Does your home reflect the changing seasons? What about your homemaking? As homemakers, we have the opportunity to bring the rhythms of the earth into our homes, and let them guide our duties for each season.
Why Does Seasonal Homemaking Matter?
Well, we all live on this planet, and our environment does impact our lives in many ways. Folks who live out in the country might see this more clearly than those living sixteen stories up in a concrete condo, but city dwellers and country folk alike can appreciate the beauty of the earth. One way we can come to a greater appreciation for our world is by living seasonally.
What is seasonal living?
For me, seasonal living means noting the characteristics of each season and finding ways to use the gifts that each season brings. It means planting seeds in the spring: a few pots of herbs or an entire garden.
It means tending that garden in the summer, as well as foraging berries and medicinal plants. It means harvesting ripe produce, whether from your own garden, or a neighbor’s, or the market when locally grown fruits and vegetables are in season.
It means preserving the abundance of summer’s yield so that it may be enjoyed during the lean months when the earth is barren and cold. Finally, it means following the pace of each season: increasing activity in spring and summer, then slowing down in autumn and winter.
This cycle of work and rest is good for our bodies and our souls. It helps us to live balanced and peaceful lives, instead of an endless succession of busy-ness with an occasional vacation here and there.
That being said, seasonal living is a goal for me. I’m really just starting out on this journey, but homemaking has given me the opportunity to start putting my dreams into action. I’m so excited for each little step toward seasonal homemaking!
What does seasonal homemaking look like in fall?
Squirrels are hiding nuts, bears are putting on extra fat, geese are flying south. Autumn is about preparing for winter, but not in a manner too rushed to appreciate the here and now.
The autumn kitchen is filled with the sights and smells of the season. Ripe produce with the last gleams of summer’s abundance waiting to be canned or frozen. The last flowers clipped from the garden before the frost could wither their blooms. Applesauce simmering on the stove, and the irresistible aroma of a pie cooling on the windowsill…
These are what my daydreams are made of! Your kitchen may not look quite like this, and neither does mine, but here are some practical steps for both of us to grow closer to the seasons in our kitchens.
Stock your pantry
You don’t need to grow a huge vegetable garden to stock a pantry. You don’t have to preserve everything yourself. It’s okay to buy canned tomatoes and applesauce from the grocery store. But the simple act of filling your pantry with preserved food will give you a sense of abundance and readiness for whatever wild weather awaits in the coming months.
Wondering what to stock up on if you’ve never done that before? Here are some suggestions for a winter pantry:
- coffee, tea, and hot cocoa mix
- dried fruits and nuts
- dry beans, lentils, and rice
- soup stock
- canned tomatoes and other vegetables
- dried herbs and spices
- onions, garlic, potatoes, and winter squashes
For more pantry-stocking ideas, along with a handy checklist, read How to Stock a Pioneer Pantry!
What to preserve in the Fall
This will depend on what grows where you live, of course; but here’s a short list of the plants I like to preserve during the autumn season:
Herbs
Dried herbs are useful for cooking, teas, and sometimes medicines. If you grow herbs in your garden (or even on your windowsill), you can harvest and dry your own! It’s extra special to open a jar of your very own dried herbs when you make pizza or a hearty winter soup!
I dry most of my herbs by hanging them in bunches. Some varieties don’t do well with this method, typically those with bigger leaves, like basil and parsley. For those, a dehydrator works great! Or you can make basil salt as an alternate way to preserve it without losing its fresh flavor!
Rosehips
This was my first year harvesting rose hips. Wild roses grow all over the place here, and this year there was such an abundance of delicate pink blooms in June!
We collected the rose hips gradually, over the course of several weeks, whenever we happened to see bushes laden with them. I learned that it takes a LOT of rose hips to make anything, because you usually only use the juice… and they’re not very juicy!
I made a small batch of rose hip catsup, which turned out very flavorful, but more like barbecue sauce than catsup in my opinion! I also dried some rose hips for later use in other concoctions.
I dried them by the lazy method: after I baked something in the oven, while it was still warm, I popped a pan of rose hips in and let them sit until the oven was completely cool. Super simple, and you don’t have to worry about burning them!
Lingonberries
Summer is berry season in many places, but here in interior Alaska, we pick lingonberries (the locals call them lowbush cranberries) after the first frost. These firm, small berries are my favorite to pick because they’re so easy to work with: they don’t squish too easily, and they’re quick to clean.
I merely clean the berries and freeze them in quart bags. They don’t tend to freeze together in the bags, because their moisture content is lower than most other berries. We use them just like cranberries, in spiced cranberry tea or cranberry scones!
