Fresh Forest Garden Harvested Pumkin Brine Fermentation Jar

This was my first ever salt brine experiment. This was one of the few pumpkins I was about to harvest from the previous project I was working on far away from this one. It had a lot of sentimental value and I wanted to be sure it didn't just mold away into nothing in the rapidly increasing desert heat. After build a lot of confidence in the simple application of a basic salt brine formula, I chopped it up, submerged it in the salted water, took on the extra step of filling a plastic bag with water to keep the pumpkin meat pushed down below the top of the water so as to prevent mold where it may contact the air.

In the punishing heat, after a few days, it was definitely coming alive, it was messy and I'd later decide against fussing with plastic bag. I got some very effective glass fermentation weights, they're like small disks of thick glass that are easy to clean and very effective at keeping lose fermentables from floating up and getting moldy. Whatever does escape and gets to the top is most often easy enough to simply fish out with a fork or spoon and go about the ferment.

This brine lasted me months and months, and ultimately became the source brine for my first experiments with fermentation to preserve left over canned fish. I remember like it was yesterday the leap of faith I made that the brine solution would prevent the fish from spoiling and making me very sick. It worked like a charm, and it was my biggest epiphany that there can be a culinary satisfying life after refrigeration.