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How often do you go food shopping for your family? Once a week? Do you stop by the store a few times a week? Here’s how we get our groceries for the week (or two or three) here in our Valley.
Come on along with me and see how I shop for groceries without going to town! And I do it all by canning and preserving our own food.
How to Shop for Groceries without Leaving Home
I have to remember to grab the green reusable bags. They are really strong and can hold a lot of weight.
And I can’t forget to bring back the recyclable glass containers from the kitchen pantry. I like to do this on a weekly basis. I’ll just exchange the jars.
Instead of taking the car and driving to the grocery store, I’ll go down the stairs to the cold room. We’ve got all we need down here.
OK, we’ll definitely need some veggies so let’s get some beans for starters. And some carrots, we love carrots!
We keep them in a pail of dirt and we trim the greens off low. Every now and then, we mist the dirt to keep it a bit moist.
We could also use sand instead of dirt to store the carrots.
Look how nice they still look. They are firm and they taste fresh and very sweet.
We have even left some in the garden, dug them up in April and ate them – they were delicious. Super sweet after all that winter cold.
We definitely need a bucket of potatoes and also a bunch of onions. When I pulled the potatoes out of the garden, I sorted them right there in the field.
All our potatoes to be used as seed next year are sitting in separate bags on shelves in the cold room.
Keep your onions in a different room – they don’t get along too well with some other veggies in storage. Onions like it a little warmer than cold room temperatures.
Now that my bags are full, it’s time to head back upstairs and put the groceries away.
A Week’s Worth of Groceries:
Check out what I’ve gathered. See the nice large chicken on the left? I pulled him out of the freezer.
We raise chickens in the summer – by raising meat birds bred for fast growing. It’s an 8 week time commitment for us and we get a lot of chicken in the freezer.
We’ve got some vegetables:
4 pints green beans
1 pint canned carrots to use in stew or soup
2 pints canned beets
about 5 lbs potatoes
We’ve got some fruit:
2 quarts applesauce
2 pints Saskatoon berries
1 small jar Zuccini Butter (for on toast)
To have some goodies when company comes over for beers or a glass of wine:
2 jars red salsa and 1 jar green salsa
1 jar pickled garlic scapes and 1 pint pickled beets
More food for meals for us:
2 pints tomato sauce
1 pint pizza sauce
1 jar smoked trout
1 jar salmon
1 dozen eggs
1 quart pea soup
1 more dozen eggs
a good whack of garlic
a bunch of onions
Add the fresh goat milk that we get from one of our Valley friends and that should do us for at least a week. There is no need to go to town.
And if I need to get more groceries, I’ll just go back downstairs to our cold room. This is the BEST way to shop for groceries!
The bonus for us is that, by Growing what we Eat, we Know what we Eat! Healthy, Nutritious, Organic and very inexpensive!
(By the way, I took these pictures the last week in December.)
Building Your Food Storage
Want to learn about canning, freezing and pickling food for your family?
Here is Preserving Food – all about food storage along with links to every food storage article here on the website.
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katlupe says
I love the way you presented this! Very good meals too!
Chelsea says
We live in 150 Mile and are working to become self sufficient, but it’s a challenge with 6 children:) I would love to come out and visit your farm some day and learn from you. I have goats, chickens and a garden, but I’m still learning and love to meet other people who are on the same page. If you enjoy your solitude, I understand and will read through these pages to glean all I can! Thanks:)
Annie says
Hi Chelsea, You’re more than Welcome to come out to our place. Come out next Spring when we’ve got more to show you…just send me off an email.
Rebekah says
Hey Chelsea, I can’t help replying because I live half an hour from you in Big Lake and, while we aren’t as self sufficient now as we would like to be in the future, we are doing the best we can on our little rented farm. We just moved here in September so nothing is set up yet, but we have a milk cow and a horse and a handful of chickens. We’ve usually had gardens in the past, grown meat chickens and turkeys, raised ducks, and preserved anything we could get our hands on. I have 3 kids under 5 and it’s tough to get things done that I want to do. Awesome that you have 6! Do you homeschool? I also love photography, riding, designing and decorating houses and reading about farming. Contact me if you’d like to chat. There aren’t too many people who like this lifestyle. 🙂
Linda says
I loved that as well… great post!
