For thousands of years, pickling has meant preserving food and adding a spicy or tangy flair. At a "pickle party" in Northampton, it also means community.
Pickle me this or pickle me that – pickled cucumbers, cabbage, plums and more have been mainstays in diets across the globe.
It’s a fermentable, universal practice and, for about two hours Thursday, it was the focus of a special workshop in Northampton.
“I'm a little bit of a fermentation and pickling nerd - I just need to tell you that we're not only picklers of cucumbers - what we'll be doing today - but the fermentation possibilities are endless,” said Abundance Farm’s Avi Abraham.
With tables of cucumbers, garlic and gratuitous amounts of iodized salt, Abraham and company led at least three dozen potential or already well-seasoned picklers through the art of making lacto-fermented pickles.
The event – an annual “Pickle Party” - was put on by Abundance Farm in Northampton, a group devoted to food justice and part of Congregation B'nai Israel.
Held on the green, mini-orchard-like parcel beside the synagogue, farm manager Nat Ross said the chatting and bonding that goes on while pickling is the kind of thing CBI and their organization strives for.
“People last year just walked right off the bike path, they're like ‘What's going on?’ and they joined right in,” Ross said. “They start making friends, they start talking to people - this is really a place where people from all different backgrounds can connect with each other over a shared interest, and it's so important in a world where people are feeling lonely and alienated that, they can come together around a skill, around a hobby and around a piece of land.”
Among the picklers was India Murphy, who just made the move from Holyoke to NoHo. Making cuts and measuring salt, Murphy said it’s not their first time at Abundance, but they are new to turning a cuke into something savory down the road.
They even planned on incorporating a red shishito pepper a friend gave them.
“I feel really good about it - I've been interested in pickling and lacked some confidence because botulism did scare me, so … I've been reassured - confidence renewed - and I'm excited to taste these bad boys in like three days,” they said.
Murphy noted they’ve previously made their own kombucha – far more cost-effective than buying the beverage at a premium. Though, like a fermenting pickle jar, with the carbonization that can build up, Murphy said spills can happen.
“I got prematurely excited and opened it without putting it in the fridge, which is a rookie mistake,” they recalled. “It splattered all over my ceiling and I got to drink maybe a cup of it. But… love making it: I’m excited to maybe try making a ginger lemon kombucha.”
As Avi Abraham told the group – “burping” your jar daily by simply opening and closing the lid is a good way to avoid a ticking time bomb. The finished product is a beautiful thing, the farm educator said, thanks to special bacteria the human body already knows all too well.
“The goal of pickling is food preservation - taking the like abundance that we have in the growing season and making it last all year long, and the way that pickling does that is by making the water content too acidic for harmful bacteria to be able to grow,” they said. “And instead, we're bringing in our lovely friend, the lactobacillus bacteria – a friend to human beings, in our mouths, in our guts and also living on the skin of the vegetable.”
To pickle Thursday, all you needed was a pint-sized, sealable jar that can hold at least two cucumbers, the cukes themselves – washed and sliced however you like – plus a half tablespoon of salt, some flowering dill, and a clove of garlic. Also, a pinch of black peppercorn.
Fill that jar up with water and stick a grape or cabbage leaf on top to make sure everything stays submerged and, in at least three days, you should have an ideal sandwich companion.
Getting the right amount of salt and dil is key, as Phyllis and John Eckstein discussed at their table. Phyllis said it was her first "pickle party" at CBI - and that she fondly remembers the dill pickles her mother used to make when she was a kid.
“The taste - the taste has to have a good dill taste and … a good sour component to it,” Eckstein said when asked what goes into a good pickled cuke. “Crunch is good – I like crunch too.”
A number of Thursday’s picklers were CBI congregants themselves. Senior Rabbi Louis Polisson says while he has only helmed it for about a month, he said it’s a special community and campus, complete with Abundance Farm and the partnerships and mission it focuses on.
“Abundance Farm does give fresh produce to the survival center - the Northampton Survival Center right next door - a beautiful partnership there,” he said. “I would say we're the best kept secret in Northampton, but there are people who know! Neighbors in the neighborhood know and come by and harvest their own stuff and help our farm staff manage the farm on a volunteer basis.”
“I want people to know that this is a reflection of Jewish values and what a Jewish community said,” the rabbi continued.
As Nat Ross tells it – it all comes down, in-part, to the sacred texts.
“There's a law in the Torah… that says you should, as a farmer, leave the corners of your fields unharvested so that anybody in the community who needs to can come and glean them for themselves,” they said, speaking of Abundance Farm's mission for the past 12 years. “We saw a need in the community - a food security need - and so, it started with the idea that we're all corners and that everybody should be able to come here and glean whatever they want for free.”
