Is Foodsaver a Viable Food Storage Tool?

I normally take a pass on buying anything that has ever been featured on an infomercial but the Foodsaver brand food system has earned rave reviews over the years so we decided to give it a try.  What we found has been amazing, it works really well!  Our garden produces a lot of produce and we buy grass fed beef in bulk so we need to be able to package and freeze some of our food and we need it to last for some times six months or better.  Even outside of the freezer just keeping apples, for example, away from the air really helps to extend the time they are fresh.  We made some smoked Brisquet and after three months in the deep freeze it came out with no freezer burn and was still very tender when we warmed it. I don't know about years here because we have not had kept anything frozen for that long, but keeping food fresh from the end of one growing season to the start of the next certainly seems possible from what we have seen.  This does not take the place of canning or drying food to preserve it but it is a handy tool that can extend the life of your fresh foods by months in some cases.  The best example for me is fish.  I love to fish, we have a fishing boat and love to catch pan fish, walleye, bass, etc. but we believe that we only keep what we will eat and there is nothing like fresh fish.  Storing or freezing lake caught fish can be tricky because it never seems quite as fresh as the day you caught it.  From what I have tasted so far the Foodsaver system seems to have that problem licked.  The fish I caught tasted as fresh on week four as it did on day one and there is nothing like fresh fish in the dead of winter!  The only thing I caution is that the bags are expensive but the off brands are flimsy and do not hold the seal.  Wait for the bags to go on sale and stock up.

Here is a quick run down of how the system works.

 Open the system door and pull out the material to the proper size bag.  Use the little slide blade included and cut the material to size.

 Insert one end of the bag roll material into the sealer and seal it to make the bottom of the bag.

Put the food in (BBQ Beef for this pic!) and insert it into the seal slot and the vacuum pump starts automatically.  Once it removes all the air it automatically starts the seal process.  Once the bag is sealed it should be air tight and ready to be put away. If you want to freeze something that is not solid, say left overs from a big batch of chili, just put the chili in a bowl and freeze it in the freezer for about an hour.  It will be solid enough to put into the Foodsaver bag and be vacuumed without your chili being sucked into the system.  You can do the same with big bowls of soup, left overs, etc.  This product can really cut down on food waste and when the leftovers can be frozen and used two weeks later and still taste great you won't waste those left overs anymore!

Container Garden

I live in Iowa's capital city, Des Moines.  The greater Metro area has around 500,000 residents most homes have a nice green yard of some sort.  I live about three minutes from downtown, where concrete and high rise buildings reside and I was still lucky enough to find a double lot (1/2 acre) in the middle of the city.  That is just the way Des Moines, and most of Iowa, is set up.  We are big but not big enough to have tons of apartments, row homes, lofts, etc.  We have some of course, I lived in an apartment for years, but as a general rule I no longer have to deal with trying to be an urban farmer, urban homesteader, self sufficient with no personal yard space.  However, I know many of you in New York, Boston, and countless other places live in wonderful cities and towns but have far less space with which to build your garden and homestead.  That is where this post, and many others to follow, comes in handy.  If you live in a row home or brownstone and have a small yard or roof space this will work.  If you have a small area in a mobile home park this work.  If you live in a tiny apartment with a balcony or even a window sill this will work!

I'm talking about container gardening.  It is exactly as it sounds, growing your favorite crop in a plant container.  Even if you have a large yard, you can still use what was once wasted space to grow in a container.  You can see from the pictures that we are growing broccoli and peas in our flower pots in front of our porch steps.  The peas grow kind of on a small vine and they even flower before developing the pea pod so they look nice when in full swing.  Right now the fall cold is coming on fast so these are the only containers we have left but we will add more in the spring.  You can plant herbs, peas, green beans, tomatoes, and tasty lettuce, almost any plant that will fit in your space and your flower pot.  If you want to grow root crops like carrots or beets, make sure your container is deep enough.  Also, you can look for shorter varieties.  I know our kids like to grow the little 4-5 inch carrots in a container here at our house.

