As the Days Grow Shorter: Preserving the Harvest
The days are shrinking, the sun sets sooner, and the season is drawing to a close. For us that does not mean the work is over. It simply shifts from tending plants and animals outside to stacking, storing, freezing, canning, and tucking away the food that will carry us through the winter. This is the point in the year when every bit of energy invested in the farm pays off. The freezers are filling, the shelves are lined with jars, and the pantry becomes its own kind of insurance policy.
Water Glassing: Hundreds of Eggs in Buckets
One of the cornerstones of our preservation this year has been water glassing. For those unfamiliar, water glassing is the practice of submerging fresh, unwashed eggs in a mixture of hydrated lime and water. The lime coats the shell, sealing its pores and keeping oxygen and bacteria out. Properly stored, eggs can last for a year or more this way without refrigeration.
We started early in the summer, setting aside eggs every week into food-grade five-gallon buckets filled with the lime solution. Those buckets now stack neatly inside our house, each one holding dozens of chicken and quail eggs. By September the number has climbed into the hundreds, giving us the security of knowing we can pull out fresh eggs in January that were laid back in June. It is a simple practice but one of the most effective ways to bank protein without relying on a refrigerator or freezer.
Freezers Full of Meat and More
The freezers are filling with rabbit and quail meat, a steady supply built up from processing animals throughout the warm months. Each package represents not just food for us but an investment of time, feed, and care that stretches far beyond the short days of fall. Rabbit is lean and versatile, quail is tender and rich, and together they form the backbone of our winter meals.
We also dedicate space to organ meats. Not for us, but for our dogs. Heart, liver, kidneys, and other cuts that most people overlook are some of the best nutrition for working animals. Freezing them ensures our dogs stay strong and healthy while nothing goes to waste from the animals we raise. It is part of the cycle of using everything possible, leaving little behind.
Keeping Fresh Eggs Flowing
Even with hundreds of water-glassed eggs waiting in buckets, we want the option of fresh eggs daily. Quail make this possible. Their small size, efficiency, and rapid laying cycle allow us to keep a covey indoors through the winter. With steady light and warmth, they continue to lay, and we do not face the seasonal drop in production that chickens bring.
We even picked a quiet rooster to live alongside the hens, which means we can still incubate and raise new birds for meat while snow piles up outside. This combination of water-glassed storage and steady indoor laying gives us both security and abundance when everything else slows down.
Vegetables by the Jar and Bag
Our vegetables follow the same layered strategy. Tomatoes, beans, and peppers get canned in jars that line the pantry shelves. Greens are blanched and frozen. Roots like potatoes and onions are cured and stored in a cool, dark place. Carrots and beets go into bins of damp sand for long-term keeping.
It is not about one preservation method but about using every method available: freezing, canning, curing, drying. Each has its place, and each adds another safety net. The work now ensures that in February we can still taste the brightness of summer.
Why This Matters
All of this work is about more than food. It is about security, independence, and resilience. Food in the pantry means fewer trips to the store, less money funneled into systems that profit from dependence, and more freedom to eat what we have raised ourselves. It means the value of the land and our labor does not evaporate with the first frost.
When you invest in preserving what you grow or raise, you are also preserving your autonomy. You are making sure that the choices you made in June still pay dividends in December. You are putting a buffer between your family and the fragile systems of shipping, supply chains, and price hikes.
Questions for You
How are you preparing for the shorter days ahead? Do you have food in storage that will carry you through the season? Have you tried preservation methods like water glassing, canning, or freezing? What would it mean for your household if you could eat from your own shelves instead of someone else’s supply chain?
We ask these questions not to offer a single answer but to encourage reflection. Every jar of beans, every bucket of eggs, every cut of rabbit in our freezer represents not just calories but a step toward freedom. For us, the winding down of the season is not an ending but the beginning of another kind of work, the work of holding on to what we have built.
Looking Ahead
In the next few weeks we will stop selling eggs for the season. That leaves a question: how will folks get their eggs this winter? How will they get their vegetables and their meat? Will they hit the store on the way home from work and hope that shelves are full?
The eggs under fluorescent lights at the supermarket are already washed, which strips away the natural protective coating that keeps bacteria out. Once washed, they cannot be water glassed or stored long-term. They have been handled, packaged, shipped, and chilled. You cannot build security with food like that because it was never meant to last. It was meant to move quickly through a system that makes you dependent on coming back again and again.
The store is not an option for preservation. It is not designed to give you resilience. It is designed to keep you buying. Out here, every bucket of eggs, every jar of beans, and every cut of meat in the freezer is proof that there is another way to prepare for winter.