Covenant Natural Health Care

3 Simple Ways to Preserve Your Summer Harvest

Summer is flying by way to quickly! It's hard to imagine that September is right around the corner. It's the time of year when most gardens are producing much more than you can eat. The last thing you want to do is for it all to spoil before you get a chance to enjoy it. Preserving your food is a great way to ensure that you can enjoy the fruits of your labor or the taste of summer (if you don't have your own garden) all year long.

1. Freeze: Freezing your fruits/veggies/herbs is one of the fastest and easiest ways to preserve. It requires minimal effort and time. Tomatoes, for example can be washed, dried and put into freezer-safe ziplock bags. They make great additions to soups or stews in the winter. Most vegetables and fruits will freeze nicely, but there are some, like cucumbers (and other vegetables with high water content), that just don't freeze well. Herbs also freeze well—they will lose there texture and become soggy, but they do not lose there flavor or nutrients. Check out this resource for foods that freeze well. The only downside to freezing is that if you would lose power you run the risk of losing all your produce and may have to throw it away.

2. Dehydrate: Purchasing a dehydrator is a good investment (they are not that expensive). It is wonderful for drying herbs, fruits, vegetables. This process takes a little longer to preserve food, but worth the wait. Herbs can then be stored in containers, vegetables put into soups, stocks, or other recipes, and fruits can be used for muffins, oatmeal, granola, etc. Dehydrated foods store nicely and last a good while when properly sealed. Click here for more information on dehydrating foods.

3. Canning: This process is a little more labor intensive but a great way to store things that you want to have a long shelf life. You can even can soups, jellies and salsas.This process requires purchasing a pressure canner, which can range from $60-$90 plus supplies like jars, lids, seals, and a few other little things. It is well worth the investment if you really plan on preserving your food via this method for years to come. The one resource for canning (and other preserving methods) that I always come back to is pickyourown.org.

For me, having a good combination of these three ways to preserve food is a way to not put all my eggs in one basket. If the power goes out, I won't lose everything, If my jars don't seal tightly while canning, I haven't lost everything, etc ... Ultimately, though, find what works best for you based on the time and resources you have.

Preserving food definitely takes time and patience, but it's worth the time and effort as you get to enjoy nutrient-rich, local and fresh foods all winter long until the next growing season comes around.

Health News Roundup

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• Worse than Cigarettes? The Silent Enemy Harming Your Health Today...
 

• Food freedom alert: Bureaucrats in Michigan threaten woman with jail time for planting vegetable garden in her own yard

• One of the Most Inexcusable Vaccine Revelations of All...: One element brought to light that has managed to stay well below the radar is the use of aborted embryonic cells in vaccine production.

• Are you eating pesticides? Canola oil, soybean oil used as key ingredients in pesticide products:
In a shocking new video, Mike Adams (the Health Ranger) reveals that common cooking oils such as canola oil and soybean oil are used as key active ingredients in pesticide products because they work so effectively to kill bugs. The video shows how one pesticide product that kills insects is made with 96% canola oil and is so dangerous that the label says, "Hazards to humans and domestic animals."

• The "Cancer-Causing Convenience" All Women Should Avoid: This is something that most people would rarely ever consider, but according to researchers, women who are on birth control pills may inadvertently be misled to select less compatible long-term partners than women who aren't on the Pill… Whether or not this is of any real concern to most is debatable, but contraceptive pills may also wreak havoc in your life in more direct ways, which I'll review in a moment.

• How to Save Gas This Summer: The price of gas is high, but there are ways to get better mileage. Yahoo Autos suggests a number of gas-saving driving tactics you might not have thought of.  Here are a few.

•  5 Ways to Age Gracefully and Healthfully: Everyone wants to age gracefully.  But whether or not you do is largely based on your own choices.

• This Simple Drink Improved Stomach Acid in Just One Minute...: A study shows that water may be more effective than acid-inhibiting drugs in its effect on gastric pH.

• 3 Ounces of This a Day May Be Harming Your Brain: Eating wheat may not be beneficial to your health. Among many other reasons, each grain contains about one microgram of Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA). Even in small quantities, WGA can have profoundly adverse effects. It may be pro-inflammatory, immunotoxic, cardiotoxic ... and neurotoxic.

Gardening to Cut Food Costs—1917 Poster

I came across this poster last week. It's from 1917, can you believe it? It begs the question, why don't we see more posters like this from the government today?

Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Anymore, though, it's not just about cutting food costs, it's about gardening for food safety and fresh foods. If you didn't start a backyard garden this year, Covenant Natural Health Care encourages you to buy as local as you can this year and plan for a garden next year.

 

Time to start planting in your garden!

It was a really busy Saturday as we built our raised cedar beds (four 4x4), filled them with local, organic compost, planted seeds and the plants we started indoors about 6 weeks ago.

In an approximate 20ftx20ft area of our backyard we planted:
• 6 green beans
• 6 tomatoes (paste, heirloom, cherry)
• 3 okra
• 1 zucchini
• 2 cucumber
• 1 rainbow bell pepper
• 3 red pepper
• 2 winter squash
• 1 acron squash
• 2 baby watermelon
• 1 pie pumpkin
• couple basil plants
• 2 small, sweet red peppers
• kale

In my vertical garden are wildflowers and herbs:
• oregano
• parsley
• lemon balm
• stevia
• spinach
• cilantro
• dill
• chives

Mixed in with flowers in the front and side garden beds are rhubarb, blueberries, strawberries, currents, lettuce, chard, chamomile, echinacea, and snow peas. We used organic compost in all of our landscaping so that we could add vegetables and fruits in with the flowers and bushes.

I have maximized every bit of garden space I have to get as much food as possible on a 1/4 acre of land while still looking beautiful and presentable in a subdivision.

If you didn't get a head start and plant your own seeds, don't worry, you can still start a garden with well-established plants that you can buy for a local, organic nursery. This year, and last, I bought mine at Marvin's Organic Gardens in Lebanon, Ohio (about an hours drive from Kentucky). They have a wonderful selection, great prices ($3-$5 per plant) and have beautiful grounds—well worth the hours drive for a great garden!

To put it into perspective, you may spend $5/pound on good organic tomatoes when you can get a plant for $5, grow your own, and get a plentiful harvest for the whole summer. Even if you just grow a few favorites in containers, it's well worth the money and time spent to grow your own food.

Time for Farmer's Markets and Fresh Produce!

It's my favorite time of year! CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and local farmer's markets are starting up, it's time to move plants that were started indoors, outdoors, and time to plant direct-sow seeds. Fresh, local produce is truly around the corner.

It's easy to find most farmer's markets via a search online, through local advertising or through LocalHarvest.org. Buying locally has many advantages (see my top-10-reasons list), the most important one being that you know exactly where your food comes from and you know it's fresh. Too much produce these days is being shipped from other countries and you just can't rely on the government to police the shipments like they should—there is too much coming in and too little resources to make that happen.

If you didn't get a chance to start seeds indoors or wasn't considering starting a garden, it's not too late to either start seeds directly outdoors. Or, you can buy plants from a trusted, organic nursery that are ready to plant outside. My absolute favorite nursery to buy organic plants from is Marvin's Organic Gardens up in Lebanon, Ohio. I know it's a little drive from Northern Kentucky, but well worth it—especially if you want healthy plants ready to go in the ground for a good price. My husband and I are heading up there tomorrow to get some strawberry plants and maybe a few other things.

I encourage you to shop as locally as possible for all your food needs this summer. It supports your local farmers and ensures you are getting great food! And, don't forget that you can freeze/can/dehydrate foods and herbs to store for winter months.