Sourdough, beautiful sourdough

We love sourdough.  We use our starter several times a week, for breads but also other sourdough treats like pancakes and cookies.  We've basically converted all our baking to sourdough now, because we love the process, the flavours, the forgiving nature of timing when baking with sourdough, and most importantly the fact that the baked goods are more healthful and digestable for us.  Here are some photos from our recent sourdough class.  And a spring wood-fired cob oven baking class is coming up in May, for those of you who wish to learn to bake with FIRE!

Next Fermentation Class April 14! and NEW, The Seasonal Spread fermentation gatherings at Little City Farm

Make kraut!  It's so simple, so healthful, so delicious, and so affordable when you make it at home!  Take part in the next Fermentation Workshop, on Sat April 14 at Little City Farm.  More details here.

And join us at Little City Farm for The Seasonal Spread: Grow, Forage, Ferment, monthly fermentation demos featuring seasonal produce and wild edibles.  May 2 (SOLD OUT), and June 6 registration available now.

Black Walnut Syrup - our 4th season!

We've been busy tapping our trees the past weeks.  It's the black walnuts (Juglans nigra) that we tap, as we don't have any sugar maples or other substantially sized maples in our yard.   There are only 3
large black walnuts on this property, but enough to get a real taste for the whole tapping process. 

This year we set up some of our taps at 2-year old height, so our little guy could easily check the buckets by himself.   Both kids eagerly added this to the daily chore routine, getting tastes of fresh sap every day.  We boiled down over a fire using shallow pans, then finished the syrup indoors on the stove.  It was a 2-day boiling down process, but worth it!

Once the trees start to bud the tapping season is over, and it can last from a few days to a few weeks (this year it was a few weeks for us, but the weather this spring has been sooo unpredictable - it is snowing again right now!).   4 litres of delicious sweet syrup were accomplished in the end, plus lots of sampling of the "sweet water" along the way and some black walnut taffy - yummm!