Homestead Nutrition

Many of you know I recently preserved 1 Million calories. For most, thats a whopper of a project, but its pretty normal for me to produce and preserve a large chunk of food each year. Big family: lots of eaters!!

There was one unsatisfying thing to me about all the processing involved in that project: the focus on the  calories. While calories will keep a body alive, its far from the only metric important to a homesteader.  While French fries and pancakes are delicious, so much more is needed to fuel all the tasks to keep farm systems running.

I love producing food that nurtures my family! I also am enamored with the idea of producing everything needed to maintain optimum health! I'm often scheming new things to grow that eliminates groceries I buy. Since I am a macro-counting health coach, I'm SUPER curious to see how much of a balanced diet I can grow or forage from my community.

I am not sure I am understanding the point you are trying to make.

I have not preserved a million calories so maybe I just don't get it.

If I were to preserve a million calories I would preserve and grow foods that I like.

Rebekah said, I prefer foods that are naturally low in sugar and fats, and higher in nutrients.

Did this make preserving a million calories harder?  Or take longer?

Great question, Anne. Sorry I got interrupted with kid drama before I could finish that opening idea.  

One example of value contention I felt when I focused on calories was: I brought home a lovely box of apples. Usually, I dry and freeze dry them. There is not added sugar or fat necessary for this. But its very low in calories. Most homestead produced things are! Instead, I would make sweetened things for the million-caloroe challenge.

While my family will happily eat jam and jelly and apple pie filling, I would rather preserve things that count for a serving of fruit instead of dessert.

Based on Dr. Michael Greggor's Daily Dozen, my normal family table faire supports vitality, mental clarity, healthy weight and blood sugar, and adequate micro and macro profiles in which no nutritionist could poke holes.

Every day, we want: 60-75g of protein (RDI for ladies is a minimum of 47g a day for a 5 foot, 5inch height. Gentlemen need a higher range, between 50 and 75 based on height and muscle mass) a strapping homestead axe-slinger could aim for 100g. Unless a person is a body builder, 60-75g of protein a day is healthy. Whatever the source.

We also want: at least 3 servings of fruits a day, preferably including a cup of berries as one of them.

Another focus is vegetables, with 5 servings a day as the target, including 1 serving of leafy green, and 1 cruciferous veggie. (From the broccoli, cabbage, radish family)

Three servings of whole grains a day supports healthy carbohydrates intake. Fiber and plenty of micronutrients also come from whole grains/potatoes/corn/squash.

Beyond these plate-filling staples, we optimize our health by including Omega-3 fats every day. Three servings of nuts/seeds is a cancer-risk-reducing target. Servings are quite small, a TBSP for seeds, 1/4c. For nuts (Or 1oz. Or about 25g)

Spices and herbs of all kinds also make food wonderful. But there aren't specific goals I am exploring with them at this time, other than growing and using some.

Calculate these numbers by 365 days, and you get a list like:
1095 servings of protein (aiming for 20-25g per each)
1095 servings of fruits (330ish being berries/cherries)
1825 servings of veggies, including 330ish greens, 330ish kale or radishes or cabbage.
1095 servings of whole grains
1095 servings of nuts/seeds.

I wanna see how many of these I can produce or forage in one year, so keep tabs on this thread to see how it goes in 2026.

I picked a whole bunch of greens for my breakfast. This is chard and beet greens and yellow dock greens. 2 cups of fresh greens is a serving of veggies.

My lettuce are ready for thinning.

One serving, thinned out, and topped with a cup of broccoli sprouts (thats another serving of vegetables.)

We have more duck eggs in the spring than any other time of year. When I get a couple dozen, I pickle some to last til later in the season when there's less eggs. (Or none)
Each duck egg is 8-9g of protein, so 3 of them gives an adequate "serving" for a meal. (Assuming you get one serving of similar size at 3 meals in the day. My target each day is 60g, so 20g at each meal.)
1 dozen duck eggs is 4 servings of protein.

I just returned from an amazing Spring Break, spent with my brother in Northern Utah. While I do laundry and wash eggs, and all of the things that need to be done after a trip, I want to catch up with you 😊

I took my brother a dozen duck eggs and a half gallon of fire cider! since he graciously hosted myself and our of my children. I love sharing gifts I make or produce from my heart! Do you? What gifts do you share?

