Coming soon!
Crocks and Kraut: Making Pots, Woodfiring, and Fermenting Veggies on the Mendocino Coast
November 2-15, 2026!(Tentatively)
Here at Cider Creek, we’re always looking for ways to bring our artmaking practice closer to the work of stewarding the land, such as by making pots that work together with the food we grow. And it so happens this soil and climate love to grow cabbage!
In this tasty workshop, we’ll learn how to make various styles of fermentation crocks using our local clay stoneware and a combination of wheel-throwing and hand-building. We’ll fire them with wood in our catenary arch soda kiln, and while the kiln cools, we’ll teach you a few different kinds of kraut, kimchi, and pickles to make at home in your own crock.
No experience is required with clay or the potters’ wheel, though some would be helpful. Building large(ish) pots in stages with multiple pieces of clay means working slowly, in order to thoroughly understand how the wall of a pot is constructed. It’s actually a great context for learning how to make pottery. We’ll spend a lot of time considering the construction of different rims for sealing the crocks, and how to make an inside surface that is watertight and can be easily cleaned. Just handbuilding instead of using the wheel is an option, and also your crock doesn’t have to be very large!
In this immersive workshop, you’ll live in the forest, make things by hand, and source ideas in elemental ways: daily use, ecological decision-making, site-specific responses to place. You’ll share respite from digital, urban, and consumer culture, and tune into intrinsic possibilities in raw natural materials, traditional skills, and offerings of the land.
Participants will stay up the hill at the historic Back to the Land commune known as Salmon Creek Farm, lovingly restored and stewarded since 2014 by artist and architect Fritz Haeg. We’re always happy to join Fritz and the SCF community in a larger conversation about land-based, shared creative activity. SCF “continues the legacy of the original ‘70’s commune, entering a new chapter as a long-term art project shaped by many hands, a sort of queered commune-farm-homestead-sanctuary-school hybrid”. Cider Creek and Salmon Creek share a vision of offering you the opportunity to sink into tangible experience, with hand-crafted, comfortable living; a sense of community; and a connection with the natural environment.
Our goal is to cultivate a community environment that is as welcoming, responsive, and compassionate as our materials themselves. Our workshops are open to all, beginner and advanced, non-artist and artist, all occupations, ages, and varieties of life experience. We welcome humans of all orientations, origins, and interests, striving to make Cider Creek Collective a safe, supportive space to enjoy making art.
The Workshop:
During the first week, we’ll be making crocks in the studio. We’ll demonstrate techniques, working back and forth between the potter’s wheel and handbuilding. You can choose from the various styles of crock- inspired by Sichuan pickling jars, German kraut, Korean Onggi, et al- and build 1-3 of your own. We’ll learn how to ensure a good working vessel, methodically smoothing the interior walls and testing the fit of the lids, and glaze them for the special atmosphere created by wood and soda firing.
After 3-4 days of making, you’ll load your work into the kiln and heat it up slowly, allowing the fire to decorate your pieces with patterns of melting wood ash and flame. The hot kiln will provide a warm nucleus during the cool days of November.
You’ll tend the firing in shifts around the clock, entering the circular clock of “kiln time”. You can choose what times of day work for you to sit with the kiln, and generally abandon traditional time and ambitions in favor of sitting by the fire, tuning into the process.
The kiln will take 3 days to cool, during which time we’ll make several batches of fermented veggies: traditional kraut, kimchi, pickled veggies, and more. On the last day of the workshop we’ll unload the kiln, and send you home with samples of each recipe and your very own crock that you made by hand!
Our programs are offered as affordably as possible while we work on establishing scholarship funds. In the meantime, Salmon Creek Farm invites those who can afford more to contribute towards discounts for applicants of historically marginalized communities. There is space on the application for you to specify your need or your ability to support others.
Work trade scholarships are available at Cider Creek, for info email jrthompson@cidercreekcollective.com.