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My grandpa would tell about the time grandma had him clean out the cellar. He brought over the neighbor to “help” emptying the fruit juice when he found it had fermented.

:-)

We recently bought a book about building a root cellar, because that's on our 'wish list' for the tiny homestead we imagine for the future.

We're especially interested in preserving things like cabbages over-winter, so that we can make kimchi and sauerkraut, because they are so healthy and immunity-supportive.

My husband's family has, for generations, canned about 500 quarts of tomato sauce every year, from tomatoes grown on their land. From what I understand from this thread, they use the 'cold pack' method - boiled like crazy over propane, poured into sterilized ball jars; tipped over once to scald the lid, and left to sit until 'popping' (sealing). We've had jars of this that we didn't use until 2 or 3 years later, and it was fine. But, tomato sauce is very acidic. Doing things like string beans and corn worries me.....

Thanks to everyone; gotta do Santa Claus stuff now; but I'll continue watching the thread.

Merry Christmas!

-JT

Green beans are easy. I’ve never been able to grow corn so can’t comment on that.

There’s a great recipe for “filled cookies” in the old Betty Crocker cookbook. It’s basically a not so sweet sugar cookie that is filled with jelly. Only use preserves instead of jelly because jelly will ooze out whereas preserves usually won’t. Similar to pop tarts but waaaaaaay better. I’ve made them since I was little to use up old preserves. You know when you open an old jar of preserves that has darkened and you don’t want to eat it? Well, make these cookies, yuuuuum!

Check out youtube for Imstillworkin’. She has tons of very informative food preservation videos and explains the how and why. In one video, she tried a method of preserving cabbage from her garden by burying it in the ground with straw. It didn’t work but the concept is interesting. Seriously, take a weekend or so and go through all her videos. She’s a great teacher.