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Food Preservation: Lacto-fermenting

My last entry on the important art of food preservation focuses on lacto-fermentation, which is especially timely in this current moment of extreme cleanliness.

First, let’s define it. Lacto-fermentation harnesses Lactobacillus bacteria’s ability to turn sugars into lactic acid, a natural preservative that inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria. Along with extending shelf life, this process adds interesting flavors, makes plants safer to eat and easier to digest, and helps to boost the population of our microbiome when we ingest these foods.

Foods preserved this way still need to be stored in a cold, dark location and won’t last as long as canned, dried or frozen items.  It is the added taste and health benefits that most recommend this method. They are also traditionally often used as condiments, eaten regularly but in small amounts.

History, Including 2020

Cabbage for Sauerkraut

Lacto-fermentation has thousands of years of history all over the globe. Some foods you might recognize using this process are: sauerkraut, kimchi, and yogurt.

In the recent past of 2020, disinfecting and cleanliness became even more of a way of life for people – for good reason (although some are taking it too far – drinking bleach being a good example of that). During a pandemic, extra attention to appropriate anti-germ measures is a smart preventative measure. However, we don’t want to forget all that we’ve learned about the microbiome and the positive role it plays in our health (the happy news about mask wearing is that it prevents disease spread without harming your microbiome).

The truth is, keeping ourselves well populated with microbes helps us stay healthy. This is true for plants as well. In disease suppressive soilsit’s the presence of soil microbes that allow for plants to stay healthy or fight disease.

The vast majority of microbes do not cause disease and many actively help their hosts thrive. Which makes sense, right? Why would any creature want to harm what it depends on to live? It’s a lesson every species learns or eventually dies trying to.

Cucumbers for Pickles

So, especially while we are in the midst of an epidemic of cleaning and have a dangerous new disease in our midst, nourishing our microbiome is especially important.

 

Personally…

I started incorporating fermented foods into my diet when I was in my 20s and having trouble with my digestive health. I had many tests, went on limiting, exclusionary diets, and even tried pharmaceuticals. All of which made me feel worse. Then, I went to a workshop with Susun Weed who sang the praises of fermented foods to keep our guts healthy. The next day, I threw out the pills and went shopping for yogurt and sauerkraut plus miso and tamari (which are fermented but not lacto-fermented to be precise). I made sure to eat one of those every single day and within a month I felt better than ever

Continuing to ingest these “friends” on a

Homemade Yogurt

regular basis has been my practice for the nearly 30 years since then and seems to have served me well.  I do also eat a diet that otherwise feeds my microbiome and I avoid factors that harm it as much as possible (there include anti-microbials like: chlorine, food preservatives, cleaning supplies, antibiotics and essential oils).

The Process

Some people get super excited about lacto-fermenting, trying it with all kinds of veggies, and creating new recipes. While very committed to having these foods in my diet, I have been less adventurous simply because I don’t always love the taste. In my repertoire are: yogurt, cultured soft cheese, sauerkraut, cucumber dill pickles and a few experimental jars. Each has a slightly different process to allow the bacteria to get established and do it’s work before microbes that would cause food spoilage get a foothold.

The milk products need a starter culture to be most successful. I buy cultures for the soft cheese but find a spoonful from my current batch of yogurt gets the next one going. I invested in a good thermometer for cheese-making and am careful to heat and cool as the recipe calls

Nigerian Dwarf Goat Milk

for and allow it to remain warm for the appropriate amount of time. Soft cheese is strained, but I don’t need to do that with the yogurt which is thick and creamy because my Nigerian Dwarf goats make such rich milk.

 

The veggies all come with enough lactobacillus that none need to be added, the environment just needs to be set up to favor them. Usually this is accomplished by adding salt to the water covering the veggies. 

Lacto-fermented Veggies: Cukes, Radishes, Beans

I usually also add dill and garlic for taste and a grape leaf which has tannins that help the veggies stay crisp. Keeping the veggies under the water rather than having them float up is tricky. You can buy glass rounds to weigh them down from the top.

 

All these dishes can easily be made at home with minimal investment in equipment. I make them in or transfer them to canning jars for storage – in the fridge chevre cheese lasts a week, yogurt 4-6 weeks, a veggie recipe up to a year, although some will get weird sooner.

A big plus of this method is that food safety is not hard to achieve. The environment in one of these preparations will be acidic, filled with bacteria and often salty, all conditions not conducive to Clostridium botulinum, the bacteria that causes botulism. If some other rogue bacteria or yeast does take over your ferment, it will be clear – smell, taste, or texture will not be appealing. Your own senses will warn you, just listen to them.

