The Daily Brine / The land / What the Glaciers Left Behind
The Land
What the Glaciers Left Behind
Cabbage isn't a fussy vegetable, but it does have opinions. It likes cool nights, steady moisture, and ground that holds water without drowning its roots. Our corner of Central New York happens to offer all three, and we have the glaciers to thank.
Lakes carved by ice
Long before anyone planted anything here, the last ice age sent glaciers grinding south across New York. The ice gouged old river valleys into long, deep troughs, and when it finally melted back about 10,000 years ago, those troughs filled with water and became the Finger Lakes. Just north of Cortland, the same ice deepened a valley into what geologists now call the Tully Trough.
When the ice retreated, it left a mess behind, in the best way. Meltwater dumped sand, gravel, silt, and clay across the valley floors, and that loose glacial ground is a big reason the whole region turned into farm country. Near Tully, the glacier left a long ridge of debris called the Valley Heads Moraine, dotted with kettle ponds and wetlands. Water on one side of it runs north toward Onondaga Lake. Water on the other side runs south. Preble Swamp, just over the county line, is where the west branch of the Tioughnioga River starts its long trip toward the Chesapeake.
Cabbage country, from one lake to the next
Settlers spent generations clearing the forests and swamps the ice left behind, and found what it had left them: deep, rich soil, cool nights, and plenty of water. Across the Finger Lakes Region, that turned out to be just what cabbage wanted. Out in Ontario County, the village of Phelps made so much kraut that it called itself the Sauerkraut Capital of the World. Closer to home, Perry Haynes planted Cortland County's first acre of cabbage in the Preble Valley in 1885, and the valley soon became the biggest cabbage-growing area in Central New York. (That story gets its own post.)
For years, that's where we bought our cabbage. Sadly, nobody grows commercial cabbage in the Preble Valley anymore. The last farmer stopped growing it a couple of years ago. These days we still source all of our cabbage from a fourth-generation farmer in the Finger Lakes Region, on the same kind of glacier-made ground.
Why it matters in the jar
Cabbage grown in cool weather, in ground that keeps it evenly watered, tends to grow slowly into tight, heavy heads with crisp leaves. Those are the heads we want.
A raw kraut spends four to six months in our barrels, and a loose, watery cabbage turns soft long before then. A dense fall head from a Finger Lakes farm holds its crunch and its sweetness through the whole ferment, and gives up plenty of its own juice to make the brine.
New York's cooler climate is a big part of why the state has spent decades near the top of the national cabbage rankings, and the Finger Lakes Region is one of the places that keeps it there. We think our corner of it is the tastiest, but we're biased.
Terroir, kraut edition
Wine people have a word for the way a place shows up in what it grows. Nobody says terroir about sauerkraut, but maybe somebody should. Every jar of our kraut started as a head of cabbage on a Finger Lakes farm, rooted in ground the glaciers dropped off and never came back for.
Next time you open a jar, give it a second. That crunch has been in the making for a very long time.
A jar of Classic Kraut is the simplest way to taste it: salt, cabbage, time, and a little glacial history.
~Dave & Carly & the F&F Crew
