Things are very productive on the home-front lately! This week, on top of everything else, I am crunching numbers to determine what all we need to preserve for the year's worth of food (the stuff we can reasonably preserve). We try to do the math and stick to the most productive and financially reasonably items to focus our time on for the most part. If there is something we use a lot of that someone else can produce better or much cheaper, we save ourselves the work, and we buy in bulk instead or directly from the producer when possible.
One evening's harvest for dinner...
Pickles and sweet relish that Sunshine made!
Fresh picked corn...
Keeping the mess outside!
Whippersnapper took pictures for me and got corn juice all over the lens....hence the soft focus effect!
Shucking corn...
Have you ever pondered about how much your family consumes per year in basic food items? For instance we have about 8 or 9 main veggies we enjoy to have cooked or fresh most of the year. Those would normally be zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, potatoes, onions, carrots, and lettuce/greens etc. Then there is of course corn, which always confuses me....we eat it like a vegetable, but it really isn't is it? Do you think about how much you'd likely eat of each particular item? I never used to!
This year, I just started thinking in general terms. I asked myself simple questions like...."How often do we tend to buy and eat frozen or fresh broccoli from the store?" and "If we could get it really cheap, would we eat even more than we do now?" Then I started to break it down from there to figure out how much we need to get put up for "winter" (really all year until we can harvest again from the garden next summer)! I set a goal of 40 quart bags of frozen broccoli because it wasn't likely we'd have it once per week normally if I was buying it from the store. Then as the season rolled on we realized we were able to surpass the goal of those 40 quart bags. Yet, the broccoli was still going strong. So we upped it to 60 quarts. This worked out really well because the green beans are not producing like we'd hoped and we will have to make up for that with something extra in the veggies category, like broccoli! Plus with extra broccoli we can enjoy a little more broccoli cheese soup than we might have normally, mmmm mmm. Once we hit that goal, we will be happy to give lots away (we've already given quite a bit away), and maybe sell some as well to help re-coop the costs of the seed starting supplies in the spring. Money is always tight that time of year, yet getting those starts going is important for the later crops to flourish and produce the next year's food supply.
Then we have the fruits we enjoy, we LOVE fruit and consume quite a lot as a family~
Peaches~ Mostly we enjoy canned and eaten fresh when in season of course.
Pears~ Canned pear slices, as well as pearsauce which is like applesauce, and dried pears too.
Apples~ Canned applesauce (LOTS!) and apple butter and maybe a few jars of apple pie filling.
Cherries~ We enjoy them mostly fresh, but 2nd best is frozen like mini lollipops, and 3rd best canned.
Grapes~ Again the best is frozen and eaten while still frozen, that is even better than fresh for us! We are known to buy 15++ lbs of grapes when they are in season and rock bottom priced and freeze them in a big container and snack on them during schooling or movies for weeks!
Berries of many kinds~ Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, black berries for jams, jellies, cobblers, smoothies, etc. We like to flash freeze some on a cookie sheet and package them in bags loosely so we can take out a few here and there for muffins or smoothies without defrosting an entire quart bag of frozen berries at a time. We eat blueberries frozen like popcorn for a snack!
Of course we enjoy other fruits fresh and canned weekly from the store that we don't have to preserve, thank goodness! These would be bananas, mangos, grapefruits (LOTS), oranges, fresh apples, mandarin oranges in light syrup, fruit cocktail in fruit juice, applesauce (when we run out of homemade) and pineapple tidbits in fruit juice.
Those are just the fruits. I will probably talk about veggies in a later post towards the end of the growing season once I know more what the average yield is. Whenever we can, we also try to gather things that are essentially free like huckleberries, blackberries, morel and oyster mushrooms, and we also try to harvest animals such as elk, deer, bear, and birds such as grouse and maybe a wild turkey when we have the tags to do so. The wild meat helps our annual grocery budget immensely. I have a very skilled husband that doesn't need much gear each year to get the job done, which I am super thankful for. I hunt too but not to the degree he does, now we have 2 young hunters coming up in the ranks! Two kids are taking Hunter's Safety Classes right now in fact. We've always cut and wrapped our own meat, (even the whole beef we bought, whew what a job!) Processing our own meat really saves a bundle! As I've written about previously, we raised meat chickens this year which added a sizable amount of quality protein for the year. The pigs round out the meat selection nicely and they compliment the other game meats because we can use the fattier cuts of the pork to mix with the leaner ground game meats for excellent flavor.
All in all, I feel so incredibly blessed that we both had people in our lives growing up that taught these skills to us, that we've continued to hone the skills over the years together as a couple with our own family, and that we have the helpers that we need to make it happen efficiently! That is a huge factor, having well trained help that isn't afraid to pitch in wherever they can! Granted, if we didn't have so many "helpers" we wouldn't be needing to put up near as much each year either. Funny how that works.
To some I am sure we seem crazy! Spending all this time and effort just to put food in the pantry and freezer when we could just go to town and buy it (maybe). There are several reasons why we don't just do that, the two main ones are money and health! To be really honest, there isn't much REAL savings in doing it ourselves (especially when we figure in the time, which we don't) because by the time we buy the fruit, the fuel to get it home, the sugar (even in very low sugar syrups it adds up), the lids for the jars, etc. It comes in at maybe at most 10% cheaper than conventional types probably the same or a possibly costs us a little more than it would on a really good sale at the store (how often would it be on sale when I needed it though?) and 35%++ cheaper than organic versions. The fruit we buy is not officially organic, but it is grown on a small scale and more naturally than most commercial producers and we control what all goes into those jars and how it is handled while being processed as well. That gives us a little more peace of mind for our health.
Another reason we go to all this work, is to teach our children something useful and memorable. You never know when these old fashioned skills will help them make it through a tough season in their lives one day or how the work ethic they are learning will come in handy in their future career or marriage even. Or maybe they will appreciate learn the value of food and not to waste it by seeing how much work it takes to preserve just 1 quart of food!
Having a connection to the food you are eating is a wonderful thing. When we are harvesting things I can't help, but start thinking of how we carefully placed those small seeds in the trays of soil to start indoors all those months ago. Then how we tended the little seedlings each and every day. Then how we transplanted them all into larger pots and watched them take off in growth. Oh and we can't forget the process of taking them all in and out every morning and evening to properly harden them off to fluctuating weather! Finally a warm spring day where we planted that same group of plants in the garden with high hopes of good weather to grow well. The late night panicked trips out in the garden with piles of sheets and blankets to guard those tender plants from a late spring frost that threatens to kill all our efforts thus far. We can't forget the diligent watering and weeding to help it flourish and the patience to wait for it to eventually produce food! That is just to get you to the point of actually harvesting that food....
Now a different kind of work begins when we preserve or cook these foods! All of these things are a powerful process to reflect on, especially as you enjoy that tasty meal featuring some of your homegrown items. It connects me with thoughts of our Creator so much more than if I simply selected a can off the shelf of a store or a bag of frozen veggies from the freezer section.
Granted, there is a LOT of work that goes into this way of life, and we've had to limit what we get involved with outside of homeschool, homemaking, and farm care. I am sure there will be many years we end up not being able to do near this much as life has a way of throwing curve balls, but for the years we can, we will celebrate all year long with thankfulness in or hearts.
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