This is a loaf I made yesterday. It is the first time I have ground spelt berries at home. . It made a wonderful bread but it was a lot of work…literally hours and hours. . I spent time sourcing local, whole spelt berries, ordering them and decanting them to store in the freezer. . 2 days ago we ground the spelt, using a #marcato hand-grinder. We put it through the mill 6 times. Two of us needed to be there and we were at it for almost 2 hours. . Then yesterday morning, I mixed this beautiful, rough flour with my sourdough starter (that came from the UK to Italy with us when we moved last year), salt and water. . I watched over it all day. Stretching, folding, smelling, touching, then panning and watching some more before cooking it for an hour. . Then I waited, waited, waited before cutting it and tucking in. . I choose to make local, sourdough bread rather than go 50 metres down the road and buy a loaf. . #veryfarmish has a prompt ‘Why do it the hard way?’ . 2 reasons: . 1 – Because I can. I have the privilege of this time available. This is partly because of my birth but also very definitely because, starting 25 years ago, I decided that I was being strangled by mainstream ways and I wanted to live my life differently. Every brave decision I’ve made since then has got me to this point where I can choose this as part of my day. . 2 – Oh, and the 2…because, because, because. Because I care about the soil, about the farmer, about pollution, about packaging, about my body, about my biome, about my son and husband’s health, about tradition, about creation, about using my hands, about beauty. . Life has never been easy. Our attempts to make it easy come with pay-offs. Those pay-offs are killing our health and the health of our community and planet. . May as many as possible wake up to this. And may we enable as many as possible to have the means and support to be able to choose things that are hard, but that are good.