Preservation considerations

[1Admin]

What are you going to do with the harvest? What are you going to do now? What are you going to do after TSHTF?

Not always easy answers and very multi faceted when you consider it all.

"Oh, I'll just can everything." (glass jar canning)

"Drying is the only way to go." (sun or electric powered dryer)

"I'll just eat it fresh" (great theory but never seems to work out in practice.

Let's cover these BOTTOM to top.

"I'll just eat it fresh."

OK, so your saying, something is ALWAYS fresh in your garden? 24/7 365? And something in QUANTITY to feed you, every day, nothing to put up? Cough, cough, o.k..... No winter where you are at? Or for those of us "roun here" the summers are the killer. Hard to keep most anything growing well past mid July without a boatload of regular, uninterrupted irrigaiton.

Eating completely fresh ALL the time? I.e, lunch is in an hour go out to the garden pick everything for lunch and dinner DAILY, YEAR round? Not very realistic for most of us.


Drying is the only way to go"

Still gotta disagree with HOME DRYING for a long term storage method. Note the words LONG TERM. Apple slices dried in an Excalibur dehydrator last summer, put into dry mason jars and put up last summer are NOTICEABLY more flexible (less dry) now. Humidity is a killer down our way. May work out west, I don't know...

We are drying apples now. A quarter of a 5 gallon bucket fills out 9 trays in an Excalibur dehydrator. SEVEN TO FIFTEEN HOURS LATER and a CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF POWER USED, we'll have apples that we will put in ziplock bags that will be good I know for roughly a year.

In even the low SEVEN HOUR time frame, we could have made several rotations in canner(s).

Still though- advantages are no jars used, no lids to replace, no broken jars, slightly less heat produced in the process (canning/drying in the early summer during 90-100 degree days this does matter). Fuel used in canning is less however it could be argued that the solar power for the dehydrator is renewed regularly. The LP for the stove is not....

Just stopping typing for a few seconds reminded me of another potential drawback of the dehydrator- the darn thing is LOUD and it's really quiet right now. Flipside of that is that we wouldn't be able to pull a "fire and forget" i.e, get it started and go to bed type deal with a canner whereas we can with the dehydrator.

See why I called it "considerations" instead of "this one is better than that one." :)

I'll just can everything"

Cost of jars (assuming you pay full price) does cause concern. This assumes the reader isn't smart enough or energetic enough to: buy them on closeout in the fall from the big box stores for $4- 5. per case of quarts, get them at yardsales for $.10 to .25 cents each or find people who will actually GIVE them to you for free. OK, last one is a little tough now that the economy collapsed, but previous to that, it wasn't a monumental task.

We can (glass jar) most of our produce as course of habit. Usually a hundred to 200 quarts of green beans, a similar amount of applesauce or apple slices, a fair amount of potatoes, sweet corn, sometimes carrots, plums, pears in smaller quantities, etc.

I prefer water bath canning because I'm a "method and process" type of person. Usually the wife is prepping the food and I keep the next 6, 10, whatever amount of jars ready to go while the current batch is processing. When the timer rings. I shut off the flame, give it about a minute with the lid off, then start pulling jars. Once the last jar is off, the flame is back up and the new batch goes in. Very little down time.

With pressure canning you have all that hassle of waiting for the pressure to drop after the first load is done, pulling the load, new load put in, flame applied, blow out steam for 7 minutes, then put the cap on, then wait for pressure to get to the required amount and THEN start the timer again..... I greatly prefer water bath canning where we can.

Didn't touch on freezing. We have a small freezer that is part of our fridge, it's on the bottom versus on the top. Currently it's full of deer, goat, rabbit and chicken. Their is some fresh snow peas in there also. We just don't have room to freeze too many fruits or vegs.

Take all these considerations into mind when viewing your preservation considerations.

Robert

[Triple-sod]

Reckon this year I

[boltgun308]

A 100 to 200 quarts of green beans. That is a lot of canning and a big garden.

