Well it’s been a busy few days! Baking on Friday for Foster Farmers Market and deliveries, and then baking on Saturday for Mossvale Market. Greg and the boys manned the stall at Foster, and all enjoyed their morning very much! Both the boys are keen helpers, happy to take money and peel off stickers and go get Dad a coffee or get themselves some morning tea…..While Stella and I held sway in the bakery with our famous auntie Diana, and my dad Ken did the deliveries. Our family has been fantastic, helping, supporting, and believing in us. Dad has made our beautiful boxes which we use to take the bread to markets and for deliveries, and he has also made our peels for us, the latest of which is just perfect; it feels so balanced and is a good size for loading and unloading. It feels so good to be doing something that uses such simple methods of doing things, like loading loaves of bread into a wood fired brick oven with a wooden peel; bread, oven and peel made the same way as they have been made for hundreds of years, with the help of some mechanical aids now. The bread is the same as it would’ve been hundreds of years ago; made with whole flour from organically grown grain, no genetic modification, synthetic fertilisers, chemical application, roller milling and artificial additives, just flour from organic stoneground grain, water, and salt. Sure we have a motor to run our mill, and a mixer for when the batches of dough are larger than I can handle by hand, but the principal is the same.
Greg’s dad has brought us some hardwood which we mix with the pine from the trees on our farm to fire the oven. The many pines drop branches consistently, so we have a good supply. They have been planted very close together and are getting on, and I found them a bit ugly at first. But now that I have seen many beautiful sunsets through them, and can hear the wind in them at night, I’ve become quite attached to them. The yellow tailed black cockatoos visit to feed off the young pine cones, and of course, the dead wood is easy and good for the fire for the oven.
Our herb patch is growing and flourishing, and it is great to go and pick thyme and oregano for the focaccia, or rhubarb for the scrolls and we are looking forward to the time when we can use more of our produce in the bakery. Keeping the water up to everything is a full time job at the moment though!