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!

Snapshots from "Homestead Camp"

This week we held our second annual Homestead Camp here at Little City Farm.  It was the idea of our daughter, to bring together other kids in the 8-12 year old range in a creative "farmstead" setting while sharing some of the projects that we like to do around here.  The outdoor day camp was held each morning, including co-operative games, garden harvested snacks (like herbal sun tea, pesto and a rainbow veggie platter, made by the kids), and a hands-on activity from the day's theme - including pollinators (making seedballs); natural plant dyes (tie-dying a favourite shirt), natural fibres (making a branch weaving, and felting a bar of soap); and finally wood-fired baking (making pizza in our outdoor oven)!  What fun!  We hope to do this again next year! 

For the fall, we have kids Waldorf-inspired art classes and mother-daughter herbal immersion classes coming up again; as well as our new line-up of family homesteading classes like cheesemaking, sourdough, kraut for kids, and more!  Registration will be open soon.

Here are some snapshots from our days at Homestead Camp this week:

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!

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

Baking Whole Grain Bread with Children

What a fun workshop we had here today!  Thirteen eager kids (aged 4-12) were over to learn about baking bread: working with sourdough, kneading and shaping their own loaves, making their own sourdough starter culture, grinding whole grains into flour, and baking the loaves in our wood-fired cob oven!  We talked about breads from around the world, and what makes up bread (flour/grain, water, salt and yeast - and heat!).  And there was lots of bread eating, laughing, creating, more eating, and playing - not to mention lots of flour and dough everywhere!   Hands-on learning is always so inspiring to watch - we see the transformation of words and ideas into tangible knowledge that is learned through tactile experience (ideally using all the senses like today - taste, smell, touch, etc - as the ideal way to let a new concept really sink in). We hope to offer more bread classes (for kids and adults) again soon. 

Gratitude Sunday

We are grateful for so many things.  Here is what comes to mind from this past week:

~ berries and cherries galore!  and wild-harvesting the bounty with friends this week...

~ wood-fired pizza dinners on warm summer nights, made here in the cob oven

~ all the abundance of flowers in the garden at this time of summer

~ the first monarchs to arrive in our yard for this season

~ peach and cherry water kefir dropped off by our friend today, and a divine lavender kombucha, and strawberry-sage kombucha made by another friend, so perfectly refreshing on a hot day

~ bees buzzing in the garden (they are all over the comfrey, catnip and lavender blossoms)

What are you grateful for this week?

Spring Seeds, Soil & Sourdough Event at Little City Farm, April 18

Join us Sat, April 18 between 10-12 noon (free drop-in event) for our first ever Spring Seeds, Soil & Sourdough Event!

We invite you to celebrate the arrival of spring, earth-day, and all good growing things that come with sunshine and warmer weather!

You will find:

• Seedballs: hands-on DIY seedball making (make your own clay seedballs to take home, filled with seeds to attract pollinators to your garden) - a great activity for all ages
• Seeds: organic non-GMO seeds for sale to get your garden off to a great start
• Soil: bags of certified organic potting soil for sale for all your seed starting needs
• Seedling Tips: helpful advice on starting your own seedlings, planting charts to take home, garden magazine give-away, and more
• Sourdough: freshly baked sourdough bread available, and wood-fired baking demo in our outdoor cob oven
• Soap: natural handmade soaps for sale
• Sprouts: in our new greenhouse studio space (still under renovation but we'll give you a sneak preview)!

Please try to walk or bike to this event, in honour of earth-day and to minimize traffic on our street.

For questions - contact Karin or Greg at: info@littlecityfarm.ca
 

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