Blessed Roots Farmstead

03/16/2025

We took a two year break from breeding goats, since my health took a sour turn from May 2023 until recently. But I'm working on reclaiming my health and my life after a long struggle and am ready to get back to the fulltime farm life.

So far we've had three goat kids born on the farm: Phoebe, Forest, and Miracle (more on the name Miracle later).

11/02/2024

November is such a cozy month, right in the heart of fall! There’s something so lovely about the crisp air, warm drinks, and the anticipation of the holidays.

I love this pumpkin sourdough; it's not too sweet, and it's not too savory. It's a perfect blend of each, so it goes perfectly just toasted with butter as a snack, or it can be dipped in pumpkin chili as a side with a main meal. And pumpkin chili is what I made for dinner tonight, so I'm definitely looking forward to cutting into this loaf.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and it's almost time to start planning the big meal that comes on that day. Turkey may be the star of the show, but my favorite thing is the pumpkins. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin soups... I look forward to this all year long!

What is your favorite thing about November, or fall in general? Any family traditions for the holidays?

05/23/2024

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.

05/21/2024

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...)

05/19/2024

Hi! If you're new here, or even if you've been here a while, let me (re)introduce myself.

I'm Kimi. Together with my husband and our three kids, I own and operate Blessed Roots Farmstead.

It all started during the COVID lockdowns with a little garden, and that quickly turned into chicken keeping for the eggs. Then we decided to leave our starter home and buy a few acres in the country with what ended up being a fixer-upper farmhouse. We bought a mama goat and her three kids, plus a buckling so we could keep breeding goats for milk. Then we added meat rabbits to the mix.

We're going on four years, and we're still figuring out a lot of things. There have been struggles and triumphs, with plenty of life lessons along the way.

I make goat milk soap, all sorts of bath products (whipped tallow balm, whipped body butter, and lip balm), and my own herbal remedies (wound salve, dandelion salve, sore muscle balm, wild yam balm, tinctures, and all kinds of garlic/herb infusions).

Last year my health took a downturn, and I gave up refined sugar, caffeine, and processed food in order to get a hold of my health. I was trying to get my hormones balanced to avoid a major surgery; while I couldn't get everything fixed well enough to avoid the surgery, I am happy that I went through with it. I have gotten my life back through both changing my diet while adding vitamins and supplements and getting the surgery. Now I don't want to go back to feeling the way I did before. Something had to change so I could be the wife, mom, and farmgirl I want to be. I can't be sick and in pain all the time, so making major diet and lifestyle changes, and sticking with them, is important to me.

We do as much clean, organic eating as we can. I loathe high fructose corn syrup and artificial dyes and flavors. It's not always easy, and I do still have the occasional sweet treat. Clearly Canadian sparkling water is my "guilty pleasure." I don't drink coffee anymore; instead I drink mushroom coffee with burdock root, dandelion root, chicory, and cacao.

After seeing how many yucky ingredients are in bread, and because my daughter wanted to start making pretty bread, now I (we) make sourdough. There are so many things I still need to learn about bread, but it's a lot of fun and very rewarding so far.

We use non-toxic cleaning products and as many reusable products as we can. Swedish dish cloths, bees wax wraps, and glass if at all possible. We make most of our own food at home, but our family does love Taco Mama and special occasions out at nice restaurants. But even while out, I'll still try to find the best possible choices on the menu.

We're not perfectly crunchy, but we do the best we can. And if we do choose to eat or do something less than holistic, crunchy, organic, and clean, I won't pretend like we do. I'll give honest reviews of products we try out, be transparent about any questionable ingredients, and do my best to live with integrity. I won't pretend like I know everything either, because I really don't. All I want to do is share what I've learned, whether those lessons were learned through trials, wins, or utter failures. There have been plenty of all of them.

On top of all this, I love Jesus, and I try to walk with Him faithfully every day. I fail to meet the mark all the time, but I am so thankful for grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

If you're still reading, and all things farm, homesteading, holistic living, and faith are things you're interested in, then stick around! Thanks for being here. 😊♥️

05/18/2024

We're hatching chicks again!

My first incubator broke, and it wasn't very good to begin with, and I went without one for a whole year.

My duck-owning friend got a really nice one and convinced me I needed to get one just like it. She incubated a few eggs for me in hers, and then I finally bit the bullet and bought it, too. So far we've had a 100% hatch rate with this one.

Currently, we have three silkies named Gandalf, Gimli, and Legolas, and we also have two mixed breeds named B.B. and Little Meep. I let my kids name the chickens, so we get a wide range of interesting things to call them.

03/05/2024

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

02/07/2024

Wild Yam Balm - the first apothecary item I've made in 2024!!!

Ingredients:
Avocado oil
Organic Coconut oil
Wild Yam Root
Chaste Tree berries
Vitamin E oil
Wild Yam Root alcohol extract
Beeswax

Wild yam has been known to provide many horninal benefits. For more infomarion, look up Anna's Wild Yam Cream. That product is backordered until at least April, and I couldn't wait that long. So i decided to just make it myself.

07/28/2023

We have six new silkies on the farm, and they finally moved outside to their temporary pen. We’re keeping them away from the big chickens until they reach full size. They’re doing well.

We’ve decided to name them after hobbits from The Lord of the Rings. So far we have a Mr. Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. We need two more hobbit names!

07/04/2023