An Alternate Lifestyle, plus a wedding…

Before I left Berkeley to come up north for the summer, I found a book in a Little Free Library (love them) in my neighborhood. The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking was published in 1984 and was, according to ChatGPT, the “bread bible” of that era.

I was interested largely because my mother was an excellent cook and a baker and served us exclusively home baked whole wheat bread, so it brought back warm and delicious memories for me. Her bread baking preceded the sourdough craze (which I joined in during the pandemic) but, unlike many sourdough breads available at fancy bakeries today, was always made with whole grain flour and not processed white flour. As I started reading the book, I realized that it is as much about an alternate approach to life as it is about baking bread. Baking bread provides the lessons of patience, persistence, self-sufficiency, good health from natural foods, and the value of learning a new skill. I was charmed by the reminder of these values, many of which I have allowed to atrophy or possibly never had, in particular patience, self-sufficiency and persistence.

Living in a food haven like the Bay Area, there is little incentive to become self-sufficient. And with Amazon deliveries and so many conveniences at hand, patience is generally unnecessary. Living on Galiano Island isn’t that different in that we also have food options (although we’ve had four restaurants close down since last summer) and Amazon Canada but there is a different pace, fewer urban distractions, and more of a culture of self-sufficiency including vegetable and flower gardens, home cooking and baking, as well as fishing, catching crab, scallops, and even abalone from the Salish Sea (it helps to have a boat).

The whole-food hippie ethos that existed back in the sixties and seventies is more alive and well here on Galiano than it is around the Bay where tech and optimization are the values that seem to have won out for now, though I do have friends with home gardens and fruit trees who bake bread (shout out to Cecilia and Paul). A small sampling of Galiano offerings that promote self sufficiency include the community nettle harvest and cooking workshop, a community sewing and mending cafe, appliance repair days, and the Galiano seed bank.

Our first project after I arrived at the end of May was to build raised beds for veggies, which we did manage to complete. John and I hauled three cubic yards of soil and manure down the hill to fill them up and then we searched and found enough starts and seeds to get them planted.

So this summer, my goal is to get myself closer to this culture by becoming knowledgable about vegetable gardening, attempting to make whole grain breads (not necessarily sourdough) as tasty as my mother’s, and spending more time in the ocean both kayaking and swimming and hopefully grabbing a few of those tasty sea creatures for our dinner table. As I turn my attention to these pursuits, it dawns on me that each one takes a surprising amount of effort, practice, and know how. That’s where the need for persistence comes in, something I have always been short of. As I educate myself about what creating a high yield garden entails, I find myself starting to think “is it worth all this effort?” Hopefully, I can get past that and learn to plough on.

My friend Angela has had a chuckle watching me and John and her good friends Heidi and Cris, who bought a property with a vineyard and other crops. As Angela summed it up with just a tad of her sardonic wit, “Now everyone’s a farmer.” Not hardly, but I appreciate the humor of us retirees having our own “back to the land” moment. Perhaps it is a mostly healthy reaction to “the world out there.”

I wrote those paragraphs a couple weeks ago and my various efforts were then interrupted by a trip to attend Fraser and Julia’s wedding at her family’s beautiful ranch in the mountains of Colorado. The weather was gorgeous and a good time was had by all.

Heading to the reception, brews in hand

It was a multi-day celebration for Fraser and Jae and their wedding party who spent the week before the wedding riding horses, playing pickleball, fishing, and generally having a great time on the ranch, hosted by Julia’s parents, Anya and Howard, and sisters, Kate and Paula. Kelsey, Garet, and baby Winter were there as well and Kelsey got her wish of a horseback ride every day of the week, an experience that took her back to her teenage riding days. I learned that she has a dream of someday having horses of her own so let’s hope she gets a job she likes when her residency is finally over next year so she can start saving toward that goal.

Kelsey in her element

Little Winter in his wedding finery

We’re now back on the island. The day after our return last week, three orca swam by the house in what was possibly the most beautiful sighting since we got here. Seeing them makes me feel so lucky and as though I am in exactly the right place in the world. By now, the lettuce has grown enough that I think we can have our first homegrown salad, although tomatoes won’t be ready until the end of the summer and avocados aren’t happening here ever (but luckily are readily purchased). Next up: baking that first loaf and heading back into the chilly water for some open water swimming, with or without my wetsuit. Tally ho!

Not exactly mermaid material…