Home is where the hearth is.

It's been kinda chilly around these parts lately. Chilly for Florida anyway. Yesterday we hit 22deg F which we haven't seen around here for several years. My foolish pomegranate tree that had partially leafed out already was thoroughly zapped for its trouble as well about about two thirds of the citrus trees in the orchard. So far it just looks like some minor leaf loss, but it's too soon to say for sure. The heater in the hoophouse worked fine so the cold sensitive stuff inside passed the night untroubled.

Being a Florida boy I don't much cotton to being cold so this last week or so I've been getting stuff done inside the house. I did manage to finish the garden fence though.
I haven't been able to find a vantage point yet that allows me to encompass the entire garden in one shot so I cut off the same corner as I did in the first photo. I still need to trench around the bottom of the fence but it's pretty well pig proof as it is. And a good thing too as the latest porcine marauder was in my pasture again tonight. He's rather unusually marked as my experiences with pigs go with a gimpy left front leg. Still seems to get around OK just the same as he was able to make good time when I ran him off.

I stretched the fence wire last Saturday, most of it anyway. The wife needed to go into her office so I knocked off in the mid-afternoon to watch the baby while she was gone. It had been chilly and breezy all day so I didn't regret the lost work time too terribly much. I was pretty tired by then as well so naturally I developed a yen to do some baking! For a time there I had been making all of the bread the family ate, but gradually it became a time issue and I stopped. When the weather turns cold though something good hot from the oven is mighty attractive so I made three loaves of the Dun Hagan standard whole-wheat bread.

The loaves could have been shaped better, but for not having made bread in a year I was generally satisfied. They tasted just as they should and all three loaves were soon gone.

Like eating potato chips those first three loaves only made me want to make still more so several days later I made some cinnamon-raisin bread. Those really didn't last long and by Friday we were pretty well out of bread again. Diana had an overnight Girl Scout camping training thing this weekend and the Kinder Major had one of her friends over so Saturday I spent riding herd on three girl children and baking up a storm. No pictures here I'm afraid as Diana had taken the camera with her, but I made three more loaves of whole-wheat bread then three loaves of cinnamon/raisin/butter roasted pecan bread. Used some of the whole-wheat for making French toast for breakfast this morning which the kids went to town on.

Being modern twenty first century homesteaders we use electrical appliances like most everyone else does. A Bosch mixer kneads the dough for me and we have an impact type grain mill to convert wheat berries into flour. Twenty cups of flour takes about thirty minutes or so which is everything from measuring out the wheat to milling to cleaning the equipment and putting it away. Once in a while I do a loaf or two by hand to keep the feel for the thing, but even with the power equipment it's hard to find time to bake when it needs to be done.

There's just something about coming into a warm house redolent with the smell of rising dough and baking bread that really communicates that you're home. I recommend it to everyone.

.....Alan.