This word describes a process by which living things break down carbohydrates to make other molecules and provide energy to cells or organs. Carbohydrates are common compounds in food and include sugars and starches Some microbes use fermentation to get energy from carbohydrates. When people put those microbes to work, this process helps make both food and fuels.

Fermentation makes acids, alcohols, gases and other chemicals. A microbe called yeast, for example, ferments the sugars in bread dough. This makes the gas carbon dioxide. Bubbles of that gas make a loaf of bread rise and become light and fluffy. Yeast also make the alcohol in wine and beer.

People can use fermentation to make alcohol for fuels. For instance, bacteria and yeast can break down sugars and starches from plants, such as corn. That fuel can be added to gasoline to help power cars.

The microbes in animal guts, including in our own guts, ferment. When cows digest grass, some of their gut microbes make methane gas. That gas escapes when they belch or fart. That might sound funny, but methane is a greenhouse gas. It traps heat and contributes to global warming.

Fermentation isn’t just for microbes. Our muscles can also ferment. Animal muscles usually get energy from a process that uses oxygen. When they can’t get enough oxygen, they use fermentation. That’s because fermentation doesn’t require oxygen.

STEP ONE

In a big bucket with 3lb raspberries (you can choose your own fruit, almost any will do),  Pour on 5pts of water and added a teaspoonful of pectin enzyme to prevent ‘pectin haze’. Then mash berries with a wooden spoon and covered the liquid with a tea towel (very important esp. in summer to keep insects out).

This is left for two days.

STEP TWO 2 DAYS LATER

Add to the bucket between 1kg and 11/4 kg of sugar (preferably fair trade/organic, white) dissolved in 2 pts water off the boil. Add 1 tsp dried yeast with a little sugar all dissolved in some of the fruit liquid in the bucket.

It’s the yeast that turns the sugar into alcohol and the more sugar the sweeter the wine. Nick uses less (1kg) as he likes a drier wine.

This liquid is then stirred 2-3 times a day over the next four days, and the process is called ‘fermenting on the must’.

STEP THREE 4 DAYS LATER

This is the messy bit, where you strain all the liquid through a muslin sieve, before funnelling it into the demi-johns and putting an airlock on it. This is then left to ferment for between 3 and 18 months until there are no longer any bubbles to be seen in the airlock. During the fermenting process a stable temperature is important. Nick doesn’t worry too much about whether it’s warm or cool, just that there is as little fluctuation as possible.

STEP FOUR 3-18 MONTHS later
Decant into bottles and leave for 1-2 years depending on the fruit. Raspberries need less time than elderberries, for example.

Now invite everyone to taste some of the wine made  – for medicinal purposes only, of course. 

Microbes sustain life on earth and they have relationships we are just beginning to understand leading us to discover these smallest of small critters and animals are the basis of all life.

The floriculture of microbes is called the soil microbiome and it is very similar to our humanbiome and definitely intricately connected.    Unseen (with our eyes) microbes have a collective mass greater than all the animals on the planet.   In the human, there are more microbes then human cells.   

We are here because of the microbes and we live in their world!

Microbes (also called microorganisms) are literally everywhere.  They  grow and reproduce in and on your body, and on rocks, within plant roots and on their leaves, in wetlands, oceans and fresh waterways.   And, microbes are in soil.  There are more microbes in a teaspoon of soil than there are people on the earth. There are more microbes in your gut than human cells in your body.   Soils contain about 8 to 15 tons of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms, and arthropods.

Therein likes the difference to soil and dirt.  There is a big difference.   The Father of Soil Science, Hans Jenny, defined the 3 components of soil.  The first is mineral (texture) which is the sand, silt and clay.    Organisms are the second component.  And, the third is the organic matter (OM).    Without the microbes or the OM, it is simply dirt and void of life. 

In the soil, the microbes decompose and recycle; keep us healthy, make the oxygen we breathe, fix nitrogen, control pollution, are a source of renewable fuel.  They literally feed the world!  Without them, there is no food!  And, without these microbes healthy we may have a plant we can eat force with “ides” and “izers” but it contains no nutrients.   It is like the difference between a tablet of processes vitamin C and a sprig of parsley from good soils.

