And here's the thread that started it, in case you're interested in more of the original story.

I think I was trying to make the point for local sustainability, which is typically what someone means when they talk about sustainability. Others were trying to put it on the scale of a continent, which is fine but was outside of the scope of what I was trying to originally say.

Polly, you pretty much said in one post what I had tried to say in several. I certainly think it is definitely part of a permaculture plan, especially since most of us in the US have to make provisions for a winter. Canning is amenable to using locally produced fuel (firewood, methane, biofuels), and the foodstuff is obviously a part of it. The resources required are highly reusable, which is an important part of sustainability.

Here is a link that might be useful: The end of the industrial age

Drying food is also sustainable. Many dried fruits and vegetables (and even meats) have been used for centuries in winter and spring cooking. Local food production (with good water and soil conservation practice) is the crux of it. The less that we have shipped from elsewhere, the less energy used and the more sustainable it would be. I am not worried about producing everything yet. I will just add more and more to what I do not have to buy as we start producing our own. It has to happen a little at a time.

Interesting thread on soil forum.

Lee AKA Fireraven9
The snow on your eyelids that curtsy with age
A freezing rare stare on tyranny's wings
The bitterness, hardness, warmth of your skin
Is diseased with familiar caresses (Winter Song - Nico/Cale)

Good point, Fireraven. We dry green beans, especially if they get a little ahead of us to can. I'm not sure if the energy savings are greater or not by the time we cook them, but they sure are good and are quite a bit different in taste.

If you live in a sunny dry place you can sun dry things rather quickly. An electric dryer works too, but uses power. I have considered doing a drying rack that can go in the oven when other things are baking. I wonder how a native style horno oven would do for drying things? I am tempted to make one for baking outdoors in summer. It gets hot enough indoors in summer without having an oven going!

Lee AKA Fireraven9
The snow on your eyelids that curtsy with age
A freezing rare stare on tyranny's wings
The bitterness, hardness, warmth of your skin
Is diseased with familiar caresses (Winter Song - Nico/Cale)

I can remember people drying sliced apples between old window screens on a tin roof.

cooking outdoors in the summer so as not to heat the same area you are trying to cool makes sense.

making decisions now about what we choose to use or not is relatively easy. those who live closest to the land and depend the least on the grid will have an easier time if a real crunch ever comes the same as we do when an ice storm or somesuch knocks the power out for a few days. Some people have to leave their homes.

It is hard for me to believe that technology wont fill the gaps. I live the way I do because it suits me. not because I fear the end of plenty.

Our elders put their racks on the dashboards of their trucks and cars and parked them in the sun.

I view canning as a nod to the "slow food" movement. Yes, it's time consuming, but the product is a great tasting meal, or part of a meal, and as a product of my time, is greatly appreciated by family members who eat it from my table, or receive it as a gift. Home preserved food is something to be savored, and often leads to good stories about where the berries were picked, what it was like to grow up on a farm, when all the women spent night after night sitting around the table shelling peas, sharing stories, etc. Re-using the canning jars and rims definitely fits "sustainable." It is also reassuring to know the conditions under which the food was prepared. A guy I teach with at one time worked at a Kellog Cereal plant in lower MI, and the stories he would tell... not quite like The Jungle, but enough to make me throw out all of my cereal.

I just picked up a copy of Permaculture Magazine (a British import, for those who don't know it) and they had a big article about "bottling" - what we call canning here. So at least they think it's sustainable.

Sustainable? Versus what? Landfill-filling plastic that is dependent on foreign oil for production? Okay, so you have to use new gaskets each time... big deal! Everything else is reusable.

Well my son use to tell people to "Watch out, if it doesn't move fast enough Mom and Don (my brother) will can it", he was not teasing! We can everything, but please remember that canning meats and some other things does require a pressure cooker/canner even for us old ones that are not picky or finicky about many things as a rule.

We certainly include canning and drying in our permaculture lifestyle. It is one of the things that someone who dreams of living a more permacuture centered type life can start doing even while they still live in an apartment in the city. Well that is my 2 cents worth of opinion. ENJOY!! DD

I do it. But drying is easier. I have a little dehydrator that I use for garlic, basil, tomatoes, mustard, etc. You can whiz them in a coffee grinder for soup stock if it is green beans or something you wouldn't want to reconstitute. In my dad's youth, they dried apples on the roof with a screen on top of it to keep the flies off. You set it out in the midmorning and take it in before dark. I love that dashboard-solar cooker idea.

