Spring is moving along nicely. The weather is getting pretty warm (65-75) in the daytime, but due to our high desert location, we have to watch the over night temps, which usually fall 30-40 degrees from the daytime high. That means frost is still an issue, though a much decreasing possibility. So we will be doing (and writing about) most of our planting activities soon.
Perhaps the most exciting thing so far, though, has been that our fruit trees are flowering out wonderfully. As we mentioned last year, our cherry, apple and pear trees didn't produce any fruit because the buds were hit with a hard frost followed by high winds. Fortunately, this year that hasn't happened and most of the blossoms have been able to bloom and be visited by our bees. Our bees, by the way, did pretty well through the winter. It's taken them a while to get going, but once the warm weather hit and the flowers came out, they have been active. In fact, standing under the fruit trees you can hear the loud and steady hum of busy bees.
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| Our loaded cherry trees |
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| The cherry trees (and beehive) a few days later |
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| The apple and pear trees (plus something else!) just blooming |
One other fun farm-related activities we have been doing is baking our own bread. This, of course, is not uncommon, but the slightly odd thing we do is "grow" our own leavening. It's a funny thing to leave a mixture of flour and water out on the counter for a week, watch it bubble and then eat it, but that's what we're doing. The idea is to catch the natural yeasts that are in the air, like folks have done for millennia. One advantage to doing this is it helps the gut flora be more diverse because the heterogeneous yeasts are caught and form a natural sour dough starter. Most commercial breads only contain a single strain of yeast, which, research indicates, can quickly unbalance the gut flora. Another great thing about growing your own starter is you can propagate it by keeping the mixture fermenting in a container between baking.
The bread-making process has been a series of experiments. Some attempts have been laughable, but over all we think we're getting the hang of it. This loaf, for example, is leavened 100% with "wild caught" yeast and only contains the yeast starter we grew, organic sprouted flour, water and a tiny bit of salt, that's it:
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| Happy loaf. cooling |