Baking day for the farmer's market today, Tiny passes and swirly rye sourdough bread, yay!!

Yesterday started with Booboo and I making sponge for the sourdough rye bread we were to make to fill orders for the farmer's market.  We have gone to using only milk kefir, water kefir or a combo of both to make the sponge in place of the water we would have normally used in it.  We have found we have remarkable rise and success with the new recipe.  Oh, and it helps use up the excess kefirs.  We got it going shortly after Bible time so it had a good long time to sponge in the rye flour and get good rise.  I went in and fed Tiny shortly after.  I was feeding her and for the first time I got her to eat really good. I even was able to squeeze the bottle a little and she ate even better.  I made a mistake of letting off the pressure from squeezing while the bottle was still in her mouth the last time before I quit feeding her.  She began screaming it was a cry of shear pain.  I couldn't console her and knew that something was terrible wrong.  I finally got her to quiet and on her last scream I noticed the problem and knew from raising many many a puppy that it was a death sentence to our little piglet.  She had a completely cleft hard palette in her mouth.  You could see up into her entire sinus cavity.  I have tried many at time to save puppies, mostly Pekingese, when I was breeding them in the 90's, and all came to a sad end at birth or at about a month old.  It is not survivable in puppies and I am sure less so in piglets.  Poppie and I decided that we would let the girls, and grands, love and cuddle her but we would go longer feed her so she would slowly drift off.  She was content the rest of the day in their arms and passed quietly in the night having fulfilled her special duty.  She was surely sent from God to help the children recover from the pain of Tillie's horrible death.  The Lord be praised for his mercies and Grace. 

The sourdough raised up good so we added the flours, oil, molasses and salt.  That's it that's all we put in it.  Oh, I lied to make it swirl I had to add cocoa powder to half the dough.  We let the two doughs rise again and then we started the most fun part, swirling it together.  We rolled the lighter dough out into a big rectangle and then rolled the dark dough right over it into it's on rectangle. We rolled it all up together into on big roll and then sliced it into six loaves, okay so 9 year olds don't divide 6 even loaves, so they vary in sizes a bit, okay a big bit.  I helped her roll them into nice loaves and we baked them.  We let them cool over night and this morning bright and early we sliced one.  Yay, success, it is wonderfully swirled into lovely light and dark sourdough rye bread.  Hurrah for simple pleasures, or things that make us simple people happy.  So we, Booboo, Yogie and I eat swirled rye sourdough toast and milk kefir banana, avocado smoothies for breakfast.  NO, chemicals no bad for us poison in our diets, almost self sufficient or as self sufficient as people on a one acre farm can be..... more than most I am guessing with our veggies, goats, pigs, chickens and rabbits...

I started a ginger beer plant yesterday.  I know purest will say it is not actually a ginger beer plant but it is as close as you can get and some debate it I the same.  I mixed water kefir, fresh grated ginger, sugar, molasses and water.  I have to feed it ginger and sugar daily for 8 days to turn it into ginger beer plant but I can't wait to see how it comes out.  I will have milk kefir, water kefir, sourdough, and ginger beer plant, all yeast bacteria mushrooms as my beginning cultures.  Oh, and I have a mother vinegar growing and maybe will retry kumbacha.  My friend Belle calls them 'counter cultures' but I think with respect to the meaning of the term, I will call mine the 'cultures of my counter'.

I pray for the Lord's glory to come into your life so he can have a relationship with you....tomorrow.