We Turn Three

I missed the anniversary date, again.

A Belated Birthday Acknowledgement

The Suburb Farm newsletter was born Jan 5, 2022. The first post was about potatoes, the only comments were from IRL friends (thank you, love you), and the marketing strategy was

Phillip Otherhalf

texting and emailing the link to his contacts. Actually, marketing is largely unchanged, so it would be much appreciated if you could:

The second post was born of panic. I was confronted by the challenge of having started a gardening blog in January. I went outside in search of inspiration and saw only gray skies and snow. So, I wrote about the grayness and included garden photos.

That February, I included writing about odd traditions (Groundhog’s Day) and liturgical holidays (Candlemas, also February 2), because it was still winter and those are topics of interest to me. Most subsequent posts have given more than a nod to folklore, historical agrarian life, and the interlacing of seasonal rhythms and religious cycles of feasts & fasts. It was never a plan to add those topics; they just spilled into the writing from the rather large area they occupy in my brain. (Sometimes I wish they would scoot over to make room for organizational skills & improved short term memory, but so it is.)

In November 2022, I was invited to swap guest posts with a (sadly) now-retired just today reactivated Substack, Brunette Gardens. Lisa Brunette was one of the first writers to reach out on this platform. Writing about a mix of topics has meant getting to meet talented writers from different corners of this platform, and their mutual encouragement has buoyed me through patches of self-doubt and writer’s block.

There isn’t a predictable publishing interval yet (see lack of organizational skills), but I hope to remedy that this year. Summer of 2023, I managed a good run of weekly posts. Summer of 2024 yielded none. The most popular posts are those that have been included in Signs + Seasons, a curated newsletter focused on the liturgical year. The second most popular are the photo essays.

As of this posting, The Suburb Farm has over 300 subscribers! Thank you! I so appreciate the readers who’ve been here since the early days, as well as the newer subscribers who’ve managed to find us in a rising sea of blogs.

Photos

Some images from around the farm the past 3 weeks:

Listening for the buzzing of the winter cluster. Our highly scientific method of determining whether the bees are still alive. Loud buzzing confirmed!

Top L to R: Morning by the Christmas tree; Beehive in the garden corner; Beehive with snow cap. Bottom L to R: Another garden beehive; Dog who thinks we should all play in the snow all day; grapevines.

What’s left of a birds’ nest, perched above the move-in ready, but as yet unoccupied birdhouse (there’s an opening on the other side, lest you think that explains it).

Top L to R: Silly peach tree putting out buds; Lotta bunny tracks; Snowy peach tree. Mid L to R: Elder leaves; Yogurt making; Jack Frost's window art. Bottom L to R: Homemade ornament for sibling gift exchange; grapevines (sorry, repeat photo) & spot the beehive; Snow clinging to branches

Apiary in January, our Mary of the Bees

Prognostication approaches

This weekend brings the momentous day on which we in the U.S. learn our seasonal fate: an early Spring or 6 more weeks of Winter? If I were to hazard a guess, I would raise my cry for Spring’s early arrival, but that’s just today’s warm temperatures talking. It’s 45 F (7 C), there are bees flying in and out of the hive that gets the most direct sunlight, and there’s the dripping sound of melting snow to indicate a proper January thaw. The Old Farmer’s Almanac¹ tells me it will be cold here until late April, though, and my phone’s weather app has the chance of snow at 60% this weekend. This weekend also brings St. Brigid’s Day/ Imbolc on February 1st, the half-way point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. The hours of daylight are lengthening.

Have you seen early signs of season change where you live? Are you starting seeds yet? And friends in the southern hemisphere, what are you growing and harvesting these days?

May the groundhog choose wisely.

—Erin, in Michigan

As promised, paid subscribers can access this month’s recipe below: Decadent Winter Sweet Potato Bread.

I enjoy testing, adjusting, & reworking recipes for baked goods. This recipe was the result of a counter full of sweet potatoes and repurposing leftovers.

Don’t worry, I won’t make you read through the legend of Great-Great-Aunt Gertrude, who brought this recipe to her new homeland on torn scraps of paper sewn into her petticoat seams, thereby thwarting both her greedy baker/ landlord back home across the ocean and the Ellis Island official who would surely have stolen it for his sister’s cookbook manuscript. Nor will I make you scroll past the origin story and detailed description of each ingredient, even though I think you’d enjoy knowing that the first record of sweet potato cultivation was in Peru over 2 1/2 millennia ago, that they are related to the morning glory vine, and that we can thank George Washington Carver for their elevation to popular Thanksgiving side dish. Thankfully, though, I am no food blogger, and I don’t have an Aunt Gertrude, so we’ll get straight to the recipe.

Decadent Winter Sweet Potato Bread/ Muffins

Ingredients

Sweet potato mixture

2-3 medium-sized sweet potatoes (enough to make 2 cups when mashed)

½ cup salted butter

½ cup milk (or half & half for extra decadence)

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Additions to make batter

1 cup sugar

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

3 eggs

1 cup sunflower oil

1 ¾ cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon cardamom

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

Prepare mashed sweet potatoes:

Poke holes in the potato skins with a fork.

Bake the potatoes for about an hour at 400 degrees. The skin should be puffing up by the time you remove them.

Cool enough to remove the skins without burning yourself.

Melt butter & milk on stovetop in a pot on medium heat.

Cut potatoes into cubes, add them to the stove pot, and mash well.

Once the mixture has a smooth texture, add pepper.

Mix together in 1 large bowl:

2 cups mashed sweet potato mixture

All other ingredients to make batter

Pour

Into greased loaf pan (8.5 x 4.5 or 1.5 Qt), with or without parchment paper

Or into muffin tin(s), greased or with cupcake liners

Sprinkle extra brown sugar on top before baking

Bake

At 350 degrees for 80-90 minutes (bread) or 20 minutes (muffins)

Eat warm, preferably with butter.

Link to printable recipe

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