Rebekah Harmon

To post calculations differently, since this BB requires poundage, I've summed up all the types of food thus:

390 pounds of live food, including potatoes, sunchokes and parsnips, stored in a root cellar, which has proven successful for 4 years now.

210 pounds of meat in the freezer, including 168 pounds of chicken and 42 pounds of venison.

Of the dehydrated foods, 49 pounds and 3 Oz. Of meat were dried into jerky.
43.7 pounds of fruits were dried,
7.7 pounds of saved dried herbs were accounted for,
61 pounds and 14.3 Oz. Of beans were saved,
1.85 pounds of dried noodles were stored,
129 sheets of fruit leather, totaling 95lbs, 13oz.
8.15lbs. Of seeds were saved (pumpkin/primrose/su flower, etc)
16.9 pounds of grains were stored.

Freeze dried foods, after drying are very light, but had to be saved in jars anyways. This just includes the food weight:
11.8lbs of pumpkin,
11.25 lbs. Of corn
9 lbs. Of yogurt
14 lbs. Of tomatoes and fruit.

4.51lbs of tallow was saved
And 10.5 lbs of honey from my own bees

The rest was canned, and I think its odd to calculate canned food by weight. Never-the-less, here's poundage of canned goods, minus the bottles' weights. (Being over 350 canning bottles, that calls for seriously sturdy shelves!)
22.8 pounds of soup/broth
118.25 pounds of juice/syrup
31.1 pounds of firecider,
186.3 lbs. Of sauces,
68 lbs. Of pie filling,
12.7 lbs. Of fish that was canned,
31.2 lbs. Of whole/sliced fruits in syrup,
506 pounds of jams or jellies,
40 lbs, 10oz of pickled foods.

Whew! Thats as much number crunching as tax season!! Don't make me do more, I already feel like Dumbledore, drinking Voldermort's potion 🤮 😆.

Oh my gosh! You're right. I didn't notice Cherish checked seeds out twice! Well, since the last 3 weeks, two more people have checked out seeds. There's a big library craft party tomorrow, too, and there may be even more seeds checked out tomorrow.  Ill add more pictures if that happens. Its not really the season for garden planning. February will probably wipe the library out 😁

I also got feedback that its hard to see all 12 packets in some of my pictures. I'm adding another post, since I've nearly reached the media limit on the last post.

Hey Alex! I wish I had avoided mylar bags at the start of this project. I kept freeze dried foods, totaling a good 50,000 calories in them!! Those calories had to be redacted.

I do have a strange regret. This challenge eventually led me to look at a pile of local produce, like a box of pears for instance, and think "whats the highest-calorie way I can preserve these?"

My go-to method before these past two years was to freeze or dry or freeze dry foods in their plain state. But thats the lowest-calorie form possible.

I know my family will eat ALL the jelly and fruit leather I made. It might take us a few years to go through all the syrups.

I don't eat fried foods or sugar regularly, so I won't personally enjoy the jams/jellies, or several of the meals I made in the 800 plates BB. In fact, my family has been getting a little chubbier, since working on these BBs, because I'm often serving really dense foods, or working on preserving food, and they kids have boring old spaghetti or other junk, just because mommy had been in the kitchen all day and is too tired for making a nice dinner.

We are shifting gears now, to more slender meals. Sometimes that means local options. Sometimes not. Hopefully we can reverse some of the damage done by my long-standing attention to high-caloroe food production.

Hello, Permies Staff!

This HUGE BB is finally finished! Here is the thread which documents all the foods preserved.

Here are the totals:

Canned goods

Including Syrups, Juice, Sauces, Salsa, Pasta Sauce, Jams, Jellies, and Pie Fillings of many, many species of fruits and veggies, for 405,594 calories, a big chunk of the 1 million (40.5%)
Of these, there were 22.8 lbs of stews/broth,
118.25 lbs of syrups/juices,
186.3 lbs of sauces,
68 lbs. Of pie filling,
12.7 lbs. Of fish that were canned,
31.1 lbs. Of fire cider bottled,
506 lbs. Of jams or jellies canned,
31.1 lbs. Of fruits canned whole or sliced,
And 40lbs. 10oz. Of pickled foods bottled.
*all these weights are minus the bottles weights, and since there were over 350 of those, this alp represents a sturdy set of shelves in my basement holding it all up!!

Dehydrated

Including Berries, Pears, Herbs, Beans, Noodles, and Jerky 74,375 calories, only 7.4%.
Including: 49.2lbs. Of meat turned into jerky,
43.7 lbs. Of dried fruit,
7.7 lbs of herbs,
61lbs 14.3 Oz of beans dried and stored,
1.85 lbs. Of noodles,
95 lbs. Of fruit leather,
16.9 lbs. Of stored grains

Freeze Dried

I freeze dried apricots, apples, tomatoes, corn, pumpkin, yogurt, and pie filling for 43,649 calories. (4.3 %) I have freeze dried many more calories and saved them in mylar bags which didn't count (dang!) Nearly 40lbs.

