Ferments. Patchwork. Saffron.

Travel

8 Oct

I have three ferments on my counter these days. Wine vinegar, kefir, and natural leaven. A wide mouthed crock covered in cloth; a cup of milk; a little pot of bubbly dough.

Recently I was present at a talk with Sandor Katz, the fermentation guru. He was Zoomed-in live; but I was lucky enough to be in a real audience inside the medieval Hall at the Dartington Estate in Devon, England. His face was projected up on the 600 year old ivory-colored stone wall as he was interviewed by the head gardener at Schumacher College (a school within Dartington where agriculture is taught in a permaculture vein). Sandor was asked which products of fermentation were his favorites. I believe he said something like “bread and cheese” — which is pretty great given he has researched and written about all forms of fermented foods from Icelandic shark to Mongolian mare’s milk. It reinspired me to keep my ferments alive. It’s true we have our favorites, the ones that are really worth maintaining. Because you are maintaining what amounts to a relationship.

Of my ferments, the kefir is a daily task, just a straining of the finished kefir and replacing the kefir grains into new milk. It takes the grains about twenty-four hours to ferment the milk. They essentially digest all the lactose so you end up with a mild, sort of ‘dry’ (as in not sweet), sometimes slightly effervescent drink. It’s not as thick or sour as store-bought kefir and I find it to be a totally different animal. It’s an improved milk: more digestible, calm, refreshing. It’s also preserved. I like to think of the people who first propagated kefir, in the Caucasus, where they left a skin of milk and kefir grains by the door and you joggled the bag a bit as you went in and out. Ostensibly to stir and stimulate the fermentation process. It was part of the household.

I put my kefir grains into cream once in a while.

It makes a very mild créme fraîche — a cream that is tart, spoonable and lasts longer. Otherwise, I just drink my one cup of kefir a day. It’s even better for gut health than yogurt, it’s lovely on oatmeal or granola.

This hop-scotching — producing something good and edible from a rhythmic cycle of attention —is much how my garden functions: You take something out, add more material in, put it away for a while, come back and adjust. Most of the time you’re not doing anything with your kefir grains, or your leaven, or that section of earth. But you’re still relating to them, when you call them back into action they are still alive for you, part of a tapestry of food making.

This morning I peeled back the black plastic woven ‘mulch’ that’s been in place for a year behind the rock herb garden. Underneath the grass had been killed, I only had to strain out the sun-deprived roots with my fingers and fork the soil a bit and plant the new daylily bulbs there with a sprinkling of compost. I then pin the black plastic down just a little further back to keep the grass out while the day lilies establish; ready for next year and adding a new patch.

Under the persimmon tree, buttercup was rampant. I lay down some old cardboard over it and weighed it down with a few logs. I then punched holes through and plugged each hole with a crocus bulb, threw on a handful of compost and mulched it lightly with old hay. The cardboard will mat down in the autumn rain, kill the buttercup and provide a start for the crocus. It’s a patchwork. Creating a larger pattern out of small scraps. There is an overall design but it is fluid, adjusting to failures and self-seeded successes.

It’s an unconventional approach; it’s all about attention. You’re never done, it’s a continual relationship to conditions, the passage of time, the evolution of the ecology. Yet all the while you are getting food out of the process. (The day lilies have edible flowers and the crocus are saffron crocus! Granted that’s not subsistence crops like potatoes and onions — but I grow potatoes and onions like this too. Potatoes are great for growing in the same way as the crocus - punched through cardboard on weedy ground. And onions can be the perennial ‘welsh’ variety which grow in self-sustaining clumps and give you green onions in early spring.)

I believe the best food comes out of this kind of live reciprocity, an exchange of energy between us and other realms — be they microbe or plant; or the elusive fairies of creative inspiration; or deep cultural threads; or the actual cycles of planets.