Our Mission...
We are committed to promoting human and ecological health by providing people with delicious, nourishing food and by working toward a regional, organic food system.
We aim to produce the highest quality, traditional pickled foods available, using natural fermentation. We buy our vegetables only from Northeast family farms and sell our products only within the Northeast. Our ingredients are 100% organic.
Benefits of a regional food system...
- Fresher, healthier food, raised with an emphasis on flavor and nutrition, rather than shelf life and transportability;
- Strong rural communities with profitable, sustainable family farms and plenty of green open space;
- Vast reductions in fossil fuel use for long-distance transport, resulting in less pollution and a more stable global climate;
- Strong local/regional economies, with more money circulating within our communities and regions, and more jobs created;
- A more democratic food system, in which people have more power to decide what food is available and how it is produced, resulting in a cleaner, safer, more diverse food supply.
Benefits of an organic food system...
- Cleaner, safer food, free of pesticide residues, growth hormones, and genetic engineering;
- Living, fertile soil, which leads to higher nutrient levels in our food and is essential to agricultural sustainability;
- Healthy ecosystems, rich in biodiversity and with clean waterways unpolluted by pesticide and fertilizer runoff.
Our Beginnings...
Dan Rosenberg started making traditional pickles in 1999, after attending a workshop at a Northeast Organic Farming Association conference. Fresh out of college, Dan was apprenticing at an organic vegetable farm and excited about the benefits of locally grown food. He started pickling cabbage, turnips, greens, and other vegetables as a way to keep eating local through the winter.
Around this time, Dan also discovered the work of Dr. Weston A. Price, a researcher who traveled the world in the 1920s and 1930s studying the diets of indigenous peoples. Price found the same thing everywhere he went: people eating their traditional diets enjoyed a level of health completely unknown in the industrialized world. Within a generation of adopting modern diets, however, indigenous people's health declined dramatically. Raw, naturally fermented pickles were among the food types common to traditional diets throughout the world.
Price's findings inspired Dan to delve deeper into the craft of traditional pickling. Two years - and countless batches of pickles - later, the idea hit. Real Pickles would be a perfect way to provide people with food that is both healthy and locally/regionally grown. The business was born.
Today, Dan and his partner, Addie Rose Holland, remain committed to producing the highest quality traditional foods while promoting a regional, organic food system.
