Increase Your Food Security
Growing a garden, hunting wild game, foraging for wild edibles, raising your own chickens, and preserving the harvest are great ways to increase your food security and gain independence from the grocery store. I grew up in a family that preserved much of our own food for the winter, so it’s a way of life for me. My family feels more secure knowing that we have food on hand and ready to eat if the power fails, the grocery stores are cleaned out, or prices skyrocket out of our budget. We have at least a couple hundred jars of vegetables, stew, meat, pickles, and jam put up by the end of the season. It takes a lot of work, but it’s worth the effort.
Canning Food After the Collapse
But what if the world as we know it ends and there’s no power grid? How do you can food if the natural gas supply and electric service shuts down? Canning requires a clean environment and a steady supply of heat to boil water. Let’s face the facts here folks, you aren’t going to can food over an open fire in the woods. You also need to consider the weight of canning jars filled with food. They’re not light and easy to pack like foil pouches of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), so you’re not toting many of them into the wilderness in a back pack. Canning your food is definitely a project for bugging in or bugging out to a secure location with all the supplies you need already stockpiled. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to handle the hardships of food preservation if I’m in an off grid survival situation, so let me share my thoughts and plans with you.
Easiest Foods to Can
High acid foods like fruits and pickles are easier to can then low acid foods like veggies and meat. They can be processed in a hot water bath canner and require less time and diligence compared to a pressure canner. Low acid foods must be canned in a pressure canner to prevent botulism poisoning. You’ll need to have a source of food large enough to fill your needs during the growing season, with extra left over to preserve. Of course it could be tough to secure that much food if you don’t start working on your food growing capabilities now. Here’s a list of some easy to can foods to cut your teeth on…
- Sweet or dill pickles
- Jams and jellies
- Apples
- Pears
- Peaches and nectarines
- Plums
- Pineapple
- Citrus fruit
- Tomatoes
- Berries
Find out what you need & read more at The Prepper Project
