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!

We will NOT BE AT MARKET today.

Order Mountain Rye, Red & White, or Baker's Choice  (this week it's a Finnish-inspired Black Bread!) online for Wednesday pickup.
​
See you at the market next Saturday.

It happens this way sometimes after deep emotion. It happens this way after rage or sorrow, after wonder or happiness: I find myself adrift, feeling tender and inexplicably melancholy. Long hours in the closed box of the commissary didn’t help. Thinking about my mormor while I mixed made me cry. Listening to an interview with Robert Macfarlane as I shaped the loaves filled my chest and squeezed my throat with longing. When I queued up a song from the interview, a song washed up from the widening ripples of Macfarlane’s book, Landmarks, the music broke over me like a wave, leaving me drenched and breathless.

At the end of my midweek deliveries I stopped at the cafe to drink espresso and reread my favorite chapters of Landmarks, wrapping myself in the room’s familiar warmth while familiar people came and went around me. But at home in my quiet house, the melancholy again pressed close. Instead of opening my laptop to start the week’s administrative work, I curled up in the sunshine on my bed and fell asleep.

I woke rested and restless. I lay for a while, staring out the window at the sunlit trees, and then got up and went downstairs, tied on my running shoes, and took off for the water. The wind cooled my face and throat, slid into my curled palms and up the inside of my arms, chilled the sweat in the crease of my elbows. I breathed through my mouth, tasting wet earth and leaf mold on the back of my tongue. The bay, when I reached it, was a brilliant blue darkening out towards the paler blue islands, under a white blue sky. The water and sky, the bright snowberries and the glossy, red rosehips in the hedgerows, the peaks of Baker and Twin Sisters gleaming over the hill behind me, the little brown rabbit watching from the striped shadows of dried chicory and thistle on the hillside, they were all beautiful.

My left shoe was squeaking, a small, surprised noise every time I rolled forward on the ball of my foot. I ran to the top of the park and let gravity pull me down, arms loose, stride wide, feet pounding. And then up the steep, washed-out trail beside the stairs, pushing hard with quads and lungs. Down and up, down and up, till my muscles shivered and I gasped for breath.

After the last climb I took off my shoes, tied the laces together, and tucked my socks inside. I walked home barefoot, feeling the cold earth, feeling the gravel too sharp for my shoe-soft soles, feeling the ungiving pavement and the wet moss at the border between lawn and street that squeezed out icy water like a wrung sponge.

“We have come to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experience of being in the world,” Macfarlane wrote, “—its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits—as well as by genetic traits we inherit and ideologies we absorb. We are literally ‘losing touch’, becoming disembodied.”

I did not have the work-productive Wednesday I’d planned, not the day of spreadsheets and email; it was a good day. By evening, as I stood talking to friends in our steamy kitchen, I felt settled. “Living in one sense at a time to live all the way through” had anchored me again to my body, and my body to the world. See you at market, maybe.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

I had meant to start prep for THANKSGIVING ORDERS this week, but I'm nothing if not predictable: I haven't yet begun. Which means orders are still open if you need bread or pastry for your holiday table. Pickups Wednesday 11/27 at Cafe Velo between 9am and 7pm.

Sweets: Apple Cake, Gingerbread Bundt
Breads: Rosemary Rolls, Red & White, Roasted Potato & Garlic (and Mountain Rye, but it's under the regular Wednesday Bread heading, just to make the process more convoluted)

Also, we will NOT BE AT MARKET next Saturday, 11/30, because I want to eat dinner Thursday with my family, when I'd otherwise be starting fermentation for the market.

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Rosemary Cornmeal (for stuffing! and eating, of course)
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap Cookie
Apple Scone (jamless, strawberry jam, marmalade)
Gingerbread Cake
Apple Cake with Cultured Cream
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps

,It’s been years since I’ve spent a day alone. Not without people alone, or at least, not only that. I mean alone without conversation, without books or screens or radio for company, without work. Often, the minutes of my bike commute are the only time I spend alone all day, and even those I sometimes interrupt with a text message or a quick, pointless check of Instagram. In the clutter and noise of my daily life I begin to think distraction is normal. I begin to think that productivity is important, forgetting that being present—to my work, to a conversation, to rain and sky and the strength of my body when I run—is what matters most. Often, it’s artists and writers who speak about stillness as a daily practice, about making time for meditation or boredom, for daydreaming or walking without direction, but I think such time alone is something we all need.

