Missing Willow Farm

My latest obsession… pottery buttons.  The majority of the designs are from stamps hand carved by me.  These are typically purchased by both sewists and papercraft artists (who use them as embellishments in their art work).  They’re labor intensive to make but so much fun!

This is what I brought home from baking class last night, I still can’t believe I made these!

We started with flour, salt, water and some sourdough starter. It took a while to get the messy mixture to come together.

Our dough spent some time proofing while we started even more bread.

The finished dough spent some time overnight in the bakery’s fridge. Some of our loaves rested in round molds called bannetons. Right before they went into the oven, we slashed the tops to allow steam to release during baking.

Around 30 minutes later the loaves were removed from the oven.

We made so many different kinds of loaves!

Remember the miniature bakery I posted a few months ago?  https://missingwillowfarm.com/2016/02/17/a-miniature-actual-bakery/

I just got back from a two day sourdough bread class from the actual bakery (LaFarm Bakery in Cary, NC).  Chef Lionel Vatinet was a masterful teacher!  It was super fun and won’t be my last outing there for training.

Jack hides from our sheep behind the watering tub that’s the same color as he is.  Pretty tricky!  Lizzie keeps track of the action from her pasture.

Plowing our potato bed.  We mostly use the tractor to scrape our driveway and move large hay bales.  Once a year we’re happy not to have to turn our in-ground potato bed by hand.  Very happy.

We stopped buying compost a few years ago because we’re able to make our own.  We’ll use it to supplement all of our garden beds.  We use the tractor to scoop it into the back of the Mule, which has a lift gate on the back.   Anything to minimize shoveling by hand!

Just a sample of what needs to get into the ground soon.  Shallots, potatoes, carrots, beets, spinach, lettuce, peas, kohlrabi & rutabaga.

Every single raised bed looks like this and there are 18 of them. Yuck.  That’s what happens when you spend a few weeks at the end of the growing season on vacation, then head right into the holidays.  Once the cages and stakes are set aside, we’ll need to weed and work in compost.  Then there’s the in-ground potato bed to plow.  This is a busy time for us.

I’ve started four flats of seeds so far, two each of heirloom tomatoes and hot peppers.  We received our seed order for the remainder of the garden yesterday.  The tomatoes and peppers will go in the ground in about two months.  I’ll group the seed packets into timeframes for planting.  Time to get the beds ready.

Here are most of them are so far (plus an older one), thick as thieves.  They run in a little fluffy gang.

Hermione gives me this much milk every morning.  I made my first batch of chevre yesterday and it didn’t set right.  I need to order fresh rennet and culture to remedy that.  I hope to put at least 50 blocks of cheese in the freezer before I get tired of the daily milking routine.  Probably sooner than later.  🙂