When Life Isn’t Quite What You Thought
Well. Here we are. August 19th. In April I had a plan to blog once a week all summer long. My last blog post was April 29th. So…that’s how that went…HA!
Even though I didn’t keep up with blogging, I’ve been gentle with myself, and on the farm, grace abounds! Life has a way of being other than you thought it would be. Not bad. Not a failure. Not a waste of time. Not poor planning. Not poor follow through. Just different. And that’s okay. Each year, I tell myself “Next year will be easier because X, Y, Z.”, or “Next year I’ll do better because I won’t have X, Y, Z on my plate”, or “I will set aside all the extra stuff next winter and make a really solid plan to set myself up for the best, most productive summer ever”. Have you said the same things? I am being gentle and having grace with myself. From now on, I want to say to myself “It's okay that this year wasn’t quite what I thought. It’s still a good year and I am doing a good job.”. Full stop. Grace abounds. Want to join me in that?
We’ve had an incredibly busy summer with farm events and farm life. We had weekly volunteers from Hope Haven, a day program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We put in a lot of infrastructure including tearing down an old house (in preparation for an orchard) and building up the garden infrastructure (including drip irrigation, fabric ground cover and the installation of perennial fruits and vegetables). We’ve hosted more than twenty camp sets through Hipcamp. We planted hundreds of plants and have been harvesting produce from the garden. We’ve picked hundreds of dozens of eggs. We’ve done lots of small building projects and lots of BIG grove clearing projects. We hosted 57 people at our first ever live music event. We hosted camping groups from Scouting America and Girl Scouts. We hosted a play group with guest farm animals in the spring and a group from FriendsLink a group of adults with disabilities from Augustana University. This list doesn’t include the family and personal things we have done. It’s exhilarating. It’s exhausting. We are so grateful for this life and the land we get to steward.
As I mentioned, more regular blogging is a goal of mine as we continue our farm adventure. Like many blogs, I plan on sharing various things from the farm including stories, the tips and tricks we’ve learned and use along the way, pictures, updates about our business, non profit and family life, and recipes from our kitchen.
One (staple) recipe we made and shared at a farm event this week is one I want to share with you today. It’s our famous and family fave Focaccia bread. The relatively simple and delicious dense loaf with a supple and moist top thanks to a thinly sliced layer of garden tomatoes, olive oil and Italian herbs and seasoning is nearly fool proof and will wow everyone you share it with. It’s very likely you have the ingredients on hand (if you’re like me and store the Costco bag of instant dry yeast in your freezer). Of course, with all recipes you can omit the minor ingredients and add things you love. Without further Ado, here’s our first blog recipe.
Specialty Crop Focaccia
For the Dough:
1 Tbsp Dry Active Yeast
1 Tbsp Kosher Salt
3 C. Warm Water
6 ½ C. All Purpose Flour
Mix yeast, salt and water and let sit for about 5 minutes. Then add flour and mix well (this dough will be a little bit shaggy). Cover and let sit on the counter or in a warm place for 2 hours. Grease two ¼ sheet pans (or large deep baking dishes) with olive oil. Using wet hands (to keep the dough from sticking) divide the dough evenly among the two pans. With wet hands again, press your fingertips gently into the dough to distribute to an even thickness through the pan. Let rise for 30 minutes on the counter.
For the Topping:
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 tsp Garlic Salt
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Italian Seasoning
2-4 Thinly Sliced Tomatoes
Kosher or Flake Salt to finish
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Thinly slice your tomatoes (you can use any kind you like but you’re going to need a pretty good pile of them). Drizzle the top of your focaccia loaf with olive oil. Sprinkle garlic salt, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning evenly over the top. Lay your tomatoes in a single layer across the top of your focaccia. Sprinkle the tomatoes with kosher or flake salt. Bake your focaccia at 450 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. When the corner of your bread can easily be lifted from your pan and hold shape with a golden brown color, and the top of the bread looks “dry”, it’s finished! If you have a thermometer, the cooked bread should be 200 degrees. Focaccia is delicious and versatile! You can eat it plain, use it for sandwiches, pizza crust or dip it into olive oil and Italian herbs. Enjoy!