I remember the last day I spent alone. I was still living in the islands. It was Yom Kippur, late fall and damp cold. I drove the truck to Shark Reef and walked out to the rocks above San Juan Channel where I sat for hours, watching the water, the sky, two sea lions cruising north against the tide. I sat and thought about my mormor, who had died that February, and about other things I’ve long forgotten. But eight years later I still remember the feeling. I still remember the anxiety of having nothing to do, nothing to distract me; I remember the beauty and stillness of that gray, fall day, and the wonder of being part of it.

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
Apple Cake with Cultured Cream
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps
(I tried to make you Pan de Muerto, too. They look beautiful, but I ate one this morning and... I forgot the salt. So instead you'll be getting bread pudding next week.)

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

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

And then the storm was on top of me. The power went out. I sat on the front porch and watched the lightning cut white though the sky. Thunder rolled over me, light and noise and the house trembling all at once. Afterwards, quiet, and I was laughing with joy, alone in the dark.

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
Gleaner's Apple Pie
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps

This week in the Bread Subscription
Red & White
Mountain Rye
Baker's Choice: RUGBROD

I spent the week in a borrowed cabin on the western slope of Chuckanut Mountain. From the narrow deck I watched the sky change. I watched the water, and the boats, the islands slipping in and out of clouds. I watched a dozen kinds of birds and one busy chipmunk. When the night wind blew hard I opened the door and listened to the trees moving. When it rained, I ran up into Larabee’s tangle of trails and listened to the rain against leaves, breathing in the wet duff smell of the forest. Warm evenings I scrambled down to swim in the cold, green ocean.

Every morning I rode reluctantly north to Bellingham, and every evening, riding south through downtown and Fairhaven and onto Chuckanut Drive, I was relieved again to leave behind the concrete and cars and right angles of the city.

One morning, in the soft light just before sunrise, I stopped to watch a barred owl on the power line above the road. She watched me back, her deep set eyes shadowed. Cars blew by too fast, ruffling my feathers if not the owl’s. I felt an annoyed pity for the drivers, to be so seduced by convenience that they traded living inside world for passing through it, insulated by metal and speed.

I was drunk on clouds and trees, on the sound of rain and on orange-pink sunsets over the Olympics. I could stay here, I thought, packing my panniers for another ride north. I could stay here, just for a day or two, just for a few weeks, just for forever. A line of poetry caught my mind and held fast. “A little way away from everywhere,” I said silently to myself riding the Interurban, running past Fragrance Lake, sunning on the warm Chuckanut sandstone after a swim. “A little way away from everywhere,” I thought, drinking weak coffee and looking out over the gray blue islands as the sky lightened. Eventually, I looked the words up. Even in the woods I had a cell phone. It was a line from Mary Oliver’s “A Dream of Trees,” a poem warning against retreat from the hard and sorrowful human world. Had my subconscious purposefully pulled a piece of this poem up out of thousands of lines, the hundreds of poems I’ve read and forgotten? Or was it coincidence that on my little blue screen Mary Oliver echoed my own longing: “I would have time, I thought, and time to spare, / With only streams and birds for company, / To build of my life a few wild stanzas.”

But, of course, she goes on, “And then it came to me, that so was death, / A little way away from everywhere.” Ah, I thought, reading the poem through once, and again. Ah, well. The words felt true. I copied them out in my notebook and then sat, thinking about the peace of wild places, about what makes a good and meaningful life, about living fully inside the world. Reluctantly, I let go my soft, romantic daydream of a hermitage in the hills. There would be no hiding away in the forest from the hard-edges and injustices of the city. I would not stay forever here among the trees, but I would return.

“as the times implore our true involvement, / The blades of every crisis point the way. / I would it were not so, but so it is. / Who ever made music of a mild day?”

