Live from Farm School: Part 3
How the weather can make or break your bread, plus some thoughts on a chicken.
Good morning! It’s going to be sunny and in the low 60s in Ireland today, which is quite lovely for this green and damp corner of the world. I hope you also see some sunshine (or can create your own sunshine) today!
LESSONS FROM FARM SCHOOL
The weather was brought up a lot during the farm school sessions this week, which reinforced my theory on the intrinsic connection between food and weather. As it turns out, weather impacts nearly everything at an organic farm and cookery school! Here are just a few of the obvious and not so obvious ways the weather really matters –
First and most obvious – the weather controls when things can be planted and how they will grow. One thing this part of Ireland has not been lacking recently is rain. The soggy soil meant planting had to be delayed, and it will be a little longer before some of the spring veggies can be enjoyed.
Depending on the weather, your sourdough recipe can produce a perfect loaf one day and a sad, dense, frisbee-shaped loaf the next. Warmer temperatures = more active yeast and a shorter proofing period, cooler temperatures = a longer proofing period. Likewise, higher humidity means a higher water content in your dough. You can mess around with the amount of starter, the amount of flour, and the water temperature to adapt to the weather - I aspire to get to the point where I can feel/see/smell the dough and know exactly what it needs more of. Baking bread is such a beautiful mixture of science, experience, and intuition!
Ballymaloe has a glorious fermentation shed where they make everything from kimchi to ginger bug to kefir. Just like sourdough, different temperatures and humidity levels will lead to a different final product. You may have to set the recipe aside at some point and step outside to determine what your fermented goodies need to thrive.
Finally, the weather decides what you can do on the farm each day. We were supposed to have a lovely morning gardening last Monday, but the sideways rain and high winds led us down a different path. You might think you have control of your day, but the weather always has a way of humbling you and having the last laugh.
Ok, onto another farm school lesson – this is one I’ve been dreading for a long, long time.
When I was deciding whether I should take a hiatus from work and run off to farm school, I was told that part of the course included slaughtering a chicken. To be honest, it was almost a deal breaker for me. I’m a big softie, I cry at everything, I feel all the feelings, and I eat 95%-ish vegetarian. So, I was quite sure that being present for a chicken slaughtering wouldn’t go over well.
I was not wrong. It did not go over well. Some of you may be munching on breakfast while reading this so I’ll spare you the gruesome details, but it was dramatic, there was a lot of blood, and I did indeed shed a few tears for the unfortunate chicken.
That being said - there was an important reason for our class viewing a chicken slaughter and it turned out to be a meaningful experience for me. As consumers, there’s a massive disconnect between the animal on the farm and the meat on our plate. We know so little about how the animal was raised, the work the farmers put in, how the animal is killed, how the meat is prepared, etc. Most of us live in blissful oblivion – we complain about the price of meat, yet we don’t give a second thought to the intense work of the farmer or the sacrifice of the animal itself.
The farmer who came to talk to us owns a farm that puts so much time and effort into caring for animals in the best way possible. Unfortunately, farms like that are not the majority. Factory farms, where chickens are raised and slaughtered in horrible conditions, are much more common. If I saw the best of what eating meat can be and still felt deeply uncomfortable, I don’t even want to imagine the worst.
I’m still not quite sure what to make of all of it. We’ve been talking in our class about how “it’s not the cow, it’s the how” – cows (and other livestock) get a rep as being horrible for the environment, but it’s really the human practices around livestock that lead to environmental issues and animal suffering. It’s a complex issue with no easy solution, but here are the main ways we can consume meat in a better way –
Know your butcher and where your meat comes from. Avoid buying meat from factory farms.
Buy grass-fed meat.
Eat a lot less meat and purchase more expensive/higher quality products when you do eat meat.
Use all the parts of the animal you can.
I’ll be processing the whole chicken event for a while – but I’m grateful for the experience and grateful to the chicken.
IRISH WEATHER AND EATS
Anywho, moving onto a happier topic! And by a happier topic, I mean the topic of bread. After the chicken experience to start the week, all I could say was TGFB (thank God for bread).
We were able to make some goodies in the bread shed last week. The bread shed, you may not be surprised to learn, is the shed in which the bakers at Ballymaloe make the bread. It’s a magical place full of buttery happiness where the aroma of freshly baked bread has the power to put a smile on even the grumpiest person’s face.
We had about four hours to make bread, and no time was wasted! By the end of those four hours, we had worked on sourdough, focaccia, brown yeast bread, and two kinds of white yeast bread. Pictures of my braided white yeast bread, brown bread, and sourdough (and water kefir) are below! I’m very proud of them!
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Since it was chicken week, we also did some practical work in the kitchen with eggs. No joke, I think our 12-person class went through about 4 6x6 trays of eggs (that’s 144 eggs if you don’t want to do the math). We made sweet and savory soufflés, veggie frittatas, French omelettes, egg salad, jam cookies, and lemon meringue pie. I’m currently living in a cottage with four other people, and somehow we ended up taking home three lemon meringue pies as leftovers. I’m not mad about it.
It was a pretty rainy week, but the warmth and sun returned yesterday. We had a pizza picnic on the beach to make the best of the beautiful day. Thunderstorms started to pop up later in the afternoon and cut the beach day short, but at least we got some cool cloud views from it!
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Thanks for making it to the end of the Frost Bites Newsletter! I’ll be back in your inbox next Monday with the weather forecast and recipe suggestions. In the meantime - get outside, eat good food, and remember all weather is ice cream weather.
I need you to make me bread when you return!!!
Your weekly posts make me so happy. 😉 Thank you for sharing!