I've dried roses in the car before :D

I've run across plans for solar dehydrators. They seem like the answer here for sustainable food storage.

I've dried sliced peppers on strings in the window between the glass and the curtain in my kitchen.

The biggest question for sustainable living is how your heat is generated. If you are using windsource or solar power then its indefinately sustainable.

we recently switched to Greenmountain Energy. we're paying a half cent more per kwh but its worth it to us to help this commercial solar/wind power endeavor survive.

More soon
ana

Here is a link that might be useful: Green Mountain

I love to can, but don't do as much of it as I would like.

I love to dry, but it isn't as feasable here. For one, it is difficult to dry things in the sun (not enough of it, and not giving off enough heat, though I like the car idea) and I'm not going to use my woodstove in the summer....
which leaves my electric dryer. I use it for treats, but that is all. I feel guilty using the electricity.

Not only that, but if you store them over the winter here, there is so much humidity in the air that if you havn't stored them in absolutely air tight containers, they absorb the moisture and mold or start to decay.

So overall, I prefer canning. Though for now I have to use my electric stove. One of those things I intend to change when I can.

People do a lot of smoking here...thought that could be fun sometime.

I learned to can from my grandmother, and have been 'putting up' tomatoes, jams and jellies, peppers, salsa, pickles, etc. for years. Grandma had what was called the 'fruit room.' It was a small room/large closet in the basement lined on all sides with shelves, most of them usually full. It may be 'slow' but there are days when I need that! Our stove is electric, like most things in the house, but our town is powered by a hydro plant, so don't feel too bad about it ;) This year we have a chest freezer, and I am looking forward to having it filled to the brim =) A friend is letting me use part of his farm to grow extra veggies. Looks like fall will be busy!

Another friend of mine is talking about setting up a windmill to power his chest freezer, but is having problems getting past local ordinances. But then, he is nuttier than me =) and I have been contemplating growing corn to burn for heat...

i think it is a worthwhile skill that we should all know how to do.

I agree with Ladykemma- we need to know how to do these things. I don't want my daughter to grow up thinking corn, peas, and carrots only come frozen in plastic bags from China.

Here is a link that might be useful: Said Daughter

I don't think anyone so far has mentioned that you can use a solar cooker, the insulated box type, to "can" acid fruits like tomatoes etc. Apparently you do everything the same way as you would on a conventional stove, ie use clean jars etc, although you use a solid lid with the seal a part of the jar, and when you see the water in the jars bubbling through the gap between the lid and the glass you take the jar our of the cooker and wait to see if the lid seals down tight. Better than burning fossil fuels, eh?
Of course you can't do it with non-acid vegies.

I'm going to build one of those solar stoves for preparing summertime meals one day soon! The problem down south with the solar dried foods and cooking is the high humidity we have here. Also at harvest, fall, we tend towards cloudy skies and summer afternoons usually involves an afternoon thunderstorm.
Same problems holds for any solar powered skiems here. I do have solar water heater panels ready to be hooked up (again bought used .. 3 - 4x8 commerically made panels for $75!! I still need a small water pump and temp guage to trigger the pump on or I could go with a hydrosyphon set-up)and plan on converting over to a solar water pump when the current electric pump goes.
Now as to canning. I bought used from a local lady. I drove away with a pickup bed full of mason jars! Gave her like $40!! She said all of the jars belonged to her mother-in-law and had to go. Lucky me ;o) I don't think I'll be able to ever use all of these jars.
As to the actual canning I'm planning on building a screened in outdoor structure open on all four sides and with a standing wood burning stove at one end. This is an older small simple wood burning stove with tow 'fire holes'. I will use firewood I harvest from the surronding land as fuel.
So the expense of canning would include lids and any additives (thats what they are!)that would be needed to be mixed into the canned product (sugar and pectin for jellies ... salts for pickles. The rest would be free.
I consider the process not as work but as a pleasure so don't count them as a cost though most people I'm sure would.
One real bonus to living in the south is a year round veggie garden!! We grow our leafy greens over winter here along with some root crops.
So is canning sustainable? You bet if you recycle jars, use home-grown produce and provide for a self-harvested fuel. Its not a closed loop but very few outside products are needed.
Mike