Journal Entry

Winter has finally returned after about a month's absence. We received about 4" of snow last week and with it arrived colder weather. It continues to snow - there is a pretty decent snow cover now and with the deep snow cover on clear nights it has been below 0. We have a good supply of firewood and with the furnace heating the wood shop which is on the northwest of the house to 45 degrees , we haven't even had to use the house furnace yet.

The kids continue to read and do their school work, mingling in ample time to play in the snow. The boys finished reading a book on Davy Crockett and are now reading Up From Slavery. They get to pick their fictional reading, which I notice has been trending toward Louis L'Amour stories. Of course, each day they do their math assignment as well as a writing assignment.

I have been reading to them a book by Bruce Chadwick entitled "The First American Army". It is a good story on some of the men fighting under Washington. I was delighted to discover a new American hero named the Revered Ammi Robbins.

He was a Congregationalist pastor that pastored in Connecticut. I did a bit of research on him and I believe his family traveled across the ocean aboard the Mayflower. Many of the Robbins men were pastors and eventually held offices at various colleges. Rev. Robbins volunteered to serve as a chaplain, enlisting four different time in spite of the horrific things he endured as a chaplain. He was with Arnold's troops during the disastrous campaign to invade Canada. He labored among men dying of small pox and was sick several times himself. He was a very revered chaplain who went beyond the call of duty in comparison to most chaplains.

He left behind a journal which seems to no longer be in print. This book quotes the journal often and I would love to get a hold of a copy. He had a great love for the troops and at times was able to preach before crowds of thousands. He was often praised for his powerful preaching, to which he replied "May I be more concerned to please God and less to please men." He was advised to not reenlist due to his health, yet he was moved with compassion due to the plight of the men and their need for prayer. At a visit to the hospital at Ticonderoga, he remarked "Never was such a portrait of human misery as in these hospitals." He prayed with them and preach with them, urging them to "Be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer."

Our hens continue to lay well. We are preparing to deliver some eggs to a neighbor that has an incubator. The neighbors 4-H projects require birds for showing at the fair this fall to be born this year. So we are going to take 3 dozen eggs and see if any birds hatch. This family has a lot of knowledge in raising birds and it sounds as if they were surprised to hear how well they were laying and how quickly they reached a nice butcher weight (for a dual purpose heavy breed.)

It's in the dead of winter, but I have started getting seed catalogues already. I love the cold and snow but I did notice that I was looking at the one of the spring catalogues the other night! Thinking of spring got me thinking about hunting for mushrooms. Mmm!

Wheat, flour, bread

For thousands of years, bread has been a staple food product for people all over the world. Scores of different grains have been harvested and ground in some form or another to create a flour with which bread can be made. With the augment of the bakery evolving into the industrial food industry, the art of grinding whole wheat flour and baking fresh bread soon was lost, first to the wealthier class and finally to all but a few.

We recently purchased some different kinds of grains and a grain mill so that we could try to make our own breads and noodles. Rachel has tried a few different recipes, using different varietes of wheat, with some working well and others not working so well. I have yet to try my hand at making a loaf, although I hope too soon.

There are a lot of steps required to turn wheat into bread. It first has to be harvested and then the kernels need to taken from the stalk. The kernels then need to be ground into a flour. Our ancestors took a handful of stalks and beat them upon ground to separate the kernels from the head. The kernels were then ground by hand, simply by beating the wheat with a stone, which was first operated by hand until the stone mill was invented.

We chose a more modern method - we bought a Bosch Grain mill that utilizes an electric current! Some of the kneading can be done by the Kithcen Aid. After the dough is ready, we put it in an electric stove and bake it until its fragrance demands that we take it out! (Now that we can fancy ourselves to be fine agrarian bakers, we have to admit that our skills are made possible by the power lines outside!)

The kernel consists of three parts, the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. All three parts have a specific nutrient function. Bread available commercially typically uses white flour, which is made specifically of the endosperm. The governments mandatory enrichment program insists in adding back some of the nutrients that are lost, but there can be no denying that a loaf of bread made out of whole wheat flour is more nutritious and more flavorful. The dawning of the of commercial food production is actually a rather interesting study. We invented so many "helpful" techniques in commercializing the production of foods that it was noticed in the 20's and 30's that people were suffering from poor nutrition. The government finally determined that they had better step in an require certain food products, like flour and milk, to be enriched.

There was a time when bread baking was a staple part of the domestic life. It's fascinating to observe that in our age of knowledge and information that most of us have no idea how to turn a kernel of wheat into a loaf of bread. Most of us don't have the time to take to make it. We load up with bread from the super market, with its plastic wrapping and 100 ingredients that are difficult to pronounce.

Last Saturday, the house smelled of fresh bread. Three of the four loaves are pictured above. I fear that they have somehow mysteriously disappeared!