If you are interested in more deeply exploring and trying lacto-fermentation I refer you to Sandor Ellis Katz’s books, online writings and classes.

Wrapping Up My Food Preservation Series

I’ve spent more than a year discussing how to preserve food with you all as a way to continue to eat locally in the north year-round. These are critical skills that have been developed over human history and that we can now dust off and use again. It’s a great way to build community resilience, so let’s keep the practices alive!

Lacto-fermented Pickles

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Food Preservation: Cold Storage

Carrot Harvest

The bulk of the food we store for winter we do so in cold storage, either in a cool room in the house or in our root cellar. Most of the work filling those spaces happens late in the season, so it is one of my last entries on food preservation methods despite how important it is to us.

The beauty of this ancient technique is that there is no electrical energy needed. No boiling water, no heating element, no freezer. Instead it uses the stable temperature of the ground and the colder times of year to extend the lives of veggies and fruits that already tend towards longevity after picking. For us, these are: garlic, potatoes, winter squash, pears, apples and roots (carrots, parsnips, beets).

What it does require from us, is choosing varieties that are known to keep well, appropriate spaces, and some care in how we handle and pack the produce. A cool room or closet in a house works great for some items. Others need a lower temp along with a moist environment like a root cellar provides. Basement root cellars can be made reasonably easily and cheaply and are right there in your house. We do not have a basement, so we had to do the slower, harder work of creating an outdoor root cellar.

In-Home Cool/Cold Storage

First, let me tell you about the foods we are able to preserve in our house. Because building our root cellar took years, even foods that I thought needed that real root cellar I went ahead and tried in the house. A number of these worked better than I expected. Plus, I (and the cats) can protect foods inside better from rodents – an important bonus!

Garlic – Garlic is harvested in late July, then cured on our breezy porch until the leaves all die. I trim them up, weigh and label them, put them in paper bags and move them downstairs to a dark, somewhat cooler closet. I grow four different varieties of garlic and we eat them in the order of least long-lasting to most: Red Russian, Music, Phillips and NY Extra Hardy. They do not seem to be bothered by sitting in our non-air conditioned house through some heat in the late summer and fall, and the drier environment makes the house a better choice than the root cellar. With this system, we have garlic all the way into the next summer. By the time the NY Extra Hardy is starting to dry up or have brown spots, we are harvesting the next crop. We save our own garlic seed, too, so now are totally garlic independent! By the way, for a year’s supply of garlic to eat and seed garlic, I grow 120 heads.

Winter Squash, Stored Indoors

Winter Squash – Over the years, we have settled on some favorite kinds of winter squash out of the wide number of choices: Butternut, Delicata, Long Pie, Seminole and Long Island cheese. Lots of nice, sweet flesh, a reasonable size and long storage are three criteria I have used. Again, some last longer than others, with the Seminole being the best keepers – I have 5 here from Fall 2019, an experiment in seeing how long they will last. We grow a lot of winter squash because we also feed it to our animals over the winter months, especially to keep goats on the milking stand. This year our total was 749.5#. Since they like warmer and drier conditions than our root cellar, we have a storage room set up that they dominate this time of year. Harvest generally runs from September through October, or until the first frost. Then we “cure” them in a hot, humid spot (for us, a greenhouse) for 2 weeks to harden their skin. After curing, they come in to the cooler set up we have for them. I can keep an eye on them, pulling any showing signs of spoilage first.

Potatoes

I was not a huge fan of potatoes until we started growing them ourselves and thus could choose from an amazing array of colors and textures! Purple Magic Molly, red Amarosa, red/yellow Pinto, Adirondack Reds and Blues, to name a very few of the myriad of options available as seed potatoes. Potatoes aren’t simple to grow, there are a variety of challenges. They are loved by other critters, especially potato beetles and voles, and they are very sensitive to drought or even inconsistent rains. They need to be hilled, then dug/forked up, which takes more human strength and soil disturbance than any other crop I grow. But, in a good year, it is worth it! We’ve had yields as high as 20 to 1 (for every pound I planted we harvested 20 pounds). We dig them a couple of weeks after the green tops have died, then I sort them, unwashed, into “will store” and “use soon” piles. The ones in good condition I lay out in trays on a shelf and floor of a dark downstairs closet then cover them with paper bags. I have read conflicting advice on how to cure potatoes (so, I don’t really), perfect storage temperature and humidity. So, I just keep trying slightly different systems and seeing what happens. I estimate that they are generally around 55F, which is a bit too warm, and 60% humidity, which seems about right. Laying them out on trays takes up a lot of room, but really helps me keep an eye and pull any that are rotting and use the ones threatening to sprout first.

