Six eggs from six chickens, two days in a row.  I had to make cheesecake (Keller’s, from Ad Hoc.  It was divine, of course.)

A dog who comes in from a night on wandering, reeking of skunk. This is, apparantly, becoming a yearly ritual. (This was very helpful. And doesn’t he look hilariously embarrassed?)

Greens in the hoophouse, planted inside, and transplanted out.  Hooray!

Some color for the kitchen floor, using what I’ve got (lots of scraps) to bring in some sunshine.  (It’s the patchwork mat from Patchwork Style)
Blessings on your weekend, everyone!

That’s right friends, this month marks three years on Main St in Amherst!  We have the most amazing customers, and we’re so proud to be part of this thriving, beautiful community.  To celebrate, we’ve had free birthday cake in past years, but this time we’re doing something even better (in our humble opinion)!  To celebrate our birthday and harvest time, for this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, all of our breads will be the regular price and flavors, but they’ll be made with 100 % locally grown grains!  Ben’s become quite the milling master, and we’re both excited to share this incredibly delicious, nourishing, alive grain with you!

Seriously now, it’s crazy good.  I’m just telling you because I love you, and I don’t want you to miss it.

At home, we’re trying to soak up the abundance and not go crazy trying to capture it all.  Here we are in our Three Sisters Field – last year the crows ate our corn planting twice, but this year, it’s thriving.  The Bloody Butcher corn is now a foot taller than me, and the squash is like a jungle!  (Three Sisters are a traditional Native American planting of beans, squash, and corn.  The beans fix nitrogen into the soil for the corn, which is a heavy feeder, and the squash makes a great ground cover, keeping down the weeds.  Apparently the raccoons don’t like to walk on the prickly squash leaves, either, protecting your harvest!  Pretty incredible.)  Our other garden is, um, weedier than I’d like to admit, but this field is heaven.

Oh, and while you’re at it, hop over and read Broadturn Farm’s post “Put Your Big Girl Panties On, Get Out There and Farm.” Amen.

And then they, with our amazing friend and farming partner Seth, proceeded to rock the field, weeding and hilling the beans all at once!

I’ve watched our sunroom and house fill with sheaves like these: wheat, oats, garlic

I started my preserving, and filled our oven with these,  making Round the Clock Tomatoes (from Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand), to take us into winter.  (Mostly, our locavore strategy is: Eat yourself silly while it’s in season, and then wait ’til next year.  I am putting up some tomatoes, and freezing some berries, but we’ve found that after a few years of eating seasonally and locally, we actually don’t even desire to eat the items that are out of season.)

Starting preparing for Lamas – the Harvest Festival on August 1st.  Get ready to see some loaves at Wheatberry that look a bit like this, and taste like the best terroir this side of the Nile

Hope you’ve had some weeks filled with all the glorious tastes of summer, friends!

Don’t live close enough?  Well, you’re in luck – a nice lady tried me once, and had to share the recipe when she wrote this article about Wheatberry for the Boston Globe.  (I thought the article should be all about me, frankly, but those pesky scones always get the spotlight.)  So you can try me for yourself using Adrie & Ben’s  recipe.  I am deceptively easy to make, and did I mention that I’m flourless for Passover?  Use the best chocolate you can find (I recommend Callebaut or Green & Black), resist the temptation to over-bake me (take me out when I still jiggle a little in the center) and I won’t last long.

On Tuesday, we celebrated Ben’s birthday.  As you may remember, we’re a big fan of birthday pies around here, and so at Ben’s request I made Pascal Rigo’s Caramel-Pecan Chocolate Tart, from our favorite American Boulangerie.  With the help of my, um, assistant pastry chef Ella (just don’t tell her she’s not the main chef), it wasn’t quite as beautiful as I’d hoped, but I was somewhat amazed I pulled it off at all, and once we cut into it, I didn’t hear any complaints.

