Meet Amy Halloran

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I met Amy Halloran’s book about 10 minutes before I met Amy. I arrived at the Grain Gathering last summer, and with a few moments to spare before a bread-baking session, I wandered over to the book tent. What’s new in the world of baking? I wondered as my fingers brushed over the myriad volumes filled with recipes and techniques. Then I stopped. I was peering down at a copy of The New Bread Basket, and this book seemed completely different. A soft-covered, thin-spined book that featured a photo of stalks of grain rather than finished loaves of bread, … Read more

Barley Day

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Standing in the field, there was silence before the rains came. It was just me and the plant for a moment—everyone else in the distance—and the plant, barley, was hooded and free. It poked in the wind against a six-row neighbor, and begged the question: Why don’t you need more of me? The plant breeders were about to pull up behind, talking all their homozygosity and double haploid smack. But first they’d grab another beer from the station set up for swilling in the field. They are a thirsty lot, these plant breeders, especially on #BarleyDay. I looked back … Read more

Overproofed

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Life sets a pace. For all of us, we wake each day to a condition of expansion and simultaneous contraction. Life gives us dichotomous opportunities to push ever outward, and then snaps us back into our selves as our essence tugs around the edges of our experiences. It is in this luscious ferment of each new day that we grow and our lives become full. Sometimes we rise up to our day slack-jawed with internal heat. Other days we crawl towards an imaginary finish line through the motions of what’s before us. Most of the time we realize that … Read more

On Seeing and Being Seen or How Toast Carries Us

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It’s early morning. Light is starting to filter through the shades drawn low to keep the cool night Oregon air inside. You hear the first signs of the household stirring. You’re alone with the ovens firing behind you and dough on the counter ready to go in. This is open before you:   from Citizen, Part V by Claudia Rankine   In line at the drugstore it’s finally your turn, and then it’s not as he walks in front of you and puts his things on the counter. The cashier says, Sir, she was next. When he turns to … Read more

Stone Punk Diary by Rob Salvino

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The second time I met Clif Leir he was covered in dust and taking a break from grinding grooves into a thirty-inch round piece of pink grey granite. The granite was to become the bottom stone of a flour mill he was building for a friend. When assembled and operating, wheat would travel in the grooves—known as furrows—and get sheared into progressively smaller pieces by the top stone that rotated over the bottom stone. Building the mill was precise, hard work—the type of work that I sensed Clif loved to do. The first time I met Clif was at … Read more

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