Late February already, and the crocuses push up through the moss and grass, violet and yellow against the brightening green. The birds are all out at once: robins probing the lawn, warblers gossiping in the hedgerows, mallards and mergansers crowding the water, and in the stubbled fields flocks of swans browse, their necks bent like white question marks to the untilled earth. Skiing last weekend over Lightening Lake I squinted into the cold, trying to read the shape of the land in the flat light. The snow was depthless, the hills on either side dark and close, the sky low. The landscape felt too austere for beauty after the noise and exuberance of our temperate spring. But when the sky opened on a patch of western blue and the low sun lit the clouds’ heavy bellies warm gold, lit the hills and lake, lit my face and chest and the cold fronts of my thighs, I stood still, caught by the light. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 27 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Quince & Rye THE LAST WEDNESDAY BREAD (till April) Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Mar 6 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Black Bread Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm I won’t always write about walking. As summer approaches the work begins to tighten around my days, squeezing out the spare hours till moving through the world becomes purely functional: cycling for transportation, running for exercise, driving for hauling impossible loads or covering impossible distances. Then I’ll write about baking, or cycling, or perhaps running. But now, in the slow heart of winter, I have time to walk. The time I take to walk without direction is often the truest part of my day. The chores and routine work, the hours absorbed by the blue glow of my screens, the casual interactions with friends and strangers, these so easily blur till the days slip by into unremembered months. Perhaps what I find in walking is the sort of moving meditation others seek in yoga or martial arts. Walking brings time into focus, makes me fully embodied and awake to my surroundings. Already, most of the hours I spent indoors yesterday are slipping from my memory, but I remember so well the yellow of the willow branches and the clean cut of snow against wet pebbles at the high tide line. I remember the cold of the wind and the heat of my body. I remember the sound of wings, and looking up to see crows silhouetted against the white blue sky, flying north. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 20 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Sour Ring Bread NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Feb 27 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: undecided Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm We walked out of the forest and down the lee side of the spit. The water was the same dense gray as the sky, the islands dark and snow dusted, disappearing into fog where sky and water merged. Two skiffs out in the bay passed close enough for conversation, but from shore we could hear nothing but the wind and gulls. The beach’s contours had changed since the last time I’d walked this way at low tide. The point, when we reached it, was flat and broad where before had been a sharp, current-rippled ridge of sand and pebble. Out of the land’s shelter the wind took us hard. I balled my hands into fists in my pockets as I looked out over the channel, the water an eerie, pale green and frothing white. Birds flocked this shore, the gulls swooping up to drop shells onto the rocks, the ducks crowding the sandy flats, facing into the surf. They lifted up before us, resettling as soon as we’d passed. The wind was picking up, cutting cold through my heavy coat and hat, icing my fingers, stiffening my face. The waves had thrown up new driftwood above the tide line and scattered shells that showed secret purple and mother of pearl green against the dark sand. Down the beach, something large and white stood at the edge of the driftwood. We followed the footsteps of other curious walkers to investigate. The shape sharpened into a padlocked sail chest, a single tie line hanging down its side. In the summer the beach is littered with plastic, but the winter empties the sea of casual boaters and their trash. The chest was the was the only jetsam we found on that whole wild shore. Back at the forest’s edge we turned away from the wind and towards an unexpected piece of abstract art: the wind had painted snow into icy, white racing stripes up the windward side of each exposed tree. Glancing back, I found the forest behind us was dark. Before us, the bold white stripes shone and swayed. A few paces into the trees and the quiet closed around us. The air was still. I took my hands out of my pockets and flexed my fingers. High above, the treetops twisted, shaking down snow flurries. Above the trees, a raven played the storm, wing dipping and rolling, skimming the air, before swinging around in a broad arc to ride down the wind and out of sight. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 13 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Tinned Rye with Raisins & Walnuts - inspired by the rugbrod so many of you loved a few weeks back. 100% Whatcom grown (except for the salt). Happy Valentines! NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Feb 20 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Sour Ring Bread - the daily bread of Finland WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 4 weeks left! RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm Back when it was cold, back in the beginning of the week, before the rain, when the chill eased through the uninsulated walls of my upstairs bedroom and I slept curled under all my blankets in a tiny island of body heat, the bed a cold sea around me, I woke to frost. The grass was frosted, and the brittle leaves of kale and cabbage in the garden. The fennel, just tufting up between last year’s dead stalks, was wilted and rimmed with white. The gravel in the drive was frosted, and the cars, the garbage cans, the old leaves scattered by the walk. Ice crunched satisfyingly underfoot. The sun is slow to reach us this time of year. It was late morning before light crept all the way to the back fence. When I walked out to the garden at midday to pick my lunch, I found the deep shadows still frozen. The house threw a long, straight frost shadow. The pine and rhododendrons dappled frost across the grass. The trash bins drew precise, frosty parallelograms, the cars, rounded white rhombuses on the gravel. If I had stood in the yard all morning, watching the little puffed up birds flick between bush and fence as the sun warmed my back, I too could have grown a frost twin: a long, cold shadow self, reaching north towards the dark. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 23 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Rugbrød - This hearty tinned bread, made with 100% Whatcom rye, is built on rugbrod recipes sent to me by the Dutch baker Tim van Dalen and French baker Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. The perfect base for smørrebrød (open-face sandwiches). NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Jan 30 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Famer's Bread - a crusty rye & wheat boule, inspired by the Austrian bauernlaib. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday through March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm After the holidays, after the lights, the rooms warm with friends and family, after the gifts, after the tamales and pozole, the roast beef, ragu, and rugelach, the gingerbread and gingersnaps, after eating and eating and eating, I step out into the world. It’s mid afternoon. Damp cold. The sky mottled gray. I start slowly, moving awake after days glutted on food, books, and sleep. The muddy track along the lakeside is quiet. Under the car rumble, I can hear the waves lapping. They roll towards shore from two directions, crossing at a wide angle. Each facet of the water’s surface reflects a different sky. For a while, I stand watching the water, trying to catch the shifting pattern; it eludes me. I run on, under the gray sky, along the gray water, through the lowering dark. I cross a hillside of waterbirds probing the grass. The ducks lift off before me in waves. The geese keep eating, unperturbed. I take the long stairs up from the lake two at a time. One flight after the next. I reach the top gasping, sweating, calves tingling, thighs trembling, face flushed, cold fingers fisted, feet fumbling for the last step. I am wholely alive. Every corner of my body is awake. This is a gift I try to remember: legs and lungs that move me through the world, arms that lift and carry, hands as competent to mix dough as they are to hold a pen. I am glad to have work that demands mind and body both, glad too to live in a community whose support lets me turn that work into a livelihood. Thank you. The bakery is growing steadily, straining the seams of the shoestring operation I’ve been running for the past four years. I have you to thank for that, as well. Because of that growth, I’ve been able to double my donations this year from one percent of sales to two percent. A small change, but a step in the right direction. And because of that growth, I’ll spend the winter planning how to build my bakery dreams into brick and mortar reality. I’ve passed enough hours staring out over the water, watching the light and writing stories in my head. It’s time to run. Happy almost New Year. Sophie Owner | Baker WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 2 Red & White Mountain Rye Broa Milho Honey & Spice (pain d'epices) WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday, January 2 - March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: 10 weeks, 10 ryes Last Sunday we climbed above treeline and into the dusty blue of high mountain sunshine where the larches blazed orange gold and Cascade blueberries lit the hillsides in red fire. Just below Maple Pass, the mountains around us alive with light, another hiker let out a wild whoop, and the mountains echoed back his joy. We need a language of place, I think, to speak the wonder of this landscape. A verb for the way the late autumn sun backlights turning leaves. Another for the blue fading of mountains, each line of peaks paler than the one before till they disappear into the sky. I want a word for the sudden temperature change when you walk from sunshine into shadow, and one for the pockets of cool air held in low, damp places. What is the word for stones sunk into frost heaved ground, for the lacy trim of ice crystals along the edges of leaves, for the way bare branches rimmed in ice glitter in low sunlight? In his beautiful, demanding book on the importance of landscape language, Robert Macfarlane writes, "by instrumentalizing nature, linguistically and operationally, we've largely stunned the earth out of wonder. Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment, for language does not just register experience, it produces it. The contours and colors of words are inseparable from the feelings we create in relation to situations, to others, and to places." If we spoke the language of the mountains and sound, would we name the daily wonder of this place? Would we see our landscape more clearly, love it more deeply, and protect it more fiercely in a changing world? TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Buckwheat Scone Gingerbread Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21. Sign up anytime.) Buckwheat & Honey Mountain Rye I get caught in the routine of my life. It’s a good routine, bounded by meaningful work, extravagant dinner parties, and too many books. What gaps there are are easily filled by the endless backlog of projects: harvesting and putting up fruit, readying the garden for winter, researching breads, business planning, house chores, etc. There’s always more to do, as you well know. No need to look elsewhere for ways to fill the hours. And so it is a startling pleasure to step out of routine and into the wider world, like stepping out into sunshine after a day spent indoors. Last Saturday a friend texted just as market was ending to ask if I wanted to canoe the Nooksack delta. I usually turn down Saturday night invitations out of hand: parties, dancing, films, none can compete with the lure of a quiet evening at home. As market ends, I’m daydreaming about unfolding a heavy wool blanket under the long-needled pine in the back yard and sitting there with a book, notebook, and pen, with the smell of dry forest around me and the tree above, till the dark or cold force me inside. But the delta. All that sky and smooth water. That was different. “Yes,” I wrote back, ignoring the next customer. “What time do you want to leave?” We parked by the side of the road and carried the canoe past No Trespassing signs and into the lazy river. The water slid, green and sunlit, between alder and willow. Ducks flew up before us. A beaver watched us pass, slipping silently under water when we circled back for another look. I listened to the dip of our paddles, the beating of duck wings, and the distant sound of airplanes. When the forest opened into the delta it was almost sunset. The water was a glossy mirror to the sky. Here, a ten minute drive and a quick paddle from my house, with Bellingham just across the bay, we looked out towards Lummi, over luminous water under a luminous sky, and the whole world was made of light. This was better than any book under the pine tree. Better, even, than coming home to dinner on the table and a house full of friends. The delta filled me like a deep breath, and when I exhaled, the light remained. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Buckwheat Scone Apple & Cream Cake Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21. Sign up anytime.) Toasted Sesame Mountain Rye The path cut a narrow line through fir and head high salal, leaves glossy dark in the rain. We walked single file till the forest opened into a thin strip of prairie and rock above San Juan Channel. The islands across the water were soft gray against a gray sky. Below us, the tide ran in a fast river through the kelp beds. Two sea lions cruised up the channel, casual against the current. Gulls and harbor seals fished the kelp. The gulls paid us no mind. The seals watched us, a baby and two adults, with round, liquid eyes. We scrambled down the rocks to stand at the edge of deep water, looking in. One seal swam closer. We could see her fat, sleek body through the water, her dark speckled back, and the rust-orange wash across her pale belly. She swam parallel to our rock, and then looped around the other way. She twisted and spun, back and forth in the green water. We stood still in the rain and watched her dance for a long time. Every time she surfaced, she was facing us. She would tip her head slightly, to the right, and then to the left, like a human tipping water out of her ears, then roll back below the surface. Eventually, the others wandered away to explore up the coastline. I stood alone at the edge. The seal’s sleek head popped up, dark eyes on our rock. She looked at me and tipped her head, to the right, and then to the left. Then she slipped back under the rain pebbled water and swam away into the kelp. An audience of one was not enough. TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Scone Plum Cake Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Red Wheat & Apple Mountain Rye When the mixing and shaping are done for the day, when the bread is rising, and the cookies and scones are lined up in orderly rows up and down the sheet pans, then the real work is finished. Still, hours remain. Still there is the baking, the oven loaded and unloaded and loaded again, the proofing baskets to scrub, dishes to wash, cooled loaves to stack in their stacks of boxes, walls to wipe down, the floor to sweep and mop. It is late morning on a day that started well before sunrise, and the work is not even half done. So I make a cup of coffee, milky and strong, and sit out back where I can see the alley and a ribbon of sky through the window. I open the library’s collection of digital books on my phone, and go in search of someone to read me a story. It has to be the right story. A real sweep-you-up, fast-paced, wild rumpus of a story. A story to lift me off my aching feet, above my stiff knees, away from the sweat and flour grit and my tired-sticky eyes. A story to carry me through the late morning, over the afternoon, and deep into the evening. It is a wonderful and disconcerting thing, to lose myself so completely in a book. When I am reading, or being read to, I no longer hear the world clattering around me or notice the passing of time. It has always been this way. Theoretically, I believe in being fully attentive to my work. After all, I spend most of my days working. If I don’t pay attention to the working hours, I could lose the greater part of my adult life. But in practice, my baking days are too long, the kitchen too loud and poorly lit. My body tolerates more than my mind, so I let the stories carry my mind away while my body moves steadily on through the familiar motions. It is the bike ride home that brings me back. After hours of living divided, the steady pump of tired legs, the air moving over my skin, the smells of the night, hook my mind and pull it inside my body. Afterward, if I have the energy and the light, I’ll run down to the water. Standing on the broken willow at the path’s edge, looking out at the ocean and sky through its branches, I’ll listen to the waves wash their steady beat against the shore. Each wave is like a breath. Each breath pulls me farther inside my skin, till my mind stills, and I am whole again. TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Sweet & Sour Cherry Galette Sour Cherry & Hazelnut Tart Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Country Rye Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, etc. See you soon.
Sophie Owner | Baker The garden is wild with last year’s seeds. Cornfield and California poppies, calendula, phacelia, red, white, and yellow clover, wall rocket, fennel, and hairy vetch claim the borders and pathways, grow in flowering thickets over the uncultivated edges of vegetable beds, riot in the corner where the old compost heap lay. Yellow spears of mullein shoot up through the old fishing net we hung as a deer fence. Ours isn’t a huge garden—ten by ten meters, perhaps—but the wild edges make it feel deep and secret. Were I still today the fairy expert I was at five, I might know those edges differently, but the knowledge of magic is long lost to me. Instead, I admire practical things: the peas trellis heavy with vines, the tidy rows of leeks and lettuce, the bank of self-seeded calendula with flowers in every warm color, from safety vest orange to dusky pink and soft, butter yellow. I read a book on sustainable agriculture last week that argued that the keys to success in farming were diversity and the elimination of waste, and I thought, these seem like good practices for any business, especially one so marginal as a bakery. Out in the garden in the gray light of dawn, picking my breakfast, my eyes kept sliding back to the poppies, impossible red against the muted colors of morning. Maybe there’s a bakery lesson in this, too, I thought. Maybe a business, too, can have an orderly, productive center, and deliberately uncultivated edges, were imagination and unexpected beauty can grow. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Garden Herb Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, Galette |
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