Preservation as Protest: Canning, Pickling, and Fermenting in Hard Times
Part of the series: #NoWasteFood
Key Takeaways
Preservation practices have long been tied to resilience, survival, and cultural identity.
Métis pemmican, prairie root cellars, and Depression-era canning clubs show how communities adapted in times of scarcity.
Today’s #NoWasteFood movement revives these traditions, reframing them as sustainable and empowering practices.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
→ The Roots of Preservation: Survival and Strategy
→ Métis Berry Pemmican: Food as Lifeline and Legacy
→ Prairie Root Cellars: Storing Against Scarcit
→ Depression-Era Canning Clubs: Community in a Jar
→ Fermentation as Everyday Resistance
→ Preservation Across Cultures: Global Strategies for Survival
→ From Protest to Practice: Linking Past and Present
→ Final Thoughts: Carrying Forward the Preservation Ethos
Preservation has always been more than food science — it was survival strategy, cultural safeguard, and sometimes an act of quiet rebellion. Before refrigeration, communities relied on salting, drying, fermenting, and storing underground to extend the life of seasonal harvests. These methods not only ensured food security but also created culinary traditions that shaped identities. To preserve was to prepare for scarcity, to protect a household, and to assert resilience in the face of unpredictability.
The politics of preservation emerged during hard times, when access to food was dictated by weather, war, or systemic inequities. Indigenous and settler practices alike reveal how canning, smoking, or burying root crops allowed families to withstand not just winters but also economic depressions and colonial disruption. For many, preserving food was not optional; it was a deliberate act of endurance that carried with it unspoken defiance against hunger and instability.
In this way, preservation became inseparable from protest. The act of boiling jars or layering roots underground was both practical and symbolic: a refusal to yield to external forces that sought to limit survival. Food stored away was a buffer against famine, a form of autonomy, and a way to maintain cultural practices when external pressures attempted to erase them.
For the Métis, pemmican was more than rations — it was lifeblood. Made from dried bison meat, rendered fat, and dried berries such as saskatoons, pemmican was energy-dense, portable, and long-lasting. This innovation turned preservation into power, fueling fur trade expeditions, bridging seasonal gaps, and sustaining communities on the move. Its durability made it invaluable not only to Indigenous groups but also to European traders who depended on Métis provisioning.
Yet pemmican was also politicized. The “Pemmican Proclamation” of 1814, which attempted to restrict the trade, revealed how food preservation intersected with colonial control. To restrict pemmican was to undermine Métis autonomy and disrupt their economic and cultural systems. But the knowledge endured, passing through generations as both culinary heritage and a marker of resilience.
Today, pemmican stands as a reminder of how Indigenous preservation practices shaped Canada’s food history. Recipes vary, but the essence remains the same: using the land’s bounty in ways that honour every part of the harvest, ensuring survival in hard times. In reviving pemmican traditions, modern cooks and knowledge-keepers carry forward an act of protest rooted in preservation.
On the prairies, root cellars were silent fortresses against winter hunger. Dug deep into the earth or built into hillsides, these cool, dark chambers held carrots, potatoes, cabbages, and beets, carefully packed in sand, sawdust, or straw. Families who settled in harsh climates relied on these storage methods to make the most of autumn harvests, ensuring months of sustenance when fields lay frozen.
The root cellar represented a balance between human ingenuity and ecological adaptation. Settlers borrowed from Indigenous knowledge of underground storage and combined it with European cellar traditions, creating a hybrid practice perfectly suited to the Canadian climate. Every bin of apples or head of cabbage represented foresight and careful planning, a household’s hedge against the unknown.
In hard times — crop failures, economic depressions, or supply chain disruptions — the cellar was more than a pantry. It was a declaration of self-reliance and continuity. To step into the dim, earthen space was to see resilience stacked in rows, each jar or crate a testament to endurance.
The Great Depression saw food preservation move beyond individual homes into collective spaces. Canning clubs, often organized by women’s institutes, churches, or community halls, brought neighbours together to share equipment, knowledge, and labour. These gatherings were not just about efficiency — they were about solidarity in the face of scarcity.
Jars of preserved fruit, vegetables, and meat lined pantries across the prairies and beyond. Women taught each other boiling-water methods, swapped recipes, and pooled resources when money was tight. The act of sealing jars became symbolic: each pop of a lid represented one more victory against want, one more way of keeping families nourished despite economic hardship.
Canning clubs also pushed back against the shame of poverty. They reframed frugality as pride and skill, reminding communities that careful stewardship of food was a strength, not a weakness. In doing so, these women-led initiatives turned preservation into both sustenance and subtle resistance.
Fermentation has long been a quiet force of resilience, turning perishable foods into enduring staples. Sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, and sourdough are just a few examples of microbial alchemy that stretched short harvests into months of nourishment. Across cultures, fermentation became an everyday act of resisting spoilage and ensuring continuity.
In times of political or economic disruption, fermentation carried added weight. For example, families in wartime Europe relied on kraut and pickles when supply chains failed, while Korean households maintained kimchi traditions despite colonization and conflict. Each bubbling jar or crock represented a small but profound defiance: a refusal to let instability dictate survival.
The practice also fostered community knowledge. Shared starters, brines, and methods circulated through families, connecting people across generations. To pass down a sourdough starter or kimchi jar was to pass down resilience itself. In this way, fermentation remains not just a kitchen practice but a cultural inheritance of protest.
Every culture has crafted preservation methods suited to its environment. In Scandinavia, drying and fermenting fish ensured survival during long, dark winters. In West Africa, drying and grinding groundnuts extended their use into protein-rich stews. In Japan, miso and pickles provided essential nutrients during lean seasons, while Indigenous groups across the Americas smoked salmon, corn, and game to carry them across seasonal cycles.
What unites these practices is not simply necessity, but ingenuity. Communities learned to read their environments, mastering methods that turned scarcity into abundance. Preservation became a universal language of survival, one spoken in spices, smoke, salt, and time.
These traditions highlight the universality of food resilience. Whether in a Métis pemmican bag, a prairie cellar, or a jar of miso fermenting in Japan, the message was the same: survival depended on honouring the harvest and wasting nothing. Preservation was a cultural and ecological ethic.
Today’s sustainability movements echo these ancestral strategies. Hashtags like #NoWasteFood and #PreserveTheHarvest bring new attention to practices once dismissed as old-fashioned. Modern homesteaders, chefs, and eco-conscious households are rediscovering canning, fermenting, and cellaring not as novelties but as inheritances.
What was once survival has become sustainability. Pemmican is studied for its nutritional density, sauerkraut for its probiotics, and root cellars for their energy efficiency. By reframing these practices in contemporary terms, communities are recognizing that resilience is not a new invention but a legacy worth reviving.
Preservation, then, is no longer just protest against scarcity — it is protest against waste. In a world of industrialized abundance and environmental strain, reviving these traditions is both ecological responsibility and cultural reclamation.
Preservation tells us that food history is never just about flavour — it is about survival, protest, and identity. To salt, can, ferment, or bury food was to declare continuity in the face of hardship, to safeguard communities against the unpredictable. Each jar, crock, or cellar was an archive of resilience.
In carrying these traditions forward, modern kitchens are not simply embracing nostalgia. They are engaging in acts of cultural renewal, environmental stewardship, and community care. The old jars and bubbling crocks remind us that the future of food lies in remembering the wisdom of the past.
Reviving preservation practices today means more than reducing waste. It means joining a lineage of people who, in every era, turned survival into strength, necessity into nourishment, and protest into preservation.
