Winter is here, my farm pantry is full, and I am appreciating all the hard work of the growing season and harvest. I spend a lot of time popping in and out of my pantry for this and that throughout the day, and I always take a minute to stand there and revel in the baskets of onions, the braids of garlic, the rows of canning jars holding bright treasures of fruit and vegetables….It’s really my favorite room in the house. Some folks aspire to own a fancy boat, some folks want a closet full of designer shoes, and me, I always wanted a pantry. When I stand in there and look around, I finally feel like I’ve made it in the world.
The floor is lined with basket and bins of all sorts of storage crops. Pie pumpkins from our field and winter squash from a local farm should keep for months, as will the cedar baskets of potatoes and garlic. The apples from Farmer John’s didn’t keep as long as I had hoped with the warm weather we had, so I went and picked more a couple of weeks ago at another farm to get us through until at least January. Boxes of chanterelles keep about one to two weeks, and we manage to go out on short picking jaunts in the hills behind our house to keep those boxes well stocked. They are perched above two boxes filled with the hard cider we pressed, fermented, and bottled this year. Jerusalem artichokes from our garden kept a little while in their basket before turning all mushy. I’m still trying to figure out where I went wrong there. The chickens loved them, though.
I braided our garlic and hung it from the shelves where I put up all my canned goods. Applesauce, pickled dilly beans, bread and butter pickles, corn relish, peaches, spiced pears, concord grapes in juice, apple cider, barbecue sauce, gooseberry jam, and raspberry lavender jam line the shelves in a bright bountiful rainbow. Beside them are jars of dried herbs and tea makings like nettles and Douglas-fir tips.
Then there are the dried fruits. I dehydrated strawberries and plums from farms, tomatoes from our garden, and pears and apples that I gleaned from trees around town. Then I stared dehydrating chanterelles and ended up with gallons of them to throw in soups, rice, and stuffings. I have also found them to make an excellent bartering medium.
A big basket of the last tomatoes we brought inside sits atop the wondrous berry freezer. Inside are quarts and quarts of frozen strawberries, blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, elderberries, peaches, and cherries. We try really hard to make them last all year, but it takes A LOT of willpower. Berries are just so tasty. Especially with fresh raw cream poured on them…
Next to this freezer is the upright freezer. This freezer mostly contains meat, including the half-pig from Sweetbriar Farm, the elk from my dad’s hunt in Idaho, the chickens we butchered this summer, the ground grass-fed biodynamic beef from Wintergreen Farm, the assorted pasture-fed meats from our Deck Farms CSA box, and a few bags of beef and lamb bones for bone broth. There are also a couple of jars of frozen lard I rendered this fall, some gallon bags of frozen pole beans from our garden, frozen grapes, 24 jars of frozen salsa we made, about that many jars of homemade strawberry jam, baby food jars full of vegan pesto, and a couple weeks worth of frozen bread from a local gluten-free bakery and my free day-old bread source. It’s one full freezer!
Then there is the bountiful basket of winter squash. The local Food For Lane County Youth Farm offers organically grown storage crops every fall at a very reasonable price, and I always try to stock up. We ate the last of our squash from them in April last year. It was still delicious.
What pantry would be complete without potatoes? Some of these we grew in straw in our garden and some are from the Youth Farm. We eat a lot of potatoes around here, and it’s nice to just go out and grab a few whenever we need them without always going to buy a bag at the store. These are kept in some handcrafted cedar baskets from a Jamestown Sklallam Tribe woodcarver near where I grew up. My parents won them at the local Streamfest one year, and I have been keeping veggies in them ever since. Cedar has some incredible bug-resistant qualities, and makes an excellent storage container for food.
So, there it all is, the fruits of my labor packed into one little storage room with very thick walls. I don’t think I’m leaving anything out. The very best thing about it all is that I gathered, harvested, gleaned, and preserved it myself. Some of it came from local farmers, but it feels very different than food from the store because I went out to their farms and met them. I picked from their trees, I petted their animals, I helped support their efforts directly to pay their bills and put food on their family tables. I can honestly say I have an entirely different relationship with my food and sustenance than when I started out in life. It’s a good feeling.
Let the snow come a’flying. I’ve got a full pantry.
that is just beautiful. We are working a little more each year to fill our pantry even more.
Thanks for sharing.
oohing and ahhing. 🙂 i know exactly what you mean, although i'm still aspiring to a pantry like yours, i am feeling well on my way this year- with the berry freezer, potatoes and onions, local seafood a mushrooms, and lots and lots of jars of yummy goodness. i agree, too, on the relationship with our food/farmers/land/plants. it's just awesome. i will have to search your blog for your raspberry lavender jam recipe! that sounds divine!!!
Local seafood is going to be my next step! After all, we're only 40 minutes from the ocean. I just keep missing the boat on it! Ha!
I don't know if I've posted the raspberry lavender jam recipe, but I just use the directions on the Pomona's Pectin sheet for raspberry jam and add a tablespoon or so of dried lavender at the end. It IS divine! 🙂
Your pantry is gorgeous! I'd love to hear what you recommend for saving information. I never knew that about cedar. All my potatoes are growing eyes and I need to know how to prevent that. My sweet potatoes all started getting intentations that were turning black inside. So, all those got eaten which makes for a bare cupboard.
Thanks Crystal. I just put the potatoes in those bins with a sheet of cardboard over the top to keep out light. I haven't tried to store sweet potatoes, but that's what sounds like happened with my sunchokes. I finally fed them to the chickens and will figure out how to store them next year. I use the Ball Blue Book of Canning and Preserving a lot. It's a cheap publication, last time I got one it was 5$, and most places that sell canning supplies carry it. There's canning, freezing and drying info in there. Happy preserving!
Wow what a great haul from the warm months! Well done indeed!
Dang!!!! 🙂 Canning, freezing, drying, pressed, fermented, preserving, dehydrated, etc.!!!! Love it 😀
gorgeous goodness, am very jealous xx