There are a growing number of conversations and discussions taking place around the country, in person and online, about a highly important emerging question – how are we going to feed ourselves with a growing population, diminishing resources and a challenging climate?
We see news reports of crop devastation from droughts, floods and other weather related impacts around the world. There was a world-wide food shortage in 2008, causing a sharp spike in wheat prices that started a series of governmental overthrows in the Middle East. Clearly, food is important in a way that many have not thought about here in the United States. We didn’t experience much in the way of price spikes in 2008, but if we look, there is clear evidence that we are experiencing our own price increases; they are just in a different manner.
The prices for food, when compared to a couple of years ago, have risen significantly, even here in America. Our food system is complex, with major food companies and distributors absorbing the brunt of price increases and passing them along in increments, instead of all at once, so that we are not as aware of the increases in food prices. With a severe drought across most of the country in 2012, and winter moisture levels significantly below normal for this year (2013), more crop failures are predicted along with higher prices.
It is natural that this conversation is beginning to happen. In venues ranging from upscale coffee shops to rural diners to governmental meetings, more and more people are asking, “How are we going to feed ourselves?” The conversation more often than not becomes some form of commercial vs. small scale agriculture, with both sides speaking passionately about the benefits of their systems and judiciously pointing out the shortcomings and detriments of the other systems. It becomes an either/or argument and is a great example of false dichotomy.
We are not against large-scale farms, as there are a number of great examples of how size does not automatically mean a dependence on petro-chemical inputs, using fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides in an attempt to change a natural process into an industrialized, mechanical one to be controlled.
There is a need for a food production system of many sizes and for many reasons. We need diversity in size and scale, as it gives resiliency to our food system as a whole.
There is also an increasingly urgent need to re-examine our food distribution system, as there is an estimated 30 – 40% of food waste that happens before the food even reaches our homes. Utilizing this wasted food would go a long way toward easing hunger here in the United States.
During the course of these conversations a logical disconnect often occurs. The commercial scale folks talk in solid, proven, real world terms and numbers. They should, as this is what they know. They talk about how only industrial farming can feed the world, as it will require their technology, equipment and inputs to grow twice as much food. These are terms that they are familiar with. When the alternative of small scale, local and sustainable agriculture is put forth, they begin to talk in relative and theoretical terms, partly out of ignorance as they are not experienced or familiar with this different approach to agriculture. Sometimes it will be as a dismissal of the effectiveness of sustainable agriculture.
Here is where the disconnect happens: when advocates of local and sustainable agriculture talk, they also tend to talk in theoretical and abstract terms, not in the proven, real world results based terms that the industrial ag folks use. This skews the entire conversation!
Some of this is understandable, as the definition of “local and sustainable agriculture” is completely opposite on the spectrum of commercial and industrial. It is hard to speak about total food production or capacity from the local and sustainable model as it is from the commercial one, for the simple reason that there is more documenting and reporting of figures in large scale agriculture, with almost none in the local one.
This doesn’t mean that alternative agriculture has nothing to contribute. Far from it. Sustainable agriculture, on any scale, is a highly important contributor to the conversation, and our future. There is a school of thought that states, “We will ultimately wind up in a sustainable economic and agricultural model, either by choice or by force.” I’m going to ignore the economic portion of the statement for this article, as it is beyond the scope of our focus.
The thought goes on to show how we don’t have a choice on becoming sustainable in agriculture, as we simply cannot continue our current path of mining our soils of nutrients and using petroleum as a replacement. The petroleum is used for transportation, to power the mining equipment extracting the minerals used to replace those lost in the soil, and for herbicides, pesticides and petro-chemical based fertilizers. Both the nutrients and petroleum are finite, we all know this. What we don’t know is precisely when these resources will run out. They are becoming more expensive each year, looking past short-term fluctuations.
We can make the choices to move our food production into a model where we aren’t strip-mining the earth of its nutrients to grow our food, or we will wind up with no more petroleum to replace these critical nutrients, and our food production on any scale comes to a halt, with devastating consequences. We at Terroir Seeds are working on the choice solution – rather than force – helping to create a better, healthier, more productive, diversified, decentralized and independent food production system that everyone has access to and can participate in, no matter where they live.
During the conversation on feeding ourselves, several examples of sustainable agriculture that are currently being practiced are usually brought up, such as Cuba. When Cuba suffered the oil embargoes and trade restrictions, many citizens died from the catastrophic decrease in daily calories as a result of very limited food production on the island in relation to the size of the population. Everyone lost around 30 pounds as they struggled to find ways to grow all of their own food with most people having little to no gardening experience and a loss of machines to work the land. Eventually they did succeed, and today Cuba is an example of small, local and sustainable agriculture feeding the population.
This example is pooh-poohed by the industrial ag proponents, “Of course Cuba can grow their own food, they are a tropical island, they can grow anything. It’s not like that here or in the rest of the world.” They ignore the difficult history and work that it took for Cubans to be able to grow their own food.
What if there was another example; one of an industrialized, well-populated country that is larger than the USA, grows about half of its total food production in home gardens in a difficult and short-season climate, with no machines or animals to help? Would that example suffice to show that local, small-scale, sustainable agriculture can be a proven, viable alternative to the industrial agriculture model?
That example is Russia, and the model is called dacha gardening. It has provided food for the people of Russia for over 1,000 years, starting as mainly subsistence or survival gardening and evolving into an independent, self-provisioning model between the Bolshevik Revolution and World War II and continues into today.
The term dacha, dating back to at least the eleventh century, has had many meanings; from “a landed estate” to the rural residences of Russian cultural and political elite. Since the 1940s, the term “dacha” has been used more widely in Russia to define a garden plot of an urban citizen. This is when the urban populations began to rapidly expand their garden plots to provide food for themselves, their families and neighbors.
Dacha gardening accounts for about 3% of the arable land used in agriculture, but grows an astounding 50% by value of the food eaten by Russians. According to official government statistics in 2000, over 35 million families (approximately 105 million people or 71% of the population) were engaged in dacha gardening. These gardens provide 92% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of the berries and fruit, 59% of its meat and 49% of the milk produced nationally. There are several studies that indicate that these figures may be underestimated, as they don’t take into account the self-provisioning efforts of wild harvesting or foraging of wild-growing plants, berries, nuts and mushrooms, as well as fishing and hunting that contributes to the local food economy.
Clearly, there is something to be acknowledged and studied here! Of note to us Americans, dacha gardening or self-provisioning gardening was the foundational reason that the Russian people did not experience a famine in the early 1990s after the USSR collapsed, and the state sponsored, heavily subsidized, industrial commercial agriculture collapsed along with it. This drew the attention of researchers seeking to find an explanation. Several attempts to explain it away as only a survival strategy have failed, especially when the extensive historical context is examined. Dacha gardening is much more than merely survival, and has always been.
