Made it to the very first farmers market of the season and left with an armful of rhubarb, kale, strawberries, and more to get us through the week, plus a savory honey and bee pollen! More pepper and tomato plants (I didn’t need those) but tomatoes are always my favorite to grow! 🌱

I used this recipe as a base, but increased the lemon juice to 4 tablespoons, and added a teaspoon of baking powder to puff them up a bit!

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I did! It’s beautiful, though there is definitely a learning curve with fresh milled flour, since it requires more hydration.

Oh I love that mix! I shouldn’t have checked the hatch list, because I may go back tomorrow for a couple Ameraucanas myself. Most of my blue/green eggers in my original flock lay brown.

Today was buttermilk banana bread! Requested by my almost 4 year old 💕

Whoa, I never even considered doing French toast with banana bread! Was it as amazing as it looks?

I ended up with a Nutrimill Classic!

Two fluffy baby chickens, about 4 days old, standing in a pile of dried florals.

I told myself I wouldn’t bring home any baby chicks this year. Well, I didn’t bring any home… but my husband did! We have 4 new Orpington babies! 💕

I’ll update on how it goes! I’m going to start with some basic hard white wheat, and hope I don’t become insufferable in the process!

Impatiently waiting for my (new to me) refurbished grain mill to arrive. I am SO excited to make home milled flour for bread!

We fill in the gaps of what we can’t/don’t specialize in with farmers markets and CSA’s because nobody can do it all. In the summer it is A LOT.

There are SO many facets of homesteading! You would have to figure out what you want to accomplish for it to be “worth it”-we have chickens for eggs, grow mostly vegetables, flowers, preserve and can what we harvest. We know where our food comes from and what’s in it, that’s worth it to us!

A speckled sussex chicken in her yard.

Four chickens eating bugs in a patch of grass. One is being weird.

They are harder to photograph than you’d think!! Miss honey (the golden one) is a complete MENACE and I love her.

These are so cute! I have a speckled sussex in my flock and now I’m imagining what an adorable cookie she’d make. Extra sprinkles!

Thank you! Trying to stress bake my way through the times!

I miss Wegmans so much!! Enjoy!

Lemon cookies rolled in powdered sugar on a cooling rack.

Life is giving me a bunch of lemons lately so I made some lemon crinkle cookies 🍋✨

That is incredible! I’ve seen freeze dried ice cream sandwiches at markets. Always good to prep some treats too! Tomatoes are my weakness every summer, there’s always a new variety I want to try! Going to do extra beans, potatoes, peas, and herbs too this year. Oh and strawberries!

This looks sooo yummy! I am a huge fan of asparagus and gruyere together and this would hit the spot. It’s beautiful!

I wanted to simplify things with a toddler in the house, so he helps me and we’re done in 10 minutes! My dehydrator is the “orange maker” because it’s mostly used for fruit, do you like your freeze dryer?

a cartoon character with horns and a beard ALT: a cartoon character with horns and a beard

BREAD BREAD BREAD

My house ALWAYS smells like fresh baked bread. Sourdough, banana bread, sandwich loaves right from the bread machine.

Oh, excellent! I was wondering if a banana bread would work. I ended up trying this recipe today, it finished and looks great but needs to cool before we try a slice!

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I purchased the recipe to support a sourdough creator (Lady Sourdough) but there’s lots of similar loaf recipes out there!

Her links if you’re interested: stan.store/ladysourdough

Lovely! I always enjoy seeing your posts, and these are just beautiful!

I’m enrolled in a gardening and food preservation course offered by WSU, that I’ll follow with a beginner beekeeper certification. There is so much knowledge I want to gain before it becomes unavailable. Support your local extension offices!

Thank you! I’m quite proud of this one, I wasn’t sure it would turn out at all! I’ll have to try with cream cheese still!

That seems to be a feature of rye flour! Are you using all rye flour for the loaf? Have you tried increasing the hydration at all?

Oh no! My oven gets to 90°F or more with just the light, focaccia time?

I used an extra rich cocoa powder (plus a shot of espresso) so the chocolate is very pronounced, but not super sweet! You still get the sourdough tanginess throughout. The sweetness comes from the chocolate chips, and we paired it with a cinnamon sugar butter.