How many acres do you garden and do you plant just one crop of green beans or several? I am about to plow up and replant my green beans.

[SeldomSeenSlim]

I can or freeze vegetables. Canning doesn't take any electricity, but frozen corn and peas taste better than canned to me, so I freeze some. I do quite a bit of pressure canning for tomatoes, sauces, chili, etc. Like you pointed out it takes some extra doing. I run multiple pressure cookers to keep the flow going without having to wait around. It's still a big production every year. Spending the time before hand to set up good workstations, prep areas, etc. is important in my opinion. Have to think like a factory almost.

I think the first part hits an important point. The "I will..." mindset. It's not that preserving food is difficult. It's the scale of things if one is looking to make all or most of their own food. A couple cases of jars is a Saturday afternoon. There's 52 weeks a year. That's 52 pints of pizza sauce (I make pizza every Friday), 52 pints of enchilada sauce, 52 pints of pasta sauce and that only gets 3 meals out of each week sized for two adults (pints not quarts). All rounded up to an even 60. 5 cases. Just those three items take 180 jars and over 20 gallons of sauce! It's not feasible to do on 'home' sized equipment. Most of the equipment came from restaurants that were going out of business.

I'm feeding 2 adults and a mob of critters. I sell all of my excess which in the past couple years has gotten me to the point of breaking even. No profit really, but free food so it's worth it. I could support a dozen folks IF I had the material to preserve the food. Which I don't right now. That's everything I do now times 6. YIKES! Doable? Sure. But it would be a challenge. I could say "I will just preserve all of the food", but there's no "just" about it.

[wwdnet]

Decent garden this year, and I agree that deciding what to do with it all is a challenge. We have a big freezer, pressure canner, water bath canner, and Excalibur dehydrator. I have been using everything to make sure nothing goes to waste.

Tomatoes were the pick of the day, and are happily becoming red sauce at the moment. With three well-spaced plantings, this is becoming a regular occurrence. I had planned to can most of them, but we are much more likely to use the red sauce than plain tomatoes. The third planting has green tomatoes and, if it does well, I will do some canning. Time is always the issue, which is why we have so much red sauce.

Zucchini? Bumper crop this year, with most of it grated and frozen for future zucchini bread. If you decide to grate and vacuum seal, try double-bagging it with a hunk of paper towel in the outer bag, since it is very moist and will quickly fill up the vacuum sealer well. The ones who grew into giants whle I was at work were sliced into rounds and made into pans of zucchini lasagna, every bit as good as eggplant lasagna. After baking it, I froze it in the pans, then popped it out and vacuum sealed it. There are half a dozen or so of these in the freezer.

Summer squash harvest was small but provided plenty for freezing.

It's getting too warm for the broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts, so I pulled the rest of those, dehydrated the first two and ate or froze the third. The same goes for the cabbage, which produced so many babies I almost lost them! This weekend will see that section recycled for another planting of something else.

This was my first year planting sweet onions - they are getting big now and I guess I need to find out how to make them last as long as possible. What's the best method??

Green beans did well for a while, but now they are getting rusty looking. Since they need to be location-rotated, I may use the old cabbage patch for a third planting.
The eggplant and miscellaneous varieties of peppers are doing well, and will likely get frozen as well. The potatoes were nice but not enough of them, so next year I am going to expand that plot. We ate them all! The garlic is slowly coming along, but strange spring weather this year has not been helpful. The cukes were a bust so I don't have to decide what kind of pickles to make this year.

[rockriver]

great post.
my young bride has signed up for 3 one day courses on preserving food.
she's had one so far.
courses are at a neighboring county extension office. $12/class or 30 for all 3
she's been following hand me down procedures from her mom.
so far directions are very close to the same.

