# Harvest and Preservation

## Harvest timing and handling

Pick in the cool of morning; handle like eggs — bruises rot first. Leafy
greens cut-and-come-again (outer leaves, plant keeps producing); beans and
zucchini picked small and often to keep plants productive; tomatoes at
full color (or before first frost, ripening green ones indoors);
potatoes after tops die back, cured 1-2 weeks dark and airy for storage
skins; onions and garlic when tops fall, cured until necks are papery;
winter squash when rinds resist a thumbnail, cured warm for two weeks,
stems left on.

## Root cellaring without a cellar

Storage crops want specific climates: potatoes and most roots — cold and
humid (4-8 °C; a cool basement corner, insulated garage box, buried
barrel/bin, or in-ground clamp under straw and soil); onions and garlic —
cold and dry, hanging in mesh; winter squash — cool-room dry (10-15 °C);
cabbage — cold and humid, outer leaves on. Check stores every couple of
weeks and remove anything softening — one rotten potato takes the box.
Carrots and beets keep beautifully layered in boxes of barely damp sand.

## Fermentation: preservation plus nutrition

Lacto-fermentation needs only vegetables, salt, and time — no energy, and
it adds vitamins and probiotics. How to make sauerkraut, step by step (the
master recipe for all vegetable ferments): shred
cabbage, 2% salt by weight (20 g per kg), massage until brine flows, pack
into a jar below its own brine with a weight, loosely covered, at cool
room temperature 1-4 weeks, then cold storage. Same method: carrots,
beets, turnips, green beans, cucumbers (add a grape or oak leaf for
crunch). Cloudy brine and sour smell are correct; surface white film
(kahm yeast) is skimmed; anything fuzzy or foul is discarded.

## Drying

The oldest, cheapest method: herbs hung in bunches; fruit, tomatoes,
mushrooms and thin vegetable slices dried in a dehydrator, low oven with
door cracked, or sun (dry climates) until leathery-to-brittle; store
airtight and dark. Dried tomatoes, fruit leather, and dried mushrooms
concentrate flavor as well as shelf life. Blanch most vegetables briefly
before drying to preserve color and vitamins.

## Canning, briefly (safety-critical)

High-acid foods (jams, fruit, pickles in vinegar, tomatoes with added
lemon juice or citric acid) are safe in a boiling-water bath. Low-acid
foods (plain vegetables, meat, broth) are only safe in a pressure canner
following tested recipes exactly — see the food-storage chapter's botulism
warning. When in doubt: freeze, dry, or ferment instead.

## Freezing and the grid question

Freezing preserves quality best but is hostage to the grid; treat the
freezer as the short-tier store and keep the deep tier in dried, canned,
fermented, and cellared forms. A full freezer holds safe temperatures
roughly 48 hours unopened (24 half-full); grouping frozen bottles of
water inside buys more. If power fails long: pressure-can, dry, brine, or
cook-and-share the thawing meat before it warms above 4 °C for more than
a couple of hours.