Real Pickles

Northeast Grown, 100% organic, fermented & raw pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, kvass, and hot sauce

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Thank YOU for 20 Years of Real Pickles!!!

It is hard to believe it has been 20 years since the first batch of Real Pickles was created!  This year, through the rainy days of cucumber slicing, now into the season of cabbage coring, shredding and mixing, and looking forward to more beets and carrots in the colder months…. we’re reflecting on the simplicity of that first year and how far we’ve come as a social enterprise.  The summer of 2001, Real Pickles was just one young person slicing cukes in the early hours, fermenting in 5-gallon buckets, and driving around the valley to sell a few jars out the back of an old Saab to a handful of willing shops. It was a short-lived season too – the 1,000 jars produced were sold out by Thanksgiving!

However, the simplicity is only in hindsight.  Starting a business is NOT a simple task, as many of you know.  Real Pickles’ success and stamina have much to do with the fabric of a supportive community, and the many elements that came together to help a burgeoning business survive… and eventually thrive.  

We write today to say, “THANK YOU to our community for supporting Real Pickles for the past 20 years!”  We mention here just a few of the organizations that made our path viable, though there are countless individuals and groups who have supported us over the years. We can only trust that offering a colorful and nourishing line of ferments – combined with an ongoing commitment to making positive social change – is an acceptable return.

Local Farms, Local Heroes

When the idea of Real Pickles was first conceived around a kitchen table in Somerville, MA, founder Dan was working at Iggy’s Breads and I was finishing up my last college semester, ready to embark on a career in geology.  Dan had taken a workshop at the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) summer conference, a convergence of practitioners and students engaged in organic farming and homesteading. NOFA has built a culture of knowledge sharing, skill-building, and advocacy; it was a fitting atmosphere for a future entrepreneur to find inspiration in the near-forgotten art of lacto-fermentation.  As a couple, we were wondering, “where to next?”  To start a fermentation business, we knew it had to be a place with strong organic agriculture and appreciation for local food and economies.  Western Massachusetts fit the bill better than we could have imagined.

Cabbage at Red Fire Farm
Cabbage ready for sauerkraut (credit: Red Fire Farm)

Not only does this area have some of the best farmland in the country, it is a training ground for skilled organic farmers.  The growers from whom we source our vegetables bring deep expertise to cultivating the highest-quality vegetables with top priorities of improving the health of the soil and surrounding ecosystems and supporting the workers that grow our food. That first year, we bought cucumbers from Chamutka Farm and Red Fire Farm and have continued to buy their vegetables every year since, while expanding our network to include a half dozen other local farms.  These partnerships are integral to our business, especially given our commitment to 100% regionally-grown and organic vegetables.

The Connecticut River Valley is also a hub for community appreciation of local and organic food.  Full of food co-ops, farm stands, and independent markets, there were many shops that were ready to take a chance on a tiny food business producing an unusual but nourishing product. The first day of deliveries included stops at Leverett Food Co-op, Green Fields Market, Foster’s Supermarket, and Brookfield Farm.  All are still important partners for us, and we deeply appreciate their early and continued support.  In a valley with sweeping farmland views, this community is invested in the success of food grown and produced here.  Much of that appreciation stems from the important work of Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). Shortly before our arrival, CISA had launched the Be a Local Hero, Buy Locally Grown marketing and education campaign that grew our community’s appreciation and commitment to local food.  Local Heroes are the farmers, food producers, and consumers who choose locally-grown products and support our local agricultural economy.  CISA has continued to be one of our most important community partners in spreading awareness of the benefits of a vibrant local farming and food culture.

Western MA Food Processing Center
FCCDC’s Western MA Food Processing Center, circa 2004

That first summer of pickle production we relied on generous offers from local business people, such as an Amherst restauranteur who loaned her commercial kitchen in the early morning hours for our production and a Greenfield ice cream maker who lent refrigerator space.  We greatly appreciated these critical opportunities and soon found that we needed a new option to scale up production.  Luckily, another crucial partner in the Real Pickles story, the Franklin County Community Development Corporation (FCCDC), was about to unveil their brand new Western MA Food Processing Center in Greenfield.  For the next seven years, we made excellent use of this incubator kitchen, plus the lending and technical assistance provided by the FCCDC to grow our product line, hone our business skills, and develop relationships with other food and small business owners.

Thinking back, it is hard to imagine that Real Pickles could have lasted long without these initial community partnerships.

Community with Big Hearts and Know-How

Addie Rose and Dan with Real Pickles
Addie Rose and Dan at the 2011 Peck Slip Pickle Fest, NYC. (credit: Paul Wagtouicz © New Amsterdam Market)

Over the next few years, I jumped in and together we grew the business at the Food Processing Center with help from a network of informal advisors and advocates.  These included other small business owners who had experience with manufacturing, accounting, sales, marketing, and growing pains. We attended food and farming events to introduce our products and talk to people. In our social time, we went to contra dances where the community readily embraced Real Pickles and spread the word across New England. The late caller-fiddler David Kaynor would frequently hold up our bartered jar to a crowd of 200+ dancers and wax eloquently about the flavor and benefits of fermented pickles. We feel so privileged for this community of enthusiasts and spokespeople that helped to garner support for our products across the region.

And then there are all of the eaters of fermented foods. Thankfully, this area is full of people with adventurous palettes!  We had the added challenge of trying to build consumer awareness of fermented foods, which 20 years ago was not the trending natural products category that it is today.  There were only a handful of producers across the country making products like ours, and in many stores ours was the only line. An effervescent thank you to all our early customers willing to give fermented vegetables a try!

