 It’s overcast now, but for a few minutes this morning the bay was sunlit. The water, the cobbles under our feet, the green-gray mass of the islands, the purple martin nestboxes—empty still—all sharply defined. We stood looking out over the bright water till the clouds closed in and the sun sparkle disappeared, then turned away and climbed back up the bluff, walking home through ordinary winter-soft light.
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 East of the mountains, sunshine and hard snow. For days the valley was dark with fog. Skiing along I could see the track in front of me disappearing into gray, the hummocked snow on either side fading out. The trees, the houses, the raven overhead were all shadows in the fog. Now in the sunshine, color. I ditched the ridged ice of the skate platform and double poled down the groomed tracks, looking up and around at the orange ponderosa, the white birch, the red twig dogwood, the electric green lichen dripping from the firs, the brown alder catkins. Textures stood out in sharp focus: the crinkle of dead leaves, the deep grooves in the cottonwood bark, the scarred-over scratch of bear claws down a birch trunk. Below the clear water of the creeks the cobbles were deep yellow, green, brown, their colors undulled by algae. And above the sky: blue and blue and blue.  Tomorrow we return west and I head back into the kitchen. There will be bread next week. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the Winter Bread Subscription or order single loaves through the online store. This coming Wednesday I’ll be baking Tinned Wheat, Mountain Rye, Cinnamon Raisin (the Wednesday Special), Vollkornbrot, and Seedy Buckwheat. The last two I’ll bake only on the 4th Wednesdays of the month till the market resumes in April.
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 There’s a crab spider in the echinacea, sucking a syrphid dry. Last night my headlamp caught the gleaming black backs of beetles eating something I’d rather not step in. The other morning I picked up an apple and found a tree frog clinging to its curve, heart beat in its throat, copper back bright as a penny. A skunk lives under the back shed. Since we cut the long grass the doe no longer beds down here, but she still wanders through to browse the unprotected tomatoes and young apple trees. I’ll spend most of the day pruning the dead wood out of these long-neglected fruit trees and thinking about the habitats we might plant for all our creatures, great and small and humans included, if we can successfully beat back the blackberry and the English ivy, keep the bindweed, tansy, thistle, lesser celandine, and yellow archangel under tight control. If you have expertise, advice, or book recommendations on landscaping for biodiversity, we’d welcome them, because although this plot we bought at the edge of town is now ours to steward, it’s home to many and could have space for many more.  Goldenrod crab spider drinks syrphid in the echinacea Ezra will be at the market stand from 10-2 and the bread this week is truly beautiful. Every fermentation yesterday was right on point, from buckwheat to wheat to rye. The plum cake is as much plum as cake. The berry scones have the last blackberry harvest of the year, picked from that very blackberry hedge at the foot of our garden that I’m aiming to eradicate. The cookies are crisp and buttery, just the way we like them.
Sophie Owner | Baker Along the roadsides and southern hills the blackberries are ripe. They hang fat and gleaming in the sun, tempting passing cyclists. This time of year you’ll often see me at the side of the road or pulled up on the sidewalk, bicycle discarded, hands scratched and lips purple, mouth full of sunshine. A perfectly ripe blackberry is plump and firm between your finger tips. It separates from the stem with the gentlest tug. The attachment point is clean white. Press it between your tongue and palate and it dissolves with the sweet, dark taste of summer. For baking, though, you want sour with your sweet. Pick your berries a little firmer, a little less glossy. They separate with a twist and a snap so soft you feel it in your fingers more than hear it. I rode back from the commissary late on Thursday. The sun had set, the sky ahead fading orange to green to white. At home, I pulled double-kneed canvas pants out of my pannier and on over my shorts, zipped my dad’s old hickory striped work shirt over my tank top, and switched my sandals for the boots just inside the door, not bothering with socks. I walked to the bottom of the garden. I was still wearing my helmet with its mounted light. The wall of brambles rose in front of me. I could hear a small creature scurrying underneath, the roar of the telephone pole factory like an airplane taking off, cars on the road behind me. On the other side of the hedge the neighbor’s dog stirred and growled on its chain. I pushed into the thorns, using the protection of pants and boots to reach deeper. The blackberries gleamed in the white light of my helmet. I filled one half flat and another till I had enough for the market bake. Then I picked up my boxes, turned off my light, and walked back to the house in the dark.  Daytime harvest The creek is cool green and clear, running in and out of sunlight. A water ouzel bobs on a rock, hops into the riffle, and up to another rock, still bobbing. We follow her downstream, each taking our own path over algae slick rocks, over pebbles, over sandstone carved into fantastic, hollowed shapes, down waterfalls. We lose our small guide but keep going, walking in the creek or stepping stone above it, scrambling over boulders, swimming the deep pools. Water striders cast quick shadows on the sandstone. This park is in the center of the city but today no one else has ventured so far off the path. We’re alone in the dappled sunlight with the birds and striders. The running water drowns the sounds of traffic. The trailing blackberries are ripe, tiny and so sweet. We eat all we can reach, stuffing ourselves on summer. Sophie Owner | Baker   Just after sunset and the clouds above Lummi are violet, rimmed with pink. The water of the delta mirrors the sky. There are three, five, no, fourteen herons walking step by deliberate step south along the flats, necks stretched straight. Every few minutes one falls on its face. They are not graceful hunters. Purple martins swoop overhead, fork-tailed silhouettes against the graying sky. They land on the nest boxes mounted high on the old pilings, then swing away and up again. The humans walking down the beach behind us are talking loudly about college Greek life. The martins ignore them. I try to do the same. An eagle wheels out from the trees, makes an aborted dive, and circles back. The sky and the water fade to gray. The island rises, massive and dark between them. The moon is a crescent from full. Herons lift off by ones and twos. When the sky is empty of swallows, we turn and walk home in the dark.
Sophie Owner | Baker  You don’t have to go far to get away. Turn off the road. There are no paths to follow but the braided creek. It’s slow going, bushwacking through the willow and poplar, backtracking around impenetrable bramble thickets, working your way downstream. Everything is young here: the clean-scoured gravel bars, the thin trees, the sword ferns growing tender green from the debris of winter floods, the creep of trailing blackberry vines, and have you ever seen so many wild strawberries? You cross the creek barefoot, holding your sneakers and grimacing at the cold. On the next bar you find an opening in the willows wide and flat enough for a tent. You’re a quarter mile from the road, from the speeding cars, the people, the big houses, the flat, manicured lawns of this horse farm suburb, but all you can see are willows and sky. All you can hear is the water running towards the Middle Fork, towards the Nooksack, and on towards the sea.  The creek rushes by. You’re a city dweller, used to traffic, to trains, to sirens, and dogs barking. Here, the noise of the water is so loud it quiets the night. In the morning you wake to birdsong. You make coffee on the campstove, retrieve a cinnamon roll, only slightly smashed, from the bear bag you strung up between two skinny alders. The sun rises over the trees. You pack up the tent and stove, wade, barefoot and grimacing, across the creek, scramble through willow and poplar, around the bramble thickets, and back to the road.
Sophie Owner | Baker  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 |