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Herb & Olive Oil
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap
Oat Scone with Blackberries & Plums
Plum Cake
Savory Tomato Tart
Shortbread

This week in the Bread Subscription
Red & White
Mountain Rye
Baker's Choice: Herb & Olive Oil

All along the top dock lines ran from the railing down to colorful floats, disappearing into the opaque water. The sky was scudded with clouds and hazy, so that the blue water and the blue sky and the blue islands were soft and dreamy like a watercolor painting. Bicycles passed, weaving between pedestrians. Families strolled by with children and small dogs, laughing in Spanish too quick for me to understand. A man rowed up in a tiny wooden dingy with a giant poodle riding the prow and the two of them followed the laughing families up and away. Children climbed onto the high railing, posing till parents or passersby took notice, before flinging their bodies out between the floats. The dock was cheerful and alive in the golden light of evening.

A man walked up from the floating dock holding a fish by the gills, trailed by a round little girl in a startlingly hot pink bikini. I didn’t understand what he held till he dropped the dogfish onto the dock. It fought the concrete, trying to swim the air, gasping. The child crouched beside it, poking the shark back onto its bloody belly when it rolled. The man stood over her, arms crossed, while other men walked over to admire the catch and take pictures with their cell phones. “Will you eat it?” someone asked, curious and slightly appalled. “No,” the little girl answered, laughing, "of course not." When the shark finally stilled the man toed it straight and walked back to his line.

My friend and I watched this small, casual violence from the same bench where we had sat, sunning dry after a swim, talking about small things and watching the clouds and the families and the man rowing his poodle across the bay. We tried to turn away. We tried to turn back to our conversation. But in the end we looked on in silence. When the man left, we stood and picked up our shoes. The round little girl in her hot pink bikini was still crouched by the dead shark when we walked away.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Rosemary Potato
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap
Oat Scone
Shortbread
All Berry Slab Pie

Wednesday bread this week:
Red & White, Mountain Rye, Baker's Choice: TOASTED SESAME

Sign up for the LATE SUMMER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
Every Wednesday, August 7 - September 25

We went into the mountains, walking through forest, across alpine meadows, and up onto the high heather. On the knob of Yellow Aster Butte I turned and turned: Baker and Shuksan were hazy to the south, the teeth of the Skagit Range to the east, and just across the valley America Border Peak rose sharp and rust stained from Tomyhoi Lake. Below the butte we followed crisscrossing desire lines to the deepest of the alpine lakes and dove into the clear, cold water. Afterward, we lay quiet on the rocks like sunning snakes.

I came down from the mountains brighter, my mind clear as the lake water. I was made of muscle and bone and wonder. Love for the land, for my Northwestern home, expanded in my chest, squeezing worry and self-doubt and the anxiety of Sisyphusian to-do lists down to their small and proper size.

After the mountains, the city felt flat and slightly unreal. Inside the boxes of buildings there was no sky, no wind, no rain squalls, no air. Outside the walls, asphalt and turf grass hid the earth. The visceral wonder that had filled me softened and settled into memory. Worries and doubts grew back into the spaces it left behind. Under the bright, fluorescent lights of the kitchen I felt my mountain brightness dimming.

At the end of a long day of baking, hungry for the sky, I took my dinner out back behind the house and sat on top of the picnic table facing the garden. The garden is fenced with fishing nets we salvaged from a net dumpster at the marina and hung like a shower curtain on wire stapled between scrap wood posts. The first fence we built was eight feet at the corners, sagging to six at the nadir of the wire’s parabola. All last summer and fall we found hoof prints postholing through newly planted beds. One morning I walked out to find the bean vines stripped naked, all the leaves bitten away. This spring we rehung the net ten feet high at the corners. The beans are lush with leaves and red flowers.

I admired the riot of flowers as the light faded: the scarlet runner beans, the banks of volunteer borage and calendula, the cascading nasturtiums, and the sturdy sunflowers standing sentry over the beds. When I heard her steps in the dry grass I stilled, waiting. She passed ten feet in front of me. Every few steps she turned dark eyes and those big, expressive ears towards me, wary but unafraid. I didn't move. At the fence she stopped, nose to the net, gazing for long minutes into the feast of irrigated green. Mule deer are nearly as common as grey squirrels here at the edge of the city. She was unremarkable and very beautiful. The wonder swelled inside me.

See you soon.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Rosemary Potato
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap
Oat Scone
Shortbread
Blackberry Apricot Slab Pie

Wednesday bread this week:
Red & White, Mountain Rye, Baker's Choice: WILD & SEEDY

Sign up for the LATE SUMMER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
Every Wednesday, August 7 - September 25