works in progress

We have mastered baking bread. Our routine is simple--every four or five days, we start a batch of no-knead bread. Flour + yeast + salt + warm water. About twenty hours later, after it's risen and risen on top of our washer and dryer (warmest place in our house), we bake it. It always comes out crispy and golden, with a melt-in-your-mouth crumb, infinitely devour-able.

Other things, we haven't quite mastered.

A few weeks ago, I started dreaming about making kefir. One thing led to another, and two tablespoons of kefir grains arrived at our house before I'd really done all the research (the email listserve on the island is a bottomless source of freebies).

Kefir grains are not grains, but lumpy white masses of bacteria that look like--if you're being kind--cauliflower. I googled kefir-making tips the night the grains arrived (found this crash course), poured milk in a glass jar, added all my kefir grains, and stuck it on top of our dryer.

I knew that making kefir is like doing a science experiment. It all depends on variables: time, temperature, ratios of milk to kefir, and perhaps the mood of the kefir grains, if bacteria can be moody. There's no exact recipe. But I was pretty sure that, in about twenty-four hours, we'd be slurping tangy, thick kefir and feeling quite hip.

Twenty hours later, right after I got home from work, I peeked at the science experiment, expecting to find . . . well, not what I found. Curds! Curds and whey. A sign of disaster--too much heat or too much time or too much kefir grains.

We were rushing to head off to dinner with some friends, but I had to save the grains. Like my dad warned me, kefir grains are not as demanding as kids, but more demanding than pets--they need to be fed and cared for 24/7. I strained out the grains, planning to throw the whey to the plants and attempt to turn the curds into kefir cheese, until I measured out another two cups of fresh milk. Fresh? Oh no. It looked . . . off. "Tim?!" I shrieked, not for the first time that night. Tim came running, tasted the milk, spat it out. Rancid!

The curds and whey went down the sink. The milk went back to the store. We went off-island for the weekend, so the kefir grains went into the fridge in a cup of fresh milk.

At least the curds-and-whey disaster wasn't my fault (I think). But I wasn't quite so excited to try again post-weekend. The second batch didn't work--grew a yeasty skim on top, but didn't thicken or turn remotely kefir-like. The third batch worked, at least more than the others; it's thicker and tangy and less disastrous. But we're a bit kefir-shell-shocked--stunned at the price of the only non-ultra-pasturized milk at the island store ($5 for half a gallon) and the thought of feeding that to our cauliflower science experiment every day and the thought of pouring that milk down the sink if it fails to turn to kefir.

Another thing we haven't quite mastered? Our second listserve freebie. A 6x8 glass greenhouse, it's turning out to more resemble a jigsaw puzzle than a home for our little lemon tree.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that we should avoid listserve freebies, no matter how tempting. But I'm more inclined to file these--kefir and greenhouse and more than a handful of other projects--as works in progress. We have mastered making bread; I am learning to master my bike commute; we are starting to settle into our routines of cooking and cleaning and living together; but much is still taking shape. Like the marigold and bachelor's buttons seedlings in our windowsill, our life on the farm is new and green and growing. Our list of plans and dreams for this year is long and hopeful. It's all getting started, with room for learning and trying again.