We had another frosty morning. With each day, winter steps closer.

Takuma 拓真 and Ena 枝那 are helping me bring in as many beans as possible before the big storms arrive tonight and tomorrow. They can’t figure out why I’m bothering picking the bean pods. They both take one and chew on it, but they are not impressed.

This afternoon we stopped at an old church on a hill above Silvana about thirty miles south of us. It’s a lovely little church and we’ve visited it several times before.

The church is surrounded by graves, and we saw this one of a Lars and Randi Larson. Behind their gravestone were the graves of four infant children who all died between the ages of one and three. It took my breath away. It was only a little over a hundred years ago, and yet the graves speak of a harsh life I can’t fathom. From Snohomish County Biographies Abstracts, I learned that both Lars Larson and Randi Rorstad were from Norway and were dairy farmers. They had some children live, and evidently their ranch ended up being one of the few farms in the state which was managed entirely by women. I’m guessing that once Lars passed away, Randi and her daughters kept the dairy farm going.

Dying at just 44 years, Lars Larson never saw his living children grow up. What was it like for Randi, to bury her young husband and one infant after another? I’m not sure who the father was of the children that came after Lars died. Did she wonder why she left Norway? A hundred years from now when people look back on how we live, they’ll probably say the same thing, and wonder how we survived living under such harsh conditions.

Winter’s first breath tinged the roof and grass this morning. It’s time to get serious about getting the rest of the garlic and shallots in the ground. Flocks of geese are heading south. I hear them long before I see them. What do they talk about as they fly overhead? Their conversations never end. “Are we there yet?” Is that what they are saying?

The morning frost is a reminder that in less than a month, the first of the swans will be flying in from the Arctic. You can feel the excitement in the air as the whole valley waits for them to arrive.

According to Steve Jones of the Washington State University Bread Lab in Mount Vernon, in the 1800s, the west coast of the US was a major wheat producing area of the country. There used to be 160 flour mills in Washington state, and more than 22,500 across the US. Now there are only about 200 flour mills for the entire country.

Fortunately, we have a local flour mill, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill in Burlington. When I stopped in this week to buy some whole wheat flour, the miller, Kevin Christenson, gave me a sample of their Hi Extracted Stoneground Washington Grown Espresso Hard Red Wheat. He told me the wheat came from a nearby farm south of Mount Vernon.

Yesterday I baked a loaf using this Espresso Hard Red Wheat, and we were very pleased with the bread. There isn’t much of it left today.

The term Hi Extracted means that most of the wheat kernel ends up in the flour. A kernel of wheat is made up of the bran, the germ, and the food for the growing plant. When milling wheat, millers usually remove the bran and the germ, and so they extract only a portion of the wheat kernel. The portion of the kernel which ends up in the flour, is called the extraction rate.

When you mill the entire kernel, you extract 100% of it, and end up with whole wheat flour. Kevin told me that the flour he gave me had an extraction rate of 85%, which means that some of the bran and germ are still in the flour. A typical bread flour has an extraction rate of 70% to 75%. You’ll find a more thorough explanation of flour extraction rates here: Tech. Note: High Extraction Flour

Heading out to deliver this week’s eggs to Tweets, I ran into the first casualty of this fall. Today’s wind had knocked over an alder, and it was blocking the lane. Fortunately, it was light and easy to move. It was so rotten inside, that it was just waiting for a gust of wind to push it over.