Since northern Utah is a few climate hardiness zones warmer than my hometown, my kids and I really enjoyed all the greenery and flowers/trees in bloom!

We foraged and ate redbud blossoms, dandelion flowers, dock greens, and -my favorite this time of year!- elm seeds (also called samaras).

We also enjoyed a neighbor's blossoming tree: Japanese flowering crab apple, I think? That made these carnation-like pink flowers that smelled like cherry cotton candy!!! My girls loved them in their hair:

As soon as the elm trees bud open in the spring, I start munching on them every day! I even save them by freeze drying them. Regular dehydrating takes enough time for them to turn brown and un-delightful. But freeze-dried, they make crunchy toppings for salads and breakfast.

Elm trees have wonderful medicinal properties. They are mucilaginous, like okra and marshmallow. Many herbalists harvest their inner bark when trees are cut down. (Harvesting them alive kills them!) But the seeds also lend the same benefits. So I will be freeze drying the first "crop" of the year soon.

I ran out of potatoes in the house larder. Time to bother the root cellar! Last fall, I saved 200#s of potatoes and 50# or so of sunchokes. Uncovering them from their nests of straw, I made a shepherd's pie dinner and a breakfast hash with them.

This is a pretty standard "hunger gap" breakfast at my house. Elk sausage, which my daughter shot and I butchered/seasoned. Mixed in with potatoes and sunchokes, covered in a duck egg and dressed with sauerkraut!
Protein: 29g from half a cup of sausage, 1 duck egg
Whole grain: half a cup of russet potatoes
Veg: sauerkraut
Fruit: your choice of frozen berries, dried fruit, or canned fruit. Today, it was freeze dried apricots.

A balanced and healthy breakfast that is completely produced "in house."

For lunch, a lovely mess of greens from my greenhouse, lavished with an applesauce/vinegar/tahini dressing, topped with roasted edamame. The salad is escorted by sourdough bread I make at home from local, organic flour, adorned with honey from my own bees. I didnt grow the edamame, but I am excited to try growing some this year. Same with the wheat!
Protein: roasted edamame 20g in 1/3cup. 5 more grams from the bread.
Whole grain: 1 slice of bread.  
Veg: 2 cups mixed salad greens
Fruit: applesauce

Its also a good day to harvest chard from the greenhouse! Blessed with a prodigious bunch, I cut and washed chard and beets.
Probably 4 servings of greens. Plus a serving of beets, three of them, not pictured

While I was away, Spring sprung! My lovage was only three inches high when I left. Now its huge! I'm adding it to breakfast. What else do you do with lovage? Pickle it??

I ate it alongside my blueberry breakfast. So tender! So pretty!!

This is a blueberry/black bean bowl, with the following mix-ins: elderberry syrup I made last fall, flax/evening primrose seeds I grew and harvested last year. Elm seeds are next, like I mentioned a few days ago. Finally, a tablespoon of almond butter for rich, cream flavor.

Protein: 1 c. Blackbeans for 15g protein, 3 more grams from almond butter, 1.5g more from seeds, 4g from elm seeds! 23.5g total
Whole grain: I'm counting the elm seeds
Veg: lovage
Fruit: blueberries

I eat a cup of berries most days, making it one of my top grocery items in amount and cost. Two years ago, I planted honeyberries and serviceberries (blueberries dont grow well in my alkaline, lava soil.) And I'm hopeful for a crop from these other blue varieties of berries this year! 😁🫐

