Preserving food isn't hard. Or expensive. This setup ran me less than 80 dollars total, and takes up virtually no space. The dehydrator is an LEM 5 tray that cost me 65 bucks. 1lb of coarse kosher salt and a 2lb bag of brown sugar cost me 5 bucks. Ziploc bags and brine containers also ran about 5 bucks. Just for shits and giggles, I even threw in a bottle of liquid smoke which cost 3 bucks. The great thing about a dehydrator is their easy to use, inexpensive, and can preserve damn near anything. I've done fish, jerkey, berries, apples, and all sorts of other things with this.