Old Way Food Storage In the Northcountry

(unedited transcript from voice recording)

            When I first moved into the wilderness I wondered what I was going to eat, particularly through those long sub-Arctic winters. That was thirty years ago and I was young and headstrong. So I took the knowledge I gained from Boy Scouts, wild food workshops, my early times with Native People, and most notably, the childhood guidance of my Mother who grew up eating wild foods.

            I found food alright, in abundance! Meat, fish, berries, wild rice, greens, nuts, tubers -- I brought food home in such quantity that much of it rotted before I could either eat it or get it properly stored. Those who say the Northcountry is barren have obviously never been there. For example, one warm, sunny afternoon I gathered four gallons of Juneberries — about 3 ½ gallons more than I could possibly eat before they turned to wine. So I laid them out on drying mats and they started to shrivel down nicely. But by day four they were still not completely dry and they were molding. What had I done wrong?

            By watching the next batch more closely I came to realize that the berries, which I left out overnight, were reabsorbing moisture from the cool damp air. I quickly learned that speed in drying was of the essence, so I would bring the berries in at night and on cooler cloudy days supplement solar drying energy with fire. Now that I was truly living on my own I soon developed the attitude of abundance that my Mother had. She seems to be an exception in the civilized world which generally functions from an attitude of scarcity. Like my Mother, the Native People I knew were rather relaxed about food gathering, whereas the back-to-the-landers and homesteaders I knew were mostly hell-bent on ferreting away as much as they could. Many were anxious as to whether or not they would have enough to the next harvest season, and a few of them clearly qualified as hoarders.

            Funny thing, if anyone was to run out of food it would be the ferreter-hoarders rather than my Native friends who took a more casual approach to food storage. What was the difference? The hoarders subsisted mainly by farming, and the low stress food folk—the Natives—were subsisting primarily by hunting and gathering. I knew about the abundance of wild foods; was I wrong in assuming that like garden fare it had to be preserved and stored away in order to be available? It turned out the answer was more involved than a straight yes or no. Over the next years I learned that Native People took the term Earth Mother literally. As with a child trusting her human mother to provide his needs for sustenance, Native People trusted in the Earth Mother, and they trusted also in Her to preserve and store most of that food for them. As I became more relaxed and trusting in Her I was provided for as well. I needed to give in to Her in order to receive from Her, I needed to surrender my control in order to be open to Her gifting. Here are the storage and preservation methods and non-methods I learned:

1.   Give it away As contrary as this may at first seem to our goal of storing food, it actually works very well within a group of like-minded people. Natives live by the concept that “giving is receiving”; they know that they will be provided for as they provide. This does not necessarily mean that if I give you something you will give me something back. It means that when we open ourselves to the flow of life we become immersed in that flow. We may share with someone who we will never see again, and we may receive from some source that we never expected. But that does not mean our generosity may return from a perfectly logical source as well. For example, if my traps were blessed and I now have more dried fish than I could reasonably store or possibly eat, I might gift my surplus to Fast Deer knowing her children will relish them in the long White Season, and neither asking for or receiving anything in return. Perhaps in the following Green Season her brother will come from upriver with more blueberries than he could possible dry for his own needs. She might reply to him, “My brother, I am honored that you thought of the children and me. These good berries will serve us well, and yet, you have brought more than we need. Tamarack helped us through the Great Winter with fish from his traps; I would ask that you take half of this bounteous gift to him.”

The Saami (Scandinavian Laplanders or Reindeer People) call this form of giving osuus, which means literally to share what one has. ¹⁴ The Hoan Bushmen of Botswana, South Africa call it -cu ²⁴ and the Nama Hottentots of Namibia refer to it as màa.¹⁶

2.   Let The Mother hold it I will let a hibernating animal be unless/until I need her. She is being kept very well and with much less effort than I could. In my area tubers and bulbs can be gathered throughout the White Season, as the thick blanket of snow keeps the ground from freezing. I gather wild greens as I need them often grazing on the spot rather than going to the trouble of bringing them home and preparing them when they go directly from plant to mouth just as does every animal. If the Geese hunters on my lake are providing me with too many eggs for my immediate use I will let a few of them become goslings and come back for them later. Some medicinals are better healers when fresh so I note their locations and come back for them as I need them rather than go through the trouble of drying and storing them. When I gardened I would leave carrots and other root crops in the garden, cover them with mulch, and dig them up as I needed them.