This was not reported outside of Russia, as it wasn’t considered newsworthy. What is truly newsworthy today is that we as a nation aren’t in as favorable of a position if there were a similar catastrophic occurrence in our food distribution, power grid or dollar value. We are all too dependent on outside sources for our food, with most Americans tied to the grocery store and its 3 day supply of food being constantly trucked in.
Russian household agriculture – dacha gardening – is likely the most extensive system of successful food production of any industrialized nation. This shows that highly decentralized, small-scale food production is not only possible, but practical on a national scale and in a geographically large and diverse country with a challenging climate for growing. Most of the USA has far more than the 110 days average growing season that Russia has.
Today’s dacha gardening closely resembles the peasant gardening production of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This shows a continuation of methods and techniques that have proven effective in a small scale garden that works as well today as 200 years ago. The Russians do not use machines – tillers or tractors – or animals on their garden plots, cultivating them in much the same way as the peasants did in the 18th Century.
Dacha gardening is not and never has been simply a survival strategy – a response to poverty, famine, adverse weather or social unrest. Recent studies have shown that Russian food gardening is a highly diverse, sustainable and culturally rich method of food production. This was initially recognized almost a century ago and has been confirmed more recently.
If examined through a strictly economic lens, dacha gardening makes no sense at all. There is much more labor as a dollar value invested than is harvested, but that isn’t the point of this type of system at all. The function of dacha gardens goes well beyond their economic significance, because they serve as an important means of active leisure as well as a way to reconnect with the land. Traditional economic calculations fail to realize the true value and benefits of a dacha garden. Clearly, a wider viewpoint is needed to realize all of the benefits! Time spent in the garden is seen as relaxation, education, entertainment and exercise – all in one. Food production is a very valuable bonus.
Despite their significant contribution to the national food economy, the majority of dachas mostly function outside of the cash economy, as most dacha gardeners prefer to first share their surplus with relatives and friends after saving enough to feed them through the winter, and only then look at selling what remains. A few will sell the remainder at local markets, and move into a small market production model for extra cash.
The Russian mindset relating to the sharing of surplus food is important to examine, as it is one of the keys that ensure the success of the dacha gardening model. In dacha gardening, people will share their excess food out of a sense of abundance or plenty. It is a very positive and powerful motivator which creates an upward, positive spiral of sharing among the community.
For example, a neighbor helps you to build a fence on your property. Instead of paying them money for their help, you give them 50 pounds of apples from your tree. These apples have little monetary value for you, as you have all of the apples you can use for the year stored up, canned, made into apple butter and jams. You are sharing your abundance. The neighbor is overwhelmed, as this is a considerable gift for a few hours of work, so he feels compelled to share some of his gardens abundance with you, for the same reason. He shares from his abundance. This process continues around the neighborhood until there is a solid network of people actively sharing food with one another. This system creates a resilient food network that is not only local and sustainable, but has many other positive benefits as well.
There are no feelings of “owing” from one person to another. When someone gives food to another, it is not “charity” or putting them under an obligation to repay. It is an exchange of excess freely given with no thought of repayment or obligation.
Economic profit is only one of the potential benefits of this type of food production. Other economic components are increased food security with a robust, decentralized and local food supply and distribution. Agricultural sustainability, conservation of bio-diversity and the preservation of heirloom varieties are some of the environmental contributions of dacha gardening. Socially, dacha gardens help create community and a connection with the land and nature.
In addressing the question of “How are we going to feed ourselves?”, we have a lot to consider in looking at the effective, proven and ongoing examples that Russian dacha gardening has to offer us. A closer study of the methods and especially the mindsets will help all of us become more resilient and self-sustaining in our food systems right here at home.
Lavender Aromatherapy Soothes People, Horses and Dogs
Lavender has been used to soothe and heal people for a long time, dating back to at least the Egyptians where it was commonly used in daily life. Not only does the fragrance refresh and soothe our senses, but the scent or aroma molecules pass to the limbic area of the brain directly from the nose. The limbic area deals with instinct and emotion as well as many of the body’s autonomic systems, such as the immune system. This is one of the primary ways that inhaling lavender essential oils helps to calm us down and restore a sense of peace. This aromatherapy is also highly effective with the animals we share our lives with.
Aromatherapy is the use of specific plant essential oils to enhance physical and psychological well-being. As a therapy it has been proven with use dating back thousands of years. Essential oils are distilled from specific plants and are 100% pure aromatic oils. Some oils are especially potent and are highly valued for their benefits and concentrations of essential oils. Lavender from Provence, France is one such oil as it is grown in the high altitude and harsh climate where the lavender plants respond to the environmental stresses by producing higher than normal amounts of protective oils, which give us benefits when the flower buds are harvested and distilled. Another source of high-altitude lavender oil from the United States is Red Rock Lavender, grown outside of Concho, AZ with a climate that is very similar to Provence. The essential oils produced in Concho are the second most potent in the world behind that from Provence.
It must be noted that there is some confusion due to exceedingly clever marketing on aromatherapy oils. As a result, many people have the mistaken idea that any kind of perfumed scent is aromatherapy. This is not true. Synthetic oils, often labeled “fragrance oils,” are not the same as essential oils. There is no therapeutic effect on the body like with true distilled essential oils. If you are buying essential oils, make sure to source them from a reputable company and that the oils are true, therapeutic grade essential oils and not fragrance oils.
Another approach is to grow your own lavender. It is a hardy perennial in most parts of the United States, with several different varieties that are suited to different climates. You can buy starts and transplant them or start your own from seed. Once your lavender plants are established, you will have an abundance of lavender sprays for many uses!
Aromatherapy is a little different for animals than for humans, with the main difference being the sense of smell that most animals have over humans. Animals have a much more acute sense of scent than we do, so the amount of oil or scent will need to be reduced by 2/3 for a start to see how the response is. It is much easier to increase the amount bit by bit than to overwhelm their nostrils on the first whiff!
A word of caution is needed here, as some essential oils can be toxic to cats. Certain essential oils naturally contain phenols and should never be used with cats. Their liver does not produce the enzymes to digest these compounds allowing them to build up to toxic levels in their systems. It is safer to avoid using aromatherapy with cats, unless you are working with a skilled aromatherapist with experience and knowledge in working with cats.
Lavender is well known for its effectiveness in calming people, horses and dogs. There are many studies that show the immediate and intermediate positive effects that lavender has on sensitive, stressed, anxious animals. Both horses and dogs respond very well to the scent of lavender with decreased heart rate and respiration, a calmer posture, less shaking and pacing or other nervous behavior. Spray some essential oil on a cloth or the dog’s bed before a car trip to ease stress, just before thunderstorms and for separation anxiety. You can also put a few drops on a cloth and tie it to the dog’s collar for a longer-lasting effect. For horses, a cloth with a couple of drops to introduce the new scent to them will usually have a beneficial effect. After they are used to the aroma, it is easy to let them inhale the scent off of a cloth that is kept for that purpose. They can benefit from a cloth hung in the trailer before a trailer loading session, before and during a road trip – adding a few drops of oil if needed during fuel or rest stops.
