Unlike bears or marmots, humans are not able to hibernate, and therefore, winter food preparations look a little different than some wild animals who gorge on food to build up fat stores for a long winter’s nap. In the present day, if you have a craving for something tasty and warm after a long day playing in the snow, you might head down to the grocery store to pick up a can of soup. However, winter munching for us humans has not always been so easy. Throughout history, people around the globe have found creative and innovative ways to store food in preparation for the colder months.

For the Ute people indigenous to the state of Colorado, food storage was especially important as the harsh mountain winters yielded very little sustenance once the frost had taken over. Generally, the Ute would live in larger groups, but when the ground was no longer suitable for growing food, they would break into smaller family units in order to be more mobile. In the fall and spring, these smaller groups hunted large and small game to store as food. The Ute also used animal parts to make leather material to create clothing and shoes and even cloths to store the food in. Both Three Leaf Sumac (Rhus trilobata) and Willows (Salicaceae family) were often used to make baskets for food and water storage. These baskets were then sealed with pitch to make them watertight. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, from the bronze age (about 5,000 years ago) until the 18th century, people of Ireland and Scotland welcomed water and wetlands to utilize as natural food preservation. Peat bogs, which are abundant in those areas, were used as storage for either butter or cheese, although archaeologists are still not exactly sure which milky product was the goal. Generally encased in leather or other fabric material, over 500 “butter burials” have been found in peat bogs. Not my idea of a perfect refrigerator, but people who have tried to replicate these methods cited the blocks as tasting “gamey and pungent; delicious like salami.” This method of preservation doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you realize that many modern-day expensive cheeses come from mold filled caves.

Fermented Foods

Another, possibly questionable yet popular form of food storage is fermentation. Fermentation is a process of food preservation where sugars and starches break down into alcohols or acids in an oxygen-poor environment. There has been a lot of research conducted on the benefits of fermented food for our gut bacteria leading to the popularization of beverages like kombucha and kefir. While most fermented foods on the shelves at the grocery store today are carefully tested and packaged in an FDA approved facility, traditional or “at home” methods could hold serious consequences if even one small step in the process goes wrong! A great number of people still live far from commercial supermarkets, and therefore must rely on these home methods of preservation. Botulism (Clostridium botulinum), is a bacterial illness caused by neurotoxic spores. It is curable but can lead to paralysis or death in humans. If foods are not properly made or stored after the fact, botulism bacteria can grow fast and without detection, but only in very particular environments containing low amounts of oxygen, salt, and acids.

Thankfully here in Eagle County in the 21st century, we don’t have to worry about making our own baskets, fermenting our own food, or where we’ll store our homemade butter (or cheese!). At your next meal, take a moment to think about where your food comes from and be thankful you didn’t have to dig it up from a peat bog!

Bethan Ouimette is a naturalist at Walking Mountains who would probably try ancient Peat Bog cheese for $20.

Sources

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-did-ancient-people-keep-their-food-from-rotting - Bogs

https://www.southernute-nsn.gov/history/ - Ute Baskets

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3320287/ - Botulism