again, I'm just like forever trying to get people to see that sourdough isn't complicated. It's just like making bread. You're developing gluten, you're adding yeast. The yeast can be really, really active, or it can need a little time to wake up. You can develop that gluten by kneading. You can develop with stretch and fold. You can develop it in your mixer, let it rise once, divide it, either throw it in the fridge or just let it rise again at room temperature. Bake it. It's the same process. No matter what recipe you're doing, no matter what kind of grain you're using, you can slow it down, you know, with the fridge here or there. You can speed it up by using more active yeast, by letting that starter, you know, come to room temperature and feed it with fresh flour and water. But ultimately, it's just the same process as regular bread making. It doesn't need like a whole new special science degree to do it. Forever trying to encourage people of that. Okay, I'll take one more question. Sourdough versus dries. I've recently delved into fresh milled flour, bought Sue Becker's book, and even saw effects in my daughter's health. Her wart fell off like sue testified about. How cool is that? Yes. For those of you who don't follow along closely with Sue Becker, she talks a lot about warts, which is random, but it's. It's crazy. Like the effects of whole grains and what that does to even a external visible symptom, like a wartime. Lots of testimonies about that. I noticed that all of her recipes use dry yeast and most other fresh milk flour blogs also use dries. Do you know anything or could you interview anyone about the health benefits of sourdough? Fresh milled versus dry yeast Fresh milled recipes. Another note, I'd love to see all your recipes, but with fresh milled versions, I'd totally buy a cookbook with that. I guess I should just let the people tell me, you know, like, if people are going to read these recipes, it wouldn't be hard because I'm going to be doing like the exact same thing, but with fresh milled. Hey, maybe we'll explore that soon on the blog. At the moment it sounds overwhelming. It's like, whoa, all my recipes but fresh milled. But maybe some of those will start to be coming in the future. With that. I still am a big proponent of sourdough one. I think it's, it's very sustainable in your own kitchen because you're not buying an extra thing. You're just keeping the yeast, you know, in your kitchen. You can shove it in the back of the fridge if you don't want to bake for a while. It's not any harder to keep a starter than yeast, in my opinion, at all. And the process is very comfortable to me because it's a slower process that does afford you time to do stretch and folds versus kneading, which to me is so much easier, so much straightforward. I have done regular bread recipes with dry yeast way back in the day, and I would just knead and knead and think. Did it do anything? I can't tell. Stretching and folding, I never have that doubt. Once I do three or four stretch and folds. This stuff's always just this big, like stretchy. You can see, like through it. You can do the window pane test, it works so well and in such a straightforward, without fail type of manner. Whereas with, with kneading yeast, I can't say the same. So I'm just so comfortable with the sourdough process. Plus, scientifically, it does unlock more of the nutrients because of what souring process does. It's a more traditional practice. Before they had packets of yeast, you know, this is what people did. So it's not, it's time tested, it's tried and true, and therefore I'm definitely going to be a forever sourdough person. But the good news is, with Sue's book, you can take any of her recipes and just pour in a little starter. That's your yeast. You have to let it do longer rise times than she suggests. You know, you need to watch the cues, like, has it doubled? But yeah, ultimately, like adapting those recipes if you want to. I guess either way, you're going to be doing a little adapting. You can either take Sue's recipes, adapt them with a little sourdough starter, or you can take my recipes, adapt them with a little, you know, or whole grain instead of all purpose. But both are very, very doable. And I think that you'll get comfortable the more that you do. And I try to talk about that a ton, you know, and for me, it's easy in a way, it's very easy for me because I have a lot of kids, so no matter. I can't make too much food. Like, I cannot out bake what my family can eat. And so I'm not gonna, like, mess up and waste a bunch of stuff where some people are like, well, if I did too many experiments, then we'd literally throw it away. That's understandable. That's not gonna happen to me. And then also my job is baking bread. And so I'm like, I'm constantly baking bread. And so I definitely feel that that amount of doing something is what will teach you better than any podcast. Like, I, I can only explain it so much, and at some point you're going to need to just go and start baking. Even if it feels like I don't know what I'm doing. The more you do it, the more you absolutely will know what you're doing and you're going to find ways to adapt it for how you like it. Like, maybe you're like, like I was telling one of my friends, it's like, now I only do stretch and fold folds. It's so much easier. And she was like, seriously, like, I hate stretch and folds. Anything that is a stretch and fold recipe. I try to skip it and I'm like, oh, well, you can always use your mixer for anything. But for her, that wasn't like this big relief. Like, yay, now I'm only doing stretch and folds because to me it was. I find it just so much straightforward. It always turns out I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm never saying did it pass the window pane test. It always passes when you do stretch and folds, that's what I like. But for her it was like, eh, it sounds like hands on time. Which I was like, it is not. Like all you have to do is like every 20 minutes or so. Don't even time yourself. Just go over there and do this really quick. It's so easy. But she, she didn't see it that way. And so I think, you know, everybody's gonna have like, well, I think this works better. Well, I think this works better. They probably both were great and you just need to start trying it to see that happen. All right, well, as always, thank you so much for listening. If you want to submit your questions, head to bit Ly forward slash capital S, capital F, capital L, Simple Farmhouse Life questions. So questions is lowercase. SFL is capital. It is case sensitive. Bit Lee forward slash SFL questions. And I will do this in, I think I every third episode, at least for now, in 2025. I will do that now. A lot of your guest suggestions, because also I tell people to leave guest suggestions in the Q A are people that I've actually have had on the podcast. I'd say like 90 of the of the guest suggestions that you all gave, I actually have had in the past on the podcast. So you can go to YouTube, search simple farmhouse Life podcast, and then the name of the person you were thinking. But we did decide that this year I'm gonna bring on a lot of repeat guests because there's people that y'all love to hear from. But it's been two or three, three years since they've been on the podcast. So we're going to do a lot of repeat interviews this year, so you'll have that to look forward to. Some of your favorite guests back for 2025 on the simple Farmhouse Life podcast. All right, well, I will see you in the next episode. Thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life Podcast. My husband Luke and I and our eight kids work together side by side on our little homestead and use our blog, podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks and home settings. Others with practical recipes and daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmassonboone.com and to dig deeper, we do also offer a course called Simple Sourdough over at Bitvit Ly farmhousesourdocourse. That's all one word. Bit. Ly farmhousesourdocourse. If you're looking to learn how we earn an income online, check out my free blog Success Masterclass at Bit Ly Farmhouse Blogging school and my YouTube course at bit ly farmhouseyoutubecourse. All one word. It.