As we began to outgrow the incubator kitchen, it took a broad array of community support to help us make the leap to our own facility.  In 2009 we purchased a century-old industrial building in Greenfield and transformed it into a solar-powered, energy-efficient, organic pickling facility.  It was a challenging transition to say the least, one that we managed to pull off only because we had community partners who believed in us.  A crucial element was the financing, of course.  In spite of our already high debt load and a new global recession, our outstanding local bank and two mission-driven nonprofit lenders (Equity Trust, and FCCDC) came through for us just as we began to wonder if it was time to give up on Real Pickles.  We are deeply thankful for all of the individuals and organizations who helped Real Pickles make it past that critical juncture.

Multiple bottom lines… into the future

Real Pickles worker owners May 2021
Real Pickles worker owners, May 2021 (credit: Matthew Cavanaugh)

Since that time, Real Pickles has grown and developed into an organization that relies on many hands to operate.  Our growing staff over the years have been an essential component of the business, and we are forever grateful to all those who have contributed by packing sauerkraut, chopping carrots, and building a strong culture.  In 2013, along with three other staff (Brendan, Kristin, and Annie), we made the decision to convert Real Pickles to a worker-owned co-operative.  This transition offered strong mission protection, opportunity for staff to benefit from owning their workplace, and assurance that Real Pickles will remain a community-oriented business far into the future. 

To make this transition happen, we relied on the support of 77 community investors to join us in this endeavor.  Folks were excited about supporting a business committed to healthy food, regional agriculture, and workplace democracy.  By becoming a worker co-operative, we are building ownership in our community and creating good jobs in an inclusive work environment.  We’re proud to be in a place where so many people value these things and are willing to invest in building a better food system.

As we move forward into the next 20 years, we do so knowing we are a community business.  Our community partners – farmers, customers, investors, vendors, lenders, and many more – continue to play an essential role in our success.  We in turn take responsibility for operating a truly mission-driven business that tracks multiple bottom lines – financial, social, and environmental.  One important piece of this is acknowledging the role of social privilege in our founding success and a commitment to applying our resources toward building a more equitable society for the future.  Building on the strength and values of our community, we will continue to make the world a better place and we commit to this for the long term.

THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to our story over the past 20 years — we’re lifting a glass of Organic Beet Kvass in your honor!

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Calculating Food Miles at Real Pickles

In the course of preparing our latest annual report, we learned some interesting things about how far Real Pickles products travel from farm to fermentation to fork!

Annual Report – Fiscal Year 2015

Since Real Pickles’ beginnings in 2001, one of our key social commitments has been to source our vegetables only from Northeast farms and to sell our products only within the Northeast.  We do this because we want to promote the development of strong local and regional food systems.  There are so many good reasons to be getting our food from closer to home – freshness and nutritional value, food security, strong agricultural economies, climate change, and more.  And, as I’ve written about here, it’s not just local that’s important but regional, too.

We’ve always had some sense about how far Real Pickles products travel from farm to fermentation to fork, but we’d never before really tried to figure it out.  For our most recent annual report, we decided to go for it.  We posed the question, “What can a business do to build a strong local & regional food system?”  We offered up our answer: “source locally & regionally…sell locally & regionally!”.  And, then we got to work with the calculator and spreadsheets to ascertain just how far – on average – our vegetables traveled from farm to fermentation last year, and how far our products then traveled from fermentation to fork.

Upon delving into the project, it quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to come up with precise numbers.  The reality of food transport involves all kinds of complexities that we could never fully sort through.  But, we could arrive at some useful estimates that would illustrate the difference it makes when a business commits to sourcing and selling within a region.

Farm to Fermentation

Determining the average distance that our vegetables traveled last year from farm to Real Pickles was the more straightforward of the two calculations.  We received a total of 128 vegetable deliveries from ten farms – beginning with the first load of cucumbers from Atlas Farm in late June, ending with our last drop-off of storage beets from Red Fire Farm in February.  For the purposes of the calculation, we assumed that all vegetables traveled straight from the farm to Real Pickles, with no other deliveries along the way.

Organic. Local. Cabbage. Ready to ferment!

The result?  The 285,000 pounds of vegetables used to make Real Pickles products from the 2014 harvest traveled an average of 17 miles from farm to fermentation!!  We’re very excited by this number.  Of course, it’s also what we’d expect given our commitment to working with suppliers like Riverland Farm (13 miles away), Atlas Farm (7 miles away), and Old Friends Farm (22 miles away).

What if we made no commitment to sourcing from Northeast farms?  Real Pickles would likely be buying vegetables from much farther away.  Most of our cabbage, for example, would be coming from major cabbage-producing areas like California, Texas, and Mexico.  In that case, our cabbage would be traveling thousands of miles from farm to fermentation.

Fermentation to Fork

CJ loads the Real Pickles van for local deliveries!

Figuring out the average distance from fermentation to fork was a more challenging task.  Nearly 20,000 cases of Real Pickles products traveled to over 400 stores last year.  Retailers here in the Pioneer Valley – like River Valley Co-op and Foster’s Supermarket – receive their pickle orders via the Real Pickles delivery van.  While those further afield – such as the Park Slope Food Coop and Martindale’s Natural Market – get their Real Pickles products through our distributors or via UPS.  We couldn’t possibly know exactly what route each jar of kimchi or sauerkraut took to get to each store last year, nor can we know the route each jar traveled to get to our customers’ plates!

We do, however, have good data on how many cases of Real Pickles product were sold to each store last year.  So, we mapped the driving mileage from Real Pickles direct to each of our top 50 retailers – which together sold about half of our product last year.  (We made the assumption that doing the calculation based on this group of stores would yield a reasonably accurate result, while saving quite a bit of time.)  Then, we used our sales data to calculate an overall weighted average for distance traveled.  Based on this approach, the final result was pushed higher by fast-selling stores in places like New York City (~175 miles away), while kept lower by nearby stores selling lots of our pickles in such towns as Northampton, MA, and Brattleboro, VT (~20 miles away).

When all the math was done, we learned that Real Pickles products traveled an average of 131 miles last year from fermentation to fork!

