Food Storage

[helwen]

Some widely varied reasons folks have been glad to have stores of food and water:
http://sharonastyk.com/2009/05/19/real-life-food-storage-stories/

Last fall after the Halloween storm, people were coming up to Ashfield because we had power and gas -- fortunately for these folks, the gas station had just gotten a delivery on Friday, just ahead of the storm. A day or two after, we were up at Elmer's and I got to chatting with a woman from Haydenville. She told me her sister had told her repeatedly that she should have some food and water stored but "we'd never lost power before". And even after they lost power, she'd figured that since the local power station was just down the road from her house, that power would be restored within hours. But the damage was so extensive because of all the downed trees that it would be days before they got power back.

On a less dramatic note, my mother always has plenty of canned, dried, and frozen goods and water as well. The water is a newer addition, something she started doing in California, but I grew up with a well-stocked pantry. She has always taken advantage of sales whenever possible, and this has ensured that her dollar goes further and she always has something to available to her. It was important when she was raising three children and it continues to be important as her mobility has decreased in more recent years.

Comments

[zaduzbina.livejournal.com]

We store food.
1. I am a cook and nothing gets thrown away until I can get every last bit of food out of it. (I make my own broths)
2. My husband is self employed. We go through highs and lows monetarily as people don't like to pay their bills in a timely manor.
3. I live in a farming community where spring, summer, and fall bring feasts. Winter, not so much.
4. The cost of regular store bought food is atrocious.

When we had a lean financial month - I bought nothing and ate well and didn't put a dent in our supply. We ate a different thing everyday.

I rotate most things through within a six month period.

wow

[bytchearse.livejournal.com]

I guess you just never know about some people. The most normal and well-adjusted people in your life turn out to be crazies, what with storing food and preparing for emergencies and all.

I'd like to chat more, but I have to visit the basement and do a little inventory...

[zaduzbina.livejournal.com]

manner-autocorrect failure.

Re: wow

[helwen.livejournal.com]

LOL

Actually, I've been doing some re-organizing lately. With making some diet changes I haven't been going through some foods fast/at all, so off some of it goes to other folks (the regular pasta went first, but I just found a corn muffin mix that someone had given me last fall, that I forgot about).

And now that I have even more herbal meds in the house I'm going to move a few things around and give them their own cabinet, too.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

I just want to say that I admire you and what you do!

Yes, winter can be thin. I got some new kale this year to put in the ground, which will give us some winter greens. We're also lucky that a greenhouse down the hill from town has greens through early winter and then again in early spring.

I really need to buckle down and do more cooking, but I admit I get lazy. When I was poor and single though, I was really good about things like using chicken down to the last bit. I need to get back into making broths... well, after I use the broth my SIL gave me... some organic vegetable broth that I guess my MIL didn't like or something. Or maybe it has too much sodium... sorry, not too much in a soup mood right now, too hot :(

This week I'll be making quinoa for the first time!

[oakmouse]

*nods* Food in the pantry is very important. Earlier this year we got our basement pantry shelves clear of the remaining odds and ends from the move, and have shifted the balance of stored food down there where the temperature and humidity are more stable. We've got a good selection of things, although we need more.

Our achilles heel is fruits and veggies, since this is an area where fruit can be scarce and expensive (this year will be horrible, the early warmth followed by an overnight freeze wiped out the entire tree fruit crop in the five county area) and veggies-fit-to-eat go through a hungry gap every spring. Still, we dried enough kale and tomatoes from our garden last summer and fall that we have some left, and we're using up the last 3 jars of homemade frozen veggie stock. We're planting morethis year of the vegies we want to preserve for winter eating, and less of the stuff we could get locally if we wanted to.

(Also, seaweed is our sheet anchor. SMIL has been sending us care packages since she found out we can only get one kind of seaweed here, so we stash some of what she sends.)

We manage.

[helwen.livejournal.com]

That's terrible about the tree fruit crops :(

Will you be growing strawberries this year? I've read that you can slice and dehydrate them but haven't done it myself. Do you have sumac in your area? The ones that get the reddish "candles" in the fall -- not fruit but it does have citric acid and could be a little variety from the kale for Vit C. I've been looking at Vit C alternatives although we can get winter apples here (assuming we don't get a frost or blight or something). I'll be growing parsley too, both during the summer and I think indoors this coming winter.

That's great that you still have some of your winter veggie stores -- I planted the last onions as they were sprouting.

[oakmouse]

We're not sure if we'll get strawberries in this year or not. We're trying to figure out how to manage growing them while getting most of the fruit ourselves instead of seeing it feed the birds and squirrels. Yes, they can be home-dried, and like most berries they're easy to do. We've done strawberries from the farmer's market and they're really nice.

Yes, we do have sumac, although unfortunately most of what I've seen grows along major roads so is polluted. A friend is going to take me up in the woods this summer so I'll see what I can get there. When I was a kid my great aunt used to make sumac lemonade in late summer and early fall.

We're growing lots of tomatoes this year, and lots of kale and turnip greens. I've found that my hungry gap fruit cravings go away if I eat tomatoes and/or those greens that are low enough in oxalic acid to not make me sick. I can safely do tomatoes once to twice a week, and greens daily. Oh yes, and we're growing pickling cucumbers and eating cukes too. *nomnomnom*

Usually we buy apples from a local fruit store that buys from the Amish farmers in the region, but we're not sure if any of those farmers will have any fruit to sell this summer and fall. JM says that his lodge brothers claim that not all of the orchards in the five counties froze out after all, only the ones in PA and the higher elevations of MD and WV, so we may be able to get some apples after all.

We're also growing some of our own fruit, or will be when the plants are more mature: we've got 4 grapevines, 3 elder bushes, 1 dwarf quince tree, and 2 compspur apple trees. The grapevines may bear a little fruit this year, and we expect some elderberries next year, but the quince and apples are probably five to six years out.

Finally, the local fruit shop sells jam made by local Amish farmers, and even those whose fruit trees froze out have berry crops coming so we plan to buy berry jams over the late summer and early fall, and use those for vitamin C boosts. A spoonful of one of those is a nice treat and goes a long way!

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Glad you have a number of possibilities and options. Hope it works out for the local apples.

From the territorial expansion we've seen so far this year, I'm expecting we should have a decent black raspberry crop. We'll have grapes but I never know how many until it's harvest time, with the weather swings. Our fruit trees are still pretty young but if I managed to stomp out the shothole ick we might have nectarines and peaches this year. Also some gooseberries and black currants.

The elderberry aren't even in the ground yet, and likely won't be this year -- I'm going to re-pot them into big pots though. The birds usually get the blueberries, but there aren't a lot of them yet anyway so it's hard for me to get too stressed out about that. Same with the serviceberry right now. And the strawberries have to be rescued from the hay that moved into the garden, so I'll be happy if we can just rescue them from obscurity this year.

Yes, thank goodness for local farmers! And we have an older guy in a nearby town who learned canning from his father, who does nothing but make lovely jams.

More folks are getting into gardening every year, as well as learning to store food. I always wish there were more of them, but it's nice to see how active some folks in the town have been getting. More importantly, folks are trying to figure out things that will help the community, not just themselves.