Purslane Food (FPJ) Fast: Chop It in a Tub With a Flat Spade

0:00 Vincent Mina: It's beneficial. It's like, yeah, okay, I get it. But you know what? Talk to me later. I'm busy juggling. So really appreciate Kyle. He is a, I mean, we have chapter presidents in our organization that are truly leaders and they're farmers. So it's very cool. I'm really excited about that. Alika, raise your hand. Alika, please. He just gave a pule. He's the president of the Mauna Kahālāwai chapter. And his chapter is hosting our convention next month. So his board is, what, about 75% Hawaiian, your board? Yeah, so it's very heartening to know that the local people are like no kidding, you know,

0:45 about seeing these initiatives move forward in support of ola ʻāina, ola ʻāina. Let me see what else. One more thing is tomorrow morning for the farm tour, you get to sign up for one tour with Leigh, and it's 8 o'clock meeting in the parking lot, okay? Today we have, there's going to be panel discussions after the opening presentations. So at 10.30, we're going to be having, this is considered A, so these partitions come across. This is A, which will be the young farmers panel, and the back area there is B. That's cultural connections.

1:22 So Derek [surname unclear] is going to be doing the young farmers, and B, Keahi Tajon, is that correct? Tajon? There we go. Tajon is going to be the moderator for that cultural connections. And the school program, Donna Mitts, okay, is going to be in C, and that's across the way. So as you see in your program, it's not listed A, B, and C, but that's how you can follow it, okay, to know which presentation you want to go to. This would be A, that B, and then the C's across the way there. Yeah, the purslane's ready to go.

2:01 I just harvest it, and I put it in these tubs that you get from, you know, the big box stores, or you can get them around the island. You've seen these tubs, these plastic tubs. And so what I did, I just put all the purslane I had in that tub and used approximately four pounds of sugar for this video. So could you roll that, please? So in essence just dump the sugar on top of the purslane, that was four pounds approximately, and I take a flat spade, see that flat spade, that's an invaluable tool okay on a number I can't do without that on my farm I use it a lot of respects on my farm

2:48 But you see how quick work it makes for chopping up that much purslane and getting the sugar mixed in evenly throughout it. So these videos, there's two short videos that are about, I guess, about three minutes long, the both of them four minutes long, and that's how fast you can get. That made three gallons of fermented plant juice. you know so you can really start to think along the lines of of expediting the making of these preparations what I would suggest though is make sure your spade isn't rusty okay so because you don't want iron contents to start

3:30 getting in your FPJ to where it's it's not a good thing for your for your soil the iron. But as you can see, you know, it doesn't take much, you know, to just flip them around, you know, just do whatever you need to do to get it to where it's going to be. And I'll show you in this video, try to keep it in the tub. But yeah, you can see how it turns into a mash, you know. And so you get it all throughout. That's the important thing. Now you see some of the stems are, I'm looking so the still needs some more chopping. So you just get it down and just chop it to where it then just becomes a mash.

4:13 And then you put that in your jar, and you only fill up your jar three-quarters of the way. And why is that, people that aren't certified? You want the air for what? What do you want to inhabit inside your jar? What do you want to come in? The lactic acid bacteria, right. That's the mother of bacteria. and it was great, Richard yesterday was sharing that he doesn't put his fermentations in the house or he sticks them outside so the lactic acid bacteria will inhabit from the outside, get that bacteria instead of the ones in the house. So as you can see that tub full of purslane

4:56 now is all of a sudden pretty processed down in short order and you're standing up doing it which is real comfortable and yeah it works out really well so you know as being at the place of farming for as long as I farmed you know you always look for other ways to do it to hone your ability to get to the end result in a way that's I can still spend some time at the beach and okay so so we're pretty much there. There you go. Yeah. So that's cool, yeah? Any questions? Anybody have any questions?

5:39 Audience: When you put it in the jar, do you leave the lid open?

5:41 Vincent Mina: Okay, when we put it in the jar, you know, then I get these two-gallon jars from, I think I got it from one of the big box stores, two gallons, wide mouth, yeah. And then I just put it in the jar and make sure there's no air pockets, you know, just pound it down with my fist, three-quarters of the way, and then I use the paint strainer. You go to a paint store and they have those nylon paint strainers. Have you seen those five-gallon paint strainers? You put that over a rubber band and it's a pile. And this way air can still get in there.

6:08 You're not having any issue with any kind of molds or anything.

6:10 Audience: No water or anything?

