Thursday, October 16, 2008

Stockpiling for the winter

This year, for whatever reason, I've felt the urge to store the harvest. Pack it away for the winter months when food isn't as abundant as it is in the summer. Which is a little odd, since I've always been able to get summer produce in winter by going to the store. But not this year. Whether from my efforts to eat more local food, wanting to prepare for the lean times that look to be ahead of us, or from wanting to be a homemaker in some small way, I've spent the last several months buying extra produce from the farmer's markets and storing it for later.

So far I have (all local):
* 2 quarts + 3 pints tomato sauce (sadly already all used up :( )
* 6 pints applesauce (3 cinnamon, 3 plain)
* 11 half-pints blueberry syrup
* 5 cups blueberries in the freezer.
* 10 lbs. potatoes of various varieties
* 4 lbs. dried bean mix
* 3 quarts + 3 pints bread and butter pickles
* 7 long lasting squashes
* lots of garlic
* 15 oz. + 1.5 lbs. pumpkin puree

I've also done some baking for the freezer, but have had to back off since there's no more room in my tiny freezer! I have:
* whole wheat bread
* 2 loaves pineapple zucchini bread
* 1 dozen peanut butter oatmeal cookies

Overall, definitely not enough to truly make it through the winter if I was only relying on my stockpiling abilities, but I feel like we could survive pretty well over the next several months on my preserved food as well as the non-local staples such as rice and flour I always keep on hand if something happened to keep us from being able to buy food easily. It seems a little silly, but it's made me feel more independent of rising food prices and like I am providing for my little family.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds good to me "Kiddooooo", remember to put bay leaf in your flour to keep the bugs out.