 Rain last night, and this morning the tops of the cedars are blurred by clouds. It’s officially spring, if not by the Julian calendar than by the forest: the nettles are up. Out past the back fence, past the thickets of rose and ironwood and the fallen willow, past the cedars and the cairn that marks the grave of Loki the dog, there’s a stand of alder. In the summer it’s all nettles, so thick you have to whack and high-step your way through and still you’ll emerge with ankles tingling. But right now the nettles are just a few leaves tall and tender, pushing up from the moss in patches. We had one pair of gloves between us; I took the right and E the left. I was clumsy at it, despite using my dominant hand, and kept accidentally pulling up the little plants when I meant only to pinch off their top leaves. E, being a farmer and much practiced at harvest, was quick and tidy. And if his bag was twice mine when we walked back through the moss and alders, past the cairn under the cedars, by the fallen willow and the thickets of the rose and ironwood, and through the back gate, well, everything went into the same pot in the end. Sophie Owner | Baker Orders are due by SUNDAY NIGHT for pickup on WEDNESDAY in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, or Fairhaven, or for pickup THURSDAY at the Well Fed Farmstand in Skagit, at 17858 Sam Bell Rd. THIS WEEK: Red Wheat ($7.50) Mountain Rye ($8) Baker's Choice: Smoky Vollkornbrot! ($8) Brown Butter Shortbread ($10)
I’m learning how to darn. So far I’ve inexpertly managed a few flat mends; I have yet to attempt anything advanced like sock heels or cuffs. My foray into darning was inspired by a book I picked up a few months ago from the library--Mending Life, by sisters Sonya and Nina Montenegro—which is both a practical introduction to mending clothes and an exploration of mending as a practice of healing and restoration. I returned the book weeks ago, but both its simple darning instructions and the idea that mending clothes could be an expression of a larger ethic have stuck in my mind. What if caring for everyday objects, for people, for our communities, for land and water here and everywhere are tangled vines growing from the same roots? “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” Annie Dillard wrote. “What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” I don’t think darning a hole in a sweater takes the place of political action, or that individual action can change systemic problems, but maybe caring for household goods is one way to appreciate the material gifts of our daily lives—the food, clothing, and objects—and our responsibility to them. Maybe mending can be a small medicine for the large hurt of living in a culture of extraction and consumption. Sophie Owner | Baker
Orders are due by Sunday night for pickup on Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, or Fairhaven, or for pickup Thursday at the Well Fed Farmstand in Skagit, at 17858 Sam Bell Rd. THIS WEEK: Red Wheat ($7.50) Mountain Rye ($8) Baker's Choice: Alpine Rye = 100% rye with a Tyrol-inspired bread spice of caraway, coriander, fennel, anise, blue fenugreek ($8) Brown Butter Shortbread ($10) Non-standard sleds tested or observed in Squalicum Park, in order of speed, from hot damn to don't bother: 1) white water kayak 2) is that an inflatable hot dog in a bun? 3) waxed cardboard box, folded flat 4) aluminum sheet pans, but afterwards they may be irredeemably lumpy and all your cookies will be crooked forever 5) laundry basket    Enjoy the snow while it lasts! Sophie Owner | Baker Orders are due by Sunday night for pickup on Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, or Fairhaven, or for pickup Thursday at the Well Fed Farmstand in Skagit, at 17858 Sam Bell Rd. THIS WEEK: Red Wheat ($7.50) Mountain Rye ($8) Baker's Choice: Apple Rye! ($8) Brown Butter Shortbread ($10) This essay is adapted from a 2017 newsletter.  