The last three years, we gave produced a metric ton of produce each year, raised about 500 pounds of meat and produced 3000 eggs. Last year I passed my first million calories, and since my food forest isn’t at full production yet, the numbers will keep going up.
We live southeast of San Diego in growzone 10b. We grow food all year round. In total I grow about 150 different plants, including fruit, berries, grains, herbs, vegetables, spices, tea and coffee. Since my passion is herbs I grow over 50 different kinds of herbs and spices.
I get your problem with fruit and berries. Most homesteads drown in fruit during the summer months and then have to preserve them. When I planned our forest garden, I focused on the harvest times. The goal is to have fresh fruits/berries all year round. November and December has so far been when I didn’t have fresh fruit, but I planted Sapote last year, that will produce during those 2 months. As for berries, I grow 8 different kinds of strawberries, which gives us strawberries 7 months out of the year. I also grow both Hass and Fuerte Avocados, since each one covers 6 months of the year. This will eventually mean we have fresh avocados all year round.
While we do eat seasonally, I do preserve a lot of food. We bought a freeze dryer 4 years ago and it’s a blessing to have. Here I preserve whole eggs, egg whites and eggs yolks, which makes it easier to use them up, when we don’t get any eggs. We have both chickens and ducks, but both take time off twice a year, instead of the normal once a year. They take time off during our hottest season and then again when the days are short.
Some crops I don’t grow every year, since I usually end up growing way more than we can eat in a year. 2 years ago I for example grew 800 pounds of pumpkins and winter squash.
My focus have always been on nutrition, but also on cost. Now that I only have 1 child living at home, we are transitioning to growing more food for our livestock instead of more food for us. I also grow over 50 different kinds of herbs, teas and spices. Both the medicinal kind, and the culinary kind. I do this, since herbs are extremely expensive and the quality you can buy, just doesn’t have the same quality and freshness as the ones I grow here and freeze dry.
The total value of last years crops were 12 thousand dollars, and I would have gotten more, if I hadn’t lost all of my corn to rodents.
But back to the calories. Avocados contains a lot of oil, and it can be extracted pretty easily. I also get oil from sunflowers and pumpkin seeds. We have bees, so those give us sugar, and I have been experimenting with sugar beets. As for coffee, my coffee trees are thriving, but haven’t bloomed yet, so until then I use chicory and we do buy some coffee. I have planted a cashew tree, since we are both gluten and dairy free due to allergies. We also get pecans from our neighbors large tree.
Citrus are canned as juice or used fresh, their peels are used to make extracts.
My point is also, that in theory we only need to buy salt, but there is a limit to how many vegetables people can eat. I am the only one who mostly eat what we produce, the others still buy beef and pork and convenience items. I do buy bread sometimes, and almond flour. Now that our family has gotten smaller, the plan is to open a farm store, where we can sell and trade.

That is so cool Ulla! I hope I can next as cool as yoi when I grow up! 😁 I'm on the path. I dont need to grow everything. But I think its a beautiful goal to progress towards.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:That is so cool Ulla! I hope I can next as cool as yoi when I grow up! 😁 I'm on the path. I dont need to grow everything. But I think its a beautiful goal to progress towards.

I don’t think I need to grow everything, but due to illness I usually get sick if I eat food we bought in the store. It is  one of many reasons we started homesteading. Now it’s so Peter can retire early. My love is burned out, but we need the money he brings in right now. So, that’s why we have worked to hard getting things set up. We need the extra income for him to retire. I have done market research and it looks like there aren’t many who sells freeze dried, or fresh locally grown herbs and spices. I have made my own extracts for years, so those we are also going to sell. It’s a goal we have been working towards for 10 years.
Anyway happy gardening.

Amazing, Ulla! Go get 'em!

Enjoying lunch today! I already ate the dandelions before the picture....
But more greens and beets are pumping our of the greenhouse. Salads every day! Ah, my happy place.
Protein: marinated white bean patties
Vegetable: beets and salad greens mixed
Fruit: apple
While grain: sourdough, whole wheat roll (Kate Downham's recipe)
Mostly local, much of it made/grown by me. That's awesome homestead nutrition!!

Rebekah i would love to hear more of your preserving processes and which ones you think take the most or least time.

Growing an apple is essentially zero work with a mature tree but depending on how you do it preserving them is an entire season of work!

Potatoes on the other hand you just box up and they store so well.

I appreciate your earlier points on trying to produce macros not just calories, but i think as long as society at large exists I have the option to trade some of my money for more free time in the year and buy those things that would take a lot of time.

The problem of course is I'm still in the planning phases and i totally lack any of your experience!

What preservation methods do you find the most valuable in terms of storing up large amounts of the food youve produced for very little time?  Are there machines that make it super simple? Should i ensure i have a working freeze drier, air drier, canner, and/or vacuum sealer?

