How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex? — Julia Child

With so many rumors going around about bread and how evil it is, it was tragic to us to see the Staff of Life regarded as the End of Life. Bread has been framed! So, we set out to clear its name.

Most of the imposter "bread" you can buy today is:

It's no surprise that eating a barely fermented, chemically saturated cake day after day will make you gain weight and lose health.

We set out to do things simply, properly, naturally, decently, nutritionally, and healthily.

At the Harvest Haven Hearth, Heaven meats Earth. We make an honest and humble loaf that is amazingly good and nourishes the body. We use a few simple earthy ingredients and good old-fashioned wood fire to make a heavenly loaf of bread.

Our Country Loaves are made with only quality Granderized water, organic flour, and natural salt.

Our water is pure and revitalized.

Our flour is always 100% organic.

Our salt is always fresh sea salt hand-harvested from the cleanest waters available.

There are no sugars, oils, eggs, dairy products, thickeners, fortifiers, preservatives, or agricultural/industrial chemicals in our bread.

We leaven our bread with an old-fashioned sourdough culture that we've been nurturing for nearly a decade.

The dough is very wet and ferments for 18 hours before baking, which facilitates a very industrious and robust microbiological community.

We bake the bread in a traditional brick, wood-fired oven. Using a hot mass of brick to bake the bread instead of hot air (like most ovens) creates an unmistakably excellent loaf. We'd be glad to explain the biophysics, but you'll know it if you try it!

Our customers are very happy. The bread is incredibly good and lots of folks who thought they were gluten intolerant have found out they were just "lousy bread" intolerant, and you know we don't tolerate lousy bread either!

We survived strawberry season for another year. We had just the right number of berries for our customers.

Most of the weeding in the gardens is done, too. Now, we wait for everything to mature.

The pastured poultry pens are finished and ready for the broilers, which will be moved into their new mobile homes shortly.

The guys continue to work on the berm layer barn. Water and electrical lines are trenched in and support posts are in place. This is an interesting project, popular in other parts of the world, though not that common in America.

Peaches have been added to the shelves of fresh BC fruits in the store, along with blueberries and apricots.

This may be the last week for cherries.

If you would like anything in cases, please let us know.

The garlic scapes have been harvested and ready for you to add to stir fry or make pesto.

Green garlic and Walla Walla onions are super good.

The baby beets look lovely. And it's time to enjoy those beet greens.

Who can resist new potatoes with fresh dill and cream?

We have many Harvest Haven certified and certified organic products, all of which we have tried and most of them we use regularly.

In each issue of the Happenings, we'll pick a few favorites, give a brief description, and suggest recipes for them, which you'll find in The Recipe Box below.

Our Farm Favorites this time are the ingredients for making your own pizza. And who doesn't love pizza?

Harvest Haven Sourdough Pizza Crust – Martin made a couple of pizza crusts from his sourdough bread dough just to see if there was any customer interest. There was! Those who purchased the crusts came back for more saying they were excellent.

The crusts are partially baked in the wood-fired oven, so all you do is oil a pan, place the crust on the pan, cover with your favorite toppings, bake at 375° F for 15 minutes, and broil a bit to brown the cheese. And enjoy!

Eden Organic Pizza Pasta Sauce – This is a flavorful thick spreadable sauce made from organic heirloom Italian Roma and Napoli tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and non-irradiated herbs and spices. Perfect for pizza.

L'ancetre Cheeses – These delicious organic cheeses come in a variety of flavors and are great for mixing different ones on pizza or in any of your favorite cheese dishes. A nice combination is shredded Swiss Emmental, grated Marbled Mild Cheddar, and sliced or grated Mozzarella.

Harvest Haven Smoked Turkey Breast – This thinly sliced deli meat is great in a sandwich and excellent spread on pizza. One of our very favorites.

Native Forest Pineapple Chunks – Organic pineapple chunks packed in unsweetened juice are a nice addition with the smoked turkey breast on pizza. Besides chunks, you can get Native Forest Pineapple Slices for tasty desserts.

Harvest Haven Beef Pizza Pepperoni – Thinly sliced pepperoni slices give your pizza pizzazz. You'll love it.

Garlic Scapes – Freshly-harvested garlic scapes can be eaten so many ways: chopped into a salad, added to stir-fry, spread on your pizza, made into pesto, just anywhere you want a mild garlic flavor.

Organic BC Peaches – Summertime and the peaches are lovely. Eaten fresh or made into a delectable dessert, peaches are special.

Please note, all ingredients in our recipes are organic.

Wood-fired Sourdough Pizza

Pizza! Pizza!

When Jonathan videoed the opening of our new store, he included a shot of a pizza coming out of the wood-fired oven, intending to publicize the oven, not to sell pizza. That was dinner for us and our friends the evening of the opening. We're sorry for that oversight.

So many people saw that clip and came to the store asking for pizza. Most of those didn't want anything else – just pizza. And some were frustrated and even argumentative when we weren't serving pizzas.

Finally, in frustration Martin had Jonathan remove the pizza clip from the video.

Konstantijn showed me this funny little LEGO Pizza Delivery video. It quite aptly illustrates people's consuming appetite for pizza.