[WILL]

[kappydell]

never underestimate a good root cellar! in mine at varous times i have kept: potatoes, carrots, cabbage, apples, pears, crocks of kraut and waxed cheeses(and have ripened green tomatoes for fresh eating thru december); dried beans and field corn dry down without a dehydrator and require only to be kept dry for multi-year storage. kale and other cold tolerant crops keep fresh in clamps or even well covered with straw or dry grass for early winter foods. jerky, salt fish and slow-cured dried hams all historically work well in my climate, so ive learned to make them as well as collecting recipes for them. bean sprouts are also versatile & healthy and honey (yes in my childhood we kept bees) keeps just fine without human intervention. its all in the selection of storable foods for your climate and learning to cook & enjoy them. obviously a good canner and dehydrator add welcome variety, but i dont need them to survive. a good study of local history can give you many good ideas.

[1Admin]

Root cellar isn't a good option down south, trust me, we've tried it. Canned and already preserved stuff, yes. Fresh stuff, no.

[610Alpha]

@1Admin - Can you expand more on which foods you use the water bath method for? I was under the impression that the water bath method was for fruits and that you should use the Pressure Canning method for veggies?

[BioG8r]

610 here is the Standard answer for your Q - Taken from Mrs Wages canning page.
They have SOME pretty good spices and mixtures for canning, I still prefer our own Ketchup and Bread and Butter pickle recipes.

Two Methods

All foods are canned by one of two methods:
1.Boiling water bath method. This is used for acid foods. These include all fruits, tomatoes, sauerkraut and most foods to which vinegar has been added, such as most pickles and relishes.
2.Steam pressure canner method. Used for foods containing little acid. These include vegetables, except for tomatoes, and meats, seafood, and mixes of food that include some low-acid foods.

All foods, acid and non-acid, contain enzymes and can harbor molds and yeasts, all of which will cause food to spoil. All of these can be inactivated or killed by the heat of the boiling water bath canning method.

The steam pressure canner method is used to destroy another threat against canned food—bacteria and their by-products. These include Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus, and Clostridium botulinum, the cause of botulism.

Since these harmful bacteria are not a problem in the high-acid foods, there's no reason to use this high temperature method with them. These bacteria will thrive in the low-acid foods and aren't destroyed by the 212

[610Alpha]

Thanks BioG8r

[kappydell]

You can water bath fruits and acid foods. That includes pickles. You can pickle everything from asparagus to zucchini, including shredded cabbage (makes a tasty fat-free coleslaw type pickle). You don't have to make sauerkraut to can cabbage if you pickle it. Pickles were very popular in times past as anti-scorbutic (keeps scurvy away) remedy. Giardiniara, chow-chow, pickled peppers, pickled 3-bean salad, sauerkraut, dilly beans, assorted cucumber pickles all are easily water bath canned.
Now add the other 'acid foods': fruits, fruit juices, jams & jellies, ketchups, hot sauces, etc and you get a LOT of variety and flavor from ye old blue canner.
I use many ways to preserve foods, but water bath canning is a favorite because you can do it over a campfire in a pail if need be, as long as you have something to keep the jars off the bottom (a folded towel will work, in a pinch) and the pail is deep enough to keep those jars submerged. As for popularity, well, many of the pickles and such are given as gifts and eagerly consumed. (Just return the doggone jar to the donor for refilling, PLEASE!!!)

[MJC]

I recommend getting the "Ball Blue Book" canning guide. It will have all the canning instructions for water bath and pressure canning and some really good recipes. Steam canning is IS NOT recommended for anything! Because the temperatures are not high enough to kill all microbes. You can steam juice fruit and vegies and then can the juice for later use. I also recommend doing some research on fermenting foods, really good for digestion, (like kim chee). also check into salting and smoking. One way to cut the run time on your dehydrator is to build a solar dehydrator and sun dry some of the food and then if it's not crisp enough, finish it off in the electric dehydrator. I put all of my dried food in 2 qt. mason jars with o2 absorbers and dessecant packs, they haven't gone soft yet.

[PerryJeff]

I agree with Kappydell on the root cellar!!! The best for storing lots in bulk... potatoes carrots onions apples pears, beer, wine.
Then freezing next for tomatoes, in all formulations, corn, peas, meat. Then dehydrator and water bath canning.