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.
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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

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)

Does it matter if we ride the bus, build a free library, buy goods from our neighbors instead of corporations, plant trees? Does it matter if we learn, protest, organize, vote, make art, donate our time and money? Does it matter if we shout our rage and grief for imperfect world we have and the imperfect world we’re making? No. You and I are two of eight billion. Yes. Individual action matters when it helps bend society towards change. Thank you for being good neighbors. Thank you for standing up, speaking out, and reaching for change. Thank you for living out loud and joyfully.

It’s a beautiful morning at the beginning of a beautiful day and I’m going to spend it out with friends in the hills and fields and quiet.

Enjoy the day and the market. It’s Hannah’s birthday, so be sure to wish her happy when you stop by the stand!

Sophie
Owner | Baker

P.S. As often happens when I’m filled with big emotions, I’ve been thinking these past anxious days about poetry. Here, if you’d like them, are two that read for me like a deep breath: an old favorite from William Stafford and a new favorite from Ada Limón.

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

With the changing season and new flour and I've been struggling to keep my fermentation on schedule. There are a lot of loaves with holes in them today, and even more loaves that might have holes (I had to stop cutting them in half to find out before I cut them all). Both--holed and possibly holed or whole loaves--are $6.50.

BREAD:
Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g)
Elwha River Spelt ($8 / 750g)
Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g)
Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g)
Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g)
Bread 2nds ($6.50)

SWEETS:
Gingerbread Cake ($6-$16)
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
Order for the coming Wednesday or sign up for all the remaining Wednesdays through Dec 16.
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
Nov 11 - Toasted Sesame
Nov 18 - Oat & Honey
Nov 25 - Rosemary Cornmeal
Dec - TBD

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

Foggy again this morning, and I hope whatever your day holds you have a few minutes to sit quietly with your coffee and watch the world outside lighten blue to gray. Moments like this I wish I still had a child’s understanding of magic. There must be secrets hidden in the fog, doorways between the ghost trees that open to other worlds if only I weren’t too blinded by the mundane realities of adult life to see them.

Up in the mountains it's probably dawning bright, sunlight catching the deep red huckleberries, the larches aflame under a white blue sky. Last Sunday we walked Cutthroat. The colors and textures, the geology and botany are so beautifully different from those of the Western slope: pink granite and the soil pink with its sediment, thin forests of lodgepole, fir, and spruce, golden willows and golden larches.. There was snow dusting the ridge line. The sky moved fast: clear, then fat cumulonimbus sailing across the blue, thickening to full cloud cover that caught on the peaks, pouring over their rocky spines, then high, flat gray, and blue again.

We have lots of lovely baked goods for you this morning, whether you're spending the day in fog or sky. Hannah will be at market from 10 to 2, and I'll probably swing by on my ride south to Skagit. Maybe I'll see you there!

Sophie
Owner | Baker

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

BREAD:
Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g)
  (Tinned Red Wheat 2nds with a hole in the middle ($6))
Elwha River Spelt ($8 / 750g)
Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g)
Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g)
Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g)

SWEETS:
The Last Plum Torte with cornmeal & rosemary ($5)
Apple Turnovers ($6) with a wheat/rye/buckwheat crust made with organic cultured butter AND lard from Well Fed Farms pastured pigs.
Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2)
Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2)
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies ($5 / 2)
Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz)

FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
Every Wednesday Sept 2 - Dec 16
11 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
10/7 - Roasted Squash
10/14 - Rosemary Cornmeal
10/21 - Multicereal
10/28 - Baked Apple
Nov - Dec TBD

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: ROASTED SQUASH
Sweets: BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE COOKIES & CHOCOLATE CHIP HAZELNUT COOKIES

All the way up I thought about the end of the world. The night before I’d stayed late deep cleaning the bakery and listening to Bill McKibbin talk about climate and capitalism. It was a hard story to hear. I worked till after one, went home to shower and sleep and dream apocalyptic dreams, biked my morning’s deliveries, and fled to the mountains.

All the way up I thought about neoliberalism and exploitation, about inequality and power, about the ocean become desert, about atmospheric oxygen dropping, about heat and fire, rising tides and rising floodwaters, the wild gone, the animals gone, the forests gone. When my grandchildren walk this path, I thought, the mountains will still be standing, but will the trees? Will the cedars, the firs, the hemlock and spruce? What of the willow thickets, the vine maples, the red alders with their leaves wet and gleaming in the soft light? The forest, with its carpet of new green, its mossy boulders and thick ferns, its orchids and trillium, its snowmelt streams falling in white ribbons down the mountainside, was so beautiful it broke my heart. We walked in the clouds. The birds were quiet. The rain fell soft against leaves and loud against our coats. Up we walked, and up. We were wet from hats to socks despite our Gortex. When I bent down to lift the face of an orchid, water streamed from my hood. For a moment, we could see the far ridgeline though the shifting mist and trees, and then it was gone again.

Somewhere up in the snowfields above treeline my mind quieted, though the climate grief remained, a familiar ache in my throat. It was colder in the open and we soon lost the trail. The snow was rotten with hidden streams. We turned and followed our footprints back to the wet, green forest. After a time the rain stopped. We walked down into sunlight.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

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

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

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

SUMMBER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
9 WEEKS REMAINING
Every Wednesday, June - August

Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, Fairhaven.
RED & WHITE Subscription - wholemeal wheat table bread.
MOUNTAIN RYE Subscription - seedy rye & wheat tinned bread.
TOAST Subscription - a new type of tinned wheat bread every week.