When I was a child, I saw the magic at work in everything. The door between the physical and imagined was open and the world was full of wonder. There was little difference between the magic of tide pools, methodically explored in Tevas and fleece on an overcast afternoon, laminated species key in hand, and the magic of a backyard fairyland, where I might spend equally serious hours exploring the fairy kingdom and serving feasts from the garden in raspberry goblets and bowls carved from hard, green apples. I found worlds in the secret colors inside clam shells, in the geode's prickly center, in the lush abstractions of Georgia O'Keefe's erotic flowers, which I carried in a pocket-sized art book that must have come from a museum gift shop. I kept beach stones and horse chestnuts for pets. But, of course, I grew up. In biology and physics classrooms we learned beautiful theories, but never spoke of wonder. In English class we read fiction, but wrote only critical essays. Each subject in turn closed its door on imagination. I learned many things in school, but forgot magic. Looking the other day at the wild topography of the rye breads, I felt an upwelling of the old wonder. The loaves cooling on the rack before me were as beautiful as any purple-hearted clam shell. They were made with intellect—with a practical understanding of temperature and time, of enzymes, yeast, and bacteria—and with the visceral knowledge of long practice. Science and intuition, fact and metaphor, both. Bread baking, I thought, might be a kind of practical magic. Sophie Owner | Baker The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION and individual orders are available every Wednesday for pickup in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Fairhaven, and now at the Well Fed Farmstand in Skagit, at 17858 Sam Bell Rd. Sign up this week to pick up a Winter Bread Subscription in Skagit and get a $10 farmstand credit. Orders due by Sunday night for pickup the following Wednesday. Red Wheat ($7.50) Mountain Rye ($8) Baker's Choice (variable) Brown Butter Shortbread ($10) Some good things: sunshine, gamboling lambs, and bread next week! These blue skies are temporary, and all the more dazzling for it; the lambs will soon be out on pasture, where you’ll be able to see them cavorting when you stop by the Well Fed Farmstand for veg, eggs, meat, and Mountain Rye; and the Winter Bread Subscription runs from next Wednesday until the weekly farmers market starts up again in April. Sophie Owner | Baker  A morning visit to the barn at Well Fed Farms. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 10 Weeks, every Wednesday Jan 27 - Mar 31 Pickups probably: Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Fairhaven (open to adding more neighborhoods west of the freeway if you have a good porch!) Bread and shortbread will also be available to order week by week without a subscription. TINNED RED WHEAT subscription ($75) - An excellent all-purpose wheat. MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($80) - The classic seedy rye & wheat. BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($80) - A new rye every week, some old favorites and some we have yet to invent. The likely lineup: Jan 27 - Rugbrod Feb 3 - Gingerbread Rye Feb 10 - Ring Rye Feb 17 - Apple Rye Feb 24 - Miche Mar 3 - Alpine Spice Rye Mar 10 - Smoky Vollkornbrot Mar 17 - Root Cellar Rye Mar 24 - Honey & Spice Mar 31 - Westphalian Pumpernickel Nina lives in the Gulf Islands. She found my name in a zine her daughter brought her, Baking for Biodiversity, by the Portland writer and baker Katie Gourley. She liked that I run the bakery by bicycle—she thought I milled my flour by bicycle, too!—and so she called up her local library and asked the librarian to find my phone number. She doesn’t have a tv, a computer, or a cell phone; she listens to Amy Goodman in the morning on a Bellingham radio station, and sometimes a little music afterwards if it’s any good. Doesn’t have a car and, at 80, no longer rides her bike. She bakes bread every other week—pain sauvage, “because I’m wild!”—in a 94 year old electric, cast iron oven in her 100 year old house. She is a photographer. She mentioned, in passing, that in her youth, in London, she photographed The Beatles.  