We’re pretty excited by this number, too.  As a growing business producing an ever more popular food (fermented vegetables), we know we could easily be shipping our Real Pickles products thousands of miles all around the country.  But, we also know there are so many important reasons to be sourcing and selling regionally.  When we consider that our 20,000 cases last year traveled an average of 131 miles – rather than 1,000 or 2,000 miles – we know we’re making a difference.

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Behind the Scenes at Real Pickles: An Interview with Heather Wernimont, Fermentation Manager

At Real Pickles, we’ve been fermenting Northeast-grown vegetables for well over a decade.  When Real Pickles got started in 2001, there were only a small handful of commercial vegetable fermenters anywhere in the country.  We’ve learned a lot over the years!

I recently talked with Heather Wernimont, our Fermentation Manager and newest worker-owner of the Real Pickles co-op, to get the latest on fermentation at Real Pickles.  Among other things, we chatted about the 2014 production season, what it’s like to get paid to taste pickles, and the similarities between cucumbers and baby goats.

Heather organizes jars for new product tasting!

KH: What do you do as Fermentation Manager?

HW: I work in a team of three production managers. My role is to oversee the making of Real Pickles products from start to finish. This includes planning for all of the vegetables that we buy from area farms, figuring out when we want them delivered, and processing the vegetables. I monitor the barrels during fermentation, tasting them to determine when the product is done fermenting and making sure we are consistent in the way we pack them into jars. I’m also responsible for maintaining our organic certification and working on new product development.

 

KH: Real Pickles fermented 300,000 pounds of vegetables in the 2014 production season. How do you go about doing that?

HW: Our season usually starts in late June when the local cucumber harvest starts and ends in January or February with our last batches of beets and carrots. So we have seven or eight months to do all of our processing of fresh vegetables. We have a production staff of eight or nine people each day who do the work of prepping vegetables, from washing and peeling to coring and shredding. We have a processing machine that we use to shred cabbage, slice onions, grate carrots and that sort of thing. We wash a lot of vegetables and cut all of our cucumbers by hand! We mix the vegetables with salt and spices and pack them into barrels to ferment. All of this work is very labor-intensive. Our kitchen crew is pretty amazing!

 

KH: Was there anything unusual about this past growing season that impacted Real Pickles?

Delivery! Bins of fresh cabbage waiting to be sliced and spiced.

HW: Every growing season looks a little different so we know ahead of time that we’ll need to be flexible and not get stressed out when the days don’t go as planned. This past summer started off nice and warm with lots of cucumbers coming in at the end of June. Somewhere around the last part of July, temperatures at night became very cool and caused the cucumbers to slow down significantly. Once we start getting into August, downy mildew is a threat so we really need to make as many cucumber pickles as we can as early in the season as possible. We were pretty nervous going into August but ended up being able to source the cucumbers we needed from a grower in the middle of the month.We try to stay a step ahead and have some backup work for staff in case there are gaps in our vegetable deliveries. We sometimes fill days peeling and prepping garlic, or we’ll get some summer cabbage for an early batch of sauerkraut. We can also pack finished pickles into jars, which is the work we typically save for winter and spring when we don’t have fresh vegetables coming in.Sometimes, we have the opposite problem. At the start of the season this past summer we were expecting a delivery of around 800 pounds of cucumbers from Atlas Farm. Instead, Gideon called in the beginning of the week and said, “I have 3,000 pounds. Can I bring them over?” We said yes — and it was intense!

 

KH: Do you ever have to change production plans in the middle of the season?

HW: Around the beginning of September, we realized we were going to need to make much, much more kimchi than we had originally planned to keep from running out in the spring. We had made all of our contracts with vegetable farmers in March. Then all of a sudden customers couldn’t seem to get enough kimchi, and we needed to make more.Sauerkraut would be easy — you find some cabbage, salt and spices and figure out the staff schedule and you’re done. Kimchi is complicated – it takes two days to make one batch and there are lots of ingredients to source from multiple farms. We have to look for napa cabbage, carrots, leeks, garlic, ginger, habaneros. Luckily, this year the leek and carrots harvests were good so those were easy. Finding enough napa and garlic was harder but we found what we needed and made an extra 20 barrels — that’s about 800 gallons of extra kimchi!

 

KH: What are the biggest challenges in your job?

HW: At our peak production, we may have about 425 barrels fermenting at once. I need to stay on top of all of them, tasting them when I think they might be done fermenting. Right now, we have two fermentation rooms and we can control the temperatures in both of them. So if we have a lot of barrels that might be ready all at once, we can move some of them into a cooler room to slow down the fermentation a bit. That way we spread out when the different batches are ready. We don’t have a lot of extra space at our facility and have to manage space carefully. We have to make sure we get batches out of barrels and into jars to sell so we can use that barrel again. My job requires a lot of planning, flexibility and creative problem solving all at once.  I love the challenge.

 

KH: How do you figure out whether a batch has finished fermenting and is ready to pack into jars?

HW: I’m looking for taste and texture. We want the flavors to have melded properly so they don’t taste like raw vegetables, I make sure whatever spices we’ve used have blended in with the vegetables. The level of sourness needs to be right. The sugar levels in the vegetable vary over the season and this contributes to how quickly the vegetables ferment so each batch is different. I can’t just assume that it will be ready in a certain number of months.Taste and texture is most important, but lately we’ve done some testing of acid levels and remaining vegetable sugars to deepen our understanding. We also pH test every batch as an extra step to make sure the finished product is safe.

 

KH: Do you ever experiment with different vegetables?

Superchiles awaiting placement in Spicy Dill Pickle jars…

HW: Yes! We canceled production a couple of days because of snow storms this past winter. I used the time to make 28 different experiments! I focused on some different kimchi recipes and tried some vegetables fermented with hakurei turnips and radishes. We have some great orchards here in western Massachusetts so I also made some recipes with apples and pears, which can add some sweetness to fermented vegetables. I wanted to try some new flavors while also staying in line with the simplicity of our current product line.

