I’m hanging up my baker’s peel for a brief respite. Looking forward to some idle time to rest, reflect and rejuvenate.
It’s gratitude I feel when I think over the past year: gratitude for the friendships, kindnesses, support and laughter I’ve shared with members of the Happy Monk community. The customers, the partners, and generous with words of support and substantial assistance.
Baking can be a solitary profession. Hours of mixing dough, shaping and baking in the early hours. It’s lonely and physically demanding. Tiring, too! But the reward is handing over a fresh loaf of bread, catching the smiles and warm wishes. The image of people slicing into their loaves, setting them out on the table or toasting them for breakfast.
Friends made through baking bread — those new and old — have been the highlight of my year, and they always will.
What a year it’s been!
It’s been a productive year! We’ve mixed, shaped and baked almost 3,000 loaves, not including test-bakes and one-offs, like the 300 hamburger buns for a beautiful Pender Island wedding this summer. We’ve provided some upgrades for Mildrith, the wood-fired oven, introduced new equipment. We also fixed some of the back-end business functions to make operations smoother, more accurate and more business-like.
A strange year, too! We baked through an exceedingly hot summer and (so far) record-setting rainfall this autumn. Despite a COVID pandemic, we Penderites have done well. We still miss physical proximity, socializing, hugging, yes. But our lives have not been devastated the way they have in other parts.
The Happy Monk Baking Company will be three years old this March! By that time, we’ll be well beyond 7,000 loaves of bread baked and sold. Orders for the first Happy Monk bake were 14. Nowadays, we’re making between 75 and 80 and could do much more if we baked a second day during the week. Or, perhaps, augmented the operation with an electric oven. 1.
It takes a community
It takes a community of souls to keep a small business like the Happy Monk Baking Company thriving. Through hands-on assistance, inspiration, and advice, an essential group of enthusiasts and supporters fueled Mildrith’s fires. They kept the bread flowing over the past year.
Here are a few:
- Jacques Marmen – Mildrith’s chief architect, natural builder, problem solver, oven surgeon, and caregiver. Wishing Jacques many happy vibes as he moves off-island for new opportunities
- Greenangel Choppers, Dave Hargreaves, George Leroux, Dave Howe, and all the choppers who keep us supplied with forest-friendly firewood.
- Eve and John Pollard, our friends at Corbett House, cheerfully provide the space and place for an essential Happy Monk bread pick-up location for Port Washington residents.
- Suzanne Stirling for her stellar delivery assistance, great business ideas and enthusiasm.
- Roy Villa is not only the wood chopping good samaritan, he’s a joy to watch chop wood. He stepped in this past year to chop wood down to just-the-right size for firing Mildrith, leaving the pile full and ready to go. Chopping wood is a joy, but it’s also a joy to step outside and behold a pile of wood ready to go … that someone else has done!
- Nootka Rose Mill of Metchosin for the grain and flour, top-notch service from their sales and milling crew (and co-owners Byron Fry and Erika Heyrman, my Victoria baking heroes (See Fry’s Bakery and Wild Fire Bakery).
- Barry Denluck of Barry’s Bees, maker of the finest honey — liquid gold — this side of paradise.
- For their apples and inspiring organic farm operation, Black Rabbit Farms on North Pender, Andy Nowak and Mary Reher.
- Davy Rippner, a tireless Happy Monk booster and loyal customer, a great friend, and an able assistant in bagging loaves for delivery
- My amazing daughter and son, Ella and John, who’ve provided spot-on advice, know-how, and artwork (Ella’s drawing has graced 7,000+ bags of Happy Monk bread).
- Mark Dyck and his Bakers4Bakers online discussion forum and the fantastic Rise Up Podcast(footnote)If you missed it, be sure to listen to Mark’s interview with me on Episode #119. While you’re at it, listen to some other of Mark’s interviews of bakers, authors, pastry chefs and other baking legends. He’s a gifted interviewer and widely respected in the baking community for his work on this podcast.(/footnote)
- Endless inspiration from the Bread Bakers Guild of America, The Bread Lab of Washington State University, and The Bread Lab Collective (creators of the Approachable Loaf).
- The bread makers of Instagram and many inspiring cookbook authors who’ve produced great works over the years.
- Most importantly, my partner, friend, wife, and sweet patootie, Jennifer Conkie. She’s been my sounding board, blog editor, business adviser, and zen presence. This whole operation might have crashed and burned without her!
Farewell, Shirley ❤️
We’re still mourning the loss of Jen’s mom, Shirley, the grand matriarch of the Conkie clan. Her passing a few weeks ago has left a hole in our lives, and it’s hard to get used to not seeing her on our weekly trips to Victoria.
Even in her last days, she filled the room with her presence. Now there’s an enormous silence rising out the spaces Shirley used to occupy: the care home where she spent her last days, the apartment where she and Jen’s Dad, Bill, lived and the “independent living” home where they stayed for a short while.
