In the winter I seldom bake and almost never bake bread. If I bake it I have to eat it and you know how that goes. But now it is spring and my workers are beginning to slowly filter in (more coming next week) so I have begun to wind up the baking routine.
Here is the link to my favourite recipe for bread. It is deadly simple.
Sheila is settled in well down the back. She spends her nights in her underground home. Here she is watching me feed the chickens knowing it is her turn next.
Yesterday the asparagus was cleared off and covered in mulch and fertilised. It is pouring rain today. Boo is watching me write from the back of my wardrobe, hiding from the thunder.
Alex my student worker has found his feet very fast. He has just come out of the Navy where he worked in a submarine. He is very organised, easy to work with and has a great sense of humour. His objective is to learn as much as possible about farming this summer, with the intent to join the Peace Corp in West Africa. Learning how to grow his own food seemed to him to be the best training for this mission.
Last night he was working on a spreadsheet designed to keep track of the plantings in the glasshouse (which he has tidied up). He is excited to have found many fresh seeds for some very hot chilis. He has taken to the glasshouse finding his passion in there. I told him he could grow and pot up one of each variety of hot pepper I have and take them with him in his car as he works his way around the country learning. He loves hot food.
I am not a spreadsheet kind of person so this is good learning for me. This summer we will be Seed Saving and creating a bank of seeds. So record keeping is pretty important for that. I am getting a lot of support and advice from the Seed Savers Exchange. And will be hosting a seed saving event in October called My Great-Grandmothers Garden. I am worried about the lack of genetic diversity in our vegetable gardens (let alone the supermarket shelves) and hope to develop a small group of gardeners who can learn and teach seed saving with and to me. It is literally dangerous to have such a limited pool of food varieties. Take the potato famine in Ireland as one example. That was an important lesson that we have forgotton again. Putting all our eggs in one basket.
I have always saved a few seeds but I am late to serious seed saving and I know many of you save seeds for your gardens so I am hoping we also can swap seeds in the future. This is pretty important work. We need to spread the seeds.
Alex will be helping me with this and the knowledge he gains from this enterprise will open up a whole world of exploration.
There will be more on this as the summer progresses. BUT WE NEED SUN!!
I have a few daffodils out and though this endless wet weather has beaten them up they soldier on with their soggy message of spring.
Wet weather gear again today. Sigh.
I hope you have a lovely day.
celi
Weather:
Rain early…then remaining cloudy with showers and windy conditions developing for the afternoon. Thunder possible. High near 50F. Winds ENE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
The Kitchen's Garden 
37 responses to “A Time to Bake”
Celi, my tongue is almost licking the screen looking at that bread. I can smell it. If I promise to eat my two dinners a day, may I have a thick heel – the crusty end piece. None of the ‘B’ word on it for my, I have my own yellow stuff… home made lemon curd. Yum, yum, yum.
I heard a poem in the “soggy message of spring” part, and saw it in the photographs. OK to copy for Albits? https://albitoblog.com/2017/04/05/wet-weather-gear-again-sigh/
Absolutely yes!
I’m part of a Seed Savers/swappers network here, and save my own seeds. Sadly, my town has recently been inundated with flood waters and all my seeds are gone. As well as all the trays of winter veg I had sown and that were nearly ready for planting. There will be more seeds of course, but all that work gone, pfft! My veggie garden is under 3 ft of mud so I doubt there’ll be any homegrown vegetables this winter, I will think about doing some in pots and tubs once the water has all gone down and the mud cleared away. I like to think that along with the piles of chook poo I had cleaned out of the pen right before the river rose, and all my compost floating away, my seeds and seedlings will embed themselves all over my neighbourhood and people will be finding cabbages and broccoli and flowers popping up all over the place 🙂
I’m so sorry to hear all your hard work gone to 3 ft. of mud. What a bummer. I hope flowers and cabbages and broccoli do pop up all over your neighborhood and you will be blessed with friends thanking you.
It would be good, wouldn’t it, like Day of the Triffids. It’s a thought that keeps me going.
Finally, even the G.O.has all but given up his bakery bread habit. We rarely buy it, I bake semi-regularly, we don’t eat it all and the remainder goes into the freezer sliced up for toast or as breadcrumbs. But it’s so nice to be able to do it. We’ve also started saving and sharing seeds. A spreadsheet is a good idea, rather than the assortment of -at least labelled- bags I have accumulated in a tin…
I got to chatting in the middle of last summer with the gentlemen who runs the drug diversion program in the courthouse. Danny is his name. Who knew he came from a farming family? We talked plants for nearly an hour, and the next time he saw me, he brought me four packets of beans that he saves that his family has grown for generations.
I promptly messed up the label.
So now I call them Danny’s Beans 1 and 2. Such a treasure! And I’ve harvested plenty to share, too.
My next door neighbor also grew up on a family farm. He says he escaped the farm by moving to the city, and now I’ve brought the farm right back to him. Ha! He brought me some canteloupes from his home place, two summers ago now. They are the sweetest things. And super juicy when they are ripe. I saved seeds from them and grew them out last year, and I’ll be doing it next year. I’m already excited to share these with the farmy friends!
I must start our own collection, as you say it’s important for our future but easily overlooked.
I just spotted our first asparagus poking through yesterday, time to poach some eggs 🙂
I love fresh baked bread. Sheila’s definitely got lots of mud to play in 🙂
I have never tried the dutch oven method. I can’t wait to give it a go! Do you use a sourdough starter or is this just basic bread dough? The loaves look perfect! Wish you could share a picture of it sliced sometime : )
This is a basic bread dough – flour, water , yeast and salt. With a very simple method. Start it at night make it in the morning – easy peasy.. c
Alex sounds marvellous. My Grandad was a navy man and my grandmother a Wren…so happy memories. Love the seed swap idea 😀
C. We make the no knead bread too with the exception of swapping out the water for beer but I’m wondering…does your bread come out with all those lovely holes or is it more dense? Ours is on the dense side and I would love to have it holier…Maybe it’s the beer that makes ours so dense…let me know and yes, we’d love to see a vid of how you make yours!
mine has LOTS of holes..
Well, I take some time off and what do I find? Sheila has a bunker all of her own. I hope she likes it.
Last year I grew tomatoes from very old seeds I saved…some as far back as 2007, if I remember correctly. Now I have tomato plants growing from last years seeds I saved. Very exciting! Also growing some new varieties from Seed Savers Exchange.
Love the look of that bread! I’ll have a look at recipe right away. 🙂