“Run down and get the cinnamon, will you, Joey?” said Polly; “it’s in the ‘Provision Room.”
The “Provision Room” was a little shed that was tacked on to the main house,
and reached by a short flight of rickety steps; so called, because as Polly said, “’twas a good place to keep provisions in,
even if we haven’t any; and besides,” she always finished, “it sounds nice!”
– Five Little Peppers
Well, I think it is official to say – we have finally finished up the gardening and Provision Room for 2024.
Praise the Lord! What a year!
The Lord is so good to us, providing the land and the seeds, the strength and the good sunshine and wonderful soil to help grow our family vegetable garden. This year, I feel we did even more than last year, particularly in the tomato category (we always go through so many tomato products over the winter that I wanted to make sure we had a little bit extra this year to see us through to September 2025).
Of course, as always, the goal of our family vegetable garden is to provide enough food to last us until next year’s garden. Our Provision Room is our grocery story in the cellar, an idea that first came to many years ago. Would it be possible to eat annually from our garden? Could we grow enough food to sustain our large family, even though our summers are short, compared to hotter climates?
I am happy to report that, as we have been doing just this for nearly 10 years now, our system seems to be working. And while, yes, there are short trips to the grocery store for a moment of weakness when one is craving a fresh salad in January (even though we all know this is not the time for salads in Canada! Seasonal eating is what we are aiming for …), we generally do keep our grocery store trips at a very small minimum, especially considering there are a dozen people to feed three times a day in our household.
I’m sure, if you are an old fashioned soul like me, you have watched a few episodes of The Waltons, that sweet, large family that somehow makes it through the Great Depression on love and good homegrown food. (Disclaimer: while some of the children have some issues later on in life, the earlier shows are endearing and sweet, especially depicting a wholesome family life during the Great Depression.) I admire Ma and her willingness to work tirelessly, to feed her big wonderful family, to create a loving home ( I also absolutely admire her adorable kitchen!). In one episode (The Christmas story), the most endearing scene to me was when Mrs. Walton went downstairs to her cellar and brought up some apples to bake her famous apple cake. The family was wait for her husband to return from travelling during a wild winter storm. She kept her family’s hope alive, cheered the worried children with her homemade cake, provided from her well stocked pantry.
When I first saw that scene, a well provided cellar, a mother working hard, but enjoying the fruits of her labour, able to just go downstairs to her cold room and pick out a few apples to bake a special cake for her family, it really spoke to me in so many ways. In so many situations, women in our current society have lost the ways of providing for their family in the art of The Provision Room.
Canning, pressure canning, dehydrating, preserving foods is such an important tasks and skill- one skill I feel all daughters and mothers should know! Quite a few years ago, when I was a young mother with only a handful of children, a kind Mennonite friend of mine gave me a tour of her canning room. As I stood looking at her beautiful filled jars, rows and rows of preserved goodness, inspiration immediately filled my head. This – this beautiful room full of homegrown preserved food – would be my new goal. I started with peaches and tomatoes, something I had seen my mother can countless summers growing up in the country. Strawberry and blueberry jam were on the list to can, as well. As the summer progressed, green beans were next – that required a pressure canner. From there, we worked our way into pressure canning soups and stews, meats and broth. The vegetable garden grew as our family grew and summer after summer, I worked out a system of how many rows, how much was needed to be planted, how many onions, how many jars of tomato sauce, how many heads of cabbage would feed our family.
I plan out all our needs and pray that our garden will be blessed enough to provide us the food we require. For example, our vegetable rotation through the winter will be beets, green beans, carrots, cabbage, squash and corn. We raise our own meat (chicken, turkey and beef) and buy freshly caught fish from the ocean from a fisherman and his wife.
“There was no rest and no play for anyone now. They all worked from candle-light to candle-light.
Mother and the girls were making cucumber pickles, green tomato pickles, and watermelon rind pickles;
they were drying corn and apples, and making preserves.
Everything must be saved, nothing wasted of all the summer’s bounty.”
~ Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy
We had a stellar year of squash! Our favourite is butternut and spaghetti squash – so thankful! This year, we canned some, as well, so we have quite the large amount. 
We have soups, stews and broths ready for school lunches. On this side of the Provision Room, we have salsa, ketchup, rhubarb ketchup, BBQ sauce, plum sauce, a year’s worth of tomato sauce, pickled beets, regular beets, green beans, pickled beans, relishes, pickled mixed vegetables, bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, chick peas … 
And on this side we find the fruits – apples, applesauce, peaches, jams and jellies, whole fruits (blueberries) and pie fillings.
We have garlic, cabbages, a year’s worth of delicious potatoes, an onion for every day, and of course – more squash! We picked apples at the local apple orchard and they are stored whole, as well. 
While exhausting and tiring and very hot at times, I am truly thankful for this wonderful opportunity to grow food for our family. We have learned so much and we will do it all over again next spring!
I also wanted to update news on our garden competition – in case anyone was wondering … 🙂 We attended the awards ceremony last week in Charlottetown. We had a lovely, wonderful time. The event, run by the PEI Rural Beautification Society, awarded our family first place in the Family Vegetable Garden category for our county. We were so thrilled! We received a money award and a beautiful big box of flower bulbs to plant from Veseys.
We had a fabulous evening, surrounded by over 300 fellow gardeners. It was amazing to know all these people in attendance care about our little island and desire to see the rural landscape beautiful. What a blessing!
Thank you for following along in our gardening journey …
by Gigi
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