 and welcome to esoteric moment. Today I wanted to talk about preserving our harvest which is something that we do a lot of because of the work we do in community gardens. So when I'm talking about preserving harvest I mean literally how we put away our vegetables and fruits for the rest of the year so that we can make homemade meals as often as possible and I just wanted to share some of the basic techniques that I use and hopefully it will inspire you to put away a little bit of food yourself whether you grow that food yourself or if you're purchasing it at a farmers market. To begin with I do a lot of canning. This is a Weck canning jar which has a rubber and glass top seal and I have a video where I did a review way back when on Weck jars. I really love these they're more expensive than the ball or curr mason jars so I'm just kind of slowly adding them to my collection but this is a liter of tomato sauce. I also do salsa this is a corn salsa that we mix with black beans. I do tons of pickles mostly dill pickles but also some bread and butter and then like a small batch of pickle relish that lasts a couple years. I do a small batch of pickled beets which sounds terrible but it's actually really incredible in January and February on fresh spinach and pecans and feta cheese and occasionally some like apple juice or maybe some jellies or something. So canning is great because it takes a lot of time at the beginning to prepare your food to make it hot enough turn it into tomato sauce whatever preserving method you might be using but then once you can it and use a water bath to do that it can sit on your shelf for months upon months usually and it's much easier to store it looks beautiful and when you need to use it it's basically pre-measured for a lot of recipes canning does take a little bit of investment and tools I don't do any pressure canning because it's like a whole another set of tools but I have a water bath canner a tool that kind of is like a tong that you can use to pick up hot hot jars. I also have a really nice you know mini pan that I can do vegetables in and a big big saucepan. It also helps when you have someone to work with there are some processes that you know depending on the size of your kitchen can be tricky but it can be very helpful to have family members participate in the process too. I'm doing canning I do a lot of drying I have a simple presto dehydrator comes with little trays that you stack on top of each other and you plug it in and you dry things for you know hours I use this mostly for herbs that's kind of the big use and things that I might use in teas so like metal rose petals that sort of thing like lavender is really great once I've dried them I put them in little jars that are easy to make airtight but get into lots of sage that sort of thing basil oregano time those are pretty common ones that I do every year the nice thing about drying herbs is that then you have the seasoning and flavor that you want all year round and frankly I really believe strongly that using the right herbs can help your health and immune system especially if you're adding them to most of the meals that you're making I also do a little bit of fermentation so this is some kombucha tea that I'm making and I have a video that I did over on pagan perspective on how I make kombucha I also do some sourdough bread occasionally and these fermentation processes it's something that you have to keep going all the time but it is another way of preserving food you can do sauerkraut or kimchi other ways of putting vegetables away for the winter and kind of adding new elements and flavors to the food freezing is another favorite of mine this is a bag of apples already sliced for pie or tarts or anything like that some broccoli already sliced and usually it means cutting your vegetables down boiling it for a few minutes not so that they're cooked but just like starting the process and then freezing them in airtight bags right now I'm using Ziploc bags because they're cheap and easy to get I would ideally like to freeze all of my stuff in glass jars but because I do a lot of canning and I don't have as many cans as I really want to put food away yet I'm still kind of working on investing in that material so that I have enough to can everything and freeze in glass of course there's food that we can just put away like pumpkins squash potatoes onions garlic those things we can just keep in a pantry like area try and pay attention to the humidity and temperature vegetables like carrots or persnips also can kind of be dug up at the end of the fall and just stuck in a bag in the fridge in the last months and putting all of this food away is really important because we spend less on our food budget during the winter and it also means that we know where the food is coming from and we know the quality of the food so often in the winter you can go and get a bag of carrots but they're really not going to taste as good as those carrots that you dug in August from your garden so why not find ways to make sure that you have that flavor and that health and that bounty all year round for me I start preserving my food as soon as harvest start coming in so usually in the middle of the summer maybe some jellies at the beginning of the spring season but really after August 1st that's when all of my preserving and canning kind of goes full-forced and we spend many evenings and weekends putting food away which sounds like a huge investment in time and it kind of is but so worth it in my opinion I also think putting away your own food is a great way to connect with the natural world and actually feel the seasons plus all your food just tastes better if you're thinking about getting started and putting more of your food away you've been gardening maybe for a year or you go to the farmers market all the time and want that delicious produce all year round I would suggest starting with one method maybe freezing seems the most possible to you so get some ziploc bags and start researching how you blanch vegetables to freeze them so find a method that really works for the time that you can commit to and do that one method for one or two years see what you like see what you don't like and then maybe start adding in all these other methods really anyone can learn how to do these preservation techniques and there are so many resources out there just start with one and experiment from there I hope if you're putting away food this fall that all of your projects are pretty much done and you are feeling so wealthy and bountiful and all of your produce put away and if that's not something you've done I hope you take a chance to try something new this year maybe you get the last broccoli at the farmers market and freeze it or dry some herbs in the comments let me know whether you've preserved any food and what your favorite technique for putting things away for the winter hour thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove today I have another book review fitting for October I am reviewing the pagan book of living and dying by Starhawk this is a book that I think every pagan needs on their bookshelf this is a book that I would recommend to everyone pagan or not to read well before they are ever in the midst of confronting death