# Prepper gardener dilema.



## stanb999 (Nov 14, 2011)

Do you as I do try to harvest and preserve your harvest with the intent of food storage?
Then find you have jars and jars of produce left over from last year. Then you work at it to eat up what you put up so you can can some more. To repeat the process endlessly.
Then your eating last years canned while the garden has fresh.

Life sure is strange some times. This year I propose to start eating fresh, eat as often and as much as I wish. Then can the extra. This will be strange.

Are you a storage addict too?


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

This time of year, I go through last years leftover jars of food and dehydrate all the foods that lend themselves to drying. 

It frees up a lot of jars for the new years produce, the garden produce that doesn't get eaten fresh gets canned or dehydrated. Any of last years canned foods that dont get dried or eaten stays on the shelf for "Hard Times", if properly canned foods will last years.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

I eat as much fresh as possible and can the rest... Not enough jars? I buy more. Buying jars eats up a lot of my prepper dollars. Aiming at having at least three years of canned everything on the shelves. If I'm starting to get a little too much of something on the shelves I give it to my kids (they have to exchange jars, they don't bring them back if I'm not a bit of a bear about it) There are a few things (very few) that we prefer canned and use very little fresh, beets we like pickled for example. We also dehydrate quite a bit of the overflow too. If I'm short on jars we'll dehydrate fruit to eat as snacks instead of canning and save jars for vegies and meat. 
Something else I started doing this year is canning a lot of convenience meals as well with excess our vegies and meat. We work long hours at times and being able to open a can, heat and serve is so nice.


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

This will be my first year in a long time canning from the garden. I have been just eating as it produced. We'll see if I get addicted to it or not! 20 more cases of half pints to pick up at the store tonight, I will be ordering 20 more on Friday.

<chuckle> I am already addicted to seeing how much I can accumulate towards that goal though!


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## cnsper (Sep 20, 2012)

If you have more produce than you can preserve, there are a few things that you can do.

1. Go to a farmers market and sell it.
2. Donate it to a food share or homeless shelter and write it off.
3. Ask your pastor if he knows of anyone that can use it.
4. Collect seeds for next year.
5. Adjust your gardening to fit your needs. Be careful because you may have a low crop year or two.
6. Feed for livestock.
7. Worst choice is to let it rot.


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