When You Read This

Welcome Preppers and Survivalists,

Folks, my family and I are going on vacation. By the time you read this, we will have been gone for five days. I plan to be back and writing at the beginning of the new year.

So,

Merry Christ's Mass

and Happy New Year!

P.S.
If I get a chance, I might post some articles, but don't plan on it.

What She Said!

Folks, like I said in the title and many time before; here are three wonderful blogs on food storage. All three are written by women and they know what they are doing.

Safely Gathered In - Home
http://safelygatheredin.blogspot.com/

Adventures in Self Reliance - Home
http://selfrelianceadventures.blogspot.com/

Food Storage Made Easy - Home
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/

Here's a post from a forth blog that I haven't read long enough to give you an opinion.

I Drive my Tractor in Pearls - Again with the food…
http://idrivemytractorinpearls.com/?p=719

Becoming a Food Producer

Lastly or firstly, you and your family (if you decide to) want to become food producers. You don't have to produce all your food, just some of it. The more food that you and your family produce; the more independent you may be during an emergency.

One way of of producing some of your own food is to plant fruit trees in your yard. My family and I are lucky; we live on an over-sized lot in the suburbs. We have five fruit trees (three pears and two cherries) in a very small orchard in the backyard. Most folks won't have room for this; however, they will have room for two or three fruit trees spread around the yard.

Instead of the two oak trees in the front yard, you can plant two apples trees, instead.

Another way is to plant a fence-row fruit like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, or ... alone the fence you share with your neighbor. This will create a visual barrier between you and your neighbor's yard.

Check with your neighbor first because these fence-row fruits spread by the branches rooting if they hit soil. Your neighbor may not want this on 'their' fence.

Another way is building a small chicken coop or rabbit hutch. Four rabbits or four chickens (hens only) can easily be kept in an average suburban yard. Make sure to check local ordinances or community covenants before starting because it may be against the local code.

The one method we have all heard about is starting a traditional garden.

There are many resources, local and on the internet, to assist you. Some states have "Master Gardner" programs. These folks have a lot of useful knowledge, they are willing to share.

Plus, don't forget the local library. They have many useful books, too.

Next, you need to process your produce. In other words, can your food. Once again there are many resources on the internet and in your local library on canning.

Yeah, I know this post seem to be very short with little information, but how do I tell you to plant something if ...

* I live in Florida and you live in Alaska of vis-a-verse-a

* You live on a 1000 acre farm and I live on an over-sized lot in suburbia
or
...

You get the point. You have to learn the answers for your area of the world

Really Long Emergencies

For really long emergencies (many, many months maybe years) you and your family are going to need to store whole foods. Whole food are foods that haven't or barely been processed.

An example is wheat.

For short emergencies (a few weeks) storing flour is o.k. For a year-long emergency, flour will go bad before the end of the year, so you want to store wheat berries. Wheat berries will store for 30 years, if they are packaged correctly. Flour will not.

So how much?

Before I answer that question for my family, I have to tell you that I was born a survivalists. My mother and father were storing water, food, guns/ammo, modifying our family home before my brothers and sisters were born.

So, for my family, we started out with the Mormon Basic Four

365 pounds of Wheat per person
(Some folks say to store less for women and kids. I disagree because my wife works as hard as I do and the kids are going to grow-up within that 30-year shelf life)

140 pounds of Sugar per person

25 pounds of Salt per person

Boxes and Boxes of Rice and Soy Milk
(Only enough for a few months because we aren't big milk drinkers)

and

One multivitamin per family member per day for two years
(The kids get a kid's chewable and my wife and I get a generic-brand)

Next, we added to that food

150 pounds of Enriched Long Grain White Rice per person
(This is the only food, that I know of, that last longer after your process it. Brown rice will only last a few week or months before going rancid)

150 pounds of Various Dried Beans (Black, Chickpea, Small Red, and Red and Brown Lentils, so far)

We are adding more beans and rice as money allows. We will stop buying beans and rice when we have 350 pounds per person in our family.

Next, we are adding to this food.

We are buying freeze dried and dehydrated veggies. We plan to have enough to serve everyone four servings a day for one year when we are finished.

Next, we plan to add to this food.

By buying, storing, and using freeze-dried/dehydrated eggs, textured vegetable protein (TVP), and other long-term food from food storage companies like;

Walton Feed

Honeyville

Safe Castle
(I suggest paying the one-time membership fee to join Safecastle Royal)

Ready-Made Resources

and many others

Lastly, you will have to wait for the next post ; - )

Link:
Family Survivors - LDS Food Storage: Mormon Food Storage
http://familysurvivors.com/lds-food-storage.htm

P.S.
If I link to someone, I don't get anything from them unless they're family and these folks aren't family.

Longer Emergencies and Rotating Your Food

For longer emergencies (more than two-week), you and your family will want a little more variety in your meals. Just like before, all you do is prepare the meal, record the quantity of food needed for the meal, and buy the food at the local market. Lastly, you place this extra food with your other stored food.

Now, you and your family are going to have to rotate this food. If you eat the meals you have stored, you can easily rotate the food.

To rotate the stored food:

First, choose the meal you're planning to eat. Go to the local grocery, buy the food, and bring it home. Next, take this food, you just bought, and take it to your food storage area. (For me and my family, it is in the basement)

Place this new food in the back of the shelf, then take the ingredients (the older food) off the front of the shelf. Take the food from your food storage area (mine is the basement) to the kitchen and make the meal.

This method insures you and your family have fresh food and that you are eating that food.

When my wife decided to become a vegetarian, we had to re-plan our food storage. We redid our menus (taking out the meat and adding new meals) Next, we went to the store and bought the "new" types of food and started using the "new" food in our "new" meals.

Most folks ask if this was/is a big deal because the kids I still eat meat. It isn't. I add canned meat to our plates after we have cooked the main course. I also do this when the kids and I have eaten PB & J for the last three days.

I like PB & J for about three days straight. On the fourth day, I have to have something different, so we plan for this in our menus. For me, we have a very small canned ham in our food storage. I slice it up and have ham sandwiches for lunch as the kids and my wife eat PB & J, again! The extra ham is used in the next dinner, so we don't have to refrigerate it.