CONFESSIONS OF A HOARDER - REMEMBERED

 

2020's Pantry Hoard

As inflation kicks in, and fears of global pandemics fade, it seems my hoarding practices still make cents, so here are some thoughts from 2020 that apply to today. 

Hoard: a hidden supply or fund stored up.

As the people of the world are shaken by the power of exponential growth in the form of a virus, I find myself pondering my role as a hoarder.  My goal for the previous spring, summer and fall was to try and grow or obtain as much food as I could and attempt to preserve it in order to minimize the amount of food I would have to purchase from the market during the winter and spring months.  My chosen preservation method was hot water and pressure canning along with some fermentation experiments, so in order to perform those tried and true preservation methods, I purchased many canning jars and lids – probably several hundred.   And although I never did a formal inventory of my total quantity of fruits and vegetables I was able to can, I did a quick and dirty estimate one day last fall of my canning progress and figured I must have had at least a couple dozen-dozen quart jars of can goods in my pantry – the place I keep my hoard of food. 

These jars contained beets, kale, mustard greens, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, wild ramps, wine cap mushrooms, squash, peaches, blueberries, apples, chicken, and beef.  Some were preserved as individual fruits or vegetables, like the pickled cucumbers or beets, or apple sauce, or blueberries and peaches canned in a light syrup of honey or maple syrup.  Others were combined to make salsas or soups – with the soups undergoing the more intense preservation method of the pressure canner.  And although I did grow many of the vegetables contained in the cans, I had to supplement what I grew with other fruits and vegetables and meat I tried to obtain from local growers and suppliers.  So I picked up onions at the farmers market, blue berries and apples from the local orchards, peaches from a stand I found while visiting my wife in Colorado, beef and chicken from the butcher shop a few blocks from my house, and to thicken up some of the salsa commercially canned tomato paste and vinegar for pickling from the grocery store in town and dried beans from the food coop in the next town over.  Of course, I also purchased much of the seasons used to spice up my canned goods, but did grow some of my own basil. 

My incentive for this experiment in food hoarding was not because I was blessed with the amazing powers of foreseeing the future impact of a multitude of tiny creatures invading humanity and causing a disruption in the food production and distribution system that most of us have come to depend on, but rather the more selfish goal of avoiding to have to get a job to earn more money so I could buy all my food from the grocery store.   Some of my previous years of working had (at least up until that point in time) rewarded me a pension that I could receive on a monthly basis. 

And because of other privileged benefits of my previous life that included the good fortune of having married a woman who worked at times two jobs and believed in the benefits of being debt free allowed us to pay off our mortgage for the home we had been living in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis and St. Paul early.  So when she decided to pull up stakes and move west to pursue a new career, I decided to take advantage of my pending pension and quit my job that always left me feeling like I was wasting my life and find a smaller place to live with a yard where I could see how much food I could grow.  It seemed like something more meaningful than working for the government anyway. 

So my experiments in hoarding began.  (And continue!)