Lessons in self reliance

Big and tasty, Nov 2018

Over the past two years, documenting my gardening successes and failures, I've learned a lot about becoming self reliant.  Although I've been documenting my vegetable harvests for several years, I'd only begun my No Buy Veg Challenge and that first year showed me the importance of preserving the excess.  In terms of self reliance, while growing food during winter is helpful, preserving food for winter is key.

When first I challenged myself to five months without buying vegetables, the last month was particularly difficult.  I hadn't saved enough summer food to tide us over once the main beds stopped producing.  This was a big mistake, and a big lesson to learn.

In 2018, I made the decision to relinquish the pleasure of eating certain vegetables fresh in order to preserve them for winter.  We ate very little fresh turnip or beet, as I pickled most of what I grew (though not a particularly large harvest, unfortunately).  Every tender cabbage heart went to make sauerkraut--only the tough outer leaves were cooked fresh.  When we were sick of chard, I was still picking it to dry for later (though at the time I doubted we'd be able to eat it all, I'm now very glad I did).  Even the best French and runner beans were salted away;  it was important to me to have a variety of different vegetables put up.


I hope that in the near future, with the addition of my new allotment, I will have the ability to grow specifically for preserving, rather than skimming off the top of the summer harvest.  It will take some planning, but I will be trying it this coming year.