3.   Storage pits I use two kinds of pit, the earth pit and the lodge pit. The earth pit is the Native version of the root cellar. It is much less work than constructing a root cellar, as it is simply a shallow pit in which root vegetables are buried. I will dig my pit the length of my arm deep then lay in successive layer of vegetables making sure none touch. I cover each layer with dirt, again making sure that the next layer will not come in contact with the previous layer. This helps to prevent mold and rot, a common root cellar problem. Rotting vegetables often cause the neighbors they are in contact with to rot also, and the open air of a root cellar allows mold spores to travel throughout. In the earth pit each vegetable is isolated from the others by dirt which largely eliminates spreading rot. For security reasons (don’t put all your eggs in one basket) I prefer several small pits, say an arms length in width to one large one, and I fill them only to about a hand’s length from the top surface so that rodents cannot easily get at them. My lodge pits are roughly the same size only they are lined with bark for dry storage. For security reasons, and for ease of access, I locate them under my lodge floor, with one pit directly under my sleeping spot to help keep it from freezing. In that pit I will keep drinking water and fresh produce; in the other pits I will keep dried foods, nuts, and fats and oils. The pits’ trap doors are covered with fur rugs and marsh grass bedding so the existence of the pits is not apparent to visitors.

4.   Hang frozen The Natives of my area will wait until after freeze-up to hunt and trap for their winter meat supply. These animals are hung whole and skin-on to freeze up and out of the reach of scavengers with chunks being chopped off as needed. I learned the hard way why the hide is left on as hanging only keeps the carcasses out of the reach of most scavengers. I didn’t see the reason for letting a good deer hide go to waste, so I skinned my first winter deer in order to tan the hide. Well, the flying scavengers — chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and gray jays (which we affectionately call camp robbers) — claimed that carcass as their winter food supply. They were convinced I skinned it for them. Fruits and vegetables can be left out to freeze also, but only for a short period of time as they do not keep as well as meat. They don’t stand up well to freezing and thawing, and dehydrate (freezer-burn) easily.

5.   Dry This is perhaps the easiest and best long-term storage method because, other than short-term freezing, it best retains nutrient value, it greatly reduces bulk — up to 75% — and dried food can keep for years if properly stored. Furthermore, once properly dried and stored they take no further attention or energy input. This method more than any other in the wilderness allows for foods to be gathered when they are abundant and makes them available throughout the rest of the year. Foods such as nuts and berries, which have fat and lean years, can, when dried be made continuously available regardless of particular harvest. Drying is fairly simple in concept, but there are variables to consider, such as the one I learned the hard way in the story I shared in the beginning of this article.

      Guidelines:

            ►    Dry fast and at low heat to prevent spoilage and retain nutrient value.

            ►    Direct sun can be more important than low humidity or air temperature in speeding up drying time. A breeze can be very helpful.

            ►    Elevate drying foods off the ground, as that’s where humidity is the highest and drying will be the slowest.

            ►    To retain medicinal herbs properties dry in the shade.

6.   Utilize springs and bogs In my area we have springs and bogs that maintain a constant 45% year-round temperature. In the Green Season I bury items such as eggs directly in the bog moss or suspend them in a spring to keep them chilled. In the White Season I’ll do the same to keep things from freezing. I’ll inset a box in the bog to keep perishables that I wish to remain dry.

7.   Utilize day/night cycle Our temperature can fluctuate wildly here, even in mid-summer we have a bare-back day and wake up to frost the next morning. Desert and mountain areas can also have radical day/night temperature fluctuations. In some hot regions, such as India, roofs are comprised of broad shallow pans of water which super-cools overnight and is then used to keep the residence cool during the day.

This phenomena can be utilized to keep things either warm or cool. For example, in the Spring and Autumn I keep things frozen by setting them out at night and then burying them in insulative moss for the day to keep them frozen. I’ll do the reverse as well, setting water in the sun to warm, then burying it in moss for the night to keep it that way.

8.   Save snow I got this idea from coming across summer snow lingering in deep crevasses and dark, sheltered boggy areas. At the end of the snow season make a pile of compacted snow in a dark low shady area, preferably on the North side of a hill and cover with moss. This may also be done with ice. Either bury your perishables in the pile or bring some snow/ice back to your lodge to use. Now when I’m living in the wilderness I don’t for a minute lament the fact that I don’t have a refrigerator or freezer. In fact, the methods I use now are more reliable and they’re cost-free. When I’m gone I don’t have to worry about power outages or appliance failure. And I have all the refrigerator and freezer space I could ever need.

            Some say living the Old Way is raft with privation and discomfort. It must be either a ploy to keep people in the towns, or a story to impress upon green-horns what rough, tough survivalists these yarn-spinners are, because I couldn’t imagine a more comfortable stress-free

existence!