My Favorite Month.

Most people, it seems, sigh a collective groan in February. I get it. I mean, can you think of another month in which an entire country founded on rational thought suspends reality to anthropomorphize a rodent and infer his weather opinion? Yesterday it actually thundersnowed, Punxsutawney Phil. These waves of wintr’y weather the south has been blanketed with (predicted by the Farmer’s Almanac, I might add) makes it seem like it’s a long slog towards spring. Especially when the alarmists say things like “catastrophic” and “crippling” and things turn slushy; I’ve found that people everywhere have a special loathe for slush. To boot, I fear the mid-month love fest of Valentine’s Day can lose its sweet panache in slush, subsumed by Hallmark consumerism. I cringe a little when I see hearts and chocolates pushed just past New Year’s. Having been out (in the real world) infrequently this year though, and having no tv (and, would you believe it, no snow-shovel!), I’ve noticed less of that and am happy to celebrate the heart of it today, of course, for it’s lovely romanticism. I mean this IS True Love and Homegrown, after all! Annnnd, I was born in February, so in actuality I’m in the camp of February not being such a bad month at all. Don’t stop reading.

I am itching for spring, to be sure. And so I’ve searched for February’s signs of stirrings – listening for a green hum beneath all this white sog. For instance, I discovered the other day, a few little rootlets budding from the withered brown loop of hops that I’d hopefully dug up and carried from our old house! W was pleased – now we have to find a place to plant them where they can grow high! Our order of seeds came in from Baker Creek, and we’ve placed an order for several more fruit trees and flowering bushes (lilacs! hydrangeas!). Before this last snow hit, WV and I found strong green shoots (which WV trampled only a little) of either crocuses or daffodils beside the house – which just whets our anticipation of all the blooming and blossoming we will discover this spring at our new house. And, accordingly, we’ve been choosing spring reads…you know, to get the sap flowing.

So, think of it this way: February (in the Northern Hemisphere) exists to prove you’re strong. You can take it. You have survival in your blood. It’s a time to think and be creative (’cause flying piglets, sometimes you want to stay in to keep your snout from freezing). These cold moments will be interrupted with punches of warmth until all we have is spring coming on strong, with open windows, longer days, and fragrant breezes. Love your person today a little bit extra, or your baby, or yourself, or your four-legged friend, or whomever you think deserves a special reminder. And love ya, February!

This post was added to a collection at The Prairie Homestead’s Monday Homestead Barn Hop. and to Crafty Garden Mama’s linkup, Tuesday Greens.

Bread Circus.

On the tip of a farmer, I’ve been calling a bakery in Richmond to see if they have any expired bread for cheap. He said he could load a truck for $20. Apparently they let it pile up, then dole it out, first-come, first-served. It’s called Hog Feed bread, appropriately, and that’s what we wanted it for. Saturday, they had some.

W, WV, and I drove out to investigate. I walked into the bakery and the cashier said to go around back to the loading bay. She had propped a door open with a loaf of bread (ha!) and left us to fill up on our own. There were 6 bread-pallet stacks, about 8 feet high each, stuffed with loaves, buns, bagels, and pita flats. We hesitated, not knowing how to exactly start, then began bringing loaves to the car, stacking them into the trunk.

The cashier came back and I tentatively asked, “So, erm, how much will this be?” “Oh, 10 dollars, you don’t have a very big car.” So clearly, the only logical thing to do was just STUFF the car with bread – it was practically free and hey, we were there. We started an assembly line: I triple-loaded pallets, stacking the empties, and W carried them out to the car, lobbing them in. WV sat patiently in his car seat, saying, “Mmmm!” every time a loaf was added.

We didn’t stop. We were a car-bread-stuffing machine. Twenty minutes in, and since I couldn’t see the car from the loading bay door, I began to wonder, how much room we really had left. W said he had to close the trunk door and was throwing the bread into the back to fill it up. It was like one of those “how many folks can you stuff in a phone booth?” game shows. When the back seats were full, he rolled down windows to stuff in more, to prevent back-spillage. I went outside to observe – and the sight nearly made me pee myself. Our car was a cartoon-like bread wagon! WV was surrounded by a mountain of bread, clearly google-eyed over it and wanting to eat some. We couldn’t stop laughing.

Finally we stopped, concerned that the bread was becoming a hazard to driving.

Officer: Excuse me, do you know why I pulled you over?
W: No sir, I don’t.
Officer: You have a lot of bread in the car.
W: I didn’t know there was a limit on bread in VA.

Haha, we were dying laughing at scenarios like these all the way home.

WV fell asleep in his back seat bread kingdom, and we were able to count the loaves – 398!!! – as we unloaded them. Some were giant flats of 20-30 buns, clearly meant for more than individual/family use. And guess where they are stored? The old shed! This is an insane amount of bread. It fills half the floor space, piled nearly waist high. And can we just be reminded that it cost about 2 cents a loaf? More than a loaf a day for a year! I think we have unrealistic expectations of how long it will last (demon preservatives), but until it goes bad, the piggies and chickens are going to have a real treat. And we discovered, some of it had just expired yesterday – we ate some for lunch, but decided we find store-bought bread pretty dang disgusting. We did debate the merits of feeding our animals such bread and settled on the logic that we don’t really know the source of the ingredients in their bagged pellet food either…and this was originally meant for human consumption, so we’ll live with it. Foraging on grass is best, but it’s winter and we don’t have a fence set up yet for the pigs.

Feeling quite proud of our bread haul…need a bagel?…come on over!

It’s even inspired poetry (thanks Dad!):

A rumor of ten-dollar bread
(there were four hundred loaves, it was said)
made its way to New York
on the wings of the pork,
and now it is stored in the shed.

This post is shared with The Prairie Homestead’s Homestead Barn Hop and Oak Hill Homestead’s HomeAcre Hop.