Growing food through the winter? What are the best ways to manage your food supply during the frosty months of the year? Today we talk about balancing vegetable and animal food, keeping plants alive through cold, winter survival food in colder climates and more.
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Canning? Dehydrating? Preserving? A greenhouse? What is the best way to keep food through the winter? Let’s talk about winter food gardening and keeping animals.
How much milk are we getting now well I don’t know how large this one container is I’m going to guess I don’t know but um that one is almost full while practicus is full generally we’re getting let’s see yesterday I got a gallon and a half and about two cups for one
Milking so over three gallons of milk yeah a day a day the two textures yeah they’re doing well welcome back you know there’s a reason that animal Foods were very important in more Northern climates is because when you can’t grow plants often you can still have animal food
Like milk and meat maybe not eggs so much because a lot of your fowl quit laying in the winter but you had something to eat so today I’m going to talk a little bit about having food through through the winter uh both from animals and from Vegetables we planted these beds of greens at the end of summer coming into fall when we were in drought conditions you can see the greens look pretty rough right now because they’re all covered in Frost but they’re not dead they’ll be fine at least until we get there’s an
Upcoming night that’s supposed to get down to 16 we’ll see how that turns out but generally these brasas are cold hearty down into the 20s sometimes even the low 20s and if it gets below that we cover them with sheets from the thrift store so this is good if you’re in North
Florida or lower Alabama up into Central Alabama Mississippi Georgia if you’re in the South and the temperatures don’t normally get below the 20s you can often have fresh greens dcon radishes cabbages turnips that sort of thing through the winter or through most of the winter depending on if you get one of those
Nasty colds or not I think the conclusion that people often jump to is that in order to have food through the winter you have to have something like this behind me because you know it gets too cold you where where you going to have food you don’t have any food you
Have to have a greenhouse and then uh you know if you live further north you have to have heaters in your greenhouse and double walls and all kinds of other stuff you know uh maybe you’ve got to dig a giant pit and build a greenhouse
In it in order to have food through the winter but what did people do before they were green houses that’s really the question because that’s going to be your more anti fragile minimalist solution what did people do before green houses you know what did people do before they had
Pressure treated lumber and they could make raised beds uh well they made mounded beds like this they just planted right in the ground with with what they had or they did single row Gardens you know and they had a mule plow it up for
Them but I I think if you get to the Simplicity of it what you need to do is grow in the growing season the plants that like that season and then store them up for winter right that’s that sounds simple so what do you do you get a big
Dehydrator now you’d probably use a solar dehydrator uh in that you’d lay stuff on top of your roof and dry it out or you would spread it out in the sun if you’re were going to do that uh canning well canning’s been around for a few
Hundred years but uh not not in the level that we have it today until about the last 100 years canning maybe probably would have a root seller instead and you would store a lot in a root seller or you would store roots in the ground and then
Just spread a bunch of straw or dirt even over the top of it to keep them from freezing solid and being destroyed I I like simpler is better and as a matter of fact when things start to get out of season I don’t usually try to grow them anymore like tomatoes I’m not
Trying to grow tomatoes right now uh I’m only sticking to the onions and the brasas that can take the cold so we have those greens coming in and we’re also eating a lot of what we stored up over the summer so we have boxes of roots sitting on the porch right now covered
Closed in porch and I’ve got other uh pots full of yams and things like that that I have covered with straw and I have set aside indoors to keep them fresh all the way through the winter so we have something to eat and that combined with the animal food of having
The cows that we can milk um we have stored up hay and they eat the hay now that the grass has frozen and they produce milk so we can have a high quality food through the winter along with our stored Roots which are uh much higher calories than what we
Can grow in the garden right now and then we have pickled dacons that we’re eating regularly having pickles live fermented pickles means that they they keep for a really long time they can sit in a jar on the counter and the natural lactic acid that in there is keeping
