When I grew up in Alaska, we would often dry food or use a pressure cooker to preserve it for the winter. It's not hard; it just takes work. We found that freezing food would only keep it fresh for a few months, and the food would spoil anyway if the power went out for a few days.

You can use a dehydrator or smokehouse to dry meats, and it's easy to dry your own banana chips & such. If you search the web for "freezer bag cooking" you'll find websites that give recipes for dried meals using a dehydrator. (I'd avoid the common practice of adding boiling water straight to a freezer bag; use a pot instead unless you like traces of melted plastic in your food.)

If you get your hands on mass quantities of fruit, vegetables, or meats, then a pressure cooker is the way to go. We used to use it to jar fish during the salmon run, and to preserve whatever surplus food we grew in the garden. You can make your own jams & jellies that way too.

It's a good idea to write the date on whatever you preserve. The food won't go bad, per se, but it supposedly loses its nutritional value after a few years.