KH: You did all of the vegetable purchasing for Real Pickles this past year. How did that go?

HW: I really enjoy working with the growers. We have some amazing long term relationships that Dan and Addie Rose started over a decade ago. All of the farms we buy from are small to mid-size family farms, but the growers’ operations are quite different. For example, I do most of my planning directly with Casey at Old Friends Farm over email. Dave Chamutka, on the other hand, is hard to catch by phone but I know he’ll be making the delivery himself so we always talk in person. With Red Fire Farm, I make arrangements early in the season with Ryan, one of the owners, and then later work with the wholesale manager. We are lucky to have such great people to work with.

 

KH: Before you started at Real Pickles you worked as the Education Program Manager at Sprout Creek Farm, an agricultural educational center and maker of award-winning cheese, in the Hudson Valley. Do you see any similarities between these two jobs?

HW: Kidding season and cucumber season are remarkably similar! You can know that fifteen goats are going to give birth but you can’t control when the kids are going to come; it’s the same with cucumbers. You may know cucumber season will be starting soon but everything changes when the first truck pulls up with bins of cucumbers!

 

KH: What’s been your favorite aspect of the job?

HW: Here in the Pioneer Valley, we have access to so many high quality organic vegetables that ferment in such amazing ways. I’ve loved learning about the subtleties of fermentation and working with a live product. There may be differences in how the vegetables ferment as a result of the amount of rain a farm received, the time of year the carrots were harvested, the variety of the cabbage, or the soil profile of a particular farm. We aim for consistency, but due to the nature of a wild fermentation, some variations between batches occur. I like to think that these differences are what make our products so interesting and delicious!

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Why 8 hours of pickle tasting rocked my world…

Some of the delicious pickle entries for GFA 2014

Last weekend, Dan and I participated in the fourth annual Good Food Awards‘ judging event – in the pickle category.  We were psyched for this!  Not only did we get to travel to San Francisco and taste LOTS of incredible pickles – we also got to meet new pickle people and connect with pickle friends we’ve made at previous GFA events.  It was a fantastic experience.

The event was much larger than we expected, almost as big as the GFA ceremony itself.  For each of the 10 categories (pickles, preserves, cheese, beer, chocolate, coffee, spirits, confections, oils, charcuterie) there were 20 or so judges ready to taste the nearly 1,500 total GFA entries for 2014, including ~120 pickle entries.  In the morning, the pickle judges split into small groups focused on regions (I was South; Dan was West), and each group selected 10 pickles to recommend to the larger group based on flavor, balance, texture, and appearance, among other criteria.  After lunch, the pickle judges tasted the 50 pickles selected in the morning and gave them numerical scores.  We won’t know until the awards ceremony which pickles won, but I have my guesses…

Dan’s group took pickle tasting very seriously

I loved tasting SO many different kinds of pickles – vinegar, fermented, krauts, fruit, onions, beets, and relishes.  The fermented black bean and garlic paste was a highlight for me – its spicy kick was significant and enduring!  I also loved the turmeric-yellow kraut packed with ginger, yum.  Dan’s day was made by the vinegar pickled sea beans (the what?) – an aquatic plant neither of us had heard of, harvested from salt marshes.  And those pickled cherries – nicely flavored with a little cinnamon and clove – came in handy immediately following the jar of cucumber pickles full of halved habanero peppers.

Chilly Dilly

Among the judges were experienced pickle-tasters, pickle-writers, and pickle-makers, and it was fun to talk details of sugar-sour balance, degree of fermentation, slicing techniques, and vegetable texture.  The selection of entries were beautifully displayed – it was lovely to see the variety of veggies, colors, textures, and jars.

The pickle category was expertly coordinated by Chris Forbes from Sour Puss Pickles in Brooklyn, NY and Todd Champagne from Happy Girl Kitchen Co in Monterey, CA.   While Chris masterminded the organization of all those pickles, Todd kept up our spirits by making an appearance as “Chilly Dilly”, a cucurbit that is “…kind of a Big Dill”.  They kept us in pickles all day long, PLUS a parade of palate cleansers to keep our taste buds primed – the highlights included some very special GFA entries from the chocolate and cheese categories once their judges were done tasting from them.  Oh, and some nice selections left over from the spirits and beer categories, too.

Fermentation crocks from Counter Culture Pottery

It was a wonderful place to meet and re-connect with a variety of pickle folks.  It put us in a reminiscent mood, too.  When we started Real Pickles in 2001, there were only a handful of businesses around the country making fermented pickles and sauerkraut.  Now there are companies sprouting up all over the place!!  Dan and I really appreciate meeting new companies who are perfecting the art of the pickle, and to talk techniques, recipes, and business models. We had a great time connecting with Mara from Zuké and learning about her new-ish pickle business in Boulder, CO.  We also got to meet Jennifer Harris who organizes Sonoma County’s wildly popular Farm to Fermentation Festival, and Sarah Kersten of Counter Culture Pottery, who makes elegant fermentation crocks.

Dan and Linda Z.

When Real Pickles was getting its start, there were also only a handful of books about fermented pickles, or role models in the world of fermentation (think: pre-Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation!).  Two of those early authors were Sally Fallon (Nourishing Traditions) and Linda Ziedrich (Joy of Pickling).  We count ourselves very lucky that, this past weekend, we were able to meet and judge pickles alongside one of our early inspirations and teachers, Linda Ziedrich.

When Real Pickles was getting its start (is there an echo in here?), fermented vegetables were a food of the past, a fringe-hippie-food, only found in backwoods natural foods stores and in the pantries of homesteaders.  A mere dozen years later, it is at the height of food-trendiness, the focus of many festivals (see this, this, and this), and the mark of the hippest hipster (any hipster worth his or her hand-harvested unrefined sea salt, anyway).