Live Storage

Including potatoes, parsnips, sunchokes all stored in a root cellar, two different seasons. 136,821 calories (13%) 390lbs!

Seeds

Including sunflower, pumpkin and primrose seeds: 25,120 calories.  Plus 6,000 cal of flaxcrackers (3.1%) 8.15lbs.

Freezer

including chicken and deer to make up the 100,000 calorie limit! (10%) 210lbs.

There were far more than 24 species of foods preserved for this BB, including Deer, Chicken, Elk, Primrose, Pumpkin, Sunflower, Duck eggs, Cucumbers, Cabbage, Wheat, Beans, Herbs of many varieties, Pears, Strawberries, Elderberries, Autumn Olives, American black nightshade, Tomatoes, Sunchokes, Parsnips, Potatoes, Little barley, Apple, Corn, Apricots, Flaxseeds, Peaches, Carrots, Crabapple, Plums, Grapes, and Cherries.
Each post documents where the foods came from. I raised a large chunk of them. My family also hunted or were given hunted animals from the local area, I stored foods from neighbors and foraged areas within two miles of my home. I bought foods from the local greenhouse, a better-than-organic farm, from which I often biked or walked. Finally, I picked fruit and tomatoes and gleaned potatoes from neighbors in my hometown.

Doing an analysis of the types of foods I preserved:

Canned goods

Including Syrups, Juice, Sauces, Salsa, Pasta Sauce, Jams, Jellies, and Pie Fillings of many, many species of fruits and veggies, for 405,594 calories, a big chunk of the 1 million (40.5%)

Dehydrated

Including Berries, Pears, Herbs, Beans, Noodles, and Jerky 74,375 calories, only 7.4%.

Freeze Dried

I freeze dried apricots, apples, tomatoes, corn, pumpkin, yogurt, and pie filling for 43,649 calories. (4.3 %) I have freeze dried many more calories and saved them in mylar bags which didn't count (dang!)

Pickled

Including krauts, cucumber pickles, and eggs! 2660 calories. A tiny amount!! But pickles are low-calorie foods. (.2%)

Live Storage

Including potatoes, parsnips, sunchokes all stored in a root cellar, two different seasons. 136,821 calories (13%)

Seeds

Including sunflower, pumpkin and primrose seeds: 25,120 calories. (2.5%)

Freezer

including chicken and deer to make up the 100,000 calorie limit! (10%)

Outside the BB, I preserved many more animals in the freezer than the 100,000 calorie limit. Just because I've been asked about how much of our preservation efforts are hunted/foraged foods, in the 2 seasons I've been working on this BB, there were probably about another 233,500 calories of hunted/raised meats that were frozen. This included another deer, four turkeys, about 8 ducks, 20 rabbits, and another 100lbs. of elk meat that didn't turn into jerky--yet. These two years, I did process more animals than I have in the past, but I think this will continue, due to my butchering and hunting skills improving!

I have officially preserved 1,001,771 calories! Of permie-approved, local food.
Served over 800 plates of delicious, homestead-fresh meals.
Shot and butchered 5 game birds.
And made a KICK-HINEY seed library; a true gift to my community.
That means ALL the work for the BBs required for PEP2 is complete. Now its only a matter of approvals and accepted badge requests.

HOORAY!

Dear Permies Staff team,
May I present to you the 35 points required for the Straw Badge in Foraging?

1 point from extras on the 'prepare a dish' list from the sand badge:
Prepare A Dish Burdock
Make A Dish Purslane

1.5 point from the extras on the dry list from the sand badge:
Dry List Rose Hips
Dry List Wild Mint
Dry List Nettles

2 points from extra fresh harvesting from the sand badge:
Fresh Elderberries
Fresh Bush Cherries
Fresh Highbush Cranberries
Fresh Service Berries

2.5 points from extra teas from the sand badge:
Rose Tea
Pine Needle Tea
Birch Tea
Linden Flower tea
Sumac Tea

Save seeds from 6 species of wild plants --2 points

And a second round: Save seeds for 6 species of wild plants --2 more points

Catch, butcher, preserve 5 lbs of fish --4 points

Catch, butcher, and preserve one large mammal-an elk --8 points

Catch, butcher, and preserve 5 wild game birds --4 points

Guerilla Plant 500 Woody Perennials --8 points

Thank you so much for looking over these BBs and for your time/talents/love!

And now, my friends, I have passed 1 million calories by 1,771!

YAHOO!! I'VE OFFICIALLY PRESERVED ONE MILLION CALORIES!🕺🤸‍♀️🏋‍♀️

My family loves homade noodles! I make them more seldom than they would like. Its a great big amount of work! But also a great way to store calories. Here I made a triple batch of my normal 1-gallon soup amount. Hopefully, that will make three meals easier, going into mad-basketball season here!!
1 dozen eggs 750calories
12 cups flour 5,460cal
6,210 calories total.

The last of our pumpkins! We made some pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and freeze dried the rest. (Also drying the pumpkin seeds)

16c. Of pumpkin, 784 calories
4c. Seeds 1200 calories.
1984 total