When I first sent out this small ode to bicycles in the fall of 2020 a number of people very rightly pointed out that my use of the imperative implies that all people can ride a bike. There are many reasons–including physical ability, the danger and distances of roads designed for cars, and the scrabbling busyness of our daily lives–that people might not want or be able to ride. So, yes, I think that bicycles are a wonderful way to travel. And yes, we need to keep fighting for infrastructure for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit in our cities built for cars (add your voice to the new Bellingham Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan!). And yes, until there are safe, functional ways for all of us to move under our own power or with public transit, and until our culture and economy value life over convenience, most people will drive most of the time.

You should ride a bike
from Oct. 2020

I could tell you all the reasons not to drive a car. I could tell you about noise, air, and water. I could tell you about environmental justice. I could tell you about war, about fracking, about the existential threat of climate change. I could tell you about the squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, song birds, cats, and crows I pass daily, flattened on the road. Or the coyote, the beaver, the deer, and the fox laid out dead in the ditch. I could tell you about the barred owl I found yesterday on my way to work, about her soft, curled toes, her unruffled feathers, her pale face, her eyes, one closed to the sky, the other open to the pavement, unseeing.

But you know those stories. And besides, a bicycle isn’t an anti-car. It needs no negative justification. You should ride a bike because it’s a delight; because your legs are strong, or will be, and feeling their power is a power in itself; because you can go so fast!; because the air above the creek is cool and wet; because on a warm night the scents bloom around you; because the sky is more beautiful than any ceiling. Riding your bike on a blue summer day is easy and sweet, but riding through a winter afternoon can be its own, uncomfortable kind of pleasure, your headlight cutting a wedge of raindrops into the dark, the wind in your face, the wet trickling cold down your collar. The comfort of the indoors is seductive, but does it make you feel alive? Does it make you laugh with wonder at the beauty of the day and your body in it?

You should ride a bike because you live here, in this place, in this weather, and you cannot love it from a distance behind walls and windows. You should ride a bike just for the joy of it.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

A good bake yesterday and this morning I woke up knowing how to build the new market display case. Between the Health Department's ever tightening rules and the physical limitations of transporting the entire market stand and product by bicycle, I'd been mulling over how to build a sturdy, collapsible case all week. As usual, I'm working right up until the deadline. They won't be fully sanded or finished, but hopefully these frames I'm slapping together will fold up and stand up when asked.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

Riding the straight shoulder of Chuckanut after dark, cars screaming by too bright too loud too fast, ducks rustling up from the flooded fields with my passing, and a barn owl glides towards the road. For a hopeless moment I think she’s going to cross and be struck but she lands at the edge of the ditch and turns her pale, flat face into the glare of my headlight.

We look at each other.

She lifts off as silently as she landed. I ride on towards the farm.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

I watched the trees outside the window bend and sway as I stuffed my pannier with extra layers and water for the ride to the farm. It was my last delivery of the year. The wind had been blowing hard from the southeast all day. Just that morning the headwind had turned my southbound delivery route around the bay from an easy, flat ride into what felt like a five mile hill climb. Still, what was the point of an e-assist bicycle if not to assist with adverse conditions like these? I strapped the box of bread to the front deck, hung my pannier on the back rack, and rode out in defiance of the wind

I rode through the city under fast, gray skies, through the forest with the treetops swaying and the breeze gentle around me. I wound the tight curves south of Larabee, bedrock rising to my left and falling away to my right, the sun breaking clear above the islands and glazing the water below shining white. I rode past water falling white and fast into culverts, past the mud streaks of small landslides, past rockfalls, past a giant cedar snag nose down beside the road, a long skid like a sled run streaking the hillside above it. The bare branches of the maples stood out bright against the firs. Madronas blazed up from the rock, red and yellow and shining green.

