Food Storage Interrupted

Continued from here

www.homestead-store.com

The way I'd like my canning shelves to look someday!

Things went along swimmingly well, the stock growing and shrinking, until we sold the farm in 2008 and did not have another farm to move into.  A farm needs to be bought in the spring so that the farmer can get a crop in for the summer in order to make mortgage payments.  Any later and he'll be making payments on the mortgage but not getting any income from the land.  The selling owner will try to rent the land out to a neighbor, just in case his farm doesn't sell that spring, as the farmer would like to recoup a bit of money for that year's mortgage payment.  Farm prices had risen drastically and try as we might, we couldn't find a farm that we could afford.

In the end, we knew that we were going to have to buy or rent a house in town (not an idea that we cared for!) until a farm came along.  Because we didn't want to sign a long term lease for renting, renting was no longer an option and we ended up having to buy a small house in town that was not fixed up.  It was built in the 50's and had a lot of character and although it was on the smaller side, by the time we had finished fixing it up (character left intact), the whole family was in agreement that if we could have just picked it up and taken it with us, we would have.

1.5 years later, we found a farm (this one) and were able, after some time, to sell the house in town.  The buyer, a young woman in her early 20's, wanted us out in 3 weeks!  Thank goodness saner heads prevailed (her parents and the real estate agent) and convinced her that this was impossible for anyone with children and she gave us a full 2 months.  But, of course, the farm would not be available for another 2 months after that so we needed to rent a place for that time.  This time, we were able to rent from DH's relatives who were moving into their house but not for a few more months.  This is the only time that the timing was perfect!

Confusing?  I know.  I knew ahead that it was going to be confusing and I tried to downsize as much as possible, throwing away, selling, giving away, donating but moving from a 190 acre farm to a .5 acre lot in town (that's being generous!) meant that there was a lot of stuff that had nowhere to go.  The problem was that we knew that we would need all of the kids' stuff still and all of the farm equipment, gardening supplies, etc. so there was a lot that we were stuck with but couldn't use at the time.

The one thing that I did not want to needlessly cart around with us, house after house, was box after box of canned, boxed and bagged food (such as rice).  I stopped buying food months before we moved and we ate up everything in the fridge and freezers except for DH's canned pineapple.  He had and still has, a fixation with them and if canned pineapples are on sale even now, we hide the grocery flyer from him!  We carted those pineapples around with us from house to house! 

We also had some leftover containers of hand lotion.  I thought I liked it then realized I didn't, no one did, and we were stuck with 7 or 8 of these large containers.  One of the downsides of food storage, I guess, is trying something new, buying multiples of it while it's on sale because if it's an unfamiliar item, you don't know when it'll be on sale again and then finding out that you don't like it, no one likes it and what do you do with it?

All of this moving meant the eventual death of my food storage.  I felt like I'd lost a friend (OK, a slight exageration) but I did lose something that I had worked hard on and I really had no idea, looking ahead down the road, when I would get the chance to do it again.  It wasn't as though someday I'd get to just carry on.  I had to start over completely - unless you consider unwanted hand lotion and oh-so-sick-of-it pineapple to be food storage!