Annie says
Thanks, it is a repost but I try to put it up again every year in January, so that new readers know what we really eat all Winter 🙂 Gotta love a full Cold Room
Johnnal Salyer says
I’m so jealous on so many levels! I will be starting my first Garden in a couple of weeks! Fingers crossed for good results, I have a blak thumb! Gardening in central Florida is a crazy, sandy business, althought the growing season is super long. I have been canning for a while, and my goal is to be able to store up enough so I can shop just like you did. I’m also SUPER jealous of those Saskatoon berries! I spent a summer with friends outside Winnipeg, Manitoba and hunting those berries, canning and eating the resulting pies was the best! No matter what my Canadian friends say blueberries are not even close to the same! I love your blog and I’m learning a ton!
Annie says
Hi Johnnal, I will be interested to hear how your garden does this year. I’m glad you’re getting something out of our website 🙂
Those Saskatoon berries are really good. Even in Canada they don’t grow everywhere, we never could grow them when we lived on the West Coast. I think maybe they need the really cold winters, although I am not sure.
Beverly says
I love saskatoons! Here in southern Manitoba saskatoons often grow wild in the bush. We have a good patch of them in one of our shelter belts. I’ve transplanted some into the orchard but the wild ones tend to do better
Annie says
Saskatoons are wonderful, we also have them growing wild on our property. I have just ordered a few Haksap berry bushes to plant in the Spring. They are also wonderful in pies! And you are right, the wild Saskatoons do much better. I transplanted one into a flower bed and it has kind of struggled.. Maybe their roots don’t like being disturbed?
Rebekah says
I love your store! That’s my goal, for a few years from now when my littles are bigger and better at helping. I’m in the cariboo too! This will be my first year trying to grow things in this area. I lived in the coldest parts of the okanagan before this. I really enjoy your blog!
Annie says
Thanks for your comments Rebekah, always love hearing from people who enjoy our site. Hopefully you are staying warm this winter; enjoy every wonderful thing the Cariboo has to offer!
Abbi says
We have been filling up our root cellar, freezers and pantry too and this is how I shop all winter as well. I love it! Tonight we put around 800 lbs of potatoes in storage. Yesterday I went and bought our wheat, oatmeal, rice and rye for the year. We buy it in bulk and get really good deals and only have to truly shop for it once a year. We also picked up our 1/2 beef yesterday. Earlier we butchered our chickens and extracted the honey from our bee hives. This fall season is very busy but it is worth it in my opinion.
Annie says
You have sure been busy! Good for you, think of all that money you’ll save at the grocery store.
Kathy Hanson says
In February we will be at our farm for a year. So far we’ve aquired 1 horse, 3 dogs, 2 rabbits, 6 goats, 3 calves, 12 chickens, and a family of 7 with 3 generations. This year I want to start a big garden with lots of veggies to can (hopefully) lol. I don’t have a green thumb so will be reading up your newsletter! Thanks for your help!
Annie says
Sounds like you have gone “all in”! You are going to have a very busy year, remember to have fun!
Monica Mansfield says
You are living my pantry goals! I canned for the first time this year, and am still eating onions from the garden, but I can’t wait until I can avoid going to town and shop in my pantry instead! Love it!
Annie says
Hopefully you will be able to do even more canning this summer for next winter! If we had a cow, I’d never have to go to town. But then, I’d never get a lunch out and I need those every once in a while. But it’s so nice to know we can just stay at home for weeks if we want to.
Debbie Heath says
What can you do if your house sits on a slab? I live in the North Carolina and have no basement or cold room. I can buy food to can but have a very small yard that’s shady most of the time which makes it difficult to grow veggies. I get more sun in the winter and could grow lettuces and cool weather type produce in a cold frame. Any suggestions?
Debbie in NC
Annie says
hi Debbie,
It might be possible to have a corner of your garage turned into a small cold room storage. Canned vegetables can stay in the house, even tucked under beds, and the potatoes and other root crops be stored in a cool spot
Jeanie says
Can you dig yourself a root cellar like they did in the old days? Once when we were going on a drive and checking out falling down abandoned properties, we happened on an ancient cellar, I peeked down to see a very old and kinda scary looking set of steps. Saw dusty dirty jars of canned food. The jars looked disgusting but the food still looked fine. That’s always stuck in my mind.
Annie says
Yes you sure could make a root cellar, some people here have them. They are great if you need food storage, but don’t have room in the house. And canned food lasts for years, we recently had a jar of Salsa from 2009 🙂