Eco Handmade Holiday Sale, Dec 2 from 11 am-3 pm at Little City Farm

Join us for the 10th Annual
A little bird told me...
Eco Handmade Holiday Sale here at Little City Farm
Sat, Dec 2 from 11 am-3 pm

Find holiday gifts made with mindful ingredients, upcycled charm, or natural materials.  For the eco-conscious gift giver or gift recipient!

The "A little bird told me..." handmade sale features unique handmade items from 10 local artisans/crafters/bakers. Including organic baked treats, raw chocolate, woolen slippers, pure beeswax candles, functional pottery, wearable art & jewelry from reclaimed wood, natural soaps, herbal salves & oils, herbal drinks and elixirs, sourdough breads, artisan pies, woolen felted toys, children's items and more!  Read all about our vendors here.

Announcing! Dec 10 Handmade Holiday Sale at Little City Farm!

Mark your calendars!  Our annual A Little Bird Told Me Handmade Holiday Sale is now only about 8 weeks away.  Saturday, December 10th, from 4-8 pm at Little City Farm.

We are excited to host this beautiful sale every year, bringing together a variety of local artisans who create unique items with an eco-conscious mind.  Many of the items are made with reclaimed or repurposed materials, and others are made using organic ingredients or natural materials. 

This year you'll find:

• woolen clothing
• natural wool and wood toys
• jewelry from reclaimed materials 
• organic baking (including the favourite gluten-free vegan gingerbread pictured below)
• handmade chocolates & truffles (including our famous raw nanaimo bars - selling out quickly!)
• paper lanterns
• functional pottery
• organic soaps & botanicals 
• household accessories & decor
• eco living books, and more...

We'll be highlighting this year's vendors over the next weeks, leading up to the sale, so please stay tuned!  We hope to see you there!
 

Pop Up Pie & Pizza Shop, Sat Oct 10 at Little City Farm

Mark your calendars!  One day only!
It's a Pop Up Pie &Pizza Shop at Little City Farm!

Sat, Oct 10 from 11 am-1 pm

Get one of our delicious homemade pies just in time for thanksgiving, featuring local organic ingredients.  Vegan options.  Varieties include: pumpkin, apple-salted caramel, chocolate pecan, and plumble (mixed fruit crumble).  First come first served.

AND Wood-fired vegetarian pizzas served from 11 am-1 pm (made in our outdoor wood-fired oven), first come first served.  Cash only.  For more info contact Karin at: info {at} littlecityfarm.ca

Sourdough Workshop

We had one of our regular Saturday homesteading workshops here today.  This was the third workshop of a four-part "cultured kitchen" series which included four classes about creating live cultured foods at home - sauerkraut/kimchi, yogurt making, and sourdough bread (and apple cider vinegar is coming in the fall).

During today's workshop we walked through the steps of making and maintaining a sourdough starter, proofing the starter before bread baking (at least 8-12 hours), making the dough, and shaping loaves.  We were working with real sourdough (not preferments or recipes that use commercial yeast) - so ingredients are basic and wholesome - organic hard bread flour, cool filtered water, sea salt, and wild yeast!  The process really is quite simple, it's just a matter of making it part of a regular rhythm of your own weekly kitchen activities. 

Participants made their own sourdough starters to take home (which now need to be fed for the next 10 days, and maintained after).  We also sampled two sourdough breads I had made the night before, so that participants could see the full range of bread making from start (starter) to finish (eating) but still fit this all - a normally 2 day experience - into a 2 hour class.  We tried sesame caraway rye (made with a 100% organic rye starter); and wholegrain country sourdough loaf with millet & sunflower seeds.  Here are photos of the bread baking after today's workshop. 

Let's make pie!

Who doesn't love pie?  Sweet, savory, vegan, gluten-free, or just old fashioned with real butter...there is a way to make pie work for almost any palate.  We held our first pie making workshop here this morning.  What a delicious way to start the day!  We used a vegan recipe with organic coconut oil, organic spelt flour, sea salt and water - which makes for a healthful flaky pie crust that rolls out easily and tastes great for either a sweet or savoury pie.  The two hour workshop also covered tips about pie making tools (e.g. pastry rollers and pie weights), differences to watch for based on what type of pie pan you are using (e.g. glass, ceramic, tin or aluminum), ways to creatively top and edge a pie crust, and what each ingredient does in the recipe.  For example, the fat creates a flaky pastry but this only happens if it is chilled before rolling and baking.  The water activates the gluten, but too much water can create a tough dough that is not flaky...etc.  We tried to cover all the best tips for creating perfect pie, and in the end there was a table filled with beautiful pies made from scratch and satisfied participant who went home feeling confident to keep on making pies.

Wood-fired baking!

Each week during the summer months we have a CSA (community supported agriculture) food pick-up here.  Our friend, Angie from Fertile Ground CSA, brings her gorgeous organic produce and her members pick up their bounty.  We offer fresh bread and baked goods, made in our wood-fired oven.  It allows us the joy of baking for a crowd each week, with freedom to experiment and try new recipes out, as well as many favourite repeats that members ask for.  The favourite breads include: Superseed Bread; Walnut-Raisin; and Potato-Roasted Garlic-Rosemary Bread; and treats such as Vegan Pesto Rolls; Gluten-free Brownies (made with quinoa); White-Chocolate Roasted Almond Cookies; and Whole Wheat Sticky Buns.  All our baking is made with organic flour, organic seeds, and healthful whole ingredients (including basil, zucchini, beets and other veggies as they come into season), with our grains mainly sourced from the local organic flour mill at Oak Manor Farms.  Best of all, we get to bake in our outdoor wood-fired cob oven.  We love so many elements of this oven - it was made by us with the help of family; is made of natural materials; it's fun to play around with the wood-firing learning to heat the oven just right for long enough baking time; we often eat a garden-fresh lunch while baking; and we get to be outdoors while we work.  Here are some photos of this week's baking day.

