5 Reasons You Should Preserve Food

You've worked hard in cultivating your garden, you've now harvested your crops and find out you have more than you can eat! You have several options, you could try to eat it all, or you could share the surplus with your friends and family. Or, you could use food preservation methods, like canning or drying! Canning was very popular in the early 20th century, especially during times of war. It's ideal for high water content foods. If you have low water content foods you could try drying. Drying is one of the oldest methods of food preservation, you can still air dry, but we prefer to use a dehydrator. I listed out the specific steps for both methods in the blog feed, check it out!

Need some motivation to get started? Here are five great reasons on why you should start preserving your food:

It's SUSTAINABLE.

When you preserve your food and use it at a later date, you avoid shopping for those products at the grocery store. The canned items at the grocery store may be convenient, but the enormous production process by each company has a huge carbon footprint. You can help reduce the carbon footprint by preserving your own food.

It's HEALTHY.

You're in control! The goal is to eliminate the micro-organisms that cause spoilage, but you can decide how much salt and fat content goes in your product, unlike store bought canned products.

It's COST EFFICIENT:

Once you get past the initial start up costs of setting up your home garden and purchase a dehydrator or canning materials, you've got a system that will save you tons of money! No more trips to the store for products you already have, the money that you would have spent on those products stays in your wallet.

It provides SECURITY.

Remember how the grocery store got last time a natural disaster struck? Aside from the chaos, there's a real threat that there won't be enough food for all if everyone decides to buy excessive quantities. Sure, you could try the next store, but why not just go to your pantry and use your preserved foods? Food preservation means food security, it's one of the primary reasons it was so popular during the Assyrian times (BC) and during times of war (WWI & WWII).

It's REWARDING.

Food preservation is a fun process, you can do it alone or you can gather your friends and preserve food together. It's making memories and using something from the present in the future. Imagine opening a can of peaches that you and your friends canned a year ago, it's almost like memories in a jar, or container!

So what are you waiting for? Let's get started.