The Fermentation Files (Ginger Beer/Not Beer)

Small batch fermenting is one of my favorite things to do. I love to make sauerkraut, kim chee, and kosher dill pickles. During milk season I make kefir and, of course, cheese. People don’t think of it that way, but cheese is in fact a fermented food. Someday I would love to try my hand at another non-intuitive fermented food - dry cured salami. Fermented foods have a ton of health benefits and they are a cheap, low stakes hobby that doesn’t require much in the way of equipment. 

A notable exception to that cheap and easy thing, though, is one type of fermentation that I don’t do anymore. I used to be a home brewer. I’d make plum wine in the late summer and hard cider in the fall. I never got all that good at it, but I did enjoy myself and I did amass a collection of cool glass carboys and neato accoutrements like airlocks and bottlecappers. And I felt a great deal of satisfaction and pride whenever I got “high on my own supply” and enjoyed a few glasses of mediocre but effective home made hooch. 

Alas, I enjoyed it all a little too much and eventually I quit drinking alcohol altogether. I gave away all my cool carboys and tubing and whatnot. It was sad to part with it all, but I still had a whole world of fermenting projects and kitchen-witchery to console myself. I’ve stayed away from fermented beverages ever since. Until a few days ago. 

My daughter Hope has long wanted to make old fashioned root beer and/or ginger ale. It’s a fermented drink, but it isn’t alcoholic. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be more than about 0.5-1% alcoholic, which is the same amount that’s allowed to be in regular apple or orange juice that you buy at the grocery store. So when, last week, the Gleaner’s Pantry offered up a bounty of a whole pound of fresh ginger, we decided to give it a try. 

I wasn’t sure how to go about it, but that’s why I have books. The first step in making ginger beer is making a ginger bug. A ginger bug is very simple to make. You just grate a ton of ginger into a jar, add a big scoop of sugar, and fill the jar with water. Leave it on your fermenting shelf (what? You don’t have a dedicated fermenting shelf?), and within a day or two it will be bubbling away. 

When your ginger bug is nice and active, make a pot of very strong ginger tea - actually a decoction of ginger. Grate, chop, or thinly slice at least six inches of ginger root into a half gallon of water. Simmer for twenty minutes. It will reduce down to about a quart. Strain into a half gallon jar and add a full cup to two cups of sugar and another quart of cool water. Temperature should be lukewarm. Then add your ginger bug in a mesh bag. 

Cover, but do not seal. Put it on your fermenting shelf (you set one up in the last minute and a half, right?). Wait a day or two until it’s nice and fizzy and drink. You can bottle at this point, but be careful. We bottled some in stoppered bottles and when we opened one a day later it shot out like champagne. 

I ended up not drinking the ginger beer, after just a taste. On the first day, I couldn’t taste any alcohol, but on the second day I thought I could. I might have been imagining it. It tasted like apple cider when it’s left out overnight. I’m certain it would be impossible to get drunk on this ginger beer, but these days I take no chances. It is a sugar-based ferment, and that means it must have some alcohol in it. I don’t fuck with alcohol anymore. So Hope gets to enjoy it all herself. 

However the taste I did get was great! Very “hot” ginger taste, light carbonation, and that slightly sweet-sour taste fermented liquids have. I’m sure it would be tremendously refreshing over ice on a hot day, and probably very good for stomach ills and nausea. Next time, I may try just making the string, sweet tea and adding carbonated water instead of a ginger bug. It won’t be a real fermented product that way, but at least I could drink it. 

To Plant or Not to Plant

The other day I went for a walk in a nice neighborhood downtown. There were signs of spring everywhere - crimson buds on the rhubarb plants in the alleys; small green shoots in garden beds that will soon be blooming crocuses and narcissus; red alder catkins dangling from the branches like caterpillars. And, in many yards, evidence of industrious people preparing for early planting season. 

I took a picture of these beautiful cold frames. They are just old windows attached with hinges to raised wooden beds. They can be kept closed or propped open. Inside, I could see fresh greens. It’s too early for these to be new spring greens, they looked like overwintered chard and kale. But they were gorgeous, bright green, tender and delicious-looking. 

I got excited. I have long wanted cold frames just like this. If I had such nice cold frames, I could plant radishes and spinach ANY DAY NOW. I could start slow-to-mature vegetables in April instead of direct sowing in late May. I could grow CUCUMBERS. I could grow EGGPLANTS. 

I even remembered that we have four or five good-sized windows just sitting on a trailer in the yard near the shop, doing nothing. 

Then I remembered that I am one of the world’s worst gardeners and there are many reasons for my failure besides my lack of cold frames. Mostly a lack of will or energy to spend hours and hours a week pulling weeds and picking slugs and bugs off of my plants. My aching knees and creaky back. My inability to remember where I put the trowel and the gardening fork for the life of me. 

I remembered that “I fought the weeds and the weeds won” is pretty much our farm-anthem around here. I remembered that I have consciously cultivated tough perennials like raspberries and rhubarb just so I don’t have to prepare garden beds every year. I remembered that I belong to the gleaner’s pantry and have pretty much unlimited access to organic vegetables year-round, even if they aren’t quite as fresh as they would be if I were picking them from my own garden. 

I always plant a few things, and I’m sure I will this year as well. Maybe this will be the year I actually get some asparagus crowns into the dirt. Maybe I can convince Paloma to help me lay down all the cardboard I keep intending to bring home from Gleaner’s and so get a jump start on weed suppression. Maybe Homero will finally put the wheel back on the wheel barrow so I can move compost in quantities larger than a five gallon bucket. 

Maybe. 

Goat Totin’ Man Totin’ Goats

It recently came to my attention that there are still people out there reading my blog. Apparently, there’s a high school boy out there, a friend of Paloma’s, who thinks my blog is pretty cool and asked Paloma why I don’t write anymore. 

Because, Kyler B., I’m just lazy. Terribly, terribly lazy. It’s easier to post a  picture on Instagram or Facebook than it is to write a real post. Also, the news has been so sad on the farm lately - we went through a terrible time of many deaths. I felt like a complete failure as a farmer. And, after twelve or so years, I sometimes feel I’ve written all I have to write about the passing seasons on our little farm. 

But of course, I haven’t. There have been all sorts of recent developments. And I have had a cool idea for a new ongoing  series of posts about eating from the gleaner’s pantry as close to exclusively as possible. So, for those few of you out there in the real world who are still interested in life up here at Windy Hill Homestead, I will start writing again. 

Meanwhile, here’s a few pictures of Homero toting goats. 

With Cleo, 2022

With Bitsy and Bootsy, 2020

 With a goat whose name I can’t remember, 2017 (?)