M is for Makers (and memories)

Why I make and a sale to help you make your own fermented foods

Are you a maker? Are you driven to create something? (Please answer in comments.) Doesn’t matter what medium you use, but you are compelled to make—food, pictures, words, stitch, mend, build, sculpt…?

I have been using my creative energy in the last years to collaborate with microbes to preserve food, especially plant-based foods like apples, beans, cabbage, flowers, and beyond. It is tangible, satisfying, and (usually) pretty to behold. I come from a long line of makers. I have made a lot of things and someday I will share how I might have just as easily become a maker of shoes in the time my children fledged but instead became a maker of books on fermentation.

Next question: Do you feel like the back side of August is the beginning of a settling?

I do. An Exhale. The feeling of making rushes back, first in preserving the amazing seasonal fruits and vegetables and second in finding time in the evening to sit and mend. It is the coming indoors after summer. A few years ago my friends at Taproot Magazine asked me to write a few words on why I make for a special issue simply called MAKE. It is sold out but in these words that follow I have excerpted some of that small essay.

The room smelled of sawdust and the soundtrack was the discordant staccato of many hammers wielded by young hands. Hammers, nails, scrap wood, and the bright chalky primary colors of tempera paint—what more is there really?  It was the early 70’s and the school I went to in Ithaca, NY was progressive. We didn’t spend all day in one classroom but instead for the last half of the day, we were allowed to choose where we would spend our time, even the kindergartners, of which I was one.  Nine times out of ten I chose the wood shop, and on the tenth, I went to the art room.

Not one to think small, I made a series of signs that year. Large flat pieces of wood nailed crosswise to stakes and painted with colors smeared or streaked but all with smiling faces. This happy extensive installation was exhibited in the front yard of our tiny house on Cornell Street.  The riotous armless stick figures stuck haphazardly in the lawn. They stood out in the otherwise well-manicured neighborhood. I have a distant, fuzzy recollection of my mother feebly encouraging me to try another activity, the art room maybe?

This is my first memory of making, at least making that was my very own, and the feeling of empowerment and satisfaction with the process and product.  It is deeper than that in that I slide into the world right into the arms of a maker. She, a maker, whose father made leather belts for Saks in the 40’s and silver jewelry that he wouldn’t sell in the 70’s. He had a shop, he had customers with cash, but ultimately when offered the money, he couldn’t part with the pieces. He came from quilters. My first doll was a cubist Picasso rag doll; my board books were curious (in no way juvenile) cutouts glued onto stiff smooth cardboard all crafted by my mom, a college student, who was an intellectual more than an artist.

Despite that, my mother was a maker of all things, from Halloween costumes to paper maché sculptures and macramé (it was the 70s). She’d learned to cook in her early twenties with the same exuberance. The kitchen was also a creative outlet. When she was inspired, she went for it. She produced with exuberance and no need for perfection. The varying results—hanging threads and crooked lines and burnt onions—never dissuaded her. We really did use a hammer and nails one year on a gingerbread house—the bread was too tough and heavy to glue with frosting.

She bought all the tools and usually made a series before heading to the next impulse. Her productions achieved the most important thing. They brought her joy. Often they were in effort to save money and make something she’d seen and liked, or something that was too expensive. Like the crooked attempt at a Care Bear (during the time when all kids had to have one) that left my little sister mortified (was there a drunken brawling bear edition?), still, there was the delight in having made one.

She taught me to cook when I was in the fourth grade. My first dinner for the family was shepherd’s pie. As a latchkey kid, I had many afternoons at home alone. Usually, that meant reruns of Gilligan’s Island, Brady Bunch, and so on.  One afternoon, though, I decided to try out my new cooking skills on a batch of cookies. The recipe instruction word I hadn’t learned was cream. When, in the instructions, I was to “cream until smooth” I thought it was asking for cream. Eggs were cracked. I was committed. We never had cream in the house but we did have powdered milk.  I decided to make a half cup of cream by mixing as much powdered milk as my half cup of water could take. The cookies were a disaster. My mom explained my mistake when she got home.  

All in all, teaching me to cook early was a brilliant move on her part. I would step in and cook for the family when she went through phases of being uninterested in cooking. I do have to say that another reason creating with food is so satisfying to me now, is because I don’t have to keep it, we eat it, eventually. I say this like it is somehow different from the trunks of treasures generated by family—quilts and toys the kids made but I admit to shelves in and out of refrigerators with some pretty old (and delicious) ferments. One in particular was not made by me. It is a tiny jar with less than a dozen umeboshi plums made by my mom. I eat one now and then when I miss her. She died in 2017.

Besides food, I tend to the practical and am attracted to functional art but my mother and I diverge in that for me it is not about saving dollars but repurposing. Gawd, the time in the early nineties I saved all our aseptic rice milk boxes, rinsed them out, and put colorful contact paper on them to produce giant, but light, building blocks for my little boys. I hated how much room they took up for the next few years, until we moved. Ah, those days of analog life, no computer distractions, I also had time to make every member of our extended family patchwork picnic quilts from all our old jeans.

So, why do I make? I am compelled to.

I knit because fiber and fine wool enchants me.

I made shoes, because I enjoy design and love the smell and sensuousness of leather.

I bind small books because I write.

To live with myself I write.

I preserve (ferment) mountains of food because we eat.

I make because I always have.

I make because my mother showed me I can try anything.

Most of what I have found myself doing over the years has been an organic journey, rather than planned. (Yes, I admit to mostly flying by the seat of my pants, definitely not a spreadsheet.) So, when Meredith and I founded The Fermentation School in 2020, as a way to continue to teach when we couldn’t, I never imagined I would find myself a few years later working with some incredible creators from across the planet.

If you have been wanting to dive a little deeper or learn a new skill all courses over $50 at TFS are 25% off through the end of August. Simply find a course and use the code SUMMER25 at checkout.

Please check out all the courses and possibilities but I have made it easy for you to go straight to some of my courses with the discount already applied.

Master Fermented Vegetables $78 => $58.50

2 courses -- Master Fermented Vegetables and Hot Sauces  $93 => $69.75

How to Ferment Miso $54 => $40.50

How to Make Vinegar at Home $119 => 89.25

How to Make Tempeh $119 => 89.25

Bundles where I have teamed up with others for even more learning fun:

Complete Vinegar Bundle with Jori Jayne Emde $185 => $138.75

Plant-based Protein Bundle Tempeh + Tofu with Mara Jane King $128 => $96

Miso + Meatso with Meredith Leigh $84 => $63

At TFS we are trying to change the content publishing model and 90% of what you pay goes to the creators who put years into developing their craft, and a ton of heart into making reliable, content-rich courses you can follow at your own pace and revisit as many times as you want.