Food Preservation

Success! Our Winter Stock Up

October 18, 2020 /

I often get a little down or anxious about not doing ALL things homesteading yet. Today I am instead celebrating our most successful homesteading year yet! While our accomplishments and winter stock are small compared to more advanced homesteaders, I’m so proud of what we have accomplished this year. Especially as a working mom!

This is the first year we’ve really had a productive garden. The last two years, we’ve literally gotten only one zucchini and not until fall when it started to rain… Thanks to our new hugelkultur garden beds, a lot of determination, and a little help from the weather (our area has finally been raised from drought to just abnormally dry, yay!), we’ve not only been able to eat fresh from our garden all summer, but also preserve food for the winter! Here is what we’ve got stocked up and I’m sure I’m forgetting something I have tucked away somewhere! Not to mention we’ve already started eating into our stock because it’s just so good and I think we’ve reached our limit on eating fresh tomatoes and zucchini in every meal.

Lot of canned tomatoes! Different kinds of sauces and crushed. Not picture are also the roasted tomatoes in the freezer and dehydrated tomatoes. I’m still brining tomatoes in for canning in mid-October!
My helper cutting tomatoes for roasting. Don’t worry, that’s a spreader he’s using, not a sharp knife.
Garlic! Some of this will be used for planting next years crop – more on growing garlic coming soon!
Some of our potatoes. I’m terrible at remembering to weigh my harvests, but I think we got about 50 pounds from two pounds of seed planted.
Winter squash. This doesn’t include the 15 pumpkins on my porch right now…
5 or 6 quarts of pesto frozen into cubes.
Frozen berries, mostly wild blackberries Anthony picks on our property.
Our freezer door is full of frozen broccoli, snap peas, green beans and summer squash. I do wash and re-use these bags, but need to come up with a better storage solution for next year…
Experimenting with dried Thai basil. Love cooking with it in summer, so trying to make it last!

We don’t have a root cellar, basement or a rodent proof garage so boxes of food end up in every corner of the house at the end of harvest season!

Left is boxes of potatoes and garlic. Squash and tomatoes invading my “office” below.

Some of my frozen chicken stock – hoping to get a pressure canner next year.

We also raised our first meat chickens and while there were some failures and lessons learned, we were able to process 8 of the tastiest chickens we’ve ever had.

Some of our home grown, home processed chicken. Most whole and a couple parted out.

I also more than doubled our egg chickens this year. The most recent batch of chickens just started laying, bringing our egg production to about 5 dozen a week right now! I might start selling some next spring, but since I know the egg laying will slow down or stop completely soon with the short days, I’m experimenting with freezing eggs to get us through the winter lull.

Single eggs frozen to pull out for baking or scrambles.

What kind of successes have you had on your homestead or in your garden this year? I’ve love to hear what others are proud of, too!

Hello! I'm Jess Ahola. I live on 5 acres in Rainier, Oregon with my husband Anthony and our young son Eivin. As an aspiring homesteader I knew there would be challenges in many areas, but learning how to homestead on a property with no fresh water was a big challenge we were not expecting! While we continue to figure out water, homesteading and life in general, I'm enjoying the progress we make and excited to share how our situation evolves and what we learn in the process.

2 Comments

  • Janice Evans

    October 19, 2020 at 6:37 pm

    Really enjoyed reading about your adventure. Having a garden and chickens and some livestock was our way of life when I was young. There were no supermarkets, just small family stores where you bought flour, sugar, etc. Everything else was canned, pickled, kept in a root cellar with a dirt floor. We ate very well, and so will you. Your canned goods and other produce is beautiful. I
    look forward to reading the next episode.

    • Jessica Ahola

      October 24, 2020 at 11:40 pm

      Thank you for sharing! We are very fortunate to be able to pursue this life style without having to rely on it completely. Crazy how just in your lifetime this went from being normal life to a whole new set of skills a lot of us are just learning.