Angel, our beautiful Great Pyrenees, is pregnant. She seems to be about 35-40 days into the pregnancy and we are so excited about the coming puppies. Many of the puppies are already spoken for and that helps us to plan for puppy sales. We will train several of the pups to guard chickens from an early age. Most likely Angel will whelp in the barn with the chickens so that the puppies will come to think of the chickens as litter mates. We’ll have some great picture ops once that takes place. We are guessing that she will have between 6 and 10 pups. For those of you who have been, or are pregnant through sweltering summer weather here is a picture you can appreciate!

If you're interested in one of Angel's puppies, please let us know!

"Good to the Grain"

If you enjoy baking with whole grains and enjoying fresh seasonal food like we do, you will love Kim Boyce's excellent cookbook Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. Boyce is a trained pastry chef with experience at famous restaurants like Spago and Campanile, but her recipes are accessible for the average cook and I guarantee you will be inspired by what you find in this book.

The book covers flours including whole wheat, amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, kamut, oat, quinoa, rye, spelt, and teff. I appreciated how Boyce explained the characteristics of each flour and how to use it without getting a dense or tough product. I've been frustrated in my past efforts to translate white flour recipes to whole grain, but Boyce takes the guess work out of it.

If nothing else, you'll certainly enjoy the beautiful food photography in this book and the author's reflection on different grains. I love books that make it easier to eat healthy, beautiful and delicious food, and this book certainly advances those three goals.

If you decide to read the book and try any of the recipes, please let us know! You can get a variety of whole grains (including, at the time of this writing, white wheat, kamut, oat groats, and spelt) as well as various natural sweeteners and baking needs at the Farm Shop. Happy baking!

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