If you want to grow inside, make sure you water enough, have plenty of fresh air and sunlight.  Many people grow house plants inside, why not a couple of pole beans or
pea pods as well?  You will be surprised at how much food you can get and how great it will taste with just a few small containers.  If you are using plants that have to be pollinated to produce, you will need to have more than one plant and either pollinate by hand (we will talk about that in another post), or set them outside daily for at least a couple of weeks so the bees can do their thing naturally.

Come spring time we are going to use the container garden method for some small blueberry bushes.  This is a perfect solution because blue berries need very acidic soil, which ours is not, so using a large cedar planter in the yard will look beautiful and also allow us to monitor and change the acidity level of the soil.  Besides controlling the soil, container plants need watered more often but normally use less water so if you can remember to water regularly, you will have healthy plants and use less water then if they were in the ground.  You can also use less fertilizer or compost tea and your plants will still  thrive.  It is basically the same concept as raised bed gardening but with smaller containers that will fit into whatever space you have.

Chickens in the City

A lot of people are scared of bringing chickens into the backyard setting but it is becoming more and more common among urban farmers because the benefits are just too great to ignore.  Plus, I know you are worried about your neighbors but it isn't as bad as you think!  For one, it is a myth that you must have a rooster in your flock.  Many, if not most city flocks do not include a Rooster because they don't want to be woken up at all hours by the roosters crow, plus they would like to remain civil with their neighbors!  Hens can chirp and cackle a bit but generally they are not real loud and most neighbors will not mind a small flock, and if you keep the coop clean there is no odor to worry about either.

The benefits of an urban chicken flock are plentiful.  Obviously you will get fresh eggs on a daily basis.  Hens generally lay between 2-4 eggs a week so a flock of four healthy hens will give you roughly a dozen eggs each week.  If you add a couple more hens to the mix you will have some extra eggs for your neighbors which may help in the "transition".  After a couple of years, egg production will slow in your hens and if you got a dual purpose breed you can use the hens for meat.  Learning to butcher a chicken is another post, but suffice to say you may have a local meat locker near by that can do this for you if you prefer.  So you have meat and eggs, what else are they good for?  If you allow them to roam your yard and garden they are very beneficial for your yard.  They scratch around and eat the bugs from the lawn, their scratching can also help aerate your grass.  In addition of course their waste will quickly become fertilizer.  And don't forget that egg shells are a great addition to your compost pile!

Coops are relatively small and chicken runs, tractors, etc. are all easily made by the average DIY person such as you, the new urban farmer!  If you are short on space, you can add a small door on the side of your shed and gate or fence part of it on the inside as the chicken coop.  This makes your shed dual purpose and saves the space and expense of building a chicken coop, although you will want a fenced run for them. 

Another concern is that a chicken coop and pen are ugly, and you live in a nice neighborhood and do not want an unsightly chicken run next to your beautiful raised bed garden.  As we build this blog together you will see that there is a way to make most of our urban farming ideas on the cheap and there is also a way to do it so that it fits in with your design and house style.  Ugly gardens can be built with cedar raised beds and beautiful cedar lattice for vine plants; DIY rain barrels can be painted with copper colored spray paint and planters can be added on top to make them look very nice, herbs can be grown on the front step in a beautiful fired clay pot that may have held annuals last spring, and the same goes for chicken coops.  You can build a simple and cheap DIY out of recycle materials or you can be elaborate and use beautiful cedar wood, or siding that matches your house, even a shingled roof or a living roof with a small garden bed on top, the options are endless!  I'm going to write several posts over the next couple of months that include lots of coop and chicken run designs and ideas so stay tuned for that.

Chickens are a great benefit to the urban farmer for eggs, meat, the lawn, compost, etc.  They have another great benefit if you have children: education.  This is the perfect way to teach your children about the circle of life, how to properly care for chickens, get them outside and enjoying nature.  One thing to note is that if you get your chicks shortly after they hatch and you socialize with them they can grow to be very docile and enjoy the company of humans.

