Path to Food Preservation: Householding
“Householding seeks to restore the pride and practice of home economics with an emphasis on sustainability, equity, and health.” -Harriet Fasenfest, author of The Householder’s Guide to the Universe.
In this video, Fasenfest shares practical tips for how to put up food for use throughout the year. If you are thinking about growing and preserving your own food, Fasenfest outlines an approach to bring you greater satisfaction meeting your own food production and food preservation needs while developing a closer connection with nature.
Home Economics: Living Off the Farm
When Virginia Yoder and her husband Emerson began to farm on their 50 acre property, near Molalla, Oregon, in the mid to late 1940’s, America’s food supply was still bound tightly to the seasons. Canning and preserving food was a common practice to insure not only an adequate annual supply of food for farm families, but also a way to eat fruits, vegetables, and certain meats that otherwise would be more limited in their availability.
Farm wives played an important role on the farm by cooking the meals, and attending to a wealth of other household responsibilities. In addition to rearing children, the farmer’s wife would typically tend the food gardens, and put up food for longterm storage.
In this video, Virginia Yoder provides a fascinating glimpse into a way of life that has largely vanished from the American landscape. And, at age 84, she continues growing and preserving food to help meet her long-term food needs.
Householding: A Way of Life, and Thinking
Harriet talks about how ‘householding’ is more than just canning — it’s a way of life that supports the spirit, the environment, and social justice.
Next Week: Pickles
- Tuesday
Pickles Pickling cucumbers is a gateway food into the wonderful craft of homemade canning. Kathryn Yeomans of The Farmer’s Feast shows us how to make one of her favorites: bread and butter pickles. - Wednesday
Certified Organic Glassery
Tucked away in the coastal hills of Oregon lies a small certified organic cannery – actually, it’s a glassery. “We don’t do cans,” says Sweet Creek Foods owner Paul Fuller. Seeing a need for a local food processing center that not only buys fresh, organic products directly from area farmers, and processes them into a variety of canned products for direct sale, their products are also sold through regional grocery outlets. - Thursday
Food Wisdoms
Paul Fuller provides a unique added value service for farmers. He helps them transform cosmetically inferior products from their harvest into high-value processed products that customers will buy. Find out more about this customized service that benefits farmers and eaters alike.
The Weekly Roundup
- Early morning lemon harvest (Dorothee Royal-Hedinger)
A visit with a farmer in California whose orchard has grown from one single tree (passed down by her mother) to 123. The farm used to certified organic, but that process has become too expensive. - Today I went to a factory farm (FoodStoned)
Blogger is contacted by Minnesota pork agency to see if he wants to visit a CAFO. - Apple Gouda Cookies (The Kitchn)
A savory fall treat. - In drought, some farmers try hydroponics (Harvest Public Media)
And it works, and it saves a ton of water, but it costs a lot more than farming in an open field. - Is raw milk really good for you? (Mother Jones)
“It might taste good, but pasteurization was invented for a reason.” - A Thousand Suns (Global Oneness Project)
The story of the people of the Gamo Highlands of the African Rift Valley, who have been farming sustainably for 10,000 years. - Popup greenhouses could bring food to food deserts (FastCo Design)
- Crispin Odey’s chickens come home to a luxury roost (Telegraph)
Rich British politician/hedge fund manager builds a $200,000 chicken coop. Story includes architectural plans. - Harvesting and storing squash (Organic Gardening)
- New breed of hunter eats, shoots and tells (NY Times)
Four new books about what it means to kill your own food. - Labeling foods is a win for farmers and customers (Food Republic)
FixFood.org released a new video which highlights what American farmers think of issues like GMO labeling and California’s Prop 37. - A word on efficiency (and productivity and sustainability) (Homegrown)
Well-written, self-described rant about why it’s important to support sustainable farmers and stop eating sugar/fat/carbs produced by the industrial ingredient machine. - Farm Bill expiration FAQ (National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition)
- A sustainable farmer talks corn (Cooking Up a Story on YouTube)
Anthony Boutard shares the history behind the different varieties of corn that he grows, and describes their more notable uses.
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