The year is winding down
The year is winding down and so are your opportunities to complete your food storage goals. Now is the time to buy honey, grains, beans and other food commodities. As the harvest is brought in, food prices drop to their lowest in the year. Take advantage of these lower prices and stock up with as much as you can afford.
This is also the time of year that you can go into overdrive with canning, freezing and drying. Your garden is at its most productive and you may almost feel like you are overrun with too many fresh vegetables. But in a couple months there will be no more fresh vegetables and you will be glad that you were able to put up whatever food you are able to do right now.
If you don’t have a garden, you can still get a lot of fresh vegetables to put into food storage. Buy from truck farmers, CSA’s or farmer’s markets. You probably have a friend or two that have more in their garden than they can use. Keep your eye on Craigslist or Freecycle for free (or inexpensive) produce. This time of year there are lots of people giving away apples, potatoes, carrots and, yes, zucchini.
Got Zucchini?
Don’t turn your nose up at zucchini! There’s a lot that you can do with this amazing vegetable. At the very least, you should try canning some faux pineapple—zucchini slices that have the taste and texture of pineapple.
Do You Hate to Can?
I do too! That’s OK. If you don’t want to can or freeze a lot of vegetables, there are lots of vegetables that will do well in cold storage. An unheated garage or basement room is a good place to store root crops (potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, etc), cabbage and winter squash. If you can keep the room’s temperature at 50° or colder (38-40° is ideal), you can store these foods for up to six months.
Enjoy a fruitful harvest!
