Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Growing and storing potatoes in the Northwest through the winter months always brought unsatisfactory long-term storage results. It didn’t matter how I stored the potatoes after digging, whether in dry sawdust, under a layer of newspaper, on a dark cool dry shelf, all had similar results of shriveling and sprouting potatoes before the stored crop was used up. An Experiment For Stored, “Fresh” Potatoes I tried an experiment with the 2016 potato crop. Once I dug the Kennebec potatoes in April of 2017, the results of wonderful plump potatoes spurred me to store the 2017 potatoes crop the same way. …

Our family did an experiment to see how we could grow wheat and oats in a garden setting. In part 1 of this article series, we shared that we used two different garden plots, one that was well fertilized and one that had never been fertilized or used for a garden. Additionally, I told about our seeds and how we protected our growing areas from animals. We began describing the tools that we tested to harvest wheat and how we found, for us, that the sickle worked best. Also, because the naked oats we grew dropped seed more readily, we …

This is an account of our family’s experience and learning while experimenting with growing oats and wheat in a garden setting. Storing food and preps are important; but, for us, the primary role of food storage is for the immediate emergency or to get us through the first year of a serious crisis. What then? No one can store sufficient food for a serious, long-term disaster. The Key Is Growing and Gathering Your Own The key is growing and gathering your own, and our favorite staples to grow are potatoes and corn. Living on the “wet” side of Oregon we …