it was always hilarious in balkans when the cabbage season comes. people showing up to the supermarket filling the whole trolley with heads of cabbage and they would go back home and put it into a big 200L drum with salty water and after that all winter everything has kiseli kupus (or as they call it in bulgaria, kiselo zele).

it's beyond simple to make, just a bag of salt, some amount of water per salt, and throw em in a giant drum. after a couple weeks or so you can take them out, slice it all up real nice and put it in jars (no sterilising needed) and you have got proper sauerkraut for the coming winter and probably fine to eat the next one after that. the vinegar that forms and the natural bacteria make it shelf stable for ages.

hm ok, maybe it's good for 4-6 months. anyway. that's when you need it anyway. harvest is about october iirc, and that keeps you with vegetables until about march. also worth reading up on other vegetables, cucumber, paprika, carrot, chilli, there's a bunch of veg you can just stick in a jar with salty water and they keep good for this amount of time.

obviously if you mean it to last 5 years then you want to pasteurise it in a pressure cooker