Now that I've got you on board with city dwelling chickens, there are a couple of things that you need to be aware of.  One is your city laws about farm animals and chickens specifically.  For example, here in Des Moines it is perfectly acceptable to have a small flock of chickens in the city limits as long as it is a certain number of feet from your neighbors house.  The size of your flock is determined by how much land you have.  Also be aware of where you buy your chickens.  Make sure they are reputable and they are selling you healthy chicks.  A local feed or farm store may sell them or be able to tell you where to get them.  You can also order online if you meet the sellers minimums.  Safety is an issue for chickens.  You may think your neighborhood doesn't have any predators such as raccoons but if you don't have proper fencing and cover for your chickens you may soon find out you are wrong.  A single raccoon or ground hog can kill your whole flock.

In the spring we are building a new chicken coop and I will take pictures every step of the way so you can read the blog an follow along with our progress.

Where to get wood for your Wood Stove

So a question I get a lot about my wood stove is where do I find the wood?  People in the city think that if you don't have your own trees to cut down your only other option is to buy it.  Buying wood is easy, it comes split, dry, and ready to burn but it is expensive.  It can cost up to $300 a season or more to buy enough wood for a winter.  I use wood to heat my workshop everyday.  I make a living as a wood smith so I can be out in my wood shop 8 to 12 hours each day, especially as we get toward the Christmas season.  Needless to say I can go through quite a bit of wood and I don't want to buy it. 

Even in the city, my property has several extra trees that I am taking down and cutting into proper size to burn next year, so start in your own yard.  If you don't want to take down any trees, maybe you can trim the tree, cut back some branches that grow over your drive way, etc.  Use these limbs as burning wood.

Stop by the wooded areas in your local parks.  You would be amazed at how many branches were down at a Frisbee golf park on the south side of town.  Many of these branches were 3 inches or better in diameter which makes them great for burning.  I was able to get half a truck load in one city park and the branches had already fallen from the tree so I wasn't hurting anything.

Most major cities and even smaller towns are built close to a lake, river, or both.  Visit the trails or gravel roads in the woods that run along the rivers, etc.  There are tons of downed limbs, small trees that have fallen over in storms or from animals, etc.  Bring a wagon so you can load up and make fewer trips back and forth to your truck.  Trust me, you will find much more wood than you think.

Listen to friends.  You don't know how many times I've heard guys talking about taking down trees in their yards.  Even if you don't have a chain saw (which you should as an urban farmer!) or if the tree is too big for you to feel comfortable taking it down next to your buddies house you can still save him some money.  If he hired a crew to take down the tree, part of his quote was getting rid of and hauling the tree.  Instead of the tree company taking the tree, just have them cut it down and you can load it up and take it off his hands for him.  My father in law had some trees removed and stopped by with my wheel barrow and got a years worth of wood just for getting it out of his yard!


Wait for the big storms!  After a big storm, high winds, blizzard with ice, trees come down, limbs get broken etc.  After a blizzard last year here in Iowa there were tree limbs dragged to the curb along the streets through out the city.  People were happy to let me take them out of their yards, I got almost a cord of wood in just one storm, saving money and recycling wood that would have gone to the chipper.

Lastly make sure you have a reliable chain saw because many of the limbs and branches you find in the woods and after storms will not be the proper length to fit into your wood stove.  A chain saw makes very fast and easy work of cutting limbs to size.  If you do not have or want to buy a chain saw, you can pick up a corded reciprocating saw for cheap at the local hardware store.  It isn't as fast or good as a chain saw but wood blades are cheap and they plug in so no need for gas.  It isn't what they are made for but they work just fine.

Using Wood to Heat your Home

If you are building an Urban farm like my family you probably own a home or apartment in the city.  If you live in an apartment, townhome, condo, or even possibly a subdivision with a home owners association there may be rules that do not allow fireplaces or various types of wood stoves to check the rules if that applies to you.  For the rest of us, wood can be a very economical way of heating our homes.  My wife operates an in home daycare so city ordinance prohibits us from having a wood stove or fireplace in our house right now.  I do however use a wood stove to heat my workshop where I work everyday so that is a big cost saving for us.  If Stacey (my wife), ever stops doing in home daycare, we will install a wood stove in the house.

Types of Wood Heat



-Fireplace: The fireplace looks the nicest in your home but it is the least efficient.  The fireplace lets a lot of heat escape the home and it uses more wood to heat the home.  Also, when it is not in use if you do not have tight doors, air can escape your house and right up the flue.  Of course in a power outage or on a cozy winter night, a fireplace can be a great thing, but for whole house heating a fireplace will not be your best option.