Since Ben’s birthday was on Candlemas, we waited and did our Candlemas celebration on Wednesday.  Neither of us had ever done one before, but I was tickled when I first read about it in Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions, and then when I read this post on The Parenting Passageway, I knew it was meant to be.  First, I love breakfast for dinner, and pancakes are traditional for Candlemas/St. Brigid’s Day.  Secondly, in addition to celebrating the half-way mark from Winter Solstice to Spring Equinox with candles, it is also a traditional time to bless your seeds for the coming year.  I brought that big beautiful jar of Tiger Eye Beans to the table, we lit some new red beeswax candles, and we said blessings and good wishes for the season to come.

My other favorite Candlemas tradition?  The beginning of spring cleaning.  Ben and I have definitely being going on a bit of a spring purge around here, and I am very excited about it.  On Sunday, Ben took Ella to the bakery for a few hours since she and I were driving each other nuts, and I suddenly had to move my sewing room from its tiny, dark room upstairs to a big, bright room downstairs.  This room has been rented to housemates in the past, and housed WOOFers, but it was standing empty.  No longer!  I got my sewing table set up, some of my fabric in, and took 10-year old inspirations off my inspiration board and made room for the new. It feels great to be moving into a fresh space, with great light.  Soon – shelves going up, fabric organizing, yarn organizing, space for projects, a bigger table for cutting out patterns.  I am just a little bit excited.

That night, I stumbled across this:

Yes, yes, and yes.  That totally sums up how I feel – we started really trying to de-clutter our home (and therefore life) last summer, and we’re now entering round 2.  Bring it on.

Ok, so maybe “let the craziness continue” would be more appropriate, but truly, this is crunch time folks!  This week we’re preparing for holiday baking at Wheatberry, doing our best to get as many CSA grain shares distributed as humanly possible before the holidays, and also .  . . trying to celebrate some holidays ourselves.  All this to say, I’ll probably be pretty quiet here this week.  But a few quickies before I disappear into the baking, grain bagging void.

All these lovely books from Chelsea Green Publishers are 15% off at Wheatberry for the holidays.  For the eco-minded, food lover, or gardener in your life.

Also, we have these beautiful mugs from Amherst potter Bob Greeney available, to drink your coffee from, and also to take home.  Locally made – he even uses local materials in the glazes.  Plus, of course, we have whole wheat flour grown in Hadley and milled in our own stone mill, and  gift certificates.  Shop local for your holidays!

I was hoping to make these cookies at Wheatberry this year as a holiday special, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.  We had these every Christmas at my house growing up – I think my grandmother brought them back from when she and her husband were stationed in England.  I’ve adapted it a bit for our family’s current diet (butter not shortening, and whole wheat flour instead of white). These have a beautiful pattern from being rolled in cinnamon sugar and are pretty scrumptious.

Here’s the recipe – from our table to yours.  Bon Appetit, and Joyeux Noel!

Snickerdoodles

(Yields about 5 dozen)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp sugar

3 tsp ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 400 degrees F.  Cream together 1 1/2 cup sugar, butter, and eggs in a large bowl until thoroughly mixed.  Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.  Use a teaspoon to scoop out dough, and roll it between your palms to form small balls.

Mix remaining sugar and cinnamon together on a plate or shallow dish.  Roll balls in mixture.  Place balls about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet (now we always use a Silpat, but I certainly didn’t have one growing up and these worked just fine).  Bake until set and lightly golden, 8-10 minutes.  Immediately remove from cookie sheets and cool.

Today – cold, raining.  November weather at last.  Everyone cranky, scrambling to write our NE SARE grant before deadline, preparing for a crazy frenzy of Thanksgiving baking tomorrow (cranberry pecan bread made with local wheat! pies!) , meetings, cleaning grain with some wonderful help down at the Granary.  Or rather, sitting in the car, nursing Ella, while everyone else works on cleaning grain.  Knitting whiles she sleeps.  It is such a huge, hard job to be a mama, and also, sometimes, so hard to “only” be mothering.

