Posted December 15, 2011 in the old blog.

Ien van Houten commented on an entry where I said putting up food for four takes no time. I started to reply in the comments section but thought more people would see it if I added a new entry. I haven’t written anything here in months so I’m long overdue.

Posted by Ien in the Kootenays

“It takes next to no time to grow and put up food for a family of four. ”

Are you kidding? You must be one of those hyper-organized superwomen. More power to you, but I don’t find it easy at all…

When I started to reply I said my organizational skills are lacking. Then I realized that when it comes to food preservation, I am fairly well organized.

Freezing Vegetables:

My mother gardened and canned vegetables, made jam and jelly, etc. when I was a kid so I’ve been doing this for 40 years. My kitchen has 100 year old drawers that are very wide, very deep and very tall. All of my canning lids and rings, the grabber, funnels, etc. fit in one drawer. They’re always handy.

Green beans, blanched, drained, bagged and ready for the freezer.

I’ll use green beans as an example. I pick the beans that are ready, up to a bushel at a time.The water goes on to boil. I usually blanch things in the pressure canner because it’s heavy and holds heat well. While the water heats I snap the beans, filling the tall colander first so that it’s ready to go into the water.  One side of the sink gets scrubbed and filled with ice water. The other side is scrubbed and empty so that cooled veggies can drain. The beans go into the colander, then into the water, then get pulled out all at once, dumped into a colander that fits the sink (I have only one that fits the canner and have to keep reusing it) and taken to the ice water in the sink. Not scooping beans out a few at a time saves a lot of time.

When the beans have drained well they go into freezer bags, the air is pulled out, the bag sealed and it’s tossed into the bushel basket I picked the beans in. When I’m done the basket goes to the freezers in the basement. I stay in constant motions and get it done from start to finish before moving on to something else.

Making Jam:

I pick all of the strawberries, blackberries, blueberries or whatever is in season at the time, all at once if possible. Picking a year’s worth of blackberries saves me a trip back to the canes. I have cultivated raspberries so picking those at once isn’t possible.

If I’m going to make jelly I usually freeze the berries I’ll use and make it during slower times. It’s nice to have the smell of fruit in the house in January and nice to have a little extra warmth in the kitchen from the stove. Frozen berries will release a lot of the juice while they thaw and save you time. I don’t like little tiny seeds of raspberries and blackberries so I make jelly. Family members like strawberry jelly better than jam so I freeze some of the strawberries, drain the juice for jelly and use the berries for a thicker jam than fresh berries make.

Wash the jars ahead of time. I use the dishwasher and keep them hot in there until I’m ready for them. Put the water on to boil for the hot water bath. Measure out each batch of berries into pots. Measure out the sugar into separate containers. If you’re using pectin, open/measure it and have it ready to go. Get out your funnel, spoons, spatulas, clean and wet cloth to wipe spills off jar rims and anything else you’ll need out and in reach. Make one batch, jar it, wipe the rims clean, put the lids and rings on and get them into the hot water bath. While they’re in the bath, clean up the mess. Repeat repeat repeat until done.

Months before the beans are ready to pick, I’m organized in the garden. I plant pounds of beans using a seeder. They’re properly spaced, it takes 5 minutes to plant a pound of beans and have them covered, and I’m done til it’s time to start weeding. Corn, beets and almost every other seed I plant is done with the seeder.

Chickens take 10 minutes a day to raise. We no longer gut chickens unless we’ve raised a few roasters. We don’t eat the organs so there’s no need to gut. We kill, pull the skin back from the breast, remove each half of the breast individually. Peel the skin back from the legs, remove. I take the skin off chicken before I cook it so we eliminated plucking, saving us hours during processing. We do the same thing with the turkeys. If it’s my turn to host Thanksgiving we pluck and gut one bird. Steve splits the birds into pieces to conserve freezer space.

I do very little canning now. It takes a lot of time and propane and adds a lot of heat to an already hot kitchen in the summer to can seven quarts of beans. It’s very inefficient. The freezers use very little energy because they’re always full and are in an always-cool basement. They run twice a day for a few minutes. As I empty space using food I refill it with containers of water for ice. If the power goes out they won’t start thawing for at least 24 hours if you keep them closed. There’s minimal thawing after 48 hours. If necessary we can run a generator once a day to keep everything frozen.

I store a lot in the cellar. The old part of the house sits on a cellar (dirt floor, field stone walls). The edition is on a full basement. There’s very little time tied up in wiping dirt off winter squash, pumpkins, garlic, onions, leeks, etc. Carrots are stored in dry sand. We didn’t grow potatoes this year but when we do, they’re in the cellar too.

I make one trip a week to the basement to bring up meats, fruit and veggies for the small freezer over the fridge.

This freezers are storing 25 chickens, three turkeys, moose, a small pig, shrimp (Steve’s brother is a lobsterman who shrimps and scallops), scallops, trout, partridge, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, broccoli, cauliflower, beans, tomatoes, green peppers and things I’ve forgotten. I have wild mushrooms, peppers, summer squash and grape tomatoes dehydrated and in jars. We eat very little beef, usually only if we’re out. Neither of us got a deer this year so there’s a only bit of venison we were given by a very generous friend. The same friend gave us the moose meat. In return, he gets shrimp and scallops in season.

Forty years of food preservation has given me plenty of time to create habits, work out routines and make the most of my time.

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