Customer Reviews

Independence Days: A Guide to Sustainable Food Storage & Preservation

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Independence Days is a book about food security. Like Sharon Astyk's two previous books (Depletion and Abundance; A Nation of Farmers), this one focuses on the need to assume personal responsibility for food self-sufficiency and for shortening the supply chain from farm/garden to table. Unlike Asktyk's previous books, this one is also a how-to, as well as a why-we-should, complete with helpful instructions for creating and managing a food storage pantry, preserving fresh foods, and cultivating a frugal and self-reliant life style.

Astyk's arguments for the importance of personal food security ("one of the central issues of our time") are compelling. A looming energy crisis, soil and water depletion, and the threat of global warming--these are all reasons to be concerned about the reliability of our food supply and the need to take personal control, as far as possible, over the food we put on our family's table. "Independence days" (a concept Astyk borrows from Carla Emery) are days when we're eating food we grow ourselves or obtain locally. For Astyk, true independence is freedom from the industrial food system that feeds most Americans.

Hence this book, which recommends various methods for food preservation (canning, pickling, dehydrating, fermenting); for purchasing, stocking, and storing food in pantry, root cellar, and freezer; for acquiring tools and equipment, in addition to adequate supplies of water, medicine, and other necessities; and for creating and using community resources. All of this advice is sound, helpful, and inspiring. It is also very credible, for Astyk practices what she preaches, and it's good to know that she has tried the methods that she advocates. The various sections are also illustrated with recipes, more or less effectively. Some of the recipes contain non-local foods--coconut milk, quinoa, salmon--which I found distracting in a book about shortening the supply chain, and not all of them illustrate the principle she'd like to teach: baked apples and cranberries are good comfort food but the recipe doesn't fit very comfortably in a section on medicines. Recipes/formulas for home-grown herbal remedies would have been a better choice.

But these are minor quibbles. I like Sharon Astyk because she always tells me why I should do something, before she tells me how, and this book continues that practice. "This isn't just about the rice or the garden or the canning jars," she says. "This is a small but important step in making a better way of life." Yes, truly. I learned from Independence Days, and it strengthened my desire to be as independent as possible. If you're concerned about food security, this is a good book to read and use. If you're not, read it anyway. You'll learn why the American food supply should be at the top of your list of things to think about.

by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Great book on being prepared for any emergency that may arise - without hitting the panic button. Easy and fun to read with great advice on getting started with food security for yourself and hopefully expanding to your neighbors and beyond. She is pragmatic about the learning curve, with a good sense of humor. I would recommend this to friends.

It's not that I didn't like this book, or find some of the information presented useful. I'm all for preservation and sustainable eating, buying from farmers and growing your own if possible. That's why I was interested in this book. However, I was looking for a preservation how-to, which, based on the title, this book seems it would be. It's not. It's mostly telling you why you should store six months worth of food for everyone you live with ... ok ... moving on. Or not, in the case of this book. I think that food preservation stands on its own merits, and shouldn't need the threat of impending doom to make people interested in it, which the author clearly does. By the third time she had mentioned that children and the elderly can die from the shock of dietary changes in the event of the apocalypse, I was a little weary of the impending doom, myself. If you are looking for a practical guide to preservation and storage, look elsewhere. If you are looking for the political motivation for said storage, read on.

I bought this book based on these same reviews, and oh my goodness am I glad I did it. This book is a valuable resource. It is an excellent starting point for all things self-preparedness, but it is more than that. I would go so far as to say that anyone who gives a darn about someone in this world should read it. Sharon doesn't just tell you how to make pickles (or kimchi). She teaches you about the kind of person we all should strive to be. How to take care of your own, but also to be kind and generous and think about MORE than just who's in your corner. I also very much appreciate the why's tossed in with the how-to's. It is so much easier to wade through the oodles of products, websites, and cookbooks out there when someone with a sense of humor tells you how they approach it. It always helps to learn from someone else's mistakes if possible. I am so very glad she took the time to write this book.

My initial reaction on seeing this book was:

I like the book cover a lot and how the title is uniquely written in message form on a nicely decorated fruit post-it note pasted onto a jar of preserved vegetables. That alone gave me the incentive to want to quickly flick through the pages for its contents.

Independence Days reminds me of the 4th July, that of the declaration of a certain lifestyle that also includes a variety of practical guidance on ways to effectively use local suppliers as our main source of getting our food and vegetables as opposed to worldwide suppliers.

A practical reference guide which chronically lists ideas of how to preserve and replenish our food stock, all year round, as a modern day Mrs Beeton would do and who had all the answers to preserving food when fridges didn't exist.

The first chapter begins with mentioning rhubard, one of my favourite desserts, so that got me looking further down the page for more tips and advice on food preservation and in turn how to be self sufficient, no matter our background and lifestyle - for even farmers could benefit from reading this and hence the title.

To follow on from the idea of Independence Days, challenges are set daily and/or weekly as for instance Point 4 (under heading `Challenges'), mentions ideas to `Minimise Waste'; an explanation is then given and further along, Point 7 discusses how to `Manage your reserves'.

