Food

In every conceivable SHTF event, you are going to need a stockpile of food. These could include Pandemics, Grid Down situations,or Civil Unrest. Even during an event like a Global Financial Collapse,or another Great Depression having food on hand, and being able to preserve food you grow will make your life easier.

Use it or loose it

When you put away food, make sure you buy what you eat, and eat what you buy. When we first started putting food away we made a large single purchase, stored it away under the stairs and forgot about it. It contained lots stilly purchases like power bars and Gatorade but also things we ate regularly (cereal, canned foods, bottled water etc).

When we finally got around to checking on it a large amount had expired. Some of the bottled water had completely evaporated (broken seals). Other things had been chewed by mice. If we were depending on this stuff in an emergency we would have been in trouble.

Time to get serious

Don't squirrel away foods and forget about them. You can keep your 3 day supply separate but keep it out so you can rotate it. (The only exception to this is your forever food but it takes some special preparation)

If mice can get into it (for example cereal boxes) they go into a plastic bucket (Gamma seal lids make it easier), or recycled glass jars (sugar, dried beans, rice etc). These can be vacuum sealed for freshness.

Get an extra can opener and store it with the food. Nothing would more frustrating that not finding one in an emergency.

Keep a small clipboard, a pad of paper and a pen hanging in your pantry. Every time your remove something from the pantry, write it down so you can replace it.

Make sure you only count shelf stable food. Food in the fridge will stay cold for about 4 hours while the freezer might last 1-2 days. Unfortunately you probably won't have power or natural gas so it will be hard to cook anything. Try to stick to pre packaged foods.

If you're desperate try making a can stove out of materials you have on hand.


** Focus on splitting this up in all 3 levels.

Level 0 (3 days)

Cereal and powdered milk.
Canned Juice, powdered coffee/ tea and powdered drink mix (Lemonade, Gatorade, Kool-Aid)
Canned meat, fruit and vegetables.
Peanut butter, Jam and crackers.
Granola bars.
Trail mix.

** Not sure if this goes here but:

** have a 'full monty' section listing from beginning. food scraps to compost to planting, to growing, (sqf plus cage etc), harvesting, processing and seed saving.

Just like the start of a race is not the time to think 'it might have been a good idea to train a little', the culmination of growing season is not the time to start thinking, ok how do I process all this?'

Have a plan right from the beginning. Are you able to dry all the leafy vegetables you have, or will they go rotten? Do you have enough canning jars, enough bottles for pickling and fermenting?. Do you know how to store the fresh foods, and for how long? (beets and other root veggies). (my beets went bad really fast. IF I do the paper towel in bag in fridge, would they have lasted longer?).

Do you have a food dehydrator? Can you build a Solar Dehydrator for more processing ability? will the solar home one do a good enough job in fall? Can you split it up, with the solar doing part, then finish in the electric?

Have you been saving good sized jars for fermenting and pickling. Don't need to always can them so can reuse jars here.

Can you make fermenting wooden tops to hold veggies down? Do you have washed rocks for same process? What wood works best? Does pine work? Hardwoods
Do you have enough salt and vinegar that if there is a problem you can process at least one full years food (or two).

Have you worked out how much of each process to do? Canning and drying for long term pickling for shorter and fermenting for shorter.
Storing fresh for shortest time for veggies that can.

The longer an event lasts, the less likely it is thing will be getting back to normal soon. We are going to have to start growing everything we need to survive.