I’m trying to get in the routine of making more of what we eat here on the farm. I’d say growing and preserving but right now the garden’s small and not producing much. So it’s more on the ‘make’ scale than ‘produce’ scale. With that said, we discovered the gastronomic delight of home fermented sauerkraut. My father, who loves pickled vegetables, promptly decided that since I got the cabbage right, why not carrots next?

It’s taken me awhile to get around to buying sufficient carrots at the green grocers but I finally did. I got them all nicely washed, chopped, and ready to go. And then remembered the second step of fermenting. After the item to be fermented has been prepared to ferment, it then needs to be bruised. Cabbage is easy – just pound it with a stick (or, in my case, wooden spoon). Cucumbers, when I get a chance to make pickles, just need to be squeezed slightly, if at all. But a carrot?

So, trusting in Katz (see book here), I salted the bowl of carrot chunks and proceeded to squeeze.

Lo and behold, you can indeed bruise a carrot. After a few minutes of squeezing the carrots started to weep. And stain my hands orange but that’s neither here nor there. Into the fermentation crock they went. And, because the vegetable stand had some, I peeled and gently bruised quite a few pearl onions. Into the crock with the carrots they went.

I added some dill and crushed garlic cloves, poured enough water over it to just cover the contents, and added the sandstone weights to keep it all underwater.

The pot, with it’s water seal and lid, is now sitting under the kitchen shelves burping away.

I won’t know if this latest adventure into fermentation is a success or just a time-consuming way to make fancy chicken food for six weeks. Needless to say, expect to hear more on this topic in September!