Reducing our food bills

[British Red]

I'm sure that BR has faced the same time lag in his own garden. What he shows us are many techniques of reliable preservation and those, of course, are an adjunct to bartering.

Oh hell yes. One question we are asked a lot is "what should I do first"?

My unequivocal answer now is "plant an orchard". It takes years to be fully productive, but when it is, it's the most food and the highest savings for the least amount of money!

 

[SaraR]

Hi Sara! That is a fabulous question and a complex one to answer but I'll try.

It has several "iterations".

To start with we "grew stuff" and tried to eat it. But...kale. It's disgusting. Just because worthy people try to convince us to like something didn't mean we would eat it ....So...we grow what we eat

Then we grew stuff we liked..Too much, too little.

Then we grew the amount we needed for a year. But it spoiled, sprouted, softened.

So we learned to plant in succession and choose different varieties with different keeping qualities

Then we learned exactly how much to grow for a year

Then a crop failed. So we learned to grow an excess and preserve extra for the long term (e.g. dried onions that last for years)

We are still learning.....

I tend to replace with 2x whenever we run out of something. I also either bulk buy or pick up a lot of one thing when I remember that we're low on it, there's a good deal on, or I feel like processing a big batch of whatever.

I have noticed though that although we tend to cycle through the same foods over say a season or a year, we don't necessarily repeat that year on year, so there's occasional mismatches in what we have in store and what we tend to eat.
I've now started a three-stage storing plan to combat that. A jar or other convenient container in the kitchen cupboard that's in easy reach when cooking and gets seen frequently so you remember it's there. A larger container in the kitchen settees or on the pantry shelves for easy refilling of the smaller container and then even larger quantities in storage barrels for things that are bought in bulk. When the bulk stuff is running low, you still have time to buy new as the smaller containers are full. It seems to work so far.

 

[Van-Wild]

It sounds like our experience of venison is much like yours with bison! We looked up online and a game butcher was offering a venison box for £90. There was a roast, two steaks, some burgers and sausages. We bought an entire, large deer for £80.

There was of course work involved in breaking it down into individual cuts and steaks but the savings were very large and it's wonderful lean, sustainable wild meat.

Do you have a link to where you got the deer from please?

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[British Red]

Do you have a link to where you got the deer from please?

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It was a face to face transaction with a local chap - part of the rural network . There are several guys around here involved in deer management happy to pass on a deer. The more butchery work done, the higher the price, so we get ours as a skin on carcass and do the butchery in the workshop. I do have pictures but was concerned some might be offended by them.

 

[Robson Valley]

That's a part of the conversation that goes on so quietly in rural areas like mine. I visit my kids in the "BIG" city of Vancouver, BC. I can't imagine how they could get "connected" without a super-human effort. It takes time for relationships. But, it has begun to happen for them. Key thing?
They now have a deep freeze so bulk buys are opportunities..

 

[British Red]

That's a part of the conversation that goes on so quietly in rural areas like mine. I visit my kids in the "BIG" city of Vancouver, BC. I can't imagine how they could get "connected" without a super-human effort. It takes time for relationships. But, it has begun to happen for them. Key thing?
They now have a deep freeze so bulk buys are opportunities..

It's funny that you say that. Our latest video talks about exactly this - the "rural network". It makes a massive difference to what we can accomplish and saves us an absolute fortune! Not really a hidden or an official thing but amazingly powerful

 

[Robson Valley]

It must be the same, everywhere. New people need to know that such a thing exists. Next is to find it and learn how you can contribute to the welfare of everyone.

I lived in a city of 150,000 for more than 30 years. Bulk buys and collective shopping were just about impossible. I think that it could have been done but that the connections would have had to be so much more formal than out here in the hills.

I can see the tree line for the bison ranch from my kitchen window. In between is the butcher, the flour miller and the poultry place. Maybe 3 miles at most?

What now makes things a little bit more of a chore is that there's just me and the cat. We are both old and creaky. Seems like half the time, I get a deal and wind up giving food away to friends. In the meantime, we do live very well.

 

[Van-Wild]

It was a face to face transaction with a local chap - part of the rural network . There are several guys around here involved in deer management happy to pass on a deer. The more butchery work done, the higher the price, so we get ours as a skin on carcass and do the butchery in the workshop. I do have pictures but was concerned some might be offended by them.

Ah... its the same where I live. I pick up birds on a local shoot and I get birds that way.


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[Robson Valley]

Call it good fortune, call it good luck, call it what you like. I was gifted some frost-hardy named variety of Vitis riparia grape vines (var. Valiant) when I bought this house, my retirement home, in 2000. They see direct sun in the western afternoons. That's enough.
Early October, snow-capped mountain peaks all around you and you're picking the most unlikely of crops = grapes.