The timing of this trend is uncanny (pun intended), as this food revival is gaining recognition from the science community, as well.  In just the last few years, scientists have been recognizing the amazing benefits of fermented foods to our overall health – benefits that our ancestors enjoyed and came to depend on for thousands of years, but that we have unwittingly excluded in our transition to more processed and industrialized foods.  In his newest book, Cooked, Michael Pollan enumerates dozens of recent scientific articles relating the importance of beneficial bacteria in protecting our intestinal health, promoting our immune defense, and maintaining our mental well-being.  Scientists are also recognizing that our recent deficiency in fermented foods teeming with live cultures may be part of the reason for some of our generation’s most serious health problems, such as allergies, obesity, seasonal colds and flus, and some cancers.  Pickle, anyone?

But back to the Good Food Awards… needless to say, there was plenty of enthusiasm among the pickle judges and aficionados we spent the weekend with. One of the best things about the Good Food Awards is that it is not just a contest, where your product is pitted against those of your peers and competitors.  So much of it is about connecting food producers, inspiring conversation, trading ideas and methods, and giving each other a pat on the back.  Being a food producer can be isolating, especially when regionally-focused, so it can be SO inspiring to talk to other people with similar experiences.  Really, in the world of fermented pickling, we are not competitors.  The more producers there are, the more we are recognized as a legitimate food category.  Participating in the Good Food Awards has given us a real sense for our larger community of fermenters and fellow picklers, and we are so happy to be a part of it!

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Fermentation is hot (off the presses)!

Apparently we at Real Pickles are in on a hip, hot, and exciting trend.  Judging by the release of TWO excellent (and beautiful) pickle books in recent months, there is no shortage of things to say about pickling of all kinds, fermented or otherwise.  We are also proud to report that Real Pickles is recognized in both!  The Art of Fermentation (Chelsea Green Publishing) is the 9-year follow up to Sandor Ellix Katz’s wildly popular Wild Fermentation.  Many ferments and workshops later, Katz offers this incredibly articulate and comprehensive volume on fermentation of food.  Andrea Chesman’s The Pickled Pantry: From Apples to Zucchini, 150 recipes for Pickles, Relishes, Chutney & More (Storey Publishing) is a fantastically thorough reference for making pickles of all kinds, with recipes for making the pickles themselves as well as recipes for using finished pickles in other dishes.

Both of these resources are essential additions to the available literature on pickle-making and fermentation.  We have always enjoyed – and refer frequently to – the standard volumes on lacto-fermentation of vegetables, such as Katz’s Wild Fermentation (2003, Chelsea Green), Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions (1999, New Trends), Making Sauerkraut & Pickled Vegetables at Home by Klaus Kaufman and Annelies Shoneck (1997, Alive Books), and Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning (1999, Chelsea Green).   The new treasuries not only add to the existing authorities, but spring far ahead in depth and breadth.  Here at Real Pickles, both copies are under constant perusal during lunch and break times and are beginning to show loving dog-ears and signs of use.

The Art of Fermentation provides an excellent account of the history of fermentation as well as its prevalence and pervasiveness in our modern diet.  As in his previous Wild Fermentation, Katz’s new book also seeks to engage and encourage each reader to set down their bacterial fears and embark on a cultural adventure.  As Michael Pollan remarks in the foreword, “To ferment your own food is to lodge an eloquent protest—of the senses—against the homogenization of flavors and food experiences now rolling like a great, undifferentiated lawn across the globe.”  In addition to the book’s breadth of information, the photos will delight even the casual peruser, from scanning electron microscopy images to the latest in kombucha fiber fashion.  But for fermentation enthusiasts, as we consider ourselves here at Real Pickles, the book is an excellent reference for putting up a broad array of fermented products.  Our fermentation manager, Katie, was so excited about The Art that she slept with the book under her pillow for the first week to maximize osmotic potential.  She just couldn’t put it down.  She says, “I love that it doesn’t read like a cookbook…that it is history, stories, science and just so much amazing information!”  Katz’s new compendium also boasts a one-of-a-kind chapter on commercial enterprises, well representing our end of Wells Street here in Greenfield, MA with input from both Dan at Real Pickles and Will from Katalyst Kombucha.  Dan is consulted for his expertise on scaling up, marketing, and consumer education.

The Pickled Pantry: From Apples to Zucchini, 150 recipes for Pickles, Relishes, Chutney & More  is a comprehensive new cookbook on pickles of all kinds.  Chesman starts with the fundamentals, necessary equipment, basic ingredients, and delves into pickle recipes both common and surprising.  Her section on fermented pickles is particularly good.  Along the way, she peppers the read with anecdotes and profiles of other picklers.  Real Pickles is the subject of one of the featured profiles, telling the story of our first decade in business.  Chesman also includes many delicious-sounding recipes in which to enjoy your finished pickles.  Personally, I am very excited by the recipes in the back of Pickled Pantry.  As soon as the pickle season slows down a bit, I will be cooking up such tasty dishes as Roasted and Braised Duck with Sauerkraut and Root Vegetables, Kimchi Rice Salad with Tofu, and may even try the intriguing German Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake(!).  Clearly, Chesman has a lifetime of experimentation and successful meals behind her – and I am so looking forward to benefiting!

For those interested in DIY pickle-making and home ferments, these books will fascinate and educate, no matter your pickle proficiency.  But these publications also represent a growing focus on – and resurgence of – pickles and fermented foods.  Now that we have industrial food and refrigerated trucks, pickles and ferments could be viewed as a relict of a simpler time, replaced by a year-round supply of food imported from anywhere.  Except that, as both Katz and Chesman emphasize over and over, ferments and pickles expand the range of our palate, creating the strong flavors that we both crave and despise.  Often, the fermented product is tastier and more nutritious than the original fresh ingredients.

