Winrock International

Agriculture is our most effective usage of solar energy. Through photosynthesis, plants produce food from the sun’s energy, ultimately accounting for virtually all of our food. We eat fruit, seeds, and plant parts; or we eat animals that consume plants. Two important food products of the flowering plants can only be harvested by bees: nectar and pollen. We rely upon honey bees to exploit the carbohydrate of nectar and the protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals of pollen. Bees make honey from nectar. Valued since early man robbed bee trees, honey is considered the only food unchanged since cave men gathered it. Among the highly valued products of the bee hive are honey and beeswax, which are important sources of income in many countries. The value of bee hive products largely depends upon the skill and capabilities of the beekeeper and those processing, handling, transporting, and storing the goods. In most developing countries, honey is primarily used in the production of mead, or honey wine. Usually harvested by crushing honeycombs, the honey contains considerable amounts of beeswax, pollen, and some protein from bee brood. In this form, the honey is most suitable for fermentation into mead. More modern honey extraction and handling techniques produce pure honey sold at a premium on world markets.

Tod Underhill is currently in Ethiopia serving in Winrock International’s Farmer-to-Farmer program assisting beekeepers solve problems in honey handling, processing, and transportation. This is one of many USAID funded project seeking to improve agriculture in developing countries. Though Ethiopia’s semi-tropical climate and diversity of flowering plants make for large honey harvests, the quality of the honey is often low. Tod is teaching the Ethiopian beekeepers the importance of harvesting “ripened” honey that the bees have capped with beeswax. Uncapped honey tends to have a high moisture content, and the honey may ferment in storage. A friend, Phil Craft, the retired Kentucky State Apiarist, also took a Farmer-to-Farmer assignment in Bangladesh. You can follow Phil’s recent travels at http://philcrafthivecraft.com/?p=437.

--Richard

Ethiopian Tej

Mead, or honey wine, considered our oldest alcoholic beverage, is produced by fermenting honey diluted with water. There is no single formula for mead, and it is made in many styles and flavors. Most mead recipes include a fruit or spice added to balance or contrast with the sweetness of honey. Some of the fruits added to mead include tart apples, citrus fruits, and raisins. Cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon are spices commonly used in making mead. Yeast, which provides the fermentation, for mead may be added by the mead maker or it may be derived from “wild” yeast existing in the air or on the surface of fruit. While mead is made and enjoyed throughout the world, Ethiopia has its own traditional honey wine known as tej, which is produced from three ingredients: honey, water, and gesho. Gesho is the native Ethiopian shiny-leaf buckthorn, Rhamnus prinoides. The stems and bark of gesho are used to counter the sweetness of honey in tej.

The production of tej is an art passed as indigenous knowledge across generations over thousands of years. The unrecorded oral tradition of tej-making has been lost in some locations. At Apinec in Bonga, we recreated the process of making tej using traditional materials and techniques along with modern production methods. A microbiologist joined us in producing tej. While we used modern techniques for sterilizing containers and equipment, we also burned Olea africana and wild pepper, two plants smoked in traditional tej making to sterilize containers. While modern sterilizing methods are effective, traditional tej receives some of its distinctive flavor from the smoke. Once a drink of nobility, tej is now enjoyed by many Ethiopians. It is usually served at room temperature in round flasks called bereles. This tej is cloudy in appearance. The processors at Bonga are experimenting with techniques to produce a clear golden, effervescent tej. Today’s photo shows bereles of tej served with a traditional meal of wot, rolls of injera, and squares of false banana enset.

--Richard