I have had the same family pick off the grapes for maybe the past 15 years. They trade carrots, several potato varieties, beet root and so on. When their kids were really little, I let them climb in the big house vines on the trellis, right up to my roof like Jack & The Beanstalk.

I've rooted the best of the best prunings as new started vines, sold no more than 300 of them. Canned and sold the grape juice (chap had a digestive issue, my grape juice was OK in his guts.) I make and eat taboluleh with my Lebanese friends.

Multipurpose crop. Look away back into agricultural history and you will seethe same multi-purpose sense in the early crops.

You all have a far milder climate in the UK. Touch of frost, no big deal. In your houses, I'd have long ago stuck a few CabSauv vines in the dirt and some Chardonnay. Buy some good yeast and treat yourselves to 50 liters of good wines.
Eat fruit. Make raisins. Grape leaves taste like grapes = tabouleh.

 

[British Red]

There are lots of places here that do make great wine - and it's something that climate change is helping!

It's funny what you say about multi-purpose crops (not wasting is the subject of this Friday's video) - we have so many. Walnuts make dye from the green husk, exfoliant from the brown shell, food and the most beautiful timber. Sweet Chestnut yields as many calories per acre as wheat - and the wood is amazingly rot proof. Rhubarb is a sensational simple crop, and the roots were historically used as a laxative....

I must stop, I'll get boring!

 

[SaraR]

Rhubarb is a sensational simple crop, and the roots were historically used as a laxative....

Soon after moving to our current place, I planted some rhubarb, but they failed miserably. I've never managed to kill rhubarb before (actually it's always been one of those things that you wish wouldn't do as well as they are...)!

Maybe I should give it another go.

 

[SaraR]

Walnuts make dye from the green husk, exfoliant from the brown shell, food and the most beautiful timber. Sweet Chestnut yields as many calories per acre as wheat - and the wood is amazingly rot proof.

I do wish we had room for a walnut tree!

When I grew up we had a huge purple hazel growing in the garden and it would propagate all over the place thanks to the Eurasian jays hiding nuts everywhere. Dad used to swap small treelings for all sorts of things and we still had too many of them.

 

[British Red]

Rhubarb is a useful plant here. Whilst not a true fruit of course it's the earliest fruit that we can harvest... rhubarb crumble in Spring and later Rhubarb fool, before the Strawberries come in. Very low effort food as you rightly observe!

Increasingly we are looking to perennials - asparagus, artichokes etc. I'm going to try root ginger again this year as it's a pantry staple that I really want to produce.

 

[British Red]

I do wish we had room for a walnut tree!

When I grew up we had a huge purple hazel growing in the garden and it would propagate all over the place thanks to the Eurasian jays hiding nuts everywhere. Dad used to swap small treelings for all sorts of things and we still had too many of them.

We have cobnuts for productive use (hazel cultivar with large nuts) and hazel in the edible hedge. The difference is really startling - cobnuts being massive by comparison

 

[Tengu]

Aldis are doing Apple/pear trees at £9.99 now.

 

[British Red]

Aldis are doing Apple/pear trees at £9.99 now.

That's a good price. Tesco had various fruit trees in a while ago too

 

[grizzlyj]

We have cobnuts for productive use (hazel cultivar with large nuts) and hazel in the edible hedge. The difference is really startling - cobnuts being massive by comparison

Do you know what the latin name for a cobnut is? I'm putting some hazel trees in at the moment. Having been told there are two different types, one with nuts one without, and then told they're all the same just nut production will depend on how happy the tree is. Searching for cobnut treelets produces the same latin as what I've planted which were "just" hazels. Confused!
Edited, PM will be sent.

 

[British Red]

Hi ,

Cobnuts are just a variety of hazelnut selectively bred to produce very large nuts

This is where we got ours ( far cheaper than fancy garden centres who charge £20)

Hazel, Cob / Filbert

Buy bareroot Filbert Cobnut sapling trees online at Ashridge. Guaranteed. Best advice & support. Corylus avellana maxima Filbert. Vigorous, bushy tree to 10m. Superior nuts to wild hazel plants.

www.ashridgetrees.co.uk

 

[Robson Valley]

I've grown ginger from ginger root that I bought in the grocery store. You can see the row of buds so you know which edge is up. Fine dice, the leaves add the same accent that you can get from green onions.

Nobody in my entire district was growing grapes of any kind.
Certainly an exotic novelty here at 53N. With my botany background, I started cuttings from the best of the best of my pruning garbage cuttings. Sold 2/$5.00 in the Friday Farmer's market. Sold out, sold 80 one summer. More of a social excuse. The money was not even peanuts.

 

[Robson Valley]

BR: Need to pick your brain. It's all well and good to become proficient at drying foods. I find that trying to reconstitute them is most unappetizing.
Take mushrooms and carrots as two examples.
What would your do and where in your meals would you incorporate these?