One other benefit of lavender essential oil is it is a highly effective insect repellent for both horses and dogs. The same properties that make it a pleasing and relaxing aroma for us and our animals make it the ideal insect repellent. Just add 10 – 15 drops of lavender essential oil to a spray bottle and fill with water, shake well and apply! Make sure to avoid the eyes, but all other parts of the body are ok.
“Seeds hold the potential for everything, the beginning and the end and the beginning all over again. Seeds are the building blocks of every meal we eat; all our fruits and vegetables, all our grains, plus the meat and milk that’s raised on grass and grain.”
Simran Sethi is an award-winning journalist, strategist & educator who teaches & reports on sustainability, environmentalism & social media for social change. Simran is dedicated to a redefinition of environmentalism that uses innovative forms of engagement & includes voices from the prairie, urban core & global community. She recently gave an inspiring presentation at TEDx Manhattan on Seeds – The Buried Beginnings of Food where she shared how much seeds really do matter to all of us, no matter where we live or what we do as a profession.
After showing how few varieties of edible plants we cultivate for our food – about 150 out of more than 80,000 – she goes on to explain the vast majority of humankinds food comes from just about 30 species. In America, over half of our daily calories come from just 4 foods – rice, corn, wheat and potatoes! We are seeing the results of a gradual shrinking in the variety of our food supply over the past 50 years, what is known as a loss of agricultural biodiversity. This is the unintended consequence of a system that was originally intended to increase productivity and feed the world – large-scale industrialized agriculture.
Moving on, she shows the staggering loss of the cultivated foods we used to depend on – by some estimations a 75% loss of food varieties that have disappeared since 1900. Combined with this is the alarming consolidations in the ownership of seeds, essentially seed monopolies. Three corporations now account for over half of the global commercial seeds market today. This includes hybrids and GMOs, both of which can’t be saved and re-planted for the next year. With this model, seeds have become non-renewable resources, inventions created by companies that farmers are required to buy from year after year.
One company now controls the genetics of nearly 90% of the corn, cotton and soybeans grown in the United States. That same company bought the world’s largest developer and grower of vegetable seeds in 2005. As she so emphatically states,
“Monopolies are hideous with our cellphones, we know this! They are disastrous with food, because food and seeds aren’t just any other commodity.”
Watch her powerful presentation, learn a few things and become inspired to take a more active part in your food!
https://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Simran-Sethi1.jpg242350Stephen Scotthttps://underwoodgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Survey-Header.jpgStephen Scott2013-03-29 12:23:132024-04-30 17:34:02Seeds – Getting Their Due Recognition
One hundred years ago, the name Luther Burbank was instantly recognized in a way that we are not familiar with today. Beginning in 1873 and continuing until 1932, 6 years after his death, more than 800 new varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers, nuts and grains were bred, stabilized and introduced by him. He was much better known than the common term “Rock Star” today, because what he did transcended social, financial and political boundaries.
An American botanist, horticulturist and pioneering agricultural scientist, Luther’s name is often entangled with the emergence of bio-engineering and the patenting of plant life. This is truly unfair, as his work was dedicated to expanding the grower’s options, giving them improved varieties that grew, looked and tasted better and were more affordable to the consumer than what was available at the time. There were few thoughts of patenting the plants that he developed, as the Plant Patent Act was passed in 1930, 4 years after his death. He was more interested in getting the new varieties out into the world and into the hands of the growers and gardeners.
The number of varieties that he introduced is enormous, from his first discovery- the potato – to blackberries, plums, walnuts, quinces, lilies, roses, rhubarbs, daisies, dahlias, poppies, the plumcot or pluot, amaryllis, spineless cacti, peas, primroses, cherries, corn, artichokes, sunflowers, the New Burbank Early tomato, day lilies, Elephant garlic, strawberries, thornless blackberries, amaranth, zinnias, nectarines and peaches.
One of his earliest developments was the blight-resistant potato that was exported to Ireland and helped end the famine there. We know it today as the Burbank Russet that is the most commonly grown and eaten potato today.
He transformed 19th and early 20th Century California from a primarily wheat producing state to varied types of fruits. Europe changed from an exporter to a net importer of fruit, especially California fruit, due in large part to Burbank’s fruit breeding and the climate of California.
Other achievements included spineless cacti to help arid Western ranchers provide another, more reliable source of food for their cattle in harsh conditions. The stone-free plums were his and even the now-common bright crimson California poppy that is very well known was originally orange.
The Luther Burbank Home and Gardens is a museum of his home and workspaces where he did much of his thinking and plant breeding. He is buried on the property as per his final wishes to be part of the landscape where he lived. This is the first house he lived in when he moved to Santa Rosa. The second and larger house that he built with the income from an overseas seed sale is no longer standing.
We took a tour of the home and grounds last fall. The existing grounds are only a portion of the original gardens, as much of the land has been sold off in later years. It is impressive to see what was accomplished here.
We took a lot of photos during our visit and wanted to share the following photo essay with you!
Cindy and Eileen are standing at the back entrance to the home.
The home with its unique greenhouse where much of the experimental breeding was conducted. The trees are all mature and very large.
The 2 story house was considered to be large in its day, and is a very comfortable size even by today’s standards. We were able to tour the ground floor and see how it has been maintained.
The guestbook shows a number of famous and influential visitors, from Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to foreign heads of state and agricultural ambassadors from around the world.
Luther designed his greenhouse, using flat glass panels but creating a rounded structure. The panels are overlapped like shingles and held in place with wooden cross-pieces. The loose set brick floor retains heat and allows water to flow through. There is a fireplace at one end to heat it through colder winter nights. The current configuration has been changed from the original, Elizabeth shortened it after a fire.
Dwarf lemon tree with lemons in mid September.
More dwarf citrus.
Cindy with Shasta Daisies and her favorite flower, the sunflower. There are rows on rows of these beds, each with different species of flowers and most of them are marked.
Eileen in front of a trumpet bush.
There were several milkweed pods ready to burst and send their silky fine flossy seeds into the world.
This is what a handful of milkweed floss will yield, only a few seeds! This will be part of the challenge when we help to harvest the milkweed seeds at Painted Lady Vineyards Milkweed Project this fall!
And away they go! There was a breeze during our visit, so they blew away quickly.
Sweet peppers and hot chiles are an important part of almost everyone’s garden, though in different ratios for many! Some really enjoy an abundant late summer and fall harvest of sweet bell peppers while others look forward to the hot chile harvest for months ahead.
One of the main concerns with growing peppers or chiles is the drop off in both quality and production during the height of the summer heat. As the long, hot days of summer set in production drops while diseases increase such as blossom end-rot and sunscald. There are some surprisingly simple approaches that can make a big difference in this year’s harvest of your beloved sweet peppers and hot chiles!
