Wednesday, December 15, 2010

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.