First Flour of the Season!

Hey all! It's going to be another short one this week because I'm still recovering from my Flu and Covid boosters.

This Week in the Commons

The main focus this week was leaching the tannins out of the acorns that we ground up at last week's Market. My preferred leaching method is to use cold water with regular water changes over the course of several days. It's slow, and you have to keep up with the water changes, but it's less energy intensive, and the resulting flour has a richer flavor.

I decided to give hot leaching, where you boil the acorns in a series of waterbaths, a try this week, just in case there were hidden advantages I wasn't aware of. It confirmed my preference for cold leaching. The acorn bits quickly turned into a big slimy mush inside their bags, and I've had a lot of trouble getting that mush dried back out again so we can grind it into flour. It did get a lot of tannins out quickly, but I'd rather leach slowly and dry quickly than the other way around.

I also made my first attempt this week at saving the tannins for later use. They make a lovely brown fabric dye, as you can see from the acorn bags, and I have friends who are interested in experimenting with using them to tan animal hides. We had 10+ gallons of leachwater to start with, so I decided to try boiling it down for more efficient storage.

Turns out, concentrated acorn leachwater starts doing some very strange things as it boils down. It started forming these weird leathery crusts around the edges of the pot, so I stopped the boil. I was able to turn 10+ gallons of leachwater into less than a gallon of concentrate, so look forward to some further experiments with that over the winter.

At the Market this week, we sold two baskets🎉 and made our first batch of finished flour. We did lose a couple of pounds of acorns to mold, but we're still well ahead of the average year. Our "Big Acorns For Bold Art" contest is running through the end of pumpkinfest, so get out there and find some chonkers!

The second batch of notepads is now in the shop! These ones feature a red/orange gradient. It includes 6 plain gradient covers, available for 1 hour each, and 6 handpainted covers, available for 2 hours each.

I also spent some time this week on the new Montague Commoners webstore. It still needs a few more weeks before it's ready for a grand launch, but I've gotten all of the baskets and the first batch of notepads listed. I'm hoping to have it fully up and running by the time the Artisan Market closes.

Recommendation Corner

This is a repeat recommendation, but I want to make another plug for Becky Chambers' Monk and Robot. It's a cozy mental vacation in a world where society makes the right choices and starts to heal. I've got several extra copies, so if you want to borrow one let me know.

This Week's Nails