Preserving food

One of the encouraging things about homesteading is that it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Homestead life has many different aspects, each of which can be tackled incrementally, and even the smallest amount of effort at some aspect will lead to healthier and more satisfying living.

This is certainly clear when it comes to preserving and preparing food. The satisfaction will be even greater when the food you prepare and preserve is food that you've raised yourself, but much goodness can be found in taking fresh, clean food from any source and using it to feed your family.

The main drawback to fresh food is that, being a living thing, it doesn't stay fresh for long; food is meant to rot, and if you want to keep it for later use you need to process it in some way. Here are some books that can teach you time-tested techniques for preserving the harvest.

 

• Home Cheese Making. A friendly introduction to a potentially scary process, with clear descriptions of basic techniques and 85 step-by-step recipes.
• Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design. Rather than padding its pages with recipes, this book gives a detailed explanation of the smoking process, together with a comprehensive survey of the various devices, simple to elaborate, one can construct for smoking food.
• Root Cellaring. Long-term storage of fruits and vegetables is a critical homesteading skill. This book describes the many ways of creating the necessary cool, dark space for storage, along with the specific requirements for one hundred garden crops.
• Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Canning is a simple and versatile method of preserving the harvest, provided it is done properly. This is essentially an expansion of the famous Ball Blue Book, with 400 recipes that demonstrate the wide variety of foods, simple and prepared, that can be canned.
• Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning. Canning is only two hundred years old, freezing even newer. How did people preserve food in earlier days? This book surveys older methods for extending the life of food, many simple and quite practical.
• Making Great Garlic Powder. This booklet by Herrick Kimball gives a brief but comprehensive account of how to grow the garlic for your powder, turn that garlic into powder, and even market the end product.