Winter and soup, soup and garlic. Squash soup, potato leek soup, vegetable soup, lentil sausage soup, chicken noodle, and three bean chili to name a few recent soups. One of our local markets offered boxes of organic oranges from CA. Carrot soup is up next as it goes so well with orange. What is your favorite winter soup?
FARMSTAND
We are open on Thursdays. This month: February 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th from 8 AM - 7 PM at Jam Brook Farm. Park along Magog Rd. Cash only please. Feel free to let us know you are stopping by, we’d love to see you.
Sourdough Bread $10
Half Loaf $5 - Utilize the cutting board & knife. Leave the other half in the cooler.
Garlic $1/large bulb or preorder $10 bag ($12/lb)
Maine Grains Hard Red Winter Wheat 2/3 milled + sifted at Maine Grains, 1/3 milled at home. Sourdough bread is a naturally leavened bread, easily influenced by seasonal change.
I recently read about a traveling farmstand in Germany. It wasn’t the plot of the article, but this detail had me hooked. They mentioned…
“Our local farmer comes by every Wednesday morning with his delivery van. I enjoy chatting with him about family, politics, and life in the “old days!” (He’s a grandpa.) We’re kind of on the same wavelength. Today, I buy kohlrabi and rindergulasch (beef stew). The stew is prepared by his wife and sealed in Weck jars. I plan to serve it with kohlrabi and boiled potatoes.”
PLACE
This is the Lincolnville Community Library. We have hosted about five Visible Mending Workshops here and are quite encouraged by the enthusiasm.
What I love about our workshops is they are 100% hands on. Folks can jump right into their project with a plethora of supplies and support from Sarah (my collaborator) and myself, along with the fellow attendees who often come with welcomed experience. This sort of craft is meant to be done in community circles.
HOME
Daniel and Louie play music every Thursday night at our house. Great fun, and great sound. At the top of the email is a recording of the song 9# Hammer. Have a listen while you read?
Basic Soup Recipe
Sauté onions and garlic, throw your meat in now too if you have it and ginger if the soup calls for it.
Add your root veggies. I love celeriac (basically celery grown underground), carrots, parsnip, rutabaga, potatoes. You are going to sauté these to help them get a bit soft.
Salt along the way. Add aromatics and spices now.
Add canned tomatoes. Let it cook down for some thickness.
Next, broth.
You can add precooked beans or greens. Or presoaked lentils or grains. Let the soup simmer to blend all these lovely flavors. If lentils or grains were added - monitor until fully cooked.
SEASON
Fermented Scratch Feed with Minerals and Kelp
Maine Grains sells feed-quality oat groats and wheat berries.
Our no shell sunflower seeds come from Hammond Lumber. They supply a product that is a part of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which from my understanding affects packaging. Side note: We have started using our grain bags as our trash bags. They are super heavy duty, and it saves us $$ on trash bags.
We use Fertrell Poultry Nutri-Balancer. It’s pricey, but helps guarantee nutrients the birds may not be able to get by foraging alone.
We ferment the wheat berries and sunflower seeds in a 5 gallon bucket for a night or two. Then add the oat groats and supplement, which is a fine powder but sticks to the wet fermented grain. And that’s it!
In the winter we add corn for some extra fat. Frostbite is a concern for our roosters. Their wattles and combs are quite susceptible. We are keeping Mr. Frostbite in our bathroom during the evenings to help him heal.
CRAFT
I replaced the lining on this coat. I also mended the cuffs, elbow, and tears near the pocket. I handstitched the worn and torn buttonholes too.
For local folks - I am now accepting unwanted textiles. I use the fabric for workshops, classes, personal projects and mending. I am willing to sort through anything, but love 100% natural fiber (linen, cotton, wool) and heavy jeans or canvas. Spread the word! You can drop off on Thursdays at the farm stand.
My friend April and I hosted our first Open Studio and Potluck. April made a cover for her meditation cushion out of an old skirt. The next one is Feb. 23rd from 12-3. This is a great inaugural series for my home studio.
ODDS N ENDS
We are rearranging our living room and kitchen. I love our new coffee table from the Belfast ReStore. Daniel isn’t into oak, but I happen to love it! 90s interior kitchen all the way.
Little King is a very sweet online store.
Current financial muses: Budgetnista’s Financial Wholeness, The Purse, and Cash Flow Calendar.
An organization hack for your online files: Go to settings on your web browser, select downloads, turn the toggle on for “Ask where to save each file before downloading.”
Enjoy a poem
February by Margaret Atwood
Winter. Time to eat fat and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat, a black fur sausage with yellow Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It’s his way of telling whether or not I’m dead. If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am He’ll think of something. He settles on my chest, breathing his breath of burped-up meat and musty sofas, purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat, not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door, declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory, which are what will finish us off in the long run. Some cat owners around here should snip a few testicles. If we wise hominids were sensible, we’d do that too, or eat our young, like sharks. But it’s love that does us in. Over and over again, He shoots, he scores! and famine crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits thirty below, and pollution pours out of our chimneys to keep us warm. February, month of despair, with a skewered heart in the centre. I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries with a splash of vinegar. Cat, enough of your greedy whining and your small pink bumhole. Off my face! You’re the life principle, more or less, so get going on a little optimism around here. Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.