making kraut with bare feet --Why?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l0joPdfV7E
This woman does just that -- have you heard of this b/4? She claims it is an old farm technique, I believe her.

Why would someone choose, clean, bare feet to mash the kraut?

Would you eat her ferment?

I ask b/c I met a person recently who was immuno-compromized and would eat no ferments that she did not produce herself.
I would guess this woman's ferment in the video is safe to eat if one is healthy -- right?

Also, she mentions to never can kraut as it kills the good stuff, she suggests freezing it to keep the goodness of the ferment.

What do you think about this claim?

Thanks for coming out to permies and answering questions, looking forward to reading your book.
Tom

I usually squeeze salted veggies with my hands, or pound them with a blunt tool, but stomping with feet is another way of accomplishing the same thing. We're trying to get veggies submerged under their own juices, and any/all of these methods bruise veggies, break down cell walls, and help extract their juices. I would have no hesitation eating kraut made this way (provided the feet were clean).

sounds like maybe she had a large amount in a large crock to process and maybe that is what she had available..kinda like doing grapes for wine.

interesting.

Not adults but children where used to stomp on top of shredded cabbage. Their feet looked much cleaner and they enjoyed the task as it was a kind of a game. When a family shredded enough cabbage to fill a wooden barrel which was the size of 55 gallon drum, the job of packing cabbage required some force. This amount of cabbage supplied family needs over the winter. It is common knowledge that shredded cabbage must be fully covered in brine otherwise it might spoil. This is why we place weights on top in a small container. In a small container you can pack cabbage with your fist and if the cabbage is fresh, it would be covered in brine in a few hours. A big barrel is a different case. Using kids was a great solution.

Young ladies were also singing and dancing on grapes in huge casks for the same purpose-to release grape juice. We must take under consideration that there were not wine presses, nor fermenting clay crocks in Europe after the first and the second world wars ended. One could not buy equipment in stores because there were no stores, just big piles of bricks. Some cities were 80% destroyed. People used any technique that worked.

You can see a drawing of a young lady walking on sauerkraut barrel at: Sauerkraut Dancing