Fruit

Pome fruits – especially pears and apples – can last for months in cold storage.  In fact, most pears should ripen off the trees, but need the time inside to reach maturity.

Old, Untended Apple Tree Between Parking Lot and Road

I have not planted apples here, since I don’t like them enough to deal with all the diseases and pests they have. We have put in 8 pear trees but they are not old enough to bear yet. However, we have great success gleaning both these crops. The apples we bring home from untended trees in public places are completely organic, but often are low quality in terms of taste and pest damage. Our goats, however, have yet to reject a single one! And there’s always enough good fruit for us to make

Bella Guarding Apples

a batch of applesauce and many apple pies. Usually I can pick up drops from August until November and we’ll all be eating them into January. They are in buckets and trays in our cool lower floor which is closer to 50F rather than the ideal temps of 36F otherwise we could keep them even longer.

Pears are intended for us humans, although we share them with the goats. Laying them out in trays around 50F gives me about a month when they can ripen. During that time we eat them, make nice pear dishes (here’s a great one we found, just substituted in wheat flour and maple syrup), and do at least one round of canning and/or dehydrating to stretch the season. November is a time when I can heat canning water on the wood stove and am glad for the extra heat and moisture from either method.

Root Cellar

Our Root Cellar

When we bought a house without a true cellar (obviously we have a lower floor, but it is not situated under ground level), we knew we would have to put in extra work to achieve this sort of storage. There are many clever options for burying trash cans and coolers and even vehicles.

Inside the Root Cellar

But I wanted it to be convenient enough that we can actually use it, even as we get older. Having to dig snow and ice off and unbury it for access didn’t appeal to me. So, we hired a neighbor and his excavator to dig into the slope next to our house. Then, over the next few years, we took rocks from all over our property plus some concrete blocks we found and constructed the walls. A very robust roof was made, covered with a pool lining we found at the dump, and heaped over with soil. Perfecting the drainage, air flow and temperature regulation will continue, but it is working! It has never frozen, but we have some trouble keeping it cold enough. Again, we’ll keep learning about it as we live with it over time.

Packing Carrots for Storage

What we use it for is simple: roots! Carrots, beets, and parsnips so far. I make sure to pick varieties known for storage prowess, and need to time my planting so they are ready at the correct moment. Having carrots and beets ready to store in August isn’t helpful – the cellar isn’t cold enough and if I leave them in the ground, they might get too big and tough or be eaten up by voles.

I will continue to try other kinds of roots now that we have it, such as parsley root, winter radishes, skirret, and salsify.

I pack the roots in damp clean sand for storage. You don’t want treated, salted sand offered free at your dump. Maybe you have sand around your home you can dig up, or you can buy clean sand from a gravel pit. If you end up with rotted veggies, you’ll need to dig out and no longer use the material around those, but we are otherwise reusing sand. We let it dry out in the sun over the summer to keep microorganisms in check.

They biggest challenge is protecting against rodents. Currently, I am using old coolers that I picked up from the dump or Good Will which have some extra insulation to moderate temperature changes and I hope are too tough for critters to gnaw through.

With this system, we were eating our own roots up until May last time around. This year we had more trouble with our crop (the drought hindered germination and growth, and we had a late season vole problem) so likely will have eaten most before that late in Spring 2021.

I am pleased to be having so much success and continuing to develop our capacity for cold storage, a low-electricity, time-honored way of greatly extending our harvests into the least productive time of year.

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2019 On the Homestead

Garden in July

We just finished up our most productive season on our homestead yet, a year that showed how abundant permacultural systems can be. The bounty also kept us very busy with picking, drying, freezing, canning, and root cellaring.

Winter in New England provides a natural space to review, reflect and plan ahead. During the rush of the growing season, it’s a struggle just to keep up with daily chores. I’m grateful for the down-time that lets me practice the first principle of permaculture: Observe and Interact and the fourth principle: Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback. Some of what I note I can’t necessarily plan for – such as how much rain we get – but other information will change what I do – such as I planted too many bush beans for what we need or what my back feels good about.

I’ve begun to think of our years here less as numbers and more by conditions. Like, 2018 was the Year of Rodents & Clouds and 2016 was the Year of Drought. This year, 2019, stands out to me as the Year of Enough Rain, Weird Nectar Flows & Overabundant Veggies.