Nina's house in the islands Pain sauvage is wild fermented bread, made without commercial yeast or sourdough. The dough ferments with the yeast and bacteria present in the grain. This is how idli is traditionally made, and injera. I heard once of a baker in Italy who left his mixing bowl of dough to wild ferment every night. I’ve never made a wild fermented wheat bread, so I’m copying out Nina’s instructions here as told to me, with all her particulars. If you decide to make her pain sauvage, you will, of course, need to adapt the ingredients and process to your own kitchen. NINA's PAIN SAUVAGE Day 1 Mill 1/3c rye, 1c emmer, and 1c red fife wheat into coarse meal. Mix with an equal volume of very cold water and ferment overnight at approximately 20°C for 20 hours. Mix 4c red fife wheat flour with 4c water. Ferment overnight at approximately 20°C for 20 hours. Day 2 Mix the overnight ferments, 3tsp sea salt, and 6c of red fife wheat flour with a wooden spoon. Let sit for an hour. Knead for 5 minutes, and then stretch and fold every hour for 5 hours. Leave out for another three hours or so before putting the dough into the refrigerator overnight. Day 3 Take dough out, let sit for half an hour. Turn dough onto a table dusted with bran. Cut into 4 pieces. Grease 4 round, glass pans and place dough into them. Scatter flax seed on top. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 600°F. Turn off. Wait half an hour. Turn back on to 600°F. This process takes about 2 hours. When the oven is hot the second time cover the pans and put them in the oven. Turn the oven down to 500°F. After 35 minutes, take off the covers. Bake for another hour. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 10 Weeks, every Wednesday Jan 27 - Mar 31 Pickups probably: Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Fairhaven (open to adding more neighborhoods west of the freeway if you have a good porch!) Bread and shortbread will also be available to order week by week without a subscription. TINNED RED WHEAT subscription ($75) - An excellent all-purpose wheat. MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($80) - The classic seedy rye & wheat. BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($80) - A new rye every week, some old favorites and some we have yet to invent. The likely lineup: Jan 27 - Rugbrod Feb 3 - Gingerbread Rye Feb 10 - Ring Rye Feb 17 - Apple Rye Feb 24 - Miche Mar 3 - Alpine Spice Rye Mar 10 - Smoky Vollkornbrot Mar 17 - Root Cellar Rye Mar 24 - Honey & Spice Mar 31 - Westphalian Pumpernickel Nothing new this week, but here's an interview I did on business and capitalism that went up last week on the Institute for Washington's Future and a newsletter reprint from December, 2017. How to love the sky in winter Here is my hypothesis: it isn’t the gray that makes our winters feel oppressive, it’s our built environment. If you spend your days working in an office from dark to dark, or tucked away in your house, hiding from the rain, these short, wet days are grim indeed. And when the sky presses low, as the asphalt presses up, and the walls of brick and stone and wood close in from all sides, I too feel trapped. But that, I think, is the fault of the asphalt and walls, and not the sky. On wild winter days, when the wind blows hard and the rain comes down sideways and the damp cold slides deep into you and settles there to wait for spring, the city is a miserable place to be. But go out walking on the beach, along the dark strip of pebbles between seaweed and driftwood. Turn up your collar and lean into the wind till your eyes tear and your cheeks flush. Breath in the cold and brine. The sea is violent and alive, white caps racing for shore. The beach is strewn with treasures. Or trash. Bring a bag to collect the storm’s flotsam, whatever it may be. And when the storm lifts, and the clouds race over you—altocumulus over cumulus, and the brief glimpse of the cirrus high above—those are the days for open spaces. The brown, stubbled fields of the Skagit Flats have their own, subtle beauty in winter, and above them, the sky is wide and bright, even on an overcast day. But best of all are the low, gray days with their steady rain. In the city, the nimbostratus is a dull blanket, the rain inexhaustible and exhausting. But go out walking in the woods. Find old woods, if you can, with Douglas firs and red cedars wider than your outstretched arms, and an open understory. Layer up with wool and leave your rain coat behind. It’s hardly raining under the trees, more a dripping mist, and the plastic is loud. Without it, you can hear the forest: rain hitting the leaves of sword ferns, the wind breathing through the trees, and off and above, a raven chuckling. The low clouds catch on the hills and treetops, pooling and whisping away. If you stand still, in just the right place, you might even have a moment alone with the forest, no freeway rumble or flyover, no stereo boom or human voices, just the wind and rain moving over the landscape, and the quiet sound of your own breathing.  WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 10 Weeks, every Wednesday Jan 27 - Mar 31 Pickups probably: Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Fairhaven (open to adding more neighborhoods west of the freeway if you have a good porch!) TINNED RED WHEAT subscription ($75) - An excellent all-purpose wheat. (Switching from hearth to tinned for the winter because we'll only be baking once a week and tinned loaves have better keeping quality). MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($80) - The classic seedy rye & wheat. BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($80) - A new rye every week, some old favorites and some we have yet to invent. The likely lineup: Jan 27 - Rugbrod Feb 3 - Gingerbread Rye Feb 10 - Ring Rye Feb 17 - Apple Rye Feb 24 - Miche Mar 3 - Alpine Spice Rye Mar 10 - Smoky Vollkornbrot Mar 17 - Root Cellar Rye Mar 24 - Honey & Spice Mar 31 - Westphalian Pumpernickel Today is the last market of the year. I've been mixing and baking all week in preparation, and nearly everything (except an entire batch of Mountain Rye with gaping top crusts) came out beautifully. It's been a long week, and a good one. I hope these loaves and pastries will make the last weeks of your year a little sweeter. See you soon. And don't forget your umbrella! Sophie Owner | Baker  MARKET MENU 10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g) Elwha River Spelt ($8 / 680g) Mountain Rye 2nds ($6.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingerbread Cake ($6 - $16) Pain d'Epices ($24) Cookies ($5 / 2) - Gingersnap - Chocolate Chip Hazelnut - Dark Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread ($10 / half dz) - Brown Butter - Hazelnut - Lemon Poppy Gingerbread Biscotti ($8) I heard crows mobbing and looked up for the threat. No raptor circling, but a liquid chuckle from the tall fir across the street. Ever since there are ravens everywhere. That black bird there, probing the lawn, perched on a low, swooping branch, strutting the roof gable, calling from the woods, flying a wedge-tail silhouette against the cold, blue sky. They must have been here all along but I only saw what I already knew: garrulous urban crows, and the occasional raven in the hills and forests out past the city’s edge. Sophie Owner | Baker Orders are open for the LAST MARKET, Dec 19. We'll be closed for a month afterwards so stock up! Red Wheat Elwha River Spelt Mountain Rye, cut or whole Seedy Buckwheat, cut or whole Vollkornbrot, cut or whole Gingerbread & Pain d'Epices Cookies & Shortbread MENU for WEDNESDAY, DEC 9 Order by Sunday night for pickup the following Wednesday. Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Happy Valley/Fairhaven Red Wheat ($7.50) Mountain Rye ($7.50) Wild & Seedy "Toast" ($8) Cookies: Chocolate Chip Hazelnut, Bittersweet Chocolate, or Gingersnap ($15 / 6) NOTES & UPDATES: TODAY'S GINGERBREAD: I thought I’d solved the puzzle of last week's suddenly falling gingerbread but apparently not. They all fell down. Again. Damn it. I've turned the failure into some really excellent gingerbread biscotti, and have also held some loaves back from the second bake to send (very discounted) to market for those of you who enjoy cakes the texture of baked pudding. DECEMBER MARKETS: starting next week we'll have Smoky Vollkornbrot (I'm determined to get that electric smoker to work!) and Pain d'Epices, a truly spectacular spice and honey bread that's been aging in the bakery for months. WEDNESDAY BREADS: Red Wheat and Mountain Rye every week, plus Roasted Squash (Dec 2), Wild & Seedy (Dec 9), and Black Bread (Dec 16). As always, orders for Wednesday pickup are due by Sunday night. WINTER HOLIDAY: The bakery will be closed for a month after the last market, Dec 19. We'll have everything available for pre-order and pickup at the last couple markets for those of you who want to stock your freezers, and will get the Winter Bread Subscription dates + menu up in the next week or two. Sophie Owner | Baker  MENU for WEDNESDAY, DEC 2 Order by Sunday night for pickup the following Wednesday. Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Happy Valley/Fairhaven Red Wheat ($7.50) Mountain Rye ($7.50) Roasted Squash "Toast" ($8) Cookies: Chocolate Chip Hazelnut, Bittersweet Chocolate, or Gingersnap ($15 / 6) |
