Enduring Losses and Counting Blessings

Friday night baking

 It's been so long since I've updated here that I have started putting it off as it seems too overwhelming. So I've decided just take it piece at a time instead of writing a complete novel in one boring post.

Taking up our time these days have basically been divyed up between garden sprints and baking marathons. Not to mention a funeral, a difficult plumbing customer, a "Gustnado" and a half, over 100* too close to my kitchen for too long...etc, I promised no novel. I took a chance and went against the grain to put house cleaning at the bottom of my priorities list and believe it or not stuff got done and there was less worry, so my creative challenge for June actually helped me that way. The only thing that bugged me about that endeavor was the amount of time I spent checking on facebook to see what the other girls were doing. Bla, I had to cut that out. But my biggest achievement this month was my sourdough starter. I am so pleased with it, and it works. That is on my list of blog posts to write.

My biggest challenge was the learning mistakes we made with our hoop house (a definite series of blog posts), and patience with garden timing. One of the good things about blogging and being 41 is the ability to laugh at yourself or realizing that you should be laughing at yourself. I can't agonize over the time and money spent and lost in the hoop house adventure. Thinking about it, they aren't real losses accounting the knowledge and experience we gained. How much time has been wasted watching a stupid movie, or money lost on eating out at a crummy restaurant. I'm coming to terms with it I promise, and laughing with myself. AND I learned that I am not cut out to run a CSA. Farmer's Market is as far as I can go! Oh, it isn't a total loss and so much was out of my hands, like the weather and all, but I'm learning, we're learning. I still love my hoop house.

Back to the gustnado. That was Friday and we were in it! It came so fast there was no time to get in the house. It looked like it was going to be just a thunderstorm so Jeremiah and I thought we would run to the garden and see if the beets would be big enough to pull for Saturday's market. We got half way there and after observing the two farms in the distance and the horrible way their trees looked and the amazing cloud of dust foaming up in their yard, we decided to RUN back home. Problem was that we didn't hardly turn around and the wind slammed into our woods. Huge wind gusts rolling the dust, leaves and branches straight up and out. Trees, huge trees were breaking and crashing and I couldn't tell if I should hunker down where I was or run back to the kids. Jeremiah didn't hesitate and was out of sight, supposedly getting the rest of the family to basement. Anyhow, this isn't a novel, long story short, the limb that fell down in front of me didn't kill me, the tree top that fell and landed on Nathanial as he huddled around his bantam chicks didn't kill him, just four of his birds, the trees that crash onto the house and deck didn't break any glass or injure the rest of my kids standing at the glass door watching. It is apparent that we don't do any safety drills or have a disaster plan, although I was screaming "get into the basement!", no one heard me (nothing really new there either). Our losses were so minimal, just a beautiful sycamore, and the cherry bee tree and at least 20 others that landed within inches of complete disaster (trucks, chicken house, shop, etc). It was so frightening, I can't image what a real tornado would be like.

Meanwhile our electricity blew away too. Bryon and our neighbor sawed most of the tree off the house. He decided that we must still push for the market the next day. After all I had  piles of granola, bread and pizza crust stacked in the kitchen, and I still had 20 pieces of sourdough proofing, by now hours overproofed! Bryon plugged us up to the generator so my convection would run (but no lights or water- we would stop and switch according to the need). Learned something here too, don't try and bake a loaf of overproofed sourdough- turned it into a fabulous pizza crust!

And here is market day, nerves testy, sales low, but the sourdough sold out!