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SW “Ohia” | Hello All,
I was recently talking with a friend of mine about weather and ice. My great-grandfather cut pond ice as a job when he was young. I still have his ice tongs hanging in the barn.
This got me wondering about the actual practical side of food preservation in the days before electricity. In this area, lots of old farmsteads have icehouses, smokehouses, root cellars of various types, springhouses, etc that once accomplished this.
Over the years I have been told about salting uncooked meat, storing cooked meat packed in stone crocks of lard, or drying it over a fire. Of course the cellar could store certain fruits and veggies. Ice house or icebox could store stuff that needed to be cold. Canning jars for various things, pickling, etc. Some older folks have talked of drying fruits over the fireplace or in special types of smokehouses but I’ve never seen that. I’ve also heard of using honey to preserve fruits in crocks or jars.
So, for those that lived during a time before refrigerators, how did you handle storing food? What was the practical storage time for these different methods?
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Question for those of you who lived without refrigerators?
