When the Fermentation Door Swings Open
It started with the grapes. Our Blanc du Bois vines were heavy with fruit, the skins warm from the sun, sweet and fragrant and calling to be harvested. This was the week, apparently—the week of fermentation. It wasn’t planned, but everything started bubbling, literally and figuratively.
First came the ginger. I dug up a basketful from the edge of the kitchen garden, rinsed it clean, and sliced it for a ferment. Within three days on the counter, the ginger and honey had turned fizzy and alive. Ginger beer. Probiotic, herbal, bright and spicy. The kind of thing that wakes up your whole mouth and settles your belly at the same time.
That same week, my dear friend (who also happens to be my neighbor) met me with a jar of her sourdough starter and a quiet kind of determination. She had tried teaching me—me and a few of my girls—a couple of times before, but for whatever reason, it didn’t stick. This time, though, something clicked. The dough rose slowly on the counter while the ginger beer bubbled nearby. One of the first loaves I baked in one of my wood-fired, hand-sculpted pottery dishes, and the crust came out just right—crackling, golden, with a scent that filled the whole house.
And then the grapes. Those sun-kissed Blanc du Bois clusters were too beautiful not to turn into something special. So we crushed a few by hand, mixed them with raw local honey, and set up a melomel—a fruit mead, ancient and wild. It’s a kind of folk wine that sits somewhere between wine and remedy. And if it doesn’t turn out? Well, it might just become a nice vinegar tonic, which isn’t a bad thing either.
All this—grapes, ginger, sourdough—wasn’t exactly planned. It just unfolded. It felt like some fermentation door had opened, and everything inside the homestead wanted to come alive. And I remembered that, in herbal medicine, fermentation isn’t just about food. It’s about preserving the life force of plants, transforming everyday ingredients into something healing. A bubbling jar of ginger beer becomes a digestive tonic. A melomel becomes an immune booster. Even a loaf of sourdough becomes a kind of slow food therapy.
So maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe it was a season shift. Or maybe it’s just that when you live in a rhythm with the land- the land starts to speak back—and sometimes, it says: now is the time to ferment.
🍇🍷🥖✨
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