You might not think there is one.  At first glance you might say, the veg­eta­bles are not organ­ic, they have less fla­vor because they are fac­to­ry farm grown, they have steroids, etc.  But there is one advan­tage of the sub­ur­ban farm­ers mar­ket.  They get fresh ship­ments of veg­eta­bles every day for pur­chase at a dis­count­ed price.  This means if I want to can toma­toes, I can run down to the farm­ers mar­ket right now pick up the toma­toes, and any oth­er veg­etable to bring home and start prep­ping to dehy­drate or to can/jar.  And, I can do this all year long, so that I do not have to wait for a fall or ear­ly win­ter  har­vest to do so.

I know what you are think­ing.  This goes against much of the self reliant frame of mind, being organ­ic, and not enabling cor­po­rate farms, etc.  But my argu­ment is that the veg­eta­bles pur­chased are still fresh, “sort of,” and the goal is to can/jar them for stor­age any­way.  Now, I am not advo­cat­ing

We were talk­ing about can­ning the gar­den har­vest this time of year, and some­thing hit me like a ton of bricks.  With the advent of the sub­ur­ban farm­ers mar­ket, you could lit­er­al­ly can and jar all year long, less expen­sive­ly than you could if you went to Stop & Shop, or any of the oth­er places around here.  In fact, I have a friend that dri­ves out of NYC almost week­ly to go to the farm­ers mar­ket so he can load up on fruits and veg­eta­bles because it saves him a bun­dle.  I can eas­i­ly save 30S% — 50% and some­times more over the tra­di­tion­al gro­cery stores here in north­ern NJ.

Would the canned veg­gies be as tasty.  Prob­a­bly not, but they would still have nutri­tion­al val­ue and could be stored in a cool envi­ron­ment for up to five years.  That goes a long way, espe­cial­ly if a sched­ule of can­ning every few months for a cou­ple of days could hap­pen.  It is an inter­est­ing thought.  I have nev­er canned / jarred any­thing yet.  I have thought about giv­ing it a shot, but I need to find the time, or make the time to stay moti­vat­ed to do it.  I would­n’t get hung up on organ­ic vs. fac­to­ry farm either.  This is your future dur­ing hard times we are talk­ing about.

Doug also brought up can­ning meats.  I know that can be done, I have seen it done before, and I think it is a great way to store game or oth­er meats for long peri­ods of time as well.  You get some liq­uid out of the jar too, that can be used for cook­ing and/or a sauce/gravy I would imag­ine…