Oh please God, give me a laying hen.

There’s a house, a few streets over, equipped with a rooster. I’m not sure if there are hens also, but I hear that proud and cocky little rooster singing his song from time to time and it’s enough to drive me berserkers. I’ve been begging RW to build me a little chicken coop so I can keep two laying hens alongside the studio, in the raspberry patch. He has yet to acquiesce to my (annoying) demands.

Can someone write him a letter and explain, in full, what fresh eggs would mean to me and how I could dress up even niftier, from day to day, as a wee and bedraggled country orphan who has nothing to her name but a mangy set of barnyard foul. Just imagine! I could walk those ladies down the country lanes on a set of patent red leather leashes…I could put one in my basket on my bike and tour around town! If I only had a few skinny chickens to tend, my world would be a better place. I’m sure of it.

On other farmy topics, I made bread yesterday. It rose robustly whilst RW and I clipped perennials in the garden and trimmed the lilacs.

On a related topic, there’s a wonderful lady

I do not know who lives down the street

and is the keeper and arranger of the

Gypsy Garden. I think she is actually

a titled landscape artist. Her gardens are amazing.

She inspired my lilac trimming this spring for

hers are trimmed like topiaries and rather resemble

Truffula Trees when they are

in bloom — tall, willowy stalks with a puff of

purple blossoms on top. I love the way they look

and mine will follow suit this year though I think

the look may be achieved after a few years of

dedicated trimming…I’m patient. Kind of.

Alright. Back to the bread.

I always think about how I want all of YOU to bake your own bread, while I’m kneading a lump of dough on the counter top here at The Gables. I think about sharing my recipe with you but I don’t really follow a recipe. I’m not even sure how much flour I use — I mix my dough by touch.

This is all to say, you should bake your own bread.

That sounds bossy, but if I explain to you why I bake MY own bread, perhaps it will inspire you to do so as well!

1. I bake bread because I like the feel of dough. When I flip a lump of the stuff out of my mixing bowl and onto the counter and begin to knead, it feels incredible under my hands. It’s warm and extremely flexible beneath my fingertips. The surface is elastic feeling. Dough is puffy. Dough is soft but firm. Simultaneously. I like the way it flows, somewhat. If the consistency is perfect, I can mold it into a roundish lump but if I leave it for a few seconds, it gently puddles. It’s fleshy. This is all to say that working dough with my bare hands is a very sensory experience.

2. My mother baked bread when I was growing up. She’d whip up HUGE batches of bread and buns. Somedays I’d walk home from school for lunch and find fresh bread and fantastic homemade soup for lunch (My mother is the queen of soup from scratch. I don’t care what you say. Yours is NOT as good.) We’d eat some of that bread hot and fresh and she would freeze the rest in one of our huge freezers. Her mother before her knew how to bake bread. And her mother’s mother baked bread. I feel connected to those women, my matriarchal lineage, when I bake bread. I’m not feeding farm hands. I’m not taking meals out to the men in the fields or feeing a handful of kids around a small kitchen table but I feel like I’m keeping my heritage alive. The only thing that could make me feel more connected to the women who came before me is if the flour I use for baking originated in the wheat fields of the Thoen homestead in Saskatchewan. It’s probably best that my flour doesn’t come from The Farm, I’d be crying into my mixing bowl from the sentimental nature of the situation. All the time.

Bottom line: I think baking bread, from scratch, is a rite of passage for a gal. It’s ok if you don’t, but life is more full if you do!

3. I like to take the time.

Mixing dough takes me mere minutes.

But waiting on two rises takes a couple of hours.

I like having to commit two and a half hours of my life

to warming up my home with an oven,

using my hands and my heart,

physically mixing dough on a counter top,

setting a bowl in the sunlight on the kitchen table

and wandering off to garden or read a book while I

I like to take the time.

I like to slow things down.

Have you been in a house when bread is baking?

The scent that fills the air is utterly mouth watering.

Hot fresh bread is like mana from heaven, but made with mortal human hands.

Bless it.

And bless the work of a bread maker’s hands.

Now go find yourself a recipe.

Do not fear the yeast.

Knead.

Feel the dough.

Set a timer.

Oven at 420F. Twenty two minutes.

Smell that baking bread!

And eat it with butter and plum jam (if you have some).

Happy Monday to you all!

Didn’t it take FOREVER for the sun to rise this morning?

xxxxxxxx

Jillian Susan

PS I finished this on Friday:

The Heart of Gold Belt Buckle.

For a beautiful woman on the hunt for a heart of gold…

…in the Etsy Shop tomorrow!