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

Red & White
Mountain Rye
Toast: TOASTED CORN
Special guest: BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE

Rye friends, I managed to collapse the entire batch of Vollkornbrot. I’m sorry! If you don’t want to wait till next Saturday, I’m adding Vollkorn to this Wednesday’s bake as well. Orders due by Sunday night. Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, Fairhaven. This also means I have 30% less bread today at market, so come early!

Quiet in the high meadows. We left the snowshoes strapped to our packs and walked out, skirting meltholes, watchful for rotten snow over the streams. The snow was wet and firm. We kicked upwards to the knob and sat to eat our lunch—sandwiches, an entire pound cake, a thermos of hot coffee—looking out at the dark firs, the shifting clouds, the brief glimpses of distant ridgeline, rocky and white and gone again.

Afterwards we boot-skied down the meadows and crossed back into the forest, down from the snow and clouds and back to earth. The roar of the Nooksack rose as we descended the switchbacks, and so did the light. By the time we reached the road the forest was aglow around us: the shining leaves of the vine maples, the bright, shaggy moss, the foxglove and columbine and little white flowers in exuberant bloom. Halfway down the service road I made E stop the truck so I could stand and stare at the dazzling green.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

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

BREAD:
Red & White ($7.50 / 720g)
Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g)
Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g)
Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g)

SWEETS:
Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2)
Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2)
Raspberry Rhubarb Rye Snack Cake! ($5)
Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz)
Hazelnut Shortbread ($9 / half dz)

SUMMBER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
10 WEEKS REMAINING
Every Wednesday*, June - August
Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, Fairhaven.
RED & WHITE Subscription - wholemeal wheat table bread.
MOUNTAIN RYE Subscription - seedy rye & wheat tinned bread.
TOAST Subscription - a new type of tinned wheat bread every week.

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

Red & White
Mountain Rye
Toast: BUCKWHEAT & MOLASSES
Special guest: VOLLKORNBROT

It’s harder on these overcast days. The house presses close, and the sky. But still, when I push the window open, creaking in its century-old frame, birdsong spills in. The peas are pressing up in the garden. Along the untended fenceline volunteer poppies, phacelia, and mullen vigorously disregard the lingering cold. Under the woody remains of last year’s growth, the herbs that died back over winter are unfurling: winter savory, oregano, lovage, echinacea, hyssop, and mint. Even the dandelions in the garden paths feel hopeful with their flower buds held close like fists, ready to punch into glorious yellow bloom.

Growing a garden is a solid sort of pleasure. It holds you to the earth, whether that earth is in a handful of pots on your apartment balcony or in a sprawling yard like ours. While the newscycle cries Armageddon and people walk around wearing latex gloves like talismans against evil, new life unfolds in the garden. As the days stretch toward summer, the garden stretches roots and leaves, flowers and fruits, untroubled by news and politics, untroubled by anything but the sun and soil and the the work of your hands. In a few weeks or months, you can eat that love and sunshine for dinner.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

Garden resources:
Did you know Village Books is taking online orders? The two most dirt-stained and page-bent gardening books in my collection are Seattle Tilth’s Maritime Northwest Garden Guild and Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, but they have many others besides.

The Community Food Coop carries a limited selection of seeds from Uprising and High Mowing. If the seed racks are as empty as the grocery shelves, you may need to look online. Uprising Seeds should, obviously, be your first stop since they’re right here in Whatcom. Other great Pacific Northwestern seed companies include: Adaptive Seeds, Siskiyou Seeds, Deep Harvest Farm, and Wild Garden Seed.

You may need to buy some of your own gardening tools, but more likely than not your neighbors have everything you’ll need. Perhaps, in this time of anxiety and isolation, community can grow alongside your garden.

Dear Bread Eaters, I need your help to make the self-serve pickups work. I had to refund nearly 10% of sales last week to customers who arrived to find their orders had been taken by someone else. I don’t want anyone walking home empty handed, nor can I afford the shrink when I’m facing down a second quarter of operating in the red. If you have suggestions for how to make the system (which currently consists of an order sheet with names and orders inside every box) easier to navigate and less error-prone, tell me, please!
- Sophie

How to get bread & pastry:
Place your order in the ONLINE STORE.
Self serve pickups every Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven.
Orders due by Sunday for pickup the following Wednesday.
Sign up by 3/29 for the 5 week April Bread Subscription.

Subscriptions:
RED & WHITE subscription - whole wheat sourdough
MOUNTAIN RYE subscription - seedy wheat & rye
TOAST subscription - a new tinned loaf every week, perfect for making buttered toast

This week’s bake:
Red & White
Mountain Rye
Toast: Oat & Honey
Pastry: Cardamom Coffee Pound Cake + Gingersnap 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!

Getting towards dusk and the sky is a crow highway. They fly over in twos and twenties,
dropping south, wing-beating, gliding, dipping and rolling like ravens. They’re gathering at the old boat house where they strut and hop over the lawn, blacken the trees, fluff and shake in the shallows.

The sky is dream blue: pale and streaked white yellow purple with thin clouds. To the north and east, the mountains glow. The ducks are rafted up on the lake, the stragglers flying in low and hard, skidding to a bright spray stop on the water. There’s a single cormorant standing in black silhouette above a white buoy, and here, on the snag exposed by the winter-low water, a stiff-legged painted turtle immobilized by the cold.

All the way home I’m running against traffic, northbound as the crows fly south in the lowering dark.

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!