Them preserved and of course they’re very good for your stomach as well so we’ve got our bacon from our pigs that we harvested harvested and uh we’ve got the fresh milk and we’ve got the pickles and then we’ve got the roots and then we have the small amount of greens that can
Actually grow in the garden at this time of year so last night we had a smoked pork roast and we had some rice that we bought can’t grow rice here so far as I know or I don’t want to bother because it’s too much effort um and then we had
Uh some greens from the garden we had Pock Choy and mustard that I steamed and then I put a little bit of sesame oil and apple cider vinegar on them with some salt and that was really delicious as a side but we could have just bypassed the rice alt together but the
Kids like it so you know the the key I think to growing and having your food in the winter is learning what grows in season how to store what grows in season and to know which things can stay in your Gardens either under mulch or actually able to tolerate the cold of
Winter through the winter season and the further north you go the more you often have to rely on preservation and possibly on animal Foods or even on Hunting to get you through a winter uh you know without a lot of technological solutions like this back here which is
Way Overkill I wouldn’t have that unless I had a plant nursery so having a plant nursery to be able to keep propagative materials alive is really important and if I was just guarding I would probably have a small Greenhouse maybe a 10x 20 or something like that so
I could start a bunch of transplants early in the year it’s nice to have that kind of season extension but I don’t like to rely on it a lot either like for example the other night we had winds that were just ridiculous and some of that stuff gets blown all over the place
And it’s just not really that viable I don’t want to deal with it here and as you can see in the grocery Road Gardens right now there’s not a lot going on we have green onions that are still here we have Frozen canas the loquat can handle this weather got frozen
Stevia got more green onions they don’t mind it there is a sleeping Mulberry there’s some very burned Musa Basu bananas there is a a sleeping Chestnut there’s not really a lot to see and you can see there’s Frost all over everything and we had such drought this year normally I would have
All kinds of brasas planted all through here you know all of this mulched area would have something growing on it but it was so dry and the ground was so hard earlier in the year all I did was put in those two beds of brasas and keep them going by running
The hose on them since we don’t have a well out here yet and I didn’t want to try and irrigate this entire area and then have to plant it and fortunately we had planted enough stuff earlier in the year that when we were harvesting out all of the sweet potatoes
And everything we had tons of sweet potatoes we’re still eating sweet potatoes we had tons of pumpkins we’re still eating pumpkins and not having this in production didn’t hurt us but we do still have grocery stores right down the road you know we would have to figure
Out a solution a well or carrying water or something like that if we really needed to produce all of our food from this area and you know last year we had over 2500 lb of food from the vegetable gardens that was mostly right here and then the little gardens behind
Me and that’s good but it might not be enough you’ve got to feed your chickens as well and feed the cows and this droughted this last summer would have been a really bad deal it’s not much to see folks I think I’ll just do a long slow Fade Out on this gusher
Row think about growing the stuff that’s in season when it’s in season learning how to preserve it it sticking with that before jumping to complicated technological solutions and lots of plastic I’m not a big fan of plastic in general keep getting stuck using it though long slow Fade Out may your
Thumbs always be green La oh
42 Comments
They used to grow rice in the Ga marshes until the free labor was freed.
People up north do canning and preservation. The mother of a friend of my daughter grows lots of food, and then she do canning and preservation. And that what they eat. There were no grocery stores nearby.
David, where has been your favorite place to homestead/garden so far??
I know you’ve been in tropics, Fort Lauderdale and now more seasonal areas. What’s your favorite??
Thank you for giving us a video even if there's not a ton to show. Really perks me up when there's snow over everything up here.
My Americana chickens keep laying through the winter! Northern Az, down into the teens. Just keep a nice red heat lamp in their chicken house for the night. Good to go!
Is cutie pie there a jersey ? They dont put out as much as a holstein But u get creamier milk and its a2 protein ✌🏻
Rice is easy to grow. I grow it in Tennessee. What is hard is threshing and de-husking it. I eat mostly keto. It is absolutely unsustainable in anything but a tropical climate. You just can't grow the salad greens you must have for the vitamins and minerals and what little carbs you are allowed. Can't have the potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, wheat, dried beans etc that are storable during the non growing season.
