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| Take a tour! |
Farm to Fermentation Festival
This past weekend my friend put on a fabulous festival out in the middle of nowhere on a beautiful farm called Tara Firma. The festival was call Farm to Fermentation and it was all about fermentables. From Sauerkraut, Kimchi, Beer, Cheese, Wine, Kombucha, pickles etc. etc.
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| Schedule for the day! |
There were some other local vendors there as well doing chocolate, sandwiches etc. but mostly the festival was made up of tasting booths where you walked around and tried all of the delicious food that people had. We had little tasting glasses and got to go around and try as many products as we wanted, all while eating with bamboo or recycled utensils. There were some that were absolutely amazing. There were a few that were pretty stinky and not as yummy but over all most of the items I tried from the vendors were delicious. I wanted to buy a jar or everything.
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| Kimchi Seminar |
Another part of the festival was that there were a bunch of interesting seminars so that you could learn the basics of making the items yourself. They had a seminar for just about every classic fermentable item that was featured at the festival. I ended up attending two that were great. Basic Kimchi making and Basic Pickling.
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| Tastings! |
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| This Place was amazing! |
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| Was and still am not a big fan of Tempeh. Sorry Soybeans. |
I have made pickles in the past and they were so delicious but I have never made any cabbage based fermentable. Kimchi I think would be a fun one to do. It does smell kinda funny when you make it but it does taste pretty good in the end. The other big draw for the festival was the farm where the festival was. Located in nowhersville Petaluma in the dry hills this adorable farm is the love child of some Marin County financial people who decided that there was not enough sustainable farming and meat raising going on in their area.
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| Pigs! |
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| Chickens! Finding the Eggs |
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| More Chickens! |
So they sold everything they owned and bought a farm raising pigs, cows and chickens in a happy environment. They do a pretty cool Meat CSA program that allows you to buy a certain share of their local farm raised meat. Plus they sometimes do seasonal veggies, fruit and eggs. They were giving tours all day of their farm and sharing their sustainable philosophies. It was a very interesting tour and I would be very interested in joining one of the meat CSA's. I could get fresh and local meat from a place where I knew exactly how they treated and cared for the animals.
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| Tasting Glass! |
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| Local Apples |
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| Checking out cheese under the Microscope. |
By the end of the afternoon both Greg and myself felt like we were armed with the info we needed to move more into the fermentable lifestyle. We already make, drink and work in beer. But maybe now I could make some delicious fermentable cabbage to go onto one of my hotdogs at the next cookout...or maybe I will make another batch of pickles. I really have been wanting to do that this fall. Maybe that will be in a blog post here in a couple weeks. I just need to find some inexpensive jars!!!
After the 300 or so people that passed through the festival gates at the end of the day the crew who put it together only had one bag of trash. Everything else was put into the compost piles or sent to be recycled. Very Impressive.
I know I will look forward to this event every year.
Until next time...Buy More, Consume Less....Possibly ferment a cabbage.
Missy
http://www.tarafirmafarms.com/
http://www.farmtofermentation.com/
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