Learning about fermentation from my 75 year old great uncle reshaped my understanding of our relationship to this food tradition. Taking a short seasoned item like strawberries and stretching them throughout the rest of the year, transforming what we know to be true about their flavor and texture, their color, really opened up my imagination. Taking native things like scuppernong grapes, wild persimmon, crab apple, and black berries to make preserves, wines, beer. Air drying on rooftops when the air is cool and dry, hanging sausage in tobacco cribs where wild yeast thrives on walls, hand milled from the surrounding forest and built by the same hands hanging the tobacco. I wanted to know everything about their relationship to what was around them, and in January 2018 I would start my journey to preserve these invaluable traditions.

It’s through the exploration of this work that intergenerational bonds form, knowledge is passed, and the community becomes a functioning network of individuals extending care and resources that make us feel seen, heard, and safe to continue dreaming and being.