Yep, root cellars, dried or canned produce, bags of grain and beans and don't forget the fat. Back in early America the pioneers put up preserves and ferments and hunted and processed their meat. I watch Townsend's alot, he shows a lot of 1800th centery cooking and preserving. We're supposed to get in single digits on Tues and snow, what little that I still have in the garden will be done.🫤
Hey David! I like your subject. about what people without technology did? how they survived? well… first of all they were communities, share their produce with each other! they called it exchange produce. now we are living in such a singular society! second-all people digestive system designed to be fruitarian and vegetarian. animals we use for gardening. people discovered fire for heat when they travel to the cold climate. Then they start killing their animals and cook, eat them!!! long story short we can't compare with our Ancestors!
It still looks good even though it's frozen. Have y'all tried making cheese from your milk? Also I have some Bamboo seeds if you want some, I have Dendrocalamus Peculiaris, Dendrocalamus Giganteous, Gigantochloa Bicolor and Phyllostachys Pubescens (Moso)
Even though it summer in Australia now I love the winter videos..
Some produce goes into my cellar and the rest gets frozen, then, later in winter it all gets processed into jams, jellies, relishes, canned slaws, sauerkraut or dehydrated and powdered for extra nutrients in homemade sourdough bread. Hubs handles the meats, mostly venison and fish. We've lived this way for over 40 years. It's the closest thing to heaven that I can think of. The feel of the warm earth, feeding it with hand mixed compost and ground up byproducts of the harvest and out of that comes an abundance that's so awesome. I love being a gardener. Great video! Many blessings in the new year.
everyone overlooks raising pigeons. pigeons and rabbits are allowed almost everywhere and both breed food fast
Well, the plus in zone 10 be. I still have. Volunteer tomato plants. Snow peas. Tons of celery. Beets and radishes. Almost forgot the cilantro. .
I know milk is good fresh is best but uhggg best I can do is cheese, i absolutely hate milk it would have be the last resort for me.
Thank you David for sharing God bless you n your family 🙏 🇺🇸
after NO success gardening this summer, I heard your voice in my head, "grow or die". I mocked my one romaine lettuce plant growing in a pot as winter approached. When in northern AZ our lows are in the teens with wind chill. to my surprised the one mocked plant is sailing through this artic cold. I think the mocking circled back. Thank you Mr. Good. God bless
What did people do before they had pressure treated lumber for raised beds: they used low wattle panels (made like basketry) made of hazel and chestnut to contain small beds.
I'm happy that your garden looks a bit like mine. I don't use raised beds and my plants aren't in perfect rows. By the way, Happy New Year.
Makes lots of sense. These are skills that have vanished due to food security thrust upon us by supermarkets et al.
Glad to see your still doing fine David! Our beds are nothing but wood chips, pig manure and compost at the moment. Only thing growing are our strawberries. They haven’t gone dormant and are spreading like wild fire! Everything else however has ceased to live or has gone dormant.
We're in Zone 6B, north part of Virginia. Currently we have kale (tronchuda and curly) and onions (bunching) in raised beds — that's it for fresh edibles right now. We are not overwintering anything in our greenhouse this year.
In the gardens, we're overwintering some Chard for seed so the leaves on the Chard need to stay on the plants. We have 2 very long beds of strawberries and herbs — perennials. We've had some hard freezes with temps to 13-degrees but these plants do well and always pop back up.
We mostly can/pressure-can to preserve our homegrown foods, or we eat fresh. We store root crops (potatoes, carrots, etc) I will be sowing seeds in the greenhouse in mid-January — cold tolerant greens, onions, etc. Lots of Mizuna — the stems double as celery for us. We've stopped using forced-air heat in the greenhouse — too expensive. I'll be starting a few seeds next week (snapdragons, peppers).
