Fermentation as Metaphor

In the microbial world, there is no purity. That’s totally a human construct. In a lot of commercial winemaking, you might use little chemicals to sterilize the grape juice and then you can introduce the single strain of yeast that’s been propagated into that. But that’s a real departure from the long history of winemaking that just works with the ... See more

So in the cultivation of microorganisms on our food—which is what we’re doing in fermentation—we use the same word, “culture,” to describe the community of bacteria that turn milk into yogurt that we use to describe language, belief systems and the totality of what we’re trying to pass down generation to generation.

reclaim a relationship, not only with food production, but with traditions and communities and ultimately with the living world through the simple act of fermentation.

Any time things were getting bubbly, things were excited or excitable, that could be a manifestation of fermentation.

every now and then, I would notice in some article that I was reading, let’s say an article about jazz music, a certain place and time being one of great musical fermentation; I saw references to artistic fermentation; I saw references to spiritual fermentation; I saw references to political fermentation. I learned that the word “fermentation” come... See more

We need bubbliness. We need excitement. We need new ideas. And it’s not that I have any idea what the outcome needs to be. I just know that we can’t keep on doing what we’ve been doing. That we need to shift. We need to adapt because our circumstances are adapting. This is another way in which the metaphor of fermentation really is powerful because... See more

Fermentation is ultimately a very hopeful practice because it does not yield immediate gratification. There’s always delayed gratification in fermentation, and so in a quite literal way it’s an investment in the future. If you are despondent and despairing and don’t know if there’s a future, why would you invest your energy into fermenting? It is q... See more

The more you get out of an air-conditioned car and into an air-conditioned house, the less relevant the environment is to your direct experience. So reclaiming our food is reclaiming much more than our food. It’s reclaiming this huge set of relationships that ultimately connect us to the land and to the biological web that we are part of.

the mystical dimension of fermentation: the beauty of the unseen and working with mystery, which you describe as also what appeals to people; the way they tap into that broader unknown with a sense of what’s possible and out there.