Mulching is one of the very first techniques that has been demonstrated as beneficial to both quality and quantity. Combined with a drip system on a timer, large improvements to the health and vitality of the plants can be seen quickly. These two factors improve the stability of the soil moisture levels, moderating the peaks and valleys from wet to dry. This reduces the stress levels on the plants as they are able to access water on a continuous basis. The mulch insulates the soil and top levels of roots from drying out too quickly and often brings the moisture level up to the surface of the soil, instead of a couple of inches down. Another benefit to mulching with at least an inch of straw type mulch is the temperature insulation of the soil. Reducing the heat gain in the upper levels of the soil improves the plant’s amount and quality of production.
Shading of the pepper plants was recently examined with experiments done in Mexico, Spain and Israel as well as by the University of Georgia. They studied different shade cloth levels impacts on pepper production from 2008 to 2010 with four different levels of shade alongside no shade as the standard. They measured the air temperatures and the soil temperatures and correlated these changes to improved or reduced quality and quantity of peppers. The amount of peppers lost to rejection for quality reasons were closely examined.
What the study has shown is a moderate amount of shade, such as a 30% shade cloth, is the ideal. More shade didn’t produce better peppers past the 30% shading. In fact, as more shade was applied, the plants grew more but produced less peppers with more defects that caused them to be rejected. The moderate shading reduced the heat stresses by lowering the air and root zone soil temperatures, while decreasing diseases such as sunscald and blossom end-rot.
Works for Tomatoes as Well
It is interesting for us to note that these exact same approaches have proven to be the key to successfully growing tomatoes through the hot summers in Phoenix and Tucson, where daytime highs can reach 110 – 115°F! The use of raised beds, drip systems on timers, thick straw mulching and shade cloth allows the pollen to be under the critical 90°F for enough of the day to continue producing tomatoes.
If you have had problems in the past with peppers, chiles or tomatoes slowing production and having disease issues with the onset of hot weather, try these growing tips to get you back on track!
Preserving that overly abundant harvest has been one of the major challenges that gardening and agriculture has always had. In today’s world we are much more familiar with the processes of canning, drying and freezing as acceptable methods of preserving our garden’s harvest for the winter season and longer. These methods have their own set of challenges, though. Canning requires time, experience and knowledge to be successful. Freezing is pretty simple, but has its own set of needs to ensure the garden bounty isn’t lost to freezer burn or premature thawing. Drying is also simple, but benefits from modern drying equipment that can be expensive as an initial purchase.
What if there was another way, a method of preserving the harvest that is not only simple, non-intensive for both labor and equipment and was proven safe? One that is location and temperature independent, doesn’t care if you forget the exact timing and still produces an absolutely delicious product? There is! That method is fermentation. It has been proven safe over several thousand years, with at least that many different approaches and many more recipes. Almost every culture across history has contributed something to the art of fermentation.
Fermenting vegetables is an extremely simple, effective and tasty way to start experimenting and gaining knowledge, taste and experience. In addition to being easy and quick it is also highly nutritious and beneficial to your health.
Some folks are hesitant or outright afraid of trying fermentation for fear of accidentally growing the “wrong” bacteria and sickening or even killing themselves or their families. This is completely understandable in today’s world of anti-microbial soaps, detergents and wipes.
At least in the world of raw vegetables, this fear is unfounded. “As far as I know, there has never been a documented case of food-borne illness from fermented vegetables. Risky is not a word I would use to describe vegetable fermentation. It is one of the oldest and safest technologies we have.” This is from Fred Breidt, a USDA microbiologist specializing in vegetable fermentation.
In fact, fermenting commercially available vegetables will kill any pathogens that we’ve seen in the news as contributing to food-borne illnesses, as they simply cannot survive in the lactic acid environments of fermentation!
This is going to be a slightly different recipe format than we usually do. We will give you a foundational approach to fermenting any vegetables, and then give a basic recipe for a sweet and hot fermented pepper sauce or paste. The beauty of these recipes is that they are entirely scalable. Do you have an extra quart of hot chiles, a handful of sweet peppers and some garlic or onion? Great, we can work with that! Or do you have a couple of 5 gallon buckets of hot chiles and 3 more of sweet peppers, more onions than you know what to do with and you’re worried about them all going bad? No worries, we can work with that as well – all from the same recipe! The flavors from each recipe will be different, but equally delicious and nutritious.
There is a new book on fermentation on the market, and it is most excellent. The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz is his newest exploration of this ancient form of preserving foods. His tagline on the book reads, “An in-depth exploration of essential concepts and processes from around the world.” The basic concepts of fermenting come right out of his book, and they are easy!
Vegetable Fermentation Made Easy
Chop or grate vegetables.
Lightly salt the chopped veggies (add more as necessary for taste) and pound or squeeze until moist; alternatively, soak the veggies in a brine solution for a few hours.
Pack the vegetables into a jar or other vessel, tightly, so that they are forced below the liquid. Add water, if necessary.
Wait, taste frequently, and enjoy!
It doesn’t matter if you have one or a dozen veggies, the above recipe works. Add spices, herbs or edible flowers and experiment. You will be surprised at just how tasty almost everything comes out.
Now that we have the basics down, let’s look at how to handle that bumper crop of hot chiles and sweet peppers. These, along with tomatoes, are one of the most expensive vegetables to buy in the store, but taste so much better out of your garden. It is an absolute crying shame to let any of these go to waste!
Let’s look first at a hot fermented chile sauce, much like Sri Ra Cha or “Rooster Sauce” as it’s called after the rooster on the bottle. The only ingredient ratio to keep in mind is the chile to garlic. Don’t go crazy on the garlic, as it gains pungency as it ferments and can throw off the overall flavor.
A note on the salt – use anything but Iodized salt, as this will cloud the color of the brine and can leave a metallic aftertaste.
Optional: 1/4 Cup fish sauce in place of vinegar. Use Vietnamese for a stronger flavor or Thai for a milder one.
Optional: Tapioca starch for thickening
Remove the stems from the chiles, leaving the green “cap” where the stem meets the chile. It adds a unique flavor during fermentation.
Chop the chiles and garlic lightly, using a food processor if needed until mixture is largely chunky. Do not process too much, just minimally.
Add chile mixture to a half-gallon Mason jar or other non-metal container. Sprinkle salt in while packing chiles. Pack down with a wooden spoon or spatula. Add just enough water to submerge mixture and cover with a dish towel secured by the ring.
Ferment for a month, more or less as taste dictates. Taste about every week to see when it is “done” for your tastes. You will see how the flavor changes with time. Keep chile mixture submerged and remove any mold that forms on top by lifting it out with a spoon, fork or spatula.
