Today we’d like to introduce you to Abigail Wetzel.
Abigail, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Picture a rugged old barn on a farm in High Falls, NY butting up to the Catskill Mountains. In this barn, there is a bubbling crock filled with a mysterious purple substance. This substance turned out to be traditionally fermented purple sauerkraut, something I had never had before. I can wholeheartedly say the moment I tried the tangy kraut my life changed. I was a novice at best to what fermentation was at this time in my life. I had tried making kombucha before but failed miserably. When the woman operating the farm introduced me to traditionally fermented sauerkraut and the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, I knew I had found something life-altering. I had studied horticulture in college and was traveling around the country working on different farms in order to learn different farming techniques. I felt that growing one’s own food and providing nutritionally dense food to my community was my way of making a change in the world.
Fast-forward several years and I had put roots down in Grass Valley, California and started a huge garden and really dove into fermentation because I thought it was the best way to preserve my food throughout the year. I began teaching workshops with the encouragement of my friends and community. Fast-forward another few years and I had returned to Central Texas (where I am from) and with more encouragement from my friends and community, had started a cottage food business sourcing local vegetables and turning them into fermented products such as sauerkraut (purple of course), kimchi, pickles, and many more delectable treats. I did a CSA-style program where folks signed up ahead of time and had a pick-up once a month. Each month the products changed based off of what vegetables were in season.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I’m not sure starting any small business is a smooth road. I started Fermentista’s Kitchen in 2020 right when Covid hit. In the beginning, everyone was ready to spend their stimulus money on local food because the grocery store shelves were empty and they had extra money from not being able to do anything. As time went on products such as jars got more expensive and harder to find. People really lost interest as life has gone back to “normal”. From my experience, which I will admit is limited, the scaling from doing a business out of your home to having a storefront is such a big jump. It is a daunting investment of time and money in an industry that is cut-throat and hard to make a dollar in.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Fermentista’s Kitchen is a side business. I have a full-time job as the Operations Lead at Tekvox, an Audio/Visual manufacturer. Our main customers at Tekvox are colleges in Houston and San Antonio. We provide the equipment that makes it possible for a professor to give their lecture. Think projector and screen, speakers, amp, a podium with the ability for the professor to switch between their laptop, a document camera, or Blu-ray player, etc. With Covid, we have added in microphones and cameras for distance learning. My role at the company is to make sure all of our orders are fulfilled. A customer calls and says they have a certain size room and would like certain abilities for the room and then someone else in the company draws up a schematic of the different equipment needed. I take that schematic and build it in real life and test it before we ship it. I do a lot of troubleshooting and evaluating our user interfaces.
What makes me proud as the Operations Lead at Tekvox is that I created my position. I started working here 4.5 years ago as the Lead Carpenter (I worked for a custom home builder for a while). They had just moved into a new warehouse and needed shelves, work benches, and storage built. Once we had gotten settled into the warehouse, I started learning the A/V side of things. Tekvox is a small company and back then had very few employees. I saw room for improvement on how the orders were handled and organized and thus created my position by just starting to do it and have worked my way up to the important role as Operations Lead. I have no training as an engineer and most everyone else in the company is an engineer of some sort. I can’t say a background in Geography, Horticulture or farming gave me many experiences in this industry but I feel like my time at Tekvox as proved to me that if you are a hard worker and show diligence you can learn just about anything.
What’s next?
Who knows what the future holds, but would life be exciting if we knew what was going to happen next? For now, I have put Fermentista’s Kitchen on hold. I still sell some things on occasion out of my house or upon request for catering events. I am focusing on my job at Tekvox, gardening a whole lot, mainly flowers for dried floral arrangements, experimenting with fermentation on a home scale, canoeing, swimming, and dancing as much as possible. Austin provides an incredible live music and dance scene (mainly country/western). I would love to bring the ferments back into the business world, but the leap from cottage food to commercial production was too big, given I didn’t want to leave Tekvox and I couldn’t manage two full-time jobs and stay sane. Sometimes in life, you just have to push pause and that is OK.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fermentistas_kitchen/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FermentistasKitchen/
Image Credits
Steve Anderson photos 1,2,6,7,8
