In this second part, I'm using the term "food preservation" rather loosely. These are the foods you don't have to do any work to preserve, but that form an important part of the winter and spring pantry. While your canned foods tend to be heavy in condiments and sauces (important to sustain your spirit), these are the calorie crops that will really sustain your body.
First, the root vegetables. Potatoes are critical, and we're planting more this year, but still not as many as we should. That's because we had a total crop failure of potatoes last year, and we're being cautious about how much space we give them, until we find a reliable system of growing them. Potatoes are supposed to be one of the easiest things you can grow, so getting a negative harvest (fewer than what you planted) is very frustrating. Sweet potatoes also did very poorly for us last year, and we are trying them again this year, but I ordered some heirloom varieties, including one from right here in Virginia that is supposed to do well in clay soil (ordered from Sand Hill Preservation Center). Sweet potatoes store really well at room temperature in my pantry (we keep our house around 62 degrees in winter). In fact, I don't think I've ever had one go bad, though they will start sprouting in April. I've got a box of them I need to finish off now, in fact.
In the fall garden, turnips and winter radishes grow quite well for us, and, at least in winters like this one, keep right in the garden until spring. I will be planting a lot more turnips and winter radishes this year, because we ran out of the latter and could have eaten more of the former. These crops take so little work to grow, and whatever we don't eat can just be tilled in to add organic matter to the soil, so there is no reason not to grow plenty. I cut up the turnips, radishes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and whatever else I've got and toss them with oil and/or butter and salt, and roast, for our basic winter side dish.
Collards are reliable and also overwintered well this year. I will add kale, cress, and spinach next year to have more variety of greens. Now, if I could just get someone in the house besides me to eat them....
I am growing some keeping tomatoes this year. Keeping tomatoes are a type of tough-skinned tomato that keeps well in storage. It's not a popular thing these days, because greenhouse tomatoes have replaced them. But, I think it's important to preserve these varieties for our descendants, who won't have plastic greenhouses.
Winter squashes and pie pumpkins are an important part of most local diets in winter. I always end up buying some kind of winter squash seeds, because the descriptions are so wonderfully romantic. The incredible variety of squashes, their beauty, their size, and their keeping qualities make them very appealing. If I have a few big pumpkins in my pantry, I feel secure. The problem is, I don't like eating them. Other than in pie, I much prefer sweet potatoes to winter squashes. And, I always end up with some winter squashes that I either can't resist buying at the market, or that someone gives me, so I have no need to grow them. So, I'll be growing seed pumpkins instead. Pumpkin seeds are the most expensive ingredient in a seeded granola recipe I like to make, and they are in ingredient in Mexican sauces. I don't know how to shell the seeds from ordinary pumpkins, so I'm growing a naked-seed type called Lady Godiva. This marvel is quite hard to find - of all my seed catalogs, only Sand Hill offered it this year. The flesh of these pumpkins is good food for livestock, like goats.
Oilseed crops are an important part of our diets, which most of us don't grow. In addition to the seed pumpkins, I'll be planting peanuts, sesame, sunflower seeds, and rapeseed this year, all of which, besides sunflowers, are new crops for us. I want to buy a hand-cranked oil extractor and start making fresh vegetable oil. Fats for cooking are something I wouldn't want to be without, and I don't have a way to produce significant amounts of animal fats on my homestead.
Grains are also important. We will be growing field corn, more seriously this year than we have in the past. Corn is not only the easiest grain to process at home, but is central to my husband's food culture and therefore to his happiness. This is the crop I have the hardest time narrowing down to only two varieties, and this year I've chosen a gourdseed corn, which I will plant early, and a flour corn, which I will plant late, both of which are supposed to be good for tortillas. I'm growing sorghum Sudan as a cover crop this year, but next year I want to start experimenting with grain sorghums, which can also be used to make tortillas, are excellent chicken feed, and require less fertility than corn. We will be experimenting with amaranth this year. We will grow millet for the chickens. I am planning to plant a little buckwheat as a cover crop, and since we don't like it, the chickens will probably get that too. Feeding chickens is something I'm taking very seriously this year, because I'm tired of buying GMO grains for them. The good thing about pressing oil at home is that the oilcake that is left over afterwards, which is high in protein, is a good ingredient for homemade chicken feed.
Dried beans are also an important staple for us. Growing dried beans is one of the least profitable uses of one's time and land that I can think of, considering what they cost, but it's something we want to know how to grow. My husband loves fresh blackeyed peas, so those can't be skipped. We're also going to experiment with planting the ubiquitous Central American bean, the red silk bean. No one grows it in the USA that I know of, and we don't know how it will do, but we're going to try it. There simply isn't any other dried bean we like as well for a simple bean soup and for refried beans. I don't often have good things to say about Central American cuisine, but they do have the best beans.
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