This brings me to the question of what to do with all the excess. Do we really just feed it to the chickens? If you knew me well enough you'd know that I give everything to my chickens. Obviously the first thing you'll want to do is eat as much as you can while it's fresh. But then what? The society we live in today separates us from our cultural traditions of eating seasonally. What I'm getting at is if you can't fathom eating 20 winter squash in your lifetime let alone 6 months, then you may have to focus on a few preserving methods that can help you increase your variety. One easy way to store perishable produce is by freezing. Now this is a big subject, and I'll leave you to do your own homework on the matters of the process, but each vegetable has a different reaction to freezing (think blackened potatoes) and you have to counter each potential problem with a different process. For most vegetables this process is blanch, cold water bath, and freeze.
To understand how to freeze your food successfully it's important to understand the dynamic that causes it to go bad in the first place, enzymes. The enzymes in fresh produce are what causes rot. Even though enzymes are massively beneficial to our health, we don't want them destroying our food before we get to it. The goal of freezing is to slow this process down, and it works well. But for longer storage times it's simply not enough. What you'll need to do is blanch (cook at high heat for a short period of time) your vegetables before you freeze them. Again, each vegetable is different. Raspberries, blackberries & strawberries for example are great to just pop in a bag and chuck in the freezer, and spinach is not. Most times you'll only need to blanch for a few minutes at boiling temperatures. This kills off a vast majority of the enzymes and greatly slows decay.
Now lets say you're a gardener and a hunter, just hypothetically, and you've just bagged yourself a deer. We can all understand that when the freezer is full of meat, you 'ain't gonna put no stinkin' green beans in there.' So what then? There are options. One of the easiest is to grow what stores well. Vegetables such as winter squash, potatoes and long keeper tomatoes, all of which require no refrigeration, can last anywhere from 3-12 months. Store them in a well ventilated area that maintains a temperature of around 45-65 degrees. For better shelf life you can wrap them in non-glossy newspaper. There's other staples that store great and are begging for a spot in your garden too. How about garlic, oregano or dill? Herbs require minimal work to store, in fact with most, you pretty much hang them in an area with similar climate conditions as above, and let them dry out. Then just stuff them in an airtight jar or paper bag. Easy peasy.
There you go, everything that's required to get through the long cold winter. Well, hopefully. Not sure? Ok ok, I've got a few more tricks too. But you'll have to check back for part two. I mean, I'm not writing a book here.
