Homemade Sourdough Starter - Capturing Wild Yeasties

my sourdough starter on day two, bubbling awaySomething my city self had imagined my country self doing every week once we moved here was baking fresh, delicious, crusty, bread. Ha - yeah, right! As people say, "life happens", and lately, it has really been happening. Despite the best of plans and intentions, there's always an unexpected event that sucks up a good chunk of the day and just having the time and energy to clean up after dinner can seem like a stretch. It started to look like bread making might be joining the more obscure "to-do wishes" on my list (like making a hat band from our guinea feathers and painting a Dutch hex on our well house... maybe next year??). 

I'm beginning to realize that sometimes, you just have to make time, even if it means putting off cleaning the coop until tomorrow (or the day after...ehm). Yesterday morning, after cleaning up from milking, I decided it was prime time to take a step towards having good bread. It was a baby step that I only needed about 5 minutes to accomplish - perfect!

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Kitchen Witchery: Dandelion Salve

Summer seems to have come quite early to Tennessee this year. Everything has greened up and its been in the 80's here for the past few weeks! The sunshine has been lavish and the goats are loving the tender new leaves cropping up everywhere... 

The super warm weather has made us kick into high gear, trying to get the garden and everything else under the sun done before it's "too late" and we starve, or eat more WallMart produce (I think we'd starve). This week, this has meant shoveling lots of gravel (fun!). At some point in time, someone here was much enamoured of gravel, as evidenced by its prolific abundance in every imaginable nook and crany. Covering the patio (why?), embedded in weeds and grass as an abstract walkway accented by truck mud flaps (huh?), piled against one side of the house so that the storm water drains right into our crawl space...  

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Monkey Balls! It's almost Valentine's Day!


One of the many Hedgeapples (aka Monkey Balls) found on the farm last month.

It's that time of the year again! The time of year you start banging your head against the wall trying to think of a Valentine's Day gift or gesture that isn't cliche, boring, or scripted. A few months ago Scrapple commented on how tough it will be to think of gifts to give each other when we're on the farm. I told him he could just pick me a bouquet of wild flowers, but then remembered that V day is in February. Maybe a hedge apple bouquet? 

Here in the city, there have been a few years where I've had an inspiring idea a few months in advance (mainly of the concert ticket or interesting experience variety), but, admittedly, many of Scrapple's V day gifts have been of the "light bulb in the head a few days before" variety. I'm also big into homemade cards :)

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