It’s a sad, sad day on the wee homestead. As we speak, the last of the fresh, local veggies are cooking on the stovetop. (How do I love thee, Alice Waters? Let me count the ways….)
At the beginning of November, we stocked our two fridge bins with things like sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, and carrots from our CSA. Two months of food isn’t exactly the pinnacle of self-sufficiency, but considering we don’t yet have anywhere to cure and store roots, I’m grateful to have enjoyed fresh goodies this long.
Thankfully we’ve still got lots of canned and frozen food to keep us scurvy-free until spring. This was the first year we put away mass quantities in hopes of making it through the winter, and I didn’t even know where to begin. Was I ridiculous to order 50 pounds of tomatoes for two people? Would we ever eat the 10-pound bag of green beans that came up to my waist?
I searched online for straightforward advice on quantity conversions and pantry planning but didn’t have much luck. Every site I read tended to speak in generalities. So in case you want to give it a go next summer, here are the numbers on our bigger batches to give you a sense of scale:
