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Preserving The Harvest
One of the best ways to enjoy your harvest all year is to preserve your food through fermentation, pickling, canning, dehydrating and freeze drying. Here at our farm, we love the health benefits of preserved foods.
Fermenting foods is a way to indefinitely keep food in the fridge without it "going bad" and preserving or even enhancing its natural nutrients. Foods that are fermented can aid in digestion and adding natural probiotics to the body.
Pickling foods can preserve the foods you've grown in your garden as well as enhancing their flavor by combining them with spices and herbs. Not all pickled foods are shelf stable and most require refrigeration after opening.
Canning food makes it shelf stable so that the item you've preserved can sit on a shelf at room temperature and being eaten directly out of the can or heated up to your preference.
Not All Preservation Methods Are The Same
Natural Fermentation
To naturally ferment we combine cleaned organic produce with salt, water and time. Once we want the fermentation to stop, we refrigerate the item.
Pickling
We combine washed organic produce with a brine made of vinegar, water, salt and sometimes sugar. We combine this brine with spices and herbs. This preserves the food.
Canning
All canning, when done properly sterilizes and preserves food. The negative part of canning is due to the heat, you lose some nutrients from the food you are trying to preserve.