Some fermented foods already command the attention of foodies across the globe:  Encyclopedic tomes are written on the wide-ranging flavors and terroir of wine and cheese – and other ferments are gaining the recognition they deserve.  We’ll know that pickles have earned their rightful place when soils known for growing great cabbage increase property values or when the local grocery starts hosting successful weekly pickle tastings.

Growing pickle popularity also makes us a happier population because pickles make us laugh.  I’m serious!  Try inserting the word “pickle” into any sentence and you are guaranteed a chuckle.  But no joke: People are excited about fermented foods, and the momentum is growing.  Creating ferments brings us face to face with the chemistry and microbiology of what we eat, which can be simultaneously unnerving and compelling.  When a mason jar is popping and fizzing and whining on your kitchen counter, you know that you are not the only living thing in the room.

Fermentation is surprising, creative, exotic, fun, scientific, and delicious.  I invite you to embark on a sour journey, use these books as your guide, open your mind and your mouth, and dig into the vast and growing world of pickles.  Send us a postcard!

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Good Food, Good Times

As honored as we are to be two-time winners of the Good Food Awards, the best part of the experience was in the details (as is usually the case). In our line of work, this is as close as we come to a professional meeting or academic conference. When else have we been able to meet a bunch of fantastic pickle makers and other food producers and talk geeky pickle-talk?? Not very often. If only for that, we thank the Good Food Awards (GFA) for creating the opportunity.

The big event. (Photo credit: Marc Fiorito)

The ceremony was a terrific event, and organizers did a great job of making GFA feel like a truly special honor. We gathered at the historic and impressive Ferry Building, a bona fide shrine to local food. Downstairs, the Ferry Building food shops and restaurants bustled with hungry activity while the gigantic upstairs hall filled with food producers dressed in their best. What exactly does “Black Tie Optional” mean to a food producer? The range of interpretations was fully featured at this event. From tuxes to trousers – foodies and members of the press turned out to witness the announcement of the 2012 winners. Alice Waters again hosted – this time acting as the medal-distributor – along with keynote speaker, Ruth Reichl. Both stood to the side of the stage and greeted each winner with a medal and a handshake before guiding them to the stage to stand with their fellow category winners to accept their award. Amidst the clinking of mason jars full of local hard cider and the excited chatter of nutriment networking, a speaker selected from each category (voted by the category winners) gave the acceptance speech. Many spoke of changing times, the ability to source quality ingredients that were not available a decade ago, and the increasing consumer demand for tasty and responsible food. Over such a wide variety of categories (coffee, chocolate, beer, preserves, charcuterie, pickles, cheese, spirits), there were many interesting points that could have served as keynotes in themselves – but in the interest of getting to the tasting tables, talks were limited to 3 minutes each.

Real Pickles’ Dan was selected to speak for the pickle category (you can read his speech here). He was a little (very) nervous but found out when he sat down with his fellow winner-speakers that he wasn’t alone. He really appreciated the opportunity to talk in the ceremony about the idea of building regional food systems, since that’s a big part of why Real Pickles got started, and it’s an effort that many other winners are involved in, as well.

The tasting.

After the ceremony, we headed downstairs for tasting!!! The Ferry Building continues its history as a terminal for ferries bound for points across the bay. But now, it is a gathering place for all who love good food (and have some spending money). During the week, food purveyors vend their victuals to ferry passengers, financial district lunchers, and tourists alike – from locally-roasted Blue Bottle Coffee to regional Cowgirl Creamery cheeses to raw Hog Island oysters (my favorite, anytime of day). You can even browse the shelves of an oversized armoire full of amazing jams and pickles, which serves as a mini-shop for Happy Girl Kitchen. For the GFA tasting party, the Ferry Building shops were closed, but tasting tables for each region were set up in the hallway by region. Each region’s table was lined with plates containing a bite-sized portion of each winning product. For the East region, we enjoyed marvelous mouthfuls from Sour Puss Pickles and Sweet Deliverance in NYC, Formaggio Kitchen in Boston, Cellars at Jasper Hill in Vermont, and Rogue Chocolatiers – new neighbors in Western Massachusetts! Washing the regional mixture down with gulps of winning beer from familiar Smuttynose and faraway Alaskan Brewing Company, we proceeded to the next table for pleasurable provincial provisions.

The sandwich. (Photo credit: Lisa Scott Owen.)

Real Pickles’ Garlic Dills were one of a handful of products chosen by San Francisco chefs to be showcased in special dishes specifically for the event. Evan and Leo, who we got a chance to meet at last year’s awards, are opening up a Jewish deli in San Francisco called Wise Sons Deli. They’ve been hard at work perfecting their fermented pickle and cured pastrami recipes for the new place. Meanwhile, they prepared and served a very special dish at the reception: Brisket braised in Smuttynose Robust Porter with slaw and Real Pickles’ Garlic Dills on a sea salt challah bun. Quite a tasty little sandwich, though half of mine ended up on the floor by way of my dress … figures.

The next morning, we headed back to the Ferry Building for the GFA Marketplace and the regular Saturday farmers market. The Marketplace was a great chance to taste some of the winning products we’d missed the night before and meet some more winning producers. We got a chance to try a yogurt cheese from Sonoma County, which was wondrous. Someone in the Northeast needs to study with Saint Benoit and get some tips. We also enjoyed meeting some folks from Colorado and tasting their Avalanche goat cheese – yum. Moving on to the regular SF farmers market, we were heartily impressed. Talk about a regional food system! This endless farmers market is brimming with regional foods. Clearly, California has a certain climate advantage over 4-season New England for produce – but there was still plenty to be inspired by in terms of implications for our own food system back home: veggies, dairy, seafood, charcuterie… and a proud showing of lacto-ferments! We got to taste astonishing horseradish-leek kraut from Farmhouse Culture, as well as pick up a bottle of refreshing kimchi juice from Happy Girl Kitchen. It was great to see a farmers market supporting two bustling pickle booths (both GFA winners, I might add).

The kraut section at Rainbow Grocery!

