Already we have to say goodbye to this year’s stellar crop of farming interns, Andrea Simmonds, Chris Grange, Lindsay Kathrens and Rachelle Bramly. They joined us in May and have been wonderful to have as part of the community. They’ve helped and learned all around the farm and on the biodiversity project, thanks to a generous grant from the Victoria Foundation. We’ll miss their spirit, enthusiasm and hard work.
Chris mixes kimchi; Rachelle packs it into jars.
Lindsay marvels at the yield: bread, carrots, kimchi, sauerkraut: many hands make light work!
Last week they participated in a fermentation workshop led by Rhona McAdam, R.H.N. of Go Local Nutrition. Most were already experimenting with fermentation, and all had read or heard or tasted fermented foods. We spent a fruitful morning exchanging ideas and techniques, chopping vegetables and tasting various fermented foods along the way.
Andrea making lacto-fermented carrots.
Gluten-free breads: buckwheat, and sourdough buckwheat/oat flour.
The morning’s work yielded a fantastic variety of foods: a batch of kimchi, a batch of lacto-fermented carrot sticks, and sauerkraut flavoured with caraway. We also decanted a batch of black tea kombucha, tasted beet kvass flavoured with cabbage and onion, and baked loaves of Infinite Buckwheat Bread and Gluten-free Whole Grain sourdough (oat & buckwheat) bread.
The fermentation ‘bible’ in use for the workshop was Sandor Ellix Katz’s Wild Fermentation. We also had on hand his follow-up book, The Art of Fermentation, and the book that first inspired him, Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions.
And we had Michael Pollan’s Cooked, the documentary version of which one of the participants had seen on Netflix. It covers various ways of preparing food, including fermentation. Here’s the trailer in case you want a look:
