Week 5 - Thinking Tree Art & Nature Program

Week 5 - Thinking Tree Art & Nature Program

Weather: overcast with patches of sunshine, but chilly (felt like 2 Celcius)

Soup made by the kids: Sweet Potato-Leek

Herbal project today: 

• wrapping sage herb bundles to hang at home (and use for winter teas, bath and sore throats)
• discussing various historical uses of herb bundles for health, purification, ceremony
  

Art lessons today:

• form drawing - looking at the human form and proportion (face, body)
• turning the form sketches into flower fairy sketches made to proportion
• cityscape drawings in mirror image
• looking at spirals in nature (shells, etc) and sketching various snail designs

Other highlights:

• delicious warm honey-baked apples made in the outdoor wood-fired cob oven! 
• playing outdoor co-operative running games to warm ourselves up
• learning about how the cob oven was built, and standing around the fire to stay cozy

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!

Cob oven workshop

We had a great workshop on building cob ovens here on Saturday.  We are very inspired by cob (and other natural building in general - read the 10 reasons why natural building can address climate change here), but we think that cob ovens are the perfect place to start when you want to learn to build with natural materials like clay, sand and straw.  Cob ovens take little time to go from start to finish, as an oven can be done in a few weekends time; building with cob requires only basic hand tools and no previous construction experience; cob ovens cost virtually nothing if you take time to source local and repurposed materials (cob ovens are often called "the $20 cob oven"); and cob ovens give you a wonderful finished project for baking beautiful breads and pizzas.  We love Kiko Denzer's book, Build your own Earth Oven, as a great primer for building your own cob oven.

Here are a few photos of our workshop - participants did not build an oven as this was just an overview workshop about the process, however they did get to mix and handle cob (clay-sand-straw), and eat freshly baked pizza!  Thanks to Natalie Nunn for the great photography from that day.

Cob oven wood-fired baking

This past weekend we had our first spring-like days for April.  We wanted to spend all our time outside soaking up the sun and doing all those spring yard and garden prepping projects: planting the grow tunnel, cleaning the hen yard, clearing mulch off garden beds.  It was also the perfect opportunity for baking in the cob oven.  (Cob is a building material made of = clay + sand + straw)

The cob oven is situated right beside our main garden, also next to a wood storage shed, and only a few steps from the kitchen - all important factors that were planned out when we designed the oven so that the fires are easy to tend, and baking is simple to do, while we can also work on other projects nearby.  In the warmer months, we usually bake at least once a week - for sourdough breads and for pizza night.  We've had our oven for 11 seasons now, and have learned a few things over the years about baking in a wood-fired oven.  We know how long to fire up the oven before it's ready for baking, we know it burns best with small to medium pieces of hardwood but can do well with any manner of scrap wood (untreated) and twigs & branches from the yard, and we know where to position the baked goods so they bake evenly, we know how to avoid smoke in the face (most cob ovens don't have a chimney so they rely on convection to keep the smoke rising properly), and we know what we might have designed differently if we built another oven (more insulation material underneath to retain heat).   We know that a shelter overtop of a cob oven is crucial for the oven to hold up over time - cob ovens don't fare well with rain and snow.  We know how to patch the oven if it develops a crack (and it will).  We know that cob is incredibly fun, forgiving, beautiful, timeless and very affordable to work with! 

Want to learn more?  Join our cob oven workshop this coming Saturday (only a few spots left), or look for future cob oven workshops this summer and fall.  Or look for Kiko Denzer's book, Build your own Earth Oven.  This is a great book to help answer all the questions about designing, building and firing a cob oven of your own.

And so it was the perfect weekend, with the most amazing pizza fresh from the cob oven - including a nettle pesto (use this favourite recipe and substitute nettles or other herbs for basil) with wild-harvested first spring nettles.  Yum!

NEW WORKSHOPS now posted for winter/spring session!

Outdoor baking day to celebrate the first days of winter

We love using our wood-fired cob oven in all seasons, but there is something so especially cozy about firing up the oven for baking bread on a cold morning.   December is here, and the winds are chilly!  We celebrated the first bits of snowfall with warm flatbreads (these were hearty gluten-free flaxseed pitas) fresh from the oven, and then baked pears in the left over heat after the bread was done (my daughter's idea!). 

Come check out our wood-fired oven on Sat Dec 10 during our Little Bird Told Me handmade holiday sale.  The fire will be lit so you can warm yourself after browsing our wonderful vendors.

Autumn Farm Day! Oct 10 with PIE + PIZZA! At Little City Farm from 11-1 pm

 


Don't forget - just over a week away is our first ever Organic Pie & Pizza Pop Up Shop here at Little City Farm as a way to celebrate the fall harvest season.

We'll have a delicious assortment of freshly baked organic pies for sale (I love pumpkin, but think I'm most excited about the salted caramel apple pies we'll be featuring!), and wood-fired pizza by the slice.  Come on out for pies & pizza, meet friends & neighbours, celebrate the fall harvest with us, and enjoy the last of the warm fall weather in our garden beside the cob oven.

Sat, Oct 10 from 11 am-1 pm
Hope to see you here!

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

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.