Tasik Segara Salt is endorsed by Locavore restaurant
and has received Slow Food Bali's Snail of Approval Award!
Making salt is an ancient tradition in Les, Buleleng, North Bali. The salt farms lie fallow during the rainy season, but when the dry season arrives the bamboo filters are repaired, the water vats and solar driers cleaned and the naked soil hoed, raked and pulverized.
The pulverized soil is drenched with seawater, left to dry, raked and drenched again. This distinctive process of combining the land and the sea is repeated three times, concentrating and mineralizing the salt, removing the bitter aftertaste and infusing it with a unique sweetness.
The pulverized soil with the salt concentrate is placed in a bamboo filter and drenched with seawater a final time. The seawater filters down to the water vat where it’s scooped out and left to dehydrate on solar driers, leaving the salt crystals behind.
There are only 20 salt farmers in Les and they are proud of the unusual salt they produce. If the weather co-operates they can make 1,000 kilos a week; the yield is much less if the sky is overcast. It is back-breaking work. The salt farmers rise before dawn to prepare the salt fields and work until sunset, yet the profit from the salt is insufficient to sustain a healthy family.
Your purchase supports these families, and keeps alive a traditional craft in a rapidly changing world.
and has received Slow Food Bali's Snail of Approval Award!
Making salt is an ancient tradition in Les, Buleleng, North Bali. The salt farms lie fallow during the rainy season, but when the dry season arrives the bamboo filters are repaired, the water vats and solar driers cleaned and the naked soil hoed, raked and pulverized.
The pulverized soil is drenched with seawater, left to dry, raked and drenched again. This distinctive process of combining the land and the sea is repeated three times, concentrating and mineralizing the salt, removing the bitter aftertaste and infusing it with a unique sweetness.
The pulverized soil with the salt concentrate is placed in a bamboo filter and drenched with seawater a final time. The seawater filters down to the water vat where it’s scooped out and left to dehydrate on solar driers, leaving the salt crystals behind.
There are only 20 salt farmers in Les and they are proud of the unusual salt they produce. If the weather co-operates they can make 1,000 kilos a week; the yield is much less if the sky is overcast. It is back-breaking work. The salt farmers rise before dawn to prepare the salt fields and work until sunset, yet the profit from the salt is insufficient to sustain a healthy family.
Your purchase supports these families, and keeps alive a traditional craft in a rapidly changing world.