Sap boiling day...and fresh oatmeal bread

We decided today was the day.  We've been storing our sap long enough, and the days are getting warmer.  We started out with sap boiling outside, and this went well for several hours.  While boiling we enjoyed the first really sunny spring day, with an outdoor lunch picnic, and planting up the cold frame with lettuce, chard and spinach greens.  Then the sunshine turned into a surprise spring rainstorm...not so great for an outdoor boiling event.  The sap boiling was moved indoors - given we are doing a very small batch this didn't seem so bad to have some of it be done on the stove.  Hoping for sunshine tomorrow to take the boil outdoors again.   And, if we ever do this on a bigger scale we'd set up a proper fire pit and evaporator...some day.

During the boil day we were staying close to the house, so it seemed like a great day for baking bread.  Having it rising while we checked and stirred the sap, and freshly baked when we came in from the cold rain, was perfect!  We adjusted our favourite oatmeal bread recipe to use up this morning's left over oatmeal.  Yum!

Here's the recipe:

Oatmeal-Rye 4 grain seeded bread
2 cups left over cooked oatmeal
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup
3 Tbsp butter
2 tsp sea salt

Combine the above ingredients in a large bowl.

2 cups warm water
1 Tbsp quick yeast

Mix the water and yeast in a large measuring cup.  Stir, then let sit for about 5 minutes until it foams.

6 cups unbleached wheat or spelt flour
2 cups whole rye flour
1/4 cup millet grains
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
Extra oats and sesame seeds to sprinkle on top of risen loaves

When yeast has foamed, mix this with the wet ingredients.  Then add flour and seeds and mix well.  Knead about 10 minutes to make a soft dough. 

Put dough back into the large bowl that has been oiled, and cover with a cotton cloth.  Let rise 1 hour, or until double. 

Form dough into 3 medium sized loaves and place into lightly oiled loaf pans.  Wet top of loaves lightly with water, and sprinkle with oats and sesame seeds.  Let rise again for about 45 minutes in a warm room (near your stove that is preheating to 400F). 

Bake at 400F for 5 minutes, then lower heat to 350F and bake another 30-40 minutes until golden brown.
Let cool before slicing.

Favourite maple-hemp granola

Surprise, surprise - we eat a whole lot of homemade granola around here.  We make it in huge batches, and love to eat it with homemade yogurt, or fresh berries, or warm applesauce.  We often serve it to our bed & breakfast guests, and our daughter is a great helper when it comes to granola making time.  There are lots of steps in the process where kids can be involved - measuring, mixing, stirring.

Here's our favourite recipe that we've perfected over the many many bowls that we've eaten.  We like using maple syrup and hemp seeds because they are locally produced, delicious and healthful.  Use organic ingredients where you can.  Use gluten-free oats to make this recipe gluten-free.

Maple-hemp granola

12 cups organic whole oats
3 cups total nuts & seeds (we include flax, sunflower, sesame, pumpkin and hemp; sometimes chopped almonds)
1 cup maple syrup (or honey)
3/4 cup sunflower oil
3/4 tsp sea salt
1 1/2 cups raisins (add these AFTER baking)

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 350F.
2) Combine ingredients in large bowl and mix well. 
3) Spread evenly on two lightly oiled baking sheet and place in hot oven.
4) Bake for 15 minutes, then take out and stir granola on the baking sheet.
5) Bake another 5-10 minutes, until lightly browned. 
6) After baking add 1 1/2 cups raisins and mix.
7) Store in glass jars after the granola has cooled.

This week - gardens, harvests, pies, hammocks

Delicious fresh new and exciting garden harvests this week as the summer season is now nearly upon us...juicy ripe strawberries, sweet snow peas, wild grape leaves, braising greens, and the last of our  asparagus and rhubarb, radishes, turnips...yumm!  Our new patches of blackberries, heirloom raspberries and high bush blueberries have been planted in our new permaculture berry garden (near the wild planted mulberry, in the forgotten part of our yard that we are trying to reclaim now that all the construction projects on the house are completed), and it feels like for once we are almost caught up on garden tasks - almost, except for the compost spreading, mulching, weeding, watering...And the tomatoes are flowering!   We couldn't help ourselves - there are 110 tomato plants in our various gardens and containers this year - what will tomato harvest look like??  I'm dreaming of sauces, salsa, drying, roasting, and lots of fresh eating.  Oh, there is so much ambition at this time in the season.

The local CSA (community supported agriculture) pick up has started again in our neighbourhood, so we are back to baking organic wholegrain breads, organic fruit pies, and other baked treats each week for the members.  So thankful for the outdoor cob oven on hot hot days like this one, when baking bread indoors would not feel possible.

At the end of the day, we find time to relax in the hammock with a good book - well, the youngest one here loves reading there even more than the rest of us...
 

Seedling Sale Extraveganza!!!

Thanks to everyone who came out to our 10th annual Seedling Sale this past Saturday!  We had a great time and hope you did too...lovely warm sunny weather, lively banjo, fiddle & guitar music, rows and rows of beautiful seedlings, tasty baked treats, many smiling faces of community members...  A very special thank you to all our hard-working vendors, volunteers and musicians who made this event the success it was.