We witnessed West Coast support of lacto-ferment beyond just the Ferry Building. Later on, we stopped in at Rainbow Grocery, a very impressive food coop in the Mission District, and found our jaws dropping at the sight of the raw kraut section. So many producers … so much shelf space. One employee noticed our reaction and said, “Yup, we like our kraut!” Some say that California leads the way, predicting the market, harbinger of the next big societal trend. Well, New England, are you ready for more raw kraut?!?

The pickle posse.

Before the GFA weekend came to an end, we also experienced what was perhaps the biggest highlight for us: A pickle posse party! As pickle-makers working in a rural area and only selling our products regionally, we only get so many opportunities to meet other people involved in our craft. The GFA weekend is a great way to get a bunch of us together. Many of us from this year’s group spent an evening embracing our inner pickle nerd by waxing eloquent about preferred cabbage slicing equipment, debating the fundamentals of fermentation chemistry, and deliberating about the challenges of buying local vegetables and managing a small business.  (Pictured here: Ann’s Raspberry Farm, Sour Puss Pickles, Emmy’s Pickles and Jams, Real Pickles, and Firefly Kitchens. Olykraut joined us later in the evening.)  In what can sometimes be solitary work, it feels good to be connected to such a great group of talented food makers, creative entrepreneurs, and all-around fun and interesting people. We’re excited for the next opportunity (fingers crossed for next year)!

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Good Food Awards speech: “Pickles Are Not Obsolete!”

Addie and I are just back from the Good Food Awards in San Francisco, where we were honored for the 2nd year in a row for our Organic Garlic Dill Pickles.  While our first experience at the Good Food Awards in 2011 was quite special, this time around we were fortunate enough to receive an additional honor:  Real Pickles was selected by our 10 fellow pickle winners from around the country to deliver the acceptance speech for the group!  (Thanks, picklers!)

At the ceremony, each pickle winner was called up to the stage and received a Good Food Awards medal from renowned chef and food activist Alice Waters.  And, then I delivered the speech:

Thanks very much. My partner Addie and I are thrilled to be back at the Good Food Awards for a 2nd time as part of what is again a fantastic pickle posse!

I think pickles are a really great fit with the Good Food Awards, with its focus on helping to bring good food back into the American diet, promoting both taste and social responsibility.  Pickle-makers in the United States have much to offer on both counts, and I would say the winners here tonight are clear illustrations of that.

Those engaged in the craft today are drawing on pickling traditions from around the world to produce tasty pickles, as three of tonight’s winners did – Farmhouse Culture, Spirit Creek Farm, and Firefly Kitchens – in creating a version of the Salvadoran classic, curtido.  And we are drawing on the American pickling tradition, as Cuisine En Locale did to produce their winning pickled peaches (which I’m very excited to try).

Some of us here (like Olykraut) are using the traditional fermentation process to make our pickles, while others (like Miss Jenny’s and Let’s Be Frank) are using the modern vinegar approach.  Both are great ways to preserve the wonderful flavors of organically-grown produce and indeed to enhance those flavors along the way.

Pickle-makers are also making major contributions in the realm of social responsibility.  Our special tool of course, our not-so-secret weapon, is our ability to take perishable fruits and vegetables and make them non-perishable, and yet still tasty and nutritious.

In an industrial food system – with monoculture farming and long-distance food transport (both made possible by cheap fossil fuels) – one might be tempted to wonder if pickles are obsolete.  I mean, why bother with making dill pickles for winter when we can just buy in cucumbers from Mexico, right?  Part of the answer, of course, is:  Who really could live without pickles?  (I know, I might be a little bit biased.)

But, as it turns out: pickles are not obsolete anyway.  Because, as more and more Americans are coming to realize, our industrial food system is broken.  It doesn’t work.  It’s causing or exacerbating a huge list of ecological and social ills, from climate change and soil erosion to human disease epidemics and the decline of our rural economies.  What we need instead is a regionally-based organic food system where everyone (not just the privileged few) has access to healthy food from small producers located (whenever possible) within their own region.

And in such a food system, pickles are an essential food:  one that can keep people eating nutritious fruits and vegetables from regional sources all year long, regardless of how cold the weather gets.

Our contribution to building a regional, organic food system is an important part of what we pickle-makers are being honored for tonight.  So many of the winning producers here have developed close relationships with their local farmers to source their ingredients, as we have done in Massachusetts at Real Pickles, Sour Puss Pickles has done in New York, and Emmy’s has done here in California; while others are growing ingredients themselves, like Ann’s Raspberry Farm.

And, thus, just as practitioners of each craft being honored here tonight are contributing to the task of making “good food” the norm in America, so too are those of the pickling craft.  And, I think I can safely speak for all of my fellow pickle winners when I express sincere gratitude to the organizers of the Good Food Awards for doing your part to help promote our work and achieve wider recognition for it.  So, thank you very much.

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Tips From Pickle Fanatics


While Winter tends to be a quiet time of year for making pickles, it is undeniably a great time for eating them. Fresh local produce is harder to come by and the tangy flavor of fermented foods is a perfect accompaniment to hearty cold weather fare. When it comes to fermented vegetables, the Real Pickles staff are, as you may have guessed, enthusiastic and creative users of the stuff. I talked with some other members of our staff recently to get a sense of how they are incorporating Real Pickles into their meals.

Katie, our fermentation specialist, has been on a tempeh reuben kick.  Known to us all as an excellent cook, she melts some Swiss cheese on rye bread, adds some slices of Rhapsody’s tasty tempeh, and tops it with Organic Garlic Kraut and Thousand Island dressing (she makes her own by combining ketchup, mayo and a chopped pickle).  “It’s an easy sandwich that you can make in a frying pan or a toaster oven,” she notes.

