THE WILD FERMENTER

Kelli Walker bubbles over with enthusiasm for foraging and fermenting

WHEN THE PRODUCT you make speaks to you, it could be a sign you’ve found your life’s work. For Kelli Walker, her product has plenty to say and she’s listening. She and her husband Simon spend hours foraging around Clevedon, sourcing fresh ingredients, then many more hours chopping and creating their fermented products in a commercial kitchen. When they down tools for the day, there’s still a lot of activity going on – this is when you can hear the kimchi and sauerkraut having their say.

“You can stand there and hear them bubbling and burping and farting and talking away,” says Kelli. “There’s a water seal at the top of our ceramic crocks that creates an anaerobic environment and prevents oxygen from entering, but it also lets the CO2 escape. The ferment is really powerful and quite aggressive, and that took me by surprise, just how vocal they are, how powerful those microbes are on a bulk scale.”

Sold under the name Forage & Ferment, jars of delicious fermented food and drink go quickly at the local Clevedon Farmers’ Market. Kelli’s rural life is a world away from her old life in corporate marketing in New Zealand and Asia. The couple sold their Mt Eden house in 2016 and now live in a small house on the family farm where Kelli grew up. When her parents subdivide, they’ll build on the land. There will also be a food forest where she can indulge her passion for permaculture.

Kelli’s permaculture design certificate helped germinate the seed for Forage & Ferment. What started as a hobby, feeding family and friends, became a consuming passion that took up valuable shelf space in the kitchen. Then a friend suggested Kelli sell her ferments at the market. It’s the quirky

flavour creations in the young brand’s sauerkraut and kimchi that have been a key to success.

“I was playing around with flavours and, with permaculture, learning to value the marginal,” says Kelli. “We can look at weeds, such as dandelion, as something to pull out of the garden, or something to value. Dandelion are nutrientdense and full of vitamins and minerals. They now play a valuable role,” she says of the flower that goes into her coriander and juniper sauerkraut.

Kelli has a small garden with a few raised beds and planter boxes that Simon built. She grows her own nasturtiums for Forage & Ferment’s red cabbage, beetroot and nasturtium sauerkraut, and marigolds for the carrot, ginger, turmeric and marigold kraut. She’s also planted kawakawa, a native shrub she favours for its peppery kick.

To achieve a well-flavoured, long-lasting kimchi or sauerkraut, Kelli says the ingredients go through lactic-acid fermentation. Natural bacteria feed on sugars in the cabbage, lowering the acidity level, which gives it a distinctive sour flavour, as well as preserving it. This is a slow process and one Kelli is learning to work with. “I’m very impatient. If I make a decision, I want to do something straight way. With permaculture, things take time, nature takes time, and you just let things take as long as they need to take. Fermenting is teaching me those lessons, too.” Forage & Ferment’s Marigold & Turmeric Wild Kraut was a gold-medal winner in the Earth Category at the Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards. Their Nasturtium & Beetroot Wild Kraut and Kawakawa Lemongrass & Dill Wild Kraut were highly commended.