When the fermentation is finished, liquefy in a blender or food processor. Strain out the seeds and pulp with a cheese-making cloth and let hang for a few hours or squeeze to get all the liquid out. Discard the pulp and seeds. Heat the liquid on low heat, adding the sugar and vinegar or fish sauce and stirring them in.
Once the sugar, vinegar or fish sauce are melted in you can lower the heat and reduce the sauce to the consistency you like or use a little tapioca starch to thicken it, much like using corn starch. Tapioca will add just a touch of sweetness, won’t be bitter and is GMO free. Let cool and bottle.
Store in the refrigerator.
Will keep for 6 months or more, but you’ll eat it long before then!
Recipe notes: Wait until the chiles are fully ripe and red, as they will have the most complex flavor profile and yield the tastiest sauce.
Use the general ratio listed to scale up or down to suit your particular needs at the time.
Now let’s look at a larger batch with more ingredients and a completely different flavor.
Sweet and Spicy Fermented Pepper Sauce
3 Lbs Ripe red chiles, much the same as above
1 Lb Ripe sweet bell peppers – Jupiter, Melrose, or Lipstick
1/4 Cup apple cider vinegar or fish sauce for additional flavor
The procedure is much the same as for the above recipe. Chop the chiles, sweet peppers, garlic and onion.
Submerse in a suitable container, pack down with a wooden spoon and cover with water. If using a large, open container it may help to use a plate on the top weighted down with one or two heavy-duty freezer Zip-lock bags filled with a brine solution of 3 Tbs salt to 1/2 gallon water. This way if the bags do spring a leak, you don’t dilute the brine of the fermentation. This also allows the bubbles to get past the plate and bags without building up pressure.
Ferment for a month, tasting weekly.
Liquefy in a blender, strain out the pulp and seeds.
Heat on low and add sugar and vinegar or fish sauce.
Thicken if desired.
Enjoy!
Now you have the basic foundation of how to make some incredibly delicious chile or sweet fermented pepper sauce. You can go from mild to shockingly hot and experiment with different spices and amounts of complementary vegetables to add their flavors. You will quickly become something of a hero to your family and friends once they taste your unique sauces!
Russian Dacha Gardening – Homescale Agriculture Feeding Everyone
There are a growing number of conversations and discussions taking place around the country, in person and online, about a highly important emerging question – how are we going to feed ourselves with a growing population, diminishing resources and a challenging climate?
We see news reports of crop devastation from droughts, floods and other weather related impacts around the world. There was a world-wide food shortage in 2008, causing a sharp spike in wheat prices that started a series of governmental overthrows in the Middle East. Clearly, food is important in a way that many have not thought about here in the United States. We didn’t experience much in the way of price spikes in 2008, but if we look, there is clear evidence that we are experiencing our own price increases; they are just in a different manner.
The prices for food, when compared to a couple of years ago, have risen significantly, even here in America. Our food system is complex, with major food companies and distributors absorbing the brunt of price increases and passing them along in increments, instead of all at once, so that we are not as aware of the increases in food prices. With a severe drought across most of the country in 2012, and winter moisture levels significantly below normal for this year (2013), more crop failures are predicted along with higher prices.
It is natural that this conversation is beginning to happen. In venues ranging from upscale coffee shops to rural diners to governmental meetings, more and more people are asking, “How are we going to feed ourselves?” The conversation more often than not becomes some form of commercial vs. small scale agriculture, with both sides speaking passionately about the benefits of their systems and judiciously pointing out the shortcomings and detriments of the other systems. It becomes an either/or argument and is a great example of false dichotomy.
We are not against large-scale farms, as there are a number of great examples of how size does not automatically mean a dependence on petro-chemical inputs, using fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides in an attempt to change a natural process into an industrialized, mechanical one to be controlled.
There is a need for a food production system of many sizes and for many reasons. We need diversity in size and scale, as it gives resiliency to our food system as a whole.
During the course of these conversations a logical disconnect often occurs. The commercial scale folks talk in solid, proven, real world terms and numbers. They should, as this is what they know. They talk about how only industrial farming can feed the world, as it will require their technology, equipment and inputs to grow twice as much food. These are terms that they are familiar with. When the alternative of small scale, local and sustainable agriculture is put forth, they begin to talk in relative and theoretical terms, partly out of ignorance as they are not experienced or familiar with this different approach to agriculture. Sometimes it will be as a dismissal of the effectiveness of sustainable agriculture.
Here is where the disconnect happens: when advocates of local and sustainable agriculture talk, they also tend to talk in theoretical and abstract terms, not in the proven, real world results based terms that the industrial ag folks use. This skews the entire conversation!
Some of this is understandable, as the definition of “local and sustainable agriculture” is completely opposite on the spectrum of commercial and industrial. It is hard to speak about total food production or capacity from the local and sustainable model as it is from the commercial one, for the simple reason that there is more documenting and reporting of figures in large scale agriculture, with almost none in the local one.
This doesn’t mean that alternative agriculture has nothing to contribute. Far from it. Sustainable agriculture, on any scale, is a highly important contributor to the conversation, and our future. There is a school of thought that states, “We will ultimately wind up in a sustainable economic and agricultural model, either by choice or by force.” I’m going to ignore the economic portion of the statement for this article, as it is beyond the scope of our focus.
The thought goes on to show how we don’t have a choice on becoming sustainable in agriculture, as we simply cannot continue our current path of mining our soils of nutrients and using petroleum as a replacement. The petroleum is used for transportation, to power the mining equipment extracting the minerals used to replace those lost in the soil, and for herbicides, pesticides and petro-chemical based fertilizers. Both the nutrients and petroleum are finite, we all know this. What we don’t know is precisely when these resources will run out. They are becoming more expensive each year, looking past short-term fluctuations.
During the conversation on feeding ourselves, several examples of sustainable agriculture that are currently being practiced are usually brought up, such as Cuba. When Cuba suffered the oil embargoes and trade restrictions, many citizens died from the catastrophic decrease in daily calories as a result of very limited food production on the island in relation to the size of the population. Everyone lost around 30 pounds as they struggled to find ways to grow all of their own food with most people having little to no gardening experience and a loss of machines to work the land. Eventually they did succeed, and today Cuba is an example of small, local and sustainable agriculture feeding the population.
This example is pooh-poohed by the industrial ag proponents, “Of course Cuba can grow their own food, they are a tropical island, they can grow anything. It’s not like that here or in the rest of the world.” They ignore the difficult history and work that it took for Cubans to be able to grow their own food.
What if there was another example; one of an industrialized, well-populated country that is larger than the USA, grows about half of its total food production in home gardens in a difficult and short-season climate, with no machines or animals to help? Would that example suffice to show that local, small-scale, sustainable agriculture can be a proven, viable alternative to the industrial agriculture model?