6:12 Vincent Mina: No water, no. I don't use any water. The osmotic pressure draws the water out of the plant from the sugar. The sugar actually draws the water out of the plant. and so then at the end of the week you're going to have a lot of liquid that you just strain off and then I take all that purslane and I put it in my worm bins and the wormies really love it no, no, that's it, right there that's done, don't have to layer up more sugar and it produces a lot of liquid that tub basically wasn't even full of purslane I put four pounds of sugar and it just worked out really great

6:49 and you'll get a feel for how much sugar is needed If you don't have access to purslane, you want to use something that is succulent. You know, watercress is really good. I tried it. I had mallow come up in my, you know, area like nobody's business. I thought, oh good, I'll make it into a fermented plant juice. It was like, oh yeah. Hardly got any water out of it, you know. So, Drake, I don't know, would you suggest putting water in something like that where the FPJ is not producing the amount of water that you would want from a plant?

7:25 Drake Weinert: No, not water. If you want to increase the osmotic pressure a little bit, you can add a little bit of salt in with your sugar, and the salt really helps to dry things like sweet potato. A little bit of salt will really help to dry out the liquid.

7:37 Vincent Mina: You hear that, everybody? Put some salt in with the sugar. Yeah, and a little pepper, a little garlic, and then you stir fry them up. Yes? I'm sorry I can't hear you dear right yeah you pick it in the morning before the dew burns off it right yeah yeah yeah no that's fine that's fine you know you know that's when the plants are waking up in a sense you know and you want to get all the vitality up from the plant and just look around these piles that I got the purse laying off are 21 years old they've been cultured

8:22 every week us cutting our trays and composting them and doing this in cyclical motion like I showed yesterday and it's so neat to see how the farm supports by growing that people are going why are you letting that weed grow in your pile they just don't understand that that's a resource from my point of view And it's invaluable, the fermented plant juice. It's really invaluable. Yes, Derek?

8:49 Audience (Derek): So for the plant juice, it doesn't matter what it is as long as it's a juicy plant?

8:54 Vincent Mina: Yeah, you want succulent. You want to get a succulent plant that will give you a lot of water because you're putting time into processing it. You want to make sure that the time you're putting in, you'll get some results. And that helps you keep excited about what it could represent. Now that, like I said, I, listen, can I have that jar over there, please? Yeah, thank you. This, and I'll pass this around if you haven't seen this yet, but this is hau flowers as a fermented plant juice, and this is a spreader sticker, meaning that when I put it into my,

9:31 you want to pass it around so people can see it? You know, take a look at it, smell it, eat it. It's really good. And my wife, who's local, said, oh, it's like li hing mui, you know. So that, when you put the hau flowers, and I did it the same way here, every day when I go up ʻĪao Valley, it was all in the morning, first thing in the morning, and there's all the hau flowers that drop on the ground, pick them all up and gather and collect for about a week. And then I got plenty of hau flowers and mix it with the brown sugar. And so when you use this in your formulation,

10:05 it helps the other amendments that you're spraying stick to the plant and spread out. You know, like Drake was saying yesterday with his tea leaf spreader. You know, that was pretty cool, by the way, Drake. I mean, you know, you rocked that one. That was very cool. And so this way, when you're spreading that out, you know, you can get really nice coverage. The only thing you have to do is you have to strain it, you know, when you're putting it through your, if you're going to actually spray it with a sprayer, they could get clogged.

10:35 But getting it into your, that's a really great fermented plant juice, and I think you really like what it represents, hau flowers are so beautiful, too, beautiful flowers. Yeah?

10:46 Audience: In making the [unclear], can everybody only use brown sugar? Yeah, because it comes from cane, as opposed to C&H or any other kind that's white sugar?

10:57 Vincent Mina: You know, who could answer that? Why the brown sugar? Yeah, Drake, come here.

11:03 Dr. Hoon Park: The particular clay jar that Master Cho explains explains that clay jar is breathing. Versus if you use a plastic or glass jar, they're not breathable in the side way. Upper way you can make it. So he told me the primary purpose of that when he's breathing through the, you know, so you don't use a clay jar with the blaze, you know, the, yeah, the glaze, not blaze. So the clay jar without glaze is the one, most ideal one. Of course, if you look at it, the clay jar has a little darkness in it.

11:52 You know, most of the clay jar is kind of dark brownish, right? So it does not interfere too much the sunlight. Because fermentation is a very important purpose when using those things. And the best condition of the fermentation is you have that jar with two-thirds of the content inside. And one-third is the air. That's the best condition to make the fermentation process happening. That's the reason why you mentioned the two-thirds you fill it up.