Last year’s review focused on the gardens. Here I will expand that to include our animals and other projects.

Let me begin again with speaking to problems, starting with the issues I identified in my 2018 Review and how I fixed them or saw them evolve.

Seedlings in April

Starting Seedlings

Having learned from my 2018 reflections on our seedling trouble, I did go back to a commercial blend. I found a company called Organic Mechanics that has peat-free seed starting mixes, so at least I was able to address that ethical issue arising with these mixes. It still came in a plastic bag. It worked well, though, so I got off to a good start with lots of healthy new plants.

Rodents, Pests and Diseases

Fewer Chipmunks Mean More Strawberries!

Rodent pressure was SO much less this year! It’s basic population dynamics – if a group grows beyond it’s ecological limits, it will crash. After 2018’s nearly unbelievable numbers, we had our easiest year yet dealing with chipmunks, squirrels, and voles, our usual competitors. I see this with insect pests and diseases often as well. It’s why I take my time and observe carefully before reacting, especially with any kind of drastic intervention.

We did have a groundhog appear mid-season, hanging out in our lower garden. We failed to figure out how it was getting in and out of the fenced area so we had some damage – it loved my broccoli and cauliflower plants and took bites out of many of our winter squash in that section. Honestly, for a groundhog, it was well-behaved to only make that much of an impact. It just kept me holding my breath for the day I’d go down to devastation! I’ve exhaled mostly by now.

Healthy Cucumber Vines in August

The cucumber disease that I and many others were affected by in 2018 was not a problem this year. In fact, I had way more cucumbers than I felt ready for! Luckily, the chickens and goats are fans of the overgrown ones. The only change I made from previous seasons was to space the vines far from each other around the garden, making it harder for disease to spread. I’m not sure that mattered, though, as so many others reported great yields from their cukes. I think it was a problem that came and went by factors larger than we control.

Pulling Parsnips

Roots

After a few years of germination problems with carrots I seem to have found the right combination for success. First, I planted later. Although carrots, beets and parsnips as “cool season crops” are happy to grow in cool weather, they don’t necessarily germinate well in cold soil. Especially since I am a committed mulcher, seeding carrots in March meant weeks before seeing them, and keeping them consistently moist that long was tough. So, I waited for some warmth and exercised patience, which I really needed given what a cold spring we had. It was May 26 when I finally seeded the root crops. I also put up a shade cloth over the carrots to keep them from drying out as the sun strengthened. It worked! In fact, my carrots came up

Carrots for the Root Cellar

thickly, and it had been years since I had needed to thin, so my first planting had it’s share of weird twisted, multi-legged roots from being crowded. I was on top of thinning the later plantings which gave me gorgeous results and 195# just of carrots to eat and pack in the root cellar.

 

Labor

The one big problem we experienced this year was a labor shortage. This should not have surprised me, as it is a very common problem on farms. When you are putting a lot of work into a product that is comparatively undervalued financially, there are going to be problems, even with the many labor-saving techniques used in permacultural systems. Steve needed to take more off-farm work this summer, leaving me to do more than I expected and than I was really up for. Any real solution to this needs to be addressed at a societal level, but, meanwhile, I am going to have to rethink some of my choices and be more realistic about my time. I am a great solar-powered, renewable resource, but have my energy limits!

Good Soil, Big Plants

Success in the Gardens

At this point we have about one acre out of our 7 in garden beds full of organic matter, built from the countless truckloads of reclaimed resources we have brought in since we moved here in 2008 (seaweed, coffee grounds, manure, hay and wood chips). The majority of the beds are planted in perennials such as rhubarb, asparagus, berries and fruit trees, most still too young to be very productive. Between the young trees, and in our 3,300 square foot sheet mulched main garden, we plant our annual crops.

Peaches!

With the regular rain, low rodent numbers, and the soil we’ve built, it was a great year for growing. The trees are also becoming mature enough to begin to bear and we had our first real harvest of peaches, 219#, juicy and delicious.

Here are the veggie and fruit numbers, hopefully presented in an useful way (feedback on that welcome!):

Alliums – garlic – 165 hds; garlic tops – 161; leeks – 96#

Beans & Peas – 96.75# snap beans; 17.5# dry beans; sugar snap peas – 11.5#

Brassicas – broccoli – 3.75#; brussels sprouts – 12.5#; cauliflower – 3#; kale/collard – 29#

Celery – 1.5 #

Corn, popcorn – 9#

Cucumber – 195.5# (ack!)