Out from the protection of the hills the Skagit flats were as bad as I’d imagined. The wind picked up as the sun set, head on and getting colder. I distracted myself with birds. Red tail, red tail, starlings, red tail. Sea gulls floated in the flooded fields. A heron lifted off from just beside the road, awkward and startlingly large. Somewhere to my right I could hear geese—dozens? hundreds?—calling as they settled for the night. I was so tired I was blinking in and out of sleep even as my legs kept pumping. Five miles to go, and then two. I stopped to pull on another layer, heavier gloves, to drink water hoping it would wash the sleep from my eyes. Every mile was slower than the one before. I crossed the Samish and turned east. The wind punched me in the side and sent me wavering. I stared straight ahead at the road, at the dark clouds massed over the foothills. Pushed and pushed and I was at the farm. I abandoned the bike in the middle of the farm road and went straight inside. What was usually a ninety minute ride, motorless, had taken me nearly two and a half hours with the electric assist. E was gone on deliveries. I didn't care. I tore off a hunk of bread and spread it thick with butter. Ate it and I tore another, and two more after that. I finished the dried apricots in the tin above the sink. I boiled water and filled a mug, wrapped myself in a quilt, and drank it slowly. I was cold and exhausted and so grateful for walls and slippers, for the mug warming my hands, for stillness.

It was a good ride. Hard and good. I was glad for the ride and glad it was over, or I was glad for the year of baking and glad it was over, or I was just glad to be sitting down, warming up with the hot water and food. I was glad. And then I was asleep.

Happy winter.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

I left the bakery just after eight. Between the buildings I could see the sun, huge and orange, balanced on the horizon. I raced its setting down Holly, swerving around the Friday night drunks, down Roeder, across the railroad tracks to Squalicum Park. The western rim of sky was yellow-orange and empty. The sun had won.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

I could tell you all the reasons not to drive a car. I could tell you about noise, air, and water. I could tell you about environmental justice. I could tell you about oil wars, about fracking, about the existential threat of climate change. I could tell you about the squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, song birds, cats, and crows I pass daily, flattened on the road. Or the coyote, the beaver, the deer, and the fox laid out dead in the ditch. I could tell you about the barred owl I found yesterday on my way to work, about her soft, curled toes, her unruffled feathers, her pale face, her eyes, one closed to the sky, the other open to the pavement, unseeing.

But you know those stories. And besides, a bicycle isn’t an anti-car. It needs no negative justification. You should ride a bike* because it’s a delight; because your quads are strong, or will be, and feeling their power is a power in itself; because you can go so fast!; because the air above the creek is cool and wet; because on a warm night the scents bloom around you; because the sky is more beautiful than any ceiling. Riding your bike on a blue summer day is easy and sweet, but riding through a winter afternoon can be its own, uncomfortable kind of pleasure, your headlight cutting a wedge of raindrops into the dark, the wind in your face, the wet trickling cold down your collar. The comfort of the indoors is seductive, but does it make you feel alive? Does it make you laugh with wonder at the beauty of the day and your body moving through it?

You should ride a bike because you live here, in this place, in this weather, and you cannot love it from a distance, behind walls and windows. You should ride a bike just the joy of it.

* This imperative comes with qualifications: bicycles aren't accessible to everyone; good public transit is also essential.

TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR MARKET PREORDER
10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave

BREAD:
Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g)
Elwha River Spelt ($8 / 750g)
Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g)
Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g)
Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g)

SWEETS:
The Most Apple Cake ($5) made with rye and buckwheat and more apple than batter.
Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2)
Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2)
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies ($5 / 2)
Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz)

FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION / WEEKLY PREORDERS
Every Wednesday Sept 2 - Dec 16
10 weeks remaining
Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Happy Valley/Fairhaven

RED WHEAT Subscription - whole wheat table bread
MOUNTAIN RYE Subscription - seedy rye & wheat
TOAST Subscription - a new tinned loaf every week
10/14 - Rosemary Cornmeal
10/21 - Multicereal
10/28 - Baked Apple
Nov - Dec TBD

Riding down alleys and along side streets, cutting across parking lots and over sidewalks, I learn the city's bounty. All year I scout the possibilities along my bicycle lines, and come summer, I'm knocking on doors and scrambling up trees, chasing the harvest.

Most people have little interest in food preservation, and even a dwarf tree can produce more fruit than a family can eat out of hand without the season extending help of canning, drying, freezing, or pressing into cider. Perhaps they take a bowl of cherries to the office, or make a few apple pies, but most of the harvest is left to fall. As the year turns, the sidewalks and alleys are smeared with plums and bruised apples; figs split open in the sun, swarming with wasps; squirrels secret away the green nuts.