The term dacha, dating back to at least the eleventh century, has had many meanings; from “a landed estate” to the rural residences of Russian cultural and political elite. Since the 1940s, the term “dacha” has been used more widely in Russia to define a garden plot of an urban citizen. This is when the urban populations began to rapidly expand their garden plots to provide food for themselves, their families and neighbors.
Dacha gardening accounts for about 3% of the arable land used in agriculture, but grows an astounding 50% by value of the food eaten by Russians. According to official government statistics in 2000, over 35 million families (approximately 105 million people or 71% of the population) were engaged in dacha gardening. These gardens provide 92% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of its vegetables, 87% of the berries and fruit, 59% of its meat and 49% of the milk produced nationally. There are several studies that indicate that these figures may be underestimated, as they don’t take into account the self-provisioning efforts of wild harvesting or foraging of wild-growing plants, berries, nuts and mushrooms, as well as fishing and hunting that contributes to the local food economy.
Clearly, there is something to be acknowledged and studied here! Of note to us Americans, dacha gardening or self-provisioning gardening was the foundational reason that the Russian people did not experience a famine in the early 1990s after the USSR collapsed, and the state sponsored, heavily subsidized, industrial commercial agriculture collapsed along with it. This drew the attention of researchers seeking to find an explanation. Several attempts to explain it away as only a survival strategy have failed, especially when the extensive historical context is examined. Dacha gardening is much more than merely survival, and has always been.
This was not reported outside of Russia, as it wasn’t considered newsworthy. What is truly newsworthy today is that we as a nation aren’t in as favorable of a position if there were a similar catastrophic occurrence in our food distribution, power grid or dollar value. We are all too dependent on outside sources for our food, with most Americans tied to the grocery store and its 3 day supply of food being constantly trucked in.
Today’s dacha gardening closely resembles the peasant gardening production of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This shows a continuation of methods and techniques that have proven effective in a small scale garden that works as well today as 200 years ago. The Russians do not use machines – tillers or tractors – or animals on their garden plots, cultivating them in much the same way as the peasants did in the 18th Century.
Dacha gardening is not and never has been simply a survival strategy – a response to poverty, famine, adverse weather or social unrest. Recent studies have shown that Russian food gardening is a highly diverse, sustainable and culturally rich method of food production. This was initially recognized almost a century ago and has been confirmed more recently.
If examined through a strictly economic lens, dacha gardening makes no sense at all. There is much more labor as a dollar value invested than is harvested, but that isn’t the point of this type of system at all. The function of dacha gardens goes well beyond their economic significance, because they serve as an important means of active leisure as well as a way to reconnect with the land. Traditional economic calculations fail to realize the true value and benefits of a dacha garden. Clearly, a wider viewpoint is needed to realize all of the benefits! Time spent in the garden is seen as relaxation, education, entertainment and exercise – all in one. Food production is a very valuable bonus.
Despite their significant contribution to the national food economy, the majority of dachas mostly function outside of the cash economy, as most dacha gardeners prefer to first share their surplus with relatives and friends after saving enough to feed them through the winter, and only then look at selling what remains. A few will sell the remainder at local markets, and move into a small market production model for extra cash.
The Russian mindset relating to the sharing of surplus food is important to examine, as it is one of the keys that ensure the success of the dacha gardening model. In dacha gardening, people will share their excess food out of a sense of abundance or plenty. It is a very positive and powerful motivator which creates an upward, positive spiral of sharing among the community.
There are no feelings of “owing” from one person to another. When someone gives food to another, it is not “charity” or putting them under an obligation to repay. It is an exchange of excess freely given with no thought of repayment or obligation.
Economic profit is only one of the potential benefits of this type of food production. Other economic components are increased food security with a robust, decentralized and local food supply and distribution. Agricultural sustainability, conservation of bio-diversity and the preservation of heirloom varieties are some of the environmental contributions of dacha gardening. Socially, dacha gardens help create community and a connection with the land and nature.
In addressing the question of “How are we going to feed ourselves?”, we have a lot to consider in looking at the effective, proven and ongoing examples that Russian dacha gardening has to offer us. A closer study of the methods and especially the mindsets will help all of us become more resilient and self-sustaining in our food systems right here at home.
Russian Dacha Gardening Research – Dr. Leonid Sharashkin
Lavender Soothes Animals Too
Lavender Aromatherapy Soothes People, Horses and Dogs
Lavender has been used to soothe and heal people for a long time, dating back to at least the Egyptians where it was commonly used in daily life. Not only does the fragrance refresh and soothe our senses, but the scent or aroma molecules pass to the limbic area of the brain directly from the nose. The limbic area deals with instinct and emotion as well as many of the body’s autonomic systems, such as the immune system. This is one of the primary ways that inhaling lavender essential oils helps to calm us down and restore a sense of peace. This aromatherapy is also highly effective with the animals we share our lives with.
Aromatherapy is the use of specific plant essential oils to enhance physical and psychological well-being. As a therapy it has been proven with use dating back thousands of years. Essential oils are distilled from specific plants and are 100% pure aromatic oils. Some oils are especially potent and are highly valued for their benefits and concentrations of essential oils. Lavender from Provence, France is one such oil as it is grown in the high altitude and harsh climate where the lavender plants respond to the environmental stresses by producing higher than normal amounts of protective oils, which give us benefits when the flower buds are harvested and distilled. Another source of high-altitude lavender oil from the United States is Red Rock Lavender, grown outside of Concho, AZ with a climate that is very similar to Provence. The essential oils produced in Concho are the second most potent in the world behind that from Provence.
It must be noted that there is some confusion due to exceedingly clever marketing on aromatherapy oils. As a result, many people have the mistaken idea that any kind of perfumed scent is aromatherapy. This is not true. Synthetic oils, often labeled “fragrance oils,” are not the same as essential oils. There is no therapeutic effect on the body like with true distilled essential oils. If you are buying essential oils, make sure to source them from a reputable company and that the oils are true, therapeutic grade essential oils and not fragrance oils.
Another approach is to grow your own lavender. It is a hardy perennial in most parts of the United States, with several different varieties that are suited to different climates. You can buy starts and transplant them or start your own from seed. Once your lavender plants are established, you will have an abundance of lavender sprays for many uses!
Aromatherapy is a little different for animals than for humans, with the main difference being the sense of smell that most animals have over humans. Animals have a much more acute sense of scent than we do, so the amount of oil or scent will need to be reduced by 2/3 for a start to see how the response is. It is much easier to increase the amount bit by bit than to overwhelm their nostrils on the first whiff!
A word of caution is needed here, as some essential oils can be toxic to cats. Certain essential oils naturally contain phenols and should never be used with cats. Their liver does not produce the enzymes to digest these compounds allowing them to build up to toxic levels in their systems. It is safer to avoid using aromatherapy with cats, unless you are working with a skilled aromatherapist with experience and knowledge in working with cats.
