Our Summer Manifesto: More Food Production & Preservation

We are set to have two 90 degree days in a row, which to me means summer. This summer is going to be a little different in that we are preparing for some big changes that will happen, Lord willing, in September.

The papa has decided to take some time off of work here and there to spend more time working on some important tasks at home. Likewise, I have stepped away from some writing opportunities in order to focus on preparing for and transitioning to this new adventure. It’s going to be a big summer.

This summer we will…

Grow more food. This has been the easiest year of gardening yet since we are not really turning over any new soil this year. This year we have planted lettuce, onions, herbs, peas, beets, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, hot peppers, cucumbers, green beans, and have a few volunteer potato plants.

If the Lord allows them to grow this is enough food to at least feed ourselves through the summer with the addition of animal products.

Preserve more food. When we first move to our off-grid homestead we will be starting with nothing. Soil will have to be broken, gardens will have to be planted, fences will have to be put up, and chickens will have to be started. If the Lord wills I would like to use this summer to dehydrate a ton of food.

When we move we will be bringing our large collection of canning jars – both half-gallon and quarts. It is my intention to fill these jars with dehydrated berries, onions, peas, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, and green beans. A fair amount of vegetable ferments would be nice as well.

Pick more food. To provide enough for some serious food preservation we will need to take advantage of the many local u-pick farms. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, peas, and green beans are all close by and will constitute a "morning off for papa" day.

I have this little dream in my head in which we take a summer tour of the u-pick farms within 2-3 hours. In this dream, every few weeks, as the seasons dictate, we would leave on a Friday night with a tent and a cooler and head to our weekend picking location. We would camp Friday and Saturday night and go picking on Sunday mornings.

 This is the fun part of our summer manifesto, at least for me. The second part of the summer manifesto will involve a bit more hard work and sacrifice.

What would your summer manifesto look like?

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8 Comments

  1. Very inspiring! Just curious how you store dehydrated berries in canning jars? Do you actually seal them with boiling water, or is just dehydrating them enough to preserve them? Thank you for all your inspirations!!!

  2. What a wonderful plan, Shannon! Our prayers will be with you as this new phase of life begins to take shape. 🙂

  3. Wow that is awesome! Those are some big summer plans. I can a lot, but I haven’t done much dehydrating, I have been thinking about doing more of that this summer. And moving off the grid, that is my dream. Good for you!

  4. How exciting – I love summer & the gardening it offers (even though over here we do garden all year around, winter gardening is so boring compared to summer 🙂 ). Thanks for sharing & I pray all goes well with you & your upcoming adventure – are you planning on continuing to blog when off-grid?

    Have a wonderful day
    Blessings
    Renata:)

  5. so exciting and very inspiring! i wish i could use your manifesto but we won’t be doing quite so much on the growing side of things this year… but i do plan on preserving a lot and have some ways to get a bunch of food to preserve. not quite the experience of camping and u-pick it spots (that sounds so fun!), but i’ll get a good education in preservation anyway… i love how this past winter you lived off what you preserved last summer. i’d love to do that in the coming years too!

  6. We’ve always had a big garden & do lots of canning, but my one issue has always been pickles, they are never crispy! I think it might be our well water. Anyhow, last year I was introduced to Bubbies & we fell in love – but they are expensive! So, my main excitement this year is to do LOTS of fermented pickles!

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