(no subject)
In addition to being a blacksmith, my host is a baker. And not just any baker -- he is Baker B from the introduction to The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved! I realize this is probably not exciting to anyone else, but I'm kind of starstruck.
He's is in the book because of the informal town market that has informally grown up around his bread. Years ago he got into traditional, natural baking of sour dough hearth loaves as a hobby. As he got more serious about it, he decided to build himself a brick oven. It's amazing -- it's huge, and it takes a day and a half of wood burning to get it hot enough for baking day. But it's size enables him to make far more bread than he could use personally, so he started selling some to people in town. He used a friend's business as a distribution point. Since Cottage Grove didn't have much of a social scene then, people came to pick up their homemade bread and then just hung out to catch up with each other. Soon other artisans took advantage of the gathering to sell their own homemade products, and market was born without anybody intentionally organizing it. Now it's become a tradition, and a (locally owned) coffee shop and bookstore have sprung up on the site. The market takes place every Thursday evening and is still referred to as Bread Club.
How awesome is that?
B spends every Thursday completely focussed on baking. As I write this he is in the kitchen getting some of his dough ready, stirring it with a giant wooden spoon in 5-gallon pails. I've been watching him feed wood into the oven for the past couple days in preparation. The brick oven is beautifully constructed, tucked into the woodshed at the base of a forested hill. It's lovely to see the thin stream of smoke wafting into the cedars, and glimpse the flames through the little bread door in the evening. Baking day is such an important event here that, intitially, they didn't think they could have a WWOOFer here on Thursday, lest I break his concentration. But now they've gotten to know me, I've been invited to watch the bread making and come to Bread Club for a while tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about it.
There's a bag of cheese curds, made from the milk of the goats I've been working with, hanging from the ceiling to drain. I spent the day gardening in the pauses in the rain. Then I got clean in the outdoor shower, heated by a home-made solar panel (black-painted corrugated metal under glass). For dinner we had vegetables from the garden and from the local farmer's market. There were little potatoes called All Blues, which are a rich shade of purple all the way through, and have the best flavor of any potato I've ever tasted.
Life is beautiful!
He's is in the book because of the informal town market that has informally grown up around his bread. Years ago he got into traditional, natural baking of sour dough hearth loaves as a hobby. As he got more serious about it, he decided to build himself a brick oven. It's amazing -- it's huge, and it takes a day and a half of wood burning to get it hot enough for baking day. But it's size enables him to make far more bread than he could use personally, so he started selling some to people in town. He used a friend's business as a distribution point. Since Cottage Grove didn't have much of a social scene then, people came to pick up their homemade bread and then just hung out to catch up with each other. Soon other artisans took advantage of the gathering to sell their own homemade products, and market was born without anybody intentionally organizing it. Now it's become a tradition, and a (locally owned) coffee shop and bookstore have sprung up on the site. The market takes place every Thursday evening and is still referred to as Bread Club.
How awesome is that?
B spends every Thursday completely focussed on baking. As I write this he is in the kitchen getting some of his dough ready, stirring it with a giant wooden spoon in 5-gallon pails. I've been watching him feed wood into the oven for the past couple days in preparation. The brick oven is beautifully constructed, tucked into the woodshed at the base of a forested hill. It's lovely to see the thin stream of smoke wafting into the cedars, and glimpse the flames through the little bread door in the evening. Baking day is such an important event here that, intitially, they didn't think they could have a WWOOFer here on Thursday, lest I break his concentration. But now they've gotten to know me, I've been invited to watch the bread making and come to Bread Club for a while tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about it.
There's a bag of cheese curds, made from the milk of the goats I've been working with, hanging from the ceiling to drain. I spent the day gardening in the pauses in the rain. Then I got clean in the outdoor shower, heated by a home-made solar panel (black-painted corrugated metal under glass). For dinner we had vegetables from the garden and from the local farmer's market. There were little potatoes called All Blues, which are a rich shade of purple all the way through, and have the best flavor of any potato I've ever tasted.
Life is beautiful!