The Living Pantry

We open the course in the last warmth of summer, with the season's abundance still at its peak. Roni leads a full session on drying and preserving summer fruit: figs, tomatoes, peppers, stone fruits. We learn when to pick for drying, how to read the sun, how to use salt, oil, and heat to capture a season in a jar. We also take a walk together through the farm and introduce the arc of the ten weeks ahead.

Taught by Roni

Dibs is one of the oldest sweeteners in the world: grape juice reduced slowly over fire until it becomes something extraordinary. We learn to make dibs and other grape and fruit concentrates that can replace sugar entirely in a living pantry. We also prepare for next week's wine session, understanding what the grapes need before they become wine.

Taught by Roni

The harvest is happening. We go deep into wine making from a small farm perspective: reading the harvest moment, crushing, fermentation, natural wine principles, and the patience required to let something become what it wants to become. Paulo brings the knowledge of someone who reads grapes the way farmers read soil.

Taught by Paulo & Asaf

Autumn is the time for apples, quinces, and the last of the stone fruits. We press cider, learn the arc from sweet juice to dry cider to living vinegar, and explore a range of fruit ferments that become a staple of the kitchen year-round. Understanding alcohol and acid: how to make them, how to use them, how to love them.

Taught by Roni

The most important ingredients in sourdough bread-making, apart from the grain itself, are time and skill. There are many sourdough workshops out there that are only 2 hours long, but they are mostly fragmented demonstrations of parts of the process. Bread-making is a sensory skill. For you to go home truly empowered to start making your own bread, you must experience the full process, feel and see the transformation happening in real time, and have your hands in the dough from start to finish.

What you will learn:

• Sourdough starter maintenance and care
• Practice and theory of all stages in the bread-making process
• Theory of fermentation and how to manipulate it
• Benefits of artisan sourdough bread over industrial bread
• Different ingredients and how they affect the process
• Baker's percentages and baking terminology
• Tools needed to bake at home

Taught by Soraia, baker & sourdough teacher, with Roni

Olive oil is the backbone of Mediterranean life and of this farm. Right before our own harvest begins, we learn everything: how to read the olive, when to pick, how pressing works, what determines quality, and how to ferment olives in the many ways they can be done. We also talk about growing olive trees: planting, pruning, caring for what may outlive you.

Taught by Asaf

From fresh milk to aged cheese: an ancient transformation that most of us have never witnessed up close. We go through the science and the feeling of curdling, pressing, salting, and ageing. We make fresh cheese together on the day, and understand what it takes to do this as a regular part of farm life.

Taught by Roni

Eggs are the most versatile food in a living pantry, and hens are the most useful animal on a small farm. We spend the morning with our own flock: understanding the egg mobile, the rotation system, how hens improve the land, what they need to thrive, and what a small flock actually costs and produces. By the end, you will know whether hens belong on your land.

Taught by Asaf

November is the moment to sow the crops that will feed you through the year: wheat, garlic, broad beans, and the full range of winter brassicas and root vegetables. We cover how to plan and sow a grain crop at home scale, how to grow and store garlic properly, which vegetables thrive through a Portuguese winter, and how to think about food production as a year-round cycle rather than a season-by-season scramble.

Taught by Asaf

Zohar brings his hives and his knowledge: how to keep bees on a small farm, how to harvest honey without harming the colony, how to make medicinal preparations from propolis and wax, and why bees are not just producers but teachers. A session that opens up a whole world of relationship with the land.

Taught by Zohar, beekeeper, with Asaf & Roni

The final session is not a lesson. We cook together from the pantry we have been building all season, sit at a long table, open a bottle of something we made, and celebrate. The farm, the people, and ten weeks of skills that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Asaf, Roni & the whole group