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Potato Soup

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Winter is coming.

A couple of weeks ago, I stood at my kitchen window in the early morning.  Looking through the fog, I saw one single, yellowed leaf float down from the trees.   My throat tightened.  Last week in the same early morning time at my sink, I saw several more fall, dancing gracefully.  Friday, I crested the steep hill on my road to see the Appalachians displaying change visible from a great distance.  Today, I see the trees across the street are turning.  Red and yellow.  This morning, I had to grab a robe when I got up.  The kids complained their feet were cold on the wooden floors.  Friends are telling me the Blue Ridge Parkway, not far from home, already has yellows, oranges and reds beautifully visible.

Winter is coming.  Soon. [Read more…] about Potato Soup

Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

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Our Food Storage 101 article on our website was so popular, we decided to expand it into a blog series! Over the next several weeks, we will walk you through the whys and hows of food storage, whether you wish to have a week or a year of food on hand.

Why Should I Store Food?

There are many reasons why people choose to practice some form of food storage, and none of them are wrong. So many people are concerned right now. Since I began working with food storage in 2007, I have seen many reasons to choose to stock a deep pantry.

  • You wish to be prepared for a hurricane, a snow storm or an extended power outage.
  • While you might currently have a stable job, you know that unemployment is over 10% nationally, topping 15% in some areas. A recent Gallup poll showed that under-employment was at 19%. You aren’t currently dealing with unemployment, but you’re concerned it might be around the corner.
  • You’re looking to wisely invest your tax refund, knowing that currently the rising price of food is outpacing the interest rate, so the purchase of bulk food at a discounted price is a doubly wise investment of your funds.
  • You are a family facing unemployment or struggling through under-employment, or you are facing the end of your unemployment checks.
  • You don’t wish to have to purchase food on a credit card if you’re unemployed.
  • You currently know a family who is forced to choose between food and housing or food and heat due to a limited income.
  • You’re not particularly interested in food storage, but you’ve decided that buying in bulk is the best way to cut your whole-foods based budget.
  • You have food allergies, and you know that you would not be able to sustain your family between the offerings of a food bank and food stamps should something happen to your income.
  • You have food allergies, and you desperately need to bring down the grocery bill.
  • Due to being self-employed, you would not qualify for food stamps in an emergency.
  • You hate shopping and would rather shop less, or you live miles from convenient shopping locations.
  • You wish to leave the food at the food bank for those who are less fortunate than you.
  • You’ve read about the potential looming food shortages from the floods in many countries and droughts this year. Multiple countries have suffered flooding or freak snow and freezing weather in the last few months, and their effects on the price of food has been in the news.
  • You’ve met a family who sustained themselves with their food storage after a job loss or other tragedy. If you are a forum member, you know that last year we sustained ourselves for eleven months on food storage while my husband went through unemployment.
  • You see the need to not be a burden on others should an emergency occur, so that those who are less fortunate or can not prepare can utilize the food banks without you also needing to go there. This creates less of a burden on the safety nets meant to help families through a crisis.
  • You are trying to return to a more sustainable food production cycle in your own family, beginning a homestead or a hobby farm.
  • You are looking to unplug from a modern life-style.
  • You wish to save money by only purchasing fresh and in-season.

In 2009, our family sustained a major hit in the form of income loss when my husband, along with 90% of his co-workers, were laid off. Three months prior, everyone in the company had taken a salary reduction in a move to delay those lay-offs. We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know the day. Thankfully, we had one year of food storage in place when the lay-off happened. [Read more…] about Real Food Storage- Deep Pantry Principles for Traditional Foodists

Gardening Season is Upon Us

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I haven’t blogged much in the last month because we have been working hard to get our raised garden beds built and extended onto some new ground.  We are effectively trying to double our vegetable garden space despite being limited by the steep topography and shade from all of the woods.  Once we are done, we will put in some new beds in a different area of the yard for the herbs and perennial plants.  We also had an extended visit from my grandparents and my grandmother came down with shingles while they were here.  That sent me into a tizzy of work, trying to get ready with extra food cooked and the chores and gardening done ahead in case the kids caught chicken pox from her. Their 14-day incubation period ended on Wednesday and they show no symptoms, so I assume they did not catch it from her.  We will still continue to watch them until this coming Wednesday, just in case.  So the last few weeks have been very busy but very productive.

Living in Western NC, our last frost date is mid-April but we don’t put out the warm weather vegetables until Mother’s Day weekend or after.  This past weekend was too cool to plant out (under 55 degrees at night) and The Farmer’s Almanac lists today and tomorrow as the favorable days to get the hot weather plants into the ground.  So I will spend tomorrow trying to break the new ground and get the grass/weeds up, finish spreading the 15 cubic yards of topsoil into the new raised beds, amending with azomite and greensand and then transplanting the plants out that were hardened off earlier this week.

I will be transplanting tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, winter and summer squash, zucchini, lettuces, melons, hibiscus and a good number of herbs.  We will also be putting beans, cowpeas, carrots, lettuce and okra into the ground. None of my beets sprouted, so we will try those again later in the year. Once things are transplanted, the weeding, feeding and soil work on a large scale begins.  We also have 5 roosters and a few hens to butcher soon and need to get the outside equipment set up for that.  Since next Saturday afternoon is taken up with another scheduled activity, I hope we can accomplish culling the flock next Friday and Saturday morning, as Jeff normally gets off in the afternoon on Fridays.

On the personal front, my husband was able to get a new job in April.  He was laid off one year ago today.  Eleven months of unemployment was very difficult and the downturn in the economy has greatly affected us.   I am grateful that the long period of unemployment is over and that God provided Jeff with a job at a company where he is happy and fits in well.  The last year was a good opportunity to fine-tune my penny pinching endeavors and it helped me to weed through some strategies that, while they work, they take up too much time in comparison to the money they save to be useful to me on a regular basis.

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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.