How To Use Up Old Root Cellar Vegetables: Old-fashioned Beef Stew

Chelsea standing in front of her root cellar door holding 10 month old potatoes and carrots with a smile on her face.

Table of Contents Managing a food supply requires careful planning. You must know how to stretch your storage assets effectively. This practice keeps the kitchen running until the new season’s harvest arrives. It is deeply satisfying to clear out the bottom bins of your root cellar. Turning past-prime staples into a comforting dinner reduces household … Read more

3 Delicious Summer Salad Recipes With From Scratch Dressings

Table of Contents There is nothing quite like the flavor of homegrown food. When the garden begins to give in abundance, it feels a bit magical every single time you pull a beautiful harvest out of the ground. Managing that rush of produce requires practical kitchen systems to turn raw greens and root crops into … Read more

 5 Things I Learned From Eating Down 300 Jars Before a Move

Little Mountain Ranch has sold, and with a family of nine and somewhere between 6 and 12 months of food stored on these shelves, the practical choice was to eat through as much of it as possible before moving day.

Over 300 jars later, I have learned more about how I actually want to run my pantry than any canning season ever taught me. Here is what I found.

A Final Tour of Little Mountain Ranch

Little Mountain Ranch from the hay field.

This ranch has been home for nearly a decade. One hundred and sixty acres of meadow, mountain, and sky in British Columbia, homesteaded in the early 1920s by the sons of neighbouring farmers who had been working this land since 1906. When we bought it, we knew it was old. We didn’t fully understand yet how much of that history was still here, waiting to be discovered.

Our Costco and Save on Foods Grocery Haul (With Prices)

Chelsea standing in front of her grocery haul piled on her kitchen table.

This haul looked a little different from our usual. We have an accepted offer on our ranch and are intentionally eating down our freezers and pantries so we’re not moving four large freezers and two full basement pantries across the province. So instead of stocking up for 3 to 6 months the way we normally do, we were shopping more like a regular family – just with a Costco membership and, apparently, a lot of opinions about granola.

How to Make and Can Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce

An image of Chelsea standing behind her kitchen island with several jars of home canned food.

Table of Contents Rhubarb season does not wait for you. It comes, it peaks, and if you are not paying attention, you have missed it for another year. I had a full pantry, a move coming up this summer, and every practical reason in the world to skip canning this week. Instead, I went out … Read more

What to Keep When You Downsize Your Homestead

Ten years ago, we arrived at Little Mountain Ranch with big plans and wide-open land.

Now we are packing it all up.

When we made the decision to sell the ranch and move to a smaller property of around 8 acres, the question that followed immediately was: what do we actually keep?