Eggplant – 70.25#

Greens – lettuce – 9#; nettles – 3#, beet greens – 1#

Herbs – basil – 6.25#; dill – 1#

Melon – 21.5#

Potatoes – 166.5# (from 22# seed potatoes, a solid 1 to 7.5 ratio)

Roots – beets – 30.25#; carrots – 195.25#; parsnips – 38#; radishes – 82

Squash – summer – 53.75#; winter = 686#

Tomato – 55.75#

Fruit:  beach plums – 1#; crabapples – 12#; currants, clove – 16.75#; currants, red & white – 21.5#; elderberry – 1#; grapes – 12#; honeyberry – 3 ½ cups; jostaberry – 3.25#, nanking cherry 1/4#; peaches – 219#; rhubarb – 15#; strawberry – 20.5#

This bounty kept us eating well and was preserved to last for months to come.

Bees Making Honey in June

Bees

My two hives from 2018 came through the winter strong, ready to take off in the spring. It was a slow start with the chilly weather, but once they had the opportunity they were wonderfully productive. Usually we have a dearth (lack of nectar) in July, but this year that did not happen. Instead, they just kept on filling their combs, to the point that we pulled honey in order to avoid towering hives toppling over, or late season swarms. I also split the overwintered hives to create two more, plus a small nucleus hive. Strangely, though, the fall nectar flow never came. I have no idea why. I gave them back some of the honey frames I’d pulled plus some sugar syrup and hope they were able to build up enough of a population to survive the winter.

We were able to take 165# of honey, so despite the weird season, I consider it a good one.

Goats

Goat Kids: Zan & Jayna

We had another year of healthy, happy goats, including two successful births in the spring. All four kids were sold to other homesteads with natural goatkeeping practices. We helped Gagnons Mountain Homestead start their herd with Luna’s little girl, Jayna, and her whethered brother to keep her company. We love helping others get started, especially folks we resonate with on animal keeping.

I have been milking three animals since the spring, this year’s moms, Cocoa and Luna, and 2018 mom, Lily. We brought in 107 gallons of milk over the course of the year, most of which I turned into yogurt, chevre cheese, and mozzarella.

Young Dominique Chickens

Poultry

All went smoothly with our Dominique chickens. From the incubator and one broody hen we raised 41 chicks, some of which we added to our own flock, some of which we sold, and some of which we harvested to eat. We added to our number of move-able chicken houses and yards to keep the growing birds protected but rotating pasture. It is tricky to make the structures strong enough to withstand predators but light enough to actually move.

Day Old Ducklings

Our Indian Runner duck flock had some turnover this year. We still had our “old grey duck” from the first batch we brought home back in 2012 but she was showing her age. Over the winter she had seemed arthritic, walking stiffly at times. I thought it kinder not to ask her to go through another cold season. We really liked her and her big blue eggs and wanted to keep those genetics in our flock. So, I put her and our drake together by themselves for a week, took her seven eggs, and put them in the incubator. We find duck eggs much harder to hatch successfully so were delighted when six of them hatched out 28 days later! And, in a poignant, bittersweet coincidence, Old Grey curled up in the pasture the following day and peacefully died, probably not – but maybe on some level – knowing that she had

Our Current Duck Flock

completed her basic biological imperative to pass on her genes to a new generation. Four of those ducklings did turn out to be female and are now part of the flock!

At that point, though, our drake became too related to everyone else in the flock to breed from, so we are ordering some spring ducklings from Sand Hill Preservation Center to add new genetics to our operation.

Our poultry harvest came to: 1,683 (140.25 dozen) chicken eggs; 593 (49.4 dozen) duck eggs; chicken meat about 100#; duck meat about 5#.

Other Homestead Projects

Packing Parsnips for the Root Cellar

The root cellar is up and running after about 7 years of intermittent work! This is a free-standing cellar since our house doesn’t have one. Lots of rock moving and masonry was involved, slow and heavy work. We also continued to expand the orchard and garden areas enough that I can order about 10 more trees for spring planting.

Looking Ahead

And now it’s time for me to do an inventory of our seeds and send in my order to Fedco, as well as orders for trees, bees, and ducklings. Now is also the season to find new and interesting ways to cook and bake all the food we have put up from this abundant year, and thus enjoy eating what’s still fresh and completely local. Watch for me to get back to the topic of food preservation in coming posts.

Happy 2020 – it’s a year of auspicious anniversaries including the 100th year of US Women’s Suffrage and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day… we’ll see what it brings for us all, on the homestead and beyond!

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