Hey Daniel, I appreciate your question! I will try to give you enough food for thought to help you make decisions.
I heard your question like: which preservation gadgets are the highest priority?
The answer depends heavily on who you're feeding, what kinds of foods you're preserving, and taste preferences. Its also influenced by which gadgets you can get second-hand, and which have to be bought brand new.
Do you live in an apple climate? And have apple trees? Or plan to? Or have sharing neighbors with big trees already? What other fruit trees and bushes are in your neighborhood? What grows wild?
Are you going to have ample freezer space? Power capabilities to keep a freezer year-round? I don't know what I would do without a big upright freezer that fits a whole cookie sheet of fruit easily. I use my three freezers in food preservation more than any other device. (I have 8 people in my family! Probably most homesteads dont need three.) Its super convenient to be able to store fresh-picked produce til I have time to do something with it. I've had trays of elderberries, pears, corn, autumn berries and parsnips in tue freezer all at once-waiting for a Saturday that wasnt full of sports games 😆 Its literally a pause button. After freezing, I might make syrup, bag it for continued freezing,  sauce it, or freeze dry it.

I also do a lot of canning, but rarely pressure canning. Unless you want to can meats or tomato sauces and other acidic foods, its a gadget that's low-priority in the beginning.

I can mostly jams, jellies, syrups and salsa. I am feeding little ones. If I were preserving for, say, two adults, I wouldn't use a giant water-bath canner. A big regular-cooking-pot would do for small batches of 3-4 pints. I do think a steam-juicer is worth it if you'll do a lot of syrups.

A root cellar is imperative for live storage, like you cited for potatoes, carrots, sunchokes, parsnips, Turnips, etc. I have a big storage room in my basement AND a couple of shallow root cellars for potatoes/apples to be stored separately. Hopefully next year, I will get to build the walk-in root cellar I want. But for now, I've gotten by on small spaces anyone with a city backyard could dig.

If you've got cherries; bush or tree/sweet cherries, a pitter that can do multiple sizes would be stellar. Mine is a hand-me-down, and only does big cherries. But its worked for a decade.

I have an old sauce mill from my grandma. I only use it once or twice a year. I mostly use my counter top blender or immersion blender for sauce-ing. Some people use the same mill for tomato sauce. I freeze dry my tomatoes instead.

The final question involves dehydrating versus freeze drying. If you like the texture of dehydrated apples, peaches and apricots (or mangoes and persimmon and bananas depending on your climate) then its an easy way to preserve large amounts of food at once. You could set up a solar dehydrator that can hold MASSIVE amounts of food, like you might get when you spend an afternoon picking your neighbor's tree. I have the big Excalibur, which has 9 square sheets. And I still often get out old windows screens when I'm doing large batches of herbs or something. They wait their turn for the dehydrator.

My kids enjoy fruit leather, which requires the extra silicone sheets. They don't really like sliced dehydrated sliced apples. They DO like dehydrated sliced pears! A spiralizer hand crank makes that process a joy (as opposed to hand-slicing.)

I freeze dry an abundance of fruits each year. I love the crispy apricots, for example. Sliced apples and pears are AMAZINGLY crisp. Freeze dried corn, eggs, even yogurt are also nice. But, by far, the reason I love my freeze dryer the most is for the tomatoes. When processing tomatoes sauce, marinara, salsa, and especially paste, usually there's a lot of simmering involved. I have used my crock pot for that, too. But I almost ALWAYS burn it. 30+ hours of a low-boil and... watching a pot is not my strong suit.

Instead, I dice and freeze dry ALL my tomatoes. I then reconstitute with as much water as needed for paste, sauce, or just throw them in soups/chilli. No blanching, no saucing, no burning, no canning.

The downside for a freeze dryer is the energy and motor oil required for each small batch. Two days of drying for very wet foods. If lowering your carbon footprint is a goal of yours, a freeze dryer doesnt help with that. At least it can be done completely without plastic. A vacuum sealer, on the other hand, uses exclusively plastic. So you'd have to decide if that bothers you.

