Blessed Roots Farmstead

Yesterday was a bad day for chickens. We lost five chickens + three eggs for an array of reasons.

The first was a chick in the incubator that didn't make it and died in its shell.

One of our silkie chicks had a cross beak, and we think he may have died from not being able to eat enough food and adapt to his misaligned beak. But we don't know for sure.

Another chick died because it got overheated due to someone running the dryer in the middle of the day. Our chicks stay in our garage, and our washing machine and dryer are also in the garage, so we can't run the dryer in the summer because it gets too humid in the garage. The someone running the dryer forgot.

A cockerel died yesterday for unexplainable reasons. Maybe he got squished by the pullets he was with?

And then one of our broody hens was taken by a mystery predator. She had set up her nest in the front yard garden area, and when I went to check on her, she was gone, along with three of her seven eggs. We collected the remaining four and put them in the incubator. We hope we got to them in time to save them. The saddest part of that loss is that this hen (Blanche) had stopped laying eggs but had gone broody for the first time ever. We thought it was sweet that she "wanted to be a mom" after her retirement. Now she's gone, but we're hoping the eggs she adopted as her own will hatch.

We also haven't seen our yard rabbit Dill since yesterday, and our barn cat Precious seems to have an eye injury, but we can't catch her to take her to the vet to have it assessed. We are attempting to lure her into a crate with food and water, but the chickens keep stealing all of it instead.

Some days farm life can be so hard.

But here are pictures of some rabbits and a loaf of pretty sourdough to bring a little happy.

Yesterday's sourdough bakes! I'm still playing around with bread design and how deep to make the cuts. Sometimes I get a beautiful ear, and other times the design gets completely lost. Sometimes the dough expands in weird places.

Hoping to continue learning and improving as times goes on. My goal is to make perfectly round boules that expand well and have good ears every time. I'm having fun with the different-shaped bannetons.

I've been simulaneously baking in the Lodge brand 6 qt DO and the Crockpot brand 7 qt DO. What I'm finding is that the doughs (regardless of bread shape) in the Crockpot DO are spreading out more and have a slightly flatter appearance than the breads in the Lodge DO. I don't think it's the brand difference causing this, but it could be the extra space inside the larger DO.

Today I made my usual sourdough recipe, but I made a 1.5x batch, and I'm going to bake the larger bread dough in the Crockpot DO and see if it's flattens as much. My theory is that it's flattening out more because there's just more horizontal room for it to do so. I could be completely wrong because it's all possible that it's a hydration thing, but I enjoy the experimentation that is sourdough.

And no matter what the design ends up looking like or the shape of the bread, it always tastes good (unless I overferment/overproof it, in which case it turns into a hockey puck! But other than that...)

It's nice to finally have the hens laying more regularly! 🙌🏻♥️