Home at last, preparing tomorrow’s dinner so we don’t have to repeat tonight’s pizza (ugh).  And then . . . I wanted to make collards, so Ben and I lit a lantern and stepped out into the cold wet still night.  Peaceful there, in the garden.  Peaceful alone in the kitchen, making dinner, to be ready for our family after another long day tomorrow.  Finding peace in the moments where it is possible.  Remembering these words.

After a week of warmth,

I step into the cold, crisp night

and find that the stars

have returned.  Reminded

again

that something will be taken away,

and something given.

(Adrie Lester, November 2006)

Bring on the gratitude, I say.

I wanted to take a moment to say how I got started with gratitude Friday, since a few of you have asked.  Last winter, during a particularly rough patch with Ella, I read an article in the wonderful Yoga Journal about keeping a gratitude journal as a way to open your heart to gladness, even a way to battle depression.  I think my simultaneous reactions were “Wouldn’t that be nice!” and “No way this will work, no way it can be that simple.”  Well, I decided to give it a try, even though I’ve never successfully kept a journal.  You would think I would learn, eventually, that the simple things are always the ones that work.  Long story short, I still keep that journal, I love it, and it provides a wonderful antidote to stressful or gloomy times.  I discovered Gratitude Friday posts on Shelley’s blog a few months back, and thought it would be a perfect extension of the journal.  So here we go!  (One of my favorite things about listing gratitudes is that, even when it’s hard to start, soon they come pouring out.  It really is an amazing exercise.)

This week, I’m grateful for all of you who’ve joined us for the Ten Steps.

Grateful for the community we live in, our neighbors and friends (old, new, and ones we haven’t met yet!)

Grateful that we get to go visit family next week for Thanksgiving – my favorite holiday!

Grateful for Bill McKibben’s Hundred Dollar Holiday, which I just finished reading.  It has a totally fascinating history of Christmas – not what you’d expect at all .

Grateful for the chance to make our special cranberry-pecan sourdough, pumpkin tarts, and cranberry-caramel tart next week.  Yummy!

Grateful, always, for the chance to work with my hands and my heart.

Grateful that we (and our animals) are all healthy.

Grateful for the chance to dance in the living room with my girl.

Grateful for the chance to count my blessings.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Whew!

Well, this past two weeks have been quite, um, interesting, on all fronts.  Home, bakery, Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain, there have been lots of ups and downs.  You, too?

I’ve been loving doing the Ten Steps posts, and all the amazing feedback, but I’m going to take a little break before moving on to the next steps.  Each of those posts has taken quite a lot of time and energy, and I need to recoup a little!  So  . . . today, less words.  More beauty.

And also, words from another time.  Ben asked if I was going to share some more poetry here, so here we go.  This is from the year we started the bakery.

The Salt

by Adrie Lester

A terrible blessing–

to be laid open to the bone,

where the marrow trembles

and sings

with all the griefs,

known and unknown,

mine and yours.

I have wanted a field

where animals could graze,

where I could lay down

in the long grasses.

If this careful work

will be nothing,

if these words will not

fit snugly together like bricks

to form a path, at least

let me have a field,

let me have the bread, the salt.

Yesterday we threw a farewell party for our employee Kate, who had been a steady, amazing presence at Wheatberry for two rollercoaster years.  As a thank you, we had a potluck with some friends and current staff, and I added the above embroidery to the apron I made her last spring.  I did the embroidery free hand, so it’s a little wacky, but I’m learning to love the imperfections of handmade.  There was a lot of laughing, some tearing up (at least on my part!), and great food.

We made Wheatberry Salad with wheat we grew here on our farm, and a Triple Nut Tart, adapted from the wonderful book American Boulangerie.  The guests brough some yummy dishes also – brown rice salad, twice baked potatoes, brussel sprouts and shallots, butternut squash soup . . . It was super yummy, and Kate gave us possibly my favorite card ever, with this quote on the front, “You rest, you rust.”  Yup.