Fermentation and transformation

At the beginning of November many people in the northern hemisphere observed a holiday marking a transitional point in the year, a time when those who have died are remembered and honored in various ways. Those of us who live in temperate parts of the hemisphere have death all around us at this time in the form of falling and fallen leaves, frosted-out gardens, and lawns going dormant. With these natural reminders of seasonal death around us, it makes sense that a Day of the Dead is celebrated at this time.

While I too remember those people I knew who have died, I also perform two other rituals to honor the plants that have died to feed me and the rest of nature. One ritual is to gather some of the newly fallen leaves to begin a new compost pile. To make good compost, one layers dry, high-carbon plant matter such as fallen leaves with wet, green plant matter such as garden weeds or kitchen wastes. If the proportion of the two is correct, when they are layered a fermentation process mediated by soil bacteria will eventually convert them into a mix of humus, a stable form of organic matter, and less stable forms of organic matter. Humus, and to a lesser extent the less-stable forms as well, attracts and loosely holds on to anionic (negatively charged) minerals such as the nitrates, sulfates, phosphates, and borates that plants need to grow. Plant roots are able to mine the humus for those minerals as they need them. By making compost and applying it in the right amount to my vegetable garden, I help the plants grow to their full potential while keeping the soil in good condition so that it may continue to support plant growth after I die.

By this time of year I have long since used all of the leaves I stockpiled from last year to make compost. If I were to use fossil-fueled means to gather and shred leaves I could stockpile enough leaves to last all year long, but because I use a human-powered leaf rake and have a limited number of hours to devote to raking leaves, sometime in summer I run out of stockpiled dry leaves. Thus, when enough leaves have fallen to make leaf-raking possible, it’s time to begin a new compost pile the proper way, with both high carbon and green materials. Since the garden isn’t making much in the way of weeds this late in fall, I mix the leaves with kitchen wastes that I’ve kept in two five gallon buckets. About a week ago I dumped the kitchen wastes onto a pile of mixed dry and green weeds and spent plants, dumped a layer of leaves on top, and then blessed the pile, honoring the ingredients and the microbes that will do the fermentation. I then put the remainder of the leaves I raked into one of the bins I use to stockpile them. By no means is this small start a full compost pile. The best compost piles I make are in spring, when I have lots of leaves from fall and green weeds from the gardens to layer together properly. But even so, this beginning of a new pile holds symbolic meaning for me. We all die in our time. I honor those who have died, acknowledge the fact that I will join them in my time, and know that out of that death the ferment of new life takes place.

Another way that I use fermentation to change past plants into future food is through collecting and analyzing data from my vegetable garden. Because our growing season ends at about this time, this yearly ritual also honors the dead plants that have fed me and transforms them into information that I can use to become a better gardener. I’m in that process now, having created a spreadsheet to compare the best results from previous years to this year’s results. As I type, I’m thinking about weather, pests, the differences in the way I planted in different years, and so on, looking for patterns that will help me to better understand the particularities of my situation and work with it in the best way. When nearly all of the data-gathering is completed (I’m still harvesting hardier crops like greens and root vegetables), I’ll post it and my analysis of the results. I wish more people would do something like this in different climates. It’s the kind of data I would have liked to have as a beginning gardener. But at least it might help those of you who live in climates similar to mine to become better gardeners quicker than I have, another form of transformation appropriate to the times.

Mike finished the wood shed today and began to load it with wood that came from the silver maple tree that was removed to make room for our garden shed. The photo shows the new wood shed with the wood he loaded into it. Because we’d kept a tarp over most of the piled logs for the last year or so, much of the wood is still suitable for burning despite its being three years since it was cut and piled.

Each of the two bays of the shed will hold a cord of wood. Since we haven’t used the wood stove much we don’t know if two cords would get us through a winter if we were heating only with wood. But we might start burning wood more often now that the shed is built, to begin to get a feel for how long a shed-full of wood, burned conservatively, would last.

The next post should be the next installment in my series on managing well in a minimally-heated house.