@Dawn_SD Four years ago my family stopped over in San Francisco on our way to my in law’s in Colorado. One thing I wanted to do, was buy bread from the Tartine bakery and so my hubby and I got up at 6, rode an Uber 20 minutes to the bakery only to find they don’t bake until later in the day! What the?!! Sourdough bread was only available to purchase in the afternoon! It was our last day so I missed out 
. Thankfully, the other thing on my wishlist was a dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, with my best friend which we got to enjoy. Happy memories. Good job on your loaf BTW. Bet that tasted great!
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In reply to my own comment. I couldn’t resist digging a third one (out of 5 in the first row I planted). There’s 1.7 kilos sitting on the scales from that plant.
Thanks for that generous offer @cathiemac. I’ll take you up on that offer one day. In the mean I’ve put bread making on the back burner until I catch up with my bees & a myriad of jobs that I’ve putting off.
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Jeff, I just scrolled up and saw your sweet potato harvest! Magnificent! I have lot of sprawly plants but haven’t dug around yet. I don’t expect anything much as I’m not great at keeping up with the watering.
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Thanks Cathie, I haven’t done much watering of the sweet potatoes, only at the start. We’ve had enough rain to not have to water. The trick with sweet potatoes is to trim the sprawly stuff off. I only leave about a meter of foliage on the plants. The other day I went wild & trimmed a lot of foliage where the rows meet, mainly so I can keep an eye on the plants in case rats start eating them from the top down to as far as they can reach. I’ve been proactive in catching them as soon as they turn up. As long as I maintain a good amount of wild bird mix in my trap, they get caught before they discover the sweet potatoes.
I went for about 3 months without catching any, then all of a sudden there was 2 in the trap. A male & female just about ready to start mating, assuming they start as adolescents. I’ve had the odd one since & as recently as the other day. I keep thinking about that pair, how it would be if I didn’t catch them.
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So what is your favorite dish made from these sweet potatoes Jeff? The variety we get in stores here is more of an orangey color…sometimes we use them for french fries…sometimes mashed with a layer of pecans on top.
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Impressive Dawn, we haven’t bought bread for decades…one of our bread staples is sourdough rye…freeze the sourdough starter between bread batches. I’m amazed at how many “sour” variations you can get just by timing the feeding of the starter over a week or so…or alternating the actual amounts of starter feed. Rye flour has an incredible amount of fibre in it.
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This morning the temperature was -31C and tonite it will likely tag -40C (which is the same as -40F)…guarantees no wax moth and SHB in our bee equipment. But it’s a wonderful time to be growing out my rose seeds in my basement from rose hybridizing efforts of last summer. Like beekeeping, it took me about a decade of experience to start getting repeatable/significant results. These seedlings are selected for fragrance, disease resistance, and floriferousness.
A purple, fragrant bouquet of different purple seedlings blooming in January under grow lights.
This non-fading yellow is producing 17 buds in it’s first bloom cycle…a record for me.
My basement setup:
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I created the starter from 50% pumpernickel (rye) flour. It still loves being fed that. It will tolerate ordinary unbleached white flour, but it much prefers a bit of whole wheat or rye. Quite a personality these wild yeast cultures have! 
We actually don’t like really sour breads, so I try to do a short fermentation of the leaven (levain) and a fairly rapid rise at around 80°F. That keeps the sourness down, but still gives a lot of flavour. 
Gorgeous roses! 
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Hi Doug, those roses are simply stunning. It’s good to see someone putting their basement & grow lights to good use. I can only imaging what minus 30-40C would be like. Sticking my head in my freezers wouldn’t do it. They’re set at only -18C.
I love these sweet potatoes roasted or pan fried. Also mashed with some sour cream, ginger & shallots. These have a white flesh. We also get the gold ones, which are quite common. We don’t go through the process of sweetening them up. We basically eat them as they come out of the ground, however still quite sweet & beautiful in a soup, especially mixed with yacon.
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I can’t grow the long season exotic foods like you so competently do…I must say I would love to experience the diverse produce abundance from your area. Most winters the frost will penetrate into the ground a long ways. The city water and sewage lines are buried at least 8ft deep to keep them from freezing…and on cold years with no snow cover, that isn’t sometimes deep enough. But when our seasons shift, growing conditions amplify because of our long hours of daylight…with often spectacular results. I live in a growing Zone 2 US. The cherries are sour cherries bred in Canada for cold climates.
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Wow! Sunflowers, corn, cherries and a little peach!! What a heavenly environment for bees. Thank you for sharing. 
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I’m replying to my sweet potato post because @Dawn_SD as well as @cathiemac will appreciate this. I have a photo following later on.
I glanced outside this morning to notice that my live rat trap had activated. Guess what was inside, a cane toad. The link being that I use cane toads as fertilizer., which the sweet potatoes feed on.
Half the cage was out of sight. Upon closer examination, guess what else was in there, a rat. The link being that I’m catching the rats to prevent them from eating the sweet potatoes. Plus I have a nice crop of sweet corn developing. Rats love them. The rat (the first one for a little while) also contributes as fertilizer.
cheers
PS. I think what attracts the cane toads to the trap is the cockroaches feeding on the wild bird mix.
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An autopsy of the very young rat revealed a pregnant young rat with 8 tiny embryos, only 6mils long. It’s always good to get those ones out of circulation.
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Wilma & I went fishing overnight on the night of the full & blood moon. Wilma took some photos. The first one is the moon rise at sunset.
This next photo is the start of the eclipse.
This is the sunrise.
cheers
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What a magical night that must have been! Thanks for the pics, Wilma & for posting, Jeff 
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Hi Eva, it was a magical night. It’s nice to get back out again after a nearly 7 year break from commercial fishing. My body told me that I could never go back to do what I used to do. Wilma loves it out there & gets excited to catch a fish. She caught the biggest one this time & caught 5 of the six fish we caught on our first trip 2 weeks ago. I caught a bigger fish this time, a puffer fish, the ones the Japanese rave about (Fugu) that poison x number of people each year. He got thrown back.
I used to commercial fish about 30 plus miles out. We only went 4 miles out. I have fished there in the past for an afternoons fishing & always caught fish with no shark problems. This time, the sharks are really bad, we couldn’t get a fish past them in the depth I used to fish in. We had to fish in a bit shallower water, where there were less fish & less sharks.
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I’m impressed (but not surprised) with Wilma’s catch 
and glad you took no risks with that puffer fish, and made it back home safely through shark-infested waters as they say! I grew up in a river & stream fishing family myself, but have been out for a handful of ocean fishing trips. I do love the water, all bodies of it and the coastal landscapes too. This summer I’ve arranged a family reunion trip to an old haunt in the Poconos that we haven’t been to in many years, and can hardly wait to cast a line for some trout.
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Hi Eva, Wilma was impressed with how pretty the puffer fish was. We finished the trip off in the shallowest part of the reef (7 fathoms), that was all we caught. We also saw a turtle at that spot. He/she briefly surfaced for air before diving down again.
When the weather’s good, it can be a real paradise out there. The Humpback wales are passing our area for the next few months, so hopefully Wilma will get to see some of those on our trips, which will be more likely when I venture further out, most likely next trip coming up on Wednesday. The out wide reef start at 19 n.miles out. We’ll go there & hopefully Wilma will see some whales & I’ll get to redeem myself.
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You are a sweet husband, @JeffH. I know that you don’t mind her success at all. That is why you call Wilma your “mentor”. Wonderful to see such a great relationship.
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Let’s not kid ourselves Jeff, you got the best catch of your lifetime… Wilma!
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