It is a web of precious live science has neglected for too long Soil microbes throught recycling and decompossition release chemicals (such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) that can be used to build new healthy plants (and animals). So, the flower or a vegetable will eventually become part of another living thing chemically.   So the next time you see cut flowers decay or a garden vegetable rot, remember, you’re really seeing microbes at work.

Our understandings about these microbes is now giving us solid information about how to provide the environment and the biology to ensure the good microbes thrive.  Science is now discovering the microbe world in research that  “…just like the human gut or plant roots, the hyphae of AM fungi have their own unique microbiomes,”  Scientist at the Maria Harrison, Scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI)  “https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-04/bti-fcm040221.php?fbclid=IwAR28ooKSVt8nVrEltXp0d0vz2Z6XSv-SpaBb2Bw7RaiMezc1UUBg1yMkDQM  

Everything has a symbiotic relationship.   For example, all living things require nitrogen for building DNA, RNA, and protein molecules. We knew nitrogen is abundant in the atmosphere but only a few species of microbes can use it in this form. All other organisms depend on certain bacteria that produces enzymes that convert or “fix” gaseous nitrogen (N₂) into a form other organisms can use (such as ammonium (NH₄+) or nitrate (NO₃-)).  Nitrogen-fixing bacteria depend on plants for food therefore forming a symbiotic (or mutually beneficial) relationship. Animals (including us humans) in turn acquire nitrogen by eating plants and plant-eaters.   

Other metabolically talented microbes can metabolize metals, acids, salt, methane, or even radioactive wastes. We are discovering a microbe for every pollutant. Thus microbes can treat sewage, clean abandoned mines, and degrade a variety of industrial chemicals.    

We are just beginning to understand and appreciate this minute world at greater depths.   Maybe it is just in time because we have spent years destroying them and following practices (both chemical and organic) that have harmed their cycle of life.  Soil biology is the mediator of life on Earth. It is the function of the biological systems acting as the “gut” of plants.

When we look into the soil with our microscopes we want to see bacteria, fungi, yeasts, protozoa and nematodes.  They act as microbes in the gut biome to solubilize, sequester and digest the minerals from the sand, silt, clay, rocks, pebbles and crop residues into plant available nutrition.    This nutrition translates for us humans as amazing “taste” that is satisfying. This is referred to as nutrient cycling and in symbiosis with plants, they (the microbes) are critical for carbon cycling also.

We all, farmers and gardeners alike, are realizing this the soil biological system that literally is the “gut” of our environment.    Big money AG and the wrath of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, soluble fertilizers and tillage have left soils void of some of these microscopic soil managers. They are out of balance. Without them, we are left to chemistry that may superficially be a short fix but it is harming the critters.   As our understanding of many of the “-cides” used in agriculture increased, it is clear how devastating these can be to the microbes. We need to eliminate or at the very least, use wisely, all forms of insecticides and fungicides so as to not compromise the biodiversity.   We need to rebuild the biodiversity.

One of the fundamental theories from soil consultants is that not all soil testing is created equal. Simplistic N-P-K and pH tests are fine for determining fertility needs, but worthless when it comes to rebuilding soils.  To rebuild you have to understand the microbiology.

It is important that we remember to view soil as a habitat and an ecosystem, and to shift our mindset from feeding plants to feeding the soil, which will in turn feed the plants and support them in many other ways.   Microorganisms are “everything” and is relevant to everybody.   The proof is around us everywhere.  Microbes actually do everything.  

Soil microbes are the simpliest of creatures that created our environment we live in.   In our soil microscope and compost making we are particularly interested in bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and soil microaggregates (held together by the microorganism glue). 

There are microbes in us, on us and acting upon everything around us.     If we don’t understand them and stop harming them, there will be no nutrition from our plants and we will left with only “dirt”, barren land, anaerobic conditions and life will cease.  We have to look at this differently.   We have help the microbes thrive.   We all need to eat and we all need healthy nutrition.  Microbes are responsible for creating soils we all desperately need.  

Recently, so many insights into how life happens becauses of microbiology.   The microbes are the engines of production and understanding their role and helping them flourish translates to true sustainability longterm.   As we learn more and more we realize they offer roots to all the solutions we are seeking…at least the most fundamental issue we are face with collectively and that is “health”.   It is important now and even more important in the future.  Taking care of the soil is taking care of the whole!