Chapter 3 links our thoughts back to the book title of independent thinking, of common protests against food storage and preservation and on `Getting Your Household Onboard'. This self sufficient thought process is reinforced by arguments against the cost of clearing space for this surplus stock of food/vegetables and essentially the reasons for contemplating such ideas which turn out to be cost-saving in the long run.

Clearm, concise suggestions to the protests going through our minds ensue and they are rational and practical:

Food storage/preservation helps us to:
1. Clear space for a healthier lifestyle
2. Become less dependent on large corporations for our daily food sustenance
3. Implement A Five Dollar Plan - a very useful economic guideline
4. Plan ahead on understanding the beneficial mechanics of food storage and other related ideas on how to
economise with buying in bulk and ways to store this surplus, to create a full food cupboard, accessible all the time

As an extra bonus, simple, easily prepared recipes such as that of homemade cream of mushroom soup base and other really useful and cheap recipes offer practical solutions to consuming the food we have at home. It even explains how to cook when we have a power failure!

Further to this are guidelines on how to store our medicines effectively, on health care and special diets with reference to other resources in preserving, storing and buying in bulk.

It is a book to delve into regulary for ideas on ways to use the space we have to better use that will mean we save time and money by economising through bulk buying and by having a continual supply of food that can be replenished without any food wastage. Each chapter is neatly organised so that you can see at a glance, the ideas on how to and what to do with preserved and/or stored food.

I found this book a disappointment. It was more why you would want sustainable food storage and preservation than how to do it. Not what I was looking for. More theory than how-to. I returned this book.

While I do not necessarily subscribe to the author's global warming concerns, nor some of her other political views, I found the book entertaining and full of useful information. It's a wonderful resource for someone who is new to food storage or who (like me) is coming back to it after many years. Great book in spite of the politics.

I follow her blogs, have read her two previous books, and completely enjoyed this one. Lots of information I can use now, next year and in the future. She's hopeful as well as helpful, and I can't recommend this book enough.

I recently planted a more extensive vegetable garden than usual because of my family's current economic uncertainty. Because I'll (hopefully) have more produce than in the past, I wanted guidance on how to preserve any excess. The extent of my experience preserving is drying tomatoes in the oven, packing them in olive oil, and keeping them in the fridge. That is why I bought this book.

The book was not exactly what I expected, but I loved it. After reading it, I did something I'm pretty sure I have never done in my adult life: cooked and ate all the fresh food I had on hand before I went to the store and bought more. The author does not prompt the reader to do that, but I found that the book so changed the context in which I think about food, I just naturally did it. Previously, the system I used for feeding my family was to graze through cookbooks to come up with a week or two of menus, put together a shopping list, and go buy it. The problems with that are: the leftover ingredients that are frequently wasted, the changes in plans, people dropping over and I don't have enough food to feed them, the necessity of having to sometimes visit more than one store, and having to reinvent the wheel so often. Even worse is when I don't have the planning time and just walk into a grocery store looking for something to fix for dinner.

After reading this book, I will be buying staples in bulk, investigating how to get what I need locally or straight from a farmer, using my own produce (fingers crossed), and fixing meals from what I have on hand. I can never be one of those people who fixes the same dish every day of the week (meatloaf on Monday, etc.) because I get bored cooking and eating the same thing, but I have come up with a loose, menu-like plan that I can see will save me a ton of money, keep me out of the grocery store on a weekly or more basis, and--so it turns out--increase my family's food security.

I appreciate that this author does not intend to frighten or alarm the reader, but to inform her. I am more informed about any food crises I might need to face, but not fearful, even though some of the scenarios in this book are full-out unpleasant to contemplate. I appreciate that, although the author might in fact be a survivalist, she is thinking about how all of us are going to survive, not just herself and her family. She is not the Martha Stewart of food preservation and homesteading. She is a real person I can relate to who willingly admits she does not do what she does perfectly, but she does it thoughtfully enough that she can teach others how.

Some buyer bewares: This book does have recipes, but is not a recipe book. One needs to be able to cook from scratch to use this book: it really is about becoming free from the corporate food model, so "value added" prepared convenience foods are not too compatible with it. (A huge bonus is that the author gives many ideas for making convenient food.) Two trepidations I have about starting down the independence path are the time it takes, and making space for food storage. One very refreshing thing about this author is she works to minimize the reader's expenses by helping her prioritize what is really needed. For instance, I will probably build a solar dehydrator rather than buy an electric one because I live in a sunny climate, but I am thinking about buying a manual grain grinder, which is something I had never considered before.

One more observation: I guess publishers are cutting back on copy editors these days.

This book has some excellent information about food preservation and storage, but the author makes the reader wade through far too much verbage about the rationale for food preservation and storage to find any technical information. I was looking for a technical book, but this book blends far too philosophical discussion with technical information, rather than conveniently sequestering that discussion to an introduction or the first part of the book. I would recommend this book for someone who is interested in considering how individuals or communities might prepare for disaster, but not for someone who is just interested in how to dry fruit or jar pickles.