Check out this quick video on eating from the winter pantry & get inspired to grow more food this year in your own garden!

If your goal is to grow a large percentage of your own food, putting up food for the winter is essential to continue feeding your family homegrown produce throughout the leaner months, when not much may be growing in the outdoor garden. There are plenty of ways you can continue to harvest fresh produce year-round, whether you’re growing sprouts or an indoor salad garden, or growing cold-hardy crops outdoors under cover.

Nonetheless, in most areas of the Northern hemisphere, you may not be able to harvest enough food year-round to supply your family’s needs, so growing extra during the main growing season and preserving some of the bounty for later use will be very helpful. There are many ways to do this – from storing root crops and other long-keeping veggies on the shelf or in cold storage, to canning, freezing, dehydrating, and other methods of preserving your fresh produce.

In this short video, one of my favorite homesteaders shows off her preserved garden produce in the winter pantry, as well as some tips for varieties of veggies that store well for winter and spring eating, how to use some of these preserved foods, and what the pantry looks like during the leaner garden months. Hopefully, this will inspire you to grow some extra for your own pantry in the growing season ahead! (Maybe next year I’ll do a video for you on our own garden preservation efforts! I just didn’t have time to get that recorded in time for this post…)