These streets hold such uncelebrated abundance. There's fruit ripe for the picking in backyards, in the last remnants of century-old orchards along the forgotten edges of housing developments, in the landscaping of parking strips, and in the thorny banks of Himalayan blackberries overrunning every open and disturbed piece of ground.

There is enough here to fill a pantry, and I do: apples pressed into cider and cooked into sauce, plums and figs dried, pears poached and tucked into jars, quince slow-roasted to jewel-toned membrillo. The task of saving a city’s worth of fruit is overwhelming and, of course, impossible, but still, each year I try, loading the back of my bicycle with boxes of sticky gleanings and staying up late into the night, saving the season.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
Every Wednesday Sept 2 - Dec 16
16 weeks / 16 loaves
Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Happy Valley/Fairhaven

RED WHEAT Subscription ($120) - whole wheat table bread
MOUNTAIN RYE Subscription ($120) - seedy rye & wheat
TOAST Subscription ($128) - a new tinned loaf every week
9/2 - Oat & Honey
9/9 - Toasted Sesame
9/16 - Polenta
9/23 - Buckwheat & Molasses
9/30 - Wild & Seedy
Oct-Dec TBD

TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR MARKET PREORDER
10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave

BREAD:
Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g) *tinned or hearth loaf!
Elwha River Spelt ($8 / 750g)
Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g)
Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g)
Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g)

SWEETS:
Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2)
Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2)
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies ($5 / 2)
Blackberry Apple Snack Cake ($5)
Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz)

NEXT WEDNESDAY PREORDER & PICKUP
Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, and Fairhaven.
Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning.
Order by Sunday night.

Red Wheat
Mountain Rye
Toast: TOASTED SESAME
Sweets: BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE COOKIES & CHOCOLATE CHIP HAZELNUT COOKIES

Snow in the northern shadows but the sunshine is dazzling clear and the pavement dry. There's a drainage pond to our left. "Stop!" I call up to C, who's riding a few yards ahead. "The geese are walking on water!" And my astonished delight is no less when I realize a breath later that the water is a sleek sheet of ice because the geese are skiing, breasts forward, necks tucked back, taking careful, gliding steps across the pond—step glide, step glide—their black feet spread wide. A mallard skis past, post-holing once in her rush to reach the ducks lapping the small, dark circle of water under the trees. And the biggest goose turns back, in a hurry now, or over-confident. His head comes a little forward. He leans towards shore. And just like an amateur skier bent forward into a rise, his feet slide backwards with each step. Step slip. Step slip. Going nowhere fast.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts January 22 and runs for 10 weeks through March 25.
Pickup in Birchwood (the front step), Downtown (Cafe Velo), or in Fairhaven (Shirlee Bird Cafe).
Sign up ONLINE.

RED & WHITE subscription ($70)
MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($70)
BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($80)

BAKER's CHOICE menu: all rye all winter long!
Jan 22: Rugbrod
Jan 29: Ring Rye
Feb 5: Apple Rye
Feb 12: Harvest Miche 1
Feb 19: Harvest Miche 2
Feb 26: Black Bread
March 4: Alpine Spice Rye
March 11: Rye & Oat
March 18: Korn Rye or Corn Rye??
March 25: Westphalian Pumpernickel!

Until now, I’d always delivered to the front door of the restaurant. I’d lean my bike against one of the outdoor tables, open the trailer box, hoist two large bags of bread up into an awkward, two-arm hug, bang on the door with my elbow till the cook let me in, drop the bags on a table between the overturned chairs, and leave. Easy. But staff or schedules had changed. The restaurant was empty now on Wednesday mornings. I got directions to the basement delivery door and my own alarm code. No big deal, I thought. I could handle a change in routine.