At family dinners and grand functions (like the 50th wedding anniversary), our memories of Shirley have that same silence about them now. It’s hard to remember specific conversations, but her significant presence, her smiling face, the sparkle in her eye loom large. She shimmers before us, her spirit, her energy.
We’re all sad. Shirley’s passing was not unexpected. The note of finality is hard, but it’s mixed with some relief that her slow decline is now over. Jennifer’s Dad and sister are doing well, and we’ve all found occasion to laugh at some memories. We’ll have a small gathering of family, and close friends soon to remember Shirley’s life, then move on to learn more about who she was and what she meant to us in her outsized time with us.
The season for long sleeps
Now it’s time for long sleeps, reading, writing, testing new recipes, and thinking about new ways to make the business run better. But mostly the long rests! It’s winter, after all. Most animals hibernate!
See you all soon when I pick up the baker’s peel again and begin pouring out the bread and love in 2022.
To the staff of life!
A new outlook for the Happy Monk Baking Company, a shift of focus from oven-to-home bread delivery to the community of the Pender Island Farmers Market [ See Link in Profile ]
Jan 29
![A new outlook for the Happy Monk Baking Company, a shift of focus from oven-to-home bread delivery to the community of the Pender Island Farmers Market [ See Link in Profile ]](https://i0.wp.com/happymonkbaking.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed-pro/img/placeholder.png?w=980&ssl=1)
A bread-fail last week produced great-tasting Sesame-Miso Frisbees or Umami Chapeaus! What to do with the remnants? Hard-bread, rusks, croutons, or what have you. And the Ravens get their fair share, too … O come to me Huginn and Munnin! Fill your beaks and carry my greetings and blessings to Odin! [ See link in my LinkTree in HappyMonk Profile ]
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#showusyourfuckedloaves, #sesamemiso, #sesamemiso, #sesamemisobread, #hardtack, #hardbread, #croutons, #huginnandmunnin, #odin, #penderisland, #southpenderisland, #happymonkbaking, #southerngulfislands|
Jul 21
Latest Happy Monk Blog: The World is Too Much With Us - In our little Island paradise, how to embrace all the beauty when the world is going to hell in a hand basket? ALSO: Baker`s Choice - Brown-Rice Miso and Sesame Sourdough [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Jul 17
Latest Happy Monk Blog: "A Bird Came Down the Walk," a brief flirtation with ChatGPT that was awkward but offered an exquisite poem by Emily Dickinson. [See LinkTree in Profile ]
Jul 3
Resurrected a couple of Salish Sourdough loaves forgotten inside Mildrith, the wood-fired oven. They emerged charred and hell-fired, sadly, so I took a knife to them and made them almost new again!
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#woodfired #woodfiredoven #coboven #Mildrith #Mildriththeoven #woodfiredovenbread #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #burntbread #showusyourfuckedloaves
Jun 9
Strongly recommend installing the Smell-O-Vision™ feature on your device to appreciate the aroma of these Rye-Currant Sourdough loaves, just out of the oven. Wish I could capture it in a jar, or make a scratch ‘n’ sniff postage stamp (like the recent French stamp commemorating the baguette). And this loaf tastes just as lovely as they look!
Jun 1
The Happy Monk Baking Company
Happy Monk Tidings - May 15, 2024 🍞 - BLOG REDUX: "Saving Grace"; BAKER`S CHOICE: Sprouted Purple Barley Sourdough; REGULAR: Seed Feast.
May 15
It’s late at night and chances are there’s a baker near you having fun with bread dough …
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#bakers #bakerslife #bakersofinstagram #bakerslifeforme #nighttime #nightlife #nightsky #bakingmagic
May 5
All spelt, all the time … well, with a few glugs of maple syrup
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#spelt #wholegrain #tinloaves #realbread #breadbakers #breadbakersofinstagram
#artisanbreadbakers #speltbread #speltsourdoughbread #speltbread #wholegrainspeltbread #penderisland #southpenderisland #happymonkbaking #happymonkbaker
Apr 20
New Happy Monk Blog: Spring brings mixed blessings! A sense of loss, along with warmth and a new cast of light, "That Science cannot overtake / But Human Nature Feels." Westeros and Emily Dickinson`s sensitive heart. [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Apr 3
This little guy is a workhorse, plain and simple. A brute! Thursday, it milled over 27kg of incredible flour for a recipe that needed the freshest flour possible. And its output was beautiful. Wheat, spelt, rye and buckwheat. A larger mill could have handled that in a fraction of the time, but who’s complaining? Some amazing bread was the result, milled and mixed the same day. A Country Miche from an article by Eric Pallant @epallant in the Winter/Spring 2023 issue of Bread Lines.
