Guest blog, courtesy of Prep4Life,Makers of The CUBE freeze dryer.

Every year, gardeners and homesteaders are planning for a bountiful harvest that will sustain them through the colder months. We are thrilled to bring you a comprehensive food preservation method that will preserve your entire food stockpiles for self-sufficiency and long-term food storage. By combining the fresh food grown from your Survival Garden Seeds with the preservation power of The CUBE freeze dryer, you control your food supply and ensure a sustainable source of delicious food for yourself and your loved ones.

Why is the Cube Essential to your garden’s success?

If you've never had any experience with freeze-drying, you may wonder why you should invest in a freeze-dryer for processing your survival food staples. After all, there are so many other methods of drying and preserving raw food for long-term storage: glass canning, vacuum drying, sun drying, oven drying, air drying, fermenting, freezing, curing, smoking, pickling, and more. All of these food storage packaging methods have their place, but an investment in food preservation with The Cube is an upgrade to your survival food strategy.

Higher Nutritional Value: Preserving your garden harvest for long-term emergency food storage can be a challenge. Although they have a long shelf life, canned foods only retain about 50% of the nutritional value of food fresh from the garden. The CUBE gently removes moisture from your fresh produce, leaving you with frozen food that still has more than 90% of its nutritional value. The gentle freeze-drying process of The CUBE helps preserve the essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals present in your fresh produce, ensuring optimal nutritional value and protecting your food from heat damage.

Space Saving:The CUBE is a convenient space-saving tool that transforms your delicious garden harvest into shelf-stable, lightweight, and freeze-dried foods that are much more nutritious than cooked products. However, they don't take up large amounts of valuable freezer space like traditional frozen fruit and vegetables. Just freeze-dry your harvest and store them in a suitable space.

Long Shelf Life and Flavor: When packaged properly, freeze-dried foods can have an extended shelf life of up to 25 years, allowing you to build a robust and reliable emergency food supply. While you may enjoy yummy fruit leather when you're on a hike, in a survival situation, you'll soon be craving the distinct fruit flavor that only fresh food can provide. Unlike traditional drying methods, freeze drying retains the textures, colors, and most importantly, flavor of your favorite fruit and vegetables. Each bite will be a burst of garden-fresh goodness, even years later. Plus, no more fruit with ice crystals! 

More Uses:Freeze drying can preserve foods that other methods cannot, like dairy products and eggs. Additionally, freeze-dried products can be rehydrated and used in cooked products, like your favorite recipes from fruits and vegetables straight from the garden.

Food Safety: Batch pressure canning is a convenient way to process gallons of food, but it can also present a serious food safety hazard when done incorrectly. Learning all the principles of pressure canning and proper canning guidelines can help you prevent deadly canning mistakes and common canning pitfalls. We recommend consulting the National Center for Home Food Preservation website to help ensure the safety of steam canning and water bath vegetable canning methods. This is especially important when canning salsa, tomato sauces, tomato juice, and other tricky canned foods.

Building a Sustainable Food Future: Freeze-dried items are the ultimate convenience food without the wastefulness of other best-selling survival food sources. By implementing preservation practices, you are taking a significant step towards building a sustainable food future. Growing and preserving your own food not only promotes self-sufficiency but also reduces reliance on external food sources. It's also a great way to keep food fresh when your harvest comes in all at once and you don't know what to do. If you have more zucchini or peppers than you know what to do with, all that extra food won't go to waste and you have more time so that later you can make Cowboy Candy or your zucchini bread recipe.

The CUBE is a serious investment in food preservation that is well worth the purchase price. It empowers you to take control of your food supply, ensure self-sufficiency, and savor delicious food from your garden all year round. With Survival Garden Seeds' high-quality seeds and our innovative preservation solutions, including The CUBE freeze dryer, you have the tools to create a sustainable cycle of growing, harvesting, and preserving, with an optimal food storage alternative to complex and hazardous food preservation methods.

Click here to Visit the Prep4Life website to learn more about The CUBE. With the Cube and Survival Garden Seeds, you will cultivate a thriving garden and secure a bountiful harvest for a sustainable future.

Happy planting and preserving!