How in the World Does Sourdough, Planting a Garden, and Torrential Rain Have Anything to Do with Each Other?

They all happened this past week of April 21, 2025.

Sourdough Disaster

Sourdough is one of those baking techniques you either love or hate. Either way, if you have a sourdough starter in your life, it has a life of its own. After all, sourdough is a living creature. It resides either in your refrigerator or on the counter.

I use a dry method of sourdough and keep it in my refrigerator until I am ready to use it each week. Before leaving on my trip, I had made a mental note to put her into a narrow but tall jar and into the freezer so it would have a better chance of survival. My sourdough and I aren’t on a first-name basis, though some people name theirs.

Not only did I not put my sourdough starter in a tall, narrow jar, I also forgot to get her into the freezer. I like using a short, wide old glass container to house my sourdough. It’s just easier for me when I’m refreshing my sourdough and making my levain for sourdough treats.

The downfall is that if I ever leave the sourdough for too long, I cannot save it by scooping off the gray layer, also known as hooch, and keep going.

So yes, this means I started creating a new sourdough starter a few days after I returned home.

I do it a little differently than most.

• I only use freshly ground Einkorn flour.
• I let my starter form for about nine days.
• The last few days, I feed it morning and night.

Sourdough is one of our bread staples, so I better get back into the groove. Until the sourdough is ready, it will be yeast Einkorn breads for the homestead.

One of these days I will make Einkorn videos to let others fall in love with sourdough. The way I do sourdough isn’t my own, though I did tweak it a bit.

Planting the Garden Between Raindrops

Since we are in planting zone 5b/6, planting outside isn’t super important yet. We still get frost through the middle of May, and sometimes until the last week.

Before I left for my trip, I planted in the greenhouse as an experiment. It worked, which means more canning during the off-season, plus more growing and eating during the off-season. Fresh food, you gotta love it.

We started planting starter plants in the greenhouse for the outside garden, plus some root vegetables and strawberries in the hoops outside. That was all done between the raindrops.

We had intermittent rain all week and kept getting reports about a storm. A storm we were mindful of because we didn’t want to lose barn doors or have seeds washed away. Plus, we refused to be stuck in the greenhouse during a storm. It’s a little spooky.

We ended up planting about 100 starter plants and bare-root strawberries. We expanded our strawberry patch last year. It can probably hold another hundred plants, but we will wait until late summer to plant and use any runners. The only issue is that you usually can’t find strawberry plants in the fall at garden centers.

We planted about 50 pounds of potato seed, 100 onion starters, and started another 100 onions from seed, which we will transplant outside in about a month for a later crop.

This is a potato, onion, shallot, and sweet potato year.

Meaning we plant more and store through canning, dehydrating, and freeze drying for two years. Then, the following year, we grow enough just for the season and to store fresh. This allows us to concentrate every other year on large quantities of less variety of food.

Torrential Rain Storm

The rain hitting on Thursday didn’t surprise us. Before the storm, the animals ran to the barn. The skies were still clear, but the animals never lie.

Within moments, the wind gusted, and the rain came tumbling out of the clouds. We made it inside the house just in time.

Looking out at our neighbor’s property, we watched the green grasses disappear into a flowing stream of water. We saw our creek fill, the fields flood, and could only imagine how wet the barn was going to be.

It’s remarkable how much rain can fall from the sky in such a short period of time. One neighbor informed us we had received five inches of rain, according to his water gauge, in about half an hour.

The Damages

We didn’t lose any livestock.We didn’t lose any barn doors—we had locked them down before the storm hit.

The floodwaters filled the front inside of the barn. I refer to this as our “pool” this time of year. When we had ducks, they loved it. Yes, this has happened before.

Rick created a barrier, so the hay didn’t get affected by the water running through the barn and back outside.

The rain made it impossible for us to get any soil from the back of the barn. Even a few days later, I asked about soil for the garden and was told, "absolutely not! Plus, if you get the tractor stuck, you’ll be hand-feeding out round bales.”

The center of the greenhouse was wet, too, with the back side opening up to a muddy pool of water. The raised beds inside were fine, but now we wonder if some of the herbs will survive since their area is soaked. We shall see.

Since we couldn’t do much in the garden, barn, or greenhouse until the sun came out, we worked inside. Rick worked on the house and things in the barn, and I took the opportunity to start baking.

Next week, we will need to move the bull. This is always fun, especially as the cows are beginning to bag, which means calves will be born very soon.

Without a little chaos on the homestead, it would just be too boring. 🙂

Until next week. Enjoy, live, and breathe.