Even my regular farmer at the farmer’s market asked on Sunday, “What are you doing with all the food you’re buying?”

“Putting it up for winter, of course.”

I know that the time invested over the last few weeks harvesting corn, basil, tomatoes and other things I’ve grown and preparing them for the freezer will reward me in winter. Purchasing 100+ lbs of tomatoes to make soups and sauces to freeze (I have a freezer and find canning kind of a pain.), buying 20 lbs of potatoes (and will buy more) to put in my root cellar basement, buying and harvesting carrots and beans to freeze, drying tomatoes and freezing basil, roasting garlic and ordering fresh to store — all will be welcome treats when fresh, local options are not available in a few months.

Still, I wonder, is it worth it? Its a bummer to spend all day on a sunny September in the kitchen making robust soups and sauces to put up. But is an 8 hour day in Fall in the kitchen worth the fast, local food that will be ready after long days at work in the short days of winter? I kind of think so.  In an 8 hour day in the kitchen, I made about 10 soup dinners (for two) and about 8-10 tomato sauce dinners (for two). The prior Sunday I put up about 10 more bags of frozen tomatoes to use in stews and other soups. This will eliminate buying canned organic tomatoes that drive all the way from California, after being processed. Plus, I put up about to dinners-worth of frozen corn (for two) and over the course of two weekends I put by about 10 dinners worth of yellow and green beans. Oh, and I have another 20lbs of tomatoes to deal with, so more frozen tomatoes, definitely more dried and possibly more sauce to go! It is a lot of work.

Will baking 4 loaves of bread to freeze 2 each week (well, realistically 2 go in the freezer and 2 get eaten each week) and start a stockpile pay off? I think so (as long as the dog doesn’t eat another unbaked loaf and cost $200 at the vet to get her stomach pumped; another story…another time…).

I don’t intend to be a 100% localvore, but I do look forward to quickly reheating some tomato soup with wheat bread on a cold day after being in the garden all day in November (or February). And, I’ll be glad at how fast dinner will be ready. Plus, when the taste of September-harvested, organic, local tomatoes fills the air, perhaps I’ll breath in a moment of the September sunshine that filled my kitchen as I cooked all day yesterday.

How does this pertain to garden help? Well, any gardener considering growing their own food needs to think about the work that goes into putting the food by. So many are enamoured of the growing but don’t think about the work that goes into the harvest. In the course of being a garden coach, when I meet someone who wants to create a permaculture edible garden and invest about 5-10 hours a week in it, I have to ask, as their garden mentor, ..well, first is 5-10 hours going to be enough in the garden? And, what about the putting food by that happens at the end of season? Are you willing to give up a Sunday (or maybe your evenings) to put the food up? Is it worth it to you? I certainly hope so, but it is food for thought.