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Food preservation and canning is a big part of our late summer and fall activities as a family. We love it! That said, the most frustrating part of food preservation is getting everything set up and ready to go only to realize you are missing a vital item or ingredient. I can’t tell you how many times we have been ready to start canning only to stop what we are doing and run to the store for a single item. To make sure our kitchen is always “preservation ready,” we keep these key ingredients and items on hand in large...

Have you ever looked at your favourite meal and really looked at it asking yourself, can I make that from scratch?  You might be reading that and scoff thinking, "I already do make it from scratch."  What I am asking is the true scratch of scratch.  Let's take pizza as an example.  Let's break down all the ways you can make a pizza for dinner: Make a call for pizza to be delivered. Pick up a frozen pizza and throw it in the oven. Purchase pre-made pizza shells and put together the toppings. Make your own dough and sauce, adding...

The idea of becoming fully self-reliant is extremely overwhelming.   There are many areas to think about, from what it means to cultivate a garden preserving high yields of food, to raising chickens or small livestock. Then there is the topic of hunting, a massive undertaking in and of itself.  Learning how to craft even small shelters is a lot harder than you might think but learning how to build your own cabin takes hours of learning and physical experience.  Expanding out of immediate needs there is the issue of power, medical needs, communication and transportation.   Where do you even...

There is a term that became popular over the last number of years – mainly due to reality TV portrayals – that word is “prepper”. Those belonging to what is called the “prepper community” are a community of folks who are often viewed through a very narrow lens, seen as a group preparing for an event like a zombie apocalypse. Preppers are considered slightly crazy, stemming from a generation that built bunkers in their backyards preparing for a nuclear event throughout the cold war era that never happened. The prepper mentality is often seen as somewhat “overzealous” in their view of the world...

The idea of a garden is revered by most everyone.  It is in our nature to cultivate the land, grow our own food and produce meaningful crops to sustain our bodies.  Most people think a garden is unreachable for them, as they live in a condo, their yards are not big enough, or they do not have the time and find it too overwhelming to start. The two most important things to consider when planting a garden is space and sunlight.  Having a yard is not necessarily as important as you might think it is.  You can get away with...

Most folks opt for buying canned food over the laborious job of home canning, as they state it is more expensive and too labour intensive.  If you buy your fruits and veggies from the local grocery store, yes it will be more expensive, but if you know a few simple tricks to keep costs down, preserving your own food through canning can save you $100’s of dollars! Equipment You do not need to buy all your jars from new!  Did you know that thrift stores, garage sales, and social media marketplaces can be an excellent way to stock up on...