Farm Families Never Shopped for the Holidays in December (12 Things They Laid In Now)

Farm Families Never Shopped for the Holidays in December (12 Things They Laid In Now) Everybody is telling you to stock up right now. Buy everything, prices are climbing, fill the cupboard before the holidays. So before we start, here is something free, and it comes straight from the Department of Agriculture's own forecast for this year. Eggs are going down. Not up. Their forecast has egg prices falling by close to thirty percent across this year. Beef and veal are the other way, up over nine percent, and food at home as a whole is up a little over two. So no, you do not fill a shelf with eggs. You fill it with beef. Half the stock up lists going round right now have that exactly backwards. A farm family filled a pantry in October too, but not because somebody showed them a chart. They did it because October was when the food existed. These are twelve things a farm family laid in before winter, and which of them still makes sense for you. The cheapest week of the entire year to buy a canning jar. The fruit nobody buys by the bushel anymore. The one thing on every stock up list that the government's own numbers say you should not be buying. And number one is the thing that made every other item on this list possible, and it had nothing to do with money. It is not a sale, not a coupon, not a cellar and not a recipe. It is a piece of equipment you already own and almost certainly use wrong. WHAT I MENTION → The United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service Food Price Outlook forecasts egg prices falling by close to thirty percent this year, beef and veal rising by over nine percent, and food at home overall rising a little over two percent. Fats and oils are also forecast to decline. → Seven of the fifteen food at home categories are forecast to grow faster than their twenty year average, including beef and veal, fresh fruits, fresh vegetables and sugar and sweets. → Hog killing time on a farm came with the first hard cold, usually late in November, and the temperature had to sit near freezing for several days together. It had to be cold because there was no refrigeration. The cold itself was the preservation, and whole communities waited for it and helped each other through it. → A cured butternut or Hubbard squash with the stem on keeps for months at fifty to sixty degrees, which is warmer and drier than a cellar. → Carrots and root vegetables buried in damp sand or sawdust in a cold corner keep from October into March. → A new bag of flour or cornmeal frozen for a week kills grain weevils, which is where most pantry moth problems begin. Whole grain flours belong in the freezer permanently, because the germ holds oil that goes rancid. → Butter keeps six to nine months frozen with no difference in baking. → Refrigerated eggs keep three to five weeks, which is the real limit on stocking them whatever the price. → A turkey is a loss leader. Stores sell it at or near cost to bring people through the door, and the deepest prices come in the last week before the holiday and again just after. SOURCES → United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook → USDA Agricultural Research Service, historical material on hog butchering → Smithsonian Folklife Festival and National Park Service accounts of hog killing time → University extension services on root cellar storage, curing winter squash and freezing grain to control weevils → USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service on shell egg storage times Tell me in the comments what your family always laid in before winter, because every house had a list and I would like to know what was on yours. And tell me what part of the country you are writing from. I read every one. Nothing here is lost. Just untaught. #pantry #farmhouse #oldways #frugalliving #groceryprices