Carrots 🥕🥕are a gateway ferment

Dear Friends,

This past Friday, I went to a local alternative high school, a small school that helps students who need a little more one-on-one personalized attention, to introduce fermentation to their garden class.

When I arrived, I was delighted to see a little farm stand in the parking lot.

The garden class is led by the math teacher, Jalynn Dinkins, who decided to start a school garden program. A few years later, that garden, behind the school, is a place where students can connect with something tangible in this increasingly digital existence. When I arrived Jalynn, whom the students all called Dinkins, took me on a tour.

Our first stop was a lovely vine-covered arbor with potted flowers and benches in the middle of the small school yard. It is a centerpiece and a lovely, tranquil spot to hang out. Each classroom has a flowering pot at its door—these students do more than grow vegetables, they also bring color and splashes of joy to the simple buildings.

The program is scrappy and mostly self-funded. (They did receive a small grant in 2025.) They have veggies, young fruit trees to plant, bees, and a flock of chickens. Oh, and a school bus!

I was absolutely charmed and inspired by the big yellow bus turned greenhouse! I think you will be, too.

Not that you or I will ever find ourselves with a junked school bus. The school is next to the bus yard and there was a bus that was damaged in an accident. Dinkins, this story’s hero, saw it and had a vision. She asked what the bus’s fate was. When the answer was that it was headed to the junk yard, she asked if she could have it for the garden class. Yes.

It was moved over to the garden, and with the help of a local handyman, the kids first made it into a greenhouse and then filled it with seeding trays and ended up selling $1700 in seedlings to local folks, to help fund their program—because chicken food and soil amendments aren’t cheap.

Let’s tour the bus.

Great details.

I met Jalynn in January at a local food solutions summit, where we all were tackling complex questions around our local foodshed. When she invited me to teach the class to ferment, Jalynn, shared that many of these students are on the edge of going out into the world, and it is in some ways the last chance to introduce them to ideas around healthy food choices. Introducing people gently to fermented foods—that is like a siren’s call for me (without any danger lying in wait, of course.) I was all in.

The kids were great. We made fermented carrot pickles because they are a good gateway ferment. As many of you have heard me say, my goal is a jar of something fermenting on every counter. Another group of jars are fermenting on some local counters—hopefully, some will become a discovery. Even if not immediately, later one of the kids will encounter ferments again and remember and be curious.

Carrots are wonderful to work with when lacto-fermenting vegetables, for one, they are just plain beautiful and who doesn’t like beautiful jars of good food looking back at you when you open the refrigerator. There’s more, ferment carrots for flavor, they are delicious! And for people who aren’t ready for the full funk and sour of some ferments, the carrot spears, are especially approachable. (More on that in a minute.)

They are also versatile. I love how you can prep the carrots in different ways, ferment for the same time, with the same additions and get wildly different flavors. A number of years ago, I did a video with my publisher to promote our book to illustrate this point. If you like videos, I hope you enjoy. Otherwise, keep reading for the recipes so you can try this at home.

You will notice in the Carrot Kraut that the brine will be thicker and the texture a little heavier than the slices in the Fermented Carrot Salad. The pickled carrot sticks are of course a whole pickle—easy to eat, easy to pack for lunch. Interestingly because of the chop in each recipe there is a varying amount of the cell structure broken and exposed directly to the fermentation so you will find that the shreds with have a stronger ferment flavor (which some people like to call funk) than the sticks that are just slightly soured. They all are delicious even though they are all just fermented carrots you will find that you use each very differently on the plate.