Why We Preserve Food on Our Homestead
When I was younger, I had no idea how important our garden was or why getting deer tags during whitetail season mattered so much. I was far more concerned about finding baby kittens in the haystacks or daydreaming about horses when I was supposed to be doing schoolwork. But as I grew older, I began to notice that the way our family ate was different from many others, and not in a bad way.
Every year, we planted a huge vegetable garden, and every fall we harvested and preserved that food. Mom rarely bought vegetables from the grocery store, we never ate condensed tomato soup, and homemade salsa was simply a normal part of life.
Our pantry shelves were lined with home-canned food, and the freezers were stocked with wild-caught walleye and venison from hunting season.
Mom and Dad had a large family to feed, which meant very little fast food and almost no pre-made convenience meals. My sister will still tell you to this day that we had to share our fries and pop.
At the time, I didn’t realize we were living a lifestyle many people now call homesteading. To us, it was simply how we survived and fed a large family on a budget.
Frozen pizzas and convenience meals were rare in our house. Every night we sat down together and ate a homemade meal around the table as a family.
Looking back now, I realize those meals were about far more than food. They were about connection, conversation, and spending time together after a long day.
As I got older and left for college, I started paying more attention to how people eat and how much food affects our health, energy, and everyday lives. I realized my parents had been feeding us a healthy, almost organic diet long before it became trendy.
They weren’t trying to follow a fad. They were growing food, preserving the harvest, and stretching the grocery budget the best they could.
Starting my journey in preserving.
When my husband and I moved onto our little farmstead, one of the first things I did was plant a garden. I wanted to grow our own food and continue the skills I had learned growing up.
What started as one garden slowly turned into two gardens, a large strawberry patch, asparagus beds, rhubarb patches, and a raspberry patch that’s currently getting rebuilt again this spring.
Now that we are a family of five, I am more thankful than ever for the food we grow, raise, hunt, fish, and preserve each year. Grocery prices continue to climb, but having a stocked pantry and freezer gives me peace of mind.
Every season, we carefully plan what we want to grow and preserve for the year ahead.
Over time, my reasons for preserving food have changed and grown. What once started as a way to save money and preserve garden produce has become something much deeper.
I want my children to understand where their food comes from, how to cook from scratch, and why sitting down together for a homemade meal matters.
We live in a fast-paced world built around convenience foods.
Drive-thrus and instant gratification. While there’s nothing wrong with grabbing ice cream or burgers from Dairy Queen once in a while, I believe many families have lost touch with the importance of slowing down, cooking real food, and spending time together around the dinner table.
Somewhere along the way, we traded a slower, more connected life for one built around rushing from one thing to the next.
I never wanted that for my family. Family meals are important in our home, and so is teaching my children where their food comes from, what real food tastes like, and the value of growing and preserving it themselves.
For me, preserving food is about more than filling pantry shelves. It’s about carrying on the skills my mom and grandma passed down to me.
It’s about feeding my family nutritious homemade food, reducing our reliance on grocery stores, and teaching my children valuable life skills they can carry into adulthood.
Here are 20 reasons we preserve food on our homestead.
1. We Want a Well-Stocked Pantry Year-Round
We live in a very rural area, and I am not a fan of running to town every time we run out of something. Canning and preserving food through freezing, drying, fermenting, and home canning helps us stock our pantry and reduce unnecessary grocery trips.
2. Preserving Food Helps Us Save Money
Fresh produce and canned goods add up fast when you’re feeding a large family. Salsa, enchilada sauce, soups, Rotel, tomato sauce, and canned vegetables can get expensive quickly. By investing in seeds, gardening supplies, and a little extra time, I can preserve an entire year’s worth of food for my family.
3. We Hate Seeing Garden Produce Go to Waste
We don’t like to waste on our homestead. What doesn’t get eaten fresh is canned, frozen, dried, or shared with others. We live in a throwaway society, and I refuse to contribute to unnecessary food waste. If we truly can’t use it, we donate extra produce to others in the community.
4. Home Canning Helps Us Prepare for Long Winters
North Dakota winters can be brutal. Roads become icy or snow-covered, power outages happen, and sometimes we get snowed in for days. Having a stocked pantry and freezer means we don’t panic when bad weather hits because we already have what we need to feed our family.
