I'm not entirely certain how early Southerners did it, how they stored food without electricity. Of the old techniques I think of salting, smoking, drying, and root cellaring. Salt pork, dried beans, and corn bread was probably a typical meal. Without refrigeration, breakfast was likely leftovers from the night before. Because we hope to someday get off the electrical grid, I think about these things.
Food storage has been a real challenge for me. Not for lack of equipment or knowledge, but because of our climate. The intense summer heat, mild winters, and year-round humidity make keeping some things difficult.
Our first year here I tried storing my fall harvested root crops in my
newly designated pantry. Even keeping the room unheated, all these kept sprouting. I observed too, that our ground never froze absolutely solid, even during the worst of our Southern cold spells. I figured out that heavy mulch on the beds enables me to harvest fresh turnips, beets, carrots, etc all winter long. Because this works so well, I don't really see the need to build a root cellar. True, potatoes end up in the spare refrigerator because they don't keep well in the ground, but sweet potatoes do well simply wrapped in newspaper and stored in a box in the pantry.
The humidity presents problems with dehydrating foods. It's no problem when we have low humidity, but when the humidity's high, the foods will get moldy before they're dried. Even with my Excalibur dehydrator I have to take care. Foods dried to a pleasing crisp soon turn soft again when the humidity is high, which is often.
I had similar problems curing hard cheeses. They tend to get moldy before they develop a rind, I think because our house temperature is so warm. We do use our air conditioner, but the thermostat is set at 82. This means it keeps the hallway at that temperature, but rooms that get sun or still have poor insulation, are much warmer. As a side note, I have to say that the insulating we did in the kitchen plus the energy efficient windows have made a huge difference in that room. In regards to cheese, I've been thinking maybe I should make soft cheeses in summer, and save hard cheesemaking for cooler months.
I have to say the humidity is a nuisance in general. It's not as bad here as when I lived in Houston. There I could work up a sweat by simply walking out to get the mail. Still, on the worst days here laundry doesn't dry on the line and begins to not smell so nice. In places where we've lived without air conditioning in the South, we've had terrible problems with mildew. More than once I've thrown away mildew covered shoes I found in the bottom of my closet, or tried to salvage books by washing the covers with diluted bleach. A dehumidifier does help, but the ones we've had generate heat as well, making the trade off not as comfortable as one might hope. Humidity is one reason we use the air conditioner. But back to food storage.
Meat is usually frozen nowadays and ours is no exception. I'd be willing to experiment with salting, smoking, and jerkies, but this will take additional equipment, set-up, learning and time, so it's still future. This makes more sense for home butchering, as meat from a local processor is prefrozen before it's picked up. Meat can also be canned. I used to do this a lot, very convenient.
Then there are the pantry moths. I know everybody has these, but with a long growing season and mild winters, it seems they are worse here than I've experienced anywhere else. How they find their way into jars with tight lids I don't know. I do know that it doesn't take long for them to destroy a gallon storage jar of grain. I have learned by experimentation that a nice chunk of cedar in the jar helps a lot. I use big chunks of cedar in the garbage cans where I store the goats' and chickens' grain as well. For our grains and flours however, I still rely mostly on the fridge and freezer. [NOTE: I should have clarified for commenters that the grains I'm having problems with are our homegrown grains: field corn, popcorn, wheat, and dried watermelon (not a grain but the moths love it). The quantity of these is bushels worth, so freezing, refrigerating, or oven drying are pretty much out of the question. :p ]
Because of all this, when I think of food storage without electricity, I realize there are a lot of things I have to rethink. The vision of the poor Southerner hunting coons and squirrels instead of roasting the fatted calf takes on new meaning. It makes sense to have smaller quantities of meat to deal with if one can't store a whole beef or two. So does
winter gardening. My experiments in this have gone well so far, and I think with a hoop house or row covers we could eat more fresh so I would have to preserve and store less.
Producing our own electricity is still a long ways down the road. Still, I find that all the projects we do here require a lot of forethought and research. Experience counts in that regard as well.
I'd really be interested in the food storage challenges of others. I suspect they are different in different locations! Anyone care to share?
