Portland, Maine’s Urban Farm Fermentory (UFF) was born out of a love for bees. When owner Eli Cayer bought a couple hives and began beekeeping, he eventually had more honey than he could handle. The excess turned into his first batch of mead; a door to the world of fermentation opened. Cayer has continued to play with ingredients ever since, and in 2010, he launched UFF, where he produces mead as well as hard cider and kombucha, a fermented tea.

Photo by Eli Cayer

The real joy in fermentation for Cayer comes in allowing natural ingredients to work together to create something else. “I am able to get out of the way and let things evolve on their own,” Cayer explains. “There is a lot of mystery and happy surprises. And if I am increasing people’s well being in the process, we’re all better off.”

UFF’s mead is made from raw local honey, filtered water, and the wild yeast from UFF’s own farmhouse-style cider, which is created using only the natural sugars and yeasts in Maine apples. The result is an exceptionally clean beverage with balanced flower and honey flavors, and slight acidity and carbonation.

UFF experiments with different sweetness levels (based on fermentation time) as well as homegrown ingredients to create rotating batches of dry, semi-sweet, and sweet meads, as well as sweet and sour flavors using kombucha cultures. You probably won’t find a sour lemon balm mead anywhere else, but you have to come to Portland to try it. Meads are only available on draft in UFF’s downtown tasting room, where the public is encouraged to gather, taste, and experiment with blends. Flavors change frequently, and Cayer aims to continually respond to the feedback he gets at the tasting bar.

Photo by Eli Cayer

The post Wild Ferments appeared first on Take Magazine.

Andy Anello is one artist who caught on. He moved to New Bedford from New York City six years ago in search of more space and time to make art. Since then he has been digging into the scene, and today he is the creator of Lunar Teeth, a performance art experiment that convenes four times a year on or around the summer and winter solstice and the vernal and autumnal equinox, and showcases artists from various disciplines.

Photo by Drew Pion

Anello began Lunar Teeth as a studio photographer looking for a looser outlet than the familiar formula of Idea + Execution = Finished Work/Portfolio. He wanted something where he could focus on the process instead of the outcome. The result is an event that operates like an open mic for work that is experimental, is often unfinished, and that stretches the visual artist. “There is freedom in doing something once and never seeing it again in the same form,” Anello says.

So far the six installments of Lunar Teeth have attracted artists from New Bedford, Providence, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Gatherings on the equinox and solstice keep the work regular but not overly structured, and in tune with natural rhythms.

A lot of traditional visual artists in New Bedford operate in isolated studios. Lunar Teeth is a refreshing, contemporary alternative to that. “People are surprised at how engaged they are. The perception of performance art is that it’s boring, but Lunar Teeth has grabbed people’s attention,” says Anello.

Lunar Teeth founder Andy Anello performing “Sing a Song” at a previous Lunar Teeth | Photo by Casey Atkins

Carl Simmons has been a Lunar Teeth regular since its conception. His work revolves around the history of Brooklawn Park in New Bedford. In one of his performances, audience members called in their own memories of the park to Carl’s Google voicemail. Simmons played each message back and read the accompanying (mostly hilarious and inaccurate) Google translation. The performance was a reflection on making informational sense of people’s personal memories.

Another regular, Dustin Brunelle, builds wooden boxes using basic carpentry skills. At Lunar Teeth he times himself while stacking the boxes as a way to look at the concepts of labor and hard work.

“It’s been amazing,” says Simmons about Lunar Teeth. “There was no outlet for this kind of thing before. The beauty of Lunar Teeth is that it’s really loose, but it pushes you to create something at the same time.”

Dustin Brunelle examines the concept of labor and hard work in his performance art | Photo by Drew Pion

The next Lunar Teeth will be held on September 19, 2015.

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