Lavender is well known for its effectiveness in calming people, horses and dogs. There are many studies that show the immediate and intermediate positive effects that lavender has on sensitive, stressed, anxious animals. Both horses and dogs respond very well to the scent of lavender with decreased heart rate and respiration, a calmer posture, less shaking and pacing or other nervous behavior. Spray some essential oil on a cloth or the dog’s bed before a car trip to ease stress, just before thunderstorms and for separation anxiety. You can also put a few drops on a cloth and tie it to the dog’s collar for a longer-lasting effect. For horses, a cloth with a couple of drops to introduce the new scent to them will usually have a beneficial effect. After they are used to the aroma, it is easy to let them inhale the scent off of a cloth that is kept for that purpose. They can benefit from a cloth hung in the trailer before a trailer loading session, before and during a road trip – adding a few drops of oil if needed during fuel or rest stops.
One other benefit of lavender essential oil is it is a highly effective insect repellent for both horses and dogs. The same properties that make it a pleasing and relaxing aroma for us and our animals make it the ideal insect repellent. Just add 10 – 15 drops of lavender essential oil to a spray bottle and fill with water, shake well and apply! Make sure to avoid the eyes, but all other parts of the body are ok.
Seeds – Getting Their Due Recognition
Seeds – The Buried Beginnings of Food
Simran Sethi is an award-winning journalist, strategist & educator who teaches & reports on sustainability, environmentalism & social media for social change. Simran is dedicated to a redefinition of environmentalism that uses innovative forms of engagement & includes voices from the prairie, urban core & global community. She recently gave an inspiring presentation at TEDx Manhattan on Seeds – The Buried Beginnings of Food where she shared how much seeds really do matter to all of us, no matter where we live or what we do as a profession.
After showing how few varieties of edible plants we cultivate for our food – about 150 out of more than 80,000 – she goes on to explain the vast majority of humankinds food comes from just about 30 species. In America, over half of our daily calories come from just 4 foods – rice, corn, wheat and potatoes! We are seeing the results of a gradual shrinking in the variety of our food supply over the past 50 years, what is known as a loss of agricultural biodiversity. This is the unintended consequence of a system that was originally intended to increase productivity and feed the world – large-scale industrialized agriculture.
Moving on, she shows the staggering loss of the cultivated foods we used to depend on – by some estimations a 75% loss of food varieties that have disappeared since 1900. Combined with this is the alarming consolidations in the ownership of seeds, essentially seed monopolies. Three corporations now account for over half of the global commercial seeds market today. This includes hybrids and GMOs, both of which can’t be saved and re-planted for the next year. With this model, seeds have become non-renewable resources, inventions created by companies that farmers are required to buy from year after year.
One company now controls the genetics of nearly 90% of the corn, cotton and soybeans grown in the United States. That same company bought the world’s largest developer and grower of vegetable seeds in 2005. As she so emphatically states,
Watch her powerful presentation, learn a few things and become inspired to take a more active part in your food!
Luther Burbank Home & Gardens
One hundred years ago, the name Luther Burbank was instantly recognized in a way that we are not familiar with today. Beginning in 1873 and continuing until 1932, 6 years after his death, more than 800 new varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers, nuts and grains were bred, stabilized and introduced by him. He was much better known than the common term “Rock Star” today, because what he did transcended social, financial and political boundaries.
An American botanist, horticulturist and pioneering agricultural scientist, Luther’s name is often entangled with the emergence of bio-engineering and the patenting of plant life. This is truly unfair, as his work was dedicated to expanding the grower’s options, giving them improved varieties that grew, looked and tasted better and were more affordable to the consumer than what was available at the time. There were few thoughts of patenting the plants that he developed, as the Plant Patent Act was passed in 1930, 4 years after his death. He was more interested in getting the new varieties out into the world and into the hands of the growers and gardeners.
The number of varieties that he introduced is enormous, from his first discovery- the potato – to blackberries, plums, walnuts, quinces, lilies, roses, rhubarbs, daisies, dahlias, poppies, the plumcot or pluot, amaryllis, spineless cacti, peas, primroses, cherries, corn, artichokes, sunflowers, the New Burbank Early tomato, day lilies, Elephant garlic, strawberries, thornless blackberries, amaranth, zinnias, nectarines and peaches.
One of his earliest developments was the blight-resistant potato that was exported to Ireland and helped end the famine there. We know it today as the Burbank Russet that is the most commonly grown and eaten potato today.
He transformed 19th and early 20th Century California from a primarily wheat producing state to varied types of fruits. Europe changed from an exporter to a net importer of fruit, especially California fruit, due in large part to Burbank’s fruit breeding and the climate of California.
Other achievements included spineless cacti to help arid Western ranchers provide another, more reliable source of food for their cattle in harsh conditions. The stone-free plums were his and even the now-common bright crimson California poppy that is very well known was originally orange.
The Luther Burbank Home and Gardens is a museum of his home and workspaces where he did much of his thinking and plant breeding. He is buried on the property as per his final wishes to be part of the landscape where he lived. This is the first house he lived in when he moved to Santa Rosa. The second and larger house that he built with the income from an overseas seed sale is no longer standing.
We took a tour of the home and grounds last fall. The existing grounds are only a portion of the original gardens, as much of the land has been sold off in later years. It is impressive to see what was accomplished here.
We took a lot of photos during our visit and wanted to share the following photo essay with you!
Cindy and Eileen are standing at the back entrance to the home.
The home with its unique greenhouse where much of the experimental breeding was conducted. The trees are all mature and very large.
The 2 story house was considered to be large in its day, and is a very comfortable size even by today’s standards. We were able to tour the ground floor and see how it has been maintained.
The guestbook shows a number of famous and influential visitors, from Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to foreign heads of state and agricultural ambassadors from around the world.
Luther designed his greenhouse, using flat glass panels but creating a rounded structure. The panels are overlapped like shingles and held in place with wooden cross-pieces. The loose set brick floor retains heat and allows water to flow through. There is a fireplace at one end to heat it through colder winter nights. The current configuration has been changed from the original, Elizabeth shortened it after a fire.
Dwarf lemon tree with lemons in mid September.
More dwarf citrus.
Cindy with Shasta Daisies and her favorite flower, the sunflower. There are rows on rows of these beds, each with different species of flowers and most of them are marked.
Eileen in front of a trumpet bush.
There were several milkweed pods ready to burst and send their silky fine flossy seeds into the world.
This is what a handful of milkweed floss will yield, only a few seeds! This will be part of the challenge when we help to harvest the milkweed seeds at Painted Lady Vineyards Milkweed Project this fall!
And away they go! There was a breeze during our visit, so they blew away quickly.
Spineless Cacti.
Colorful Rudbeckia.
Monarch luncheon.
Bee feasting on Dahlia pollen.
A fuschia Dahlia.
Bees having a party!
Cactus Dahlia.
