Gardening is rewarding but it's often the case that our plants provide far more produce throughout the growing season than what our family & friends are able to eat. The next step to food independence is learning how to best manage & prepare fruit, vegetables, herbs and other tasty edibles so they last throughout the long months of off-season.

Canning, drying/dehydrating, salting, freezing, pickling/fermenting...we're living at a time with ready supplies, affordable equipment & technologies. Add to all that the wide variety of easy-to-access information & voila! we have plentiful options for stretching our goodies. Whether growing your own produce or not, it's still worthwhile learning a few methods of food preservation...taking advantage of bulk sales at grocery stores, farmer's markets and even generous neighbors who share their bounty with us.

In this section I've assembled a few notes and resources to help guide pantry stocking efforts. I'm confident there's a useful tidbit or two for your good-to-know files!