Apples and sauerkraut are a popular combination among staff, especially in these colder months. Some thinly sliced raw cabbage, Organic Sauerkraut, chopped apple, feta and toasted walnuts tossed in a creamy dressing is a perfect crunchy winter salad. Another inspired example of this combination is the pizza that Dan and Addie have been making, topped with ricotta, gruyere, shallots, thinly sliced apple and Organic Garlic Kraut. Dan and Addie particularly like using the sourdough crusts from our friends at Berkshire Mountain Bakery. We are always impressed by the beautiful caramelized shallots when they bring in leftovers for lunch.

In my own home, we make a version of the Real Pickles vegetable fried rice recipe at least a couple of times a month. We start by sautéeing lots of garlic, add some leftover rice, crack in an egg or two and then add whatever cooked vegetables we have around (carrots, kale and broccoli are always good). Sometimes we’ll throw in some frozen peas or green beans from our summer garden. We top it all with a big serving of Organic Asian-style Cabbage and some sesame oil. A handful of chopped salted peanuts tossed on top are an added bonus.

Brendan, who works in the kitchen and is our source of outstanding homemade goat cheese, also makes a lot of stir fries and likes to add in some Organic Ginger Carrots at the very end, heating just enough to warm it all through. He also suggests mixing the carrots into green salads.

Fermented foods are popular with staff for breakfast, especially as an accompaniment to eggs. A slug or two of Organic Tomatillo Hot Sauce on scrambled eggs has long been our favorite use for it. Annie, our lead production manager, likes to cover an over-medium egg with melted cheddar cheese and Organic Red Cabbage. Hannah also likes to precede her day in the Real Pickles kitchen with fried eggs for breakfast, topping hers with Organic Asian-style Cabbage.

If you’ve had a busy week and are looking for a simple and satisfying meal, you can always take a cue from the Real Pickles lunch table: unwrap a wedge of cheese, get some crusty bread or crackers and top it off with whatever Real Pickles vegetables you have open. Joe, our facility manager, takes this simplicity approach a step further. He traveled back home to Louisville over the holidays and his stash of Organic Dill Pickles intended for family and friends became the road trip snack of choice. “We easily went through an entire jar of pickles in one sitting and drank the brine when they were gone.”

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Occupy Wall Street and Organic Pickles

In lower Manhattan and in cities and towns across the country, thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand change.  We are the 99%, they are saying, here to put an end to the societal injustices perpetuated by the 1%.  Those occupying Wall Street and elsewhere are speaking out against the concentration of corporate power and its negative impact on people and ecosystems, including problems ranging from joblessness and lack of access to health care to loss of biodiversity and accelerating climate change.

Meanwhile, in western Massachusetts, a small crew is hard at work inside a solar-powered food processing facility, peeling and shredding cabbages freshly harvested from an organic farm ten miles away.  The cabbage will ferment for several months, and then be sold as raw sauerkraut to stores around the Northeast.

Occupying the streets.  Making organic pickles.  Any connection here?  I would say so.

At first glance, what happens here at Real Pickles appears to be merely ordinary business activity.  Just a small enterprise trying to yield a reasonable profit by producing food for people.  An observer not so familiar with the workings of contemporary America might be tempted to think it normal, as well, that we source our vegetables from a small organic farm down the road, generate our own power, sell our pickles in raw and fermented form, and only distribute within our own region.  But of course, in 2011 here in the United States, there is nothing ordinary at all about such practices.  Nor is it typical these days for people to be eating food produced by a small business.

While the representatives of the 99% are seeking to occupy Wall Street, we should probably be thinking of the 1% as the real occupiers.  Climate activist Bill McKibben, in a recent address to the demonstrators in NYC, noted: “Wall Street has been occupying the atmosphere.  That’s why we can never do anything about global warming.  Exxon gets in the way.  Goldman Sachs gets in the way.”  Indeed, Wall Street has long been occupying many realms of our lives.  And our food system is a prime example.

Local food production and distribution by small businesses certainly used to be the norm.  But these days, our food system is primarily national and international in scale.  It is dominated by huge corporations with massive influence over what we eat and how it is grown, processed, distributed, and sold.  These companies have spent significant sums of money to convince us that there is nothing wrong with this picture.  Monsanto’s public relations message is that we need them if we are to “feed the world”.  Kraft Foods assures us that they’re there for us, “fighting hunger and encouraging healthy lifestyles”.

Increasingly, however, people are starting to see through the slick PR campaigns.  They are starting to see connections between the corporate control of our food system and a wide variety of societal problems – the diabetes and obesity epidemics, the huge “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, and ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions, just to name a few. Indeed, I think the evidence is robust and convincing enough to say quite clearly:  A global, corporate-dominated food system has profoundly negative consequences for people and ecosystems.  We are, without a doubt, in need of a new food system.

Here, then, lies the connection between Occupy Wall Street and a business such as Real Pickles.  Among the Wall Street protesters, some are more radical than others in their demands for change.  But there appears, by and large, to be a unified determination to alter the balance of power in our society away from the corporate elite and in favor of the 99%, and thereby begin to remedy a long list of social and ecological problems.

At Real Pickles, we are doing essentially the same work.  Having recognized that a corporate-dominated food system does not serve our society well, we have set about helping to build a new one.  Real Pickles is small, people-centered, ecologically-conscious, and local/regional in scale; and puts out food that is authentic and nourishing.  The aim is that this business will serve as a model as our new and better food system emerges.  Just like those protesting on Wall Street, we also recognize that the problems stemming from corporate control extend far beyond the food system, and hope that our work has impact as part of a broader re-shaping of our society, as well.

Occupy Wall Street and Real Pickles represent different approaches to the same effort.  Many approaches are needed, as there is much work to be done and no one simple path to an equitable and sustainable society.  So, it is with excitement that we witness the latest social ferment on the streets.  Here at Real Pickles we love fermentation!  We fully support the Occupy Wall Street protests and are delighted to be engaged together in the work for a better world.

 

Header photo: David Shankbone