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#spelt #speltbread #buckwheat #buckwheatbread #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #naturallyleavened #artisanbread #realbread #rusticbread #flourmilling #flourmill #komoflourmills #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands
Mar 2
Latest Happy Monk Blog - The Living Rock Island – Our Little Corner of South Pender Island 🍞 [See LinkTree in Profile]
Feb 28
O, for a slice of raisin sourdough! that hath been
Warm’d a long age in the deep delvéd oven,
Tasting of Hestia and the ocean green,
Rest and a slow moving song and sunburnt mirth!
O for a loaf full of the warm South
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded raisins winking at the crumb,
And cinnamon-stainéd mouth;
That I might eat, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
— Apologies to John Keats for my butchery of his “Ode to a Nightingale”
Feb 25
At the outset of the Happy Monk Baking Company, I cherished those early mornings, working alone with Mildrith in the dark before the birds began their glorious morning chorus. The world was silent, unhurried. Mildrith and me, the trees, the solid earth, a passing deer, the baskets of bread dough waiting for the oven.
Going to work in the pre-dawn hours was something bakers did, I thought. They sacrificed sleep and delivered their bread early to appreciative customers. It was a romantic notion on my part, a naïve commitment to the baking trade without fully understanding the consequences, i.e. sleep debt.
It was satisfying to have loaves ready for some customers before noon; it was a triumph! But by the time most of the bread was ready for delivery, bagged and labelled, my eyelids were growing heavy, my mind fuzzy, my body slowing down.
And it wasn’t safe driving up-island.
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#bakerslife #bakers #sleepdeprivation #woodfired #woodfiredoven #woodfiredovenbread #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #happymonkbakery #happymonkbakingcompany
Feb 1
Milling a little corn to mix in with some marinated olives before they go into a tapenade infused dough. Big olive flavour … plus a rare shot of Mildrith, the wood-fired oven!
Nov 19
Happy Monk Tidings - November 15, 2023 BAKER`S CHOICE this week: Olive Sourdough Loaf; AND: An Emotional Weather Report [ See LinkTree in Profile ] 🍞
Nov 15
Happy Monk Tidings - November 1, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE: Sourdough Sandwich Loaf; BLOG: Don`t Let That Wonder Lawyer Tell You It`s Not Real Bread! [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Nov 1
Dylan Thomas, one of my muses, would have been 109 years old this Friday, Oct. 27. One of a small-handful of poets whose words are cherished and summoned often for their music and wisdom. They soothe, they sing, they evoke. I`ll be thinking of him this bread day, under "the mustardseed sun"….. and the "switchback sea"…. as he "celebrates and spurns his driftwood thirty fifth wind turned age."
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#dylanthomas #poetsofinstagram #poetrylovers #poetryisnotdead #poetryofinstagram #poets #poetryislife #poetrylove #poetrydaily #poetryworld #poetryinstagram #bakerpoets #poetryforbakers #southpenderisland #penderisland
Happy Monk Tidings - October 25, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE - Sprouted Emmer Sourdough; BLOG: Happy Birthday, Dylan Thomas! [See LinkTree in Profile ]
Oct 25
Happy Monk Tidings - October 18, 2023 - 🍞: BAKER`s CHOICE: Seedy Spelt and Rye Bread; BLOG: It Starts With Wonder? What`s That?
Oct 18
Happy Monk Tidings - October 11, 2023 BAKER`S CHOICE: Potato Rosemary Bread; BLOG: Swimming with Otters 🍞
Oct 11
Happy Monk Tidings - BLOG: Abundance: Season of Apples; Baker`s Choice: Pender Island Apple Bread with Pender Apples and Twin Island Cider - October 4, 2023 🍞 [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Oct 4
Happy Monk Tidings - September 27, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE THIS WEEK: Harvest Bread; BLOG: Positively Fourth Avenue - [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Sep 27
Happy Monk Tidings - September 20, 2023 🍞 - BAKER`S CHOICE: Garlic Levain Bread; BLOG: Harumph! Author Says Leave the Baking to the Professionals! [ See LinkTree in Profile ]
Sep 20
A hefty Country Miche, formula from Breadlines published by Bread Bakers Guild of America. Hefty in size, hefty in flavour. Four flours (Sifted Metchosin Wheat, Rye, Buckwheat, Spelt), a super-active levain and an intense crust colour. I think I’m addicted! It’s kind of finicky, though, and trying to work out a reasonable schedule to produce 40 loaves for Happy Monk customers.
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. #bread #realbread #naturallyleavened #baker #bakery #bbga #artisanbread #breadhead #sourdough #sourdoughbread #penderisland #southpenderislands #happymonkbaking #happymonkbakingcompany #wholegrainbread #breadhead #michebread #realbread #rusticbread #southerngulfislands #southerngulfislandsbakers #southerngulfislandsbakeries
Sep 14
CAUTION: this probably won’t be happening soon↩
Enjoy your much deserved break!
All the best to you and Jenn in 2022!