this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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I would think other preservation methods are easier to go with really. Salt, dehydrate, smoke, pickle, fermemt.
For many things, yes. Canning can be done for some things (although you want to be really sure about what you're doing; you can kill yourself pretty fast with botulism if you do it wrong), freezing is good for other things (although not great if you have power outages). If you're trying to live off the land, you do need to be aware that certain parasites are not adequately dealt with by salt curing, smoking, dehydration, or even freezing; feral pigs and bear both have trichinosis, and must be thoroughly cooked to be safe. In wild populations, the parasite has been demonstrated to be highly resistant to freezing, etc.
Dried, etc. things should be vacuum sealed with desiccants and oxygen absorbers for maximum preservation. I test the e.g. apples that I've dried every so often (I live in an area with a lot of orchards; apples can be very cheap when you buy them by the bushel directly from the orchard), and as of this year, the apples I dried six years ago are still good.
One thing that freeze drying can be very good for is complete meals. E.g., if you make a stock pot full of jambalaya, you can freeze dry it in individual portion sizes, vacuum seal it in 9mil mylar, and you've got a meal that should be good for 10+ years.
For anyone that's seriously considering a freeze dryer, check this video out. Yeah, I still want one, but seriously, it can take a lot to make it practical. I'm not enamored of the control system that they use; a blended automatic and manual control system would probably work better than something that supposedly takes the guesswork out of it for you.
I think I would preserve apples in the form of cider. Perhaps fortified with some apple brandy to help it last longer.
But really isn't it kinda unnecessary to preserve most things for multiple years?
Well, I hope it's not necessary. But you don't know until you actually do need to, and once you need enough for multiple years it's too late to start stockpiling.