Around back, at the end of a dead end alley, I leaned my bike against a stack of kegs. The alley was empty but for me and two men drinking out of paper bags. I walked to the unmarked door, decided that perhaps this was a good place to lock my bike, walked back to my bike and locked the front wheel to the frame, walked back to the door, decided that I shouldn’t leave my pannier and helmet behind, turned back to the bike to retrieve them, returned to the door and, at last, opened it. Immediately, the alarm began to shrill. I fumbled right and then left for the light switch. It was taped over, damn it. Who tapes over the light switch in a windowless basement? The alarm was still shrieking at me. How long did I have? Finally, my hand hit a second switch. The fluorescent lights flickered on. I crossed the room quickly, scanning the walls for the alarm box. There, by the inside door. I entered my code. The noise stopped. My heart was beating too fast. I returned outside to my bike for the bread, hoisted the bags up in an awkward, two-arm hug, fumbled for the door handle, and found it locked. Bread back into the boxes, key out of my pocket, door unlocked and propped open with my pannier, bread bags hoisted and carried through the open door, pannier hooked with a blindly seeking foot, and I was in. The door slammed shut. I crossed the room, again, passing the blessedly silent alarm, fumbled open the far door, climbed the stairs (still hugging the bread), fumbled open another door, and I was in the empty restaurant. I walked to a table and dropped the bags between the overturned chairs. I had done it.

But when I returned to the door at the top of the stairs I found it locked. I looked around, hopefully. The room was quiet and still entirely empty. I tried the basement door again. Definitely locked. There was nothing for it. I turned around and marched across the restaurant and out the front door. The front door started to swing shut behind me… and then it stuck. I pushed. It didn’t budge. I opened it again and tried to close it. The door jam was in the way. How was the door jam in the way? We wrestled back and forth, the door and I, until at last, with a heave, I triumphed.

Now, at this point the reasonable thing to do would have been to walk around the block to the alley’s entrance, but I wasn’t feeling very reasonable. I scrambled over the patio wall instead, climbed carefully down the other side, picked my way across the blackberry thicket, and wiggled through the only gap in the chain link not sewn shut with barbed wire. I was in the alley, and, thank god, so was my bicycle. I went back into the basement one last time, rearmed the alarm, grabbed my pannier and helmet off the floor, and walked out, leaving the light on behind me.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

THANKSGIVING ORDERS are up!
Order today at market with cash or check or online with a credit card by Wednesday, Nov 20.
Pickup Wednesday, Nov 27, downtown (exact location TBD)

Sweets:
Apple Cake - because it's my favorite and should be yours, too. Rye, buckwheat, and heirloom apples. 78% Whatcom grown by weight.
Gingerbread Bundt - in all its dark and sticky glory.

Breads:
Rosemary Rolls - with a little toasted corn & olive oil
Red & White - for a large or larger table bread
Roasted Potato & Garlic - 100% Washington grown (except the salt)
Harvest Miche - of wheat, rye, buckwheat, & corn

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Oat & Honey
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap Cookie
Apple Marmalade Oat Scone
Gingerbread Cake
Apple Cake with Cultured Cream
Orange Cardamom Bread Pudding
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps

FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
5 weeks remaining
Every Wednesday, OCT 2 - DEC 18
Pickup downtown, Birchwood, Fairhaven
This week: Mountain Rye, Red & White, CIDER RYE

I left the kitchen just after seven last Monday. Riding towards home I caught slices of a sky melted apricot yellow between the buildings. The color was luminous and deep. I changed course, rode hard towards Squalicum, hoping to catch the color, hoping as the desire knotted under my collar bone and tightened my throat. I was too slow. By the time I stopped above the beach the sunset had settled into a lovely, unsurprising orange. I stayed anyways, leaning against my bike, watching the sunset and the crescent moon, watching the silhouettes of herons flying north and the colors reflected in the glassy bay, till a jetski revving loops across the bright water and the brittle music playing from a cell phone down the beach drove me away.

I would be earlier next time, I decided. I would go down to the water to watch the sunset every day the sky was clear. But I didn’t. I worked late all week. I rode home in the dark.

Celina will be working the market today, but I might see you when I stop by to shop.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Oat & Honey
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap
Oat Scone
Gingerbread Cake
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps

FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
11 weeks remaining
Every Wednesday, OCT 2 - DEC 18
Pickup downtown, Birchwood, Fairhaven
This week: Mountain Rye, Red & White, Farmer Rye