Apples
When the apples are in season and you can get a bushel for a great price, why not stock up? If you don’t have a cellar to store them in, you will probably need some other way to preserve the fruit so it will last well into the winter or longer. There are many ways to preserve apples:
- as applesauce, canned or frozen
- canned apple butter
- canned apple slices or apple pie filling
- dried apple rings
- you can even freeze apple slices if you plan to use them for baking!
Here is a great tutorial for making canned apple slices, along with ideas for recipes to use them in!
Pumpkins
Pumpkins will last for months in a cool, dry place, so you don’t have to process them immediately. However, most recipes don’t call for raw pumpkin, so I like to cook a lot at once and have it ready!
Cooking pumpkin is as simple as cutting it in half, scooping the seeds and pulp out, and cooking the halves (in a shallow pan) in a slow oven for several hours. Once the pumpkin has cooled a bit, you can scoop out the flesh, mash or puree it until smooth, and then use it as you please in recipes calling for canned pumpkin puree.
I like to freeze pumpkin puree in pint-size freezer containers. Freezer bags would also work. I would recommend freezing small portions, or you’ll end up with a lot of thawed pumpkin all at once!
You can also can pumpkin, using a pressure canner. Jill has a simple recipe and pressure canning tutorial.
Seasonal Meal Planning
I love meal planning in general, because it makes my life easier and prevents the dreadful looming question of What’s For Dinner from destroying my peace of mind.
Most of the time, when I make meal my weekly meal plan, I have a few ideas for meals I want to make in the coming week. Then I flip through a cookbook or two (not more than two, or it takes too long!) for inspiration.
I’ve noticed that I tend to use certain cookbooks more during one season than another. I make more soups, stews, and oven-roasted meals during fall and winter, while spring and summer feature fresh salads and grilled dishes.
This in itself is a step toward seasonal eating, but I want to take it even further. I would love to eat mostly locally-grown foods while they’re in season, but that’s a little scary to me, living in Alaska! I’m sure it can be done, but I like fresh vegetables in the winter, too!
So, while I’m not at that extreme of seasonal eating, I do like to use the fruits and vegetables that are in season — if not in Alaska, at least somewhere in Canada or the United States.
Making a Seasonal Meal Plan
How do you go about setting up a seasonal meal plan? First, it’s helpful to know which produce is in season at what time. You can find lists of seasonal fruits and vegetables online easily, but I don’t always find them helpful.
After all, you can buy fresh produce all year, and strawberries don’t ripen at the exact same time of year everywhere they’re grown. (As an example, my neighbor has a few hardy cherry trees, and they produced at the same time as her apple trees this year: early September!)
Perhaps the best way to find out what’s in season where you live is to visit your local farmer’s market or produce stand. Failing that, just check the grocery store sale flyer to see what produce is on sale this week!
Make a list of in-season produce
Write down a list of the fruits and vegetables that are ripe, and use that list as the basis for your meal plan.
Many people participate in CSAs or farm shares, where they pick up a box of fresh produce weekly from local farms. My sister has done this for years, and she says it has really helped her family to eat more fresh, local produce.
These programs are more geared toward summer gardens, so what about fall produce? If you live in a place where there are farm stands or orchards, go there first! They will have the freshest fruits and vegetables.
But even if you don’t have that option, many grocery stores carry local produce during the local growing season (summer and fall in this hemisphere!).
Find some seasonal recipes
Now that you have a list of produce, how do you make it into a meal plan? I imagine many of us are already baking with pumpkins and apples. That’s great! Intentionally making apple pie instead of chocolate cake during the fall is one small step toward seasonal eating.
Note: There is nothing wrong with chocolate at any time of year! I do eat it all year long, except during penitential seasons. This is just a suggestion for how to incorporate more seasonal produce into your menu!
Collect Favorite Seasonal Recipes
If you really want to get into seasonal meal planning, you could organize your recipe box by season. I hope to do this some day! Just imagine turning to the Autumn section and pulling out all of your favorite fall recipes!
I have a few cookbooks that are organized this way, and I find it a delightful system. Each time I flip to a new season, I see special recipes and fall into reveries of memories from yesteryear.
If you don’t want to go to all that trouble, or perchance prefer your recipes organized alphabetically, try making seasonal Pinterest recipe boards. (I have a fall recipe board here, if you’d like some inspiration!)
You don’t even need to use recipes from a website if you have one that your family likes; but sometimes it helps to have a visual reminder of which dishes you can make from cabbages and apples. (Psst — here’s a great one!)
Or just make a simple list of your favorite fall recipes, and post it in your pantry. Keep adding to the list as you discover new seasonal recipes, and by next year, you’ll probably have more ideas than you can use!
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What do you think of the idea of bringing the seasons into your homemaking routines? I hope these ideas help you to celebrate autumn and embrace each season that you find yourself in.
For more about finding joy and meaning in homemaking, as well as embracing seasonal living, check out my Guide to Intentional Homemaking!
Happy homemaking!
~Kimberly
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