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Roasted roots are easy. Cut into chunks, mix up the roots in some olive oil and salt, spread out out on baking sheets and roast in the oven at 350deg for 1/2 hour. Cool and vacuum seal then in the freezer. When you want a meal, pull out a bag and spread the out on a baking sheet and finish roasting at 350 for another 1/2 hour.
Kale we rinse off and flash freeze then vacuum seal. We don't blanch them at all any longer- they hold fantastic and taste great that way.
We freeze our corn, but definitely blanch first. Some years we do on the cob, some years off.
Squashes get cut thick, blanched and frozen. We like them grilled for the most part.
We can our green beans, collard greens, tomatoes and some other things. We pressure canned 8 pints of green beans last night.
Fermented foods get placed in mason jars and put in the food cabinet in the basement where the temp stays at 58-62 deg year round.
Threerun, great info ^^^! How many freezers do you have? It must be very nice to be in the middle of winter and be able to eat corn on the cob that you grew yourself! (I am laughing, I am still fixated on how beautiful your corn is! )
Today's pick. We're picking green beans about every 2-3 days, so we save a weeks worth and then can or freeze them. 2 more cabbage heads (making smoked pork and cabbage soup), about a dozen ears of corn, some of the last carrots and a few more beets.
And our peppers and squash are starting to come in.
Pretty busy few days. Yesterday I mowed the grass short, rented a core aerator, applied weed 'n feed, threw some top dressing on some spots and over seeded areas of the yard. Today was stripping 10 year old funk and stain from the deck to prep for new coats and up and down a ladder stripping old caulk around trim, windows and doors prepping for new caulk.
My wife said 'How hungry are you?" I'm STARVED. So this was my dinner-
Mashed potatoes, green beans and corn from the garden and mule deer tenderloin from last fall.
Time to do the bi-annual chest freezer defrost. We're pretty vigilant about defrosting our freezers. We have 2 good size chest freezers and one small one. While we are waiting for the ice to loosen up we inventory our food, moving things from last year up, fresh harvest down. My wife counts everything so we know what's on hand. Gotta make room for more veggies yet to harvest, so we fire up the second chest freezer now. (Plus making room for wild game- hunting season is fast approaching).
Veggies on the right, meat on the left. You can see this years corn, below that are 1/2 roasted roots and potatoes, the purple is 4 bags of premade mashed potatoes from last year, various greens (bok choy, kale and spinach), some squashes etc..
This week I'll use quite a bit of the bok choy, the last of my smoked pork, some of the carrots, onions and peppers to make pork/cabbage udon soup. About 14 quarts worth. It gets canned and goes down to the basement cupboard where we store canned goods.
Threerun, you and your wife are so organized!! Did it take you a while to develop your "system" (both growing & storing)? I am impressed. You and Cambium are my heroes, LOL!
I grew up gardening- my family always had one, my mom, dad and my grandmom canned a lot. My side of the family were farmers and prolific gardeners. Like county fair winning gardening. My wife did not. When we bought our first house I stumbled on a plot of 'pay dirt' that turned into a fantastic garden- 100x50 or greater in size. She grabbed a few notes from my grandmom, my mom and my dad. They gave us some canning supplies and away we went. Never really a system involved. We kinda 'figured it out' with help along the way. We gardened for 5 years at our first house- up about until we had our first child.
We bought another piece of property and built a house in 1999 and we stopped gardening for good. Too much to do with two little kids. I did a lot of hunting so we had a chest freezer. Meat was expensive so I learned pretty quick that the meat you forgot in the bottom of the freezer for 3 years is now dog food, lol. So we began the bi-annual freezer defrosting regimen. Keeps the freezer in running shape AND you discover that turkey at the bottom.
We started gardening again about 4-5 years ago, so we're back at it. We're still learning what does well here in Montana, and try to focus on crops the grow well and yield.
So I guess we may have a system by virtue that we've done this stuff for a while and know what works. It really helps that my wife and I think along the same lane when it comes to this hobby.
Last edited by Threerun; 08-29-2021 at 09:43 PM..
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