preface to

the revised edition

This revised edition is a book I could not possibly have written

when I first wrote Wild Fermentation 15 years ago, because writing

this book changed my life.
When Wild Fermentation was first published in 2003, and for a
decade before, I was living in the community I refer to in these pages
(where I no longer live, though I live just down the road). Wild Fermentation grew out of my experience in this community. During those
many years, my days were devoted to the land and the people and the
animals and the plants there, and I became a fervent student in seeking to learn the practical skills of the homestead. My exploration of
fermentation emerged as an element of this.
I also gardened. I started learning about the forest we were in, the
plants I could find in it, and how to wildcraft herbs, dry them, and
make tinctures. I learned to cook for large groups, and did a lot of the
community food purchasing. I learned to operate a chain saw, and cut,
moved, split, and burned a lot of wood. I was canning and pickling. I
learned to build, and (along with others) built a house, for less than
$10,000, out of mostly salvaged or locally harvested materials. I was
milking goats, drinking raw goats milk, and making yogurt and cheese.
I was baking sourdough bread. I started making sauerkraut and country wines. My fermentation obsession developed in this larger context.
It was just a personal obsession for a while, though always shared
with (some might say inflicted upon) my friends, fellow communards,
neighbors, and family. I was first invited to teach a sauerkraut-making
workshop in 1998 at the nearby Sequatchie Valley Institute, after
which the workshop became an annual ritual. But meanwhile, I was
struggling with my health. Though I had moved to Tennessee from
New York City in the hope that active country living would keep me
healthy, I was experiencing HIV-related symptoms and spiraling
downward. After a health crisis in 19992000, I began taking

anti-retroviral drugs, and my health stabilized and began to improve.

The following year is when I originally wrote Wild Fermentation.
This project has given me back a sense of the future as expansive and
full of possibilities, I wrote. And expansive it has been! My experience since the publication of the first edition has been beyond my
wildest dreams.
What began as a series of self-organized grassroots book tours just
never quite stopped, because there was so much interest, so many
opportunities, and I was having so much fun. I have now taught many
hundreds of workshops, at farms and farmers markets, universities,
museums, and libraries, culinary schools and galleries, cafs, restaurants, breweries, wineries, community centers, conferences, festivals,
private homes, and churches, in big cities and rural areas alike, mostly
around the United States but increasingly beyond. I find that I have
become an international teacher and lecturer on the broad topic of
fermentation, just at a time when fermentation is getting hot, cited as
the latest food trend as if bread, cheese, beer, wine, chocolate, coffee,
yogurt, salami, vinegar, olives, sauerkraut, and kimchi hadnt been
there all along.
In February 2015, as I embark upon this revision, I reflect upon a
year that brought me to four continents, with presentations in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, the UK, Belgium, Sweden, Canada, India,
Mexico, Costa Rica, and a dozen states of the United States. I love to
travel and get to see all these places and learn from them, to see fermentation in context, to be wined and dined, and to meet the wonderful
and passionate people whom I do meet, everywhere. I feel lucky to be
seeing the world in this extraordinary way, making so many connections, and sharing important information and skills for which people
are, quite literally, hungry. I feel fulfilled to know that my books are
making a difference, and to be a catalyst in a broad fermentation revival.
And yet I cannot help but have some ambivalence. It is truly dizzying to travel so much and meet so many people. And traveling means
not being at home, in the kitchen and the garden and the forest, and
with my beautiful family and friends. My interest in fermentation
grew out of the practicalities of living on and from the land. My life as
a fermentation revivalist, and especially traveling to all these places,
takes me away from all of this. As I said, this book changed my life.
Life is full of trade-offs and I have no regrets. As a result of talking
to people in so many different places about fermentation, and tasting,
hearing about, and learning to make an ever-broader repertoire of
ferments and variations, my experience and understanding of

xii wild fermentation

fermentation have been broadened and deepened immeasurably. I

know a lot more now than I did in 2001 when I first wrote Wild Fermentation, and I decided that it was time to update and improve the
first edition, to make it a better and clearer book of fermentation
basics, informed by all that I have learned, but not including it all (for
that readers can turn to The Art of Fermentation, where I go deeper
into the concepts and processes).
The book is somewhat reorganized. Many of the original recipes
have been revamped or revised. Some recipes (and digressions) that
now seem superfluous have been removed, in order to make space for
others that are more relevant. I hope that this book contains the
information you are looking for, and helps empower you to feel confident to experiment in the realm of fermentation. Welcome to the
fermentation revival!

preface to the revised edition xiii