Lately, we’ve been busy clearing out the freezer and pantry (planning, week 1, week 2, week 3) while not neglecting our garden and the seasonal deals on fruit.
Now the pantry and freezer project is almost over. In the past month we’ve had birthdays and parties, we’ve weeded incessantly and planted most of the garden, and we’re finishing up the school year. It’s been too busy to really focus on emptying the freezer, but even this half-hearted job has been helpful.
Our three freezers are much emptier, and my husband is hoping to move everything into two. That, to me, is success.
And it’s all just in time. Our asparagus is growing unimaginably fast, strawberry farms are beginning to open, and our currents are turning red. The push to fill the freezers again is starting. While we’re still happily eating last year’s fall produce, it’s good to know that last year’s early summer produce has been mostly cleared out to make way for all the new goodies.
We still have a few days of this challenge left to empty the freezer out some more, though. I’m planning to eat more fruit, cook a turkey, use up some more soup stock, eat frozen butternut squash, tomato, and pumpkin, and ask my husband or son to barbeque some of the yummy sale pork steaks we have.
I also have one more week of minimal food purchases. This shopping trip I’ll buy only potatoes, milk, eggs, grapefruit juice, and sale items (tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, and butter… and maybe our summer’s supply of wieners (also on sale) for wiener roasts. Obviously, we’re saving money as well as eating our food stores.
And now we’re almost ready to fill those freezers right back up again.
How about you? Are you ready for this year’s harvests?
–For more kitchen inspiration, see Workin’ It Mondays, Homesteader Blog Carnival, No Ordinary Blog Hop, Sustainable Ways, Encourage One Another Wednesday, Women Living Well Wednesdays, Works For Me Wednesday , Raising Homemakers, Simple Lives, and Frugal Friday.
I’m growing a garden for the first time in many years this year, and hoping I can do more than feed the neighborhood squirrels and rabbits from it! We went to a U-pick farm a couple of weekends ago and I canned sixteen pints of strawberry jam, so I’m pretty proud of my start for the summer!
I’m working on clearing my freezer and pantry too.
Three freezers!! I have friends that are jealous of my two!!
Kristen @ Trial & Error Homemaking
Great series and I will certainly read the rest, although at our home, we are working on stocking our freezer and pantry.
blessings, jilly
You could really bless some others with the abundance the Lord has given you! How cool! No harvest hear, but again- hoping to grow a garden in the years to come! I’d also like to learn canning. 🙂 Thanks so much for sharing with us again at Workin’ it Mondays, this is such a neat series to read about!
Sounds like you are doing great with it. 🙂
We are doing that for at least the next two weeks. This month, I get paid 3 times, instead of the normal two. So I want to bank that 3rd check. That meant I had to stock up on groceries to cover those two weeks so that I don’t go out and spend money.
Three freezers – wow! I would love to have just an extra ONE. Still, we garden and preserve what we can. It is a fun process. Thanks for the inspiration.