Just a few more preserving thoughts:

I have all of the toys/gadgets I've mentioned. Plus some. They take up a huge shelf in my attic when theyre not being used, which is.... most of the year. Plus, all the jars, whether full of food or waiting to be used again in the next preservation season, take up oodles of shelf space.  Not everyone has the space for that many gadgets.

But because I have them all, it allows me LOTS of freedom. A common scenario in the fall is that I come home with a truck load of apples/pears/tomatoes/corn/potatoes/apricots/green beans. I have also ordered cases of food from local orchards before. Last year, my neighbor with a GIANT pear tree told me to come get as much as I wanted. I first filled my dehydrator. Then my freeze dryer. Then a few trays in the freezer. Then I made pear sauce. Then I canned some slices. Refilling the dehydrator and freeze dryer as there was room. Enjoying them fresh. Every day til I was sick of pears! I got to them all before they went bad because I had multiple ways to preserve them at once.

So much to consider! Take it one food item at a time. And ask: how do other people preserve this food? How would I like to preserve it? What gadgets are absolutely necessary for that process? 🙂 hope this helps!

I use all of those methods too, but my favorite way to preserve will always be fermenting. I ferment Meyer lemons, cabbages, radishes, garlic, ginger, collard greens, onions, green plums, root vegetables, mustard leaves and so much more.
Fermented foods will last 9+ months in the fridge, and if we have leftovers, when we start a new years ferments, they can se canned or freeze dried. We love freeze dried fermented foods. They add so much flavor to soups, and easily rehydrate with no loss of probiotics. They are also essential for anyone with stomach problems, since they help heal up the gut and create a good environment for digestion. Our favorites are Red Kimchi, White Kimchi and Korean white kimchi. Sour kraut and beet kraut, and the fermented Meyer lemons. My favorite creamy salad dressing or dip are made with cashew sour cream, whole fermented Meyer lemon slices with the seeds removed, salt and fresh thyme or parsley. It also goes very well with chicken.

More amazing eggsthis week! My ducks are so good to me. I'm going to try freeze drying them next. The eggs, not the ducks 😆

My daughter and I have been exploring ways to eat our wonderful, sourdough, whole wheat waffles without syrup. Blood sugar balance, you know. She and I both like almond/hazelnut butter with un-frozen raspberries on top!

Love this thread, you are doing great things!

Lovage may be my favorite garden plant. It’s the one herb that reliably comes back strong year after year with no work or fuss. I use it in everything, anywhere parsley or cilantro might be called for. Lovage tabouleh. Lovage guacamole.

I also layer lovage leaves in salt to make a flavored salt that is great for all savory uses. The lovage seeds are a good seasoning also, similar to dill or cumin.

Mk Neal wrote:Love this thread, you are doing great things!

Lovage may be my favorite garden plant. It’s the one herb that reliably comes back strong year after year with no work or fuss. I use it in everything, anywhere parsley or cilantro might be called for. Lovage tabouleh. Lovage guacamole.

I also layer lovage leaves in salt to make a flavored salt that is great for all savory uses. The lovage seeds are a good seasoning also, similar to dill or cumin.

Have tried growing lovage every year previous five, and it hasn't come forth.  This year put some seeds in hydroponic system to get started, and so far, only one has popped, though seems a weak start so far.  Tried from different sources too.  Any pointers to get it going?  I'd really like to have it going in the garden.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:Many of you know I recently preserved 1 Million calories. For most, thats a whopper of a project, but its pretty normal for me to produce and preserve a large chunk of food each year. Big family: lots of eaters!!

There was one unsatisfying thing to me about all the processing involved in that project: the focus on the  calories. While calories will keep a body alive, its far from the only metric important to a homesteader.  While French fries and pancakes are delicious, so much more is needed to fuel all the tasks to keep farm systems running.

I love producing food that nurtures my family! I also am enamored with the idea of producing everything needed to maintain optimum health! I'm often scheming new things to grow that eliminates groceries I buy. Since I am a macro-counting health coach, I'm SUPER curious to see how much of a balanced diet I can grow or forage from my community.

One thing that seems to help is thinking in layers. For example, staple crops can cover energy needs, but then there is space for nutrient dense additions like leafy greens, herbs, and perennial plants.