Kirsten writes: We are Oregon-based writers. I am the author of award-winning Homebrewed Vinegar, and together we’ve written the award-winning The Big Book of Cidermaking; also award-winning Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments; Fiery Ferments; and the best-selling Fermented Vegetables.
The short story is we got our start fermenting foods over twenty five years ago on 40 acres of wooded hillside on unceded Takelma territory which grew into a teeny-tiny organic food company—when fermented veggies were NOT hip. I realized that my passion lay in the desire to both teach people how to ferment and push this culinary art to new flavors, so we wrote some books—admittedly the first one was Christopher’s idea.
Christopher recently pivoted to fiction writing and running a small music festival, and I am still fermenting things—I hope change.
I lead experiential workshops worldwide and online helping people to make, enjoy and connect with their food. I co-founded The Fermentation School a women-owned and women-led benefits corporation that supports the voices of independent educators to empower learning and build culture and now write this newsletter. You can also find our work at Ferment.works.
The longer story is that I learned from an early age that food grounds people in place and culture.
I’ve called a lot of places home: married student housing on the campus of Cornell University; a thatched hut with bamboo pipe plumbing on an island in Indonesia; a historic building along the Isar river in Munich; a 70’s rancher in the high desert of Arizona; a townhouse in a suburb of Rotterdam and another in Tucson. In all these places I found nature and learned the local culture through cuisine. Through all that I longed for a place of my own.
I found it on a homestead with her husband and young family in the mountains of Southern Oregon where we’ve lived for the last 26 years. I became passionate about food from the ground up. The obsession became planting fruit trees, raising dairy animals, growing vegetables, and preserving the harvests—all while homeschooling. Our four children grew (and they grew and grew to a combined height 25 feet, 9 inches). Meanwhile, my cheeses and fermented vegetables became popular. This is where the farmstead food company enters the story. We produced for local markets and retailers and found myself teaching. Always teaching customers and local restaurateurs how to ferment foods for themselves.
And that became our first book. From here we come full circle to the books that we’ve written in the first paragraph and that we also now are grandparents of 4 small humans.
In this newsletter, you will mostly hear from me, Kirsten, but as Christopher started this newsletter and my hope is sometimes he will add some wisdom, or humor.
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