What do you do when you’ve grown 600 extra pounds of daikon? Go make kim chee.

At least that’s what farmers Daniel Leas and Rob Barreca do. With Laarni Gedo, they’re owners and operators of Counter Culture, a 5-acre Waialua organic farm. They also spend time in a commercial kitchen, washing, chopping, shredding, slicing, mixing, seasoning and bottling their produce to make tasty fermented food.

Think olena-spiked sauerkraut, Morrocan spiced beets, pickled dilly beans, shredded pumpkin kim chee, daikon and pear kim chee, and a pak choy kim chee that includes a unique mix of carrots, shiitake mushrooms, onions, olena and pine nuts.

“There’s never a shortage of things to do on the farm. Then when the vegetables are ready, we need to take care of them, and we come to the kitchen,” said Barreca as he prepped cabbage for the sauerkraut they call Golden Kraut.

“The other day, we were in here 13 hours to get through 600 pounds of daikon, after harvesting 700 pounds,” Leas said. “We worked from 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.”

The kitchen is a stone’s throw away from their farm, where they grow a diversity of vegetables and raise some 40 chickens and 20 ducks for eggs.

“We want to do seed to countertop,” said Barreca.

They’ll explain their philosophy this weekend during the Parade of Farms event in Waialua. Their operation is part of the North Shore Specials tour.

Counter Culture products make good use of not just surplus produce, but also B-grade veggies they can’t sell — items like a twisty, crooked carrot or a blemished kabocha. “They taste great but just look funny,” said Barreca.

“The products are a good way to add value to our work in the fields,” added Leas.

Counter Culture’s recipes, collaboratively created by Barreca, Leas and Gedo, are based on one or two ingredients grown on the farm. Though none has culinary training, “we eat all kinds of food,” said Barreca. They schooled themselves in recipe development and fermentation through books, online research, advice from experienced fermenters and experimenting at home.

“Recipes usually take a handful of tries. We’re constantly making little refinements,” Barreca said. “But the good thing with fermentation is that if the ingredients seem to be a good balance for cooking, that’s a good guideline for fermenting them together, too.”

Their recipe for daikon and pear kim chee, for instance, is based on a Korean practice of boosting tanginess with sweetness.

“We blend the pear and onion into a paste and add chunks of purple daikon. It has a lot of flavor.”

At the Red Barn Farmstand in Haleiwa, that kim chee is made into an aioli and used in a popular menu item, the Kimchi Turkey & Bacon Pita. It comprises a stack of organic greens, cherry tomatoes, roasted turkey, bacon, macadamia-nut pesto and the aioli.

“It evens out the pesto with its creamy flavor,” said Jill Nordby of Holoholo General Store, a partner in the farm stand. She said the aioli also makes a great dip for other items, such as fried sweet potato.

Fermented food is noted for the presence of lactobacillus, a species of beneficial bacteria that’s referred to as a probiotic. Surely Wallace, a master’s degree student in the University of Hawaii’s Nutritional Sciences program, said that probiotics occupy the gastrointestinal tract and produce natural molecules to protect the area from unfriendly bacteria.

So it’s no surprise that Barreca was sold on fermented food after it helped him resolve his own digestive problems. “Now I can eat what I want, I feel better and my digestion is good.”

Wallace said that adding salt to food creates an environment hostile to most bacteria but not probiotics.

“There is natural lactobacillus in food. When you add salt and spices (to ferment food), it creates an environment to promote probiotics,” she said. But she cautioned that beginners should rely on a starter culture to safely ferment their food.

Barreca said three things ensure success in his fermentations: salt, proper temperature and brine in which vegetables can be submerged.

“It’s about getting the salt content and temperature right. Salt ratios are a science,” he said. As to temperature, it’s all about finding that “sweet spot.” For Counter Culture’s products, that means an air-conditioned room set at 65 degrees, allowing for a slow ferment that cultivates a series of different lactobacillus strains to create the right flavors.

In general, the kim chees ferment for about a week, the pickled items two to four weeks.

But before all that can begin, there is farming. Barreca and Leas hit the fields to grow a wide range of organic produce, among them cabbage, carrots, purple daikon, beets, olena, jicama, kabocha, string beans, pak choy, banana, soybeans, corn (which they dry and mill into their own cornmeal) and much more.

“We both enjoy growing crops. It’s the greatest job in the world, out in nature,” said Barreca. “It’s always engaging. There are always huge puzzles to solve.”

The two are proud of their three hard-earned organic certifications, for their produce, value-added products and livestock. It’s not an easy process. Farm certification, for instance, entailed documenting their processes and inspections of their operations, including seed sources, soil conditions, crop health, weed and pest management, water systems and more.

“We are passionate about organic farming and figuring out ways to farm that are regenerative,” Barreca said. “We want to build a farm and a system that is here to last, that creates nutrient-dense, delicious food.”

The men want to encourage other like-minded local farmers to take the time to get certified.

“If you believe in organic farming, it’s like what voting means to participating in a democracy. We wish more growers would become certified. That would give organic farmers a stronger voice in the state.”

PARADE OF FARMS

>> Where: Waialua Sugar Mill, 67-106 Kealo­hanui St.

>> When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday

>> Information: parade-of-farms.org

EVENTS

Waialua Sugar Mill: Farmers market (until 12:30 p.m.), all-day keiki activities, free tours

North Shore agriculture history lecture: 11 a.m., Waialua Public Library, free

GUIDED TOURS

Depart from sugar mill. Tickets: $15, ages 15 and older; $8, ages 5 to 15

Agri+Culture (9 a.m. to noon): Farms incorporating community and culture, Malama Loko Ea Fishpond, Na Mea Kupono loi and Mohala Farms

Farm Exploration (9:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.; free to ages 15 and under): For families, at Monsanto’s Haleiwa farm

North Shore Specials (1 to 3:45 p.m.): Sweet Land Farm, Twin Bridge Farms and Counter Culture, farms that do more, including retail outlets and value-added processing

Bean to Bar (12:30 to 3 p.m.): Waialua Estate’s cacao and coffee farm and processing