Indoor Wood Stove: This is the traditional stove you remember from your grandparents house, and for good reason.  A wood stove is over 85% efficient which means that the majority of the warm air it creates is used to heat the home and very little escapes to the outdoors.  This is one of the best options when using wood to heat your home.  The air in the room circulates around the hot stove and warms the air.  You can mount the stove in the living area or possibly dining area and use a simple box fan in the hallway to move the hot air around your living space.  This is what I use.

Outdoor Wood Stove:  These stoves are generally used as add-ons to your current gas furnace.  They are really great in that they can be temperature controlled, and they have large hoppers so you can "feed" the stove once before bed and be good to go for up to 8 hours or better.  They are expensive and you have to have duct work and a regular furnace blower in place already.  Also, a duct line will run from the furnace to the house and the furnace must be a minimum of 10 feet from the house so that is a lot of space.




Why wood heat?

Gas and propane can be expensive and the cost can fluctuate from season to season which can make it hard to budget.  In addition to that, your furnace also uses electricity so if you lose power during the winter you will have no heat even if the gas is still working.  The one caveat to that is the older room furnaces that run on gas but do not need electricity.  In addition to our whole house furnace we have one of these big old heaters as well which works great to heat our addition using only gas and no electricity.  Last year during a blizzard, parts of our city lost power so we opened the door to the rest of the house and cranked the old gas only furnace and worked well for us for about 6 hours until the power came back on.  Even if you plan to keep your gas furnace, a wood stove might be a great addition to save on energy and also to use during that occasional winter power outage.  Redundancy is the key to great disaster preparation as well as an efficient urban farm.

There are two more articles coming on wood heat.  The first article will talk about installing my wood stove and how I use it efficiently.  I'll also include tips on how to clean it and keep it safe.  Secondly, I will post an article about how to get wood without having to buy it.  Buying a cord of wood can cost up to $100, and you may need several cords during a winter which will wipe out your utility bill savings.  I will tell you how I get wood for free

What is an Urban Farm and what is this website?

I like to think of myself as a farmer in a city boys clothing, a sustainable lifestyle hidden behind a consumers credit card, an organic diet hidden behind the nearest grocery store.  About two and a half years ago my wife and I bought our first real house together.  We were able to buy a modest old home on a double lot (1/2 acre) in the middle of Des Moines, Iowa.  We are now building a lifestyle that better reflects our views and priorities.   What does that mean for us?  It means we started a business that builds 100% organic wood toys using sustainably harvested lumber.  It means that we are not perfect but we are in the beginning stages of building a more sustainable life with an organic garden, back yard chickens, compost bins, and even a wood stove for heat. 

To me, an urban farm is something that is done maybe to save a few bucks on the utility bill, but more to improve your quality of life.  And while it is about growing organic food, not everything you do is built from wood or cotton.  For instance, one of my posts will be on the advantages of buying a resin shed/storage building, as opposed to a conventional wood or metal shed building.  In the long run, over time I believe that the resin building will take less maintenance, energy, paint, and it will last longer which may, over time, make it the "greener" choice for my urban farm.  We will talk about more then the garden and chickens; let's talk about fishing, tackle, farmers markets, disaster preparedness, fruit trees and bushes, rain barrels, fire wood, and so much more.  And let me say this, an urban farm may not be pretty as that chemically treated lawn, but it can be done in a way that fits in your neighborhood.  You don't have to be the neighbor with the ugly yard.  For instance, I used landscape timbers to frame my wood pile to keep it neat and tidy outside of my work shop.

The life is not necessarily less complicated, but it is less cluttered and I feel more in tune with the world around me and I know that food comes from the ground, not from the grocery store shelf.  I have skills and knowledge about food preservation, carpentry, wood working, fishing, hunting, sewing, and more.  Lets save the skills of our grandparents generation and pass them on to our children so that they are not lost.  Lets not only learn them, but lets use them in our own lives.  It is not as easy as running to the local big box store, but I promise that it is healthier and it will build a stronger family than video games and smart phones.