Grow Better Peppers with Shade
Peppers Like a Little Shade
Sweet peppers and hot chiles are an important part of almost everyone’s garden, though in different ratios for many! Some really enjoy an abundant late summer and fall harvest of sweet bell peppers while others look forward to the hot chile harvest for months ahead.
One of the main concerns with growing peppers or chiles is the drop off in both quality and production during the height of the summer heat. As the long, hot days of summer set in production drops while diseases increase such as blossom end-rot and sunscald. There are some surprisingly simple approaches that can make a big difference in this year’s harvest of your beloved sweet peppers and hot chiles!
Three Techniques to Boost Pepper Production
Mulching is one of the very first techniques that has been demonstrated as beneficial to both quality and quantity. Combined with a drip system on a timer, large improvements to the health and vitality of the plants can be seen quickly. These two factors improve the stability of the soil moisture levels, moderating the peaks and valleys from wet to dry. This reduces the stress levels on the plants as they are able to access water on a continuous basis. The mulch insulates the soil and top levels of roots from drying out too quickly and often brings the moisture level up to the surface of the soil, instead of a couple of inches down. Another benefit to mulching with at least an inch of straw type mulch is the temperature insulation of the soil. Reducing the heat gain in the upper levels of the soil improves the plant’s amount and quality of production.
Shading of the pepper plants was recently examined with experiments done in Mexico, Spain and Israel as well as by the University of Georgia. They studied different shade cloth levels impacts on pepper production from 2008 to 2010 with four different levels of shade alongside no shade as the standard. They measured the air temperatures and the soil temperatures and correlated these changes to improved or reduced quality and quantity of peppers. The amount of peppers lost to rejection for quality reasons were closely examined.
What the study has shown is a moderate amount of shade, such as a 30% shade cloth, is the ideal. More shade didn’t produce better peppers past the 30% shading. In fact, as more shade was applied, the plants grew more but produced less peppers with more defects that caused them to be rejected. The moderate shading reduced the heat stresses by lowering the air and root zone soil temperatures, while decreasing diseases such as sunscald and blossom end-rot.
Works for Tomatoes as Well
It is interesting for us to note that these exact same approaches have proven to be the key to successfully growing tomatoes through the hot summers in Phoenix and Tucson, where daytime highs can reach 110 – 115°F! The use of raised beds, drip systems on timers, thick straw mulching and shade cloth allows the pollen to be under the critical 90°F for enough of the day to continue producing tomatoes.
If you have had problems in the past with peppers, chiles or tomatoes slowing production and having disease issues with the onset of hot weather, try these growing tips to get you back on track!
The Benefits Of Shading Peppers | GrowingProduce
Fermented Pepper Sauce
Preserving that overly abundant harvest has been one of the major challenges that gardening and agriculture has always had. In today’s world we are much more familiar with the processes of canning, drying and freezing as acceptable methods of preserving our garden’s harvest for the winter season and longer. These methods have their own set of challenges, though. Canning requires time, experience and knowledge to be successful. Freezing is pretty simple, but has its own set of needs to ensure the garden bounty isn’t lost to freezer burn or premature thawing. Drying is also simple, but benefits from modern drying equipment that can be expensive as an initial purchase.
What if there was another way, a method of preserving the harvest that is not only simple, non-intensive for both labor and equipment and was proven safe? One that is location and temperature independent, doesn’t care if you forget the exact timing and still produces an absolutely delicious product? There is! That method is fermentation. It has been proven safe over several thousand years, with at least that many different approaches and many more recipes. Almost every culture across history has contributed something to the art of fermentation.
Fermenting vegetables is an extremely simple, effective and tasty way to start experimenting and gaining knowledge, taste and experience. In addition to being easy and quick it is also highly nutritious and beneficial to your health.
Some folks are hesitant or outright afraid of trying fermentation for fear of accidentally growing the “wrong” bacteria and sickening or even killing themselves or their families. This is completely understandable in today’s world of anti-microbial soaps, detergents and wipes.
At least in the world of raw vegetables, this fear is unfounded. “As far as I know, there has never been a documented case of food-borne illness from fermented vegetables. Risky is not a word I would use to describe vegetable fermentation. It is one of the oldest and safest technologies we have.” This is from Fred Breidt, a USDA microbiologist specializing in vegetable fermentation.
In fact, fermenting commercially available vegetables will kill any pathogens that we’ve seen in the news as contributing to food-borne illnesses, as they simply cannot survive in the lactic acid environments of fermentation!
This is going to be a slightly different recipe format than we usually do. We will give you a foundational approach to fermenting any vegetables, and then give a basic recipe for a sweet and hot fermented pepper sauce or paste. The beauty of these recipes is that they are entirely scalable. Do you have an extra quart of hot chiles, a handful of sweet peppers and some garlic or onion? Great, we can work with that! Or do you have a couple of 5 gallon buckets of hot chiles and 3 more of sweet peppers, more onions than you know what to do with and you’re worried about them all going bad? No worries, we can work with that as well – all from the same recipe! The flavors from each recipe will be different, but equally delicious and nutritious.
There is a new book on fermentation on the market, and it is most excellent. The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz is his newest exploration of this ancient form of preserving foods. His tagline on the book reads, “An in-depth exploration of essential concepts and processes from around the world.” The basic concepts of fermenting come right out of his book, and they are easy!
Vegetable Fermentation Made Easy
It doesn’t matter if you have one or a dozen veggies, the above recipe works. Add spices, herbs or edible flowers and experiment. You will be surprised at just how tasty almost everything comes out.
Now that we have the basics down, let’s look at how to handle that bumper crop of hot chiles and sweet peppers. These, along with tomatoes, are one of the most expensive vegetables to buy in the store, but taste so much better out of your garden. It is an absolute crying shame to let any of these go to waste!
Let’s look first at a hot fermented chile sauce, much like Sri Ra Cha or “Rooster Sauce” as it’s called after the rooster on the bottle. The only ingredient ratio to keep in mind is the chile to garlic. Don’t go crazy on the garlic, as it gains pungency as it ferments and can throw off the overall flavor.
A note on the salt – use anything but Iodized salt, as this will cloud the color of the brine and can leave a metallic aftertaste.
Homemade Fermented Sri Ra Cha Sauce
Will keep for 6 months or more, but you’ll eat it long before then!
Recipe notes: Wait until the chiles are fully ripe and red, as they will have the most complex flavor profile and yield the tastiest sauce.
Use the general ratio listed to scale up or down to suit your particular needs at the time.
Now let’s look at a larger batch with more ingredients and a completely different flavor.
Sweet and Spicy Fermented Pepper Sauce
Now you have the basic foundation of how to make some incredibly delicious chile or sweet fermented pepper sauce. You can go from mild to shockingly hot and experiment with different spices and amounts of complementary vegetables to add their flavors. You will quickly become something of a hero to your family and friends once they taste your unique sauces!