5. We Like Knowing Exactly What Is in Our Food
Even my kids have learned to flip products over and read ingredient labels. It’s honestly shocking how many preservatives, additives, artificial dyes, and extra sodium are added to grocery store foods. Why does bread need so many preservatives? Why are pickles dyed bright yellow? No thanks. I know exactly what’s in my canned vegetables and how they were grown.
6. Preserving Food Helps Us Rely Less on Grocery Stores
We all remember the pandemic and the panic shopping that emptied store shelves. We never had to panic because we already had food stored away. Growing and preserving our own food gives us peace of mind and helps us rely less on the grocery store system.
7. Home Preserving Allows Us to Enjoy Seasonal Foods Longer
Fresh garden produce only lasts so long, especially in northern climates. By freezing, canning, and drying seasonal foods, we can continue enjoying them long after the growing season ends.
8. Canning and Preserving Helps Us Use What We Have
If I have older hens that are no longer laying eggs, I turn them into nutrient-dense homemade chicken broth. Leftover birria meat gets canned to save freezer space and make quick meals later. Extra eggs get frozen or dried, and extra produce is preserved so that we can use it best. Nothing goes to waste around here.
9. We Preserve Food Because Homemade Simply Tastes Better
Homemade broth has far more flavor and nutrients than anything from the store. Tomatoes canned at peak ripeness taste completely different from store-bought canned tomatoes. Fresh pie cherries turned into homemade pie filling are hard to beat. Home-preserved food simply tastes better.
10. Preserving Food Is Part of the Homesteading Lifestyle
Homesteading is about learning to use what you have, becoming more self-sufficient, and relying less on commercially processed products. Food preservation is one of the most important skills on a homestead.
11. We Want to Pass These Skills Down to Our Children
I want my children to grow up understanding that food doesn’t magically appear on grocery store shelves. Food is raised, grown, harvested, and preserved by real people. These skills have been passed down for generations, and I believe they are too important to lose.
12. Preserving Food Gives Us Peace of Mind
Preserving our own food gives us a sense of food security that’s hard to explain unless you live this lifestyle. We worry less about high grocery prices, supply shortages, or storms because we already have food stored away for our family.
13. We Enjoy Sharing and Helping Our Community
Anyone who gardens knows you almost always grow more than you need. If a neighbor loses their garden to hail or strong winds, we share what we have. Extra produce often ends up in our little farmstand so others in the community can enjoy it too.
14. Home Food Preservation Connects Us to the Past
My grandma loved pickling food, and preserving food has been passed down through generations in our family. I recently started learning more about fermentation, another traditional food preservation method people have used for centuries. Many of these old-fashioned skills still have tremendous value today.
15. Something Is Rewarding About Doing It Yourself
Growing your own food and raising your own meat is good for the soul. There’s something deeply rewarding about putting healthy food on the table that you grew and preserved yourself.
16. Canning Gives Us Quick Homemade Meals During Busy Seasons
I can save leftover birria meat and sauce so I can make quick tacos later without all the prep work. I can also cook ground beef and stew meat for soups, chili, and easy weeknight meals. During busy seasons, having homemade convenience foods already prepared helps tremendously.
17. Food Preservation Has Become a Family Tradition
My kids genuinely look forward to harvesting the garden each year. Their faces light up when they find the biggest pumpkin or fill baskets with cucumbers for pickles. Even our toddler loves picking tomatoes and digging in the garden dirt. These are memories and traditions I hope they carry with them forever.
18. Learning to Preserve Food Changed the Way We Think About Food
Growing and raising our own food has given us a deeper appreciation for the work farmers and homesteaders put into feeding others. When people complain about the cost of farm-raised meat or fresh produce, I understand why those foods cost more. Cheap grocery store food often comes with hidden costs people never see.
19. Preserving Food Helps Us Create Healthier Meals
When you preserve your own food, you control the ingredients going into it. We can reduce preservatives, artificial ingredients, excess sodium, and unnecessary additives while creating healthier homemade meals for our family.
If you’re learning about canning, head on over to my page for those just starting out in canning. I go over basics, such as safely using a pressure canner and the methods of canning, plus I have a few easy-to-follow recipes on pressure canning green beans and how to can sweet corn.
