(MotherEarthNews) Believe it or not, it is possible to live without refrigeration. Long before the advent of home coolers and freezers, the problems of food storage and preservation had been solved, but this invaluable knowledge has been largely forgotten by our modern “quick and easy” society. Today, you can learn how to preserve food without refrigeration to save money and have delicious produce all year.

Yes, it certainly is both fast and easy to cram an armload of frozen supermarket food into the freezer or refrigerator. It’s become so natural to do exactly that, in fact, that we now often completely overlook the home refrigeration unit’s definite limitations.

For instance, it’s impossible to store a year’s supply of food in a refrigerator or freezer. If you raise all or most of what your family eats, then refrigeration is definitely not a practical means of preservation.

And did you realize that food frozen or refrigerated for longer than three months loses both its flavor and appearance and the greater portion of its nutritional value? Some edibles become positively revolting when frozen overlong.

Consider, also, what happens to a big freezer of frozen food during a major, lengthy power failure. It only takes about two days without electricity to turn a marvelous store of frozen victuals into a sodden, rotting mess.

There’s a money angle to consider too. Operating expenses for a home refrigerating unit are nominal — probably not more than a couple of dollars a month — but that is still bread you could use elsewhere (like for a subscription to MOTHER). And think of all the nice, useful things you could buy with the money you’d get if you sold your refrigerator or freezer. Or — if the unit is too old or useless to sell — you can still make money with it by turning it on its back, filling it with dirt and table scraps and sprinkling in a handful of fat earthworms. Within a year, you’ll be able to sell livestock from this worm farm to all the fishermen and organic gardeners in your neighborhood!

Well, chances are you won’t want to take that drastic a step, but if you’ve read this far, I assume that you are seriously interested in learning to can and preserve food without refrigeration. Your mother may have done it, your mother’s mother probably did, and your mother’s mother most certainly fed a family without the benefit of the electric refrigerator. If great-grandma did it, you can too. It’s as basic as breathing and, after awhile, you’ll begin to look forward to the fun each year!

Three Major Methods to Preserve Food without Refrigeration 

Meat and dairy products are another story altogether and will not be covered in this article, but fruits and vegetables can be preserved at home without refrigeration by three methods: storage, drying and canning.

Simple storage is, by far, the oldest method of preserving food. It’s also the easiest. Perishables to be kept by this process are merely placed in a cool, dry environment such as a cellar or specially-constructed hole in the ground. Only a limited number of fruits and vegetables can be preserved in this fashion, however, and only for a limited period of time.

Drying is another easy and quite old method of keeping produce (dried foods have been found in human settlements dating back to 4,000 B.C.). In this process, spoilage is prevented by removing most of the food’s natural water. Many edibles can be dried, but just as many cannot.

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