My belief is that it's better to train ourselves to live like we're in the 1800s as our forefathers did. Living on their homesteads gave them priceless wealth during the Depression.
Love this topic. Good video.
Good ideas indeed. Thank you
I always let a couple of broody hens be moms. Those new young pullets always lay through the winter! I ferment, can, and dehydrate for winter food. You have to love crops like taters, onions, garlic, squash, pumpkins and dent or flint corn for easy storing. My chickens also enjoy squash and pumpkin in the winter.
I'm in Georgia – east of ATL – in zone 8a and I've grown rice. It's super easy to grow, but the harvesting and processing is a pain in the a$$. I used the rubber/plastic horse troughs (round, approx. 3' across by 6-8" tall) from Tractor Supply to grow them in and they worked perfectly. It was awesome to realize that I could grow it if I needed it…
As you said, it’s the severe winds that’ll turn a hoop house into a big pile of trash in an instant. You have to have a means of lowering the plastic asap if the weather looks bad. Easier said than done.
The outro tune sounds like Roxy music and tindersticks after a long boozy night.
I’m currently building a smokehouse to be able to better preserve meat without canning or freezing
Garden is clean and tidy, so looks good with all the frost
So I watched twice. These are things that are crucial to know in a disaster. If folks would try to live without going to the store for anything for two months, that would give an idea of where you are weak and what you need. We have done this several times, but always discover something else we need. These things were not food, but things that break, more screws and nails than you ever imagined you needed, and pipe and fittings for when sinks starts leaking. Pig feed is the biggest issue for us to really be self reliant. If you are raising more than one, that takes a lot of scraps without other feed that you grow. It just takes a lot of corn and pumpkins for more than a couple of pigs. After 15 years of living with solar and attempting to feed ourselves, we are still learning. A disaster is not the time to learn. I say this from having been through two hurricanes and being without power and water for an extended period of time. Thanks, David the Good for all you do. Thanks to your family as well.
I haven't used pressure treated lumber for raised beds for years. Scrap fencing or catttle panel cut down to size forming rings & ovals, woven side walls using stakes or concrete nails & small branches & saplings…etc. If it looks too "rustic" for your taste grow beans & peas up the outer walls.
David, I was wondering if you know what happened to Christian, Ice Age Farmer? Your interview with him was one of his last videos. Just concerned and wondering if you had any info. Praying he is fine! 🙏🏼 Thank you for all your info! 😍
David would you consider putting your streams on apple podcast? Plz and thank you either way 😁
God bless y’all!
And this is why I love Florida.
I love having our milk cow. We do a half jersey half Angus. About a gallon a day, calf sharing. Works great! Only 3 in our family now, so more than we need.
I have a similar problem to you, if I want winter vegetables I have to plant them in mid-late summer and it's just too hot for them to survive, except perhaps with constant watering, and we don't have a very ready water supply either, just harvested rain mostly. I haven't really found a solution, just eat stuff we've grown in summer, that's pretty much it for now.
Have you considered putting a water catchment system on your Green house. Title of You Tube Video. COMPLETE Rainwater System START TO FINISH – DIY Greenhouse Build #10
Good info!
Very good advice.
Very few YouTubers involved in gardening and smallholdings. Talk about the amazing benefits of having a pond with fish if you’re in a climate but it’s cold Trout can be kept and they love the cold weather. If you have a big enough Pond you can feed yourself or winter and through the hungry group with Trout, which has the highest level of omega three fatty acids and also has bioavailable vitamin d which is very rare. In homegrown food, so take a whole line at the Cley or a food safe pond liner And get yourself some fish, fry them up through the summer on worms from your work very well your black soldier, fly breeding pods. If you don’t wanna do that just let nature feed them, the pond will be colonised with allsorts of waterborne, insects and Lavi. where is the fish for eat. even if the weather gets down to -20 you can still catch trout, they will still feed
LOL Central Florida here not trying to grow tomatoes either but my chickenshit just wants to well over 90 +volunteer tomato plants from all the chicken s*** I've been spreading around